Below is a Youtube link to a song that can make me cry.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9EzeW5KoPUI

The song is a story about a young teenager who's friend who is dying of cancer and how his pubescent romance complicates the situation. But it is not just out of sympathy for dealing with death that moves me but how what happens to us at that age casts such a long shadow and how little we can understand what it is that is happening to us. It is no surprise to me now how often my Mom would think and reflect on that time in her life.

When I was thirteen... ha ha I simply would not post all of the stuff that happened at that age but I can say that I am pretty sure the next couple of years were a mild case of PTS. Up until Christ revealed Himself to my heart that time pretty much unconsciously defined me. I remember Liz always saying "Michael why can't you just be happy?!" I had no answer and most of the time I didn't even know what she was talking about.

In Christ that time has not ceased to be influential but has a whole different direction. I think of the blind man in the gospel of John. He didn't forget that he had been blind but that made his belief and joy all the greater. That story certainly resonated with me when I first read it. Christ's influence has been like a stone dropped in a pool that ripples both directions of time, so not only my future has a hope but the despair of the past is dispelled with a clarity.

The real difficulty of my younger life was a feeling of existential abandonment and with dried eyes I saw that I had never been alone, that a strong hand had always been in my life from the darkest most difficult times till... well till Revelation chapter 21.
...
My meeting with the Special Ed program went well. I didn't completely charm the head of the department but that's fine. I will have to been in school for a heck of long time still but God's will be done. It is not like my life is really on hold anyway.