A Night to Remember

Okay, I don't know if I am reliving my high school days or what but last Saturday night was a lot of fun. It was Kristin's ring banquet night. We went because Steve is the class sponsor. It was so fun seeing the kids all dressed up and excited. Emmanuel came to the house to pick up Kristin. He looked so nice and his parents were there along with an aunt and his sister. They were excited, too. They brought cameras and everyone started snapping pictures. Candice, Kristin's friend had gotten dressed at our house and her date, Grant, came as well along with his twin sister and their parents! Then Steve's mom came....a full house! The living room was crowded, flashes going off..it was fun.

Then off every one went to the Warwick River Yacht Club and more pictures! All the kids were coming in dressed up and laughing. They got to sit at tables and eat fancy food and get their class rings. It was fun to sit back and watch them. Afterwards, we took some of them to Taylor's house for a party. They stayed late and spent more time together. They acted as if they didn't want the evening to end.

It is hard to believe those days have begun but I guess instead of being sad about it, I will just enjoy each event. One more week of school and Kristin is a junior and the special times will continue. I hope they are as enjoyable as that night was. It was a night to tuck away in your memory.

When Life Gives You Lemons...

I was suppose to write a blurb about Korie and our testimony that went along with the above theme....here it is:

When Steve and I found out we were going to have a second child, the doctors told us that we were going to have a "lemon". In fact, three doctors told us that we could throw that lemon away and start over. Without hesitation, we refused because we know that God creates no accidents.

However, at times, this has been very difficult to accept. It is hard to make "lemonade" out of something so sour. The sour times were giving up the dream of a healthy child, of not being a "normal" family. They were 14 times in a surgery waiting room, sometimes wondering if our time with her was up. I could go on.

But, if you add enough sugar or sprinkle enough spice, the bitter can be made sweet. God added the sugar to Korie's personality. "I love you, Mommy" is repeated over and over daily with lots of kisses and hugs. She thinks her mom is the best mom in the whole world and every day is a day to cherish.

God added the spice be giving her the spunk to be strong and to teach us that we have little to complain about and show us how wonderful life should be.

Yes, God gave us a "lemon"....to teach us how to make lemonade. We have tasted it and it is SWEET!!

Easter 2006

Here are my beautiful girls on Easter Day. What an Easter day it was! Church was incredible...no words to explain...such a day of celebration of what Christ did for us. The songs and the message were so uplifting and honoring to our Lord. We couldn't have asked for a better day.

Hello Dad

Well dad,

It is time to catch you up on things. I can't believe it has been nine years since you have left. Things are so different now. First I want you to know that I am very different. I have really found my place in the presence of God. I am getting to know Him better and better...maybe not as good as you....hahaha....but I am on my way. I am really learning prayer. I believe that is the key to everything. I am learning to pray and to believe God more. So I am doing okay.

Steve is doing the same thing believe it or not...I guess you can add AAU basketball coaching in there. He wasn't doing that nine years ago. I think you would really enjoy that level of play. I think about you most when I watch Kristin play. She is doing so well this year. You wouldn't believe....I can't begin to tell you all the records she is breaking and the points she is scoring....we didn't expect the scoring. She has become a real leader. And she is really growing up. She has a boyfriend now. Wow! Didn't see that one coming either and it has been a challenge in more ways than one. The other day we drove by Deep Creek and they tore down the 7-11. Kristin was very upset when she saw that. She had really good memories of walking there with you to get a paper and gum. It really effected her. By the way, she wears your number in basketball. So does Judson.

Korie is doing well in school and she is as happy as ever. I know the two of you would be good friends. She is happy to sit and talk and spend time with people. She is patient and kind and loving. She would really have enjoyed being with you.

You used to like something about DBC and it was the fact that we really loved each other. I would just have you know that we still do and it is really wonderful. I love my new pastor. We all look out for each other and I have some really wonderful friends there that mean the world to me. I don't know what I would do without them.

Mom had surgery on her knee...yeah, the same one that she limped around on nine years ago! Can you believe it? She is a little stubborn. I am not sure how it is going...I get conflicting reports. She misses you but she is doing okay. She has a cat that looks just like Baby. It is just WEIRD...it is like GHOST CAT or something only THIS one likes me and not TOM so it must really be a different cat or came from a reverse universe or something.

Grandma is weak...you should be seeing her soon. She gets things mixed up. She sent Kristin a birthday card but in it, wrote that she hoped she was enjoying college...so I think she got her mixed up with Lacey....she does things like that a lot now.

Aunt Carol spends Februarys in Florida now! Isn't that weird? She is the same. She is a sweet person. She is going to Bible Baptist and from what I hear she is more involved and goes to church hour there, too. I still don't get why she likes it there. Doesn't seem like a fit to me. They got a new pastor, too. I don't know his name but I am glad. I guess things are better there now. You don't even want me to get into all that. I don't know half of it and what I do know isn't good. I have no idea what you would have said to all that mess....I know what I would have said and I guess that is why it is good that I live in Virigina.

Steve had FIVE girls...yes, five. One in college and one in first grade. He lives in a nice home in the middle of nowhere but they love it. You would like it, too. And Tom is doing really well in business and with his family. You would just be really proud of all your grandkids and hopefully your kids. We all have times when we need you and would like to talk to you. I still don't understand why God took you from us when we still needed you. But I guess God has a time appointed for everyone and nothing we can do can change it. We just have to trust and accept.

You don't know how many times I have wondered if you can ever see us and know what is going on here. It just wouldn't seem right if you didn't but we have such a limited view on life and what is really important. I just wish I knew.

I haven't visited your grave site the past few times I have been in Ohio. We always seem to have such limited time and mostly mom isn't interested so that makes it hard. I like to go there...it makes me feel closer to you. You wouldn't believe what happened last time I was there!!! It is too funny to believe. Your sister was going to meet us there with Kristin and when we got there, they were both on their hands in knees...OVER YOUR GRAVE SITE....looking for Aunt Carol's bridge that had come out. It was so funny I could hardly keep from laughing as we all got down on our hands and knees to look. Aunt Carol was praying TO YOU to help her find it. She is so funny. I prayed to God instead, and believe it or not....we found it. I just laugh thinking about that day and what we were doing there. But we found her two teeth! HAHAHA

Anyhow, not much else to say...just that Ohio State Football was good this year and the basketball team is decent..for them and they are suppose to be better next year (although that is what they always say). The Steelers won the Super Bowl. The Olympics are on and both the girls are loving it. Kristin has two more regular games and then the tournament and she is a shoo in for the METRO all-star team. I know you would be here.

I just know you would want to know what is going on here in 2006. I know I rambled but there was so much to say. Next year it will be ten years....hard to believe. It is strange to think of you, the same as you were here, but in another place and what you must be seeing and experiencing. I know you still love us but I wonder if it seems you just saw us or if you can tell nine years has passed by? Do you see how the kids have grown? Do you know we live in a different house? It can drive me crazy thinking about it too much. People write books about it and I have read them but all they are really doing is guessing. So that is what I do sometimes, just guess. I will talk to you again next year....unless I see you face to face first. Then we will have lots of time to catch up.
Boy, I am having a hard time saying good bye......I help lead the worship service on Sunday mornings and I need to get some sleep...by the way, I LOVE that, too. That is new. I know God gave it to me as one of the desires of my heart. I love it.

Okay, this is really good bye.....I miss you.

Donna

End of the Spear

I just saw the movie End of the Spear. I can't stop thinking about it. I came away with several things from the movie...one was knowledge. I had some inkling of what the movie would be about from Elisabeth Elliott's point of view. I have heard her talk in person although I don't ever remember reading Through the Gates of Splendor which is Elisabeth's account of it.

This movie was from Steve Saints point of view. Steve was 5 when he told his father goodbye. His father, and 4 other missionary men where going to make contact with the Waodani. The Waodani were very violent, so much so that they were killing each other off. This was why Nate Saint felt such an urgent need to meet them and tell them of God. All seemed to be going well when a miscommunication caused the tribe members to come back and spear the men and all were killed.

What amazes me is that at least two of the women stayed...maybe more, but two were in the story. I would have taken my children and gone home. Elisabeth Elliott goes with her daughter and Rachel Saint, Steve Saint's sister and LIVES WITH the men who killed their family. Then the Saint family comes and stays awhile. There were times when their lives were in danger but they stayed. I can hardly think of it.

The tribe eventually accepts Christ and Rachel continues to live with them until her death in 1994. Steve Saint returns to bury his aunt with the Waodani people and they ask HIM to stay with them. Also, Mincaye, the very one who killed Nate Saint, takes Steve to the very place where the murders occur and Mincaye, now a Christian, gives Steve the chance to take revenge for his father's death, for Mincaye cannot live with the guilt. Steve and Mincaye both end up crying on the ground for the pain in their hearts. Mincaye tells Steve that his father, Nate, was a special man. He says he saw the moment Nate.."jumped the Great Boa" or went to heaven. He tells of how he saw the angels come for the men.

Mincaye and Steve end up being friends and actually travel together and tell how the Lord worked in both their lives to bring them to this place. The part of the movie that touched me the most was when Steve Saint said this:

"No, my father did not live to see his children or his grand children grow up. But Mincaye was the first of the Waodani to live long enough to see his grandchildren....." That statement really took root in my heart because we each see things from our own point of view....why did THIS happen to me or why did God allow THAT in my life. We...and I will personalize it....I often don't take into account that God is at work everywhere and His picture of things entails more of what I am going through. His plan is greater, wider, and has more impact on the world than my own little part of the world.

Nate Saint, Jim Elliott, Roger Youderian, Pete Fleming, and Ed McCully had no idea that their deaths would play into a whole tribe coming to know Christ, of strength given to the women they left behind, of Life Magazine bringing their story to the world and then, a movie being made of their lives that would touch thousands, maybe millions of life. We just don't think that big...we have no concept of what God has in mind for our lives.

But we know that those angels took those men to God and God allowed the story of EXACTLY what happened that day to be preserved to show us what He did for them and what He continues to do with their story.

What a movie! What a story! What a God!

January 22

On Sunday, Kristin will be 16. That is so hard to believe....here are my memories of Kristin so far:

Car crash, lots of visitors in the hospital, knowing she would be okay, yelling at bathtimes but quiet and still afterwards, spitting up...A LOT...never going to sleep, fastest crawler ever, sock in the mouth as she crawls, having 2 pacifiers, one to suck on and one to hold, jogging in place on the couch pillows, she and Steve fighting with empty 2-liters as their swords, calling Steve "Daddin", being scared of dogs, having lots of boyfriends (when she was LITTLE)....she would say...Evan, Derek and Joshua and sometime Big Judson were her boyfriends, watching Michael on Barney, pitching and spiking with her balls or balloons in the living room, always having a tissue in her hand, talking to Grandma and Papa on the video camera, saying, "Grub, Grub" instead of "Scrub Scrub" when visiting her sister in the hospital, hugs after naps...I took advantage of them since they were few and far between, crying...loudly at swim lessons, talking constantly, knowing the words to the story and saying them with me, wanting to be a "shooting star" from the get-go, being able to make Korie laugh when physical therapy days were hard, the first day of Kindergarten, Brian Mouring asking her to marry him, never going right to sleep, crying the first time she got a B, being the tallest in Upward basketball and being very good for her age, getting her hair done for Stefanie's wedding and looking so gorgous and then sitting up at the big table drinking sparkling water, getting saved and then baptised, 5th grade graduation, having dad for her bible teacher for 3 years, making the MS basketball team and winning the title, sleepovers with Regan, Hope and Roni, birthday parties, wearing braces for 5 years and all the visits to the Orthodontist, making JV team, being on the Black Widows and going to Nationals in Tennessee, being afraid of roller coasters, babysitting for Faith and Alan at Camp Open Arms, going to high school, making varsity in basketball and volleyball, going to Washington DC...just her and I, the first time she got a varsity award in a tournament, letting her go to camp for the first time, all the Presidential fitness awards she received, the first time a boy showed interest in her, being a leader in her class and teams, talking in her room about her day, letting her go to Mexico on a mission trip, how special her youth group became, boys in the picture now, making Homecoming court and now about to get her class ring and license...how did all that and more happen in this short amount of time...my goodness...her time here is almost over.

God, help her to love you more and more as the years go by, help her to stay close to family, to never forget what she has been taught through the years, to always seek Your will and to finish school ready to face the world with the person that YOU have chosen for her....and someday her daughter will turn 16 and she will know the love that a parent has for a child and how their heart can hurt but be proud at the same time. Keep her close, may she always feel Your love and know that YOU are everything she needs for life. Amen

January 19

Happy Birthday, Bobo! May you rest in peace. I loved you! You were my childhood....and you are both missed....:)

LOSS

I wrote this in October but lost it when I couldn't remember my blog username!! Anyhow, I have it all figured out now and thought I would post this one again.

Today I was reading about Loss. Like most people, I have a few losses. One is the dream of a healthy child and one is my dad's death. Both of them threw me for a loop and took a while to get over. But anytime we are challenged over a death of some kind, we are challenged to allow the loss to bring gain for Christ. While reading about this in my Beth Moore study, the story of the death of Lazarus was brought into focus. Jesus loved this family and was very moved and heart broken over Lazarus's death....(this account says Jesus wept over the death of His friend)...but there are reasons listed in the account in the book of John for Lazarus's death. Verse 4 and 40 say it was for God's glory and for Christ's glory, vs 11 says Lazarus died so He (Jesus) could "wake him up", vs 15 said it was so the disciples would believe. So God had reasons behind this as He does for us. I think one of the things that was hardest for me, was not only the loss, but my loss of faith. It took awhile for me to recover it. Satan had turned my losses into bondage.Also, Beth suggests that God never allows any illness to end in death for a Christian. Death is never the end of anyone's life in Christ. Dad is still living...just in a different space and time. He will live for eternity because he accepted Christ as the way to heaven. And Korie's problem is temporary. For all eternity she will have a perfect body.And life is always about change. I hate change. I detest it. I don't even like it a little bit. And yet over the last few years, God has really changed me and I believe it for the better. I have a long way to go but yet I am learning to let God be God. He has become the only explanation for my emotional survival. What else do I need in life? I have it all. I have a wonderful family, the best church in the world and the best friends. And I have God who has given me all these things because every gift I have comes from Him.

New Year's Quotes and Sayings

Be always at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let each new year find you a better man. ~Benjamin Franklin

New Year's Day is every man's birthday. ~Charles Lamb

Year's end is neither an end nor a beginning but a going on, with all the wisdom that experience can instill in us. ~Hal Borland

New Year's eve is like every other night; there is no pause in the march of the universe, no breathless moment of silence among created things that the passage of another twelve months may be noted; and yet no man has quite the same thoughts this evening that come with the coming of darkness on other nights. ~Hamilton Wright Mabie

The Old Year has gone. Let the dead past bury its own dead. The New Year has taken possession of the clock of time. All hail the duties and possibilities of the coming twelve months! ~Edward Payson Powell

Cheers to a new year and another chance for us to get it right. ~Oprah Winfrey

Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.
~Alfred, Lord Tennyson, 1850

Every man should be born again on the first day of January. Start with a fresh page. Take up one hole more in the buckle if necessary, or let down one, according to circumstances; but on the first of January let every man gird himself once more, with his face to the front, and take no interest in the things that were and are past. ~Henry Ward Beecher

We will open the book. Its pages are blank. We are going to put words on them ourselves. The book is called Opportunity and its first chapter is New Year's Day. ~Edith Lovejoy Pierce

Glory to God in highest heaven,
Who unto man His Son hath given;
While angels sing with tender mirth,
A glad new year to all the earth.
~Martin Luther

One resolution I have made, and try always to keep, is this: To rise above the little things. ~John Burroughs

Of all sound of all bells... most solemn and touching is the peal which rings out the Old Year. ~Charles Lamb

A happy New Year!
Grant that I May bring no tear to any eye
When this New Year in time shall end
Let it be said I've played the friend,
Have lived and loved and labored here,
And made of it a happy year.
~Edgar Guest

A New Year

Wow, a new year. It is like a fresh sheet of paper or a clean chalkboard....all new and open with lots of potential.

But if I was honest, I usually dwell on Dec. 31 instead of Jan. 1. I have never liked new years. I guess that means I don't like change or moving on. To me it is another day closer to getting older, to the day that Kristin leaves home, to the day there is another big change in my life.

Lately, I have looked at it a little differently. It reminds me of how grateful I need to be that God lets us "start over" when we mess up. He always gives us another chance....gives us a "clean slate." So like the year ahead, 2006, we can have a new "sheet of paper" to write on. And we can make better decisions, good choices. I am very grateful for that.

So, I will look forward to 2006 instead of missing 2005. I will trust God for the changes ahead and know that He will be with me as I go through them. I will know that His plans are perfect and I can rest in Him. So, in a big leap of faith, I embrace 2006 with all its challenges and all it's joys and remember that on Dec. 31, 2006, I will be wishing it could stay. So I will enjoy the year as it comes and live each day to its fullest.

Hello 2006!! Welcome!