Dear Friends,

I am going to take a little time away from blogging to really pray and consider my priorities.  When I started blogging, I felt truly directed by God to write and encourage.  As time has passed, I sometimes feel that I have to write something whether I am getting any direction from God, or not.  Now, I want to take a period of time to lay the blog before Him and seek his direction.

I will let you know what I hear!

Be Blessed!

In the throes of obsession with Ferris Bueller’s Day Off when I was a pre-teen/teenager, I loved to quote it.  One of my favorites?  “Life moves pretty fast.  If you don’t stop once in a while and look around…you could miss it.”

Psalm 90:12 (NIV) says it this way:

Teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.

Besides all of the newness and joy of that goes with the first year of marriage, my husband and I (and number of relatives) have been commenting on how fast it went by.  Life moves faster as we get older–or so it seems.

I have been thinking about numbering my days, and one of my great-grandmother’s favorite sayings:  “Do it now.”

So, whatever it is for you, please be encouraged to do it now.  Don’t waste this beautiful gem called today.  So often, we get caught up in temporal things, and don’t give enough time to the eternal–time with the Lord, and time building and enjoying relationships.  So many times, we put off our own dreams playing the game of, “I’ll do it when I get a better job, when I pay off some bills, when the kids are older, when I have more time, when things calm down.  It’s so easy to get trapped in this way of thinking, but we all know that we will never have more time, and things don’t usually “calm down.”

Therefore, let’s all seize the day and put a little special time into our worship, our relationships and our dreams.  I am walking away from a messy house, and a half-finished to-do list today, so I can spend the day with my husband.  We are going to look in some shops, have lunch, and see a play in a town about an hour a way.  This day will be a treasure, I know–even if not a single thing gets marked off my “do-do list.”

Hey–maybe we should all just revamp our lists!  Mine might look something like this:

1.  See if I can make my husband laugh.

2. Thank God for everything I see today that is beautiful.

3.  Choose to be a hopeless optimist.

4. Stay home more–run around less.

5.. Chase the dog around a tree.

6.  Send a friend a goofy card.

7. Take a step toward one of my “far-out” dreams.

8.  Sit quietly for five minutes and  meditate on the love of God.

9. Try a new recipe.

10. Make something new–whether it’s a poem or a bath bomb cupcake.

11. Look at the stars.

Oh, yes!  Let us number our days and relish our moments.  Thank God for the life he has given us!

Dear Lord, I pray that you would teach us to count our days, and that you would give us a heart of wisdom.  I pray for wisdom in how we spend our time, how we spend our resources of talent and money.  Dear Lord, let us be wise in how we spend our lives.  Thank you for today and I ask you to help us to accept our current circumstances and find the special blessing this day offers.  In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Monday has rolled around again, and I am exhausted.  The weekend included some stressful, physically (and financially) tiring activities–computer-buying, and large-scale tree planting.  I am thrilled that we got so much accomplished, but my body does not feel ready to cope with a new week, and the relentless demands of my to-do list.

What I should be doing: I should be doing massive, full-scale house-cleaning today.  I should change the sheets, and clean out the fridge and really get organized for the week.  I should go into town and get a few groceries.  I should put in some time on a special project for work, and if it weren’t for the month’s worth of exercise I got from planting trees,  I would say I should exercise.

What I will be doing: There are two things that really need to be done today or as soon as possible, and that is where I will focus–I will get a few groceries, because no matter how messy the house is, or whatever else goes undone, we still need to eat.  I also plan to try out a recipe this afternoon purely because I bought buttermilk for the recipe, and intended to make the recipe once before, but the buttermilk went bad first.  I will not have another incident with the buttermilk!

From there, I don’t know how productive I will be, but I will be satisfied to get those two things accomplished.  Today, I am sure I will make use of my handy-dandy kitchen timer, a device that has helped me through days cram-packed with activity, as well as days in which I just suffer from lagging motivation.  I set the timer for fifteen minutes and get to work on whatever task I am putting off or simply having trouble focusing on.  That’s my fifteen minutes to clean the bathroom, grade papers, write, pray, exercise, or even take a break.  The break may be the opposite of how the timer is used by most folks, but sometimes, if I am having trouble settling into a task, I give myself fifteen minutes to goof off, and then when the buzzer sounds, it is time to get down to work.

In case you are interested, the recipe requiring buttermilk is from the Kate Jacobs’ book Comfort Food. See www.comfortfoodnovel.com

     Emily Dickinson once said that some kept the Sabbath by going to church, but that she kept it by staying home.  I am following in Emily’s footsteps today.  I am at home resting and reflecting on the implications of a health scare I had yesterday.  I went to visit my mother, which is about an hour and-a-half drive, and went I arrived at the house, I had a little difficulty seeing clearly out of my right eye.  We attributed this to the unusual heat and extremely bright sun.  I put on my sunglasses and we headed out for a breakfast of coffee and muffins.  While we were visiting, even though I was hot, my right hand/arm started feeling tingly and numb.  I had difficulty speaking.  I couldn’t think of words and when I tried to say a word, I couln’t say it correctly no matter how hard I tried.  We abandoned our breakfast and Mom drove me to the emergency room–which I also could not say.

     By the time we arrived, my symptoms were gone.  They lasted maybe 10-15 minutes.  We got out and walked around the hospital parking lot for a while.  My mother told me she had a similar episode once–as did my aunt, although the symptoms were slightly different.  Since I was feeling back to normal, I did not check into the hospital, but went on about my plan for the day.  My mother did warn me before I left that I might have had a mini-stroke, and that I should look up the symptoms and causes when I got home.

     I did just that, and the more I read on-line about TIA, or mini-strokes, the more scared I got.   The symptoms I had sounded exactly like the symptoms of mini-stroke (garbled speech, impaired vision, numbness on one side of the body, headaches, difficulty walking) I had experienced.  I also read that  mini-stroke many times is a pre-cursor to the real thing.  I still felt a little funny, so for the second time that day, I made a trip to the hospital, except this time, I went in and got checked out.

     Apparantly, Urgent Care isn’t as busy on Saturday evenings in late June, because I got in right away.  After lots of tests, checks, questions, and blood work, I was told that it was doubtful that I’d had a stroke of any kind.  I did however have a fever, and a sinus infection and may have had it for a very long time.  I asked if the sinus infection could have caused the odd symptoms I’d experienced.  The nurse practitioner said, “It’s possible.  Yes.”  With a prescription for antibiotics and nasal spray and enough to get me by until the pharmacy opened, I left the hospital.  I did schedule a CT scan for Monday which will rule out the stroke possibility more definitively, and also give some indication of the sinus infection is chronic and how severe.

     When I got back home to rest finally, I was relieved to have been diagnosed with only a sinus infection, but also a bit disturbed.  How could I have gotten so used to feeling tired and head-achey to accept that as my “normal”?  When I was doing the online reading earlier and feeling the threat of a full-on stroke, I had crystal clear clarity about my priorities.  What was more important than taking care of my health (diet, exercise, rest, reducing stress)?  Was cleaning the house more important?  Getting my students’ essays graded?  Getting my errands done?  No.  In that moment, nothing was more important.  On any other day, I can easily reason with myself that doing something like cleaning the house is a necessary chore whereas taking time to exercise or rest is a luxury–not something that has to be done.  That combined with the fact that I got so used to living with an infection that I didn’t notice it is forcing me to take myself and my health more seriously.  I need to set some new “non-negotiables” in my life.

     For now, I am enjoying being at home, taking it easy.  I slept late and deep.  I have been drinking coffee and feeling grateful for the chance to rest and re-think things.  I am more grateful than ever for my health, and I pray that God will teach me to take care of myself better starting today.  I don’t think I will take for granted the ability to speak, see, walk, or feel free from pain–even a pesky headache, anytime in the near future. 

     Yesterday really shook me.  Who knows?  This may become a health blog in the near future.  We’ll see how it goes.  I hear my husband outside.  Time to go get my prescription.

     Honor God today by truly resting from your work, and finding rest in him.