Learning to Live Evermore

February has flown by and has only a few days left. This has been a month full of emotion. Makes sense when you consider it includes Valentines Day. And this particular Valentines Day I was surrounded by those I love and who love me - my husband and children and both my parents. How blessed I am to have these persons in my life who reflect the love of Christ to me! Truly the greatest love the earth has ever known is that of Christ and his sacrifice. And how fitting it has been this year to have Ash Wednesday fall the day before this “National Day of Love” full of Hallmark cards and candlelight dinners. It was a chance for me to witness in my own life how much easier it is to pay more attention to a secular holiday than the time in the church year where we stop and reflect on Jesus’ great love and grace towards mankind. What greater love is there? 

Earlier in the month, we enjoyed an evening of opening up our home to the group of families we traveled to China with while adopting our daughters. Those little bundles of joy and screaming are now 7 year olds. The bond they share is extremely special as is the one we share with the fellow parents. Our backgrounds and interests may be varied, but the experience we share with them is heartwarming. What a blessing this group is! Zanna sees that other families are like hers and she loves to get together with her “China friends” as she calls them. The dads were bold this evening together and took the kids sledding at a nearby hill. Seven girls and Will kept the dads busy by challenging them to races down the snowy and somewhat hard, icy slope. The guys came back with some sore behinds and the kids were ready to attack the hot chocolate bar I had ready for them! 

Chinese New Year was not far behind and we enjoyed a quiet meal at home with some homemade beef stir-fry and specially made egg rolls made famous by a local restaurant! 

Mom and Dad’s visit in honour of Zanna’s birthday was a fun filled 9 days full of activities that included a Beatles’ Tribute Show with the NAC orchestra downtown. We sat in the box seats in the mezzanine level and enjoyed a perfect view while tapping our feet and biting our lip to keep from singing along and embarrassing ourselves!  We kept up our normal activities for the most part with Oma and Opa tagging along sometimes - soccer, ballet, a field trip on honey bees to the Agriculture Museum. And we spent Family Day in Watertown, New York for a change of scenery and a visit to the aisles of Target. Amid the days included discipline issues and naughty behaviour - the kids too:) I wish these special times wouldn’t be tainted by bad attitudes and rebellion but they were. Often bringing to light issues that have been there all along and have finally reared their ugly head until we can ignore them no more. It’s exhausting. Parenting is exhausting. Especially when I see myself in their bad behaviour and I am reminded of my Heavenly Father’s grace towards me and I am moved to extend some of that grace to my children. Humbling. 

This month I have run the spectrum of emotion - joy, happiness, sadness, guilt - and I am brought to my knees by an email and a phone call. The email - news delivered that a dear friend and sister-in-Christ, fellow pastor’s wife my age has cancer. I think of those days back at Seminary and the budding of our friendship. Our boys the same age - little 1 year olds that final year of Sem and us new moms enjoying the fellowship we had with one another. Now a mom of five, she lies in a hospital with leukemia. My heart aches. I think of her pastor husband we just saw last April. I think of her children. I think of her mom and dad and family members and the church family she has in Florida. I think of evermore and what this means. She is a child of God. Her husband faithfully teaches and preaches God’s Word in it’s truth and purity. Her children have been baptized into faith, the cross of Christ marked on their foreheads in the name of the Triune God and doesn’t God “work for the good of those who love him”(Rom 8:28)?  This is evermore. This moment falls somewhere in eternity and yes, God does work things out for his children. “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you,” declares the Lord. (Jer 29:1-14)  This world is so temporary and things change so fast! God has healed us of the only thing that matters for eternity - our sin that damns us to an eternity of suffering. My friend will be healed of this cancer - maybe in this life but for certain in heaven because Christ has healed her of the one thing that can truly harm her. I pray for strength to be given to them and hope to endure the trials and for His will to be done and remember Jesus praying in the Garden of Gethsemane and didn’t he pray for that? Our God knows and endured much worse on our behalf and I pray she and her family will be comforted. 

I’m praying for another dear friend and fellow pastor’s wife on a mission trip to Nepal. As she teaches a group of Christian women there to teach their children about Jesus, encourage their husbands to evangelize and to properly understand their roles as women, I know my friend will return home a different person.  I wonder what her eyes will see and what perspective she’ll bring back. I look forward to seeing how God uses this experience in her life to glorify his name and unite sisters in faith across a globe. Evermore.

And finally, a phone call. I can’t say anymore at this point. We're all OK, no worries. Only that it’s shook our world and brought me to a very vivid awareness of my weakness and need for a Saviour.  Prayers, please?  May His will be done. Evermore.