Joyce's Blog

Saturday, November 19, 2011

Happy Thanksgiving

Life is not about waiting for the storms to pass;

it's about learning to dance in the rain.

We have so much to be thankful for! God loves us so much that He has been so good to give us "the bread of adversity" Sounds crazy, doesn’t it?

I was just reading Isaiah 30:19-21 And though the Lord give you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction........

This part hit me, because again I see His goal is not to give us smooth lives, but lives that are being molded and shaped to be able to live in heaven for eternity. We can't enter heaven with pride, selfishness, hate, grudges, anger, lust. Even minor sins cannot enter into heaven. Jesus will clean us completely and prepare us, but sometimes that saving grace and preparation will come through adversity, affliction, prison, loneliness, health issues, losses, trials, family problems. He uses everything in our lives, bad and good to mold us, to clean us, to prepare us. He has plans for our good not for woe. Plans to give a future full of hope. Jer. 29:11.

We spend so much of our time trying to avoid the storms, trying to protect our children from problems in their lives, or trying to make our families or our life as smooth as possible. Then when the problems hit, we question why, we do everything we can to fix it, and we beg God to heal, provide or take away the problem. But can we learn to "dance in the rain"? Can we give thanks in everything?

It's an amazing transformation in our hearts when we can thank Him for everything. When we can thank Him for our pain, trials, and afflictions. Knowing, trusting He has a good purpose. Knowing He truly loves us and will only do what's best for all in the long run. For all eternity.

Thank you Jesus for your great love and compassion. We truly have so much to be thankful for.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING

Here is a song that goes along with my thoughts today:

We pray for blessings

We pray for peace

Comfort for family, protection while we sleep

We pray for healing, for prosperity

We pray for Your mighty hand to ease our suffering

All the while, You hear each spoken need

Yet love us way too much to give us lesser things

Cause what if your blessings come through raindrops

What if Your healing comes through tears

What if a thousand sleepless nights

Are what it takes to know You’re near

What if trials of this life are Your mercies in disguise

We pray for wisdom, Your voice to hear

And we cry in anger when we cannot feel You near

We doubt Your goodness, we doubt Your love

As if every promise from Your Word is not enough

All the while, You hear each desperate plea

And long that we'd have faith to believe

Cause what if your blessings come through raindrops

What if Your healing comes through tears

What if a thousand sleepless nights

Are what it takes to know You’re near

And what if trials of this life are Your mercies in disguise

When friends betray us, When darkness seems to win

We know the pain reminds this heart

That this is not, this is not our home,

It's not our home

Cause what if your blessings come through raindrops

What if Your healing comes through tears

And what if a thousand sleepless nights

Are what it takes to know You‚re near

What if my greatest disappointments

Or the aching of this life

Is the revealing of a greater thirst this world can‚t satisfy

And what if trials of this life

The rain, the storms, the hardest nights

Are your mercies in disguise

Welcome trials as friends.

I am sending them to you to grow you up in Me.

They are sent to show you the faith you already have and to strengthen that

faith.

My plan is working out perfectly!

Persevere, dear daughter.

Perseverance makes you more mature.

You will end up perfectly mature and complete in the end...lacking NOTHING!

Rest in Me, God your Father

Saturday, May 28, 2011

Splinter

I was running down the stairs to bring the children to school one morning and the hand rail gave me a horrible splinter.
Since I was running down full speed, it went very deep. I couldn't see anything there to pull out, but my hand was extremly sore and unusable.
I was planning to go get some lidocaine from my birth kit and have a freind numb me up and dig around, but I ended up in the doctors office. Later i was glad it was the Dr, because it was really deep and took his skill to get to it.
Oh what a blessing lidocaine is!

Thursday, March 24, 2011

Our vacation to Missoula

Martha and I decided to take the kids on a trip to Missoula. Actually the kids had a week off school and I had a midwifery conference I needed to go to. So I used points and got a nice motel with an indoor swimming pool. With a little bit of convincing, Martha agreed to make the trip with us.