Don't Waste Your Life

I am reading, Don't Waste Your Life by John Piper.

"God created us to live with a single passion: to JOYfully display His supreme excellence in all the spheres of life. The wasted life is the life without this passion. God calls us to pray and think and dream and plan and work not to be made much of, but to make much of Him in every part of our lives."


"Most people slip by in life without a passion for God, spending their lives on trivial diversions, living for comfort and pleasure, and perhaps trying to avoid sin..."

Don't Want To Waste My Life...a wonderful song by Lecrae. It's on the right sidebar.

Something of interest, I did the Closed Captioning for the Christian TV show, Wretched, with Todd Friel. My episode is where Todd talks to a young man named Brandon, who is a wiccan. They asked me to do another, but I need a lot of breaks for my hands. I can't wait to do another though. I'm blessed to be even a teeny tiny part of that ministry.
Now, as Todd says at the end of each program...
"Go and serve your King..."

Pam

She Looks to the Sky by Sherri Youngward

We're "HOME" in a world that is "not my home"

I can't type much, my hands are giving out, but we are in our new "condo" that our oldest son has created for us. Very happy. My appointment with the specialist is Feb. 1st., so keeping that in prayer. Not a lot to say when it's so painful to say it in type. Hope they can help with this pain and swelling in my hands, heels and lower spine...the Lord knows. Update: We've now lived here awhile now and it is wonderful, thank you for praying for us.
ANOTHER Update: My hands are lots better due to a pretty intensive drug, but little pain now, although the dupytren's contracture is still there and active, but I can type and play guitar (modified a bit). Very happy and thankful for this.

Love,
Pam

What We're Reading Now

Geneva Public Library

This is a photo of the Library in Geneva, Illinois, were I grew up, and what I remember when I close my eyes...old oak everywhere, banisters down the stair case, wooden book shelf ladders that slid along the rails, the Librarian in the middle seemed perched high on an oak throne. My heart was knit to the children's area downstairs, marveled that I could take all the books home that I wanted, FREE, FREE, FREE. Trip after trip, loading my wagon, loading my arms. I could never hold enough. The cord, tied to my heart, stretched between the pillow and lamp in my closet to that beautiful stone second home across town. The stores charged pennies and nickles for treats to little ones with mostly empty pockets but the Library gave up lavishly. While mom did errands or went to the little beauty shop down the street, I begged to be dropped off at the...hush...library of dreams. The Geneva Public Library seemed so large and especially so to little eyes and feet. The Librarian who worked in the children's section was always impressed with my reading level, would suggest new books. You had to be 10 or something before you could use the adult sections upstairs. I was fine with that, but like the swimming pool, you eventually want to dive into the "deeper end." Our Methodist church also had a library, I've felt guilty all of my life because I took out, Three Came Home, a war story about missionary family, but never could bring it back, always had to read it one more time... (Sorry Rev. Carter, one of your angels was a thief). I also knew Anne Frank's fears and joys as well as my own. I shuddered at her dieing, she was just a little older than I in her photos. I wondered why would anyone kill little girls like Anne...or like me, my sisters, my schoolmates? I was always scouting for good hiding places, keeping them in the back of my mind, in case they came for us someday. I grew up to treasure, The Hiding Place, by Corrie ten Boom. A Christian sister who was sent to a concentration camp for hiding Jews. I vowed when I was a little girl that I'd hide Jews like Anne Frank if I ever could, so Corrie became a hero of mine. She walked the walk of faith and risked her life to hide Jewish families too. In Corrie's book she said that her father, a dear Godly man said one day, "Pity the Nazis Corrie, for they have dared to touch the apple of God's eye (His chosen people, the Jews)." Her father and most of Corrie's family died in the camps. She was released by mistake, a clerical error. She traveled the world, after seeing man at his worst, bringing God's love to that lost and dieing world, and her message was, "There is no pit that God is not deeper still."

So this is what I'm reading: I'm reading Twelve Extraordinary Women by John MacArthur for our book club at church and How Could a Loving God...?, written and sent to my husband and I by Ken Ham (Answers in Genesis) gift, sent from a brother (Ken Ham) in Christ because we are hurting. If you are hurting, you need this book. If you've suffered loss you definitely need this book. You will be blessed.
Love,
Pam

ps Ken Ham had written to us in the cover but I loaned it out, don't remember to who...so, I bought another one. I learned today that the Geneva Public Library is a Carnegie Library, even more thrilling because I'm Scotish. "A Carnegie library is a library built with money donated by Scottish-American businessman and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie. A total of 2,509 Carnegie libraries were built between 1883 and 1929, including some belonging to public and university library systems. 1,689 were built in the United States, 660 in Britain and Ireland, 125 in Canada, and others in Australia, New Zealand, Serbia, the Caribbean, Mauritius and Fiji. At first, Carnegie libraries were almost exclusively in places where he had a personal connection. This would be Scotland and the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania area. This would change in 1899. In later years few towns that requested a grant and agreed to his terms were refused. When the last grant was made in 1919, there were 3,500 libraries in the United States, nearly half of them built with construction grants paid by Carnegie."

Living with with the hope of Christ and...JOY

I finally was diagnosed, after two years of worsening pain and crippling hands. I have Dupytren's Contracture, and some sort of arthritis in my hands that nobody can figure out.(I am one of the administrators of the new facebook page: International Duputyren's Society.)

We are moving in with our oldest son and his family. We get the downstairs and all the love and care they can give us and we hope to love and care for them too. Blessed? Yes... Happy? No... Joyful? Most definitely! My Joy is found in Christ and not in earthly circumstances.
I want to become friends with everyone who has this disease...so please, if you have Dupuytren's Contracture write me. I'd like to hear from others too. I'll pray for you.
The photo above is swiped from a friend, Mrs. Greg Adams :) I put the saying and scripture on it...hope that's ok Nae.
Love and Joy,
Pam
"He is familiar with our infirmities and acquainted with our grief."

Trials?

"Trials are the food of faith." 

George Mueller

Illness that brought stillness...

Often, during my husband John's illness, we would travel from our quiet home and business in the north-woods, to huge hospitals and clinics in the big, busy city of Madison, WI. (We also traveled to trade shows when he was well enough. I'm an artist and we sell my art to gift stores. Our last trade show together was in January, 2010 in Dallas, Texas, at the World Trade Center.) While in Dallas I noticed John was not breathing right, having to "catch" his breath, take longer breaks. He was quite obviously sick again. His body was probably attempting to reject his transplanted lung again. We'd done this before, so many times, and usually after a week or so in the hospital, they would get it sorted out and we were right back to living our "normal lives". But this time something was different, very different. John's transplant team could not get the rejection to stop. I remembered a long time ago they had told us, "Somewhere along the road we will not be able to stop your body from ultimately rejecting the lung. It is called Chronic Rejection and it's deadly without a 2nd transplant." In January they hospitalized him 3 separate times, injecting massive anti-rejection medications into his body. But, nothing changed. The cough and shortness of breath got worse. Then, they finally informed us that John did indeed suffer from the much dreaded Chronic Rejection this time. It's the worst diagnosis there is in the transplant world. My knees were weak, I prayed and cried. For 5 years I had feared this, for 5 years I had feared the C word...Chronic. But, I still held on to a hope, they had said that people who reject can get a "2nd transplant". We held on to that, like you would hold on to a child in a house fire. Tightly and desperately, looking for safety. 
A few weeks after the 3rd and last hospitalization, we were home and talking on the phone with John's transplant-coordinator, Kelly. She said that a 2nd transplant was not going to be possible for him. The fight was over...
No more big city, no more travels, hospitals, hotels, treatments or appointments, no more life together...it was as though a huge clock had ticked very loudly. And just with that one tick, a whole new time of "us" began. I swear I actually heard the TICK of the clock...and then stillness.
"Be still and KNOW that I AM God." 

 I'm sorry I can't give credit to the photographer-I don't know where I got this picture

John is in Hospice care at our home now. We went from Home Health Care right into Hospice Home Care. Nurses come and go. We don't live by the "outside" world's time any longer, other than me going to church services. I heard the final TICK of the outside world's clock. It's can be 2, 3, 4 or 5 in the morning when we finally sleep a little. The O2 concentrator makes a sound like chchchchc-POOOOF-chchchchchchc-POOOF.
John's nostrils get dry and sore from the plastic cannula in his nose and the constant rushing wind. We have to hook up 2 concentrators for him to shower, bath time is a nightmare for most people with lung disease. Yet he does not lose heart, he cheers me and our children. He says, "I know who I serve, I know why I'm here and I know where I'm going." He said that to the church body once when he was teaching, he then posed this question to the congregation, "Do you?" God has said that "In our weakness He is made strong." I've seen that in John. Faith wise, I watch him literally tower over most people though he's flat on his back in the hospital bed. It's amazing to see, it really is. 
We want to have the authentic faith that I'm reading about. All the world will eventually suffer, and everyone will eventually die, we are no different. So, how can I be different from the world in this? When I do it for Christ. When I show them His love, when I "seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness.", when I show them, as Amy Carmicheal said, that there is a "path through suffering"... and when I am still.
Love,
Pam

Authentic Faith

Closer to Him. Closer to others.
AUTHENTIC FAITH

http://www.garythomas.com/

A small group of women from our church are getting together and reading Autentic Faith, by Gary Thomas. I've never experienced a *"book club" atmosphere before (*not sure what to call it), but I am already enjoying and learning much from this book that Cathy chose. 

 God is faithful...

Some of the notes I've taken from Authentic Faith so far are:  


What if life isn't meant to be perfect but we are meant to trust the One who is?


The seasons (of trials) are necessary because we do not walk easily into maturity.


The active Christian life is full of risks, heartache, and responsibilities.


Yes, we experience peace, joy and hope, but it is a peace in the midst of turmoil, a joy marked with empathy, and a hope refined by suffering-Refined BY Suffering-


Learn to love with God's love. Learn to serve with God's power.


Mourning gives us a glimpse of the world as God sees it.


With Love from,
Pam at Her Quiet Corner