Evening July 20, 2014 Shirley and I went to church this morning. We didn’t go to service, but we did go to Sunday school. If I had to make a choice between one and the other, I would go to Sunday school. Service is very important and I am not saying we won’t go to service. Right now it took all we had just to go to Sunday school. We made it through class emotionally well. When class ended and we were able to talk to others in the class, the tears fell. I don’t want to cry in front of other people anymore. My heart doesn’t seem to listen to my mind now. It isn’t that I am embarrassed or feel particularly aware of others looking at me. It is more that I have cried quite a bit and I would just assume the tears fall where others do not have to deal with my pain. We have been blessed in ways I cannot say during the time we were in Birmingham with Kendra and when we came home. People were so good to us and there is nothing I could say or do that would be good enough to show my appreciation. One person, I was very glad to see was Tim. Tim was there in Birmingham with us many times when he came in to Alabama for his work. He was a steady and stable touchstone to home and to us. He listened, he smiled, and he prayed for us and encouraged us when we were taking meals with him and when we were in the MICU. I know this was something that he did from the heart and we are so grateful for his visits. I don’t think very many knew about Tim and his blessings for us. I hugged Tim when I saw him and the tears were heavy as his presence in Birmingham came to mind and it meant so much to all of us, especially to me. Our lesson in Sunday school was about living the life of a Christian and how we should stay within the life of a Christian. It does no good to talk the talk if one does not walk the walk. Now, it is my life to live as Christ emulated. I fail a little here and a little there and sometimes a lot. It isn’t that I am being hypocritical because I try to be open and confess my failures as quickly as I can. I try not to make the same mistakes over and over. I do sometimes because in a very small way I am like Paul and I have my thorns that I wrestle with. Those issues I deal with are old issues and I pray that I will leave them in my old life and not live them in my new life. I have made progress though and I hope that with the belief in Christ that I will conquer some of failures permanently. If I go out and do not have the heart of a Christian I will not be seen as different. If I am not seen as different, then my life is not different. I am worldly, I am living in a way that cannot be an example. We talked about one thing that really resonated. If you are a Christian, then you are called to be a Christian. Some people can talk to others and bring Christ directly to the world. Some do it by example. I guess right now I do it by writing. Not many people read what is written here if one looks at how large a world we live in these days. I know this, maybe God has a plan for someone out there and somehow maybe they read this writing. If that is so, then I am doing what the good Lord wants me to do. The promise God has for each person is simple in my opinion. Believe in God and confess your shortcomings, your wrongs, sins, whatever makes you comfortable to say, and God will deliver His promise to those that hold to his robe. The way that God delivers his promise is the complicated part that I am simply too human to understand. If by some chance what I write here affects someone enough to give themselves to God, I probably will never know. It doesn’t matter if I know. This is the fulfillment of the life God wants me to live and the procurement of another lost soul for His love. So the question I have to God is how long should I write? I think God will show me what I need to do through the healing that is happening here in this home. There people that have walked where we are walking both here and among our church friends. I listen to anyone that can tell me what they have endured, the pain they have felt, the emotions they have lived, the mind they have tried to obtain to make it through each day. The theme that I hear over and over is that what we feel never completely goes away, but we learn to adapt. We learn to live and that it is okay to move forward and come to do things again that seem to be too light, too distant from Kendra right now. Kendra is distant in that she is not on this earth anymore. Her spirit is alive and the good Lord knows her. In that way she is near, her spirit is part of God’s spirit and I know it sounds crazy, but there are certain times and certain places I can feel something of her near. We want to be back in church among friends. Sometimes it is difficult to reach out to people from our place in life. I think it is doubly difficult for others to reach out to us because they aren’t sure what would be helpful, what would be sensitive to our situation. You know what? It doesn’t matter, just a hello, just an email, a Facebook hello helps wonders. It doesn’t need to be a meal, or an invitation all the time. Sometimes all it takes is just a little contact and communication. As we continue to heal we are trying to “tread water” and keep our heads above water. Sometimes all someone in our kind of situation just needs a little bit of acknowledgement. It takes a lot for me to write what I just wrote because I don’t want to hurt feelings. We hold every blessing we have very close. Now, while we try to get our legs back under us, people that have gone through what we have gone through need a little push, a little tug to keep going. It is difficult to move forward and none of us should do it alone. In our place, helping others blesses us and in our ways we have all tried to do things that would be seen by God, but unseen by others. Whatever good happens, happens through God and because of God. Corinthians 1:3-4 “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God.” See the bottom line is this: I may mourn but God gives me the strength to help someone else. It is difficult for the world to understand how one that hurts can help another that hurts. For a Christian it is clear as a sky after the rain has come. What God does for me he wants me to do for you. God is good, good, and so very good. Dad
Posted on: Sun, 20 Jul 2014 19:17:25 +0000
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