Saturday

I just want to say thank you to all who have been praying for our family and my dad. He came home from the hospital yesterday, Friday Feb.29. As I wrote in the previous blog it had been a long week. Well now we are in for the long journey to full recovery.

I know as children we think that our parents will always be around. They will never be sick and will always be there to take care of you. Then we grow into our teenage years and we feel basically the same but we also feel like we know everything and they just don't get it. How could they get it they are our parents they could not possibly understand and know what we are going through. Then we become adults and have children of our own. We are so busy by now with our lives that we don't take the time we need to to be around to spend a lot of time with our parents which by now have become mawmaw and pawpaw instead of mama and daddy.

Well, I know you are thinking by now where is she going with all of this. Well here it is in a nut shell. We need to realize that our parents have been children at one time and thought the same about their parents. They were teenagers and have gone through a lot of the same things we have just in a different time. Then there came the day when their parents became grandparents to us. Basically they do understand and we need to take as much time with them as we possibly can.

None of us young, middle age or old are guaranteed tomorrow. We are to live today as if it could be our last. So if this is so we need to come together more or as much as possible as a family. Not just the regular holidays.

I can truly say in these last six weeks or so between the trips to the hospital and the death of my lovely sister in law and then my dad having by pass surgery we need to quit taking for granted that our time will never end because we know that is not so. So take the time to spend with family or pick up a phone to a love one and just say hi. Send a card or send an email. Just take the time that God has given you and enjoy your family now while the time is yours to enjoy them.

A Very Long Week

It has been a very long week. To be honest with you it has been a very long last 6 weeks for our family. First off my daddy was in the hospital for a heart attack and had to have a heart cath and stints. Well that all went well. Then my sister in law Stacy went into the hospital and while there was healed by our Lord and taken home to be with him, but I will say this we all do miss her very much but do know that we will see her again. During all this time I was told that I needed to be looking for another job after 2 1/2 years of working for this company (this was the new owners that told me this). What has topped this all off is that on Wednesday my daddy blacked out while he was driving to the doctors for his six week followup and has a small accident while crossing 759 bridge. He was taken to Riverview Hospital where we find out late that evening he has had another heart attack. On Thursday he had to have another heart cath and we found out he was going to have to have by pass surgery. Saturday was the big and long day. With all your prayers and a God that is still in the healing business everything went well. He is now in ICU anding doing well. He will proably be put in a room on Monday. The doctors said he will be in the hospital maybe a week to 10 days and then will be sent home for about 6 to 8 weeks of healing and rest. Like I said at the beginning of this Blog it has been a very long six weeks. To all of my friends that have known about this and been praying for our family thank you very much. To those that are just now finding out about my daddy and mom please pray for strenght and healing in these next few days and weeks.

Just a quick thought

I am sitting here thinking how many different posts I have started and stopped thinking I am to write about some profound thought or thing in my life and I seem to end up never posting anything to my blog. Then I realized writing on my blog doesn't have to be all profound or theological. All it needs to be is something that I feel passionate about at the time I am writing.

So I stop to think about what am I most passionate about at this very moment. Ah, what could that possibly be. Well, as I sit here racking this brain of mine (yes for my closest friends I do have one of those LOL) I realize one of the things that really is on my heart at this moment is something that God spoke to me about last night while I was sitting in my Romans class at seminary. (Thanks Brother Roy). We were going over Romans chapter 6 and preparing for our finals next week when we started to discuss the scriptures Romans 6: 1-2.

Romans 6:
(v1) What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? (v2) Certainly not! How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it? NKJV

One of the examples that was used for this scripture was that of a dead body. You can touch it, caress it, and move it's hand but there is no responds. I had never really thought of this scripture in this way. Then there was a short story of a young pastor that was truly on fire for God and in this same church was an old deacon that was set in his ways, basically his way or no way. For years the old deacon would discourage, oppose and criticize the young pastor. One day a member of the church asked the young pastor how he managed to put up with this deacon and he simply replied, "I died to him five years ago." The young pastor had grasped the concept of the believer's death with Christ.

So as the scripture says "How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it?" I truly don't think (in my humble opinion) that we have grasped the concept ourselves. If we have or had how could we continue on the way we are with worrying about the problems that our children are in or the direction they are going. Continue finding ourselves stressed out and letting our health be effected by the things that our family members put us through. Get mad and upset when someone doesn't see things the same way we do in our work place or even in church. Even as simple as being on the road and getting cutoff and getting mad and passing that anger off to the next person we meet.

I know to some people these are things that we take with us daily but even the little things worry, anger and so many other are all sins that if we are truly in Christ we have died to. We should be like the corpes and the young pastor and really die to these things. Let them go we say that we believe and trust in God then die to these sins and let him take over for us. I am not just writing this for those reading this I am writing this with myself included. And I am not saying that we (I) am/are prefect but we should strieve to be. Yes we all sin and fall short of the glory of God. But I praise him daily for the grace that he has given us all.

So what I plan to do that next time I find myself in these situations I am going to remind myself as the younger pastor said "I have died to this" and give it to Christ.

Lord, Thank you so much for the gift of grace you have given each of us that are your children. Lord I pray for strength to continue walking daily in your light and to remember daily that we who have accepted you as our Lord and Savior died to these sins with your son Jesus Christ. In your blessed Sons name I pray AMEN