Prayer...God...and emotions!

On November 20th I set out to "reclaim" the place that Jeff and I went on our weekly dates...Disneyland! I went with my friend Sarah. It was not too bad. We ran into one of Jeff's good friends, Bruce, while we walked through "cars land"on our way to "radiator springs racers". We waited in line (not too long) and then I just wanted to go have a sit down meal with her. Right as our food was brought out I got a phone call from my brother saying my mother had been rushed to the hospital in an ambulance. This happened on the day that my father had just been released from the hospital after having a bacterial infection. So we packed up our food, stopped by the Starbuck's on the way out (these times call for a bit of caffeine!) and drove home. The rest of the late afternoon/evening was texts and then a phone call from my cousin, "Your mother's kidneys are failing. Come home now." We frantically started looking for tickets to Sioux Falls, SD!

Let me break down how powerful prayer is...
1) Our search for tickets had us at $5000 total (Lamont, Emilia, Aunt Helen and myself). After crazy searches for people with private planes to fly us home, we found an airfare to Minneapolis for about $1000 total and then rented a car to drive the 4 hours to Sioux Falls.
2) My mother had been having massive back spasms, she started talking crazy talk (similar to a stroke) and her kidneys shut down...ER had no idea what was going on. So we heard that she had heart damage, kidney problems, bacterial infection...and on and on! In the end it was definitely a life threatening problem...but God was so faithful and the morning we arrived (Friday) she had a 20 minute surgery to have a stent put into her kidney in order for the infection to drain out. She was then on a breathing tube as her breathing was extremely shallow. By the evening she was taken off that. On Saturday night she was moved out of ICU into a regular room. She then had a few nights there and by Wednesday was released from the hospital! She still has to have outpatient surgery for her kidney stones...but is resting at home and improving each day!

Prayer works!!

So our unplanned trip home was much needed...we were able to take the pressure off our amazing cousin, Julie, who had been shouldering the burden of both our parents being hospitalized. We were able to be there for our parents as they began to recover. And loving that we were there for that and that alone!!

So on the eve of my 49th birthday...yep I'm that old...I am in a very reflective state!

This month of December has always been a month that I've loved...it's about my birthday...and Christmas...and my anniversary to the man of my dreams! And yet this year there is this tint of an emotion that I had never in a million years expected to experience at this particular time in my life. As I turn another year older I understand more than ever what it means to embrace each moment of life to it's fullest. As I come closer to Christmas I truly haven't even put a lot of thought into buying gifts as I contemplate what this holiday time actually means. While I was in SD this past week and a half I realized how much my sweet Jeff got entangled into even my parents home! I kept seeing him everywhere I'd sit. He was in the fire place room working on his iPad, in the kitchen on his computer, in the TV room watching war movies with my Dad, in our bedroom sitting in the chair reading his bible. A place I thought would be much easier to be in was actually one of the hardest places to be! South Dakota was a place Jeff could hibernate from all that life was pulling from him! He could soak up things of God and have conversations that challenged others to look deeper into God's word! He could talk politics with my Dad and go to my Dad's carriage house to work with all his tools! So as I get closer to the end of December and the mark of our "what would have been" 9th year together...I'm amazed that in just that short time...in the span of human life and eternity...that this man impacted me more than any other person over the years of my life!

And even as I write this and tears stream down my face, there's this fight in my spirit that knows that 2015 is going to be such an explosively amazing year! A year of seeing the harvest come in. A year of seeing people know and understand who they are and what they were created to be! A year of pulling out the jewels in people that no one has ever seen! It is the year to take the "Taguchi assignment" to the the next phase! A book to publish, nations to love on, teams to unite, words to declare!

I continue to look for the "We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose." that Romans talks about! It is there and I experience it often and I know that He...God...Daddy...is my complete strength and the reason that 2014 is not the most horrible year of my life, but rather a year that caused me to hold Him tighter and love Him more intimately and to truly say, "When I don't understand you, I get to choose to love you God!"...thanks Brian and Katie Torwalt for incredible words to so many incredible songs!!