You Don't See That Every Day

Sometimes it's good to look back on things and see how far we have come.  A year ago today I had a gut-wrenching day.  Gut-wrenching in the literal term. I had no idea if I would be a widow by morning or not. Oh, I had hope. And I had prayer, fervent prayer that it would be "not" for the answer.  Never have I prayed so hard, or felt so connected to God.  I had no way to help, except though prayer.  I had no one to turn to who could actually comfort me, except God. Oh, I had friends and family praying and surrounding me with love. But none of them could say 100% that he would come home. Only going to God would give me hope.  For years I have struggled with prayer. I didn't believe that God would actually listen to me. I hoped He would; I hoped Jesus would want to intercede for me. But I think deep down I doubted my petty prayers would be heard among the masses God must hear daily. But on 9/25 last year, I had no doubt. I knew He hea...

The topic of making good, or bad, choices has been coming up over and over this week. So much so that it got me to thinking, Why is this coming up so much?! We've been slowly finding out that one of children has been making poor choices in certain areas. I know all of our kids do it, and we do it for that matter, but it still came as  a bit of a surprise to us. We had thought that this was one child that we were pretty sure we could trust in all areas. But (thankfully) the child has come to us and told us what was done, and we talked about it. Now don't worry. It wasn't earth shattering, hush hush, don't tell the relatives kind of bad choices. But it pointed us in the direction of making sure we talk to our kids about making choices, and thinking before they spoke or acted. It's one thing to listen to all that's going on around you and following along; it takes a lot more courage, and wisdom, to stop and think and discern the right choice. Recently there ha...

Sometimes I get so bogged down in grown-up burdens. I think about what I need to be doing, or places I need to be, or what I should be reading, or how I should be raising our kids. And then sometimes -usually out from left-field - I am reminded of the amazing world we live in. My younger girls asked me today, "Where is heaven?" What an amazing question. But yet simple too. So we talked about heaven not being anywhere we could see. And so that meant outside of the universe as we know it. Their minds quickly moved on to another topic; but this stayed in the recesses of my cranium, percolating as I went about my evening business. And it hit me - stop! take a look around! God is great, and made a great world to live in. Look at the human body. Amazing! Skin regrows. Babies are conceived and formed and birthed and then grow up. Brains and eyelashes and the ear canal - fascinating! Somehow this led me to think about heaven once again. (The twists and turns of my thoughts are no...

I haven't talked much about my faith on this blog. Maybe I figure those who know me, know what we stand for. But I suppose there are those out there who don't know or don't care. But here's a little glimpse. My Facebook entry yesterday evening said, "I don't believe in coincidence. I do believe God answers prayer." So totally believe it! Earlier in the week I alluded to some challenges we are having with our Boy. He's the oldest of the kids, the first, the guinea pig. So we are finding our way along with him as we navigate the growing up years. Tuesday night he and I had a very emotional, but very good, talk We knocked out all expectations and told him to just relax and have fun. He puts so much pressure on himself to be perfect. (Is this a firstborn trait?!?!) Well, yesterday (Wed) he had another basketball game. This is one area which has been most difficult. He is in a new league with boys who are really good players. He's good, but just...