sunny monday...

It is Monday morning and things have dulled down to a slow pace. My mom is much, much better and at home resting and regaining strength. She read my blog and asked me yesterday why I wrote a post that sounded like she was going to die…I tried to explain I did it in the midst of medical questions that were going unanswered and drugs that were not working, while in a state of fear of the unknown. But in the end she received the right treatment and is on the road to recovery and I thank everyone for their thoughts and prayers.

She has to take antibiotics intravenously up until Friday, finishing the treatment in time for us to leave for vacation on Saturday. Needless to say, our entire family is ready for and needing a vacation. We are heading to Osage Beach in the Lake of the Ozarks, this will be our 5th year vacationing there. The husband and I were talking about how enjoyable it is to go to the same place every year on vacation – you can be excited about visiting and revisiting constants and anticipate any new changes. We look forward to our nightly rivalry on the Pirate's putt-putt course, dinners on the lake at the Duck and JB Hooks, lazy days at the pool and for the boys, all their favorite golf courses with the certain holes that they talk about all year and plan out execution of months in advance. But most of all, we look forward to just being and relaxing with family.

On a side note, my thoughts this past weekend have been centered around a confrontation that we had with our youth minister and his wife last week. They don’t really support or have respect for the leadership of the church and the youth minister took it upon himself to tell one of his teens that he thinks that my husband doesn’t live what he preaches because he preached about evangelism one week and then, the next week, failed to show up to a youth event that had been planned. There were other things that were said that we have been mulling over (and I don’t feel like rehashing) but this thought of evangelism has been on my mind.

When my mom came home from the hospital last week, her neighbors brought dinner for she and my dad for two nights and then the other neighbors said that they would bring dinner this week. These people are not church-goers, but they were driven to do what Christians fail to do so often – reach out to others. I feel embarrassed when the rest of the world acts better than those who claim to follow Jesus. The husband said that this is what the church doesn’t get – that evangelism isn’t going to youth events or church sponsored events but more importantly, providing for people’s needs when they can’t take care of themselves. Giving of our time, money and resources to help people where they are and help them despite reasons of why we shouldn’t or instead of thinking why they are where they are and trying to place blame. I feel challenged to be more intent on meeting people where they are, rather than where I think they should be.

prayer please

Please pray for my mom. She is very, very sick and I am not sure if things are going to be any better. She has liver failure due to cirrhosis and now she has developed and infection, I don't believe things look very good right now. I covet your thoughts and prayers for our family right now.

Peace

imperfection and being ok with it

I feel like I have been away from writing for so long and yet, if I look back I couldn’t tell you what profound or time consuming things have happened, it just seems like life has happened to us for the past weeks. I do know that we are anxiously awaiting the end of June and our family vacation to Osage Beach at the Lake of the Ozarks. We have started early planning our lazy days, dining adventures and effortless week of sunning by the pool (and for my dad and husband, of course, the many rounds of golf that will be had!)

We have experienced another frustrating month of not getting pregnant. June ushers in the two year mark of throwing away the birth control and finally being able to acknowledge that we were ready to start a family. I am frustrated that month by month we can not achieve this goal. I struggle with this for many reasons, one being that it is my personality and nature to want to control and plan everything so I am completely helpless and out of control with this. More so I think is the frustration that we got pregnant once and that took 1 ½ years to do and I can not imagine waiting for that long again. I know that it will all be in the right time and I have said that to myself, have had many, many other people say it to me and I believe it except, why did we have to go through a miscarriage if it wasn’t the right time? I know in my heart that one reason may be because this was our assurance that everything was alright (physically speaking) and that it may just take longer but we have the ability to do it. I just have a hard time, when I get frustrated, remembering that.

We continue to be busy with work and church and continue to ride the waves of our church family. We had dinner with Phil the Presbyterian and his wife last night and they asked us how the church was and I realized, in talking about it, it is becoming more and more of an ebb and flow. It just depends week to week whether we have a good service and people are energetic or not. Things that I thought would influence this such as the weather, vacation season, etc. really don’t, it is pretty much a gamble. The hard thing is to overcome whatever way the day is flowing and just be in the moment and realize that all of them are sacred moments and that something good is coming out of all of them. I have learned to surrender the fantasy of Sundays without glitches and snags and just rest in the fact that our imperfect community can not always have a perfect Sunday morning.

It is good to be imperfect and know that we can be made only perfect through Him.