oh, how things can change!

Hard to believe that one weekend away my husband Randy and I were having a self proclaimed perfect weekend away.
One week later...4 days ago, Randy had a stroke.

I haven't really allowed myself to feel anything but thankfulness along the way. The initial terror I felt was nearly incapacitating and I sho' 'nuf knew I needed to move my bad self along from that feeling. I have 5 kids after all.
Now, don't think it was anything I did. I just happened to realize I couldn't stay terrified or catatonic and God made Himself very big in the whole situation enabling me to see the next right thing to do and say and provided the strength to do it.

My husband is now home. It seems to me he had the best kind of stroke he could have had.... God placed that clot smack dab in the center of balance and vomit central in his cerebellum and He made it small enough that his symptoms are being overcome daily. He is less weak every day. He is hardly dizzy anymore. He does not see double. He is no longer vomiting. He is able to eat and walk and talk with nearly no slurring. He does have to think about what used to be automatic and everything he does is much slower.
I am going to take him to Physical Therapy today and they will continue to work on him.
I mentioned feeling nothing but thankful...

• So thankful for my son in law Grant, an ER nurse, being with him and taking care of him when he first fell.



• So thankful for family and friends and practical expressions of love and prayers.



• So thankful for the nurses and doctors.



• My sister from TN, and ICU nurse, was with me to listen to the first visit with the Neurologist.

It is strangely beautiful to know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that in the midst of a storm you and all you love are being safely Held.

Valentines Weekend Away

Just got back from a weekend away for the first time in two years. My husband and I enjoyed one another on all levels. We went walking in the woods twice over the weekend. I ate what I wanted and what my surgery would allow. I drank good wine, hot-tubbed under the stars, made leisurely breakfasts each morning, visited some great restaurants along the river, watched a movie or two and saw many bald eagles flying over the Mississippi in Prairie Du Chien.
I even came home to a pretty clean house...we have great kids!
So thankful!

the Sea Inside

Recently watched this movie....very profound. I would recommend it greatly!
I suppose I should share a bit more....Whatever you might feel about the right to die, I am sure this movie will bring out something from within you that you hadn't thought before.
My mother passed away many years ago. She chose to stop taking nourishment through her stomach tube and weighed less than 70 lbs when she died. She was a prisoner in her body, suffering from ALS. Her only means to communicate was blinking out concise messages to convey her needs. She had a sea inside of her...as we all do.
I, for whatever reasons, had a life experience where I had to help care for my mom's very physical needs and watch her die while in college. Receiving from her the gracious life lessons one would never wish to have to teach their own child has filled me and made me who I am.

Savior

I have this life...
It's full, it's practiced (I've lived it for nearly 46 years!), it's predictable, it includes different roles--Being a wife, being a mom, being an employee, being a friend, being a sister, being an aunt, being a daughter in law, etc.

I have this habit...
I naturally think I am the source of all strength, solutions, and sustenance. It's all-encompassing, never ending, and quite stubborn. I "humbly" receive counsel and seek input, knowing later that my judgement will prevail because who knows best, but me?

I have this God...
He touches on each and every relationship area of my life, in His time and for His glory. It ends up looking and feeling quite a bit like death. Which it is. "For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that his life may also be revealed in our mortal body." 

 God has this Gospel---this "Good News"...
"We know that the one who raised the Lord Jesus from the dead will also raise us with Jesus..." 

In small places, indiscernible to the naked eye,

I have this paradigm shift...
I am weak. Jesus is strong. I can't. Jesus can and did. I am fixed because He did the fixing.

My pastor and friend wrote:
"The gospel teaches us that no one fixes anyone; but Jesus paid for the fix with His blood, He does the fixing with His Spirit, and in the end, is still the only one completely fixed this side of Heaven." 

Jesus completed work is still saving me, my husband, my family, my co-workers, my pastor, my friends. What a Savior!

Reminding myself I'm clean

Mark 2


He went out again beside the sea, and all the crowd was coming to him, and he was teaching them. And as he passed by, he saw Levi the son of Alphaeus sitting at the tax booth, and he said to him, "Follow me." And he rose and followed him.

And as he reclined at table in his house, many tax collectors and sinners were reclining with Jesus and his disciples, for there were many who followed him. And the scribes of the Pharisees, when they saw that he was eating with sinners and tax collectors, said to his disciples, "Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?" And when Jesus heard it, he said to them, "Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners."



I read this recently and it dawned on me that Jesus isn’t speaking of those reclining at the table with him in a disparaging tone…He is, in essence, inviting the Pharisees to join Him, but first they need to realize they are sick too!


I heard Tullian Tchividjian share in his recent series on Grace that we so often think we have to DO DO DO our Christianity (Exactly like the Pharisees). This thinking ends one of two ways…pride (ie: sin) in how well we have done, or despair (faithlessness ie: sin), cuz we just “can’t get ‘er done”.

When will we realize, "It is finished" really means just that?
 
Mark continues...

Now John’s disciples and the Pharisees were fasting. And people came and said to him, “Why do John’s disciples and the disciples of the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast?" And Jesus said to them, "Can the wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them? As long as they have the bridegroom with them, they cannot fast. The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast in that day. No one sews a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment. If he does, the patch tears away from it, the new from the old, and a worse tear is made. And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the wine will burst the skins—and the wine is destroyed, and so are the skins. But new wine is for fresh wineskins."

 The message of God’s grace is “new wine for fresh wineskins”.

Attempting to attach True grace to works-based Christianity will only prolong the misleading notion that we somehow have a part in our redemption.
 We tend to forget the order of things concerning our salvation.

1. It’s God’s gift (we ALL need it, tax collectors and Pharisees alike)


2. It’s not our works (Hello!? We all try to sneak this method by…some for much loooonger than others)


3. We’ve been created IN Christ Jesus for good works
 4. Rinse, repeat.