Prayers

I have been meaning to share with you a very special craft project for a while now.

What my niece went thru in December was very scary. It was a very difficult time for our family. It was had to know how to deal with such traumatic news. She is so sweet... It was so hard to watch her go thru all the poking and testing in the hospital.

The hospital room was overwhelming and scary, so clinical and medical. I wanted to bring in some flowers to brighten the place up, but for allergy reasons or something, there were no fresh flowers allowed on the pediatric oncology floor.

I decided to make her some flowers out of my wool sweater stash.

I cut and I cut...all the cutting became my silent meditation...

and the stitches of each button are a prayer. I worked on them a little everyday. They took me so long to finish that by the time I had a bouquet, Ayana had been sent home. I set out to make something for my sister and my niece but it turned out to be for me. It got me thru.


Praise God, our prayers are being answered. Ayana continues to do well and all the monitoring and testing is showing that the tumor is receeding, and she has not needed any chemotherapy. She recently had a CT scan and the tumor had regressed to such an extent that she they will just monitor it now with ultrasound.

Treasures in Heaven

We had two bikes stollen out of our backyard this summer. It made me very angry and sad. The other day I noticed the top had fallen off my plastic bin of sweaters under my bed. Moths and bugs got into them and ate holes in almost all of them. I was sick to my stomach about it, and spent alot of time thinking about it. I seemed to remember there was a scripture somewhere about something like that...

19"Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. 20But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. 21For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

22"The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are good, your whole body will be full of light. 23But if your eyes are bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness!

24"No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money.

Matthew 6:19-24

My God is really working to reveal something to me and I am trying so hard to get my finite little mind around it. It feels like if I can begin to understand what he is saying, it will forever change everything in my life and family. We are praying that God will help us to grasp what these words really mean in our life and everywhere we turn we are confronted in some way by this truth. I am learning to let go of the control I have always tried to have over my life and truly surrender to God's will. I am trying to focus only on Him, and not letting my eyes wander. I am learning to live in God's kingdom now.