Another !$&#$) Day In Paradise (Scroll to end of this post for update)

I just received an email saying that Terry Ryan, who needs a kidney transplant, is in need of a new donor. He had a donor lined up, but that fell through. My mom used to have a saying about frustrating things: "It's enough to make a preacher cuss." I've learned that it doesn't take as much as she thought to make a preacher cuss, but this makes me want to SERIOUSLY cuss. Terry is a swell guy, a good person, a great preacher and an all-around quality human being. Why him, why now, why this?

Meanwhile, a colleague from the Small Church Ministry I volunteer for has lost is sister to ALS (Lou Gerig's disease) and is spending all his time helping to care for his daughter-in-law, whose melanoma has metasticized to several areas of her body. She is being treated but it doesn't look good. She is a mother to an 11-year-old.

I wish I had words of wisdom about these pieces of terrible news, but no mere words could fix serious problems like these. They might help, but words are limited in their power to heal. One of my professors became a widow at the age of 25, and she said the best advice she had ever gotten was "hang on to Jesus."

"What do you mean--hang on to Jesus?" My professor was (an is) a highly educated intellectual. Yeah, she's a minister, but she is not the hang onto Jesus type by nature. But she is that she had to hang onto Jesus, in spite of her doubts and fears and discomfort with doing that. So I hope these friends of mine are figuring out how to hang onto Jesus right now. because that's what they need.

Update: Terry has found many potential donors who are currently being screened by Yale New Haven Hospital.

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