Oh the Joy!

Today my little great-niece Janae Hope is one month old. The great news is that her feeding tube came out today, and she has been off oxygen since last Wednesday. They need to be sure she can take in enough nourishment on her own to gain weight before she gets released from the hospital. Her parents hope and pray in eager anticipation of taking her home soon! Today they posted the first picture of her little face without even one tube attached!

In the past month, she has gone from this sad picture

 to this beautiful picture!

Many people all over this nation have prayed for this sweet little one and her parents while she was in the hospital in Virginia, and I know God has special plans for her life! God and modern medicine are amazing! I can't wait to see her in person when they next visit Oregon! Thank you so much to all my friends who have prayed and asked about her.

My Flood Walk

So it's been raining a little bit the past week - over seven inches the last three days. I took a walk this morning during a lull in the rain while there was some blue in the sky, hoping I could get back before it started again, because I don't walk in the rain, wind or extreme cold. (Yes, I am a weather wimp, according to my husband, who cancels his morning walks only if icy conditions cause him to fear imminent hip breakage due to high probability of falling.) Ten minutes into it, I was being pelted in a downpour! But I was determined to continue until I could go no further. (I knew I would be blocked in another 10 minutes!)

Sure enough, just before Hinck Road I had to turn around. I got to watch a pickup sit at the stop sign  for a few minutes, then finally turn turn toward me and safely traverse the flooded road.

 As I was going around this curve, I heard a car coming behind me and exercised my fastest running speed ever, motivated by the fact that the shoulder has been eroded and abruptly drops off. I won the race and made it safely past the flooded roadway before the car passed through.

 The shoulder now drops off a good two feet some places.

 When I was almost back at the same location where it started raining, it stopped, and lo and behold, look at all the blue sky!

Oh, the joy of a hot shower after being soaked outdoors! I am so thankful for a warm, dry home. My prayers are with all those whose lives have been disrupted by the flooding.

Tribute to Helen Sannan

Funerals. I always dread them. But I love it when I walk out of a funeral feeling encouraged and inspired.

I left work yesterday to go to Helen Sannan's funeral. I met Helen very soon after we started attending South Albany Community Church almost 30 years ago. I viewed her as one of the old saints of the church back then, and it startled me yesterday to realize that she would have then been only five years older than my current age!

Helen wrote out plans for her funeral 10 years ago, and of course Pastor Darrell followed her directions. Helen wanted to have the gospel preached at her funeral. She had instructed Pastor Darrell that he was to make sure people knew of their need to make a commitment to Jesus and of their need for a committed prayer life. He shared scriptures from her well-worn Bible with comments she had written, and he made us laugh and cry with stories about her, with the deep respect of a pastor who knew and loved her for many years. I loved singing the songs she chose, including "Oh, How I Love Jesus" and "Great is Thy Faithfulness".

I was fortunate to attend a ladies Bible study at her home in 1986. While my baby napped on her bed, my respect for her relationship with God grew, and I learned some things I never forgot. I was adjusting to being a full time housewife/mother at the time. One day some of us were discussing the drudgery of housework, and Helen said she loved doing housework, because she did it for the glory of God. "I sweep the floor as if I were doing it for God." She took 1 Corinthians 10:31 very literally, "Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God." I've thought of that with amazement many times over the years. I have never mastered that attitude like Helen did! Probably because I didn't pray enough and ask God to help me figure out how to apply that to cleaning toilets!

When I think of "Prayer Warrior", Helen Sannan comes to mind. Helen prayed without ceasing. A friend of theirs started coming to church, and Helen told me she had prayed faithfully for him for over 40 years before finally committed his life to Jesus. She advised me to never give up praying no matter how hopeless it seems!

I remember another comment she made back then that I thought was really funny. "By the time you reach my age and have gone through so many things, you have SO MUCH wisdom to share. The problem is that people really don't want to hear it!" I can relate to that at my current advanced age!

Helen also had a great sense of humor. One Sunday after I left my son in the nursery, I noticed I had two different kinds of black pumps on my feet. Just then I saw Helen in the hallway and confessed to her how mortified I was. She laughed long and hard, and made me feel much better! She also reminded me of it several times over the years!

I haven't seen much of Helen and Larry in recent years, and as so often happens after someone is gone, I regret that I didn't make more of an effort to stay in touch. I loved seeing and visiting with her family members after the funeral. It is beautiful to see the love for Jesus in their lives. They were privileged to be around her bedside singing as she left this earth to be with Jesus. My family was blessed to do that with my dad, and I'm so glad they were also able to share that precious time with Helen.

I left that funeral feeling so inspired, with a renewed commitment to prayer and to loving people and Jesus. Thank you, Helen, for all the encouragement and wisdom you shared with me. I look forward to seeing you on the other side!

My Lazy Saturday

It is a cloudy, windy Saturday morning, and I am confronted with a strange reluctance to change from my flannel jammies and fleece robe into daytime clothing. Probably because dressing signals a change from the morning coffee/reading/computer time into the Saturday chores mode. And coffee/reading/computer time is so much more appealing right now.

Although the coffee is in short supply. Someone (NOT me for a change) inexplicably broke the coffee pot carafe after I had only had one cup from it. He cleaned it up very nicely and got absolutely no criticism from me. I understand too well how things like that can happen. BUT---only one cup of coffee on a Saturday morning? That will never do. So I braved the cold in my bathrobe and raided the RV for a little French press coffee maker.

Will has so much more discipline than I. He left the table after breakfast and came back a bit later saying he needed to go to town for something and asking what I planned to do today. “The same thing I told you a little while ago when you asked me at breakfast. Clean house and plan menus for the week. What are you REALLY asking?” was my question.

So he sat down and wrote out three questions.
1. When do you want to replace the coffee carafe?
2. Do you want to come to town with me?
3. Are you going to stay in your bathrobe all day?

He read the questions to me and wrote down his interpretation of my answers:
1. Today when you go to town.
2. No.
3. None of your business. (Which is not what I actually said!)

Now that, my friends, is communication. I'm thinking someday we should probably teach a class.

He is now about to return from his shopping trip. Should I surprise him and be dressed when he gets home? Or should I be curled up on the couch, still in my bathrobe, but with my Bible so that at least I look spiritual? He wouldn’t dare make any wisecracks then, right? Decisions, decisions.

Baby Janae Update

Many of you have been praying for and asking about Baby Janae. I am excited to report that today the ECMO heart lung machine was successfully removed. She is now on a conventional ventilator. Brianna was released from the hospital on Monday and finally able to go be with her baby. She and Peter are very thankful for Janae's improvement and feeling very blessed by all the prayers and loving support they are getting. It is very exciting to see pictures with less and less tubes and wires attached to her little body as God does his healing work! Brianna and Peter are staying at a Ronald McDonald house there. Please continue to pray that little Janae's lungs will heal, and for Brianna as she recovers from the C-section.

Here is a quote from one of their updates: "The meaning of Janae is: God has answered: God is gracious. Hope: expectation. He is answering, and He is gracious!"

Hope for 2012

New Year's Day 2012. I looked back to see if I have ever done a New Year's post to share my deep reflection of the past year or prognostications for the new year. I conclude that this blog is sadly lacking such content.

I greatly enjoyed ending 2011 with a visit from my sister Linda and my sister Jean's cute children yesterday. (For some reason, she really enjoyed attending a wedding without those little darlings!) It was Chavon's 6th birthday, so I got some wedding cupcakes (donated by Anisa on Christmas) from the freezer. We put six candles on it and sang happy birthday to him after lunch. (I wish I would have washed the pizza sauce off his face first!)

Serena insisted it was also her birthday. Well, I'm here to spoil her just a little, and if she wants to blow out a candle it's fine with me. So I lit a candle on her cupcake and told her to blow it out. She looked at me like I just didn't get it. "No, it's my BIRTHDAY," she said. After we sang happy birthday to her, she blew it out with great delight!

Later in the day, I learned that my sister Hope's daughter Brianna had given birth to her first daughter, Janae Hope, back in Virginia. After a long, difficult labor which ended with a C-section, the baby was in critical condition with respiratory problems due to inhaling meconium. She was airlifted to the nearest hospital with a NICU, about an hour from where her mother Brianna is. This morning doctors performed a cardiopulmonary bypass, meaning that an artificial heart and lung will temporarily take over to supply bloodflow to the baby's body. This will give her lungs a rest and build up her blood supply. After several days they will try to wean her from this.

As if all this weren't hard enough, Brianna didn't even get to see her baby. The very thought of that breaks my heart. So we pray, knowing we serve a God of all comfort who heals beyond our expectations. Specifically, we have been asked to pray that Baby Janae's lungs would heal and that there would be no bleeding in her brain. Brianna is expected to be released from the hospital tomorrow, when she will finally be able to go be near her newborn.

Before I knew this yesterday, I was looking at the healthy, energetic Chavon and marveling that he spent the first month of his life as a premie in a neo-natal unit. We have at least three other miracle babies in our family who were born with serious issues. Many prayers went up for them, and they are all thriving.

So we begin our new year with hope. Hope for the best possible outcome: a strong, healthy baby who gets to come home soon to be loved and nurtured by wonderful parents.