On this day last year, the lives of many changed forever. I first wrote my thoughts about it here.
A year later, I am absolutely amazed at how God has worked. I would have never guessed we'd be where we are today.
I had a dream this week. About a guy who really exists but I've never met. He used to be my friend's boss. In the dream, his college age son dies when he gets hit by a car while riding his bike.
In my waking moments, I hadn't been thinking of this man, his son, bicycles, accidents, death or anything that was even remotely connected to this dream. So I chalked it up as completely random and emailed my friend so we could laugh about this "stupid" dream I had.
A few days later my friend responded and I discovered the dream was anything but "stupid." A very close family friend of hers, a college age girl, had committed suicide. The man in my dream also knew the family and took part in the funeral. They all attend the same church and have a lot of history together.
As I read my friend's response, I became completely overwhelmed. I started shaking and then found myself crying. God had given me a message and I missed it. What I chalked up as "random" was actually a prompting to pray for the people in my dream. I was so sidetracked by the strangeness of the dream that I completely missed the fact that God wanted to use me to help those who were hurting.
How many other opportunities have I missed simply because I didn't recognize God's voice?
Whenever Andrew does or says something funny we call it a "Drewism." Last week Drew had the stomach flu. I'll spare you the details. I went up to PA on Friday to help out my sister with car issues and a sick kid. It was day 3 of the flu and Drew seemed to be rebounding. But it was a roller coaster day...one minute he'd be running around, the next minute running to the bathroom. That evening his brother had a basketball game followed by a pizza party. Drew couldn't decide whether to eat or not. He finally decided to try so he took two small bites of pizza and was done.
On our way home from the party I dropped my sister off at the mechanic to pick up her car. The kids didn't realize the car had been at the shop and were asking lots of questions about it. One of them asked if it was fixed and I said, "No, they didn't have the part."
Drew says in a very sad, forlorn voice, "That's like staring at a piece of pizza and not being able to eat it." Priceless.
My nephew, Andrew, is in 2nd grade. A few weeks ago a parent helper was assisting in his classroom. She was having difficulty managing the students so she used the old stand by... "I want all eyes on me!"
Within seconds she felt something pressing against her side. She looked down to find Drew's face pushed flat up against her. You guessed it! He decided to be funny and obeyed her literally. Fortunately, those big blue eyes and long eyelashes melt every female who encounters them. Flash the grin and it's over! Plus he is a very sweet kid. So the mother took it as endearing and not at all disrespectful. She thought it was adorable.
Yes, Drew knows how to turn his aunt's heart into a puddle, too.
Update on last two posts:
Family Skeletons:
I found a non-profit, completely free service called International Soundex Reunion Registry. They don't do the searching for you but they enter all your information in their database and cross reference it with information everyone else has submitted. It's like a giant data match. Of course, it only works if parties within the same family have participated. If they find a connection, they call both parties to find out if they want to contact with each other. Several adoption search websites recommend starting with ISRR because it's simple and free. I'm dropping the forms in the mail today! Please pray!
Esophageal Stricture: (try to say that 3 times fast!)
So I eat my first real meal on Sunday and spent the rest of the day in pain...with heartburn! I've never had heartburn in my life! But now that my esophagus is open, the acid is free to flow all the way up. So the solution to one problem has caused a new problem. Now I know why I'm on acid-reducing meds. And then this doesn't make any sense...yesterday I got food stuck in my chest again. What's up with that? Is it open or closed?
