What say, Delmarva?  Are we going to have snow???  Tomorrow is the day that I am supposed to go with Daddy and Mama over to Baltimore for a follow-up for Mama.  I do not relish the trip when there is snow and ice. . .  We may need to reschedule.

Daddy had wonderful news yesterday when we saw the doctor.  The lumps that were giving him extreme trouble had mostly shrunk to “insignificant” and the one that was larger than it should be was still smaller than it was before, which led them to delay any radiation for now, which makes all of us quite thankful, indeed.  He is feeling so good again, that it is easy to be hopeful.  (How can we help but hope???)  Thank God for HOPE!

The next weeks look full–but so exciting.  Next Friday night Daniel’s office comes for eating, singing carols, (with our own inimitable Karen Bontrager on the piano– she makes them sound so good that they actually sing their hearts out for her) and the reading of the Christmas story.  I love looking around at the faces of these people who share Daniel’s life every day and seeing the light of candles in their eyes, the hard, hard faces are often softened with wistfulness or even tears.  “Silent night, Holy Night. . . Christ the Savior is born. . .”  It will be the fifth year that some of these people have joined us.  Those with children always bring the kids (“It’s the one Christmas party that it is ‘safe’ to take kids to,” they say, as they scramble in out of the cold) and as a family, we have come to look forward to this event more than anyone who comes.  The many children run the train on Daniel’s Christmas village until I fear for its health, and there is noise and laughter and chatter.  Pray that the message of The Gospel, the true meaning of Christmas, will settle into the quiet places of their hearts and cause them to want to know the Prince of Peace.  How very much we all need HIM.

May that Peace guard our very hearts.