It is well with my soul...

It is well with my soul this morning.  I don't always wake up with a sense of peace and well being, and it's not that something has happened really to give me a new sense of these feelings today, but Thank you Jesus, I feel it all the same.  It is TRULY well with my soul.  Thank you Jesus.  I can't say that enough.  I'm in love this morning.  With my Savior.  Thank you Jesus for my salvation and Promise of an eternity with you and all that I love who has chosen Your way.  Thank you Jesus for my family.  A husband who prays, children who love me, extended family who cares for me.  Thank you Jesus for my warm house and plenty to eat.  Thank you Jesus for just feeling your presence this morning right now, in your HOLY presence.  Thank you Jesus.

http://youtu.be/cPPSG_SpojY

Sometimes it takes something hard to go through to see God's presence.  I will give a small instance of this happening just this weekend.  Friday night, I became very ill with a nasty stomach bug.  Vomiting the whole thing.  Over the next 24 hours, I would see God's grace, God's love, God's mercy and thankfulness.  Over those 24 hours, I heard from probably every family member in my immediate family in the voice of concern, prayer, asking if I needed anything... It was a blessing.  My sweet Judaea came and rubbed my back in the bathtub after I had my first violent encounter with the porcelain throne.  She fixed me peanut butter and crackers the next day, TWICE, and believe it or not I held those sweet things down :).  Bailey kept me in sprite through the day, and By GOD I was able to hold that down.  Jonathan got to see me, for the first time in 17 years of marriage, vomit in a trashcan like I would imagine a big burly trucker vomits... and he loves me still... :) God is truly great.  Although me and Christian both got sick with stomach bugs, the girls didn't.  That is God's grace.  Thank you Jesus.

I love you all.  I am thinking of starting something new on here.  I need your prayers before I do that.  It involves my documenting a spiritual and physical cleansing that I am about to undergo.  It will also involve me actually posting my WEIGHT and stomach measurements online for the world to see.  Crazy?  Almost definitely.  But still considering it.  No one's really ever accused me of sanity :-) 

Karen Kingsbury... Why must you do this to me?

A couple of weeks ago, in a very unassuming conversation, I had a couple of really nice ladies tell me about an author I should check out.  Karen Kingsbury.  Well I love to read and I am trying to get back into the habit of reading a good book, so the next time I was at the library I searched her out.  Well if anyone has read any Kingsbury, they are aware that she has an enormous amount of titles to choose from.  I choose a series that consisted of four books and brought them home but I never could get started.  I just didn't feel that it was the right set for me.  So the next trip to the library (I go often now that we are homeschooling), I unassumingly chose a series of two books that just seem to fit.  A time to Dance and a Time to Embrace.  I have started reading A Time to Dance and she is a wonderful author.  Again, very unassumingly I really enjoyed getting to know the characters, who after being married 21 years to their childhood sweethearts begin the process of divorce and separation.  This are Christian novels but good christian folk still have troubles, boy do I know that one.

Anyway.... back to the story.  Out of no where in the middle of the novel, the main character of the book has to beginning mourning all over again for a daughter she had lost 19 years before.  What?!?  I am reading to get away from real life, isn't that why we read fiction?  I wasn't prepared for this.  It's not written on the back cover of her book that this was included.  I might would have put it back on the shelf.  Some things are just hard to face.  But God is never unassuming, and ALWAYS has a plan.  I needed to read these fiction words that are all too real in my heart.  

I didn't begin this blog to use it as an outlet for my grief.  Shoot, this is just the second post and I've went and got deep on everyone (or maybe just one reader).  But again, God has a plan and I need this tonight.  It's 12:32 am and I am the only one away after a very good, busy friday and I have no one to talk to.  But I need to remember my Lanie tonight.  Sometimes when things are so difficult, I just brush them off whenever possible.  Not to give my daughter's memory a disservice, but just to give my own heart some shield.  But the truth is, she had my heart and when she passed, it left a whole that I have just ignored and not allowed God to heal.  Lanie was a beautiful young girl of 13 when Jesus called her home.  She went back to God as innocent and pure as the day God gave her to me.  There is beauty in her returning to the Father in such a way.  But there is pain in only being allowed to hold her for 13 years.  She was, and I truly mean this, she was my best friend.  My buddy, my companion.  She was always with me and would seek me out in a crowd.  She would hold my hand through Wal-Mart and church.  She would comfort me about her own mortality.  She was much more aware of her short earthly time than I would allow myself to be.  She was brave, a fighter, an amazing daughter, friend, sister, christian... My hero.  And I MISS her.  I am thankful that God has her in His arms now, safe and healthy.  I am most thankful that God has given me a promise of another time together.  But I hurt tonight.

I am thankful for my many blessings, don't get me wrong.  I don't even question God over His decisions, knowing in my heart that He is all knowing.  I trust in Him, His word, His love, His promises.  I think I am just finally ready to trust Him to heal me.  All this from a fiction book that I am not even finished with.  God knows what speaks to us and He will use those things.  Thank you God for "unassumingly" entering my heart tonight and making me feel again.

I am going to try this thing...

Blogging?  Why not.  I thought I'd give it a try.  I read several others blogs and enjoy theirs. Sometimes I have thoughts and I don't really have a forum for it (in other words, my husband doesn't want to hear it hehe).  I figure this will be like my electronic, public diary.  If you want to read it, you will, if you don't, you won't.  And I won't have to know if you really paid attention, or even give it the time of day.  I can fib to myself and tell me that I have hundreds, no, thousands of people who care about what's on my mind and that will help my ego.  Yeah, I think me and this blog thing will really work out well :).