Living in the Kingdom Family

Hello, Saints!

When I go to town to take Bethany to school, or pick her up, or run errands or whatever, I see people who know what is going on with us. Inevitably, they smile, hug me and say how amazed they are that Tracy is doing so well. They say they have been praying and they read the blog all the time to see what is happening. Today, someone told me that they happened to see a friend of their's from the past who said their whole Bible study group was praying for a girl in Chappell Hill who had a brain tumor and what was her name? Isn't that crazy? These are people who we don't know from anywhere or any time and they have been beseeching God on our behalf. How did they find out? What investment do they have in us? Now, I am going to be rather specific here, but she didn't say they prayed. She said they were praying. That is a present condition, having begun in the past, which continues into the future. People are praying all the time! Who is praying? The family is praying. What family? The family of God is praying.

I enjoy an image in my head of God listening to the prayers of His children. As He listens, He keeps hearing Tracy's name. The more He hears it, a little grin wrinkles his cheeks. He hears it again and again, and from so many different places, and the grin stretches uncontrollably into a smile. Her name keeps coming and coming from all over the earth and a chuckle that crescendos to a hearty laugh of absolute, thrilling happiness that His Tracy is being loved and cared for spills out of his heart. His eyes gleam and sparkle and He can't wait to send Tracy the blessings and love that have been lifted up just for her. WHOOHOO!!! Man, just writing it gets me all kinds of happy.

I gotta kinda come down off that mountain a minute. Whoooooo. Ok, ahem, ahem, cough, cough. Ok. Ok.
A wonderful fella of experienced faith through tragedy shared something with me on the day of Tracy's surgery. He was preparing to teach on prayer and he found Daniel's experience with the angel who was delayed from coming to Daniel's aid for twenty-one days. Listen to chapter 10, verse 12 of Daniel: "Then he said to me, 'Do not fear, Daniel, for from the first day that you set your heart to understand, and to humble yourself before God, your words were heard; and I have come because of your words'...." Consider "from the first day", and "because of your words". God hears us the first time and He answers because we call on Him. You know, you have His attention the very moment you call on His name. What beauty! I can't leave this without appreciating that the angel recognized Daniel's condition as he sought God: He set his "heart to understand" and "humbled[d] himself before God". We have to be sincere. God is real and so must we be also.


It's getting late and Tracy is waiting for me to turn out the light. I should be more diligent in getting this done. She walked on the treadmill again today. Another 1/2 mile in 15 minutes. She's great. She was kind of cranky (in a fun kind of way, but still cranky) today; kind of funny and encouraging, because it means she wants more than she's got...and she's gonna get it.

One of you asked what could be done since you can't get over here, books on tape etc. She has been given a couple of tapes and actually plans to start one tomorrow. We did the bills today. It took a couple of different sit down times, because she got really tired. (Tracy has been our house and home administrator for years and years. Since she is able, it is better for her to direct these chores than for me to try and take them over...and mess them up.) She's not really ready to go out to eat. We did stop at a restaurant on the way back from the doctor the other day (using a gift card provided by one of you). She was freshly bandaged in the princess-one-bun-aunt-Jemima style and it took a little gumption to be that public, but she had to eat (we had been in the doctors office through lunch and breakfast was hours earlier). She's got gumption, though.

What you can do is call her. Talk to her. The sweet calls break up the day. If you're long distance, call us and we'll call you back. When we figured out that we would be going to surgery and expected to be in the hospital for 6 to 8 weeks, we got a land-line phone plan where all the long distance calls are covered by the established monthly fee. We may not be in the hospital, but the phone plan can't change, so let's use it. Also, if you use cingular wireless for your cell phone service, your wireless call to our land-line number will not count against your minutes. That's just part of the package. (sounds like an ad for Cingular doens't it?) Look forward to hearing from you.

Livin' in the family and lovin' it.

Jeff

I don't know if you guys have noticed, but the time on this thing is way off, about three hours. It's after 10:30 p.m. now. Oh well, probably doesn't matter.