Remembering God's Deeds

There was a time, not that long ago but which seems like a lifetime ago when I...

I cried out to God for help; I cried out to God to hear me.

When I was in distress, I sought the Lord;
at night I stretched out untiring hands
and my soul refused to be comforted.

I remembered you, O God, and I groaned;
I mused, and my spirit grew faint.
Selah

You kept my eyes from closing; I was too troubled to speak. Psalm 77:1-4

October 12, 2007 is a date that I will never forget.

It is not a birthday or the day I was married.

It was the day we discovered there was a tumor growing in side my three-year-old daughter. I was surprised, although God was not.

Last night, I learned of a family in our community that may hear today those same words, 'Your child has cancer." They will face a flood of emotions that nothing, not even my words can prepare them for. It will be surreal, it will be frightening. They will feel the love of those around them, yet they will feel unloved. They will have many present with them, but they will feel alone. All of these moments will come and go, but they will surely come.

When I got the news at the beginning of our church service, I could barely sit through the service. My heart was broken. Partly because all of those emotions came flooding back, and partly I felt so saddened that anyone but especially people I knew would have to experience this. I wish I could carry this burden for them. I am prepared. I have been there. I began to think of all of the things I could say to them, or do for them. And then I though...

Then I thought, "To this I will appeal:
the years of the right hand of the Most High."

I will remember the deeds of the LORD;
yes, I will remember your miracles of long ago.

I will meditate on all your works
and consider all your mighty deeds.

Your ways, O God, are holy.
What god is so great as our God?

You are the God who performs miracles;
you display your power among the peoples.

Psalm 77:10-14

This is all I can really do for them. Call out to God. The God who in his mercy and grace choose to make a way for Carys to recover from her illness. To me the greater miracle of Carys' journey is the work He accomplished in our hearts. The closeness I found to Him. The many people who were {and still are being touched} by my daughter.

In good time I will see them. I will pray over them and make myself and my family available to them in any way they might need us. Yes, I could flood them with hospital advice, treatment advice and on and on and on...But I know that it will be weeks before they can process this type of information anyway. Before their hearts are ready to begin the fight. Before they are able to comprehend that their three-year-old just became the family, make that the community, missionary. This is going to change the way their world views God; it will be awhile before they can see this.

I am not sure what time they will be in clinic today. I am praying for another miracle in Clinic 8 like I witnessed on THIS DAY. Please join me in lifting up The Steele Family in your prayers.

David, Jennifer (Wallace), Mackenzie-5, and Kilya-3

Prayer and Perspective

For some reason, perspective seems to be a theme in the writings God sends me. He has revealed to me in a very real way that the Free Will He allowed mankind, requires that we be actively involved in the choices we make about how we look at and/or react to the situations God places before us.

I do not want to mislead you to think that I have always taken the right perspective on situations. No, I have not. But God has taught be from those times and I feel that it is so important to share what God has done for me! I am a VERY visual learner. So, I decided to use a visual aid to help drive my point home. Look at the following picture...Okay, before you go on talking about what a horrible photographer I am, lets think about this. What is this? {you will find out later}

I will tell you that it is just a small piece of a larger picture. Imagine that the whole image was the size of a huge wall. The image took up every square inch of that wall. And you, the observer, were forced to stand with your nose against that wall. What would you be able to see. Perhaps something like the picture above.

It would be a very small piece of the whole picture that you would be able to see. Also, it would be hard to put the picture into focus. Just the shear size of the thing and your position to it would make it nearly impossible to figure out what the artist was attempting to do with this "mess."

This is exactly how our lives are. Life is like a masterpiece of art that fills up a whole wall of time. We, often try to observe and analyze what God {the Holy Artist} is trying to do with this "mess." Particularly during the difficult times, we stand there with our nose against the wall of God's Plan trying to make sense of it all. "Why God?" and "What does all this mean?" are often our questions.

This is where FAITH steps in. The Bible says,
"Do you not know? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary, and his understanding no one can fathom." Isaiah 40:28

See HE knows things that we cannot comprehend. He is the only Person big enough to stand far enough back from the "wall" of His Plan to see the whole thing. So we must...

"Trust in the LORD with all {our} heart and lean not on {our} own understanding; "Proverbs 3:5

When things see crazy, out of focus, and just plain unfair we have to learn to lean on His understanding. This is difficult because our minds are made in the image of his. I believe that we have the physical capacity to understand what God understands...{you can read plenty of studies about the amount of un-used matter in our human brains.} What we lack, is the spiritual capacity to understand like Him.

I challenge you, especially if you have something going on in your life that you do not understand, to "Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you."1 Peter 5:7

Let him handle the details in your life...remember, only He can see the BIG picture!

{The first picture was a piece of Carys' shoulder as seen in the picture above.}

How to Kill a Mockingbird...

**No animals were harmed in the making of this post or the pictures contained therein. Furthermore, one Sir Sawyer Cottingham was duly warned against the slaughter of all types of song birds.**

Sawyer got his first REAL gun this weekend. It is a tiny Daisy BB gun. On Sunday after church, Justin took him to the shooting range to practice. Upon their return, Sawyer took me into the yard to show me how to "kill a bird with a BB gun" Here goes...

First you gather your equipment.

CALLS

Retriever

Gun, which you must load with ammo. {and hold your mouth right}

Begin to call your prey.

Hand motions are imperative.

If no luck, step up your calling efforts.

Wait, patiently, for your pray to respond or appear.

Aim. FIRE!

Send your retriever after the kill...

It is really quite simple.

Fingerprint Friday

There is a song by Steven Curtis Chapman that says:
I can see the fingerprints of God
When I look at you
I can see the fingerprints of God
And I know its true
You're a masterpiece
That all creation quietly applauds
And you're covered with the fingerprints of God.

You all know what a wonderful time we had at the beach. When I look at this photo and think about all that is revealed to us, about God, through nature I am amazed.

God is the beginning of life. All life. All form. All meaning.
I cannot help but think of the following scripture.

Genesis 1:1-9

¹ In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. ² Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. ³ And God said, "Let there be light," and there was light. ⁴ God saw that the light was good, and He separated the light from the darkness. ⁵ God called the light "day," and the darkness he called "night." And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day. ⁶ And God said, "Let there be an expanse between the waters to separate water from water." ⁷ So God made the expanse and separated the water under the expanse from the water above it. And it was so. ⁸ God called the expanse "sky." And there was evening, and there was morning—the second day. ⁹ And God said, "Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear." And it was so. ¹⁰ God called the dry ground "land," and the gathered waters he called "seas." And God saw that it was good.

Visit the Rusted Chain for more Fingerprints!

Senior Portraits

I believe they speak for themselves.

Whew!!

I am really feeling the effects of the end of the school year. I will be much better prepared for this next school year. This is the first end of the year in this position by myself. I am trying to stay focused on the fact that I get the next two months off, something many would love to have.

I am so ready for my time with the kids the summer. I have a lot planned for us to do!

I will update later today with pictures from Carys' graduation. She is officially a First Grader!!!

My prayer for today is that I can find a way to...

¹⁴Do everything without complaining or arguing, ¹⁵so that you may become blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation, in which you shine like stars in the universe ¹⁶as you hold out the word of life—in order that I may boast on the day of Christ that I did not run or labor for nothing. ¹⁷But even if I am being poured out like a drink offering on the sacrifice and service coming from your faith, I am glad and rejoice with all of you. ¹⁸So you too should be glad and rejoice with me. {Philippians 2:14-18}

Final Beach Post

We are home.
It is very bittersweet.

There are no words to describe the level of blessed that I feel. I just got back from a wonderful vacation. I have such a wonderful family {both that were on vacation with us and at home!} My mom stepped up and took care of all of our plants and animals while we were gone. THANK YOU Mother for doing that! The kids were absolutely wonderful while we were on the trip. The were together 24/7 for 4 days straight and did not get into any major skirmishes! My dear husband suffered from a toothache {he is on his way for a root canal this morning} the entire trip, but was a trooper and spent LOADS of time the kids which they LOVED! He even afforded me a little alone time to just sit and pray or be on the computer and edit photos! We stayed up late and slept in. We ate well and just took a short breather to get me through the next week or two of school. It was wonderful.

I hesitated before posting all of that. I know that there are people reading who's lives are not so blissful. Who have all sorts of things going on right now. They are just as bogged down with work as I am, but there may not be a beach vacation in their near future. They may not have the loving, devoted husband I have. Or, {the one that hits home the most} they may not have two happy healthy children running and playing like mine.

I stopped for just a moment to remember the moments when I felt hopeless and desperate for something to happen. Anything. Just anything that would make me feel better than my circumstances. But those were only moments. Then I realized {even back then} what I HAD. Life, given to be by a Savior to live out for His glory. And I realized that I HAD to post all of these wonderful things so that everyone can see what GOD CAN do. He is wonderful! Trusting in Him provides all that you need to carry on through the tough times and really soak up the glorious times. I realized that were it not for those "dark" times in my life I would NOT be able to see how truly spectacular my life is today!

Back to the beach...

Here is the boat we went on.

Here are the boat's Captain and Co-Captain!

Daddy and Sawyer enjoying the view from the front deck. It was so interesting to see how the sails work and how fast the boat moved through the water using just what God had provided!

Pop on deck. It was also very relaxing.

Grandmother Cottingham really enjoyed herself. And looked amazing!

Grammy and Carys on the boat before we left the dock.

Justin loves the water and this was also his first time on a sailboat.

Sawyer was very intrigued by the boat. At one point, he asked where the captain's "pirates" were. It was so funny! He is a really comical {but serious} child.

If you do not know, sailboats lean. As the winds shift or the captain changes directions and the sails move, the boat leans. Our captain was great to tell us when this was going to happen. I quite liked it, but it could make some people queasy I'm sure.

Carys loved the wind.

Isn't she lovely!