A New Day

Today is remarkably different than yesterday. While chilly, it is sunny and bright. My spirit feels much brighter today as well than it did yesterday.

My 3 kids accompanied me to the airport this morning to drop off my father. I'm assuming that many people were praying for this farewell, as it went very well. Traffic is basically non-existent once we drove the 1 mile from our place to the city limit. The kids did well in the car and at the airport. There was no line in checkin and the wheelchair people even arrived on time to drive him through immigration and to the gate.

Healthwise, my wife and 2 of the kids weren't feeling 100%, with upset stomachs. She made it to the hospital for her weekly meeting with the bereavement counselor. It apparently was a good session. The counselor said that her sickness showed that she's still in recovery from all that has happened the past 3 weeks.

Now they are all napping, except for my elder daughter (who like me is feeling well).

Now our lives get back into more "normal" mode with just us 5 around. Of course, our "normal" is different than it was before as we deal with the loss of Jessica. We are likely to go away for a week, probably in Alsace with some friends, starting sometime next week. Getting a change of scenery would probably be a helpful thing at this point.

One French praise album titled "Passion pour ton nom" (2007) by Asaph Louange is excellent. It contains some recent praise and worship songs (officially translated by LTC) by Matt Redman, Chris Tomlin, Brenton Brown, and Tim Hughes, as well as a couple of excellent songs written directly in French like "Plus que tout" by Emmanuel Pelatan and "Jésus prit le pain" by Joel Andres.

I picked it up at le Centre Evangélique de Lognes last Monday at the LTC (Louange Traduction Chants) booth. The guy who I talked there was Johan, who is one of the leaders in worship in France today. When I told him about Jessica, he mentioned that the song "Blessed Be Your Name" by Matt & Beth Redman was originally written for a couple on their worship team who had lost a baby. I haven't been able to confirm this elsewhere, so I'm not sure. In any case, this is one of the songs (in both French and English) that continues to minister to us during this journey.