Good Things Can Come of Bad Things

   Part The First
   Just to show us that He is still the Planner and Arranger of our weeks, God allowed certain things to take place for which we hadn't planned or arranged. By Thursday, I was having trouble remembering which day of the week it was.
    Monday morning just as we had all nicely taken our places in the parade we were called away to a different one.  I spent most of my day in two different ER rooms and in waiting rooms with a friend. Despite the trauma that goes with having an injured child, I would say that the day was good for my friend and me. We had all kinds of time to catch up on each other's lives which hadn't happened for a while.
   The rest of the week centered around doing the house work and laundry for my family and hers, and sewing besides. I enjoyed the busy-ness of all of this, because it left little time to ponder our own problems. It also helped us to count our blessings in a new light for a few days. Somebody said that one good thing that would come of little Cassandra's accident would be that she would be weaned of sucking her thumb.  I was pretty sure that there were more good things than that for God to help us glean from such a nasty experience.
       I am still sure of it.  Many people dropped whatever they were doing on that busy Monday morning and bowed their hearts toward God in behalf of a hurting family. That was a good thing. A few of us completely forgot what we were doing and ran to the scene so to speak. Today someone mentioned how blessed we are to have "community".
   So how many good things have I mentioned? See, that is the kind of God we serve. He can use what seems so bad and show us how blessed we are after all. And draw us to Himself from Whom great rivers of blessing and salvation flow. And bring us toward each other in more understanding and caring and love. How does God do that?
   And right in the middle of all this busy week, we got news that someone we had been praying for salvation for years finally found the Lord. It was like God was again reminding us that He CAN and DOES and we ought to notice this answer to prayer especially. Why else would He have plopped it exactly in the middle of the audience of us who were standing around the throne so much of the time anyway praying for Cassandra.

    Part The Second
    It is a good thing for Elv and I that we have been married for thirty years and know that our love is based on more than having  a date on Valentine's Day. It did not hit our radar at all this year. And I am not dying of sorrows and tears and bitternesses. I believe we have grown up some.  This week was simply not a good week to celebrate our love in the form of roses and supper out and kisses by the fire. No time.  Our love is holding us together for the long haul and one of these weeks we will celebrate by going away for a day or two, alone. The calendar can go hop.
    We did have a sit down supper at a formal table Thursday evening.  The girls had brought flowers for the table and we made desert for a change.  So we had that much anyway and it was great. We love our family supper times around a decorated table and we had been missing it.  So this was special without the Valentine's Day part of it in the middle of all the hub-bub going on.

 We left the table and stacked the dishes for the night and when I washed them the next morning I put the stacks back on the table and got more pictures. We used Mrs. Madrey's plates which I inherited from my mom. They bought the plates from the Madrey's over 50 years ago and the farm where I grew up was thrown in. Sorta. The little pink desert bowls came from Elv's grandmother Graber.

Have a good weekend. Sunday when we meet for worship, communion, and a sermon about Abraham let us make good on all of it. Looking back on a week of having been close to the throne because of difficult and also joyous experiences. Then, looking forward to a week of living it out for Him wherever we are working and being community to each other.