Some of my online friends have been asking how I am doing, so I thought I would combine my physical well-being with the lessons God is teaching me these days. I am on an extremely restrictive diet because the doctors don’t want my stomach working too hard until it has had a chance to heal. So, for the next month, I can eat fish (yuck!), soft or puréed foods and ice cream or sherbet. I can only add one new food a day, and this is the fifth day that I have been allowed to add foods, so I am now eating fish, noodles, butter or margarine, cake and puréed green beans. Sounds delightful, right? The good news is that I am able to eat and digest food! My esophagus is working right, and I am exercising my lungs daily now with a spirometer incentive device. You see, my lungs are not used to having all of that room to work so taking a deep breath is painful. I am working on expanding their capacity, with exercises on that little device ten times daily. Through all of this God has given me two scriptures that are very dear to my heart.

The first photo is from Voice of Prophecy and the second is from cellcode.us. Both were found with a Google search.

I am very happy to have the noodles or whatever is on my plate for the day. I have to eat 4-5 times a day, small meals. I am absolutely grateful for being able to taste and eat solid foods again. No, they are not my favorite things, but they do nourish my body and are helping to make me stronger. My outer wounds from the robot cuts are almost healed. My inner parts are healing a little more daily. Thus, I am thankful for all that I have and all that I can do. It’s a long recovery period of 2-3 months, but God is with me every step of the way. After all, He looks after all of the birds and the flowers, so I’m sure that He will take care of me. He is supplying my physical, emotional and spiritual needs daily. I hope that you know this God of whom I speak. He does not love or care for you any less than He cares for me…just trust His mercy, love and goodness. Go before His throne and ask for His forgiveness. That will start a relationship that will be unbelievable! Blessings for a day filled with God’s goodness!

Each day that we wake up to serve the Lord, we face the challenges of daily battles. We all have them. The enemy of our soul is trying to destroy us, so Satan is the enemy that we are all trying to ultimately defeat. The truth is that Jesus defeated him at Calvary and that daily we are defeating him in our lives. The final victory will come at Armageddon when the enemy is totally defeated forever. For now, we need to ask God what He wants us to do in these daily skirmishes with our enemy. Does he want us to go out to battle or just rest in him? There is a real difference between just allowing God to act victoriously and our struggling with Satan’s taunts and temptations. In the Book of Job, Job faces Satan head on, loses everything and still does not curse God. Job is a hero of mine because in spite of all of his troubles, he continued to have faith in God. And he was rewarded for his belief because God restored more than he had had before Satan attacked him. Job fought the battle and won! I’m not sure that I could do that, but I do know that in my daily battles, God is enough. The Lord shows Himself strong on my behalf more times than I am probably aware of. But I don’t go to battle lightly. If God says “battle time” then I am prepared, with all of the spiritual armor described so well in Ephesians.

Photo from Mission Venture Ministries on Word Press

But there are sometimes that God tells me just to be still, to rest in Him, that the battle is His. That is what happened when it was time for my surgery. I surrendered myself to the Lord and His great power and felt totally at peace. I should have been shaking with fear at the prospect of facing surgery that ended the life of a dear friend; however, I was calm and didn’t even realize it. I was laughing, joking and talking to the pastor and his wife and my spouse. Before I knew it, the nurse anesthetist came in and told me it was time for me to go, so off I went. I should have felt anxiety after the surgery, knowing that I face months of a very restrictive diet. But that has not been a problem for me. I just look at the daily diet plan and go with it, thanking God for whatever new thing I can add to my diet daily. One new food a day until I am back on a regular diet. First, I added a banana. Next was fish and next was noodles. So, I’m recovering slowly, but I’m recovering. Job got everything back in an instant; I’m not expecting that to happen with me because God prepared me for this battle. I met with doctors and nurses who told me that it would be a slow recovery. Nevertheless, I am still wearing the armor of God and fighting my battles daily. Do you know how many commercials on TV are for food? And they are all foods that I cannot have. (A good reason not to watch TV. I do, however, enjoy Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy each evening and just suffer though the food commercials). God continues to tell me to be still and to rest in Him. This is not my battle. My battle is to get stronger again physically, to let my digestive system recover from the trauma and to follow the instructions of those wiser than I, i.e. all of my doctors and clinicians. What battle are you facing today? Surely not one like Job, but one that may rock your world. No matter what you are facing, God will take control and fight the battle beside you or for you. Our part is to pray and ask Him what our role in the battle should be. Do we fight or do we rest? Ask Him. He will tell you. Just remember to always have your armor on because Satan is constantly looking for your vulnerabilities. Be wise and don’t let him find any! Blessings!

“Battles” by The Afters

I’ve been spending a lot of time lately in my recliner, since I was told to rest following my surgery. My recliner happens to be adjacent to the laundry room so I have had the “privilege” of listening to all of the cycles of the washing machine in the last couple of weeks. Fill with water, wash, spin, rinse, spin, spin harder, cut off. That brought to mind the fact that I think that life is a lot like a washing machine. We go through different periods in our lives, sometimes blessings and sometimes troubles, but no matter what, we keep going. Just like a washing machine, we keep chugging along until our job is done. I thought when I went into surgery that my job might be all done, but God said otherwise and kept me safe through the surgery. That means He isn’t done yet incorporating me into His big plan.

Sometimes, things are going really well for us; we have hope that all will continue to go well so we rejoice. Then…boom! There is an interruption in our cycle. A sock gets stuck or something equally devastating that stops our performing well. Now we have more difficulty moving, speaking, reading our Bible and praying even. But we have to be patient. We are still chugging along, waiting until this heavy load part of the cycle is over. Whatever is going on in our lives, we are called to always pray. It’s our connection to our source. If the washer is disconnected from the electrical outlet, it won’t work at all. If we are disconnected from our Source, we don’t function too well. Since I have decided that life is like a washing machine, I wonder if I’m in a spin cycle sometimes, spinning in circles and not really going anywhere. But I realize that I am not always supposed to be going somewhere. Sometimes, God wants me right where I am until He tells me to move on. I’ve been reading the Old Testament lately and I’m reading a lot about the Israelites in the wilderness. They spent forty years there! The route to the Promised Land wasn’t really that far; I had a pastor tell me once that they kept circling Mount Sinai because God would not allow them to enter the Promised Land due to their disobedience and unbelief. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to be in the spin cycle of my life for forty years. I want to finish the work He has prepared for me. Thus, I am trying to rejoice when things are going right, wait patiently for things to change when things are going badly and pray no matter what is happening to me. This is the lesson that God is teaching me. What is He teaching you? Again, I refer to a pastor we had, in South Carolina, I think. He said that you are either moving forward with God or you are going backward because life with God isn’t static.

Which are you doing? Which cycle are you in? Blessings that you complete this wash cycle that you’re in and that you’re all prayed up and ready for your next “load of wash”. One final reminder, the load that God gives you is never meant to be too heavy for you.

Photo from Inspire21.com

I have known the truth of this title for a while now, at least since the first time my husband was deployed and I was left alone in a strange place, and pregnant. I am certain that I pray more during times like these, but there is always the thought in the back of my mind that God is with me. This truth was brought to the foreground of my mind during yesterday’s devotional from “Devotionals Daily.” I want to give credit where credit is due, so please check out the book by Ann Spangler, Praying the Names of God.

Here is the image that she had in her devotional yesterday. I do not know Hebrew, but I just thought that this was beautiful and worth sharing.

Jesus has always been our rock, from the first day that we accept Him as our Lord and Savior. For me, He has been my rock, the One who doesn’t change or doesn’t move. He is the One to whom I turn when I am am lonely, afraid, hurting, sick, or feeling hopeless. All of us have gone through a period in our lives when life is rough. I’m going through that now with my health issues. I am beyond sad that I cannot attend my youngest granddaughter’s first birthday party next weekend because of those health problems! But Jesus is with me during my sadness and sends me smiles to get me through. Last night, I was feeling low. I was hoping to be able to FaceTime with my son and his family, but Steven was flying back from Boston so that wasn’t possible. Suddenly, the thought came to me to call my daughter Hope. I did, and we ended up FaceTiming. I got to see her two-year old cutie little daughter and talk to her. She kissed the phone to give me a kiss and lay her little cheek on the phone to hug me. So precious! See…Jesus was being my rock again, showing me an alternative to my plan and one that brought me a smile and a chuckle.

I was lonely the other night and feeling a little sorry for myself since there is a lot that I would like to do and I’m not allowed to do it. So, in the midst of my “pity party” the Lord told me how much I was loved and reminded me by having a fellow church member call to check on me. Small thing? Maybe to some, but to me, it was a really big blessing! You see, the friend who called to check on me has Stage IV cancer, yet he called to check on me.

When my children and I moved to South Carolina to await our family orders to Iceland, we had no idea that we would be there for over a year, alone without my husband. It was supposed to be a few months, but there was no base housing and no place to live off base that we could afford, so the decision was prayerfully made that Harry would stay in Iceland on a remote tour for a year and I would be with the children in South Carolina. One big problem soon reared its ugly head. Each child had a couple of toys and only summer/fall clothes since that was when we had arrived. Winter was approaching quickly and I could not convince the military to release boxes of winter clothes and some toys for us. All of our household goods and clothes had been packed up into a huge wooden crate for transfer overseas, but we weren’t going to Iceland now. Nevertheless, I needed things for our three children, ages, 9, 6 and less than a year old. I called everyone I could think of. I prayed. I had members of the church praying. I had my husband pray. And then, I relaxed, with the thought that God would have to work something out because I just couldn’t. That is when a friend, a commander’s wife, called and told me that I should contact the base chaplain for help. I did and less than two weeks later, we had boxes everywhere. They couldn’t deliver everything because that included furniture that I didn’t need in our furnished apartment, so I had to pick and choose boxes randomly. Ideally, the boxes would have been labeled with contents on the list. But that was not how the military movers did things at that time. I had a list of boxes labeled kitchen and others labeled miscellaneous. So, once again, I prayed and asked God for help. Guess what? I got winter clothes, winter coats and toys for our children! I also got table lamps and some other unnecessary items but nothing that I couldn’t fit into our small temporarily abode. God came through for me again! Just when I was ready to go out and put all kinds of charges on a credit card to buy warm clothing and some toys for our babies! God has never, let me repeat that…NEVER…allowed me to go through something without reminding me that He is there and will take care of me, no matter what.

God is my rock and I hope that He is yours, too. I have a list of the Names of God and the accompanying Scriptures in the front of my Bible. I plan to add Yahweh Tsuri to that list and the verses like the one above that tell me that God is a rock, to all who will believe this awesome truth. Blessings!