So Many Kindnesses

The past few weeks have held many ups and downs, desperate moments, enduring moments, countless evidences of God’s faithfulness and deliverances, and a multitude of blessings. Through it all, I am slowly learning to trust Him more. And I continue to be humbled to be the recipient of your prayers, encouragement, and care. I am in awe at the way He sends help – just on time. He has given me such kind friends in each of you.

Today, I want to recount some of His incredible blessings and gifts. Tomorrow, I will put up more details on how you can pray for my health at this time, but for now, I wanted to recount His mercies and kindnesses.

Here are some ways I have been greatly blessed and encouraged lately:

• Welcoming spring!
• Celebrating Easter and the hope of new life and Christ’s resurrection which has transformed EVERYTHING.
• Receiving prayer from my pastors at their weekly prayer meeting.
• Finding grace to make it to multiple medical appointments back-to-back over several days.
• Seeking God for wisdom and direction about a particular decision and seeing Him answer.
• Receiving a verse from a friend at just the right moment.
• Finding rest in our backyard hammock which was discovered free on Craig’s List last year.
• Finding daily grace to take another step.
• Eating something that looked like a sandwich wrap (real food!)
  
• Receiving a much-needed dental examination and x-rays at no cost from a generous and kind dentist.
• Seeing how God sustains as He kept me and enabled me to keep eating when it seemed impossible.
• Enjoying a walk with a friend.
• Pink dogwood trees.
• Singing “Be Still My Soul” in church (the Lord gave me this hymn 10 years ago when I first started getting sick, and singing it reminds me of how He promised to bring me through in His timing.)
• Rejoicing with a friend at her healing from celiac, while watching her trust God and wait or Him for the bigger unanswered sorrows and questions in her life.
• Receiving prayer and words of truth from dear friends.
• Unexpected beautiful flowers from a friend.
• Being loaned a dress that fit which I will wear in a friend’s wedding next month.
• Seeing that He ALWAYS keeps His promises.
• Being reminded by a radio host on Good Friday that when things look the darkest incredible good is coming. In her words, “just look at the Cross.”
• Finding a beautiful Easter basket in my room – thanks to my sister.
• Eating chicken.
• Having several high calorie days.
• Eating “out” for the first time in a few years – parsnip soup from a grocery store!
  
• Slowly learning that it is HE “who will perfect that which concerns me” (Psalm 138:8) – not me.
• Meeting a friend’s little nephew and spending time with her one afternoon.
• Waking the other day with a particular verse in my head which I had not read in a long while and later on finding an email from a friend which shared that very passage and mentioned she had been praying. The time of the email coincided exactly with when I had been thinking of that verse. God ANSWERS our prayers.
  

And these are only a sampling of all He has done and continues to do! Yes, there have been moments when I thought I would not make it. Many moments when all I could do was hold on for dear life and wait for deliverance. But He never failed me. It may not be the way I would have chosen, but I am so glad that He knows better than I.

Note: My brother, Nathan, has been struggling greatly with multiple seizures yesterday and today. Would you all mind praying for him? Thank you so much!

“Let them thank the Lord for His steadfast love, for His wondrous works to the children of man!” – Psalm 107:31