Happy Birthday, Toby

Let's start with the cute photos:  (or rather, the photos of the cutie)

The birthday dinner included some of his favorite foods,  spaghetti with shake cheese and orange jello. . .

and finished up with the Pooh cake he requested. (He wanted it for cutting, not eating.)

It is difficult to believe he is 4 years old already and difficult to remember the reality of those first days.  The memories are still there and vivid, but buried under an increasing pile of ordinary, happy days.  And always when I look at him, I feel a strong undercurrent of gratitude.  So I have been thinking lately about the gift Toby is to us and ways he has lit up my life in the past 4 years- 1,461 days of Grace.

Toby's life has shown me three ways I have been blind.

God has protected and sustained Toby many times, beginning with his birth and survival and continuing through his ongoing medical journey. I have literally been thankful every day. Yet, I have other children. They are also created by God, “fearfully and wonderfully made”, and because of his mercy and sovereign grace, protected and sustained every day. How is it, then, that I see God's power more clearly when looking at Toby? God protected the others from problems Toby had to face. Should he not be praised for this? Instead, I find in myself a hardness of heart and ingratitude which overlooks the graces God sends each of us every day. This is a blindness of not seeing. God has used Toby's weakness to show me these graces and his glory as he told us he would in 2 Cor 12:9: My power is made perfect in weakness.” Toby speaks God into my life each day as I see God's strength in Toby's weakness and I am then able to see his other gifts more clearly.

Toby has also been a good reminder to me of how needy I really am. We have tried to get him the right doctors, treatments, medicines, therapies, etc. But all the time, I know that I am not in control and my understanding is limited. Even the professionals can only do their best guess. God told the church at Laodecia in Rev 3:17: For you say, I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing, not realizing that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked. This is a blindness of seeing good where there is none, seeing a sufficiency in myself which is not really there. Toby has been a vivid illustration of my own impotence and mortality, leading me to depend more on God.

There is another blindness I sometimes have when I don't see the good that is there in the negative circumstances. God promised to work all things together for our good and yet I fail to believe. I see danger, stress, and problems. In chapter 13 of The Last Battle, entitled “The Dwarfs are Not Taken In”, C. S. Lewis describes this dangerous blindness. Thrown with others into a damp, dark stable, the dwarfs see only what they expected to see. The others saw the reality- a new, big, beautiful land. Aslan observed,“They [the dwarfs] have chosen cunning instead of belief. Their prison is only in their own minds, yet they are in that prison; and so afraid of being taken in that they can not be taken out.” As I have seen God keep his promises and bring good out of Toby's difficulties, I can see more clearly the reality of God's goodness.

So thank you, Lord, again, for the gift that is Toby. May his life continue to bear witness to the Light.

(Happy Birthday, Zeke)