Faith

Faith is not faith if it requires evidence.

I believe that what God says about Himself is true because He said it, and He has graciously given me the faith to believe it. If things don't ever turn out the way I want, I will still believe that He is a merciful, loving, good God. I will not let circumstances dictate what I believe. I will not let circumstances rob me of my faith.

My view of this life is quite limited. I could never see the big picture as God does. I can never step completely out of my biases and misconceptions to even interpret correctly the part I can see. Why then would I choose to anchor my faith in my experience rather than in God's Word?


The prophet Habakkuk was told in advance of the horrors that were about to be visited on his nation for their sins. Rather than turning away from God, he deepened his resolve to praise Him:

"Lord, I have heard of your fame; I stand in awe of your deeds, O Lord. Renew them in our day, in our time make them known; in wrath remember mercy. Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Savior. The Sovereign Lord is my strength; he makes my feet like the feet of a deer, he enables me to go on the heights." (Habakkuk 3:2, 17-18)

I want to be like Habakkuk. I don't want to be dependent on having a smooth path, or having comforts, or even having all my needs met in order to praise God. I want to trust and praise Him whatever may come. Nothing that happens to me can change who God is.

Blessed Be Your Name
by Matt Redman
- - -
Blessed Be Your Name
In the land that is plentiful
Where Your streams of abundance flow
Blessed be Your name

Blessed Be Your name
When I'm found in the desert place
Though I walk through the wilderness
Blessed Be Your name

Every blessing You pour out
I'll turn back to praise
When the darkness closes in, Lord
Still I will say

Blessed be the name of the Lord
Blessed be Your name
Blessed be the name of the Lord
Blessed be Your glorious name

Blessed be Your name
When the sun's shining down on me
When the world's 'all as it should be'
Blessed be Your name

Blessed be Your name
On the road marked with suffering
Though there's pain in the offering
Blessed be Your name

Every blessing You pour out
I'll turn back to praise
When the darkness closes in, Lord
Still I will say

Blessed be the name of the Lord
Blessed be Your name
Blessed be the name of the Lord
Blessed be Your glorious name

Blessed be the name of the Lord
Blessed be Your name
Blessed be the name of the Lord
Blessed be Your glorious name

You give and take away
You give and take away
My heart will choose to say
Lord, blessed be Your name

And so I'll pray earnestly for what I desire. But if He chooses a different path than I would choose, I will praise Him still.

Lord, may it be true.

Thursday 13

Thirteen Ways to Make the Most of Baby Wipes They're not just for babies anymore. Wipes are handy for anyone. Here are some of my favorite tips: 1. Buy the Target brand. They're every bit as good as the name brand wipes, at a fraction of the cost. They're also better than most of the other no-brand wipes (and I've tried a lot of the no-brand wipes!) 2. Cut them in half for the first few months of your baby's life. Their bottoms are so small, there's rarely a need for a full-sized wipe. Even if it's a messy diaper, two of the half-wipes go a lot further than one whole wipe. I recommend a bread knife or sturdy scissors for the job. Always carry some in your purse. Use them to: 3. Clean off the shopping cart handle before you use it. (Use a hand sanitizer when you're done anyway - those things are gross!) 4. Clean hands when soap and water isn't available. A good wipe-down with the baby wipe followed by a squirt of hand sanitizer does wonders after a trip to playland at the mall (i.e. the pediatric petri dish). 5. Wipe off the high chair in restaurants before putting your child in. Heaven knows, the restaurants rarely clean those things. 6. They work wonderfully for dusting. With one wipe and about three minutes, and I can dust a whole bedroom. It picks up the dust while removing sticky fingerprints, all without spreading any chemicals around the room. 7. They're good for grown-up bottoms, too. I recommend the sensitive-skin type to my hemorrhoid and anal fissure patients (Yes, the glamorous part of my job) because they do a good job cleaning with less trauma than toilet paper. 8. They're gentler than tissue for sore noses during cold season. My preschooler insists on a wipe when his nose is running. 9. I highly recommend buying the pop-up kind if you have a preschooler who likes to help himself (see above). Otherwise, you may find yourself digging bundles of 20-30 wipes out of the trash, only the top one of which was actually used. 10. They're great streak-free cleaners for things like bathroom faucets and sinks. 11. Turn the box over from time to time in between uses. It helps distribute the liquid throughout the package so the last few wipes in the package aren't super-soggy. 12. They make for easy cleaning of white boards. 13. Keep the empty travel-size containers for storing crayons and colored pencils. They're just the right size. Links to other Thursday Thirteens!

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Really Sick

A portion of my conversation with Jeffrey before bed tonight:

Me: Who would you like to pray for tonight?

J: Grandma

Me: What would you like to pray for Grandma?

J: She's really, really sick because she can't eat M&M's because she has diabetes so we have to pray for her to get better so she can eat M&M's again soon.

Too sick to eat chocolate. It doesn't get much worse than that to a three year old.

Snickers

 

We have 2 cats. The younger of the two, Snickers, seemed like a reasonably well-adjusted, smart creature when we first took her in. She was a frisky, friendly kitten. Somewhere along the line, however she developed significant emotional and psychiatric problems. It started out with a little stranger anxiety. Nothing too unusual - she just started hiding in another room whenever we had company. But that turned out to just be the start.

Three years after we got her, we moved to another state. Being naive cat owners, we didn't give them much thought in our plans. We had professional movers, courtesy of my new employer. They came one day and packed everything up then came back the next day to load the truck. I think that was the beginning of the end for poor Snickers' sanity. She spent the entire time the packers worked cowering under our bed. Which was fine, until it came time for them to pack up the bed. Snickers went tearing down the stairs into the basement, leaving a nice little trail of diarrhea behind her. (Fortunately for the new owners the stairs had been covered with paper by the movers). As if that weren't bad enough, behind her came our other cat, staggering like a drunk from the sedative we'd already given her, licking up the mess like someone had left her a treat.

We had planned that I would leave first, taking both cats with me. B was to come later, after making sure that the truck had been loaded without any problems. The only problem was finding Snickers. After an extended search, we finally located her. She had managed to wedge herself into a very small hole in the ceiling of the laundry room. There was exposed insulation and bare nails sticking out of a board above the hole. By the time I succeeded in dragging her out, I was scratched up both from her claws and the nails, and covered in itchy insulation. I managed to force-feed her a sedative pill, and said a little prayer that it would do the trick for the 6 hour drive I had ahead of me.

It was a pretty interesting drive, to say the least. I had one cat cowering in terror at my feet and the other pacing back and forth from my lap to the back seat while making howling, mournful cat sounds. I wonder what it would have been like without the sedatives?!

The closing for the house we were buying was scheduled for the following day. The kind sellers had offered to let us leave the cats in the new house overnight, since we were staying in a hotel. Seemed like a good idea. I dropped them off and set them up with their necessities. As luck would have it, though, that night there was a terrible thunder storm. If there had been any flicker of hope for poor Snickers' sanity up to that point, I think that quenched it. A night alone in a strange place with terrifying thunder all night was the last straw. When we came to the house after the closing the next day, we found her hiding in our suitcase. For the next 6 months, she refused to leave our closet. She trembled anytime anyone got close to her. She dropped from 9 lbs to 6 because she refused to eat. After those first 6 months, she would occasionally venture out of our bedroom - but only when the house was very still, and always with her hind end dragging on the floor. The moment she saw anything that moved, she darted back into the closet. She had just about adjusted after a couple years there, when, sadly for her, we decided to move again.

We'd learned a few lessons from the first time around and decided to try to make this move a little less traumatic for our feline friends. This time we moved the cats before we packed up and moved the rest of our things. We tried the sedatives again, but they were having none of it. I tried hiding them in treats. They would eat the treat and spit out the pill. Finally I gave up on that, since they hadn't seemed to be much help before. This time, B got to drive the cats, and I would come later with our son. We took the cats to my parents' home, where they lived in the garage until we were settled. They actually seemed to enjoy the arrangement. Snickers adjusted to our new home without quite as many difficulties as she had last time. She still doesn't like to be around anyone unfamiliar; no one who visits our house has ever seen her. She occasionally has issues with continence when she gets anxious (which doesn't take much, unfortunately). And eating is now her favorite coping mechanism. I think she's at least doubled her weight.

All that to say this: I'm pretty certain she would rather die than ever be taken to the vet. The car ride, the strangers, the unfamiliar place - all her least favorite things rolled into one event. Unfortunately, we've recently noticed that she has a problem with her right eye. I thought it was a cataract at first because it looked pretty cloudy some days. Other days it would be orange in color. Finally I noticed that the upper inside part of her iris has a big black spot. The days when her eye is orange, it's bleeding. You can actually watch it run down inside her eye if you catch it at the right time. From what I can tell by Googling "feline eye diseases," I'm pretty sure she has melanoma. Apparently, this is common in cats. The treatment? Enucleation of the eye. Ick!

Since she seems to feel fine, and acts as happy as she ever does, I've decided to let her keep the eye. It's really the humane thing to do. Maybe we'll reconsider if it starts to bother her.

I'm just hoping that she dies peacefully of metastatic disease before this thing totally fungates through her entire eyeball.

Wedding Bells

My cousin Becky got married today. We had a lovely time seeing our family at the wedding. We took the kids with us because: 1) The bride is one of 5 children, so I was pretty sure she wouldn't be too uptight if one of them made a peep during the ceremony 2) Many of my extended family members who were there had either never met our youngest, or at least hadn't seen us in a long time 3) My parents were also attending the wedding, so who was going to babysit if we left them home?!

We were thankful for a lovely, but very short ceremony. We managed to keep the kids entertained and reasonably quiet throughout it. The folks who sit in that pew at church tomorrow may be wondering what's up with all the cracker crumbs, though. Sorry!


 








After the ceremony, the very nice lady who played the harp gave J a little lesson. He was fascinated. "It's just like Quincy and the Magic Instruments," he told her. Judging from the confused look on her face, we're guessing she's not a big fan of The Little Einsteins



 It was a little strange to see Becky getting married. She's quite a bit younger than me, and I haven't seen her as much as many of my other cousins. I still think of her as a little girl. The last time I had seen her before today was at another cousin, Jenny's high school graduation open house. Jenny is now a PhD candidate. I guess it's been a while.


 We stayed out quite a bit later than our kids are used to. It was a special occasion and all, so we decided to "go crazy" and stay until 7:30pm. (Yeah, our children go to bed pretty early.) An amazing thing happened on the way home. J fell asleep in his car seat! (Despite the sugar rush he should have been having from all the Hershey kisses my Dad fed him.)And even more amazing - I was able to get him into bed without completely waking him up when we got home! I've heard of other children doing such things, but it has nothing like it has EVER happened in our experience! I'm expecting him to wake up any second now and freak out that he's been sleeping in his clothes. He's a big fan of PJ's.

Congratulations, Becky and Brian. Thanks for having us at your party!

Links

I finally got around to adding a link list to my sidebar. These are the people whose blogs I enjoy reading regularly. Some of them are friends and family. Some of them are people I only know through cyberspace -- but after reading their blogs for a while, they feel like old friends. My "cyber friends" all happen to be Christian moms. Sometimes I enjoy reading them because it reminds me I'm not the only one who doesn't have it all together. Sometimes they make me laugh so hard I can't breathe. And often they express the things that I feel in much better words than I could ever express. Check them out.

Who's watching the kids?

Yes, that is a picture of my son playing in the snow in short sleeves and bare feet.

It was Daddy's day to watch him.