So, Katie has come home from the hospital. She has an ulcer, a painful but treatable condition, plus her usual hiatal hernia. This diagnosis comes as a HUGE relief, since an original CT Scan had suggested the possibility of something far more grave. 

How do we acknowledge the huge-ness of this relief? How many times have I been excused from walking down a certain dark road, and marked the occasion merely by resuming whatever mediocre pastime I had been engaged in before the crises arose?

U, God, are most “with” us at such times, U the Prodigal Father of an Impossible Son, whose death sentence was not commuted, whose execution proceeded without divine intervention. U carry all our possibilities within yourself, like a pregnant teenager in a Galilean village. U are the One who, having shared our tears, bids us join in delirious rejoicing.