thankful. 11.12.09

I’m so thankful . . .

For the fact that everyone in my immediate family professes faith in Christ and expresses that faith openly through prayer and service. I’m so thankful that my children look to God for help as they face challenges in their day.

I’m thankful that my daughter feels sadness at the end of the day when she confesses that she “didn’t think about God all day.” I’m thankful that the thought of excluding God from her day causes her to rededicate herself toward walking with God the next day.

I’m thankful that my son asks the Lord to help him as he strives to give his best effort academically, athletically and relationally. I’m thankful that he evidences his faith through compassion and empathy and kindness and his work ethic.

I’m thankful that both children were happy and somewhat excited when they were told that we would be spending Thanksgiving serving dinner to the community at our church.

I’m thankful that my husband is a man of faith and actively strives makes his decisions based on that faith rather than on self-serving motivation.

THANK YOU, LORD!!!

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I’m participating in a month of Thanksgiving hosted by Rebecca Writes. If you want to join in, post something you are thankful for and then link up over at Rebecca’s blog!

thankful. 11.11.09

I’m so thankful . . .

For BOOKS.

I read so many books at the “same time.” Authors are like friends. I just pick who I want to have a conversation with and/or what I want to “converse” about at that time and open up a book that fits. Today I read some from Philip Yancey’s “Prayer. Does it Make a Difference?” and Bruce Wilkinson’s “Secrets of the Vine.” (And “Special Edition Using Microsoft Office 2007″ by Ed Bott and Woody Leonhard, but most people don’t like to chat about that book.)

I almost always learn something when I read. Yesterday, while reading Yancey’s “Prayer” I looked up a Bible passage he referred to and discovered that Matthew 17:21 is missing from the NIV, dismissed as a forgery. I originally looked up the passage in my New King James and thought the verse was interesting, so, as I sometimes do, I looked it up in another version to see the difference. In my NIV, Matthew 17 goes straight from verse 20 to 22. No reference in “The Message” either. A quick Google search later and I discovered that some translator decided that he would copy Mark 9:29 to Matthew 17:21 for “consistency.” Hence, the forgery.

I wonder, if I hadn’t looked up that passage because a book made me curious, if I ever would have noticed that. I love books.

THANK YOU, LORD!!!

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I’m participating in a month of Thanksgiving hosted by Rebecca Writes. If you want to join in, post something you are thankful for and then link up over at Rebecca’s blog!

thankful. 11.10.09

I’m so thankful . . .

For my ability to write without pain or numbness in my hand. I’m thankful the arthritis in my neck is not causing me pain or limited movement right now. I’m thankful for the days I forget I even have arthritis in my neck.

THANK YOU, LORD!!!

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I’m participating in a month of Thanksgiving hosted by Rebecca Writes. If you want to join in, post something you are thankful for and then link up over at Rebecca’s blog!

thankful. 11.05.09

I’m so thankful . . .

No one in my immediate family has ever suffered from a life-threatening illness. I’m thankful for my acute awareness that my family’s health is due to the grace and mercy of God, whose reasoning I don’t pretend to comprehend, and not because of anything we have done or haven’t done. I’m thankful that I can express my gratitude to God for this blessing by being obedient when faced with an opportunity to provide help, encouragement and child care for someone who has BEATEN stage IV breast cancer. I’m amazed and thankful for the miracle of her healing. I’m thanking God in advance, that her reconstructive surgery was safe and successful yesterday. (I haven’t heard yet. She’s resting.)

THANK YOU, LORD!!!

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I’m participating in a month of Thanksgiving hosted by Rebecca Writes. If you want to join in, post something you are thankful for and then link up over at Rebecca’s blog!

expensive tedium exposed.

I’ve been reading a little C. S. Lewis lately. Today I read the November 1st and 2nd entries from “A Year with C. S. Lewis: Daily Readings from His Classic Works.” He’s a tough read. I may have mentioned before that I respond to his writing in a number of different ways.

Sometimes, I think he’s a pompous windbag who delights in using words the common man (that’d be me) has to look up in a very old dictionary because the newer dictionaries have already stopped including said words due to lack of use. (This is why I sometimes refer to him as “Jack,” as his friends called him. It reminds me that he’s just a guy and that I need to take what he says with a grain of salt, as the saying goes.)

Sometimes I have to read a phrase or a sentence or an entire paragraph multiple times before I have half a clue what the man is trying to say.

Sometimes I understand immediately what he’s saying and I adamantly disagree.

So why read him?

Because when the man DOES make a point with me, it often resonates. He sometimes states something so succinctly that it hits the core of my belief in a certain area. Thankfully, those moments occur more often than the windbag, re-read and adamantly disagree moments.

One book that consistently hits home is a small work of fiction entitled “The Screwtape Letters.” It’s a series of letters from an older demon (Uncle Screwtape) to a younger demon (Wormwood), advising him on how to bring about the downfall of the human (the patient) to whom the younger demon has been assigned. It’s a backward concept for the Christian reader, especially when Lewis consistently refers to God as the “Enemy.” His assessment of human nature and temptation makes me think. Case in point:

When the patient repents, Screwtape outlines Wormwood’s blunders:

“…you first of all allowed the patient to read a book he really enjoyed, because he enjoyed it and not in order to make clever remarks about it to his new friends. In the second place you allowed him to walk down to the old mill and have tea there – a walk through country he really likes, and taken alone. In other words, you allowed him two real positive Pleasures. Were you so ignorant as not to see the danger in this? …

…you were trying to damn your patient by the World, that is by palming off vanity, bustle, irony and expensive tedium as pleasures. How can you have failed to see that a real pleasure was the last thing you ought to have let him meet? Didn’t you foresee that it would just kill by contrast all the trumpery which you have been so laboriously teaching him to value?

And that sort of pleasure which the book and the walk gave him was the most dangerous of all? That it would peel off from his sensibility the kind of crust you have been forming on it, and make him feel that he was coming home, recovering himself?

As a preliminary to detaching himself from the Enemy, you wanted to detach him from himself, and had made some progress in doing so. Now, all that is undone.

…the man who truly and disinterestedly enjoys any one thing in the world, for its own sake, and without caring two-pence what other people say about it, is by that very fact forearmed against some of our subtlest modes of attack. You should always try to make the patient abandon the people or food or books he really likes in favour of the ‘best’ people, the ‘right’ food, the ‘important’ books.”

I get it. Thanks, Jack.

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Have you read something interesting you want to share? I want to read it! If you post about it, link up in comments – or just post your quote in a comment. Check out other book quotes I’ve posted by perusing my “therefore I quote” tag.

what I learned this week. 09-30-09

I need to listen to that still, small voice I hear. Even when it makes no sense.

God can bless me by asking me to give away my van. He can bless me beyond my wildest imagination.

I can be happy – really HAPPY – even when I have no vehicle and no plan for how to get one.

The biggest thing I learned this week?

Blessings require change. And faith. And courage.

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To find out what others learned this week, check out What I Learned this Week hosted by Musings of a Housewife.

I blinked.

And then it was September 22nd.

Holy WHIRLWIND, Batman!

There’s so much going on right now. Here’s one thing:

No one was hurt!!! It could have been so much worse. We’re looking at it as a blessing!

FirstHusband was on the Florida Turnpike in my van, on his way to FavoriteSon’s “away” football game on Friday night. We had decided the two hour drive there, the two hour game and the two hour drive back was too much to ask of PinkGirl considering none of her friends would be going to game either. So PinkGirl and I were home. FirstHusband called about 5:30 p.m. and said:

“No one was hurt, I’m fine, but I just got rear-ended. I’ve gotta go.”

Sometimes, the man KNOWS how to start a sentence. I hung up and thought, rear-ended. No big deal. He’s fine. He drives a Ford F250, so if he’s fine, it’s probably fine. Small aircraft can hit that thing and bounce off.

Then I remembered. He was driving MY van. oh.

Then the texts/phone calls begin.

Text from FirstHusband: “Your registration is expired.”

Me: (to myself) CRUD-OLA! Happy flippin birthday to me, I FORGOT to renew my tag! (text to FirstHusband) “I’M SO SORRY!”

Him: “No worries.”

Me: (to God) “I know we deserve the consequence, Lord, but please don’t let the ticket for an expired tag be too expensive!!!”

Phone Call from FirstHusband: “Where’s your insurance card?”

Me: “In my purse.”

Him: “Not in your van?”

Me: “No, I carry them with me. With my license.”

Him: “I keep mine in my glove compartment.”

Me: “You don’t carry mine in case you drive the van? I carry yours in case I drive the truck.”

So, FirstHusband is on the Florida Turnpike, over an hour away, with a smashed van, waiting on the Florida Highway Patrol to arrive – withOUT proof of insurance and with an expired tag.

And he’s not mad. Gotta love him.

While waiting on the FHP officer, he called and told me what happened. There was a three car accident ahead and traffic on the Turnpike came to a stop. The guy in front of him barely made the stop. HE barely made the stop. Both he and the guy in front of him looked in their rear view mirrors and knew the guy behind FirstHusband was NOT going to make the stop. They both inched forward as far as they could and FirstHusband stood on the brake to (hopefully) keep from hitting the guy in front of him (didn’t work). At the last minute, somehow, the guy ended up on the right side of the van instead of directly behind it, so no full rear impact. AND the guy didn’t hit the traffic in the lane to the right. No one was hurt, everyone was in a pleasant mood and a woman who worked for the Department of Transportation was two cars ahead, so she hung around and told everyone what they needed to do.

Like I said before – it was a BLESSING. I’ve prayed “Thank you, God” more than a few times since Friday night.

And, instead of a citation with a fine, the officer gave FirstHusband a citation and a form to fill out. We had 30 days to mail copies of the proof of insurance and renewed registration to the clerk of the court. It’s in the mailbox right now.

FirstHusband, Later that Night: “In 19 years of marriage, we just learned something new about each other today. You carry both our insurance cards with you and I keep mine in my truck. I thought you kept yours in your van. Neither way is wrong, I just can’t believe after 19 years, we just figured this out about each other.”

Now we figure out what to do about the van, but that’s another story and it’s WHALE of a SALE time! I’ve got to go shop alphabetize books!

Then Sings My Soul Saturday: Desert Song

This week’s new praise song for our 9:30 a.m. praise and worship service! I can’t stop thanking God for letting me sing it!!! So beautiful.

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For more Saturday music, check out Then Sings My Soul Saturday every Saturday hosted by Amy at Signs, Miracles and Wonders.

Then Sings My Soul Saturday: Father, Spirit, Jesus

Another new song for our church’s 9:30 praise team this week:

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For more Saturday music, check out Then Sings My Soul Saturday every Saturday hosted by Amy at Signs, Miracles and Wonders.

Sings My Soul Saturday: Lead Me to the Cross.

Our church’s 9:30 service praise team is introducing two new songs to the congregation this week. I’ve been singing it all week in my car, walking around the house with my mp3 player, freaking out the cats, I even woke up to it in my head this morning.

I can’t wait for the congregation to learn it because in my head I can hear the women singing the bridge. It just floats. So beautiful.

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For more Saturday music, check out Then Sings My Soul Saturday every Saturday hosted by Amy at Signs, Miracles and Wonders.

Then Sings My Soul Saturday: Trading My Sorrows

I get to sing this tomorrow! I am SO happy we are doing this arrangement instead of the original. So much better! Who IS this woman anyway? She makes it look so easy. This song is not easy.

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For more Saturday music, check out Then Sings My Soul Saturday every Saturday hosted by Amy at Signs, Miracles and Wonders.

Rachel Barkey is Home.

Rachel Barkey went home to her Lord on July 2, 2009 at 37 years of age.

I wrote about her before, in a posted entitled “55 minutes.” I linked to her testimony.

I challenge you, I encourage you, I beg you – to take 55 minutes out of the busyness and redundancy of daily life and think on these things.

Here’s minute 48:

“I am dying.

But so are you.

Neither of us knows if we will even see tomorrow. And perhaps the reason that I am suffering now, the reason that God is waiting to bring judgment against all the evil in this world is because he is waiting for you. For you to acknowledge your sin and to turn to him for forgiveness.

Maybe YOU are the one we are waiting for.

Jesus suffered. God did not spare him. Why would he spare me? If my suffering would result in good for you? If my suffering is the means that God would use to bring even one person to himself, it is an honor for me to suffer.

Does that seem strange?

I suppose it does.

But really, it is the only way that all of this makes any sense at all.

A God who sees my suffering but is is unable, or worse, unwilling to spare me? A God who sees my suffering but allows it? With no greater purpose or hope? My God is able to save me and he will. But save me from what?

From a life without him.“

In the end, she stated that her goal was to “finish well.”

If you watch her testimony and it impacts your life as it did mine, it will be even more evidence that she achieved her goal.

Her funeral service will be held on Wednesday, July 8, at 1 p.m. at St. John’s Shaughnessy Church in Vancouver, BC. In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to Child of Mine (www.childofmine.ca) or World Vision (www.worldvision.ca).