We aren't promised tomorrow....

I've been thinking a lot the last couple days about how we aren't promised tomorrow.  No matter our age or health there is no guarantee that we will be here tomorrow.  We may have an unexpected death or Jesus may return.  Obviously I would prefer it be the latter.  I'm not trying to be morbid but I was made to face reality again on Sunday.

A friend of mine left this world Sunday morning.  We weren't particularly close.  He was actually my little sister's age.  We went to church camp together and later reconnected at college.  He was even my date to my first sorority formal.  Even though we haven't really stayed in touch my heart hurts so badly for his family.

While we were in college all he could talk about was becoming an officer in the United States Marine Corp.  He had an injury as a child that prevented him from doing it right out of high school so he went on to college and conditioned his body so he could become a Marine.  We graduated in 2004 and he pretty much went straight way.  Be patient with me here.  This really does tie in to what have to say.

He was such a strong young man.  He was determined and in the words of his sister a nonconformist.  He was married and had two beautiful children.  He was serving as a Civil Affairs Officer in Afghanistan and was due to return home in about 8 weeks.  Instead about two weeks ago he developed pneumonia and his lung collapsed.  He was flown to Germany and there they found discovered he had a tumor in his abdomen.  He had Leukemia. He was flown home and started chemo treatments.  He also had several blood clots in his lungs which they were trying to resolve.  He was getting better.  I know hundreds of people were praying for them.  I was one of those praying as well as my family.  Saturday night I was excited because though they had to intubate him again, he was starting to show signs of improvement.

When I got home from church Sunday afternoon my sister sent me a text.  Josh Pairsh passed away.  My immediate reaction was to say, "no, no no!"  because I knew God was going to heal him.  I responded to my sister that I would read Josh's sister's status on Facebook because she had been updating everyone about him this way.  This is what I read:

This morning at 7:45 EST my brother Captain Joshua Cole Pairsh USMC passed away following an intense battle with ALL. He was a honorable soldier who was serving his country on a civil affairs mission in Afghanistan when he became ill. He was an incredible father, devoted husband and loyal friend. Our loss is great and words fail to express the sorrow we are all experiencing. I want to honor his life and the sacrifices he made, for those of you who never met my brother you can't possibly know what you missed but he was a good man, he had integrity, a kind heart and was a nonconformist. I am truly grateful for the time we had with him in Bethesda, MD these last couple of weeks and I thank God for bringing him home with us before taking him home with Him.


My heart hurt so bad and I cried for awhile.  I had lost a friend I rarely spoke to but his family had lost so much more.  I began to think about if I lost my sister.  How painful would that be for me.  I still struggle to understand why this happened. Here was a strong, fit young man.  He did triathlons to condition himself to become a Marine.  He took care of himself and lived such a full life.  He had babies and a wife.  God took him home though.

So it has made me think and evaluate.  Folks, we aren't promised tomorrow.  When I leave this world I want to be remembered for how I put God first all the time and lived as an example for Him. I am not sure if I can truly say I am doing this right now.  Yes, I try to do this but am I really trying my best?  I can't say I'm going to be perfect from this point on but I am going to work on it.  Our journey as Christians should be one of growth and progression.  The last month or so I have been in a place of apathy.  I am not sure why really but I am going to change that.  If anything Josh's death has given me the kick in the rear I need.  At the risk of sounding redundant, I'm not promised tomorrow so I have to live the best I can for God today.
This might not help anyone else but I really needed to get all of this out of my head.  I need to move forward in my spiritual growth.

Below is a picture of Josh and I the day we graduated college.  It was almost 8 years ago and the last time I saw him in person.  We kept in touch the way most people do these days, the Internet. Not the greatest picture of me but he looks great :)

Josh you will be greatly missed but I know you are home now.

                                       

Here's to 2012 and a retrospect on 2011

OK, so I took a blogging hiatus because I felt like I didn't have anything worthwhile to blog about and/or I was too busy to blog about it.

I would like to say I will blog more in 2012 but I can't make any promises.

Looking back at the last few months since I posted quite a bit has happened.  My last post was in October 2011 and it was brief to say the least.  I will just tick off a few things that have happened in those months to get you up to speed.

- At the beginning of October, the 9th to be exact, my son turned 2.  He has been 2 for three months!  It's flying people and I am afraid I might miss something.

- Nothing super significant happened in November other than Thanksgiving.  It was good.

- The beginning of December my husband got laid off from work.  That was earlier than usual because it normally happens for the month of January but hey he got called back to work on January 5th.  He was off a whopping 3 weeks! Upon return they made him salaried instead of hourly and now he will get paid once a month instead of weekly.  That will take some adjustment on my part since I pay the bills.

- Christmas was good if a little hectic.  This year my son enjoyed the opening of the presents a little more and I must say having a huge family pays off because little man made off with a bunch of toys this year


Now that we have looked back at what you missed (I'm sure there is more) in 2011 let's talk about 2012.  I am not a big resolution kind of girl.  I know I won't always follow through.  This year, however, I have a couple of goals.

First off my husband and I have been looking at the finances and are going to try to get a lot of stuff paid of this year.  This calls for a tighter budget, rarely eating out and other things to curb the unnecessary spending.  To accomplish this I am going to get back to meal planning.  I used to make a meal plan weekly and then shop based on the meal plan.  I have gotten out of this habit.  Now that he is only getting paid once a month I am going to have to do monthly meal planning (pray for me :) ).  Also, I am going to try to get back to doing the envelope system.  Taking out cash each month for gas and groceries is where I will start.  And each of us will get an allowance.  I will be more likely to stay on budget if I have that money in hand.  These are just a few things to accomplish this goal.

Another goal I have for 2012 is to do more journaling about my son and to take more pictures.  We have a group at my church that meets once a month called Mission:Motherhood.  Today we met and one of the things we discussed was keeping memories and passing them on to our children.  Being able to look back and either tell our children about them or remember for ourselves.  A lot of the moms keep a notebook of cute things their child said or did, milestones their child hit etc.  Some moms are big scrapbookers so they do that.  One mom has a calendar for each child and writes down in each date one thing that happened for the day.  There were about 20 moms there and everyone did something different.  So for me I am going to carry around a notebook and write down those memories I want to cherish.  Like instead of saying yellow he says wehwhoa.  Take those pictures I want to remember like when he gives his little cousin a big kiss and pats his cheek.  He is only 2 but I look back and because I haven't kept very good record I can't remember when some of his milestones were and that makes me a bit sad.  But I am not going to dwell.  I'm just going to move forward.

Lastly, and this isn't really a goal, I would like you to pray for me if you are the praying kind.  I might face returning to work for at least a year.  I am not sure yet what this looks like, if it's part time work or full time, days or evenings.  This hurts my heart.  See I never planned to be a stay at home mom.  I always thought I would be a career mom.  I had my son though and it ached to think of leaving him to go back to work.  I was going to do it though.  I thought I didn't have a choice really.  God took it out of my hands though and my position was eliminated due down-sizing while I was on maternity leave and we made a go of it.  I love nothing more than staying at home with my baby.  I haven't missed much of his life.  To think that I may have to return to work for even a short time hurts a lot.  I pray that I see God's will in this situation.   I realize that if he wants me to stay home still He will provide.  I also am looking at this as a short-term thing too.  If/when we have another child it will be too costly for childcare.  But until then just help me in praying that I make the right decision.

Enough of my rambling I hope some of this made sense.  Part of this is an attempt to capture a snap shot of our life as it is now.  I can't promise I will blog daily or even weekly but I will try to at least once a month!

Been awhile and may be even longer.

Taking a blogging break.  I have felt like my blog posts have been rather forced of late.  I am taking an indefinite break unless I find I have something really worthwhile to blog about.  I will still read other blogs just not going to post right now.

Prayer Monday, September 26, 2011

So I skipped out on Prayer Monday last week because I was trying to be still and do some listening. It's amazing what that will do for your prayer time.  A lot happened in the two weeks since I didn't Prayer Monday but let's just say it has been rather trying.

I have few things that I am praying about this week.  I am praying for our Fall Retreat which is this coming Thursday through Saturday.  I am really looking forward to it.  I am specifically praying that all of our hearts will be open to hearing from God.  It's going to be a great time!

My husband has an interview on Oct 3 for a job that would be really great if he can get it.  I am praying God's will be done.  I feel like we have been through this cycle a couple of times now with interviews and rejection letters so I am just not going to stress it and rest in the fact God is our provider.

Continue to pray for me that I will be a little less Chatty Cathy with God and do more listening. I don't really feel like I have been hearing Him much lately. I just feel like I have been talking, asking, pleading etc  too much and not being still to hear what He has to say.

Overused....

I have come to the realization that I have a word I overuse.  That word is Awesome.  Especially when replying to text messages.  It has become quite ridiculous actually. I have had to break out my mental thesaurus to intentionally find words to express the same thing.  It has become such a habit though that I automatically respond with Awesome before I have a chance to think of a different word.  I've even started noticing it in regular conversation.  I'm not sure why I do it.

Is there a word you overuse?  Have you tried to break yourself of the habit?

Prayer Monday, September 12, 2011

God has been good over the last couple of weeks.  My dad's surgery went very well and he is feeling so well that he not caring much for his restrictions.  That's my dad stubborn as he can be.  Thank you so much for your prayers.

My knee is also improving.  Big J was a little nicer today even though I gave him a hard time about last week :).

My sister and BIL are making some big decisions regarding possible relocation of their business to the town they are currently living in.  There is more to it than that but that is the short version.  Please pray that God has their hand in this and they are able to hear Him clearly.

My church is having their Fall Retreat at the end of this month (I know it seems like we have a lot of retreats but this one is just our church not the whole network :) ).  Please pray that God will prepare the hearts of those going and they will be open to what He will show them during that time.  I am hoping to get to go myself but am trying to figure out childcare for my son.  Please pray that God is able to work that out.

Also, pray for me that I get my energy back.  I have just been so tired lately no matter how much I sleep.  I am trying to exercise more because I am sure my lack of exercise is not helping. Ironically my knee injury has kicked that into gear because I have to do exercises for that daily.  

Therapists and Watermelon

Normally therapists and watermelon would not be connected but I will get to that in a minute.

I have been going to therapy for about three weeks now.  I have a PT and a PTA I generally see when I go.  I do a series of exercises and then they do stretching and deep tissue massages on my leg and knee.

Now most people when they think massage they think of this nice relaxing experience.  Let me set you straight. When you combine the words massage, therapy and deep tissue you get anything but relaxing.

I generally work with the PTA when I am there, we'll call him Big J.  Big J is a big guy and good at his job.  When he does a deep tissue massage he means business.  I am sure he doesn't mean to torture because the object is to find the tight muscle and get it to loosen up.  Fact is I am fairly certain Big J could get some secrets out of some very tough people if he ever needed to; granted he's a really nice guy so I doubt he would ever do that.  Though he may have said something along the line of giving me something to remember them by; I am assuming the pain I now feel.  Today I felt like he was going to put his thumb through my muscle all the way to the bone.  I know from previous experience that this will be a good thing in the long run.  Tonight, however, I feel like he beat my leg with a metal rod.  No hard feelings though...... I will let him know about it at my next appointment.  Enough about Big J and me whining.  On to the watermelon!

The place I go to for therapy also has a little room where they have produce for sale.  This really isn't that odd if you know all the pieces of the story.  See Big J's sister owns the therapy place and their family farms. Big J brings it to work.  Hence the produce sold out of the little room.

Last week I got a watermelon from there.  It sat on my counter for a week and today I decided to cut it open.  MY GOSH it is the sweetest watermelon I have had in awhile.  My 23 month old ate two big pieces at lunch.  Thankfully I had the foresight to undress him down to his diaper before lunch.  The watermelon was so juicy he had it running down his chest and a smile from ear to ear.  I wish I would have cut it up sooner!

Well that was about all the excitement in my day.  How about yours?