JESUS

I LOVE YOU SO MUCH, LORD. Son of a carpenter, Child who loved his mom and honored her - grown man , son of God, sent to die for our sins and free us in his holy name. I LOVE YOU SO MUCH, LORD.

Please put Christ in Christmas!

He couldn't possibly love us anymore. Think of how much you love your child - as every parent knows, nothing compares to the unconditional depth of love we have for each little one given to us to bless our lives. God, in his love your you and me, as simple as we are, in a sinful state so often, took the son He loved more than anything else and offered him to death on the cross for our sins that we might be free from the law and become filled with Christ's spirit. All our sins were paid for, sll the horrible thoughts we've had, all the disgusting things we've done. He felt the pain for each and every one of them. How then is it so easy for us to take his name out of the holiday to celebrate his birth. He is our savior - He SAVED US! Please let him know how much you appreciate what he has done. Make an attempt to put Christ back in Christmas this year. When you smile and offer seasons greetings, let his spirit speak through you to the other person and allow them to feel the love only Christ has for them. Turn seasons greetings into Merry Christmas this year and celebrate as never before. Our redeemer lives!!! I love you Lord!!

To love as God loves

I want to love. Some people aspire to be the greatest artist in the world, or an NFL star, or the best accountaint in the world. My passion - I want to love. I want to love like Jesus loves. He sees the heart and hears the pain and touches the area with his Love. If only I could reach out to the aching hearts, the fearful of the world, the children who are so confused by the ever increasing evil that our society perverts them with, touch their spirits with your love Lord. Please don't let another wounded soldier die. If you csn use me to show the soul your love than please let me be an instrument of your peace. Many have told me that I need to learn to detach myself from others pain. It is not good for me - I feel others pain and if I am experiencing it myself. Fight it as I may - there continues this drive in me to heal the broken hearted. I know so well the pain of aloneness, the fear that Satan can fill our minds with.---- I know the battle. That's exactly what it is. -- a battle--- between good and evil. The lies that we're feed, the perversion that is imposed on us by t.v. and theinternet - all so appealing, so beautiful on the surface ----- so destructive, so evil, leading to spiritual death in reality. With one touch from you Lord, the spirit rises. You can erase the evil- you can calm the screaming spirit. Your love changes it all. Please, please, please let us all feel that love and fight the good fight against whatever battle might come our way. We are more than conquererers through Christ. And me - I just want to believe, as much as I don't want to hurt and feel the intense pain of others, I so desire to touch those aching spirits and give them respite from the pain. So contradictory- so overwhelminingly complicated and painful at times, and yet the most freeing, absolute thing in this whole creation - Your love. Let the touch of my hand calm the heart of the sick, the lonely, the devasted, the fearful, Your children, Lord. Let me speak words of comfort of truth of you - lead those in bondage to the open, bright fields where your love resides. Nothing left so say - just this desire to reach out and give your people hope --- the need in myown life to be constantly lifted up by your grace and comforted and loved as a little child running to her father and receiving a secure embrace. You are my God - you are the essence of my being. Make my path clear, help me to do your will -not mine. Erase this constant grieving in my spirit for those who don't know you and can't access your grace if I'm stepping out on my own. Please - I sincerely do not want to speak without it being in your will. Lead me Lord - show me your will. Help me to love like you if that be your choice to me and allow me to be effective in showing that love to those who need you. Amen and amen!!!

And Again the Rain Falls

I am alone!!! God reaches out to me but I find it so hard to feel his presence, his love. I FEEL alone!!! The pain is unbearable. How does ones life come to this discord? I wake every day praying to live my day for my Savior. That's the desire of my heart - to love like Jesus did!!! To even comprehend the depth of such a desire is overwhelming. To be more like you, Lord. Yet no one sees you in me. My own accuse me of incomprehensible things to me. If I can't even imagine such actions, how do they then come to the conclusion that I am involved in some scheme - some evil attempt to hurt those I love so dearly. And then to bring Jimmy into it and acccuse him, a totally innocent loving man, will nothing but good intentions towards anyone, to be devising evil and purposely hurting those who mean the world to him. I'm confused, hurt, alone. There is no one to address. The are all so close minded and lost in their self-centeredness that they really don't see the chaos and pain they are causing. So, I'll choose to live this day. I don't know how but I know God is bigger than all of this and He will somehow bring peace into my heart. I feel so deceived- so used- so totally alienated from those just a few weeks ago I trusted implicity. They have no love for me and they have no integrity. I can say this in all honesty - I have never chosen and will never puposely choose to hurt anyone or anything. My heart desires so much to help , to love, to fill that space left in each of us from our losses, our defeats. I see a major split on the horizon - lost holidays, angry words, slander. Why am I the one always to be judged so strenly. I need to sleep. My mind is spinning, my heart aches I can find little meaning to my exisence. I really need you, Jesus. Straighten out my heart, deal with my attitude, and pleae, please, let me find those in my life who can and will honestly love me. You have put Jimmy into my life to show me your love for me. Thank you so much for him, Lord. He is such a good husband, kind and loving father, adoring grandfather. He chose these things in his life - it was not jus a matter of life making it that way. How wonderful to be chosen to be loved. For someone to conciously choose to speak kindly to you, to walk with you through the valley of death, to offer you love genuinely from the heart of God. So now I'll rest, try to escape what torments me. My fear - that when I awaken it will still be here. Each of us desires that love in our life - I need it to survive. Restore it in me OH Lordl.

Please love your neighbor as yourself! A command for us to try and follow. How much more than should we love our familiies. Seek the good everyone. Focus on showing them God's love through you,

All has been said . Exhaustiion has set in. Lord, David and Cheryl, Lorraine Fryer, the Bailey Family, Betty and Bob, the women in the study group. All need you , your love , your peace. Help us all Lord and control these things beyond our control. Please save my family!!!

What a difference a day (or two) can make

It's Tuesday, Phillies are playing, and I"m sitting here with Jimmy and my pups and stIll I feel so very alone - that old feeling that is so familiar to me that I fight constantly to gain peace in my life. Lies all day. My head is swarming from them. They start at a moment when I am weakest - when my emotions are high due to circumstances around me. I just learned a dear friend's child is coming to the end stages of her cancer. A little child. My heart is breaking at the mere thought of her in pain and the emotional injustice her family is and will continue to suffer. Then something happens in my life - someone lets me down, falls short, all things that are familiar to the human race , but given the timing, seem magnified to an unimaginable point ------ and the pain begins. The feeling that no one loves me, that I am alone, that they are tired of me, sick of my illness. It seems so reasonable in the midst of the storm. Why would they make plans to go somewhere this weekend without thinking of me? After all, I haven't spent any quality time with them for weeks. They're always busy. But I love you is always the response to any questioning. If you don't want to be with me, you don't love me. Saying a word is so easy - living it is something else. My soul pines for the reality of God's love for me. I've been striving and studying and praying - trying to forgive the past and move on - trust when I am told I am loved. Lord you say to look to you. I am trying so hard - my insides ache from the turmoil when these types of situations come about. I see the evil that passes through my mind and catch it as it tries to convince me to lie, over react, anything just to get their attention. Not only is that deceitful, it takes me further from my Father , who actually has the love for me that I so badly need to feel evidence of. So here I sit, not quite so thankful and filled with joy as when I last wrote. I need Jesus. I cannot do this alone!! Fighting this self-hate is way beyond what I can withstand. The pain is unbearable and leads to evil and destructive thoughts. As I write this, I feel a release of some of the pain - the ability to release it into the universe and to have it dissolve in the expansive universe where it can't hurt another innocent human, who , was abanoned, neglected, unloved. Help me to grow Lord. Let these time become less and less. I choose to believe that you will do this in my life - that is what gives me the will to continue. My battle is tiring - I need to rest in you. I find myself asking for some amazing evidence of your love when, I repentently remember what you have done for me. Lord, you died for me - for these very moments when I fall out of grace, when I get lost in my own thoughts, when my mind loses focus on you. I hope to look back on this in the near future and see that I have grown more secure in your Love and the love of others. That seems so distant - when I reach this level the aloneness seems so unbearably real. It's merely by faith that I move on. Bless me Lord. See the faith that you have given me and increase it so I can glorify you. I'm so tired now - I need to rest. My mind is weary, my body weak. I weap Lord. Be with me now as I try to enter rest. Give your beloved sleep.

Football Sunday

So we're all sitting here getting ready for the 1:00 Eagles vs. 49ers game. All the excitement around me - amazing how really involved my men get involved in these games. It's serious business for them - like they're there playing the game themselves. I have to admit, I do enjoy watching a good game and I really love the atmosphere in the house game time. It's family - people you love getting together just to live life. Such an amazing gift from God - our loved ones. Whenever the day gets too long or a situation seems to be taking away your calm, think on the ones you love and what joy it brings to you to have them in your life. Next summer we're hoping to rent a house in the Poconos to hold all five of the kids with spouses and all the grand kids. Every time I think about it I get so excited inside - like a little kid at Cristmas. The thought of us all being together can actually distract me from negative thinking that trys so hard to work its way into my life. I want to thank God for giving me these people in my life - they are my joy (and that includes my pups). Today is Football Sunday and I am so thankful!!!!!!!

F R E E D O M

Dorney Park today for two of my grandchildren. Boy, did they have fun. I'd have to say they actually looked exhausted by the time they got home from the park around 7:00. Now Buzzy and CJ have a long ride to Elizabethtown - I pray they go safely. Today was a little rough on me. The girls had asked me to go with them to Dorney and at first, I looked on my calendar, which was filled, but thought, " heh, you only live once. I wanna see them have fun.", so I set about to make all necessary changes to my calendar. Then that sweet calm voice spoke so gently to me, reminding me that running around an amusement park for 12+ hours could be a real catastrophe should the right circumstances come into play. There it is again - facing reality, dealing with truth. I am a 60 year old woman who has been fighting cancer for almost 8 years now and it has taken its toll on my body, my emotions, my energy level, my life. I realized how selfish I was being by pressing the issue that I go along with them. They are young, full of life - like a fawn in the early morning leaping out into the open meadown. Let them enjoy the day at their pace, overextending themselves, getting slightly sunburned, becoming exhausted physically and mentally. They loved it ----- and so did I, from right here at home. They sent me some pictures while they were there and stopped at our house as soon as they came home. I know I was with them in every way that really matters even though I didn't make a presence. I love those boys so incredibly much - enough to actually let them go and enjoy life without me hovering over them. Was it hard - yes., I have definite seperation anxiety issues and have a sense of panice when I can't be there, in control, making sure that strap is on right, checking their heighth carefully insuring they are adequate size for the rides they choose. So today I grew, and I loved in a more mature, God-like way. We all made it - we're all safe and most importantly, we still all love each other very much. Not being present didn't change their love for me at all. WOW - for me that is a wow. Maybe I can really come to a place of believing that I can be loved just because I am. I pray so - in that lies the freedom God speaks of. Now I'm tired - but of course I can't sleep yet until I know Buzzy and CJ got home ok. Then - my head will hit the pillow with a fury. Thank you for today, Lord. Thank you for teaching me, loving me, loving my family and for dying for me. You, Jesus, are amazing!!!