If all goes well and if the Lord wills, my Fred & I will leave for Ohio tomorrow morning. He has made contact with a man he was in the Army with and they've arranged to meet just outside Fred's hometown.

They've been in contact for a few months via email and phone and he seems like a very nice person. He's a lawyer and a professor and his wife teaches school. They never had children so I'm wondering what she and I will find to talk about. I'm sure the Lord will let me know!

We'll also have opportunity to visit with Fred's brother and their Aunt. I hope we have time just to go sit on the beach at Lake Erie for awhile. We shall see.

Have a blessed week-end my dear friends. We plan on coming home on Sunday. Will check in then. Bless you all!

I met a very nice lady today at my Mom's. Her name is Kay and she & Mom have been prayer partners for years. Long distance by the way, as Kay lives in Kentucky. Mom has talked about this lady for years and I had this picture in my mind of what she looked like. In my mind's eye she was perhaps tall and thin; a pretty woman who had been educated in some fancy school someplace. She also had to have money because she & her husband travel a lot and own a time share condo in Nashville.

Boy was I wrong. She is shorter than my Mom and has short, un-done hair (today anyway). She is however, a very pretty lady. Her smile lights a room and she has this twinkle in her eyes that just draws you in. She grew up during World War II and learned the meaning of prayer and hard work early as her Dad died when she was quite young. She came to faith in Christ as a child but married a man who didn't share that faith until years later. As she told me, "I turned to the Bible and he turned to the bottle". She then told God she would do whatever He asked her to, regardless of consequences. Today her husband and their sons are up at 5:00 a.m. reading their Bibles before going to work. Her youngest son is now a minister. She's in love with her Lord, her life and her grandchildren. And she's a woman who prays. Consistently and without doubting, she prays. At times she said she will ask God what to pray for and He actually tells her. Imagine that. When she visits with her sister, she said they either study the Word or pray together, because that's most important to both of them. Can you imagine getting together with a sister and studying the Word rather than go shopping? Praying together instead of talking about ... whatever or whomever?

Meeting her made me take another look at myself. If God allows me to live that long, where do I want to be when I'm her age? Where do I want to be tomorrow? Next week? Next month? What do I want people to see when they first meet me? What do I want them to take with them when we part?

Have you ever met someone who you felt could look into your soul? That's how I felt at times today. As though Kay was looking far deeper than the color of my greying hair and eyeglasses. It was no accident we met today. It was, I believe, God prompting me to get on with what matters most in this life ... His will being done regardless of the cost. He showed me what a prayer warrior named Kay looks like and He let me know I can really be one too if I'll allow Him to truly be LORD in my life.

What could happen if professing Christians truly surrendered their all to our Father in heaven? What might happen if we gave up unnecessary things and spent time in study and prayer? What if we REALLY believed God heard us when we pray and we had the boldness to come before His throne and asked Him for His glory to shine on this earth ... for the lost to be brought to a saving faith ... for good to triumph over evil .... for our loved ones to come to the knowledge they need a Savior ... for His name to be hallowed and kept holy .... for His will to be done on earth as it is in heaven ... for His soon return ...

May God in His mercy draw us closer to Himself and, in a new way, reveal to us our deeper need of Him. May we see Him as He is and glory in all that He is for us in Christ Jesus.

Hello dear friends. It was so good to read your comments from my last post. Good to know you think of me as you do.

Do you know deep, deep in your being that our Father thinks of us also? And that His thoughts are for our good and never our harm? I have begun reading The Treasury of David by Charles Spurgeon and oh, what eye-opening truths are contained in its pages! Like these words, found in Psalm 1, verses 1 & 2: "Blessed is the man that walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of the scornful. But his delight is in the law of the Lord; and in His law he mediates day and night" ... And then this question is asked: 'Is your delight in the law of God? Do you study God's Word? Do you make it the man of your right hand - your best companion and hourly guide? If not, this blessing belongeth not to you.'

I had to honestly answer No when I read this. God's law has not been my delight. I've been preoccupied and busy with other things. I've been looking outward, not inward far too much lately. I also had to answer No to the other questions ... I haven't been studying; it hasn't been my best companion and hourly guide.

Thank the precious Lord for His care of us! Even when we deem ourselves unworthy, He calls us back to Himself and allows us to pick up and begin again. Where would we be without His mercy and His grace?

Farther down in the first chapter of this book, these words waited for me:
"Our worst things are often our best things. As there is a curse wrapped up in the wicked man's mercies, so there is a blessing concealed in the righteous man's crosses, losses and sorrows. The trials of the saint are a divine husbandry, by which he grows and brings forth abundant fruit."

We serve a risen Savior; Jesus is LORD to the glory of God; Greater is He who lives in me than he who lives in the world; I have been bought with a price and I am not my own ... we say those words and for most of the time, we believe them. Then why, in the name of all that's worthy, don't we act like it? That's the question I posed for myself as I stood looking into a mirror the other evening. And that was a difficult thing for me to do ... look at myself and ask questions that beg honest answers. Answers that only I could give.

I am not a failure, regardless of how I see myself right now. I am a child of the most high God and He sees me and He knows what I shall be when I enter glory and He loves me in spite of myself. He loves me because of Christ. He loves me. He allows me to call Him FATHER and He loves me.

May the truth of these words pierce my soul and become the fiber of my being. May my actions be modeled after the One who bought me and made me His. May I delight in His Word. May I act on what I see written in God's precious Word and be the 'doer' He desires me to be.

I have not died and gone to heaven ladies and I can't admit to being kidnapped or kept from the computer against my will .... 'tis been a busy time for me the past few weeks. Either that or I've been tired and simply didn't feel up to doing much of anything. Today, praise the Lord, seems to be one of my more energetic days, so here I am. But not for long. I have a dr's appt. at noon, need to stop at Meijer's & maybe Target, then home to finish laundry that I didn't get to yesterday. There is much I could write about and maybe, later on, I will. I've checked into your blogs and glad to see you're all alright.

Blessin's to you my friends.

Have a great day.

Dear Ladies, thank you from the bottom of my heart for your kind responses to yesterday's post. I saw my Mother-in-law again this morning for just a few minutes and gave her a hug. The Lord has much to teach me if I'll be open to His leading and His voice. Your understanding surely helps, thank you!

I read this in one of my old journals today:

"What you can't give up becomes your ball and chain"

Such appropriate timing, finding that sentence, as I'm going through my office, sorting and emptying and organizing all kinds of stuff. But it applies to more than physical stuff, doesn't it? It can apply to habits and chocolate and all kinds of sweets ( I love 'em, way too much). It can apply to grudges and anger and misplaced motives. Those words have made me look at this office in a new way today. They have also made me look at me again. Seems I'm doing a lot of that lately. Must need workin' on more than I realized.

I gotta run ... husband is calling!
Love you all!

I learned a valuable lesson this week-end. A hard one too. While my mother-in-law was away for the week-end I went to do some cleaning in her apartment. I didn't ask her if I could, I simply assumed it would be okay and that she would see it as a blessing when she returned. I worked steadily for about two hours on Saturday and even had two granddaughters there to help me with dusting. I did some re-arranging too. I took some pictures home with me so I could put them in an album and left the others nicely rearranged on a book shelf. I've been putting her older pictures into albums for a few weeks now and wanted to add these. I left the apartment feeling good about the 'gift' I had given.

When she arrived home last evening she called. And she wasn't happy. Especially not happy that pictures were missing. I explained they would go into an album as they were older and the newer ones had been left. She still wasn't happy. She said some things that made me question why I had bothered to work so hard in her apartment and I then told her I was sorry and that I wouldn't do it again.

I cried a bit after I got off the phone. My husband was upset that I had been upset by his Mom and he adamantly told me I would never do any cleaning there again and that he would return the pictures himself.

After soul searching and talking to the Father last night I learned this:

I should have asked her permission to go in and clean. Just because we have keys doesn't give us the right to go in and do anything.

I should not have taken pictures regardless of my reasoning and trying to 'help'.

It is her apartment, not mine, and she can do or not do anything she darn well pleases in it.

I was wrong to assume she would appreciate the work I did.

I was wrong to assume anything! I should have asked her permission.

When I'm wrong I need to own up to it and ask forgiveness. Even when it's family. Maybe, especially when it's family.

I woke this morning knowing what I had to do. I had to return the pictures and tell her I was sorry and assure her I would never do that sort of thing again. It was my responsibility to do that, not my husband's. And I did. I called first and then went to her apartment. She told me she appreciated all I did for her but ... she wanted to do all she could for herself for as long as she can. She wanted the pictures left just like they were. She had them in order and wanted them left alone. So be it.

Sometimes what we think may be a 'blessing' to someone else ends up being anything but. She saw my 'help' to be intrusion and trespass and for that I am sorry. It's better to let older folks alone at times, regardless of how much you want to jump in and fix things.

This morning I realized that if God permits, I will clean in that apartment again. Only she won't be there to feel I've intruded. It will be my husband's and my responsibility to one day clean and clear out what was her belongings. Until then, I'll leave it alone until and unless she asks for my help in some way.

Lesson learned. May I remember it.

“Do you know who you are? Do you know who you were designed to be? Do you know the Father’s intent for your life? You are meant to hear in your spirit the same thing Jesus heard when he came out of the waters of baptism at the beginning of his ministry: ‘You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased’…. J I Packer puts it simply. ‘ What is a Christian? The question can be answered in many ways, but the richest answer I know is that a Christian is one who has God for his Father’…Our highest privilege and deepest need is to experience the holy God as our loving Father, to approach him with out fear and to be assured of his fatherly care and concern.” Greg Ogden, Discipleship Essentials