One Beautiful Life

Healing Hands

Don is coming home with his brother, Kevin, today. He had surgery last week to remove a large amount of cancer in his colon and will be here with us for a few weeks to heal and recover.

Our hope and prayer is to be the Light of the Lord to him right now. He needs direction, motivation, guidance, love, and basically a God intervention! So we are going to be God's love to him right now.

Our prayers are for his strength, his physical healing, and a spiritual awakening. God brings us to places along this journey for certain reasons and we are prayerful this "wake up" call will speak to Kevin's heart and soul. I also pray my husband can have some intimate time with his brother to build their relationship with Christ as the foundation.

Please pray that this time in our life will glorify the Lord and that our family will be protected from attacks. Please pray that Abby will know the difference in being "sick" as we have told her and "having cancer" like Kevin. Her heart being protected is also one of my greatest prayers. I do not want fear to enter her heart about being sick so we are really trying to make Kevin's illness very different from her own.

Thank you so very much for your prayers and support. I also ask you to lift up my friends brother in law, Andy, as he has been fighting cancer and is now fighting a very hard and long battle against phenmonia. He is very young but struggling in this fight. I also ask prayers for a family in Winchester, friend's of my parents. The husband is in the hospital and may have not even made it through the night. He was diagnosed with cancer a few years ago but has spiraled down very quickly. He has three children, one in his twenties, one in high school and one in junior high... and a wife... and a mother...crying by his bedside.

There are so many people out there hurting... pleading with God for healing... asking for answers and hanging onto hope. In this time, I can hear people's confusion about God and I know that feeling so very well. It's a desperate and very lonely feeling... very frustrating and exasperated. I just want to encourage those, going through these tragic times in life, that God is good and He remains good and sovereign... even when our circumstances are bad... dark... and tragic.

Bad things happen because this is a temporary life... in a world full of consequences. Consequences for actions against our earth and resources (pollution, chemicals, waste), consequences against our body, (what we eat, how we do or don't take care of it, what we are exposed to) and consequences against our Lord. It happens because it is life... not because God has neglected us or doesn't care.

The hope and truth in all this is that God can still be glorified in all this tragedy. We may not know how immediately... because we do not understand His ways. But we can hold on to the truth and look for the good in all sad situations... it is there. Whether someone comes to accept Christ and receives salvation, whether a child sees his/her family lean on and trust in the Lord and a strong foundation is laid that changes his/her life, whether people are brought into communion with the Lord in prayer... God is there and He can and will be glorified... SOMETHING beautiful is going on in the darkness because Christ has already won the battle and GOOD has already beaten evil! Praise God for that... thank you... thank you.

It is this hope and truth that shines the light into the darkness. It is hard to hang on to during times that cause us fear and pain. But you must remain focused on the Lord and not on the circumstances... that is where the peace that surpasses all understanding comes from.

"Oh, the depth of the riches both of wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and His ways past finding out! For who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has become His counselor? Or who has first given to Him and it shall be repaid to Him? For of Him and through Him and to Him are all things, to whom be glory forever. Amen." Romans 11:33-36

"Be anxious in nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus." Phillippians 4: 6, 7

I pray God can be glorified and that the pain in my past and God's sovereignty in it, can encourage others and direct them to the Lord's feet. Be blessed today in knowing your are loved by and in the hands of the God of the universe!