We're having a ball here at Granny's house, eating comfort foods visiting and playing games and burning up the cameras (in case you haven't seen the shots strewn across our blogs!). This morning all eleven of us, plus over half of our grandchildren, were at church together for the first time in years. A rare blessing!

It's now been more than a month since my leg surgery, and I continue to make progress. The need for pain meds is now close to zero and for that I'm thankful. I'm still reserving judgment on whether this operation did what we wanted it to, but as soon as I'm allowed to put full weight on it (another week) I should have a better idea.

The Papa is home! This trip to Hawaii seemed especially long for all of us, so his return was even more welcomed than usual. And aside from the obvious pleasure of having him back in the house is the secondary pleasure of the passing out of the chocolate-covered macadamia nuts, the Kona coffee, and the Hawaii T-shirts. It's only because of these things that we let him make that long trip several times a year :-)

Last night, the Lifetime channel ran the premiere of the movie The Memory Keeper's Daughter. I'll admit to not having seen a whole lot of movie adaptations of books I've previously read, but the few I've seen have been disappointments. Not so this one. In so many ways, it was just as I pictured as I read the book. Naturally there was a mountain of character development missing from the two-hour movie and it kind of felt like the movie was racing through the story at break-neck speed, but other than that the movie was very faithful to the book and tells a sweet, if heartbreaking, story...

A particularly poignant verse from one of this morning's hymn spoke to me unusually loudly:

Let sorrow do its work, come grief and pain;
sweet are thy messengers, sweet their refrain,
when they can sing with me: More love, O Christ, to thee;
more love to thee, more love to thee!

May you welcome whatever messenger is sent to your life this week with the knowledge that God will work His purpose...

Labels: Books, Family, Movies, Music, Sundays