Why do we always seem to be surprised?

It's late. I'm tired. I'm going to make it short, but I have to blog this.

I know that, regardless of what we see here on earth, God is glorified by everything that takes place. Regardless of how we mess up or how our lives don't go just as we hope, God picks up the shards of the broken plates, bowls, vases--whatever, puts them together and makes a beautiful work of art. And sometimes I think we look for the plate or bowl or vase that we used to have and we miss what new, unexpected beauty God is trying to stick in front of our noses, all while he's saying, "HERE! LOOK AT WHAT I'VE DONE!"

But today...today we got the vase back and it is GORGEOUS!

The story is this: early last week, two of our PC kids--one graduated with Bart in 2002 and the other is getting ready to graduate with Brett this year--were going to or coming from the Lexington Catholic tournaments. There was an accident and the senior was thrown from the vehicle. When we heard about it the next day, they didn't expect him to live. The graduate was banged up, but he was going to be OK after some repairs. The one, if he lived, was probably going to need 24-hour care for the rest of his life.

That was BEFORE bunches of us started praying.

The story went, "If he can make it through the next _____", every day. You fill in the blank. The next 24 hours or the next 72 hours or the next...We were holding our breath through each milestone, praying all the while. We prayed individually. We even prayed individually in school. We EVEN prayed as a mixed group of faculty and staff yesterday morning.

Some time yesterday, the teen who would at best need 24-hour care because of brain damage was trying to sit up and was mouthing to his mom, "I love you."

Sorry if it's too much to know that I cried today when we got that fabulous news. Sorry, too, if I'm being shallow because I can only see that my prayers and hundreds--maybe thousands--of others' were answered the way we wanted them to be. But there are times when you relish the vase...you treasure it...you hold it and pray that you never, ever come that close to having it shatter on the ground again.

Especially when the vase is no more than a jar of clay that is 17 years old and is someone two people call "son."

"Glory to God in the Highest!"