Water babies

Spring break arrived all at the same time for the kids and I, so we bundled into the Sub and drove up to the iced over Lake Superior with Ali along for company. There is something about water - I don't put much credence in astrology but it is noteworthy that I am a Pisces and my name means "white wave". Water speaks my language and syncs my soul with the mighty universe, tapping me back into the source of energy, peace, growth. Here I am safe and I am whole, I have limitless potential, I believe in myself and the earth and others. It is respite much needed from dangerous precipices of past and present colliding to set me off center.

The textures and colors on the shore are breathtaking. The harsh cascades of ice off the rusty cliffs, the contrast of the soft and solid ice, the pools of water melting from the brief sunlight, the sound of an underground river running...

Of course, we have adventures: I brave the icy waters below and try to edge my way along the shoreline to the caves that I've never been able to see. Sliding each foot forward tentatively, one finally pushes through the mushy top layer. I almost put weight on it, thinking it's just surface melt. But Lake Superior is unforgiving always, and deadly in winter, so I push with my toe once more, and my boot goes down into the icy water. I keep my balance, pick the slab of ice out of the hole, and look clear through to the bottom 15 feet below. Every pebble is visible in still relief through the viscous water, clear as glass but with that wintery blue hue that bathes the world up here.

We pick rocks, dig through to the underground river, slide and skip stones across the glassy ice in the cove. Facts and ideas and things to teach keep leaping to my tongue, but the hollowly silent air by the waveless expanse swallows up my intellect and we are all just awe and contentment and bliss.

Little fingers are red with cold and cheeks have angry splotches, but we press on into the twilight after sunset, skating with our boots on a small natural ice rink, eating snow, sliding on our butts down embankments and boulders covered in inches of ice.

Recharged, refreshed, rested, we drive away on a sunny Thursday with the lake sparkling like an vast field of diamonds. There are no words for the joy of seeing a once-in-a-lifetime natural event like the ice over on the big Lake this year. There are days you barely scrape your way through to bedtime and wonder how you made it, and then there are days you know you will never forget: days like these last stolen few on the wild, boundless beauty of our favorite shores.

"shine bright like a diamond"

Mother prayers

You who have been safe your whole life, you children yet to meet the evil of this world, you're sassy and free. I am learning what a child of 7, 8, 9 is like without scars. You believe in those big hands of Grandpa's - they would protect you, they would threaten anyone who threatened you.

You don't know that evil is insidious. It comes dressed in friend's clothing, it comes in the shape of your heroes, it comes along with love and it comes along with joy. It is a silent companion, a shadow like a panther creeping closer when those big hands aren't around to protect you.

You dream when you are alone. I don't know what dreams fill your little head, but I know they aren't nightmares. I know your nightmares, and they aren't of people you love turning evil, or of being awoken in the night by a terrible face that used to show only love. Your nightmares are amorphous - lightening storms and monsters. But when you wake, I can comfort you. You haven't wet the bed in fear. You don't hide your nightmares from me, afraid I'll discover the truth.

And maybe life can be as simple as growing up and falling in love and living with joy. It is the hope of mothers everywhere - that their children have a happy life. Do some mothers dream of their children having a childhood just like theirs? I pray you have the joy of siblings, the love of parents, the wings for your dreams - but not the torment and the secrets and the caustic burn of wrongdoing in the night that feels as though it somehow leaked through the innocence of your own little soul.

I pray that when someone says they love you, they really do. I pray that when someone says they'll always be there for you, they will be there. I pray you never face a turncoat or a frenemy or a two-faced liar. I hope you never discover one of those amongst your friends. I pray you keep your innocence, that the world doesn't rip it from you with the truth that evil is here along with good. I hope you can watch from the sidelines when pain is afoot. I pray you are His, and hedged about, and free and believing and gullible and naïve.

Be the shining face that believes in the power of good. Be the innocent soul that encourages and gathers groups to carry out your big dreams. Be the kind voice that speaks of Christ's love, unadulterated by the knowledge of exactly what His love has saved us from.

Be that kind of person.

Don't be me.

I need Your romance

Somewhere in the haze of girlhood I lost my sense of whimsy. All the symbols girls adore grew stale, cliché - no more doodled hearts and rainbows dancing in swirls across lined sheets of notebook paper. I stuck between the lines, wrote in Roman alphabet, and taught myself calligraphy instead of doodling.

It's what happens when your heart breaks too soon in life, I suppose. You give up on romance and turn to logic because it's ever so much safer. Predictable, calm, precise and controlled. Just like you wish your life and heart would be. Just like you've trained your emotions. Just like the iron fist you've wrapped around your tear ducts, the roiling in your belly that threatens to spill vomit whenever your thoughts drift away from math homework or history books and into the dark crevices of memory.

I didn't get romance back even for my wedding day. Joy, yes. My smile was wide and free, and I threw my arms around my new husband's neck with abandon. I let him carry me off to our honeymoon, but I wasn't going to write a poem about the sunset, even then. Babies were born, and I let myself be carried away to heaven and back simply on the indescribable scent of their hair. Still no romance.

It started to seep back in slowly, the romance of life.

Songs penned.

Photographs taken.

A tiny pad of postcard sized watercolor paper and a single brush and two tubes of paint.

A space on the internet for a blog that started out simply to relay a few facts about cancer, but suddenly burgeoned with the overflow of the soul as the dam nearly broke in the wake of emotions that couldn't be contained any longer.

In the days that followed the surgery that changed my life forever, one symbol crept back in. Not a rainbow, a heart, or a peace sign. A butterfly. Your thyroid gland sits just below your voicebox, in the shape of a butterfly with wings outstreched, ready to take the next breeze heavenward. It is a thing of beauty, tucked in secret deep within your throat. A piece of poetry straight from the Maker to you, a little love gift right where songs are created by your own unique voice, right where you speak and whisper words of love, right where your laugh is formed.

When I lost my butterfly in the throat, the colorful creatures floating on the summer winds became precious to me. Whenever I see them, I smile and tears well, all in the same moment. I am remembering the beauty He gifted me with, the beauty that was taken away by thieves in childhood's night, and the beauty that was reborn out of cancer grief - the eyes that see again beauty everywhere, romance everywhere, the whimsy and lilt and lovesong of life. If I'd never lost my thyroid to cancer, I'd never have noticed the butterflies all around me. I'd never be a doodler or a dreamer again.

He has sent me to provide for those who grieve - to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair. They will be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the Lord for the display of his splendor. (Isaiah 61:1 & 3 exc.)

Hollow eyes

Eyes of glass

matte paper projector screen

with the scenes playing from the inside

I remember too much

and now I can't scream

Got to take it in stride

Flash back to seven

flash back to blood

flash back to lies

as I held back the flood

I was the child with thumb in dike

I was the girl with banana seat bike

One day I "fell on it" and bled so much

I remember doctor's cold gloves

indignity of exam

Private places

empty spaces

filled with pain

never the same

I try to cry, scream, swear, weep

I try hardest to go to sleep

To walk the halls of unconscious mind

like the Oreo lost in the bottom of the milk glass

I dive in and I'm sinking fast

I just go looking for someone to believe in me

Cover up the scarlet letter

Wrap me up in robes

Lead me out trembling

If only I could say (like He did)

"It is finished."

Flip the switch.

Go back to life.

Have eyes that see instead of flash fear reflection.

I can't say "it is finished"

friends, family circle shields

and tell me no

tell evil where to go

Hide knives and pill bottles

I stifle

and shiver cold

And dive instead

of death and her freedom

into small joys

swing on the swingset

paint a new picture

develop some film

Try to regrow life from a hollow soul.
Try to remember why I want to age out slow.

This is a video portrayal of my Gratitude List for this week.

Excerpted from my Gratitude Journal #568-600:
#569 Friends who come over in the middle of the night
#574 Being allowed to have a pencil
#577 Despair - yet huddling like the chick
I am under His wings
#581 Forgiveness given freely
#583 Cheerful night nurse - swapping night shift stories
#587 the sweet childish "I think I like you very much" from the autistic woman who doesn't speak
#596 A sermon that splays me wide open
#601 That God uses me, least of all His children, to speak the Gospel to broken people. 5 people accept salvation and I give away 3 Bibles in 14 days at the hospital

Reflection from the trenches

Each time the mystery of suffering touches us personally and all the cosmic questions arise afresh in our minds we face the choice between faith (which accepts) and unbelief (which refuses to accept). There is only one faculty by which we may lay hold of this mystery. It is the faculty of faith, and "faith is the fulcrum of moral and spiritual balance". It helps me, at such a time of bewilderment and sorrow, to go to some of the simplest words, such as I am the good shepherd. My Lord chose that description of Himself, and He does not change. He was and is and always will be my shepherd. The word fits my need, for I am a sheep, helpless and bleating. He cannot foget one for whom He lays down His life. I bank everything on that.

~ Elisabeth Elliot, A Path Through Suffering: Discovering the Relationship between God's Mercy and Our Pain

Choices of the magnitude of those facing Aaron and I today are unfathomable. It is as if I have suddenly become blind, and must navigate using unfamiliar senses bolstered by a hefty dose of trust in those around me who offer help. We know that Amelia is not getting better; we know that we don't have a good explanation for her illness; we know that the pressure surrounding her brain is climbing. So we step forward, and accept terrible, wonderful medical intervention. I am uncomfortably familiar with the altar that is the operating table. I have walked up to it myself praying for salvation in the temporal sense: excise my cancer, carefully please, that, by God's grace and your skill, I might live. Today I walk up to that table with precious cargo laid gingerly there. I dwarfed the thin table on which I laid; the tiny form I lay on the table is dwarfed by it. I try to subdue my eyes, which would plead with these doctors and nurses for extra care, for divine intervention that would forestall their mistakes and enlighten their misunderstandings. Try to dose them with just enough of my faith that they see my belief and are strengthened by it. Internally, staying in constant communion and pleading: spare her, heal her, keep her, Father.

I am encouraged that Jesus trod this path before me. I look down and see His footsteps, and the pools of His tears. During the days of Jesus' life on earth, he offered up prayers and petitions with loud cries and tears to the one who could save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission. (Hebrews 5:7) And, though I tremble, I am borne up as I remember to such comes the Master's voice, 'Fear none of those things which thou shalt suffer.' (Revelation 2:10)

Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you wholly...

He who calls you is faithful; he will surely do it.

~ I Thessalonians 5:23-24 ~

I-131 recommendations

I have searched long and hard for information regarding safety after taking I-131 when around children. I finally looked hard enough to find some great recommendations, solidly based on science. And some mathematical formulas for calculating the dose of radiation I am emitting at any given moment after I receive my pill. I've received criticism from other cancer patients for choosing to stay away from home so long after my treatment and prior scans. That criticism makes it hard for me to stay away, because, believe me, I would prefer to be at home with my kids if I really believed it to be safe. I also think that criticism stems from the lackadaisical approach to nuclear safety our country has recently taken in order to eliminate in-patient management of patients post-radioactive iodine intake. It is important that someone on this vast Internet speak out about what is truly safe for others. Because going home and holding your children 24 hours after you receive I-131 is most certainly, scientifically, NOT safe.

For a treatment dose of 33 millicuries or greater, the recommendations are:
Try to minimize time spent with young children. Children under 12 must stay in a separate residence for the first 7 days. Maintain a 1 meter distance from children under 12 for 7 days. Eliminate holding children under 12 for 14 days. Minimize holding children under 12 for 21 days.

For scan doses 3-10 millicuries, the recommendations are:
Try to minimize time spent with young children. Children under 12 must stay in a separate residence for the first 3 days. Maintain a 1 meter distance from children under 12 for 5 days. Eliminate holding children under 12 for 5 days. Minimize holding children under 12 for 7-14 days.

These recommendation are culled from the University Health Network and the Health Physics Society. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission puts the annual dose limit for minors (under 21 years of age) at 0.5 mrems of total effective dose. Adults in the general population can receive up to 1 mrem annually. Radioisotope sodium iodide 131 emits 2.3 mrem/hr/mCi at 30 cm, meaning my 5 mCi of I-131 is emitting 11.5 mrem/hr at 30 centimeters from my thyroid. In plain English, this means that you hugging me for 1 minute means you receive 0.2 mrem of radiation. That's almost half of the ANNUAL dose limit for a child. That holds true for 2-3 days after I receive a scan dose of 5 mCi (as I did today at 12:30 p.m.). 1/1,000th of my scan dose could mean thyroid cancer for my child. That means my scan dose must be divided in half many, many times by elimination through my urine before it is safe for me to hold my child. As a co-sleeping mother, that alarms me. Enough to keep me away from my children for days. To strictly adhere to the guidelines I've been given - guidelines that are specific to my living situation, my dose, and my known elimination rate of I-131 as calculated by prior uptake scans at specific time lapses from previous doses.

One last note: the half-life (rate at which a substance is eliminated by half by the human body) of I-131 is 8.1 days. Not until two half-lives of I-131 will I be considered "safe" to have frequent, close contact with my children (holding them or sleeping with them). This means 24.3 days. So by mid-January, I can resume normal life. Until then, I do have to worry about exposing my children - and others - to dangerous radiation. The last thing I want to do is cause one of my offspring to suffer in this same way.

laying Isaac down by increments

Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering and placed it on his son Isaac, and he himself carried the fire and the knife. As the two of them went on together, Isaac spoke up and said to his father Abraham, "Father?"

"Yes, my son?" Abraham replied.

"The fire and wood are here," Isaac said, "but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?"

Abraham answered, "God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son." And the two of them went on together. Genesis 22:6-8

My Amelia is so often my Isaac. She is sick more frequently and more intensely than all the other children combined. I think it's probably her severe asthma that is to blame. This visage, her peach-cheeked beauty deflated into grayness, scared me sufficiently to send us off to the emergency room again yesterday. Her lungs are clear, her rapid influenza screen is negative. She is decidedly ill, probably from some never-to-be-named virus, as usual. Add to that the fact that she is scheduled to have her tonsils and adenoids removed tomorrow to improve her breathing and decrease the number of opportunistic infections she gets through the long Wisconsin winter. My mother's heart is screaming no, but I cannot sort out whether it is instinct or sheer, irrational fear that is speaking deep within. The plan for now is to go in for surgery and check labs, peer into throat and ears, take temperature, perhaps get a chest x-ray. And proceed if no alarm bells go off clinically. I guess I am on board with that, but it does feel like walking to the altar...again...the same altar I visited yesterday. The gray-faced 3rd daughter lying quietly in a hospital bed while I passively wait in the chair next to her, wait for someone to figure out why she's sick all the time. Wait for someone to fix her. I told my aunt this morning that I am bleeding worry, and what I really need to do is put a Prayer Tourniquet on it to staunch the flow. I've done it...but it still feels like that fresh worry-wound from yesterday's scare is leaking through.

Please lift my Amelia up in prayer tonight and tomorrow. Her surgery is scheduled for 8:30 a.m. Pray for grace and peace as I lay her down and let them wheel her in. Pray for safety and a quick recovery for her, and that the surgery will provide the proffered benefits of less illness and improvement in asthma. I found these lyrics from a Christian band, Tourniquet, thought provoking this evening. I strive to relate through prayer, not just demand, as modeled by Jesus Himself in Matthew:

When turmoil breaks through the shell of my comfort
my lack of a prayer life abort

An acrostic for prayer that I learned as a kid
praise and repentance, ask for others, yourself
but now in my lackluster state of affairs
give me what I ask for-beyond that who cares?

On a totally unrelated note, I found this monologue by a favorite blogger restored my hope in success as a homeschooling mother...despite fits of exasperation, complete downfall of all schedules due to long illnesses, and descent of our home into utter chaos at times! Read it, laugh, and take a deep breath: it's going to be okay!

Under His wings

It is safe here, I've found. What lies ahead is something I have little control over: my faith is still a conscious choice I make, in the middle of circumstances that confound. I fainted yesterday, and rolled to the edge of a very real precipice. I couldn't get down to the floor, and I stood, paralyzed as darkness swept over me like dust before wind in the desert. I was holding a glass baby bottle and a glass quart jar full of raw milk. In the midst of preparing a bottle, most ordinary of tasks. Yet suddenly life was on "pause", and I was sliding under the surface once again.

I woke up in a sea of milk and shards of broken glass. I held the stem of the baby bottle in one hand. My hair was wet with milk, and I looked desperately for my children and for what seemed like an inevitable pool of blood from my wounds. There was a little blood - but just a little. Oddly, I cut myself on the elbow and the tip of my middle toe. That's it! Somehow I managed to escape serious injury, even as I lifted myself up precariously and tip-toed out of the wreckage.

A young woman of some wisdom recently posited, to the anonymous masses of the internet audience, "Why do we fear submitting an unknown future to a known God?" This became very real to me, as I lay in the puddle of milk, blood and glass. I had no control over that fall, or the way my body landed amongst the shards. But God was watching the whole thing, and moved to protect me.

And so, today I simply write praise in thanks for protection. However long this trial lasts, I know He cares for me.

I don't know about tomorrow I just live from day to day
I don't borrow from the sunshine for the skies may turn to grey
And I don't worry o'er the future for I know what Jesus said
And today I'll walk beside Him for He knows what is ahead

Many things about tomorrow I don't seem to understand
But I know Who holds tomorrow and I know He holds my hand

I don't know about tomorrow, it may bring me poverty;
But the One Who feeds the sparrow, is the One Who stands by me.
And the path that be my portion, may be through the flame or flood,
But His presence goes before me, and I'm covered with His blood.
~ I Know Who Holds Tomorrow, Ira Stanphill

Undercurrents

We are apt to say-"It is not in the least likely that having been through the supreme crisis, I shall turn now to the things of the world." Do not forecast where the temptation will come, it is the least likely thing that is the peril. In the aftermath of a great spiritual transaction the "retired sphere of the leasts" begins to tell; it is not dominant, but remember it is there, and if you are not warned, it will trip you up. You have remained true to God under great and intense trials, now beware of the undercurrent. Do not be morbidly introspective, looking forwared with dread, but keep alert; keep your memory bright before God. Unguarded strength is double weakness because that is where the "retired sphere of the leasts" saps. The Bible characters fell on their strong points, never on their weak ones.

"Kept by the power of God"-that is the only safety.
~ Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest


That is my current peril: to come through the fire, the heat of the crisis of the cancer diagnosis, and get swallowed by all the smoke in the aftermath, as I live with cancer. Likely it will be the everyday things...the stresses of motherhood, the difficulties of marriage, school deadlines, writing deadlines, housework, serving at church...that bog me down. I have a heightened sense that I need to define my purpose, to delineate what I am supposed to be doing, in a big sense. Not just what is next on my calendar. What is next for my soul? Obviously, this trial is meant to yield certain results, otherwise what sense can be made of such things? I may never ferret out God's supreme purpose, but I feel as though I must be on the lookout for the little things that threaten to pull the whole thing apart. I need to be faithful in the details, as always. Yet more so in this aftermath of a stressful year. As I near the one year mark, I am still unsure where I am headed. Although it looks as though I'll survive this current crisis, I still don't know why I was asked to walk through it. I don't want to defeat a giant only to be done in by an innocent, beautiful distraction (David's story, Psalm 51).

Stretching toward blue skies

It is easy to feel barren instead of full. Sodden instead of saturated. Wasted instead of well-used. Abandoned instead of alone with God. Irritated instead of thankful. Cloistered instead of protected.

These are hard days, these "rubber meets the road"days when faith is put to big tests and there are no easy moments or choices. I stretch my aching arms towards heaven and give thanks, mindfully, sentient, in spite of all (because of all). Who am I to curse the whirling wheel or despair of the clay of which this pot of mine is made? I look forward to days, after this current firing in the kiln, when I will know what the Potter is making. I will see it's purpose. Today I trust and I flip the negative thoughts and feelings on their heads like coins flat on a smooth sidewalk. I am still flat on the sidewalk, trampled on. But I choose heads up instead of tails turned.

You're the strength in our weakness
You're the love to the broken
You're the joy in the sadness
You Are

Greater things have yet to come
Great things are still to be done...
Where glory shines from hearts alive
With praise for you and love for you

~ In This City, Bluetree

Holding hands

Today was a gray day, and perhaps that's why I feel so tired. Amy's hands are always in mine if my hands are available. She likes to hold the web between my thumb and forefinger. This is her ultimate comfort. This particular photo was taken the night she developed haemophilus B influenza and became so ill. I was looking through photos today, and this captured how I feel. Secure, comforted, but not myself.

There is no one like the God of Jeshurun, who rides on the heavens to help you and on the clouds in his majesty. The eternal God is your refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms. He will drive out your enemy before you, saying, 'Destroy him!' So Israel will live in safety alone; Jacob's spring is secure in a land of grain and new wine, where the heavens drop dew. ~ Deuteronomy 33:26-28

Freedoms & fears

The longest...and most dangerous...leash this 5-year-old country girl has ever been on: 10 yards across our quiet country road to the mailbox. We walk her down to the end, the three younger ones and I, and stand at the end of the driveway, looking right and left, "helping" her spot any oncoming cars. Truthfully, a trained ear hears the rumble down the uneven blacktop for 1/2 a mile or more. After a more than thorough view of both ends of our short stretch of street, she runs pell-mell across to the opposite ditch, and slowly and carefully picks her way through the snow the 10 feet up to the mailbox. Opens carefully, standing to the side so she isn't sticking out into "traffic". Glances over her shoulder at least 100 times before all the mail is pried, piece by piece, out of the box and into mittened hands. Calls us to help her "check" again, and then yells, "Mama, is it safe to come now?" No confidence in her own rudimentary skills. (After all, haven't I warned them that the big grain and gravel trucks would kill them in an instant?) She runs head-long, legs stretched to eat up as much ground in one leap as possible. Crashes into our ditch and slowly picks her way through the deep drift up to the culvert, the driveway, the four of us waiting...safety. Her audible sigh of relief. And then the smile. "Look, mama! I did it! I crossed all by myself!"

This little elf of mine isn't constrained by her short leash. She doesn't pull at the tether. She doesn't even feel it, except to absorb the certainty and bliss of protection and trust that flows between us, mother and daughter. I am not so with Christ. I am the toddler with the "I do it myself" attitude, hands on hips, begging to be loosed to self. I wish it were possible to do as Amy often tells me I should: "you just grow yittew (little) again, Mama, so I's can take care of you." Oh, to grow little again...most especially in faith! To know, with certainty, that I can't do it myself. To feel the tug of Father-God, and revel in protection. To glance a 100 times backwards when given freedom. To run pell-mell across the distance that separates us for those times of sin in my days. To smile proudly up at Him in accomplishment.

In the spirit of growing little again, I am putting myself on a self-discipline "diet". I am required to be on a strict food diet in preparation for my upcoming tests and possible cancer treatment March 23-28. I am putting myself on a water-only diet by joining forces with many others to provide clean water to Africans...
http://www.bloodwatermission.com/

I am going to learn about using food sensibly by finishing this...
http://www.settingcaptivesfree.com/lords_table/

And to follow up my recent study of Elisabeth Elliot's Discipline: The Glad Surrender, I will study this...
http://www.desiringgod.org/ResourceLibrary/OnlineBooks/ByTitle/1730_The_Dangerous_Duty_of_Delight_Sample/

My journey begins on my 30th birthday, March 1st. I won't be done until April 10th. Join me if you wish! Let's shed some fears - and freedoms - together this spring.

Stages

Raw ingredients...formless, full of possibilities, only potential. A pile of scraps on the floor, a sweater ruined in the wash.

Yet you brought me out of the womb;
you made me trust in you even at my mother's breast.

From birth I was cast upon you;
from my mother's womb you have been my God.
Psalm 22:9-10

Beginning to take shape under a skilled hand. In the middle stages, things often look strange and unfamiliar. The Loch Ness monster looms instead of what I had created with my mind's eye. It is tempting to give up - I am certain things won't turn out well in the end. I can't imagine what good will come of persevering at this point.

Do not be far from me,
for trouble is near and there is no one to help.

I am poured out like water...
My heart has turned to wax;
it has melted away within me.

My strength is dried up like a potsherd,
and my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth;
you lay me in the dust of death.

Psalm 22:11, 14-15

In the end, it all comes together. What was once a pile of fuzzy, useless scraps will be cuddled and treasured in it's new form. It isn't a monster after all...it just needed a few more pieces added and a few finishing touches to bring out it's character. My perseverance paid off.

For he has not despised or disdained
the suffering of the afflicted one;
he has not hidden his face from him
but has listened to his cry for help.

All the rich of the earth will feast and worship;
future generations will be told about the Lord.

They will proclaim his righteousness to a people yet unborn—
for he has done it.

Psalm 22:24, 30-31

My heart is steadfast oh God
And I will sing
With all my heart and soul
Music for the King
And I will awake the dawn
With my praise to You oh Lord

How great is Your love
So much higher than the heavens
With faithfulness that reaches the sky

~ How Great is Your Love, MercyMe

Praise God for family and friends, hugs and tears, food and fall colors. Praise God from whom all blessings flow! Happy Thanksgiving!