Contemplations of a Mommy "Monk"

The day I found out my son broke his neck , I sent him off to a youth group activity that evening.  The students were in a gymnasium, dancing in the bleachers to a Christian rapper before they got to hear Brian Cole speak about how God rescued him from a life of drugs and destruction.  Anyways, as I dropped off my son to a pretty harmless event, I had a pang of anxiety, wishing that I could control how rowdy the kids were being in the bleachers.  What would happen if he was bumped and fell accidentally?  As I drove back home, the prayers switched over from being for his safety to being about my faith and ability to trust God through all the "what if" scenarios that kept running through my mind. Cody's personal coach mentioned to him that he was going through a fiery furnace type of trial, referring to the story in Daniel 3.  Although we may have heard this story in childhood Sunday school classes, I would guess most of us can hardly imagine how intense this trial o

Back in January, my 14 year old son was practicing wrestling after school with the high school students.  He was drilling and rolling around on the mats with seniors and boys who were bigger than him.  It's been that kind of year - his passion for this sport has led him to many one-on-one lessons, extra practices and hours weight training with older students and coaches.  In one of these practices he injured his neck, and came home in pain and needing to take a day off school to let it heal. After Cody's neck injury, we gave him some time to recover, rest and recuperate and he started feeling better.  After a couple of weeks away from wrestling, he wanted to get back into it again so we slowly eased him back into it. He started off the middle school season with a few good meets, won a tournament and then it became clear this neck pain wasn't getting better, so two weeks ago we had an x-ray done.  That's when the roller coaster ride began.  At the doctor'