Celebrating a Birthday I Wasn't Predicted to Have

Today I celebrate another year of life.  What's significant about that?  I wasn't expected to be celebrating today.  In fact, based on the doctor's predictions they shared with my husband almost a year ago, I wasn't supposed to live, yet here I am now entering my 40th year of life.

Predictions don't determine God's plans, and God had my days numbered before I was formed in my mother's womb.  I will not die a day earlier than what was predetermined by Him in His sovereign will.

So, here I am celebrating the life I still have left to continue to serve God.  When I didn't die there in the hospital when they discovered I had severe acute hyponatremia (sudden, low sodium levels) and thought they were too late, and when I woke up after being unresponsive for 24 hours exactly and discovered that I was in an ICU and had been hooked up to a ventilator, I knew there was a reason why I was still here and not in heaven.  As the painfully slow days of my recovery turned into a few months with my making a surprising and unpredicted near-complete recovery from the damage done to my heart and brain from the low sodium levels, I realized that God still has work for me to do for His kingdom. 

My continued unresponsive state after being removed from the ventilator

I don't understand all that God is doing in my life or what He expects from me, but I do know that He has called me to live each day for His glory as I love Him and follow His commands.  As family trials have continued to be difficult over the last year making the past two years the most difficult ones of our lives, I can't say that there haven't been times that I have wished I had died that day or wondered why I couldn't be free of these trials and be present with the Lord.  Those thoughts have come and gone over the course of the year, but one thing I always come back to is that God's not done with me yet.  When He is, then I will enter His presence. 

In the meantime, I rejoice that I have breath to praise Him and energy to serve Him.  I celebrate the life He has given to me and the course of life that He has ordained.  God is good in the good times and the bad times.  This year has been a time of growth in my trust in Him and His sovereignty as I learned in new ways to let go of my own plans and desires and let God be God.  I love Him more today than I did a year ago.  I know Him in a deeper and more intimate way today than at my last birthday.  I hunger and thirst after His Word and His righteousness more than I ever have.  They are my lifeline!

So today, I celebrate His work in my heart and life.  I reflect on His sovereign plan for my life.

Because of God's faithfulness, I am here today celebrating a day others predicted I would never see.  May He receive all of the glory and honor due Him.

Psalm 139:13-17:
"For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.  I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.  My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.  Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be. How precious to me are your thoughts, God!  How vast is the sum of them!"

The Growth of Summer

I love watching things grow during the summer.  I especially look forward to the growth and production of my organic vegetable garden every year.  Usually, my garden grows out of control, and we are swimming in its harvest and giving plenty of the bounty away because we can't consume, can, or dehydrate it fast enough.  This year in particular has been a very slow year of growth with my garden thanks to a pesty groundhog who gave up digging under the fence and instead goes through the fence and climbs up the raised beds to devour my garden.  I have trapped him once, but Tim inadvertently let him go when the trap door of the trap opened unexpectedly as he lifted up the trap.  Of course, the varmint isn't dumb enough to get trapped twice despite our tempting efforts.  It has been the most frustrating summer of growth that way.

However, there has been good growth in so many other ways this Summer.  Our boys are the most visible growth.  They have shot up so quickly the past few months growing a few inches each with Josh soaring past me in height.  It's been difficult to keep them in clothing!  We have grown as a family as Josh makes progress in his residential treatment, and the family relationship has been given time to heal and improve.  We have been able to go away for 2 week-long vacations spending really special, quality time with David giving him our long-overdue attention and making special memories together without the drama of a brother with Autism.  Tim and I have been able to grow in our marriage relationship having extra time to spend together just the two of us.  Lastly, I have experienced growth of a different kind.

This summer has been a time of spiritual growth for me.  My trust in God has been strengthened as I continue to learn anew (almost daily) that I am not in control of anything--especially my children, but that God is, and that's ok.  As a result, I've grown in my ability to let go and let God.  My love for and marvel of God has grown as I've had a chance to dig deeper into God's Word through a summer women's book/Bible study I was able to participate in bringing a whole new perspective to life and God's sovereignty and gifts.  My hunger to learn God's Word has grown as I've been challenged to memorize passages of Scripture and say them to others in the book study who keep me accountable and memorize verses also.  I've also grown in my experience of and participation in the edification of the Church body as I weekly spent time with some lovely, Godly women at this study.  I didn't realize how hungry and thirsty I was for Christian, female friendship, and being able to satifsy those longings has renewed my spirit.

As the Summer comes to an end, I am so grateful to God for the growth He has given to our family, and especially for the way he has grown His love and care in my heart and life.  I am strengthened and encouraged as I look to the start of another school year with many new and uncertain challenges ahead of our family, because I know the time of growth this summer will help carry me through all that God brings across our path.

Growth this Summer in the sunflower field of Please Wash Me Car Wash in Elverson, PA

Good Gifts from the Hand of God

This summer, I have been going to a women's Bible study on the book of Ecclesiastes where we use the book Living Life Backward by David Gibson to guide us in our study.  It has been such an enriching and encouraging study for me and has made the book of Ecclesiastes come alive in a whole new way for me.  Ecclesiastes is quickly becoming one of my favorite books of the Bible!

I have already learned so much from the study and am hoping to write a blog post on that as well in the future, but for today, I have to put to words what I experienced a few weeks ago where God gave me simple but meaningful gifts that I knew immediately were straight from His loving hands for my enjoyment and happiness.

In the second chapter of Living Life Backward, Gibson states, "By relativizing all that we do in our days under the sun, death can change us from people who want to control life for gain into people who find deep joy in receiving life as a gift.  This is the main message of Ecclesiastes in a nutshell:  life in God's world is gift, not gain" (p. 37).  Later, he points out that the Preacher in Ecclesiastes 2 bursts the bubbles of pleasure and profit, materialism, and laughter with the blunt reality that we all die, but in the end, the Preacher bursts death's bubble by pointing out that if we live knowing the reality of death will come upon us, we can stop striving so hard for the good things for which we long but can learn to enjoy them for what they are.  Gibson says, "Death reorients us to our limitations as creatures and helps us to see God's good gifts right in front of us all the time, each and every day of our lives.  Instead of using these gifts as means to a greater end of securing ultimate gain in the world, we take the time to live inside the gifts themselves and see the hand of God in them" (p. 45).

Ecclesiastes 2:24-26 tells us that God is the one who gives enjoyment and satisfaction and wisdom and knowledge.  After reflecting on the fact that everything in life, the good and the bad, are gifts from God, I prayed asking God to help me find the gifts in life, because lately, with the heavy burdens and difficult trials, I have lost sight of the gifts and just cling to God's grace to sustain me each day and help me keep putting one foot in front of the other on a daily basis forgetting that God's grace itself is a gift.  The very next day, I saw a very visible and tangible answer to that prayer and stood in awe of God's goodness in even the small things.

I had been extremely stressed out trying to help everyone else get ready for a week-long retreat that I was quickly running out of time to get our family ready for the retreat.  We were going to a place where there weren't many food options, not to mention healthy ones.  Our inn did not provide breakfast, so I wanted to make sure I made enough things to bring with us that would suffice as breakfast that wouldn't spoil being kept in a cooler on ice since I knew we wouldn't have a fridge.  It also needed to be food items that didn't need to be heated up or cooked since we wouldn't have access to a stove or microwave (not that we use a microwave anyway). I also wanted to make sure we had food options to cover some of our lunches.  We were coming down to the wire for our departure, and even though I had my recipes chosen, I had yet to start the cooking and baking not to mention packing for the trip.  I have not been able to have gluten the last year due to increasing adverse reactions to it, and we were going to be having a campfire one night during the retreat and making S'mores.  I had really wanted to make myself some gluten-free graham crackers, but I knew there was no way I was going to be able to have time for that.  I also had wanted to make some special gluten-free chocolate chip cookies so that I could enjoy dessert when others had desserts that I couldn't have.  Again, not a chance of that happening.  We are very careful in what we eat and don't use refined sugars, gluten, most grains, and only healthy oils.  That being said, it's not as simple as running to the grocery store for gluten-free labeled products, so I was disappointed but content to be resigned that I won't be able to have special treats.

However, God had other plans for me.  On June 21, two days before our departure, I ran to the local farms where I get our groceries and decided to swing by a discount food store on my way home in case I could find some organic ingredients I needed that I wasn't successful in getting at the farms or couldn't get at the farms.  While there, I decided to peruse the aisles as sometimes, they have organic treasures that fit within our dietary choices.  Lo and behold, God had everything I needed there, and more than I could have ever dreamed.  With each shocking find, I immediately thanked God for the special gift.  It almost became comical with how many special gifts directly from God that I found in the store.  I literally laughed out loud at God's goodness to me that day.  I found the organic milk that came in juice box size that would keep better than the raw organic milk I get from the farm to go with the granola I was planning to make.  Ordinarily, I make our yogurt from the raw milk I get from the farm, and I had run out of yogurt that week and knew I didn't have time to make more to go with the granola and/or fruit I was planning to bring as a breakfast or lunch option.  The discount store happened to have plain organic whole milk yogurt sitting on the shelf waiting for me to claim it.  The top two gifts from God caught me totally by surprise and made me tear up right there in the store.  There on the shelf sat a box of gluten-free graham crackers with acceptable ingredients and not too far down the aisle from that were two boxes of chocolate chip cookies also made with the right ingredients.  I have never seen either of those two products before, and I have looked since to find them again since they were so good, but I have not found them (up until today when I found one box of the chocolate chip cookies).  I know God put them there and led me to them because He cared about me and my silly longings and gave me those precious and delicious gifts for my enjoyment and happiness.  God is so good!

Finding those gifts from God have been a great encouragement to me to keep looking for God's gifts in every day whether they be something as silly as needing healthy and gluten-free chocolate chip cookies or protection from an accident or an answer to prayer.  I find myself always looking and praising God for those gifts as I see them.  I marvel at how easy they are to find when you are looking for them and how we so often go through life blind to them.  I am working on living life in light of death and enjoying the daily gifts God gives to me to enjoy in the moment because I never know if it will be my last.