Linda had that unique ability to crack a person up.

The last couple of weeks things have gotten muddy. Problems. Death. Loss. Hurricanes. Math. My broken website. Cold feet. Problems. It reminds me of a song Jamie Grace sings:

I’ve had a long day, I just wanna relax
Don’t have time for my friends, no time to chit chat
Problems at my job, wonderin’ what to do
I know I should be working but I’m thinking of you and
Just when I feel this crazy world is gonna bring me down
That’s when your smile comes around

That is exactly where I’m at right now.

Aunt Linda died, and I’m sitting here scrolling through all these old photos on the Facebook.  I’m worried about my cousins and planning to go to the funeral. I hate that our family has been living all over the country, and my children didn’t even know Aunt Linda. How could they not know someone who was such a main character in my childhood? There’s regret, but what could be done differently, really? It is what it is.

Linda (in front) and Mom. I’m guessing this was Granddaddy and Granny’s horse.

at Amber’s wedding in 2008

I’ve often said it, and I’ll say it again. Life is a series of problems to solve.

Not endless though. The series of problems definitely has an end for each of us. Our family is acutely aware of that on this day.

But life is glorious, truly glorious.

In spite of all the problems, there are enough joys sprinkled in that make it all worth it. Some of them you have to look hard to find, and some are as easy as a chocolate chip cookie. I think hugs may be my personal favorite joy of life. Isn’t that funny? I once read that a human needs like 7 hugs a day, though I doubt that was a highly scientific statement.

Linda’s life was full of ups and downs too. Yes, she was married 3 times, developed diabetes, and had to fight many battles in her life. But wow at what she accomplished!

These 2 called her Mom too.

In addition to Amber and Ethan (Linda’s children) and their families, there were all these young people basically camping out at Linda’s house, calling her mom, who came to her in their teens when they needed some light in their lives! They might not have even realized that was the light of Jesus shining through their beloved second mother, but that’s exactly what it was, the love that she showed them, drawing them to her like moths to the flame.

“You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.”    Matthew 5:14-16

I was so inspired by the way our family gathered around their beloved Mom. Literally, when we went to see Linda last week, we opened the door to this tiny apartment full of young people and Linda.

The way the family looked out for each other, kept each other’s children, and the love that they shared was truly inspiring. I hope that as my children reach the age that their friends are teens facing troubles, that we will also show our sons’ friends this amazing amount of love and kindness that Linda has given these sweet young people. Love is so contagious. It’s like bamboo. It spreads well and takes over if you let it.

Linda and Amber, back when we were kids.

Amber did a wonderful job of taking care of her mother at the end, with the help of the family. Chi, Linda, Mom, and I marveled at how Amber could work all day, pick up a toddler niece just because she wanted to see her, go to the grocery store with 3 kids, and then come over and cook us all vegetable soup and visit.

Amber had also asked everyone to give Mom and I a day alone with Linda to visit it up since we had flown so far, which was so unbelievably sweet because I think those two days of visiting with Linda at the end are my favorite memories of her.

At the end of your life, all the “small stuff” we’re usually walking around sweating sort of melts away, and you talk about the GOOD stuff. We walked up and down memory lanes. I learned things I’d never known about the family. Linda confessed her regrets to us, but even more she shared laughs with us. We laughed all day long, even in the midst of this. We could do that because she was at peace with herself and where she was going. There were still people here she was worried about, loved ones she was hesitant to leave behind, but her time had come.

Around 10 years ago, when Linda still lived in Alabama

The thing about life is, it goes on. Even while we were saying good-bye to one of our most beloved, spunky, fun, and motherly members, we were also rocking new ones in our laps.

Oh, that it didn’t have to end! If only we could all always be together.

Heaven. In Heaven we can. I do pity the ones who cannot believe, who have no faith, no hope of Heaven. We pray for you to find this hope because it is the great reunion we look forward to with joy. It is not the end. The soul lives on. Generation may replace generation here on earth, but in Heaven, generation JOINS generation in a beautiful reunion of love.

Linda was the youngest. Here she is with her sister and parents.

Maw-Maw, Granny, “Railroad”, Linda, Amber, and Ethan. The good ol’ days, how I remember them. This was our last activity together as a whole family besides Thanksgiving and Christmases. Both of my parents and brother and sister were all there too.

I had a dream last summer. Mom, Linda, Amber, and I were at a family gathering, but what was weird was that Granny and Maw-Maw were there too, and of course, they left us years ago. The men in the family were also there, but they were not the ones I was talking to in the dream.

In the dream Granny and Maw-Maw (who have been dead for years) were walking around with us, and I wanted to hang out with them so badly. Mom did too. We kept trying to follow them around and talk to Granny and Maw-Maw because we were so excited to see them. But they were having none of it and instead personally escorted us back to this 2nd building. There were two buildings with a yard between them. They told us, “No, this is the staging area, and you are still needed in the other building.”

I also remember that my cousin Amber was in charge of everything in the dream. Perhaps Granny and Maw-Maw were pointing us back to Amber and Linda because at the time we still had both of them. And then all of a sudden I woke up, and I was all kinds of disturbed because there’s just something disturbing about a dream full of ghosts who wouldn’t quite look you in the face.

I woke up thinking, “Oh no! Whose funeral was that!!??” And then I knew that it was probably Linda’s, and Maw-Maw and Granny had come to take her home.

It’s hard to explain a dream, as dreams are so weird anyway, but that dream left such an impression that I still remember much of it vividly.

We are so lucky in my family because we come from this legacy of strong, southern women.

These women have been through tough, terrible things, all of them, and yet every single one of them was the epicenter of her family. Each of these women, Granny, Maw-Maw, Linda, and still we that remain, have stood our ground in times of trouble. We have clung to God to see us through. We’ve made mistakes, and we’ve cleaned up our messes. We are redeemed, trusting in Jesus, and there will never be an end for us.

One day we will all be together again.

Yes, Linda may have gone home, but she left a legacy of love and faith behind her, and we will see her again.

Maw-maw, Mom, & Linda

The post Saying Good-bye to Aunt Linda appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

Starting a new school in a new land is harder than I anticipated, but I felt like day 2 actually went very well for all the boys.

School started back yesterday. 

This was an exciting event that I’d finished in high gloss and framed in my mind as a victorious day ushering in a new era for me.

Without a single pre-schooler following me around I will have a spotless house, serve gourmet dinners, volunteer at their school, and run wild and free through grassy meadows.

Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah!

High expectations. I love to do that to myself.

Three years ago, my heart began to give me trouble, so I saw a cardiologist, and she told me not to exercise until we’d figured out what was going on with my heart.

We’ve never fully figured out what is causing my v-tach episodes, but they gave me back my freedom to exercise. Phew!

That lasted for about 6 months, and then my general practitioner took away my exercise again. “Only exercise in water. Otherwise, your joints are going to get worse and worse.”

Limitations. I hate them. Who doesn’t?

Anyway, am I not too young for such physical limitations and too old to have silly, unrealistic expectations?

For two years, I did not exercise. Occasionally, I’d rebel, suffer the pain of it, and reform. Meanwhile, my weight packed on at lightning speed.

I’ve come to see myself as this overweight, tired lady with a ticking-time-bomb heart and deflated dreams.

Lovely, eh? That’s disgruntled, disappointed, low self-esteem at its best.

But this hope of having a whole 6.5 hours/day to accomplish things alone drove me.

“I can lose the weight.”

“I can walk so much and do so many weight-bearing exercises (with small weights) that I can’t possibly mess it up with chocolate chip cookies.”

“Alan will love how clean the house is, and he will be impressed with me.”

“My blog will thrive again because I will have so much time to pour into it.”

“The sky’s the limit! I can do anything I want!”

“I’ll finally go get that MRI I was supposed to get a month ago and show the cardiologist how good my heart is doing.”

Some of these thoughts are healthy, I think. You gotta have drive to get through life, ya know?

And yet, you know what is inevitable with hopes of this sort? Disappointment. Problems. Unmet expectations.

Back to school day one wasn’t even over before Daniel developed strep throat. So guess who isn’t at home slaying all these accomplishments today? Me.

Daniel said, “No, I just want to sit in here with you, on the sofa.”

For 5 hours, I basically just sat with Daniel and cuddled on the couch. We watched Ninjago and Peter Rabbit and looked at old family photos of vacations at Legoland and the beach.

I still enjoyed it, but normally I would’ve cherished it so much more because I wouldn’t have had all these unmet goals in my head.

So no, today I did not impress my husband or anyone else for that matter. I have no idea what we will be eating for dinner. I actually fell asleep in Daniel’s bed around 1pm and woke up to see a giant block tower with farm fences built beside the bed and Daniel downstairs playing the x-box.

If I don’t get strep throat myself, it’s a miracle. Plus, I’m playing chauffeur tonight, which I rather despise, so I’m dreading that.

But God knew this all along, didn’t he? He knew my freedom would have a brief interlude. He knew I’d make grand plans that would fill me with disappointment when they came crashing down in front of me.

It’s actually serving as a good reminder to me, though it doesn’t feel like anything “good,” because I so desperately wanted to be wonderfully productive this week.

The thing is life isn’t about accomplishments, exercise, to do lists, or gourmet meals. Life is about love and people. That’s what life is about.

Yes, you heard it. I am DEFINING life right here on my little, low-traffic blog!!  And I dare you to argue with me. Ha! Because this time I’m right. (Maybe just this once, okay?)

Life is about love and people, so when you look at it this way, perhaps I am a smashing, unexpectedly amazing success after all because that is exactly what this day was about. Love and Daniel, and he is a person.

Just look at your life through that lens when it feels like you don’t have an accomplishment to your name. What’s success anyway, if it isn’t about love?

If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. ² If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. ³ If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.    1 Corinthians 13: 1-3

You might think, “No, April. Love and God.”

Well, yes, but if you love God then you must love people. You SHOULD love God most of all, but you should display that by loving his people. How can any of us love God, who we can’t see, if we don’t love people, who are right in front of us?

After all that’s what the Bible teaches:

Thus I am reminded to be content, no more like empowered, to show love and maybe only achieve 1 or 2 things from my list, or maybe none at all. I can work on this list any day at all, but Daniel needs me TODAY.

I hope you’re having a good day too, loving God and people. I’ll bet you’re way more of a smashing success than you think you are!

The post Disappointments and Limitations: Starting a New School in a New State appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

******This is the 12th chapter in the series The Real Army Wives, stories from a young military bride at the beginning of Operation Iraqi Freedom, 2003.******

Previous chapter: When Alan First Deployed: My New Friends at 9-1-1.

Getting Help

I followed through with my vow from the previous night to hop off this crazy train and get myself some help. What kind of help, I had no idea, but I figured I’d try the doctor’s office first.

Military clinics are a unique entity. The appointment line system in and of itself is enough to make a person go absolutely mad, but somehow I managed to secure myself a same day appointment. I must have called at 7:59 am, and God was just smiling down on me that day because it’s normally about impossible to get an appointment.

I remember that every single time I would go to the Fort Hood health clinic they would circle my BMI (too low–which I can’t even imagine now) and take my blood pressure and my heart rate twice, because “that just couldn’t be right.” Ha! Yet it took 13 more years to figure out I needed heart medicine. We always just thought I was nervous, which really I was.

On that particular day of desperation, I saw a female, civilian physician who I’d never seen before. She was probably in her 60s, a thin, upbeat woman with short white hair and glasses. I liked her immediately, which is very unusual for doctors. Don’t you love it when things actually work out?

Telling my shortened tale of woe to this doc, who we’ll call Dr. Jones, was a humiliating thing to have to do, but I knew it had to be done. I told her about my jaw and my inability to sleep before 4am. I even admitted about calling 9-1-1, though I doubt I told her how many times I had done it.

The tears came. I couldn’t help it. This was so embarrassing. What kind of adult can’t even handle living alone? Well, me, I guess.

She asked me if I was depressed, but I didn’t feel like I was in general a depressed sort of person because I’m not, but the situation was definitely getting to me in a bad way.

After listening, Dr. Jones told me a little part of her own story.

Apparently, she went to medical school in Chicago. Her apartment situation was on the wrong side of town. Dr. Jones confided that she had once even accidentally left her keys in her front door!! She said a neighbor knocked on her door, handed her her keys, and reprimanded her kindly, “Girl, this ain’t no nice neighborhood. You can’t be leaving your keys in the door!!!”

So Dr. Jones counseled me that while break-ins do happen, most people are basically good. She reassured me I would be okay.

Then she prescribed to me a 30 day supply of Ambien, a sleeping pill. Dr. Jones said that it would fix both my sleeping problem AND my jaw.

My jaw?? How could a sleeping pill fix TMJ? That was because the jaw was the result of constantly grinding my teeth, which I was doing, unawares, in my sleep.

I’ve never left a doctor appointment so relieved. Maybe I was a touch embarrassed that I needed sleeping pills, but mostly I didn’t care. I just couldn’t wait to get a full night’s sleep and be able to eat potato chips again.

And you know what? It worked!

My jaw stopped hurting within a couple of days, and I stretched that Ambien out to well past 30 days and then never had to take it again.

Sometimes when times get hard enough, we just need a little boost to get us through.

Unfortunately, I was still actually more depressed than I was willing to let on to any doctor.

My life was not working out as I’d planned it at all. My Mr. Right was oceans away, and I could only hope that he would even come back. This was a tough situation to work through. There was no way around that.

[clickToTweet tweet=”Sleeping pills could fix my physical problems, but not my spiritual problems. #milspouse #armywife #faith #Jesuscan” quote=”Sleeping pills could fix my physical problems, but they couldn’t fix my spiritual problems.”]

However, the sleeping pills did provide me with some mental clarity during the day. Y’all! Sleep is so incredibly important. Never underestimate it!

The sleep allowed me to look at my life and examine myself more honestly and realistically.

My whole life I had always been a spiritual person. From the age of 4, I remember looking up at the sky and simply feeling the all-powerful presence of God. I didn’t know anything about Him. My family did not go to church, but I knew He was there. Creation testifies to the Creator.

While I was 4, a neighbor invited me to church. I was so excited to go with her and finally learn who in the world was God!! I can still remember the blue dress that I wore the first time I went, with the white lace at the top and the pretty sleeves. That was the day I first heard about Jesus.

After that, there was no turning back for me. I wanted to know more, and more, and more. My mom started taking my sister, my brother, and me to church herself. It was extremely difficult to take my big sister, Amanda. As I mentioned before, Amanda was blind, mute, profoundly retarded, and handicapped from birth.

While Amanda was mute, she could yell, just not talk. She often yelled out, but not with words, and she rocked back and forth, shaking her wheelchair enough to make it roll whether the brakes were on or not. Plus, it’s a lot harder to carry around an 85 pound person than a 30 pound toddler.

It was almost impossible to take Amanda anywhere. Therefore, after the first few years, Mom began to let Amanda stay home with my dad. It was just Mom, my brother, and me that went to church from then on.

But Amanda was a blessing to us too. From her we had all learned more about love, compassion, sacrifice, work, and serving.

From God’s Word, we found comfort and healing from some of our own hard situations.

By the time I was seven, my Mom went forward and accepted Jesus as her Savior. I got saved soon after her, and my little brother did a few years later.

We firmly believe that Jesus is the Son of God, sent to Earth to reconcile man to God. God loves us, but we are sinful. There’s a price for that sin, but Jesus paid the price for us, and we need only believe with our hearts and confess with our mouth that Jesus is Lord.

Salvation is a gift of grace, not a work that we accomplish. Not one of us is any better than any others of us.

Over the years, starting in middle school, I became a devout student of God’s Word. At that age, it isn’t enough to hear a preacher say something. You have to examine the truth for yourself in order to believe it.

Misplaced Faith

But between high school and college, I somehow seemed to have put too much of my faith in the Bible study that I was doing rather than in what Jesus has already done for us.

You see, after getting married, it was harder to keep up my Bible study routine. Alan was always there, it seemed, and reading my Bible isn’t something I can do if I’m not alone. As the deployment approached, and I needed comfort from the Lord most, I was praying and reading my Bible less and less.

I didn’t mean to. It was just a new routine to work out.

Once Alan deployed, I was stuck in this absurd mindset that I couldn’t reach out to God because I had not been reading my Bible every single day. How ridiculous! Ya’ll! Reading your Bible doesn’t benefit God nearly as much as it benefits YOU. Your Bible reading doesn’t make you more worthy either.  Only Jesus makes us worthy.

Whether I read my Bible or not, God was still there. I could have called out to Him at ANY time, any place, and he would have heard my prayer. But at the time, I was stuck on stupid.

That’s when I realized that I had become puffed up, thinking highly of myself because I read my Bible so much and thinking that was why God answered my prayers.

That year I learned that God doesn’t work that way.

He is not a bank that you deposit prayers and study in and then cash out in hard times. No. God is always here. He’s always available. We need only seek him. We need only have faith. He will always be found by those who seek him.

Suddenly, I was seeing clearly. I don’t think Alan had even been gone much more than a month before I realized how foolish I had been.

I wasn’t just depressed because of my circumstances. The problem was that I was focusing too much on my OWN problems. I was being self-centered, and I was depriving myself of even praying under some foolish notion that I didn’t deserve answered prayers.

God answers our prayers because He loves us, and you know what? He still loved me, and I finally realized that once I got my head all sorted out!

I vividly recall bending down on my knees, at the foot of my bed, with tears all over my face and probably snot too, and realizing all these things as I prayed. This is where life had brought me–to my knees!!

My next steps were suddenly crystal clear. This year wasn’t about “how I was going to get through this” at all. Instead, it was time for me to focus on helping my friends “get through this”. It was time for me to build a support network.

Some of my friends from church: Jessie, Ashley, me, and Theresa. Ashley’s husband was also in the 4th ID. Jen and Theresa’s husbands deployed later that year with the 1st Cav……..By the way, those are none of their real names.

Time to Reach Out to the Other Real Army Wives

I didn’t have much to give or many talents that I could think of to use, but I could cook, and I had a cute little duplex to visit with friends and neighbors in.

So from that day on, my mission was to gather Army wives in my living room and attend any outing I was invited on. We would laugh, we would cry, we would gossip (sorry, but we would) and encourage one another, and none of us would truly be alone anymore.

There was Elsie across the street, who seemed to be doing just fine, but I needed her. I was going to have to start with building that bond. There was Sarah, the bubbly specialist’s (or was he a corporal??) wife I’d met at a unit sports day before Alan left. There was Katie and little Garrett, and Ashley and the gals from church, and so many more that I was yet to meet. But I was ready to get started supporting others and no longer thinking ever so much about myself!

Want to know what happened next? Click here for the next chapter: The Coffee Group

Come back next MONDAY for the next tale in this series of Real Army Wives stories, right here on storiesofourboys.com.

Need to catch up on previous chapters? Click here for last week’s and here for a somewhat complete list.

The post Real Army Wives: Time to Build a Support Network appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

Sometimes I choose involuntary titles to read to my children. As in, I pick the book, and they have to listen. I have four boys, and with their personalities this is necessary if I ever want them to read a single classic novel. It worked well for the Little House series and Old Yeller, so why not Tom Sawyer?

I do have the unabridged version of Tom Sawyer, which is on an 8th grade reading level and is chock full of big words, some taboo language, and outdated ideas. I think it broadens their understanding to read things like this.

And it is a hilarious book, as you would expect, certainly funnier than their beloved Captain Underpants, in my opinion.

I’m only reading Tom Sawyer to my two oldest because the little ones don’t have the attention span for that yet.

One chapter we read recently reminded me how much America has changed for the worse, though many changes, such as America’s dark past of racism, have been for the better.

What change was for the worse? Bible knowledge. These days most people have terrible misconceptions of God and the Bible. How could we have any knowledge of a book most people no longer study?

Tom Sawyer was no goody-good church kid.

That much you know, but out of requirement he did attend church every Sunday. The kids in Tom’s Sunday school class could even earn tickets by reciting Bible verses…..much like AWANA today. Tom was obviously not one to spend much time practicing his verses, so he took to trading for tickets.

This was funny to me because Caleb used to do this exact thing with SOAR cards when he was in 1st grade. SOAR cards were handed out at school for good behavior and could be exchanged for prizes. Caleb used to take Lego men to school and trade them for SOAR cards. He and many of the boys in his class had a real underground black market going with those cards.

Anyway, in the book Tom hands in enough tickets to get the grand prize, a new Bible. Not only that, but when he receives the grand prize he gets to stand up in front of the entire church and receive applause.

So they brought Tom up, and they asked him questions like, “What is the greatest commandment?”

No, Tom didn’t know.

Most people in America probably don’t know what commandment is the greatest. Sometimes the loudest so-called Christian people are the very ones who have confused everyone from knowing what God’s message even was. Ugh.

So I ask you, do you know? What is the greatest commandment?

Some of you know, and some of you may not, but I don’t think we can ever be reminded too often.

“Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”

37 Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”                                  –Matthew 22:36-40

Because if we love others, we will naturally not steal, lie, cheat, or use God’s name in vain. When we love others, we want to respect, help, and honor them.

None of us are perfect, and none of us ever will be on this earth, but what we should be striving for is LOVE.

“We were meant to put ourselves out there for people. An earthly cause is nothing without a people it affects.”       –Beth Moore

Love God. Love people. The most important commandments.

People often split hairs about raising children. Do they have all As? Are they good at sports? Are they leaders? Do they sit quietly with their hands in their lap? Are they outgoing?

Who cares? You know what matters? Do your children love God and love people and show that through their actions? That’s what matters in my book and in God’s book too.

Of course, they have to learn that from us. We have to show our children how to do these things through our own actions. I hope we will always look for ways to show love to God and love to people. It isn’t always easy, but it’s more than worth it.

As I type these lovely, ideal thoughts out, I wonder. How will I show love today?

You know, I’ve probably already failed a few times at this, and it’s only 10:39 am. But it is never too late to make the next step in a positive direction.

The post Tom Sawyer and the Most Important Commandment in the Bible appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

We were crazy excited to find my favorite coffee at Winn Dixie. I should write this company and ask them to sponsor my blog, like permanently. Just FYI, those are Alan’s arms, not mine. I just thought, “Oh no! What if people think I have man arms!!??” Yes, it matters.

I guess life has settled down into a new normal here at our new casa. Thus begins the 1st year that you move somewhere. Oh, how I love that first year. (That’s sarcasm.) This is the year when you walk around confused because you don’t get it yet, and you don’t know how to fit in either. You leave extra early to get places because 8 times out of 10, you are going to get lost. It’s a year of frustration and flipping out in the driver’s seat.

It’s a year of meeting tons of new people. It’s a year of very few commitments because hardly anyone knows who you are, which means no one asks anything of you. See, now that’s positive, right? Or maybe it’s just lazy.

I love moving. Moving’s fun. I mean it’s a giant pain in the neck, but it’s fun. We’re adjusting quite well. The boys hop out of the mini-van every morning and enter the building looking happy and ready to go. (Not sarcasm. The boys are life-savers, they’ve handled it all like pros.)

We’ve all met plenty of people already. We each have at least two people a piece that we could call a friend already. They probably don’t know our last names, but by golly, we are clinging to them.

Here are a few tales of our most recent adventures:

John David about gave me a heart attack at the pool. He has no fear. He floated around the deep end, with nothing but a pool noodle!!! Don’t worry. I was so helicopter-mom, I can assure you of his safety.

I re-framed a large photo. The glass kept trying to come out and cutting me to pieces, but it is done, so yay!

Re-framed photo: See, doesn’t it look nice? I found that frame super cheap at a yard sale. Then I went to Hobby Lobby and bought a mat to help the photo fit the frame.

Take your baby’s poop with you when you leave. Wow. I took this photo at the pediatric cardiology office. Thankfully, I’m past the diaper phase, but man! What a reminder! It’s a HARD life out there for a baby’s momma.

We discovered a local park with trails, playgrounds, and water fowl galore.

a beautiful Saturday in the South

JD has gotten really into baseball. He uses this little bitty light weight bat, and I throw a medium-sized, light, rubber ball to him, and he’s getting good!

Joshua joined his school cross country team, so we’re learning all about this sport. He did a fantastic job on his first race. Go, Joshua!!

This is JD, sleeping on DaddyO. I’ve always said that my children can sleep anywhere.

most adorable self-portrait ever

We are doing quite well, I think. I’ve even started attending a Beth Moore Bible study. We’re doing Entrusted: A Study of 2 Timothy. I’m excited about that.

A note about the heart thing:

I’ve learned a valuable lesson about moving. If you have medical problems, ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS get copies of your records before you move. My new doctor won’t see me until I get him my records, and his staff is apparently incapable of getting the records themselves, so they kept making me call California, and ugh. It has been such an ordeal.  Thankfully, my other doctor’s office wasn’t so shy and handled the record retrieval themselves.

Also, I learned so much more about what is actually wrong with me than what I knew before I read them. There are so many things doctors don’t bother to tell you. I found out that my heart beat is over 100 for 8 hours of a day, and of course that varies. My average heart rate is over 90. My v-tach was 210 beats per minute. I had not known any of those things before. It doesn’t change anything, but it’s nice to know. Don’t worry. I faithfully take my beta blockers every day. Those stats were while I was off of beta blockers.

Always get your medical records before you move! Lesson learned.

I hope you are all having a great week. I want to leave you with a beautiful quote I came across recently, from the Kendrick brothers who make all those Christian movies, like Fireproof and Courageous.

“Love positively acts; it doesn’t negatively react. Love rises above the cloudy circumstances and soars above the storm. It defies common, self-centered logic.”   –Kendrick brothers

I have had my low-grade fevers and hip and shoulder pain lately, and Alan has done a beautiful job of this love-in-action thing, handling so much of the house work because it’s such a struggle for me to keep up. Thank you, Alan.

Have a wonderful week, y’all!!

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Why Cope When You Can Conquer?

 It’s an encouraging book. It asks an annoyingly high volume of questions. I never did enjoy answering questions. See, it’s a Bible study guide, but it’s not one of these where you have to watch a video or attend a class to go with it. You can totally just read the guide on your own. (But I did warn you about the questions.)

Don’t worry. The book is still worth it. You can’t read it without learning and growing in your faith. There’s this one particular story that struck a chord with me this week. It’s in Lesson 6: Where to Run in Trouble.

The author, Juanita Purcell, asked this: “When did the Israelites discover they had been delivered from Sennacherib’s invasion?” Read 2Kings 19:35

It was the morning. 

Purcell said this, and she’s referring to a time when Senacherrib of Assyria was attacking Jerusalem in the 700sBC, “As the enemies gathered against the city of God, the nations were in an uproar. Yet the Angel of the Lord killed 185,000 Assyrians in one night. This miraculous event was no big deal to God. He doesn’t even tell us how it happened. Is anything too hard for the Lord?”  (source 1, page 62)

So I had to dig into my Bible, into 2 Kings chapters 19 and 20 to remind myself what exactly was going on here.

Big surprise. Hezekiah was king. He’s my favorite king of Judah. This was the kingdom of Judah, not Israel. Israel did indeed fall to Assyria, but Judah (the southern kingdom) didn’t really. (They fell to Babylon later on, after Hezekiah.) This was because of leadership. They had Hezekiah, and Hezekiah had God.

This is what Hezekiah did when he found out that Assyria was coming for him. He prayed:

“Hezekiah received the letter from the messengers and read it….” (2 Kings 19:14)

Yep. He got a threat letter.

“Then he went up to the temple of the Lord and spread it out before the Lord. And Hezekiah prayed to the Lord.”  2 Kings 19:14-15

It goes on to describe his prayer. But I mean, basically, “God, save us from these horrible people!!” I just love how the Bible tells us that Hezekiah spread the letter out before the Lord. He was a man who took his prayers seriously, so God took Hezekiah’s prayers seriously. King Hezekiah had great faith.

My take away here: “Trust in the Lord. He will solve your problems in your sleep.”

Oh, and you might be wondering how the angel of the Lord killed 185,000 soldiers while the  armies were sleeping. Historians speculate that it was a plague of mice, an outbreak of the Bubonic plague. *oooo eebidy jeebidies*

I don’t know what problems you might be facing today, but God will lead you to the answers that you NEED, if you ask him to. Have faith and trust in the Lord, and he will not let you down. He is trustworthy. I tried so many things this past year to figure out my health problems, and eventually I was actually able to overcome my chronic joint pain by simply dropping gluten from my diet. That was not a conclusion I ever suspected, but God answered my prayers through the advice of my doctors and my friends. Praise God!

Carmel Valley, photo by Janet

So have no fear. Trust in the Lord. He will solve your problems in your sleep.

sources:

1. Why Cope When You Can Conquer? by Juanita Purcell, published by RBP Women’s Studies, 1999

2. 2 Kings 19 and 20, The NIV Study Bible, Zondervan 

3. Wikipedia, Hezekiah

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I love Mother Teresa. She is one of my heroes, and it’s because she lived such a selfless life for Jesus. I am a far cry from that. I also noticed, in reading about her, that she had some of the same struggles I have: heart troubles and shoulder problems. If you see footage of her, her shoulders were all hunched over as she walks. But she didn’t let that stand in her way or take center stage, and I don’t need to either.

So here’s the story, from the book No Greater Love, by Mother Teresa.

“One day I picked up a man from the gutter. His body was covered with worms. I brought him to our house, and what did this man say? He did not curse. He did not blame anyone. He just said, “I’ve lived like an animal in the street, but I’m going to die like an angel, loved and cared for!”

It took us three hours to clean him. Finally, the man looked up at the sister and said, “Sister, I’m going home to God.” And then he died. I’ve never seen such a radiant smile on a human face as the one I saw on the man’s face. he went home to God. See what love can do! It is possible that young sister did not think about it at the moment, but she was touching the body of Christ. Jesus said so when He said, “As often as you did it for one of my least brothers, you did it for me”  (Matthew 25:40). And this is where you and I fit into God’s plan.”   page 23-24

What a touching story! Okay, I’m off to take care of the four little charges entrusted to me. I hope you all have a wonderful weekend!

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