I smell like Jesus

Yesterday my Sunday school class decided to spend our time together praying for each other rather than doing the typical lesson/discussion. Every week we take prayer requests at the end and throw up a short general prayer, but most of us have been going through unusually hard times lately, so it seemed like it was time to do some more serious praying.

So we went around the room, family by family, sharing our concerns. After one family shared, a few people would gather around them to pray. It was a strangely wonderful blessing to hear others' prayer concerns and to share their burdens if only for a few minutes. One of the class members brought anointing oil with him and offered to anoint each person as we prayed for them. Now, my knee-jerk reaction to being anointed with oil is pretty negative; during high school, when I was going through multiple surgeries on my ankle and not healing, several well-meaning folks anointed me with oil at different times, hoping that God would perform a miracle and I would be totally healed before their eyes. Needless to say, that didn't happen, and I couldn't help but feeling like I had disappointed their expectations or hurt their faith by not getting healed. So when Shawn offered to anoint us, I just sort of complied. And, as I expected, nothing "happened."

But as I left church that afternoon, I kept getting a whiff a frankincense every now and then (it took me a few times to remember that the smell was coming from my forehead). A few times that afternoon Matt jokingly told me "You smell like Jesus!" And it made me realize that the oil represented God's presence with me. Which was really comforting.

Hanging out at home

Thanks for the card, Aunt Janet!


Tummy time for the little one.

New pictures

Karis dressed up in Mommy's dedication dress.







...and this was Abbie's first time holding her little sis :-)

7 hours

That's how long Karis went between feedings last night, which means that I got a solid six and a half hours of sleep. Glorious!

New president!!!

Asbury Seminary announced this morning that Dr. Timothy Tennent will be inaugurated as our new president! This is great news, as we have been lacking presidential leadership since the Fall of 2006. I don't know much about Dr. Tennent, but I have read his book, Theology in the Context of World Christianity which, if you remember, was on my Best Of 2008 list as a book you MUST read.

Welcome, Dr. Tennent, and may the Lord be with you as you take on the task of leading Asbury!

Why my kid's mouth is purple

I've gotten a curious reaction from a few other moms when I've mentioned that Karis has thrush: their eyes bug out, they gasp and/or groan, and then give me a pitiable look before saying, "Oh, I'm SO sorry! Thrush is SO HARD to get rid of!" Hmm. Well, during an impromptu trip to the UTC last Saturday when I brought Karis in for what I thought might be pink eye but was actually just a plugged tear duct, I asked the doctor to swab Karis' tounge and, sure enough, a little bit of yeast turned up on the culture. Her tounge has had a thick white coating since she was about 3 weeks old, but because it wasn't spreading in her mouth, she wasn't passing it to me, and she wasn't complaining, I figured I'd wait it out. But the white stuff hasn't gone away, so I've decided to tackle the problem with gentian violet. This stuff is EXTREMELY MESSY and will basically dye anything it touches, even after it's dry. Since Karis has had a diaper rash also for a few weeks, I've decided to let her go diaper-free for a few hours a day and expose the rash to sunlight (yeast hates sunlight, apparently) as well as using yogurt to treat the rash. Yummy. Hopefully, all these magic remedies will work and my baby will finally have a normal pink tonge. Until then, she'll look like this:

She...really likes her cell phone.