Life has a lot of unexpected moments. My co-worker (Mike) called me Monday night to tell me that his brother had died suddenly earlier that evening. Yesterday, Mike himself was admitted to the hospital with chest pains. As it turns out, he has been having leg cramps and the doctors believe that some plaque broke loose from a femoral artery in one of his legs. This in turn caused a series of cascading events which resulted in the chest pain. He's still in the hospital this evening.

He had to be in a lot of pain to go in. I walked into our workshop one day and wondered why there were drops of blood on the floor. He had just pulled a molar from his own mouth with a pair of pliers. He didn't want to go to the dentist and pay $400 to have it removed so he decided to do it himself. He's been a professional bouncer and when he was a younger guy (before he became a Christian) he used to get into a ton of fights. I once saw the clear outline of a chain across his shoulders. It looked like a perfect purple tattoo of a chain. Someone had hit him with it. Suffice it to say he has a very high level of pain tolerance.

He hates hospitals. I'm not terribly fond of going to them myself. Everybody is sick or broken in hospitals. I am going to use some Christian "lingo" here.....I have given it all to God. So many folks probably wonder what that means.

When I say that, I am saying that I can't deal with it, and I have to entrust whatever happens to the hand of God and know that His wisdom and will is infinitely greater than my own. I had to work my day off for Mike yesterday and I wondered about him all day long. I prayed at different times and today we had one of the largest deliveries that we make each year and I made it by myself. Through the lifting and driving and hustling through it to make it on schedule without help I thought about the deliveries Mike and I had made together in the past. You can get to know someone fairly well by working with them day in and day out for years, and by struggling through difficult days with them, working...side by side.

I have been blessed in life, so very much. Many of the struggles I have worked through have been of my own creation. In some struggles I have not been my own worst enemy. In either case....God has been right there....at my side. I have heard from Him in the way that He has orchestrated things through these struggles. The merciful hand of the Master at work is almost always more easily seen by me when looking back. There have been plenty of times where I have nearly given myself a forehead slap and wondered how I could have missed it.

Even in the seven years that my father battled cancer, and the last several months when he was paralyzed from the chest down, there were many hidden blessings. A great blessing was gaining a little more insight about my father, and growing a little closer to my father as he graciously accepted whatever God gave him, but the greatest blessing was gaining a little more insight about our heavenly Father, and growing a little closer to Him through all that He graciously gave. Cancer for seven years? Paralysis? An agonizing struggle for a time the night that death came? Some might ask, "How can there be any blessing in things like that?" Believe me, they were there, and I will treasure them for the rest of my life.

My hope and prayer for Mike and his family is that as a Christian father, Mike will be able not only to see the blessings, but to gain insight from God and grow closer to God as He helps Mike work through these struggles....right at his side.