Category: 2013 Posts

Posted on in 2013 Posts

She Was Lost, But Has Now Been Found!

That's the smile of a happy dog!
That’s the smile of a happy dog!

Last weekend, I was out cutting the grass.   In fact, I had just practically started mowing and I heard my neighbor hollering at me, “Lori!”  At first it brought back memories of when I was in trouble and mom was trying to get my attention. However, when I swung around, there stood my neighbor, obviously upset.  I turned off the mower and found out that the dog they had adopted the day before, Sadie, just ran away!

She gave me a description of Sadie and so I told her I would jump into the car and see if I could find her.  My neighbor declined to go with me because she wanted to be on foot instead.  She was walking up and down the sidewalk calling for the dog to come to no avail.  She told me earlier that the dog loved the woods.  She also said some golfers had seen it heading up through my yard across the street.  My first thought was, “If she goes to those woods, she’s going to come out on a very busy road!”

So, I hopped into my car and headed out to the busy road I feared would be her fate if someone didn’t find her quickly.  I drove slowly down the road and didn’t see her.  However, I did see a deer with his rear-end sticking out of the woods!  He was bent down as though he had discovered something interesting low to the ground.

I know from experience that deer usually don’t leave their hind quarters hanging out for the world to see them.  It just looked suspicious to me.  Like maybe a puppy ran through the woods and happened to run up on a deer resting in the woods.  So I made a u-turn and pulled onto the side of the road near the deer.  By the time I got stopped and looked up, the deer was gone, but low and behold there was Sadie standing in the tall grass about 50 feet from the busy road.  I knew this was my chance so I started talking to her from far away and tried to keep her attention on me.  She seemed to be interested and at that point I was just praying she wouldn’t dart and run away from me as I got close.  When I got up to her…not even knowing for sure this was the right dog…she laid down as though to submit to me.  I swept her up and we were instantly friends!

You see, Sadie had once been rescued by my neighbors to a home that will love and care for her.  However, she didn’t really know what she had until she went out into the woods and ran up against the big dogs…or in this case a deer!  I think that even though she had been running fast and furious, she was scared from her recent encounter and was relieved to see me.  As I put her in the car, she went right in and lay down on the seat exhausted from her excursion.

Have you ever had something like this happen to you?  Have you ever told God, “It’s O.K., I can handle this one on my own?  Have you ever ignored His voice and just kept running, only to get into the middle of the woods to realize, you can’t do it on your own?  Have you ever lay down in the tall grass and said, “Here I am, Lord.  I really messed up.  Can you please pick me up and rescue me once again from this mess I’ve caused for myself?”

I think we can all honestly say we’ve been there.  What are you running away from now?  Have you paused to listen for God’s call in your situation?  Do you even recognize Him speaking to you or are you are just so focused on running you’re not hearing Him?  Just like Sadie, are you contemplating running away again or are you fixing your eyes on Him and His voice speaking specifically to you. He’s calling you to be rescued.  My prayer today is that you will recognize His voice from afar and focus only on Him.  Allow the distractions of the world to fade away from your thinking.  Then lay down, so to speak, to submit to the One who is ready to sweep you up into His arms and rescue you for eternity.

He wants to love you like you have never been loved before.

He wants to care for you like no other.

He wants to show you that you don’t have to run anymore.

He’s here for you with open arms.

Just simply…stop running.

John 10:27-28 (NKJV)  My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me. And I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; neither shall anyone snatch them out of My hand.

Posted on in 2013 Posts

So, Can I Tell You About My Week?

 

Image courtesy of Sura Nualpradid at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Image courtesy of Sura Nualpradid at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Was that really a week or did I just wake up from a bad dream?  I started out Monday morning in the Emergency Room by orders of my doctor.  I won’t go into the details as to why.  However, the visit resulted in a colonoscopy being ordered for Friday morning.  If you’ve ever had a colonoscopy, you know that there is preparation one must do the day before.  I rushed home from work on Thursday to start my first dose at 3:30 as ordered.  I started drinking my meds and half way through this horrible tasting stuff, Jim walked in the door early from work exhibiting signs of a heart attack.

I took his blood pressure as a good nursing school dropout should.  Then I Googled his symptoms.  Oh, yes, we need to get to the Emergency Room!  I’m going to be a little blunt here, but I don’t think there’s a reader who can’t relate.  I put him in the car and prayed all the way there that I didn’t poo my pants.  I had no idea how long it would take the meds to start working!   We spent the remainder of the day in the ER only to determine that he needed to be admitted for more tests.

I didn’t get any sleep that night and arrived at about 6:30 am Friday morning at the hospital.  I wanted to see Jim and drop him off some clothes and a toothbrush before going to my test at 7:30.  While I was undergoing my colonoscopy, he was somewhere else in the hospital having a stress test!  Nothing like supporting the local medical center with everything we’ve got…and probably some we don’t have too!  I got a clean bill of health and was very happy that I don’t have to repeat that scenario for another ten years…or never if I have it my way!  Jim on the other hand remains undiagnosed; however, they did decide his heart is fine.

When I walked into church today someone said, “You look so good for all you’ve been through this week!”  After all we’ve been through in our lifetimes, not much affects us anymore.  Yes, I was concerned about what they might find for either one of us.  Yes, I hated to think my husband might have something major wrong. Yes, the situations exhausted us.  However, there truly is a peace that can’t be explained when your eyes are set on Jesus.

Then quite appropriately, the sermon today at our church was titled, “Why Do Bad Things Happen to Good People?”  You see, a young couple in our church are pregnant with a child they may never get to know in this lifetime.  Unless God does a miracle, their baby’s brain may not be formed enough to even tell it how to breathe when it is born.  It doesn’t take long for your perspective to change when you realize that maybe your problems aren’t all that bad.  As I watched this young couple talk about their unborn baby with a peace that only God could give; I recognized the same strength we were experiencing in our trials.  The same Holy Spirit that was getting us through our week was also getting them through theirs.  No matter what we might be facing in this life; God’s peace can be there if we will just seek Him and keep Him first in everything that comes our way.  He is the same from one person to another…His strength and peace never change.

None of us know what tomorrow brings, but we can rest knowing that the Lord who created us has it all under control.  What have you been going through this week?  Have you asked for God’s peace?  It really is real and can be yours if you trust and believe that God can.  In the meantime, please put Jim and Ella (the unborn baby) on your prayer lists this week.  I’m praying for some good things ahead!  Be blessed and don’t forget to get out there and be a blessing!

Isaiah 54:10 (NIV) Though the mountains be shaken and the hills be removed, yet my unfailing love for you will not be shaken nor my covenant of peace be removed,” says the Lord, who has compassion on you.

Posted on in 2013 Posts

DELETED!

Image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Wow, I get my desk together and think I’m on a roll when all of a sudden, my computer goes on the fritz and my life is turned upside down!  Have you ever lost a hard drive or done like I did a couple of months ago and dropped your smart phone into the toilet?  If you have ever done either, you will immediately be able to relate to the horror I felt when I was told I needed to reformat my hard drive.

When Jim told me of my fate, I immediately thought, what do I have that I need to keep and what can I lose that won’t matter anyway.  Perhaps half of what I have on my hard drive could be lost and I would never know it was gone.  However, my mind went to the recent book I’ve been writing,  my real estate files, pictures, contacts, old emails and other important things that made me cringe at the thought of losing and having to start over.  How could I ever rebuild all of those things?  I had spent hours editing, scanning, and creating a LOT of stuff!

After thinking all of my contacts were lost forever, Jim announced he found them on an old backup and the day was saved!  Whew.  I like to live on the edge sometimes, but even that scare was too much for me!   My comment to Jim when he found them was, “Wow, I thought for a minute I had lost my entire life on that hard drive!”

Some day when God calls me home to heaven, I won’t have my hard drive or phone to take with me.  I laughingly can imagine some people standing at the pearly gates and saying, “Really?  I can’t take my cell phone?  Do you know what that means to me?”

Then I was convicted.  I can have 100’s of Facebook contacts,  followers and readers of my writings as well as my “tweets” in this life.  However, what good are they when I’m gone?  What would happen if God came today and deleted all of these people from my life, leaving only He and I.  Would I be content with that?  Sometimes in the mornings, I find myself checking Facebook before I read my devotion.  I’m often convicted that even in the small things…the innocent things…I need to put God first.

The fact is, some day everything that we have held dear in this lifetime will be gone…even those things we’ve backed-up a hundred times.  Only that which has been done for Jesus will remain.  As a matter of fact, He’s not impressed by my Facebook contacts at all.  More realistically, He put those people in my life for me to be a witness.  Have I reflected Him in my words, thoughts and actions?  If He comes through and deletes the earthly things I’ve clung to all of these years, would there be any evidence of my walk with Him?  Would lives be changed because of the time I spent talking with others about Jesus or will they just be saying, “Lori, who?”

Yes, I was traumatized by losing some data this past week.  You may have missed the fact that I didn’t blog last week…or then again…maybe you didn’t notice.  You see, the things we think are important in this life really aren’t all that important, especially to others.  I’ve heard it said, “What you did for someone in this life might not be remembered, but how you made them feel will be remembered.”

As a writer, I want to remembered as someone who affected the way you feel in order to affect your walk with God.  For as I am realizing the older I get, all of the other things of this world will quickly be deleted and what I have done for God will be the only data left.  What will your hard drive say about you when you’re gone?  Will there be anything there that will say, “He or she was a servant of God.”  Or will it just be empty…erased…deleted?

As a country that on every corner, in every restaurant and office, millions can be found huddled around a smart phone, my question would be.  Are we paying attention to the important things in life that will last for an eternity?  Or are we just allowing our data filled lives to suck us into a world that someday will be deleted?  The choice is ours.

So for today…I will remember that most of the data on my computer or phone is not all that important in the big scheme of things.  It is, for the most part, a collection of earthly stuff that when I am gone will have no meaning.  What I do with the tools such as my cell phone and computer, is what matters.  Do I use them for with eternity in mind or are they just a distraction from the things I should be doing?  Just as with anything in life, that which glorifies God will last, but what doesn’t will someday be deleted.  Gone forever.  Can you live with that?

P.S.  Don’t judge me if you see me huddled around my cell phone.  I am guilty of spending too much time on it and haven’t mastered the not wasting time on it so well yet.  God’s working on me with that one. The first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem!  Be blessed and don’t forget…get out there and be a blessing!

Matthew 6: 19-21 (NIV) 19 “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. 20 But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. 21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.