What Difference Do It Make? by Ron Hall

brings tears, especially when I play with my three granddaughters—granddaughters Deborah never got to meet. But Denver met them for her. Griffin, my daughter Regan’s girl, is now three and a half. When she was born in 2005, she was the first white baby Denver ever held.

    Daddy cried at Deborah’s funeral, said she always treated him with respect. A year later, we broke ground for the new homeless mission and chapel to be named after her down on East Lancaster. Mama came, as well as the mayor and several state legislators.
    Dad stayed home.
    â€œWhat’s all the big deal raising money and building buildings for the homeless?” he groused. “They ain’t nothin but a bunch of drunks and addicts. They got themselves in the mess. Let ’em get out on their own.”
    He endeared himself to me further with this addition: “If you wanna give a bunch of money to someone, why don’t you give it to me?”
    â€What would you spend it on?” I asked.
    â€œI’d buy better whiskey—Jack Daniels instead of Jim Beam!”
    It irritated Dad to no end that I spent far more time with Denver than with him. And even worse, every time I visited him, Denver was with me. Earl Hall had definitely been a racist. He claimed to have taken a cure and gotten over it, but I didn’t believe him.
    Dad told me it wasn’t right for a man to live alone and that a very beautiful person was going to move in with me— him. I actually thought that was funny, and for the first time I caught a glimpse of his humor with fresh vision. But a couple of months later, it dang near killed him when I moved Denver in with me instead of him.
    Lupe Murchison, John D.’s fabulously wealthy widow, had followed her husband into glory, leaving two hundred million dollars to charity. The Murchison family asked me to move into the estate and sell off the Murchison art collection, which was valued at around ten million dollars. I invited Denver to move in with me and help me guard the place. That meant Daddy had to stay in Haltom City. When it came to sowing and reaping, I tallied that as a fair deal.

CARINA
    Rearview Mirror
    As the mother of four boys, from toddler to age eight, Carina Delacanal had very little time to herself. In 2007, she learned she might not have much time left at all.
    Carina, then twenty-nine, had just given birth to her youngest son, Joshua. And while three boys plus a new baby could drive any woman to distraction, Carina began to think that something might actually be wrong with her. “I noticed I was more forgetful than usual,” Carina remembers. “Just for peace of mind, I went to see my doctor.”
    Peace was not what she found.
    â€œThe news isn’t as good as I’d hoped,” the doctor told Carina when the results of a CAT scan came back. “You have what we call an arteriovenous malformation (AVM) on the right side of your brain.”
    An AVM is something like an aneurysm, the doctor explained, a weakness in the wall of a blood vessel. Carina had been born with hers, and if it ruptured, she could die instantly. Her only option: brain surgery, either conventional or with a radiological gamma knife.
    â€œI felt so overwhelmed,” Carina says. “I wanted to hear God’s audible voice tell me where to go, who to see, what procedure to choose.”
    But questions tore at her heart:
    â€œWhy? Why me? Why this, why now? My children need their mommy! Why would God tear me away from them?”
    Before the diagnosis, Carina had been a harried mom who barely had time for her daily devotional reading. Now she dove into the Scriptures, clinging to those that quickened her heart and writing them down in a notebook.
    She sought counsel from her pastor and proceeded “cautiously, in baby steps,” asking God and each doctor for wisdom. All the while, Carina poured out her anguish and concern in her notebook.
    â€œWhy?” she still