Satan - Prince of Lies

John 9:1-3 - As he went along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?" "Neither this man nor his parents sinned," said Jesus, "but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life."

I am not sure if this is just an Asian thing but a lot of Asians, when they see a child who might be handicapped in some way or even if a child just has behavorial problems, they almost immediately assume that the parents did something wrong to deserve this "karma". On the opposite side of this, parents often take too much pride when their child is successful attributing the success of their own child to their own handiwork.

Perhaps partly because I have been exposed to this kind of thinking all of my life, sometimes, especially during times of weakness and sadness, I can easily fall prey to Satan's lies and find that I am not able to forgive myself or my own body for failing my children - blaming myself for causing all the suffering Rachel had to suffer during the time she had no water inside me and the time she had to suffer trying to stay alive so that I can see her before she went to heaven; and blaming myself for causing all the suffering Isaac has had to suffer the past 4.5 months and the many more months and years to come.

I had a tough weekend struggling with this. But today I was listening to a sermon from my old NYC church and it was really, really good. I am reminded that there is really only one way out of this for me -- I need to fall more and more in love with Jesus. And to do so I need to medidate more on the truth, i.e. His Word and to spend more time with Him. I need to keep my focus on Him, not on myself, not on Isaac, not on Rachel, not on Jong. I need to be satisfied by Him. Once I let Jong or Isaac or Rachel or anything else become more important to me than Jesus, I am in trouble. That's when Satan can get a foothold in me and attack me with His lies.

But its not a one time "aha I am enlightened" thing. I need to do this - read His Word, spend more time with Him and thinking about Him - every day, every morning, every afternoon, every evening. I haven't been doing that. I have been more faithful going to visit Isaac at the hospital than spending time with our Lord. In doing so, I have sinned.

So I need to repent of my sin and try again. Lucky for me, Jesus already paid for my sins.

The other day I was telling someone about Rachel and started to cry. She said to me in a kind of a don't be so silly way, "You musn't cry! Rachel belongs to Jesus!" She is so right. Not only does Rachel belong to Jesus. Isaac belongs to Jesus. Jong and I are just stewards of Isaac. God has great plans for our tiny boy. I am reminded by the verses in John that every thing that has happened was to display God's Work. I knew this to be the truth but instead, I chose to focus on the lies instead. It is very hard to watch Isaac having to suffer. Its much easier to try to blame myself and somehow try to punish myself for that than to accept that Isaac needs to go through this and say, God, do what you will for your glory.

I know I am just in the beginning part of this journey of healing and I will have more ups and downs. But I am very fortunate to have many people who love me who will remind me to look up to Jesue and look to the truth.

Before I go, just a little about Isaac today. He is getting better and better at eating. I was able to finish feeding his 40 ml of milk within 30 minutes again today. The nurse said that he finished his milk in 15 minutes at the 10:00 am feed. Isaac was wide awake the whole time I was there today and he was being a Curious George - looking every where with his big eyes. There is a one-year old girl next to us (she still has pretty bad breathing problems) and she was in a baby chair right next to us today. It was really cute when I was burping Isaac as Isaac was facing the little girl directly and they were really looking at each other! The little girl smiled so big at Isaac and Isaac's eyes were wide open looking at her with his mouth in a little O! ^_^

I have another short video. I took the first part one handed as Isaac was in my other arm but I finally captured him sneezing! Unfortunately, I made a sneezing noise so you can barely hear his sneeze but you may be able to hear Isaac's high pitch squeal "achoo" behind my fake "achoo".



God bless,

Sonia