We are having (praise the Lord) another stunningly beautiful day here in Houston today. It's the kind of day when I can sit on my driveway while my children bother our neighbor :) and get a tan on my shoulders and legs and not sneeze the entire time. LOL My kids are not shy about talking to our neighbors. They assume that you love them because we live next to each other and are happy to keep them company. Oh, thank You, Lord, for days like today! We so appreciate the temperate ones here with the ridiculously hot, humid summers we get that make it extraordinarily unpleasant to be outside. I don't even need air conditioning on today! I have fans on and am loving it.

I have gotten Graysen's passport all taken care of. We are still in prayer about this, but proceeding as if things are green lights all the way: our youth (middle and high schoolers) are going to El Salvador in very late July-August this summer to serve at Potter's Field Ministry Orphanage and some other places locally for 8 days. I would love to go with her, but it's not my season in life yet to do it. She saved up the last month or so and got her passport money together. I am nervous about her being in a foreign country without us, however, I cannot think of four adults more equipped to take the kids down or that I trust more. The Lord will have to help take care of the money with most of it due before the middle of June. I know that if you are reading this and are family, in lieu of a birthday gift, Graysen would rather have a contribution to help go than anything else. Or if you just want to contribute because of the mission and love Jesus, that is welcome as well! I pray that the Lord fully prepares all who are going spiritually and physically for their time and am thankful that each one of these people going is already sharing the Gospel as a part of their life, encouraging other believers, are prayer warriors, and such a blessing in the body of Christ to the Lord and others. Our kids are amazing. They always outnumber adults for community Gospel outreach by a lot, they are bold, and they know God's Word. Poverty in El Salvador is exponentially worse than what we see here. I think we forget how blessed we are in America with just basic things alone. They don't wan to be like us, they just are hungry for Jesus, and praise the Lord for open doors for the Word to go out and ministry to happen!!! They will stay on the orphanage compound, but there is no hot water there, and they will be working their tails off! I heard at the meeting Sunday that they may just want to throw away their clothes and shoes when they are done! LOL Maybe we can say goodbye to those Converse in her closet..........

On a light note, since I did title my blog "The Misadventures of a Sububan Mom", I thought I would share a post office misadventure from this morning. I pullled in and there was a car there, windows down, engine on, no one in it at all, and music playing. The music was actually pleasant. It was not blasting. And I thought to myself how wonderful to be at a country post office where someone can just do that! While I am waiting in line, a lady comes in who looks exactly like Minnie Pearl on Hee Haw, same hat and everything, comes in and says, "Whichever one of you has left their ugly music blasting and their car on with their windows down is disrupting life out here for everyone and you are going to cause us to pay higher insurance rates." This sweet little man who was being helped apologized to her and everyone in the office, ran out to turn off his music, car, roll up his windows and lock his car and was incredibly gracious to her. When he returned, I told him what I had thought pulling up and that he wasn't bothering me (which was echoed by the other two customers in line and the lady helping said the woman comes in all the time and has issues). We all looked at each other---a bunch of Christians we were---and agreed she needed some prayer! Love the one who reviles you! So, now you know why I called it "misadventures". Nothing much going on down here!!
Today has been a day of good news and difficult news. Brian and I received some very good news this morning, and I thanked the Lord and was even amazed at what the Lord did. I wonder how many times I have prayed over this thing, asking and asking the Lord to help, and committing ourselves to whatever the Lord has for us, including nothing!!!, and here the Lord did something this morning very specifically in answer and in a manner that was especially pleasing. But, my heart is stayed on the difficult news instead. Why? Because the difficult news is what actually matters: news about people whom I am praying for who are suffering. They have cancer, and I have a broken heart as I have considered news about each. We don't say who cares to the good since it's all from the Lord and it would be wrong for me not to give Him thanks, but in light of the needs and condition of the situations of others, I am impressed with my own tendency towards selfishness and desiring to be more like the Lord, I cannot help but put my mind on someone else. He says we are blessed to bless others. I am so thankful for the way the Lord has blessed us, so thankful, but I also know He will take care of what is happening so that I am free to keep my mind on others and their needs and is working out everything for our good. So, my heart and mind are back on these precious ones. People are what matter. We can know that is what matters to the Lord simply by considering John 3:16, "For God so loved the world that He sent His Only Begotten Son that whosoever believes in Him will not perish but have everlasting life." God cares that much. We might not all believe him, but Jesus was sent to pay for all sin. Sin is paid in full, the question that remains for each of us is whether we want His blood applied to our account.
Sheri is the wife of a friend of Brian's at work. She is battling breast cancer and it's been extremely difficult for her since she received her diagnosis. I have a cyst in one of my breasts and I have gone through a biopsy last year, and it's extremely scary to wait just for that. To receive news of cancer and then go through treatment is incredible to consider. I know too many women who have breast cancer and had breast cancer. We ran into her husband yesterday, and it broke my heart to hear what he had to share about what is going on. After losing Kelli, I have a very tender heart towards women suffering from it from watching all that she went through, especially the last 7 months. I have another friend Julie from our church family, battling it right now as well who is older than Sheri, but her prognosis has been better than Sheri's though she is exhausted, in pain and worn down as well. Cancer is no respecter of persons. Its content to ravage any woman's body. Sadly, the younger you are when you get breast cancer, the more aggressive it usually is. It's amazing to me what we each go through in our lives, the difficulties!! I pray for Sheri to be healed, and I pray for her to allow the Lord to be at work in her life and to trust in Jesus alone. Julie's faith in Jesus blows me away and she is such an inspiration, so giving of her time, such a loving and compassionate woman. When I miscarried a few years ago, it was Jesus who ministered to me and cared for my soul, no one else can do what Jesus does. As close as we can be to people in this life, it's the Lord Who never leaves us, Who can be with us when we go into surgery or an MRI, or just in our thoughts when we cannot speak what we think and feel. I am so comforted and grateful knowing this not just for myself, but for others. Ever feel like you don't have the right words? I do all the time. The Lord does!  I pray that both of these women I cherish and pray over are abiding in the presence of the Lord.
The youngest I pray over is not even two, home with hospice care to go home to be with Jesus soon. His name is Brennan. Sadly, I am praying for three other young kids as well: Izzy, Clayton and Wyatt, and they are not having an easy time of things lately either. I read a comment posted on Brennan's site that no mother should have to bear what his mother is. I have to disagree after much thought about it. It is because we are mothers that we have the unique privelege to bear so much when it comes to our children. It's the job the Lord gave us. This precious family are believers, and I cannot begin to imagine the grief in their hearts and the overflow of love for Brennan as the remnant of his days are lived out in their arms, and they wait for Jesus to call Brennan home. How do you go on afterwards? I have read his mother post this question. I can remember this coming up with Kelli. Is it cruel that life keeps going or is that a tremendous blessing from the Lord?? It almost seems wrong that our hearts could keep beating after we lose someone we love so much, doesn't it? But life beckons us to continue, and Jesus is right there ready to lead us through not only the valley of the shadow of death but to dwell in His house forever, if we will just humble ourselves as sinners, repent and give Him our lives.

In thinking about this precious one and his mother, since I am a mother of four plus one who is with Jesus and one of those four is a prodigal, I want to ask when was the last time that you personally thought about the great and precious promises to those who believe in Jesus and have His blood applied to their account of sin, wiping it out? We are not just eternally saved, we are also provided with abundant life today, even in the middle of the worst trials imagineable and we are promised that He works all things together for the good of those who love Him and are called according to His purposes. One of the most difficult things to mature in as a believer is childlike faith. Sounds like some kind of phrasalistic oxymoron, but that is what it is. The longer you walk with the Lord, the more you just know that He is trustworthy and really deserves that name, the Rock of our salvation. We can't see how it's being worked for our good, but praise Him, He can. We just need to trust Him, even through our tears and heartache.
1 Corinthians 1:18 Paul writes, "For the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God." The finished work of the cross took away my sins as far as the east from the west, Isaiah tells me. How amazing to consider! My work was faith. I think I had the easy part!! I had the unique privilege to have at least three years of time with Kelli before she ever passed away to listen, study God's Word alone and with her, and talk with her about dying before she ever spoke to anyone else about it. I learned a lot from this time with her. The Lord prepared me to be that person because I had read His Word and His Spirt brought to mind those passages that we needed to talk about to prepare her heart as well to meet the Lord. I was hungry and He fed me the Bread of Life. I think about that all the time when I reflect back. She saved an email I wrote about her and salvation after spending the day with her while she was in hospice care at home. When it was read at her memorial service, it just about ripped my heart out to hear my own words as I had quoted God's Word in that email. I had to believe the Lord. That day, I had the privilege of the Lord reminding me of His faithfulness, that this not the home of the believer in Christ, and our body is called a tent in the Bible, by more than one New Testament writer! Praise the Lord for this precious knowlege and how it frees us up to look at things from the Lord's perspective instead of the world's and to live full out for Jesus and praise the Lord we are free from being a slave to sin any longer.
So I pray over these children, totally in awe of all they go through, and thankful that their parents know the Lord, as He comforts them and gives them peace in the middle of an all-out war on the bodies of their children and one where they have to choose to believe Him about promises for the temporal and the eternal and wait on Him to work things out for their good. It's hard to pray sometimes. They are not particularly eloquent either, but the Lord knows my heart, those things that are beyond words that are about them. I am so grateful about that with the Lord!

I think about my own oldest son and the war going on for his soul, who is in control of his life, and it brings me to my knees before the Lord that I might have peace from Him simply because I know Him and want that same thing for not just my son or my family members, but like the Lord, for all men! I walked with out the Lord many years. It's not a good place to be. When we do it, there is a part of us that knows this. He says He gave us a conscience and He certainly gave us a need to worship. Sadly, both are usually seared and misplaced. Oh, how we need Jesus! Our children, gifts to us from the Lord, how easy that is to forget when we are distracted or they are being onry!! My kids have to be the most content kids to just be loved on and also the onriest kids on the planet! I am so blessed, and they have such a beautiful relationship with my husband. Growing up without a father, this is one of the things that I am most grateful every day to the Lord for! And I am blessed with a Father in Heaven, mine by adoption, thanks to Jesus.

On the driveway today, I had the blessing of the Lord reassuring me in something I was reading that He was freeing me up from all the things that could burden my heart so that I could put my mind on others. I even wanted to write today and did it! I write because I love to, but really, my heart is to encourage fellow believers and to prayerfully remind those who are not in right relationship with Jesus that He is still there waiting on them and ready to receive them with open arms bearing love and forgiveness and living hope.

The last thing that I want to say because the Lord was so good to show me something today in His word and I want to share it is that Paul, by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit wrote in probably my favorite book of the Bible, Romans 12:20, "if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head."  In the days of Paul, if your fire went out, you were in trouble!! Paul is talking about rekindling your enemy's fire, and not doing it with just one coal to get it going, but a huge heap, which would be considered an extremely generous blessing! I love this about the Lord. This is one of our commands as His followers. What I am finding with the Lord is that the more I give the more He gives. You cannot out-give The Giver. He is the supplier of all good things and all blessings, and that includes the blessing of having a right heart toward Him and other people--I am dependent on Him to give me that as well, and He delights in me asking Him for it!! I have spent a lifetime in fear of giving and being without, and really more the latter, and the Lord has spent my life trying to eleviate this and to show me something about Him. How long-suffering He is with us when we are slow to learn what He is trying to show us!

If I have nothing, I still have Jesus. If I still have Jesus, I have everything and I still have Jesus to give. Today, don't be afraid to heap some hot coals on someone and reflect the character of the One who is molding us into His image. Our nation so badly needs revival, and it starts with the person reflected back in the mirror seeking the Lord first. Ask Him to help you, to give you a clean spirit and a heart that wants to please Him, a heart that heaps hot coals on the needs of others! We are to be salt and light in a dark world. We want revival? Let's start with heaping some hot coals into fires that have gone out and get them restarted. That is the God we serve!! One Who promises He will not break a bruised reed and a smoldering wick He will not put out!! Isn't Jesus awesome??!!