Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving was so much fun this year! We had a change in eating schedule, because Don and Elise had to go to Elise's grandparents for dinner prior to our dinner. Normally we eat at 3, but this year we ate at 6. Don and Elise got here at 6, but the stuffing and other sides weren't ready until 6. That gave me some time with my daughters in law, and Conner and Andrew, Marie Henderson's little boy, who is a doll baby, too. Marie played basketball with the boys and Don. Nathan played for about 2 minutes. He didn't feel well all day yesterday, and still doesn't feel well. The doctor said all of his abdominal organs are bruised, including his liver. The way it happened was, the boys and their friends--about 20 people....played "touch" football....but their first play involved two lines charging at one another. Chris, our oldest, and Nathan, our youngest charged each other, and neither one of them backed down. Both of them ended up getting hurt...Nathan more than Chris. Yesterday, before they played basketball, I mentioned disability insurance and how easy it is to damage spinal cords. I am reading the book, Wild at Heart. Maybe I'll begin to understand....

Anyway, first Cameron and I hung out with Conner and Andrew while I cooked....and that was a lot of fun. I'd almost forgotten about cooking with little ones underfoot. We had little cars, a high chair, sippy cups and cookies in my little kitchen. It was fun. The kids were excited and Andrew and Conner played sweetly with one another. When Elise and Don got here, Cam took the boys downstairs to play and Elise hung out and helped me finish up dinner. We fit ten people around our dining room table, with hardly an inch to spare. Don and I are going to have to get a longer table! We prayed and intended to go around the table saying what we are thankful for, but we never did that, because everyone was so hungry--except Don and Elise--who ate at her Grandparents. They ate though.

After dinner and dishes, we went downstairs for Wii bowling. Andrew and Conner were all excited, and my living room was full of action! I forgot to mention, our granddog Dylan was there, too. He is a border collie, and before Conner's birth, he was the "baby" in his family. He still thinks he has to sit in my lap and lick my face. So if Conner or Andrew wasn't taking a rest on the couch with me, Dylan was squeezed between me and Elise or on top of both of us...kissing us on the face. He reminds me of a 5 year old suffering from sibling rivalry.

It wasn't hard for me not to eat meat, even though I gave myself permission to have a piece of turkey. I just didn't eat it, because it didn't sound good to me. Everyone said it was the best turkey ever, but I couldn't eat it. I did eat other things with milk products and eggs, so I had a vegetarian meal...not vegan.

I am thankful for all of my family, especially my daughters in law and baby Grandson. I am thankful for my husband and our 33.5 years of marriage. I am thankful he knows me better than anyone on earth, and he still tells me I'm perfect. No one knows better than he does...except me...how imperfect I am. But he truly loves me. I am thankful that God has created this family from the two of us.
I love and respect my children....the boys and their wives...our little grandson. I am thankful for Marie and Christine and little Andrew in our life...and all of my friends and church family. I feel like my life is a painting with all of the little nuances and rich colors...lights and darks....brights and dulls...warms and cools...that make up a great painting. God has blessed me richly. I am so undeserving, but His love and grace has rained down upon my life. How can I help but thank and praise Him. Thank You, God!

Continuity and Wise Adventure

This is the 34th Thanksgiving dinner I have made;although one year when I was sick, I coached, half-conscious from the couch, in between trips to the bathroom--it was the year I had Hep A. I am always up the night before Thanksgiving, making pies, cornbread, salads and cleaning. Every year I ask what everyone wants for dinner, and they always mention the same things I have made for all of these years. They only want that dinner once per year, but they always want the same dinner. Usually, we go to devotional the night before Thanksgiving, but this year Nathan spent the afternoon at the hospital. He was diagnosed at the medical clinic with appendicitis. After a CAT scan at the ER, it was discovered that what he really had was extremely bruised internal organs, to include liver, kidney, and all of his abdomen, from a game of "touch" football he played with his brothers last weekend. I am not happy. They are grown men, and they should know how fragile the human body is....even young 20 and 30 something bodies. One of them is a daddy, and he should know how valuable his spinal cord is! When they were little and hurt each other, there were consequences. When they hurt themselves, the consequences took care of themselves.
This year, I am considering taking Thanksgiving dinner hostage....and banning the basketball game altogether. At the very least, I am sending the voice of sanity, their dad, out in their midst. They have always known there will be "heck" to pay if they hurt their dad....or me. But I quit playing with them after they started getting taller than me. But this is serious....a liver can be ruptured so easily, and if the liver is ruptured, death from hemmorage happens almost instantaneously.
I told Nathan that if he even thinks about playing basketball tomorrow, I'm cancelling Thanksgiving dinner. He promised he wouldn't. Just wait until Little Man is big enough to play....I think they all will curtail the rough stuff. If they don't, there will be "heck" to pay....from Chris, Cameron AND all of the grandparents. I know boys need adventure....but wise adventure! Happy Thanksgiving, friends.

Praise, Pounds, Phil and Rainbows......

It was an extroidinary weekend! I learned so many things about our brother, Jeff Dalling! It was inspiring to hear how many people connected with the selfless service of Jeff and how everyone knew that he was the way he was because he loved (loves) God. I was inspired by how many people attended his funeral, provided food and ministered to the Dalling family. I admire the courage and faith of Wanda, Lizzy and Ben. They were here and serving all weekend. I admire that they let us share in their sorrow and yet were willing to humbly serve and be served by the family at Fairfax. That is the way families are supposed to operate, and I am so grateful to have witnessed such faith in action. I am also grateful to be a part of the family at Fairfax.

Also, I was proud to be part of our church family last night as we welcomed the McKinney family. Pound parties were new to us when we moved to this area. We moved to the DC area on a prayer (we didn't even have a wing). We became members at University Park church of Christ, and some really dear friends gave us a pound party.
We felt part of a family, and we really needed to find family in this big cavernous world up here. I was happy to hear Phil say that they felt they were "home" here. That's the way everyone should feel--that our church family is home,to our old and new members, even people who are not yet part of our church family. I miss my family at University Park, too...the way it was then, and I miss the sister who gave us the pound party.

It was great to see the faces of everyone in the congregation from the vantage point of the praise team. It was like Phil said, we weren't singing to each other....we were singing to God.

Oh, and I forgot to mention....Saturday after the funeral and after my art class, I looked out the window right on the Potomac River--from the Torpedo Factory. There was the most beautiful rainbow I have ever seen....a brilliant double rainbow with 8 different colors...I always thought rainbows only had 7 colors! I looked around the elevator and beckoned a young family to go outside and look at the rainbow with me--I just wanted to share it with someone. We were just staring at the rainbow, and I was trying to think of something to say to the family, when the young woman said, "Wow! This is just PERFECT for the gay pride event downtown!" Um...not exactly what I was planning to talk about, so, as my mind drew a blank, I decided to call and share the rainbow with Don...over my cell phone! He had already seen it from his Centreville vantage point and had called me during art class. I had whispered, "....still in class!" Anyway, I guess wherever you were, you probably saw it, too. (I'd like to think Jeff asked God to display it for his family.)

Losses

This week we had a tragic death of the father of a young family, Jeff Dalling. It is the second such death in our church this year. He was a public servant who traveled into harms way in both Iraq and Afghanistan in the past several years. He was also on our prayer team, and we all prayed for him and felt relieved that Jeff didn't have to go back overseas. He died of a brain aneurysm. I am so sad for his family....his wife and children are going to miss him so much, as will our church. He was a good man, a true servant from what I knew of him.

I've been thinking about the Roth family, another family who lost their dad this year. It must be really hard going through this again with another family in our church, at least for Tresa and the older kids. Pray for the Roth family, too.
I know we know we will see our loved ones again, but it's so hard when Heaven seems so far away, especially to children.

Other upsetting news came from my family. My brother, who has polycystic kidneys, like my dad had, went to see his nephrologist in Denver, CO. My brother's kidney function has gone down from 60% to 47%. He is only 49, and he seems to be losing function a lot quicker than my dad did. He will most likely have to have a kidney transplant...I thought about giving him one of mine, but I'm pretty sure they wouldn't let me, because of my lupus and diabetes. Pray that my brother's kidney deterioration slows down and maybe that there will be a cure for his disease. He's had to quit his job because of pain and will hopefully be on long term disability and then social security disability. He has a good attitude. He said that he has an opportunity to be home with his 15 year old son now, and he may not have that time later. That makes me sad, too, but proud of my brother. I'm going to go see him this Feb. I think.

God Bless America!

I am amazed by the distance our country has traveled in the last 44 years! Today I turned 54 years old, and I have a picture that is engraved in my memory from 44 years ago. I was standing on a street corner watching a parade. I was holding hands with another little girl, with dark skin, and she and I were oblivious to everything except the sights and sounds of the parade before us. Suddenly, we were ripped apart, and, as my father grabbed my shoulder, bent to my level and shook his finger in my face, so did my friend's father do the same to her. She and I stared in bewildered silence at one another, and never again were we allowed to play together in our fathers' workplace--where my dad was a credit manager and hers was an elevator operator. It was the first moment of my awareness of racism, and fear was the shadow on both of our fathers' faces, fear for what could have happened to two little girls standing on the street in Wichita Falls, Texas during the racial tension-filled sixties, holding hands, watching a parade.

I remember the fires that my parents watched burning on the TV screens, and I remember the muffled whispers and furtive glances and they worried about what would become of our country. I remember Martin Luther King's speeches on racial equality and I remember wondering why anyone would deny someone their rights just because of the color of his or her skin.

Later, as a young woman I was angry to find out that parts of towns in Texas had what was called "colored town". I read books like "Uncle Tom's Cabin" and "Diary of Anne Frank" and I made comparisons of the cruelty in both worlds. I was already outraged by injustice, but then I became fearful of the capability of men to believe in the superiority of one race over another. The murders of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy added to my fear of the reality of our world. And there was always the looming mushroom cloud of the cold war.

Tonight, I am amazed. Although I voted for Sen. McCain, because of my strong belief that abortion is wrong, I am proud of our country for electing an African American President. And it is gratifying to know that most of the electorate who voted for him were not black. Our country has come a long way.

This was the first election that had me undecided until a week before the election. It was the abortion issue that pushed me onto McCain's side, but I think both men would be good Presidents, and unlike most of the hype I've heard about Palen, I respect her as well. I don't know much about Biden...or at least I didn't until tonight. I am sure you all prayed, as I did, for the outcome. I miss talking to my dad about the election. He used to take me to vote. He would have been amazed and proud tonight, too. And unlike me, he would have voted for Obama. And that would have been an amazing thing, too! Thank you, Dad, for taking me to vote with you...you gave me a love for my country, and you made election day have a wonderful sense of anticipation for me. I did the same thing for my boys, and all of them voted today....basically, our whole family cancelled out each others' votes! :)
But at least we live in a country where we can do that! God bless America....and please, dear God, let us glorify You by our actions.