Be Still....And Wait

Wednesday was a good day. I got a lot accomplished around the house. The boys both got their school work accomplished without any trouble. It was raining outside, which always makes me feel so thankful for my warm, cozy home.

So, when the boys and I piled up in the car that same evening headed to their Wednesday night activities at church, and the car wouldn't start, I was very surprised (and disappointed) by my reaction.

I immediately felt so frustrated! We have had a really difficult year, both financially and physically, and for the most part, I have had a great attitude. But when my car would not start Wednesday, I just lost it.

Go figure.

I called Shannon (who was on his way home from work) to tell him about the car, and bless his heart, he said he would take the boys to church when he got home. He even called back and said, "Why don't you go with me. Just put our dinner on some plates, and we can have a 'picnic' while the boys are in church. I'll even treat you to a Starbucks."

Sigh.

While we waited for Shannon to get home, I had Daniel go get the mail, and I called my mom. I started just crying as I talked to her. I just felt so overwhelmed with all of the events from this past year, not to mention the bills from my surgery, Allie being sick, inflation, etc., so my car not starting was just the straw that broke the camel's back. As I was talking to my mom though....I saw that I had received a letter from my sweet bloggy friend, Paula.

When I opened it, I just started bawling. (Sorry, Mom!)

I was so blown away by Paula's thoughtfulness to me and God's constant goodness. He continues to comfort and bless me even when I am so frustrated with Him.

I had read Paula's post on November 8th titled "Hope Restored." Click here to read Paula's encouraging words. I left her a comment on that post and told her that I was going to write down all of the Scriptures that she had shared in her post. And I did; I wrote each of them down on a piece of paper to keep in my daily calendar.

Anyway, as I was reading her card to me, tears were pouring down my face. She had made me a magnet that had each of those verses on it. She even used some fall leaves from her own yard to decorate the magnet. Take a look.



Isn't it beautiful? Isn't Paula beautiful?

I cannot begin to tell you how Paula's thoughtfulness touched me. There I was feeling so overwhelmed about something as silly as my car not starting, while at the same time the Lord of all Creation was still trying to speak to me and comfort me through the thoughtfulness of this precious woman.

Well, I don't have to tell you, my perspective was immediately changed.

Shannon got home, and we took the boys to church. They even arrived on time. We had our romantic picnic in the car (because the rain was still pouring down outside).

And just like he promised, after our picnic, my sweet husband took me to Starbucks, so we could each get a coffee and read our books while we waited.

Here we are at Starbucks....

My sweet hubby.....



Me.....



And Scarlet......;)



We all three had such a lovely evening.

Paula, if you are reading this, thank you, my sweet friend. Your magnet is now on my refrigerator as a constant reminder for me to be still and wait on our Lord, and it is also a reminder of your thoughtfulness to me. You are a special lady, Paula, and I am blessed to call you friend.

My cup runneth over with thankfulness.

And for those of you reading this post today, here are the verses that God led Paula to share with me. I pray that they will bless you like they have blessed me.

Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord. Psalm 27:14a

Be still before the Lord; wait patiently for Him. Psalm 37:7

Be still, and know that I am God. Psalm 46:10a

God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. Psalm 46:1

The Lord is my strength and my shield; my heart trusts in Him and I am helped. Psalm 28:7a

You will seek Me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. Jeremiah 29:13

Call to Me and I will answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know. Jeremiah 33:3

The Lord is good to those who wait on Him, to the soul who seeks Him. Lamentations 3:25


Dear Lord,
Thank you for your constant love and goodness to me. I am not deserving of either, but you lavish me with Your love and goodness anyway. And for that, Lord, I am truly thankful.
With a humble heart I say these words in Christ's sweet name.
Amen.

(Not So ) Wordless Wednesday

Remember, the greatest gift is not found in a store nor under a tree, but in the hearts of true friends.
~ Cindy Lou

You have all probably noticed that the look of my blog has changed again.
Well, this time it is going to stay this way for a while.

The very unique, beautiful, and completely one of a kind background that you see now was created especially for me by sweet bloggy friend, Dianne, from the Deez Dayz blog.

Everybody say, "Hi, Dianne!"



Dianne is one of the loveliest ladies that I have ever had the pleasure to meet.

For my birthday this year, she made this blog header of my name written in the sand on a beach in Sicily.



Sigh.

She recently took her adorable daughter, Phillipa, to their local zoo in South Africa, and she took a picture of these beautiful daisies.


(She knows I love daisies and the color blue, so she snapped this photo for me.)

Then she fashioned this blog header for me using one of the pictures that she took.



Isn't it beautiful?

Sigh.

I loved my previous blog headers all so much, that it was hard to let go of them, so I made a digital scrapbook page of all of them which you can see on my sidebar, but here is the picture (up close) so that you can see a little more of the details.



Another blogging buddy of mine named, Becky, told me about this amazing website called Scrapblog, and that is what I used to make the scrapbook style picture, as well as my new blog header. It is a fabulously free and fantastically fun website. You should rush over there immediately and make a new header for yourself.

I'm just saying.

Dianne designed this new blog layout to match the header that I created, and if you look closely at the blue daisies on each side of my blog....you will see that they are the same daisy that is in the picture she took for me at the zoo.

Sigh.

Isn't she clever?

Dianne, thank you so much for all the hard work that you put into making this beautiful new blog design for me, but even more than that, I want to thank you for your friendship. You are a very special lady to me and my family, and we are blessed to call you friend.

And in true Zsa Zsa form, please just let me say.......



"You are simply vonderful, dahlink! MWAH!" ;)

Ag shame.

"A true friend is someone who thinks that you are a good egg even though he (or she) knows that you are slightly cracked."
~ Bernard Meltzer

Thankfulness

I want to start this post off by saying, "Thank you!" My family and I have been so touched by the outpouring of prayers and well wishes from all of you.

Proverbs 16:24
"Pleasant words are a honeycomb, sweet to the soul and healing to the bones."

It's hard to admit sometimes, but I struggled so much with starting this blog. I felt the Lord leading me to do it, but inside, I was so fearful. Fearful of looking and sounding like an idiot, and I was even more fearful of tens of people reading whatever I wrote and telling me that I looked and sounded like an idiot. Writing was not (and still isn't) my strong point. If you don't believe me, just ask my "Remedial Writing Composition" teacher that I had in college.

Sigh.

Much like Moses, I argued with God as He was leading me to write and share stories about Him and His presence in my life.

Exodus 4:10-12
Moses said to the LORD, "O Lord, I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor since you have spoken to your servant. I am slow of speech and tongue." The LORD said to him, "...I will help you speak and will teach you what to say."

And much like Moses, I got over myself and followed God, and I am so thankful that I did.

I have been overwhelming blessed through this journey in Blog Land. I am just so thankful to have met each and every one of you. You have all been such a blessing to me and my family.

I have been at the hospital with my dad for most of this past week, which is why I have not been able to give you an update before now.

As I type this he is pulling up in the driveway of his home.

It has been an incredibly long week, but we have all been blessed beyond measure.

I was the first person in the family to see my dad once he was awake and had the ventilator tube removed.

When he saw me, his eyes lit up, and he said, "Hey, Sissy!" And then he looked at me very seriously and asked, "Am I alive, Amy? Did I make it?"

And I answered him by saying, "Yes, Daddy, you are alive; you did make it."

Sigh. Thank you, Jesus.

His recovery has been amazing! Although he has a long way to go, he has come so far.

Yesterday, the physical therapist came by to help him walk, and he walked a long way down the CVICU unit hall and all the way back again. It dawned on me as I saw him walking, that last Friday, when my mom brought him to the hospital for his heart cath, he had to ride in a wheelchair from the hospital entrance to the Same Day Surgery unit. He was in such bad shape that he could not walk that far. Then, there he was, just three days after surgery, walking farther than he had walked in a year.

It was incredible to see, and I was once again reminded of his "blessing" that I pulled from the blessing jar at the hospital.

Psalms 13:5-6

"I trust your love,

and I feel like celebrating

because you rescued me.

You have been good to me, LORD,

and I will sing about you."

God did indeed rescue him.

I have quite a few stories to share with you about our experiences this week, but for today, I just want to tell you all that he is doing well.

He will, obviously, have a long recovery ahead of him, but the surgery went so much better than we could have ever hoped for, and he had the best sense of humor even on the roughest days.

One morning while I was in the room with him, he looked at me and said, "Amy, when you leave, tell your mom to come in here. I want to talk to her about my will."

I looked at him strangely for a second, hoping that he was not going to get all morbid on me.

Then he continued talking and said, "I want to tell her.....that I don't have any money....." At that point he started laughing so hard, that he had to grab his heart shaped pillow and hug it tightly to his chest.

(You can probably tell from that comment where my sense of humor must come from.) ;)

I have always heard that our attitudes through difficult situations are half of the battle, so when he was making jokes the day after surgery, I realized that he was going to be just fine.



Psalms 100

"Make a joyful noise unto the LORD, all ye lands.
Serve the LORD with gladness: come before his presence with singing.
Know ye that the LORD he is God: it is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.
Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise: be thankful unto him, and bless his name.
For the LORD is good; his mercy is everlasting; and his truth endureth to all generations."

Company Came Calling...... Again

I don't believe the streets of Crazyville have seen this much traffic in well.....ever.

But it's funny what people will do when they feel sorry for you all piled up in bed with a bad back, or if it's your birthday!

So my friend Kenny that I introduced ya'll to the other day drove all the way out here just to wish me a Happy Birthday!

(And to get the gift that I bought him while I was in Europe. I'm just saying is all.)

Kenny loved what we had done with the place since the last time he was in Crazyville. (Eight years ago...but who is counting?)



I was very excited to see him, so I immediately started taking pictures.



Kenny is the sweetest friend; look at this birthday cake he bought made me.



He knows how I like my daisies.....Covered in sugar and on top of a cake!:)

After a few minutes of picture taking and talking, we got down to business.

That's right; we started exchanging gifts.

I made Kenny go first. (Since he drove all the way out here and everything.)



You are probably asking yourself,"What is that? A wooden chicken?"

Well, you are exactly right. It is a wooden toy chicken.

(Or as Kenny called it, a Christmas ornament.)



There is a really funny story and reason behind why I would bring him a wooden toy chicken back from Italy, but as you all know, Kenny does not like it when I ramble too long. So unfortunately, I will not be able to tell you that story today. But, if I get enough inquiries concerning the chicken story, then I will do a separate post. That way Kenny won't fall asleep as he reads this one.

(Ya'll have to remember, he is forty.)

Well finally it was time for me to open my gift(s). I couldn't wait to see what he had brought me back from his trip to Nevada.



Oh, ladies, don't be haters. We can't all have Peanut M&M Pirate key chains.

Then he gave me a gross "funny" birthday card with a Walmart gift card in it. (I can't wait to be released from this house so I can go use it.)

I was tickled to death with everything, then he says, "You haven't even got your real birthday present yet."

I wasn't sure what he meant, then he showed me the bag.



It was a gift bag that appeared to have three bags of plain M&Ms (my favorite candy) in it. I noticed that the M&Ms were all pink, blue, and white (my favorite colors).

But then I looked at them a little closer......



I saw that some of them said, "Happy Birthday!"

Some of them said, "39 years young."

And then Shannon's favorite, "Still Hot!" ;)

But then I noticed a different one.

It didn't have words on it.

It had a picture on it.

So I took a closer look.

It was then that I realized......



It was my picture!

My picture on M&Ms!

Three whole bags of them.

Well, I felt, practically famous.

I never in my wildest dreams would ever think that my face would be on an M&M.

After Kenny left to get out of Crazyville go home, Daniel asked me (very politely) if he could eat some of my M&Ms, and I screamed said, "Are you crazy? They have my picture on them!"



Don't judge.

Thank you, Kenny, for coming all the way out to Crazyville to get your present spend time with me for my birthday. I love you, Friend! (And I adore that key chain!)

Just as I was finishing up this post, my son Matthew brought the mail in.
And I had a package! It was from Tina who has the fabulous Golden Goodness blog.
I was so excited when I opened the package and saw this....



She is a scrapbooking extraordinaire and I was so thrilled when I saw what she had made me.
Tina, if you are reading this, "Thank you so much! I absolutely love it! You are so thoughtful to me, and I have not forgotten about our lunch date." ;)

Even now that I am 39, I still love to get mail!:)

And last but not least, Dianne, from the lovely Deez Dayz blog, if you are reading this, I am still blown away by the blog header you made for me. You are a special lady! And thank you for my calorie free cupcakes! (Tell Phillipa that I am sorry about that blowing out the candle scandal.) :)

Thank you to all of my bloggy friends; your birthday wishes meant so much to me, and they all put a smile on my face!

I tell you all from the bottom of my heart, "My cup runneth over!"

♫
Well now its time to say goodbye to Amy and her old friend.
And they would like to thank you folks fer kindly droppin in.
You're all invited back any time to this locality
To have a heapin helpin of their hospitality
Hillbilly that is. Set a spell, Take your shoes off.

Y'all come back now,'hear?
♫