Finding Christ at Christmas ... A Challenge Worth Taking

The calm before the storm on Christmas Morn 2012

Is it just me?  Or do you, too, have trouble fulfilling those great intentions we always make that first Sunday in Advent ... you know, the ones where we promise ourselves that we will make this "the best Christmas ever."  I mean, really, how many "best Christmases ever" can one have in this lifetime???  It's a rhetorical question I know ... but do I really know this?!?  Because if I did then I would realize that the answer is ONE!  And for me, that would likely have occurred on my wedding day/night/day after ... December 24-25, 1982.  So why the quest each and every year to exceed all the preceding now 51 Christmases of my life?  I am not sure I even want to know the answer to that question ... it is most likely rooted in pride, which has forever been my besetting sin.

But I am fairly certain that there is no amazing present that I can receive or trip that I can take that will result in "the best Christmas ever."  Not that this has kept me from trying both of those approaches in the past.  I remember a couple of amazing ski trips that we have taken as a family to both Telluride, CO and, most recently [in 2010], to Steamboat, CO.  I even remember the Christmas Eve sermon preached in the First Presbyterian Church of Telluride as being probably the most polytheistic sermon I'd ever heard.  This, however, was followed by the glorious spectacle of the entire Telluride ski patrol skiing down Telluride Mountain carrying flaming torches in each hand ... an awesome sight to behold.  And that was followed by a $300 family dinner downtown that was memorable only for its price tag.  No wonder we always stay in condos, shop the grocery stores and cook in the room.  But not when you're going for the "best Christmas ever!"

And what about the Christmas trip we took with Janna's parents to the Garden Isle of Kaua'i back in 1993?  We had given the island more than a year to recover from the devastation wreaked by Hurricane Iniki back in September 1992 [a mere 10 days before we moved to the Aloha State].  As gorgeous as that trip was, it didn't result in lasting satisfaction to the soul.  And, in fact, we still saw evidence of the hurricane's destructive power just about everywhere ... from the piles of debris [I don't think I have ever seen a larger mountain of mattresses anywhere at any time] to the now free-roaming chickens all over the island.  And it is my understanding that they STILL have free roam of the island.  Sometimes in life, you just can't go back and close the barn door.  Literally.

The only "present" not unwrapped!

And really, what do any of these things have to do with Christmas anyway?  Beside the fact that Christmas is one of the few times during my year that I purposely block time away from work and focus on spending it with my family.  But even in doing so, I always find it very difficult not to get sucked into the vortex of the myriad of distractions and tasks scattered like a dense minefield in front of me.  And this is especially true when we stay home for Christmas.  We seemingly always have more than our share of entertaining to do, plus we now have a burgeoning family of four kids, two sons-in-law with another in the wings and now a grandson on the way.  This on top of a large extended/blended family of siblings and their children ... and two sets of parents with one surviving step-grandmother.  As an aside, perhaps I should just think "What would Grandma Threadgill do?"  And then just do that.  I am not sure she has ever suffered this problem.  And then there is always this pre-Christmas dilemma of our wedding anniversary arriving every Christmas Eve.  It has too often been given short-shrift in the carousel of holiday events ... especially back in the day when we'd be up till 3:00 or 4:00 AM building several of those "some assembly required" projects. 

Now this is neither the first Christmas nor will it be the last that I have purposed to find Jesus in.  As a matter of fact, it has become a rather common occurrence.  And I do think that there have been occasional breakthroughs on that front from time to time.  The most recent of these breakthroughs occurred in December 2009 when I published my blog post entitled "The Great Leap Down -- The Story of Christmas."  That was my first Christmas on Facebook and happened a month after my kids insisted I get a blog page because I was blowing up everyone's News Feed.  In fact, I am not so sure that their News Feeds have ever been the same.

Anyway, all the preceding is written as a backdrop to the question of the day "Where can we find Jesus this Christmas?"  The obvious answer would first be to look in the manger.  But I immediately recall a news story I ran across just ten days ago that cited an occurrence in Birmingham, England where the Baby Jesus in their local market nativity set had been stolen and replaced with a garden gnome statue.  The City Council was not amused and ordered that the nativity set be boarded up until Jesus could be found.  And it is my understanding that it remains boarded up today.  The local paper even went so far as to quip that "there was gnome room in the inn" for Jesus.

This got me to thinking that Jesus just might be missing from our Christmases as well.  What if the local authorities here insisted that my Christmas season remain boarded up until Jesus was found?  Where would I go looking for Him?  Well, it might be wise to follow the footsteps of those whom we know from history had actually found Him.  Remember those shepherds "living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks by night?"  "An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them."  Yes, the very same ones who were "terrified."  They were told "Do not be afraid.  I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people.  Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord.  This will be a sign to you:  You will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger."  Then suddenly the heavens opened up revealing the entirety of the heavenly host appearing with the angel, praising God and saying, "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men on whom His favor rests."

No sooner than the angels had left them and returned to heaven, the shepherds decided to do what?  Abandon their flocks?   That was the one thing shepherds NEVER did!  And yet the Scriptures record no real debate regarding this seeming dereliction of their duty ... it was as if they all came to an instantaneously unanimous decision to "Go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about."  An angelic visitation tends to have that effect on people ... even the most responsible people, like shepherds in that day.  Or perhaps even doctors of my day?  But sadly, I haven't seen a single angel this Christmas season and I certainly haven't seen the sky split by a great multitude of the heavenly host.  So why go?  And even if I went, where would I go?  After all, they were given pretty specific directions and a sign to look for.  And I have been given neither.

Weren't there others who came searching for Jesus?  Oh yes, the Magi.  Wise men from the east came to Jerusalem and asked, "Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews?  We saw his star in the east and have come to worship Him."  This greatly troubled King Herod who called the Magi secretly and learned from them the exact time the star had appeared and then sent them to Bethlehem telling them to make a careful search for him that he may too "go and worship him."  After going their own way, they again saw the star they had seen in the east and followed it "until it stopped over the very place where the child was."  Matthew records the Magi's emotional reaction as being "overjoyed" when they once again saw the star.  And when they arrived at "the house, they saw the child with His mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped Him.  Then they presented Him with gifts of gold, and of incense and of myrrh."  Hence the tradition of Christmas gifts goes all the way back to the Magi.  But why do we give them to each other?  Could it be because Jesus is just too hard to find?

Well, I thought if I were looking for a married person, assuming he was happily married [and I do realize that can be a big assumption these days; but we are talking about Jesus after all] then the first person I would want to talk to would be his spouse, which is, in this case, his bride.  Who is the bride of Christ?   Ostensibly the Church.  Wait, that is you and me, isn't it?!?  So moving past the obvious circularity of this argument to the Church corporately, what about finding Christ in our Church gatherings?  That would seem like an obvious place to start our search ... begin where He was last sighted.  That, too, carries with it certain assumptions that may or may not be true, and may also be specific church dependent.  What we find in far too many places is a dispassionate, dysfunctional bride.  Church attendance and participation is on the decline.  In just the past twenty years, church attendance has declined over 10% in the United States, and at any given church event here in America, an average of just 47% of the church congregation will attend.  Moreover, in the just completed 2012 presidential election, fully 20% of the electorate claimed to have no religious affiliation at all [the so-called "nones"] and that was up from 16% just four years previously.  Yes, gathering with other believers to celebrate our union with Christ is getting to be a bit of an afterthought, something to be checked off after we are done working, playing and shopping.  Our relationship to our groom has moved down the priority list.  And this is not by His choice mind you.  In most instances, His input hasn't even been sought at all.

It, however, wasn't always this way.  The early church met daily, "in the temple courts and from house to house."  And just as the shepherds came eagerly to Bethlehem that first night to see when Jesus entered our world, so, too, did the early church eagerly seek to see what was happening in the lives of those whom the Spirit of Jesus had recently entered.  The Church, as the bride of Christ, greeted Him regularly and passionately.  As a groom I know that is how I would like to be greeted each day as I come home from work.  But as with most marriages, this type of greeting sadly soon goes into decline.

In Him was life, and the life was the light of men...

So how do we practically put Christ back into Christmas?  In my mind, it comes down to what we in our family call "God sightings."  Where is it that we have seen the Lord show up lately in our lives or in the lives of people around us?  What is it that we or they were doing when this happened?  We then make a conscious effort to replicate that or at least to get involved in what God was doing the last time He was seen.  Too often, we prefer to tell Jesus what it is that we'll be doing and then invite Him to join us there.  That may work from time to time, but I submit to you that those times are more the exception than they are the rule.  So as another Christmas draws nigh, I am actively looking backward over the past six months to see where it is that I have seen Christ working in both my life and in the lives of those He has sent across my path.

Alison

Last May, one of our family's dearest friends and one of my longest standing patients, Alison, suffered a devastating recurrence of her stage 4 endometrial stromal sarcoma as she had a large metastatic lesion grow around her proximal jejunum which caused severe internal bleeding and very nearly a complete small bowel obstruction.  This after nearly six years of almost "remission" [while not exactly "no evidence of disease" but essentially stand-off disease without any measurable progression].  Even more alarming was the seeming change in the cancer's histologic grade from the favorable "low grade" classification to the more ominous "high grade" category.  No one I have spoken to yet knows exactly what this means in Alison's case, and we now have a fourth opinion pending from the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, TX next month.  We are not so sure they will know any more than Dr. Linda Morgan, her Shands gynecological oncologist, does.  Both the Shands Sarcoma group and the Moffitt Cancer Center Sarcoma group declined to offer an opinion.  Perhaps only God really knows for sure given the extreme rarity of this tumor cell type.  We are all rejoicing with her, however, following the results of her six month post-operative surveillance CT scans done last month that showed no evidence of tumor recurrence or of further metastatic disease.  We are all learning greatly from both Alison and another dear Four Oaks Church friend, Debora, just what it means to live one day at a time and to rejoice for each Christmas celebrated.

Debora

Debora is battling stage 4 breast cancer with liver metastases simultaneously with Alison, as she fights onward with hers.  And we continue to see how our amazing God changes lives one person at a time, seemingly more through the struggles we go through in this life than He does through our various "successes."  Debora's testimony was very powerfully shared with our entire church congregation via a video production during both services on December 23 and was also the focal point of Pastor Scott Stake's sermon on suffering while waiting in the middle for Christ's second Advent.  I don't think there was a dry eye in the sanctuary.  Still, she counts it all joy and wouldn't change a thing, as she has seen her two sons and the girlfriend [now wife] of her youngest son come to Christ through it.  And they are certainly only the first-fruits of the souls Christ will save through Debora's valiant struggle.

Alli & Chris ... let them eat cake!

Andrew & Ariel; Ashley & Matt ... headed out for a day at Dog Island

Engaged!

I marvel also as I watch the way Christ has operated in the lives of my kids.  All three of the girls have selected Godly men to become their husbands.  And it was a special blessing to watch my daughter Alli marry the love of her life, Chris, this past July in a service officiated by divine appointment by the pastor of City Church, Dean Inserra.  Selecting the pastor to both perform the wedding ceremony and conduct the premarital counseling sessions had been one of the few sticking points about the wedding as Chris really wanted his pastor, Dean, to officiate while I was partial to my and my family's pastor, Erik.  Ultimately, at our second meeting concerning this issue, which we held during Alli's Spring Break home from Caracas, VZ, I relented and let them use Dean after finding compelling Chris' argument that they as a couple would be submitted to Dean and the leadership at City Church and not Erik and the pastors and elders at Four Oaks once they were married and Alli was no longer attending Four Oaks.  I was also impressed with the way Chris yielded the final decision to me after making his final plea.  And then suddenly just seven weeks prior to the wedding and just a week or two before Alli would arrive home from Venezuela for good, Erik resigned his position with Four Oaks and we began an ongoing search for a new pastor.  This is a search that continues to this date ... but one that we hope will soon be over.  How great was it for Alli and Chris to have their premarital counseling and ceremony performed by the man who currently pastors them!  I am so glad that I got out of the way

Four Oaks Candlelight Christmas Eve Service 2011

That brings me to another recent God-sighting ... the amazing transformational process taking place in our body at Four Oaks.  God seemed to be saying that this time without a senior pastor would be much more than just a time of transition.  He would take this opportunity to reveal to each of us in leadership the extent of our continuing spiritual blindness despite each of us having "received the light."  We are just beginning to comprehend the deceitfulness of our remaining sin and the blinding effect it has on our personal spiritual vision.  While we tend to see very clearly and with great specificity the sin of others, we tend to be mostly blind to our own.  And the most dangerous aspect of this already dangerous condition is that spiritually blind people tend to be blind to their own blindness.  As a result, God has set up the body of Christ to function as an instrument of vision in our lives, so that we can know ourselves with a depth and an accuracy that would otherwise be impossible if left on our own.

Matt receiving the Swift Creek Teacher of the Year Award

And while I was on the subject of my girls and their husbands and husband-to-be, I would be remiss to not mention my son-in-law Matt Rousseau's selection three weeks ago as the Teacher of the Year at Swift Creek Middle School for the academic year 2012-13.  This is quite an honor for one so young as Matt [just beginning his third year in the classroom] and yet not surprising to any who know him.  There has likely never been a teacher more passionate about his calling than young Matthew nor one more gifted as a communicator.  Combine that with Matt's gregarious, outgoing personality, his heart for youth and his love for God and you have an unbeatable combination that makes for a very highly effective teacher.  God is honored every time Matthew walks, dashes or even leaps into his classroom, and it shouldn't be too surprising to see God honor him with this award as well.

Prayer send-off for Brian & Lois in our living room

We were honored late this summer to help send out a couple of dear friends, Brian and Lois, to Nepal on a long-term mission to the displaced Tibetan Buddhist people group living there.  This was the culmination of a calling that Brian received while taking an exploratory short term mission trip to Oaxaca, Mexico not so coincidentally with Janna and Ariel back in July 2007.  It was during this trip that God spoke to Brian's heart about long-term Christian service using his considerable engineering skills to help the indigenous peoples of Tibet whether residing in Tibet [now China] or across the border in Nepal.  As a result, God asked Brian to forgo the prestigious Ph.D. program in engineering at Florida State University that he had just been admitted to and give it all up for the cause of Christ, both on the opposite side of the globe and at an elevation quite different from our current sea level.  The ensuing five years were remarkable for the Lord providing Brian with the perfect helpmate for him ... a lovely, sweet, capable and also very adventuresome young woman named Lois.  And just like God, he allowed them to meet each other in one of our Four Oaks Church Fellowship groups ... sadly, just not OUR fellowship group [that would have made a great story even better ... well, at least in my mind].  Lois, too, had long felt the call on her life for overseas missions ... she just needed God to clear up all of the details.  In addition to providing spouses for each other, God allowed them ample time to develop a prayer and financial support network, take a couple of extended trips to Nepal to make some of the connections that would be necessary for survival there as well as to get a foretaste of where they would be living for the foreseeable future and then even an extended period of time learning some of the more modern concepts of low impact, high yield, high country agriculture at a commune-like farm near Aspen, CO last year.  And then long before we were ready to bid them farewell, they were off to Katmandu, Nepal learning the language and customs of the people there and taking a few forays/treks into the high country to get acquainted with some of the peoples they hope to begin planting churches among in the not too distant future.  I am just reminded of them this Christmas season being so far from "home" and yet home with Christ who, Himself, was no stranger to sacrifice having spent the world's first "Christmas" very far from the comforts of home [heaven] while sleeping in a feeding trough out in a borrowed barn.  You can't help but see Jesus when you see ones like Brian and Lois, so willing to sacrifice their own comfort so that others may know the one eternal and essential truth of the universe.

Missionaries have long been my heroes and I have two more such "sightings" this fall.  The first are our dear friends Chad and Tiffany, who came home in September on furlough from their mission in northern Cameroon to primarily the Fulani people group [Muslim] there.  Chad is an engineer who like Brian is a McGyver type guy ... can-do all the way no matter the circumstances.  His is a life devoted to making the lives of those much less fortunate than us better by employing relatively simple bits of technology in ingenious ways such as water filtration systems among others.  Water is the overarching feature of his ministry and he shows in very tangible ways why Christ so often referred to water in his metaphors.  There is probably no other single thing that can transform the health and life-expectancy of a remote village than reliable access to ample supplies of clean drinking water.  Fortunately, Chad is a master at finding ways to provide this life-giving resource to people ... whether it be via the laborious "hand-drilling" of a well or to employing a little machine help to start the fresh flow of water.  Last year a couple in our church donated a night's use of their skating rink to raise money to provide a Cameroonian village with a newly drilled fresh water well.  And not only did we raise enough money to fund a well but there were also enough funds to allow Chad to buy a mechanical well digging apparatus of his own rather than having to lease one every time he needed to drill a well.  Talk about an eternal investment in the Kingdom of God ... that night proved to be one ... while at the same time being a heck of a lot of fun as well.  I will never forget the sight of Pete Butler skating around in an electric suit seemingly right out of an Elton John music video!  Sometimes even a night of frivolity can result in the Kingdom moving forward a step or two, and yet there is no shortage of simultaneous sacrifice going on as well.

While we were celebrating a Housewarming Party just a few weeks ago for Chad and Tiffany we ran into another hero couple of ours, Terrill and Amber who had just returned home on furlough from northern Uganda where they minister to a very primitive tribe of people known as the Ik.  Terrill serves as a Wycliffe Bible translator to this remote people group and in four short [or maybe not so short ... depending on the eye of the beholder] years they have moved into community with this mostly nomadic people group, begun to learn their language, have developed their alphabet and have compiled a dictionary of several thousand words in the Ik tongue.  This hopefully will ultimately culminate with the New Testament and selected other sections of Scripture being translated into Ik and with a literacy program teaching the Ik to read and write in their own language.  And we also pray that it results in many coming to know the living Christ who cares enough not only to die for their souls but also to send ones as lovely at Terrill and Amber half way around the world to labor in their midst and to live out the gospel in front of their eyes.  Both Amber and Tiffany are trained nurses, yet out in the far flung reaches of rural Uganda and Cameroon, they operate at basically the level of nurse practitioners, and that more by need than by design.  And while we were celebrating their new home with them, we couldn't help but see the gleam of Jesus in Tiffany's eyes when she told us that not only was she expecting a sibling for little Chloe next summer but that there would be TWO!

Still smiling after 30 years of marriage!

I have also seen Jesus in the life of my wife Janna and in our marriage of now thirty years plus one day.  While it has become exceedingly rare for couples to spend a lifetime married to the ones they first exchanged vows with, our God is still a God who keeps covenant and has since the promise he made to Adam and Eve in the Garden regarding the offspring of her womb as being the one who would crush the serpent's head, which Christ did nearly 2000 years ago on Calvary's hill.  He is also the same God who kept covenant with Abraham and Moses and continues to keep covenant with men today.  And despite the mores of today's culture, He still expects no less from us.  How fortunate was I to marry a woman who anchors her life around honoring God's Word and keeping His commandments?!?  It was no one other than Jesus who did the same Himself, perfectly I might add, and then claimed that this was how we were to demonstrate our love for Him ... by keeping His commandments, which were in case you've forgotten summarized as "love the Lord your God with all your heart,  with all your soul and with all your mind.  And the second is like it:  Love your neighbor as yourself."   She serves her role of encouraging me to more closely walk with Christ in a beautiful way and demonstrates His unconditional love for me and others with her quick heart of forgiveness for the many times I fail.

Curtis is typically the first one to arrive at our pre-game tailgate party ...

Lastly, I want to speak of a homeless man named Curtis that God sent across our path last August at the first Seminole home football game using of all platforms ... our tailgate party.  This, I think maybe more than anything else this year, showed me just how resourceful our God can be and how unpredictable He can be about how, when and where He will show up.

Clemson v. FSU tailgate party

Curtis is a 50 year old homeless man whose life has had far more than his share of pain and heartache.  He is a veteran of the United States Army and served our country in both the Iraq and Afghanistan theaters I believe.  His pain, however, began long before he first experienced the atrocities of war.  He grew up not too far from Tallahassee down in the coastal community of Apalachicola.  Born just two days prior to Janna, he on August 9, 1962 and Janna a couple of days later, their upbringings could not have been more different.  While both came from lower middle class families, Janna was blessed with a family having a very strong Christian heritage going back at least to the fourth generation.  Curtis has only known a life of both physical and sexual abuse that began when he was a young boy and continued into adolescence.  This produced in him a harvest of mental illness manifested primarily by severe post-traumatic stress disorder [PTSD], panic disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, attention deficit disorder and a chronic mood disorder that is currently characterized as bipolar.  He requires a significant amount of medication to function and still life is a chronic struggle.  But somewhere deep inside his soul, Curtis knew that God had not forgotten him and that God did still somehow have a plan for him ... if he could only find it.

FSU Cru ... our tailgate party fixtures

So after being kicked around the country from one VA health clinic to another following his discharge from the Army, somehow Curtis ended up in Tallahassee.  This after being denied entry into a trade school program and its accompanying housing benefits in upstate New York because someone there misinterpreted something he said as him "being suicidal."  And once again, what little progress Curtis had made while in New York had come to naught and he was thrown into a different system to try again to make something of his life.  Nevermind that Curtis was not assigned to a physician or a psychiatrist when he was sent to Tallahassee ... he would just have to figure those things out once he arrived.  And, of course, he had no where to start.  And so it was that God sent Curtis to our tailgate party that hot Saturday afternoon on September 1, when the Florida State Seminoles kicked off their 2012 season against the Murray State Racers.  This, too, was our first Saturday in our new upgraded tailgate lot [Lot 8] now no longer having Dick Howser Stadium [baseball] separating us [we were previously in Lot 11] from the shadow of Doak S. Campbell Stadium immediately to our west.  The increased cost associated with the upgrade [which also was required to purchase seven season tickets, an increase from our previous level of four season tickets the prior three years] was something that had been a source of irritation to Janna.  God graciously relieved her of this irritation once Curtis came into our lives as we would likely have never met him out in Lot 11.

Our weekly sacrifice to the football gods:)  Please let FSU win!

Chris had asked Janna if she would let his brother Brian use her game ticket that day, as he had come down from Atlanta to spend the weekend with Chris and Alli.  Janna was only too happy to oblige, as she doesn't care so much about the games as she does about the people she loves who attend the games.  So following the conclusion of the tailgate party, our band of seven traipsed into the stadium to watch the game in sweltering 95 degree heat.  Janna stayed out at our tailgate site and watched the game via our satellite TV hookup, graded papers, did some teacher planning and other such things that teachers do when they have time to kill.  A short while later, Curtis appeared and seemed intrigued by the game and being able to watch it outside with just a satellite dish.  He asked if he could stay and watch and Janna said yes, but after a while when he didn't leave, she awkwardly invited him under our canopy to watch in the shade and while sitting down.  She also offered him a soft drink and a late lunch which he also quickly accepted.  They struck up a conversation which Janna purposely turned toward Christ and Curtis was only too happy to follow.  It turns out that this is just what he had both been craving and asking the Lord for all along ... that God would lead him to believers who could point him in the right direction and help him make the needed connections that would result in positive change in his life.  He just didn't even know where to start.  And neither did we.

The family that parties together ... stays together!

And so it was on that fateful Saturday before Labor Day, neither Janna, nor Curtis nor even I knew the first thing about how Curtis could qualify for the generous GI bill programs that are now available to Gulf War veterans.  What Curtis did know though was, despite the fact that he did graduate from Apalachicola High School back in 1980, he could not pass the math portion of the TABE exam, all of which he was required to pass before being qualified for admission not only to Tallahassee Community College but even to Lively Technical Center which is his current school of choice.  The gulf between him and his goal of securing his GI benefits seemed far too wide to bridge and almost too wide to fathom.  Yet our God is a resourceful God.  Unbeknownst to me, God was about to begin working through another couple from our church, Paul and Jeanie Diemer, who head up the local Frenchtown Breakfast in the Park for the indigent and primarily homeless and hopeless people in Tallahassee most of whom stay in or around either the Shelter a block to two to the east or at the Haven of Rest, which is the Christian homeless mission that Curtis is residing at presently.  Curtis took an instant liking to them too and got to know them on Saturday mornings over breakfast while getting to know our family and friends on Saturday afternoons before football.  Who said that God doesn't work in mysterious ways?

Thanksgiving 2012

After dinner it was a time to reflect on our blessings.

Curtis was also faithfully attending the Renaissance Center, a block diagonal to the Haven by day using the free internet service there to further understand his options as well as the tutoring opportunities afforded him there.  Janna's dad as the former director of adult education in Wakulla County had a couple of connections that he suggested and ultimately we secured the services of a tutor who could help Curtis master the math portion of the TABE.  As I got to know Curtis better, I learned that while he had been a lifelong fan of the Seminoles, not only had he never actually seen a college football game in person, but that he had never even set foot inside Doak S. Campbell Stadium.  Well, we certainly needed God to make that situation turn around for Curtis this fall, and He did just that on October 27 when I was able to take Curtis to sit beside me for the FSU v. Duke game at Doak.  Curtis had eyes full of wonder throughout the entirety of the game and it proved to be one of the most wonderful days of his life [and yes, thankfully, the 'Noles did win the game convincingly].  One final grafting of Curtis into our family occurred on Thanksgiving Day when we invited Curtis to spend the day with us [our friends and extended family].  There was not a dry eye in the house when I shared Curtis' story with the fifteen or so folks gathered there and how God uses suffering in our lives to mold us into the kind of people he wants us to be ... even the severe things that somehow the Apostle Paul was able to describe as "light and momentary troubles" when viewed in comparison with our eternal reward in glory [see my blog post dated November 22, 2012 if interested].

The newest student at Lively Technical Center

Andrew and I went out to the Haven nearly two weeks ago to serve at their annual pre-Christmas breakfast in the park only to find Curtis missing.  It turned out that he had been hospitalized two days previously and was until noon the following day for another panic attack and that his doctors were still struggling to find the right combination of medication for him. Moreover, he may even need another admission in the next week or two to fine tune things.  But I am happy to report that I did go out to the Haven last Friday after work to give Curtis both a bit of encouragement and our family's Christmas gift; and he had a gift for me ... see the adjacent picture.  Yes it is true!  Curtis had passed the TABE exam and had been granted admission to Lively Technical Center effective in January.  He now qualifies for two years of paid housing, a monthly stipend to live on and free tuition books and fees!  He joyously told me that he was number five on the housing list and should be in a home of his own in January or possibly February at the latest.  And so it is that the kingdom of God marches on ... one changed life at a time!