Just a reminder from God above

"...do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?" Matt 625-27

Amazing how the things we seem to worry about often never come to pass. Just as I worried for so long about Justin heading to Iraq. He should have been leaving today or tomorrow. Just a quick update. He isn't going right now as we thought. I'm so glad that God sees the big picture that we can't see! Please continue to pray for him and all of our military.

Those birds feasting on the little crumbs frozen on the ground were a reminder to me this morning to continue to trust and not worry. Unfortunately, you can't see the cardinals too well, because it was too cold to go out and everytime I tried to open the window they flew away. But what a sight and reminder of God's great love and care for each of us.

He will hold us until we meet again

How does one say goodbye to their child? Does it really matter if they are an only child or one of many? I heard that statement so many times yesterday. After an 8am basketball game of Tia's we went to Chelsea's funeral. My heart just grieves for her family. I can't imagine anything in life more difficult. Our church was filled with so much heartache as each person said goodbye through a cloud of many tears. Please keep these high school students, family and friends in your prayers in the days ahead.

Immediately after the funeral, we quickly headed to the airport to board a plane for California. In just a few hours I will say "see you later" to my son for the next nine months as he heads to the other side of the world to protect my freedom. Those of you that know me, know I DON'T do goodbye's. Yes, it is difficult, but I know he is in God's hands and whether he is in the states or on the othe side of the world my God never changes. What a comfort and peace I have as I hold to the verse He gave me for Justin many years ago,

"For I know the plans I have for you, plans to give you a hope and a future, plans to prosper you and not harm you, thus says the Lord." Jeremiah 29:11.

HUG YOUR KIDS A LITTLE TIGHTER!

Please pray for our kids at the high school and all others involved. I just returned from the high school where the grief is devasting. One of Brandon's good friends was on her way to school this morning, was changing lanes, rolled her truck and was killed. Initial reports say she did have on her seat belt. My heart breaks for her family and all of these students. What a blessing it is to teach in a school that quickly found someone to cover my class so I could be with my son and just give him a hug.

"Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue, but with actions and in truth." I John 3 18

Strength

I don't know how amazed others are, but as a mom, I am extremely impressed. Brandon, weighing in at 148.4 lbs, came in 2nd place for his weight class in the powerlifting meet on Saturday. His weights were 195 on benchpress, 445 in the deadlift, and 385 in squat. Wow! If you are interested in seeing him in action hop on over to Coach Tullous' webpage and follow it to the 2009 powerlifting meet on the left side of the page. It is a great video that I was thrilled to see since I wasn't able to be there. I was at a birthday party with Tia and of course neither of us had the camera, so this is the best I could do.

I hope he always remembers were his strength comes from and that he will continue to be blessed when he puts his strength in God. Psalms 84:5.

It is God who arms me with strength and makes my way perfect. 2 Sam. 22:33

His ways are far greater!

Come along and glimpse into the journey that God is taking our family on at this time. I haven't blogged much in the past week, and what little time I have spent on the computer, I have been catching up on the heartache of the Saunders family so that I can pray for them as they go through this valley. Please take a look at their blog and lift them up in pray. Satan has really been attacking their family, but God is going to get the glory!

Now, I think it is time to share a little about our family. We often wonder why on earth God is moving us, especially when our heartache is involved. A year ago this month, God clearly spoke to us to move churches and as we searched and visited He led us to First Baptist. This is where we were members upon first moving here 10 years ago. But in the past 8 years we had been at Cornerstone where I taught an incredible ladies Sunday School class and it broke my heart to leave, but we have learned that when God says move, we must follow just like Abraham did(Hebrew 11:8) even when we don't know where we are going. At the time we certainly didn't understand and we were just filled with questions and no answers. Have you ever been there?

The Sunday we joined FBC Tia said she wanted to be baptized and I explained to her that was not why we were going to the front of the church and we would discuss it later. She promptly said she wanted to discuss it THEN because she wanted to be baptized. So after church we talked and made an appointment with the pastor. Tia verbally accepted the Lord as her Savior that week, although in her heart she had already done so. On Mother's Day she was baptized and I was overjoyed getting the best gift any mother could ever ask for!

We quickly began getting involved at church and attending Wednesday night dinners(where else can you feed a hungry family for under $20 and have good Christian conversation?). I'm convinced that God selected our seats at the dinner table so he could open our hearts again. The family we sat with is in the process of their second adoption from China and has a wonderful story to tell. Adoption has been so close to our heart since we were blessed with Tia, but we never planned to adopt again, because with four kids, certainly God knew we had our hands full. Didn't He? He definately has a different definition of full than we do! Yes, we have discussed adopting again over the years, but came to the conclusion that we were too old and too busy to adopt again, although we loved to hear stories of other families adoptions.

One evening, the week before Thanksgiving, Brandon and Tia said "Mom, we need to adopt a little girl from China." Yes, I laughed just like Sarah(Gen. 18:12) when she heard she was going to give birth and explained that we were too old. I can just see God as He listened to our conversation and thought, "You have no idea, a forty(ish) year old couple is nothing in MY grand plan!" David and I talked and laughed some more while at the same time our two kids at home were still pushing the idea. We finally agreed that maybe this was something that deserved prayer. Why is it that often our last resort? Not only did we begin praying telling God that we wanted His will and not our own, I began praying a different prayer. Little did David know that for many years I had been praying that he would step up and make more decisions in regards to our family. My prayer sounded like this, "God if You have a plan for our family move me out of the way and allow the decision to come from my husband." Well, it did and I was not prepared for his answer. Did I really pray that? So a couple of weeks after our discussion we decided that we either needed to quit talking or start moving. Remember that faith that sometimes has to be accompanied by action(James 2:17). I told David it was ultimately his decision. He proceeded to tell me to send off for the paperwork and let's see where God takes it from here. I completely expected him to say, "then let's stop talking about it." So the day after Thanksgiving I sent our application off to AWAA along with $250 that we really didn't have extra that week. On Monday, I got the call that we had been accepted to begin our international adoption from China and on Tuesday I got a bonus check for exactly $250 at work. We have no idea where the rest of the money for this adoption will come from, but we know that God will provide if we just step out in faith and give it to Him. Last week we got our homestudy and dossier information so it looks like we will be very busy filling out paperwork in the months ahead.

As we began this process this is the verse the Lord gave me on 11-28-08:

"I pray that now at last by God's will the way may be opened for me to come to you." (Romans 8:10) and so, precious daughter, we can hardly wait to see who you are that our Lord has chosen for us.

URGENT PRAYER REQUEST!

Please pray for my blogger friend, Linny, as she watches her home go up in flames. I am attaching a link to her post. If you haven't read her blog you are missing a true blessing from the Lord. Please lift her family up in prayer.

The value of words

After spending the weekend with fever and a stomach ache I took Tia to the doctor this morning. Looks like she just has a stomach virus. Poor thing, she was probably scared to death when the doctor told me I should just sit on her for another 24-48 hours before we do any other tests. The look in her eyes when she heard this told me I better do some explaining! I told her the doctor just meant we didn't need to do anything else for awhile. WOW, what a relief that must have been to her to know that mom wasn't actually going to sit on her.

After getting home and pouring liquids in her I was busy working around the house and she came up and said "Mom, thanks for taking care of me." I explained that this is my job, but boy is it nice to hear such sweet words! She could have had anything she wanted at that point.

On Saturday, I heard the words from my sweet husband, that "I would marry you all over again," as he placed my wedding ring back on my finger that had been at the jewelers.

I wonder how my words sound to others that hear them? Kind of scary to think about at times. For any of you that know how important it is to remember the words of the Lord, Beth Moore has a challenge for us to memorize scripture for 2009. Just remember that it is the word of the Lord that helps us fight the enemy. I don't know about you, but I need His help fighting the enemy! Just look at how Jesus fought Satan in Matthew 4 when He said, " Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God."

My words may not always be pleasant, but I am really trying this year to keep Christ's words on the tip of my tongue. Feel free to join the challenge by dropping by Beth's blog.

"Pleasant words are a honeycomb, sweet to the soul and healing to the bones." Proverbs 16:24

Time flies when life happens!

Who would have dreamed that in 22 years we would have gone through so many experiences together. We have grown up in our love for each other and the Lord. There have been good times and times of struggle, feast and famine, joy and tears, but through it all God's hand has been the glue to hold us together. God has blessed our marriage and through looking to Him we have seen that He has so much more for us than we would have ever dreamed.

Happy Anniversary, David, You are my Prince Charming!

Faith

I just found a quote the other day that I wanted to share. It is not the definition I may have given for faith, but one that I really liked.

"Faith is wanting something with all your heart. Faith is taking a chance on something before you are sure how everything will work out. You must dare! Remember, mountain-moving faith is not just dreaming and desiring. It requires action!" Mary Kay Ash

I don't know about you, but I want that mountain-moving faith in my life. I know there are times when having faith means sitting back, being still and waiting on God to work, but like this says there are other times when faith means we move before we have any idea what God is going to do. We just know He is telling us to move. That is exactly what we are doing with the adoption of our second daughter. We know beyond the shadow of a doubt that God is telling us to adopt, but we have absolutely no idea how all of this is going to work out, where the finances will come from or how on earth we will have the energy. Our faith though tells us to move and God will take care of all of the details.

I know this is word, faith, is one I am going to get very familiar with this year. As I am writing this my two oldest children are on a road trip from Texas to California. Yes, big brother talked his younger brother into riding with him and then letting Nathan fly back home. I'm sure they are having plenty of brotherly bonding time on the 20 hour road trip. It certainly wasn't my desire that they drive that far, but it is hard to convince a 19 and 21 year old that they might actually get tired. I am just trying to have faith that they are in God's hands and He is riding with them. Nathan will fly home in a couple of days and Justin will be getting prepared for his upcoming deployment within the next few weeks.

Faith to me is "being fully persuaded that God has the power to do what He has promised." Romans 4:21. I would love to hear what faith means to you.