Some Encouragement

Here is a follow up to yesterday’s post. Part of my problem yesterday was I tend to carry every one else’s problems around in sack over my shoulder, kind of like Santa. Only instead of toys it’s full of things that are hurting others. When I get down I tend to open up my sack and start sorting though them for some reason. I guess to make myself feel worse. Starting on Tuesday and for the next 24 hours it was like one bad thing after another. I found out that a customer of ours has cancer then we got messages from our church prayer chain. We haven’t had a call on that for quite some time and yesterday we got two. One was one of our older members who has a tumor on her kidney. With all of my kidney issues that always scares me to hear this. They had thought for some time she was having kidney stones….The other call we got was about a young member in our church, I think she’s about 14, who all of a sudden started having problems. She’s in the hospital and they think she has MS. So all of that was swirling around in my head yesterday and I felt very down.

This morning Jay and I were talking about our adoption and what should we do. I go back and forth on if this is really what God wants us to do. Jay doesn’t feel the same way, he thinks it will happen. I never know if it’s God speaking to me or my own pessimistic attitude making me think that we are supposed to be a family of 3. Needless to say I felt discouraged. I’ve felt like God has been so silent on this adoption thing and I’m confused. I prayed this morning to hear something from him, anything that was encouraging.

This morning I got a phone call from the mother-in-law of the customer who has cancer. She was calling about the patronage check that we have been giving to our customers the last couple of years. We are having a customer appreciation day on the 25th to start handing out the checks. She was calling to let us know how great that was but unfortunately she and her husband would be unable to make it. She started telling me that her husband had 5 blockages and had open heart surgery a week ago and then her daughter-in-law had just found out about her breast cancer. I told her not to worry about the checks, I’d mail them out on the 25th. Then I asked her how everyone was doing – she said her husband was doing fine and then she said prayers had been answered about her daughter-in-law. When I first heard about it Tuesday I was told it was the very aggressive type of breast cancer, which really had me down because she has young children. Her mother-in-law said that things were looking much better. At first they had been told it was Stage III and that it had spread to her lungs. They’ve since found out it’s still at Stage III, but it’s only in the lymph nodes. It hasn’t spread anywhere else.

There was the answer to my prayer of God showing me some encouragement today. Not only did I find out things weren’t quite as bad as thought for this lady, her mother-in-law who has got much more on her plate than I do encouraged me. It wasn’t so much that she said anything special but it was just the upbeat way that she spoke about everything. She knows things are still going to be hard for her family but they will get through them.

I’ve never doubted that there is a God or that he doesn’t care about us. Even when things seem quiet I know God is working, but I get so frustrated with it. I told Jay this morning that I could see how some people could really loose their faith during these silent times. I guess when you hear an answer, not matter how small it may be, it makes you really appreciate it after these times of silence.