Give the Gift of Knowing What It Is Like To Be Loved This year.

I saw this today on the television and thought what a wonderful concept.  They said to give the best gift of all this holiday season…to give the gift of “knowing what it was like to be loved”.  I thought about that long and hard. The gift of knowing what it is like to be loved….what a concept.

Sometimes we take for granted the very things in our lives. Being loved is one of them.  We just assume everyone has someone that loves them and shows them that love but the truth of the matter is…many many people in this country and this world don’t have that. Think about the people in nursing homes. Many are forgotten and just left there….never having visitors or anything. My sons and I used to go visit at the nursing home and would ask to be directed to those that had no one.

I remember taking my kindergarten class one year to perform at the nursing home. One woman thought I was her daughter and just hung on me and hung on me. She called me Brenda the whole time and kept asking me why I didn’t wear the dress she made for me and she would hold my hand. My heart was breaking for her and then I realized that she was happy at that moment. She was happy because she believed her daughter was there with her. And so I sat there and talked with her and held her hand through the show and just loved her as if I were her loving daughter. What a simple gift and yet we all have it in us to do that.

I thought about all the children around the world who never have the opportunity to know what it is like to have a loving mother or father. Children here in our own country who come from homes where there are drugs and violence and don’t know what it is like to be loved. I truly believe that is why the Big Brother and Big Sister programs were started. To give these children what they would never get otherwise.

Right in our families, we can give the gift of love, of time spent, of letting someone know they are loved. It does not cost piles of money….it basically cost our time and effort.

I am sitting here watching Laverne and Shirley and remembering about how we had to iron all our clothes back then. So many time saving things have been created from permanent press clothes to special washers and dryers to dishwashers and microwaves….all to give us more time and yet we seem to be in more of a hurry today than ever. Why?

How can we give the gift of showing someone what it is like to be loved? Perhaps we can share our home by inviting those who have no where to go, to come to Christmas dinner? Or, we can fix a box with a dish made from a treasured family recipe and share it with someone….along with the recipe. How about adopting a child for the holidays to buy Christmas for….. Or spending time with a child from a broken home….. Or going to the nursing home and spending time with those who have no one…..or reading to someone that is blind….How about adopting a pet from the animal shelter that needs loving….or cooking special goodies for our law enforcement and fire fighters or EMT people?  Or be a chemo angel for someone going through chemo.

There are many ways to show someone what it is like to be loved. Don’t make it a one time effort. Make it part of life. Love is free and we should be sharing it around this world and making a difference. Love can heal when nothing else does.

Mouse Saga, Hospitals and Divine Intervention

Am laying here wide awake at two in the morning. Maybe that is another sign I am getting better as I have done the delirious sleep lately and been in and out. I sure hope so. I am ready for a little spunk and fire and looking forward to food tasting good again.

Son and I were looking all over the kitchen and my bedroom, which is beside the kitchen, to figure out where the cold leak was coming from. We had noticed it a day ago and could not find it and both felt too bad to do much looking. I don’t think either one of us was ready for what we found. It was sure a surprise. I first discovered that the cold air was coming from the dryer. So, son decided to go outside and check the vent flapper thing to make sure it was shutting and sure enough, it was cracked open about a half-inch or so. And when he tried to force it closed, it would not go.

Coming back in, he put in his snowsuit and got some tools and went outside to check. I don’t think anyone could guess what was causing that vent to be open. I know I sure was not expecting the answer. It was a frozen mouse. I just looked at son and repeated a few times…”mouse?….. frozen mouse?……..did you say mouse??”  Son was just nodding his head at me. I asked him did the mouse have a little suitcase with him. Maybe it was the one that ran away when he cooked his pork stew that time. Guess that mouse got the last laugh after all. Poor mouse.

Oh, what a difference it made in the house to get that fixed. We are really keen on keeping this house energy-efficient and was so proud that we only used 39 dollars in gas this past month. Course, I kept going and checking the heater cause I could not believe it was not coming on very much considering there were one degree temperatures outside. But, the house registered 70 degrees and felt good.

Poor Jack does not know what to do with his mama so sick. Son had to block Jack out of my bedroom as he kept waking me up and whining. I think he just wanted me up and didn’t know what to do. Yesterday, I sat for a bit in my power chair and Jack just came up and leaned against my legs and I rubbed his head and talked to him for a long time.

When we were in CO Springs for the heart stuff, son and I both got a kick out of the phone book there, considering ours is about the size of a 1/2 inch paperback harlequin novel.  This made us realize how small our little town is.

The kidney doctor called yesterday. Denver wants my scans, all of them, sent over night to them. I was so thankful that they were able to call the hospital here and have them do it. With son sick and me as sick as I am…there was no way we could ride to Pueblo and hunt a Fed X office. They want to study them to see the best way to remove the tumors. Right now, my mind just can’t wrap around the upcoming kidney surgery. I think I have just been through too much this past week. Maybe once they look, I will know more about when it will be done.

I will be honest and say I am concerned about this trip for the weather is so unpredictable with all this snow and we just can not afford to get up there and then get snowed in.  We wrote a nice review on the La Quinta Inn that we stayed at in CO Springs and they sent us a thank you note. They really were nice and very handicap conscious. They were also especially nice knowing that I was having hospital stuff done. We also were thrilled that Jack did so well at the motel. Son was able to leave him in the room and come to the hospital and then he would go check on him and Misty.

I really want this over and done with so that it is not hanging over my head.  God has been so good to me and I am so thankful for all He has done. I DO believe in the power of prayer and Godly intervention. Some people want to explain everything that happens and try to give some “logical” reason why this or that happened when there really is none. I just knew that the jubilee that my doctor was showing at the end of the heart catheterization told me this was not a normal event to have a CTA show blockage and then doing a heart catheterization and not find that significant blockage.  I just knew and believed that God had intervened and it is HIM that I give all that glory to.

Was it a miracle? Depends on what you call a miracle. I believe miracles happen daily…some small and some huge. All I know is that God intervened on this and I did not have to have stents put in. And for that I give great thanks. My Creator has never failed me and I have always given Him the praise and glory for all He has done for me.

Guess, I could find a “logical” reason why a check from a 1988 Electrical Bill account  that equaled the exact amount of the gas bill we owed suddenly showed up on the cut off date. But, I don’t need a logical reason. I know the reason. For those who believe with their whole hearts, we don’t have to try to tear events apart or try to find some way to say it was not God.  We know it was. I could sit here and tell you event after event that I could plainly see the Creator’s hand in my life and there would always be someone who would try to say “oh it was this or that”.  I believe God answers all prayers. Sometimes the answer is yes, sometimes no and sometimes it is “wait”.  We learned that with our house we were selling.

If our house had sold when we first put it on the market, we would not own outright our home today for, though it was on the market, they wanted close to 80,000 for it. And while waiting those two years to get the house sold and doing all the work we did was not easy, the end result told me that God was leading on this. Sometimes we can’t see down the road…that is what faith is. Faith is believing in what you can not see and trusting that where God is leading you will be where you are supposed to be.

Trust is one of the hardest things to do. Human nature makes us want to control what happens. Remember the game “trust” as a kid. The game where one person stood behind you and you stiffened up and fell straight backwards and you “trusted” they would catch you. Sometimes they did and sometimes they didn’t. Life is the biggest game of trust there is. I trust with my whole heart that God won’t lead me astray and that if I let Him lead and I follow…I will be where I am supposed to be.