Dear Friend,
We went to church this morning, so ... YAY! I wanted to stay in bed and sleep and came up with several excuses why it was okay to sleep in this one more week. But then my husband came in with coffee and he was already dressed to go. So I had about 15 minutes to throw on some clothes and get ready and go. And I'm really, really glad I did.
At the first of the service, three people, including the minister, got up and blessed the women there. Now this is all new territory for me ... but it was really meaningful and I got a lot out of it. Then the sermon was about Pentecost, he's been doing a sermon series about the Holy Spirit. And then at the end, some couples went to the front of the church to pray for you if you needed prayer. One of the couples included the woman who had given a blessing that was especially something I needed to hear. So you can bet that I was up and out of my seat and went to them to ask for prayer. She was just lovely. I told her that I was just dry. I had had no fellowship for such a long time and was dry and defeated. She and her husband both prayed for me and, I can't really remember what they said too much, but it was just what I needed.
I went back to our owe and was thinking about it all and realized that it is my heart that has been defeated. I'm not depressed and overwhelmed because of my health and having too much to do. I am depressed and overwhelmed by these things because my heart has been defeated and had lost hope. These prayers don't change my work load or any of the challenges in my life. But I feel like I can approach them with a heart that is no longer hopeless.
The verse that the pastor used as the blessing he offered to the women was from the psalm where the author writes, "The King is enthralled with your beauty." This was written as a psalm for Solomon when he married the woman from Egypt ... the first of his many mistakes, but I digress, he asked us to receive this as from The Lord, that He sees us fully and truly and He is enthralled with our beauty. This really meant so much to me, to freshly realize that God loves me and sees me and delights in me. I kept having this image in my mind of Jesus standing in the stormy Sea of Galilee with His arms stretched out and me leaping from the boat and running so fast to Him that p, unlike Peter, I couldn't sink because I wasn't even aware of the wind and the waves. All I wanted was HIM.
So it was a lovely service and really ministered to me so much. They are having a conference next weekend and I planning on going.
We picked up the kids and our daughter took us it to eat at our favorite sushi restaurant. Only problem was that her card was declined!! She swears she has the money in her account, but it was just so funny.
The umbrellas I ordered got in. I got one of them set up on the patio and it looks great! Best $33 ever spent!
For dinner, we went to a seafood restaurant right on the water on the other side of the river. It was open air and really great! And, we got to enjoy it for a LONG, LONG, LONG TIME! Two hours and fifteen minutes long, to be exact. How does this happen to us so often?? Our food didn't come and didn't come. I had to ask the waitress's to check on it. She said the kitchen was backed up and we waited and waited and it was just kind of ridiculous. The charm declined steadily thought the evening! But we had a really great visit and laughed hysterically over lots of things. My husband and son ordered the three-berry cobbler with vanilla ice cream. Sounds good, huh? But, what they got was frozen berries with some sort of cold piece of biscuit on top of it in a large glass with a scoop of whipped cream!
My mother had a terrible day. She has leu risky and the pain was so bad that she couldn't get enough air and had to call for an ambulance to take her to the ER. We had a lot of problems because she was in too much pain to take her prescriptions in to the pharmacy. So I got hold of two of her neighbors who went over and took care of her. And then they found out that the doctor didn't GIVE HER the pain medicine prescription! When he called the ER, they rudely told him that she was just going to have to come back in to pick up the prescription no matter what kind of pain she was in!!! Long story short, she's doing better now and is going to call and try to get in to see her own doctor in the morning and one of the neighbors is going to take her. She has three very kind neighbors who have told me over and over to count in them to help in any way they can and they really showed up today!
My niece has just gone crazy. My sin and daughter both listened to the voice mail she left and apparently she just went completely off and said I was a liar and I had threatened her and her father and apparently is "threatening" me that she is going to post everything I said on her Facebook page and tag me so they'll show up in my Facebook page. Now, mind you, this gal is FORTY! Not FOURTEEN! So I'm, like ... what???! You're going to post me saying please don't get involved in this, this is between me and my brother and I don't want my relationship with her getting caught up in it and I wasn't going to discuss it anymore with her. Yea, well, that's certainly putting the fear of God in me!!! What in the world can she possibly be thinking? It's so incredibly irrational. One thing, and I have to keep reminding myself about this, but there are a lot of not-normal people in the world! Sociopaths, psychopaths, borderline personality disorders, histrionic disorders, narcissistic disorders, etc., etc. So, she may actually BE crazy, and not just acting crazy! I told my daughter that I'm beginning to think that my branch of the family tree is actually the LEAST crazy branch! And, incidentally, I would use italics and not all caps for emphasis, except I don't know how to do that without going back to the top of the page for each word and selecting italics. Not happening.
And, she sent me an email, too! Both kids read it. I haven't read it or listened to her voice mail yet. I know I'm going to have to deal with this now since they are apparently going into lala land and he owns lots and lots of guns! I joked with my kids that I didn't want to cut them off completely because I may need a kidney some day. My son had just finished reading the email and he said, "Oh ... I don't think you're going to be getting a kidney from either of them!" It was so funny!! He has impeccable delivery! I about died laughing. So that's going to be a wearisome task for tomorrow. Later in the day I had to send an email. I deleted a bunch of emails and then hers popped up. I didn't look at it but I saw the preview which said, "You have lost it! I don't know who you think you're talking to, but" ... and that where it cuts off. Fun fun. Sorry, chica. I have had to deal with too many crazy people in my life and I am not wasting any emotional energy on this one! My brothers broke my heart and I cried for something like two or three weeks. I am so over it now. (I hope! Dear God, I hope they don't have any other way of hurting me more than they already have!)
So, here I am, facing a new week. Nothing has changed. Nothing will be easier and I don't have less to do than I had at the start of the day. But I have a little kernel of hope planted in me now and I think it will gain hold and change ME, not my circumstances. And I surely do need a lot of changing.
Have a great week!
Cheers!
Lisa
No comments:
Post a Comment