updates on prayers

I wanted to share the most recent information regarding our niece… the one for whom I asked yesterday for your prayers.

Chrissy remains in ICU.
What prompted this current crisis in her body and of her system is yet unclear, but the crisis does remain….

However…..

Yesterday the family was given very little hope.
She had been placed on a ventilator Sunday but fought its presence.
She has developed pneumonia.
She was placed into a coma yesterday in order to allow the ventilator to do its job.
Her vital signs continued to fail as her kidneys began to shut down.
Yesterday was a heavy day as feelings and thoughts were not optimistic.

At the same time, prayers have continued.

Last evening my sister-n-law and husband spoke over the phone. My sister-n-law was barley hanging onto the rope in her life…yet a knot has been thankfully tied at the end.

Late last night I had a clam concerning Chrissy….this after a day of dread and doom.
Never one to trust these “mood” swings, I dismissed it as I continued to focus on healing.

This morning I still had the calm.

As I headed to Atlanta this morning to see my dad, my husband called telling me that Chrissy had actually had a “good” night….that they would use dialysis on her today to “jumpstart” the kidneys…

It was then that my sister-n-law text wanting me to share her deep gratitude for everyone I had asked to pray for Chrissy—she doesn’t know about my blog nor of my asking all of you.
She’s just knows I’ve asked friends to join in prayer.

I debated whether I should tell her about the “calm” I’d experienced as I didn’t want to throw out false hope or what in her desperation may sound trite and empty…but I went ahead and shared that I felt late last night as well as this morning that Chrissy was going to beat this.

She didn’t text back immediately and I feared I had overstepped my boundaries.
Then suddenly she responded…
She told me that when she was driving home last night late from the hospital that she too had a calm to wash over her. She felt that Chrissy was going to make it.

I then told her that we would continue to claim that.

My sister-n-law is a quiet private individual–she is also very emotional and I’ve known that seeing her child, no matter a grown woman, in such dire shape, has taken the mother in her to a place of utter despair.
For her to share with me that she had felt a calm was / is huge.

As of this afternoon, Chrissy is thankfully hanging in there.
The dialysis will begin shortly…

So once again, I ask that you continue with me on this journey of prayer.
Please know that I thank you and that my sister-n-law Gretchen thanks you as well—she just doesn’t know how many of you there are…..

The sinking sands of our crazy times

I live in a crazy time.
Anne Frank

(the evening beach walkers / Santa Rosa Beach, Fl / 2016)

I don’t think that there is man nor beast amongst us who wouldn’t agree that we are living in a time of utter craziness.
And that’s crazy in not a good kind of crazy way.

Granted previous generations have had their fair share of crazy…
However back then, back in the day,
one could pretty much discern who and what was crazy and who and what was not.
Everyone knew who were the good guys and who were the bad guys.
Life was black and white.

Everyone knew right from wrong and wrong from right and they could all unite on common ground to fight the common fight against the common enemy.

Folks could and would rally around a cause,
actually rolling up their sleeves to fight for that cause.

Today we live in a hazy time…a crazy time.
A time of heavy smoke and fog…
A time that sees the sands on which we stand, sifting…
As all the colors have swirled together… creating a tertiary bland sea of nothingness…
with no discernible good / bad …right / wrong.
No one knows which side of the fence to get on anymore.

That’s what happens when we decide everything and anything is simply all good because we don’t like anything to be bad. We’ve actually muddied the waters with our overt good intentions.

I’ve always been pretty even keeled and level headed…or at least that is now the case in these latter years of mine as hindsight is something I have finally, thankfully, acquired…with such being a by-product of the aging process.

I’m not one to go off half cocked and jump on the elusive bandwagons of those wearing the rose colored glasses.
I like things to be black and white.
Yes or no
Good or bad…
I like being able to readily discern what is what.

A gray, blended hodge podge of gobbledegook is not my cup of tea.

I admire the John the Baptists and Winston Churchills among us.
Those who could and can see, as well as know, what is what…
No excuses, no delusions, no appeasement and sticking heads in sand.
More of stating the facts then squaring the shoulders in order to deal with the forthcoming onslaught.
They didn’t nor currently do not mince words and they called and continue calling a spade a spade….
meaning…they don’t and won’t sugar coat the truth, no matter how hard and tough it may be.

I like to see what I’m dealing with…straight away and head on…

It’s like seeing that ominous twister in the distance.
It’s fearsome, destructive and heading your way…but at least you know what you’re dealing with.
You know your options…albeit dire and possibly deadly, but at least you know what your fighting for and against.

It’s the twister coming in the night, hidden in the darkness, that hidden monster heading your way, which is most frightening. You catch a glimpse of it in the flash of lightening… only to meekly jump into bed while pulling the covers over your head as you simply hope for the best.

Not a good plan…

Nope, not at all…

I prefer knowing what it is I’m dealing with and in turn, flatly deal with it.
And I don’t like pretending that the bad is hiding in the sheep’s clothing of good.

Now I’ve never been one to jump on Ralph Nader’s bandwagon.
You know, that forever and ever Greenpeace presidential candidate…
That fellow who has been raising his battle standard since I was young!
As Nader was always the voice in the back of the room who was reminding everyone of issues no one either cared to hear about or simply tried to ignore.
He made most folks a tad uncomfortable with his rabble rousing.

He was always a bit out there for me, a bit over the top.
Not that he hasn’t had good ideas…
He has sounded the often necessary bells of alarm over the environment and all things humanitarian.
He was the consumer’s advocate before there was the magazine.

But as a more rock solid kind of soul, I wasn’t all peace, love and rock and roll.

So imagine my small bemusement recently when reading a recent interview with Mr Nadar that actually had me more in agreement than disagreement.

Never one to shy away from what he thinks is the real reason behind big government, big business, big shenanigans, Mr Nader reflects on some of the reasons for today’s craziness of the shifting sands we precariously now find ourselves slowly sinking on….

Everything from the defunct Occupy Wall Street movement, to the overtly sensitive Black Lives Matters, to our darkening college culture of self absorption, to the crisis in middle America and the rise of Donald Trump…

Mr Nader offers a good bit to chew on in his latest bells of alarm….bells I tend to agree need to be rung….

http://www.aol.com/article/2016/06/10/ralph-nader-criticizes-absurd-college-culture/21393149/

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2016/06/09/ralph-nader-blasts-sensitive-black-lives-matter-activists-absurd-trigger-warning-campus-culture/

My hope is built on nothing less
Than Jesus’ blood and righteousness;
I dare not trust the sweetest frame,
But wholly lean on Jesus’ name.
On Christ, the solid Rock, I stand;
All other ground is sinking sand.
Hymn “my Hope is Built on Nothing Less”
lyrics by Edward Mote (1797-1874)