Confusion

God, sometimes in the night hours I cannot sleep. I'm so confused about things in my life and I'm searching so hard for answers that sleep will not come. Peace is elusive. My mind is in turmoil. God, help me find answers to my questions. Help me find the peace you promise. Help me to quiet my anxious mind and totally rest in you.

Life is such a puzzle sometimes. We live with people we don't always understand. We work with people that are sometimes difficult. We worship with people we don't always like very much. There is so much to be confused about when the people you think you know the best are total enigmas to you. And when the people you are told to love can be so unlovable. Life is just hard sometimes. We search for answers that don't always come. And we look for things it might not be possible to have.

But I know you are there for me Lord. I know you love me and I know you want me to have life in all its fullness. Thank you Lord for giving me your promises. I can rest in them until sleep returns.

Challenges

Sometimes life is such a challenge,Lord. Sometimes things just don't go the way we want them to, or we are stymied by the place we find ourselves, or we just can't seem to move forward the way we want to. Sometimes it's our family members who are suffering and we don't know how to help them. Sometimes our friends need help and we are unable to give them what they need. Sometimes life is just so hard God.

We need you so much. We need your wisdom, your guidance, and your helping hand. We need to know you are with us and we need to feel you walking beside us. We need you God. We need you.

Thank you for promising to be with us when we need you. Help us to reach out to you and to always, always seek your will. Help us not to depend on our own strength, but to covet yours. Help us to live like your children, triumphant and content. Help us, Lord.

Feeling good

Dear God what a blessing it is to wake in the morning to a new day, feeling good enough to get out of bed and clean my house or bake a cake - whatever the day holds is OK, I'm ready for it! After going through months of medical issues, including surgery and chemotherapy, I am more and more appreciative of the blessing of feeling good.

So many people suffer every day. So many people fight to get up out of bed and get through their morning. God thank you for my health and for my many, many blessings. May I never take them for granted. May WE never take the blessing of feeling good and being productive and active for granted.

Thank you God for such wonderful days.

Praise and thanksgiving

Dear God how full of gratitude and humility I am at your gracious faithfulness. I stand in awe of the fact that I have completed my treatments, my health is good, my prognosis is excellent - and I feel so good. Thank you God. Thank you God. Thank you God.

I know how unworthy I am to be the recipient of your grace. I know I can never be the kind of person I want to be. I am imperfect and sinful and I long for your perfection. And yet you have given me a new chance to experience life in its fullness. I am your grateful servant.

And regardless of the outcome of my own medical nightmare, I would feel the same way. Because you have been so close to me these past seven months that I have felt your touch, your spirit, and your constant presence with me every single day, throughout the long and lonely nights, and during those times when I felt there was no one else who really cared. You were always there. I always knew it. And I will never forget it.

Thank you for this time of spiritual and physical transformation. Thank you for your love. And thank you for your abiding grace to me, your undeserving child.

Praise God from whom all blessings flow
Praise Him all creatures here below
Praise Him above ye heavenly hosts
Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost
Amen

Independence

I'm so grateful every year to celebrate the independence of this country and remember how blessed I am to have been born here. It also reminds me every year that through you I have independence of another sort to be grateful for. I'm free from the bondage of this world and enjoy the glorious freedom of a life lived in your favor. Freedom - such a beautiful thing.

In the Psalms I read "I will walk about in freedom, for I have sought out your precepts" and in II Corinthians "where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom" and I know that the concept of "freedom" is one that comes from you, for only through you do we find true freedom. In church this morning we sang "America the Beautiful" wich includes a salutation to you as "author of liberty" and I nodded in acclimation!

Thank you Lord, on this weekend when we in this country celebrate our freedom, I can also celebrate the freedom that you have given me.

Counting down

Three treatments down, one to go. Lord you've been faithfully walking me through my crisis and I've felt your presence with me every step of the way. Thank you for your ever abiding love and presence, and the knowledge that you're in control of all that happens in my life. Knowing you're alongside me makes the loneliest hours tolerable - waiting for tests, sitting in the chair getting chemo, not able to sleep at night or in the early hours of the morning, driving back and forth to Southampton with nothing to do but think...and pray. I've enjoyed those times we've spent together because they reinforce to me that you're my best friend. You're the one who's never too busy, never distracted, always available.

Thank you for being there for me. May I always be here for you - ready, willing and able to do whatever you need me to do for you. And dear God forgive me when I'm not.

Beautiful

The sun is shining and it is finally a beautiful day. Thank you God!

I'm often reminded of the words to an Andrea Crouch song that says "If I never had a problem, I wouldn't know that He could solve them, I wouldn't know what faith in God could do...". It always makes me realize that it truly is the difficult times in life, the rainy days and the sad things, that make us appreciate the good days and the sunny skies. We'd be so complacent if it were always beautiful outside and we'd never appreciate such beautiful days for the wonderful gift they are.

So thank you God for this beautiful day after so many rainy, overcast, miserable ones!