Psalm 139:14

Every single Krass child (possibly with the exception of Alan, I can't remember) had this wonderful 3rd grade teacher by the name of Mrs. Jackson. Mrs. Jackson is and was a legend. Not only was it a MUST to select her with the first overall pick in recess kickball (Her OPS had to be near .989) she was also rather liberal with her skittle distribution. But in addition to all this, Mrs. Jackson had her classes memorize and recite particular biblical passages each year. For whatever reason (insert the Lord) one of these passages popped into my head this morning.

"I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; you works are wonderful, I know that full well."

-Psalm 139:14

We memorized the entirety of Psalm 139 and if I were offered enough skittles I could probably remember the hand motions and voice inflections. My favorite part of the chapter was this verse. We would say each word very slowly, with added exaggeration on the words "praise", "fearfully" and "wonderfully".

I am not intelligent or theologically savvy enough to speculate on what it means to be fearfully made so allow me to take a shot on the wonderfully made part.

We are wonderfully made. We are wonderfully and intentionally made. To me that suggests that the garbage that we inherit: the depression, the lack of self-esteem, the cancer doesn't minimize the fact that God looks at us and says, "Yup, I pretty much hit this one out of the park. I'm very pleased with how I created Karl Krass. Keith Krass, Alan Krass, Jennie Krass, Kevin Krass, Trish Krass, Kari Zawada, Shannon Zawada, Logan Zawada, E-Force Zawada (Ethan) Mrs. Jackson, Wilt Chamberlin are pleasing to me."

I'm not saying that God is somehow responsible for "giving" people terrible diseases. That issue is a book not a blog. What I am saying is that despite the diseases and stuff, God thinks we are wonderful. He didn't slip up in creating you and me.

Sometimes I have to remind myself this. Often times I have to remind myself this.

Awhile back I included a link to the song "desert song" by Hillsong. This morning I was also thinking about the last four lines in the song:

"This is my prayer in the harvest
When favor and providence flow
I know I'm filled to be emptied again
The seed I've received I will sow."

Karl has received some pretty good news over the last month or so. Which is awesome. But the refrain of this song is "I will bring praise, I will bring praise, no weapon forged against me shall remain. I will rejoice, I will declare, God is my victory and he is here."

I'm just trying to remind myself to praise him in every season, both good and bad...

Ps To Mrs Jackson: you are an amazing woman. Thank you for making me learn those verses as a 3rd grader. They do matter and they still do. I'm am literally eternally grateful.

Back to school, back to school

Although Karl's return to school is significantly dissimilar to the fictional Billy Madison, I couldn't let the opportunity to include a picture and reference from a truly wonderful achievement in film just fall by the wayside. I may need to look this up, but I'm pretty sure Billy Madison won like 97 Academy Awards. Anyways, that is neither here, nor there*. If you are unsure what the "star" is doing following the "there" of that sentence, I haven't blogged in awhile so I'm feeling very spunky. The "*" is an indication that there is a footnote at the bottom of this blog. That's right. I take a little sabbatical from blog writing and I return with a new bag of tricks. I compare it to Jordan returning with a fade-away jumper. But that is neither here nor there...



But back to Billy Madison. Last week Karl returned to ZBTHS (Zion-Benton Township High School for those that are non-regional) to finish up his student teaching. As of right now he is just doing observations but will be teaching lessons soon enough. Karl is still getting fatigued and his legs will get tired from standing around all day but overall his health is very good. His stitches are now out from his past surgery as well. Below is a picture of Karl after his latest surgery.



Just kidding Karl...

So overall Karl is doing very well. He will still have regular check ups and despite the fact that they didn't see any cancer in his last scans, he will still have chemo treatments. They want to make sure that they get all of it.

One more thing, 99% of the population was peeved when Duke beat Butler to win the National Championship. Karl is part of the 1% that was excited about this. I have to admit, although I wanted Butler to win I'm happy for Karl. Karl is a HUGE Duke fan. I think he deserves for life to throw him a bone...






*Other expressions that I have no idea what they mean, "Have your cake and eat it too", "Well...yes and no", "It is really apples and oranges", "Don't put all your eggs in one basket".