I have just returned from Wednesday night services at my church.

For a couple of months I have felt that I was not walking with God as closely as I once did. I have prayed and asked God to give me back my tears of love I felt when I first met Jesus.

My neighbor has also been going through the same thing and we confessed it to one another just last week and started praying for each other, though I wasn’t sure my prayers were going any higher than the ceiling.

Tonight we had the most unusual communion service I have ever attended. Instead of the deacons serving communion to us, we went to the altar in two groups of eight at a time, with the senior pastor at one table and the associate pastor at the other table.

We actually broke bread and then the pastor asked one of the men to pray. We then ate that bread, the symbol of Christ’s body. We went through the same ceremony with the grape juice (no wine for Baptists) while the pastor quoted scripture again and had one of the other men pray. Then we drank the juice.

All the while this was going on music was being played by the bell choir or being sung by a soloist who was then joined by the congregation.

All the music that touched me so deeply as a child–”The Old Rugged Cross”, “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross”, “Were You There When They Crucified My Lord?” and others that seemed to move me with each one, until I had to quit singing and just started crying. Not little tears but giant, shaking sobs of regret and re-dedication to my Lord and Savior, who gave up Passover until He can have it with us in Heaven.

God gave me back my tears and now I feel as though I can walk on clouds and I feel emotionally drained all at the same time. In other words, I have been given the privilege of falling in love with Jesus all over again, and I wanted to share it with you.

The last song was not the usual “Blest Be the Tie That Binds” but was “Victory in Jesus” instead and one could feel the Holy Spirit moving in that sanctuary as people went forward to pray and re-dedicate their lives.

What a wonderful joy! He looked beyond my faults and saw my need. And He filled that need. Praise God!

On Tuesday I told you our daughter in law had been taken by ambulance to the hospital for a suspected aneurysm in her brain. After sending emails to our church list and to prayer warriors on my email list we were so relieved to get the answer in such a short time. She suffered a “complicated” migraine and sinus infection and thus the blood in her spinal fluid. She is feeling fine now.

What I didn’t tell you was that my husband had to undergo an endoscopy and colonoscopy on Friday due to the lab having found blood in his stool.

We spent the afternoon at the hospital with the doctor running about 40 minutes behind. Everyone in there to be tested was starving, but they had gone through the prep and had to stick it out. One doctor was on call at the ER as well as doing these scheduled procedures. Not very good scheduling on the part of his practice.

When I went back to the cubicle made with curtains my husband was lying there, seemingly awake, and doing what they tell you to do after this procedure.

Soon the doctor came in and told us he had removed a couple of polyps and could not find the source for the bleeding. He says that can happen from almost anything and my husband is on aspirin therapy per the instructions from his cardiologist. No, he doesn’t have heart trouble yet. They are watching a couple of small blood vessels to make sure they don’t get more blockage than they have.

My husband has to go back June 6 to have his colon checked with barium and an X-Ray. This is because my husband has gained weight and his colon has grown as a result. The doctor ran out of tube to check the entire colon and wants to see all of it.

We expect he will be fine and he went to bed almost as soon as he got something light to eat last night. He’s still snoozing away.

Just when Satan tries to put doubts in my mind about God and Jesus, the Lord takes them out by showing us the power or prayer and His healing powers.

We truly had the peace that passes understanding with my husband’s condition, but our daughter in law threw us for a loop since she has a history of cancer brought on by Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma. At one time she had three tumors on the base of her skull, and we thought they might be acting up.

Fortunately, that was not the case.

I cannot appropriately praise God in words even in the best of times, but at times like this I feel even more humble.

Words are not enough to express my love for each of you for praying for Lucy and probably for Don too as you read Sue’s post on Friday to pray for us.

It’s so wonderful to know the Lord, and if we didn’t have Him we would have been downcast at the very least. I’m convinced of that.

Now I’m also exhausted as I didn’t realize the strain on me until it was all over. I never panic as long as I know something has to be done, but after it’s all over, I collapse in exhaustion and exhilaration at what Jesus has done for us in addition to His blood sacrifice on the Cross of Calvary.

Have a wonderful week-end, everyone, and please go to church on Sunday. You will be amazed at how blessed you will be.

I am still not at liberty to give you the details for the Anchoress having to go to the ER except to tell you she had more kidney stones and an infection from it.

She’s slowly on the mend now and I wish to thank everyone who took the time to pray for her, as she would for you.

She says she felt the prayers and I’m sure she did. She contacted Captain Ed, me and her brother Thom because she describes us as prayer warriors. I am humbled by that description, and will admit I got my circle of prayer warriors involved in praying for her too.

Again, thank you for praying for her, keep praying and praise God she is on the mend.

I consider the Anchoress to be one of my best friends and she has never been anything but kind to me.

Are you one of those people who prays only when there is a crisis in your life, and when it’s over you stop praying?

When you pray do you pray for an immediate answer and you want that answer to be yes? And if it isn’t yes do you just throw up your hands on God and get back to your old life?

When you ask for God’s Will to be done do you really mean it or do you mean you want YOUR will to be done? If you don’t get what you want do you walk away from Him again until you have another crisis?

I learned a lot about prayer and waiting upon the Lord, but it took years for me to see the fruits of that prayer.

My parents were not married when I was born. I barely knew my mother and didn’t even know what my father looked like. I was raised by my mother’s aunt and a boarder in the house who had lost his wife.

I had two step-fathers who beat me; one even went so far as to hit me in the face with his fist and throw me across a room.

If it hadn’t been for my aunt and uncle returning to our area on military assignment I honestly don’t know what kind of release I would have had or chosen. By then I was staying with my mother and I would be allowed to stay with my aunt and uncle as often as I could.

When I was 13 years old I got it into my head that if my father knew what was happening he would come to my rescue like a knight in shining armor.

That’s when I started to pray every day that I would meet my biological father on my fourteenth birthday. Birthdays fourteen through sixteen came and went and I quit praying to meet him.

I was saved and I believed I would meet him, but after two years I decided the Lord had other plans for me.

After I was married I found out where my father was and gave him a call. He gave me a calling down. I was 22 years old then.

My mother died suddenly in February 2000 and it became urgent for me to see if my biological father was alive or dead.

At the end of May 2003 I had mailed a check to someone back home in Maine to be used for charity. The check came back stating I had the wrong address.

I checked Yahoo to get the fellow’s telephone number, but I was informed I’d have to pay to get the information. I decided not to do that but then it struck me that I might be able to find my father because the note on the side said if you knew where anyone lived in the past ten years they could locate them for you.

You could pay $25 for an answer in 24 hours or $65 for an answer in an hour. I typed in my father’s name and my home town and struck out.

Then I remembered I had heard he lived in a different town so I put in that town. Voila! His name came up and I chose the one hour option.

When I got the information I called him, told him who I was and was met with the answer I had been waiting 40 years to hear: “I think it’s about time we met, dear.”

He was in the Panhandle of Florida and it just so happened I was on my way to Florida that very week-end. (This was on a Tuesday) All this time he had been three and a half hours from where my aunt and uncle lived and I had been going there every year.

We met at a Waffle House because his wife didn’t want me at her house. She was apparently afraid I wanted money. We hugged and kissed when we first met, and when we left we each studied the other’s face, cupping it in our hands a couple of times.

I thought I’d never see him again and I was satisfied with that, but a month later he needed serious surgery and wanted me to be there.

My Dad died 25 months after we met, but every minute we were together or on the phone during those 25 months it was a love-fest.

He had been a heavy drinker when I was growing up and said I wouldn’t have liked him back then.

I forgot about my prayer, thinking God had said no, when He actually said “Not yet.”

I held my father’s left hand as he drew his last breath. He, too, died suddenly, but our last exchange of words before he went to the rehab hospital on the Tuesday before he died Thursday night were, “I love you, Dad.” “I love you too, Dear.”

Don’t give up on your prayers or on God. He always does what’s best for you when it’s best for you. Just ask me. And my step-mother? She and I are best friends now.

But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall mount up with wings as eagles. They shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.” Isaiah 40:31

My daughter in law just got off the phone with me. The test results from Wednesday have been confirmed, and the two lymph nodes under her arm are so small no treatment is necessary on them.

She will go back in six months unless she has some symptoms for another scan. After 4 clean scans a person is declared in remission from Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma.

This is absolutely nothing short of a miracle and a Physician much greater than any on earth is responsible for this.

I get down on my knees and cry Holy! Holy! Holy!

Heavenly Father, I praise Your Holy Name, for you are God, and there is none other before You or after You.

Amen.

I had to share this news with you now.

Today my daughter in law was in class doing her rotation at a hospital. She received a voice mail from the pathologist who diagnosed her cancer but couldn’t take the message.

He then called the hospital and asked to speak to her. He told her to go into a room, close the door and sit down. She told him she just couldn’t stand to hear more bad news as she had had a body scan of her cancer done yesterday. He commanded her to do as he said and she did.

He then told her of the 15 malignant spots she had in the prior scan, 7 are completely gone, 6 are what they call reactive, meaning swollen glands from something like a sinus infection (she has a sinus infection), and 2 are still cancerous but are under her arm and can be removed by surgery!

She has to go back tomorrow and repeat the scan just to make sure the machine didn’t make a mistake, and we are cautiously optimistic until we get the final word.

None of the lymph nodes got larger, as you have seen some have gone away and the color has not changed in any of them.

People all over the country have been praying for her, including my good friend The Anchoress, Kimsch from Musing Minds and many other bloggers whose names have escaped me at this moment of excitement.

Please keep her in your prayers that this is, indeed, a correct reading of the body scan. I’ll let you know something tomorrow as soon as I know.

Praise God! She asked me if I could believe it and I told her there were people all over the country praying for her and that my prayer has been thanksgiving for healing her body, whether it be directly by God, or by God using doctors.

He’s still in the miracle business. He made our bodies and He can certainly heal them if that’s His will.

I thought this repeat of an earlier post would be something that could cool down some of the discussion going on about genocide happening or not happening. Enjoy.

In honor of my American Indian heritage and my Christianity, I present to you Amazing Grace sung in the Cherokee language.

Amen.

It was the summer of the year when I was 12 years old.

I had recently returned from two weeks at Bible Camp, enjoying Christian fellowship and learning about Jesus.

I didn’t accept Christ as my Savior at camp, though.

I came home and I can still remember it as if it happened yesterday. It was hot so the windows in my bedroom were open and for about two weeks the Holy Spirit dealt with me.

I have heard people pray “may someone’s bed be a bed of rocks and their pillow a pillow of stone until they accept You, Lord.”

I’m living proof of that prayer being true in my life.

I resisted for about two weeks because I didn’t want my friends to laugh at me. After all, it’s easier to be of the world than of the Lord.

Night after long night I tossed and turned until I thought I was going to lose my mind. Sleep was something that wasn’t coming easily for me.

I wasn’t thinking idle thoughts, either. I knew I was thinking of Salvation, and I know now it was the work of the Holy Spirit.

One night I finally got out of bed and got down on my knees at the side of my bed and asked Jesus to come into my heart and soul and be my Savior.

I confessed my sins and acknowledged He is the One and only Begotten Son of God and because He died and was resurrected and lives at the Right Hand of the Father I am able to have eternal life.

The tears came a few years later when the Spirit finally got it into my thick head that Jesus loves me and I should love Him too, not just because I don’t want to go to hell, but because He has that Perfect love that gives me peace that passes all understanding.

I was baptized in a river (full immersion) at the age of 16 by a pastor who, with his wonderful wife, had a big impact on my spiritual life.

If ever I had a problem in my life and I called Mrs. Ludwig just to talk, the first thing she would say is, “Are you alright? The Lord has put you on my heart to pray for you.” What sweet words!

The road has been rocky and has sometimes curved, but I’m still following the path and one day we will all rejoice in Heaven together with the One Who made it all possible.

Jesus paid it all. All to Him I owe.

Thank you for this opportunity to share my testimony.

The last verse of this beloved hymn is not sung in this video. Here are the words from my memory:

These are, to me, the most wonderful of the words to this hymn because it tells us there is no conception of time as we know it in Heaven and when we’ve been there 10,000 years we still have eternity to sing praises to our God and our Savior. What a promise!

Today is Palm Sunday, the beginning of Holy Week. I am not going to talk about politics today, but instead am going to give you the verses from the New Testament that show our Lord’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem, where five days later He would be crucified for our sins.

From BibleGateway is the New International Version of Luke 19:28-44:

28 After Jesus had said this, he went on ahead, going up to Jerusalem.

29 As he approached Bethphage and Bethany at the hill called the Mount of Olives, he sent two of his disciples, saying to them,

30 “Go to the village ahead of you, and as you enter it, you will find a colt tied there, which no one has ever ridden. Untie it and bring it here.

31 If anyone asks you, ‘Why are you untying it?’ tell him, ‘The Lord needs it.’ ”

32 Those who were sent ahead went and found it just as he had told them.

33 As they were untying the colt, its owners asked them, “Why are you untying the colt?”

34 They replied, “The Lord needs it.”

35 They brought it to Jesus, threw their cloaks on the colt and put Jesus on it.

36 As he went along, people spread their cloaks on the road.

37 When he came near the place where the road goes down the Mount of Olives, the whole crowd of disciples began joyfully to praise God in loud voices for all the miracles they had seen:

38 “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!”[a]
“Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!”

39 Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to Jesus, “Teacher, rebuke your disciples!”

40 “I tell you,” he replied, “if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out.”

41 As he approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it

42 and said, “If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace—but now it is hidden from your eyes.

43 The days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment against you and encircle you and hem you in on every side.

44 They will dash you to the ground, you and the children within your walls. They will not leave one stone on another, because you did not recognize the time of God’s coming to you.”

How sad that even today so many people do not recognize God came to us in the form of His Only Begotten Son Jesus.

In honor of my American Indian heritage and my Christianity, I present to you Amazing Grace sung in the Cherokee language.

Amen.