A week of major bumps along the road, sprinkled with blessings and reminders to trust
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Linda Krieg
Dec 1, 2018, 12:13:27 PM12/1/18
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It is so easy to chant, "Just trust the Lord and his promises. He'll never take you beyond what your faith can handle, and the strength and grace He gives never runs out." Easy, that is, to proclaim that mantra to friends going through difficulties. Less easy, when applied to self.
This week, the Lord has decided it was time to do a little shaking in my life, testing my stand on those promises. No, He wasn't testing me to figure out for Himself how deep they went-He was testing, so that I would recognize how deeply they are anchored.
As I've seen before, it is the flies and gnats (or poisonous centipedes), not the tigers and lions in our pathways that can shake us from our complacency. What was true in Siawi is true here, too. None of the bumps in my road were life-changing or even major to most outside observers. But then, the blessings, too, might not have been obvious to those same observers.
While I feel we should dwell on our blessings, not our trials, or as I prefer to think of them, our challenges, for this to make sense, the challenges (which definitely clunked down in my mind as trials, at least at first) have to be explained for the blessings to make sense. (And if you ever doubted that I was a Bible translator in my "previous existence," that very Pauline serpentine sentence should have convinced you.)
First bump was a major one to me (probably because it takes aim at my pride). Though the oral surgeon had previously told me that it would take 2-3 months for my mouth to heal so that a new denture could be made, suddenly that seems to have changed. When he found out (because the implant doctor called him to explain what he was proposing to do) that I was planning to go straight from the hospital to the dental clinic for them to adjust my old lower denture, so that I could wear it for the 3-4 months it would take for the jaw surgery site to heal completely (sorry, I just can't stop the long sentences), the oral surgeon put his foot down. "No! She is not to have anything in her mouth for 5-6 months!" What?!!! Prune faced on a liquid or pureed diet for 5-6 months? Where did that come from?
Calming down my upset heart, the Lord reminded me of how I've tried to lose more weight, but been plateaued for a long time now. Not only will He be helping me, He'll actually be forcing me to do so, with this 5-6 month diet plan. And-I have a good blender, a new Ninja Pro (because the old one just died, right when it went on the "vital list" in my mind), and some one gave me a baby food hand mill, so I will even be able to puree foods when away from home at a potluck (maybe). So, while it is taking a bit for me to wrap my mind around all this, I KNOW the Lord has control of all this.
Next bump? The heavily used Samsung Galaxy Note 4 smart phone went wonky. Okay, for those of you still using the flip phones, I can hear your mumbling about that not being a bump, anyway-just a minor inconvenience. Just remember-we all have our lists of order of importance for things like that. For me, a good working smart phone is up near the top. The idea of dealing with the doctors, hospital, traveling back and forth and all that without a dependable cell phone is troubling for me, a single old lady who will need to do a lot of this on her own.
The blessing side of this? Well, after a complete meltdown, my present phone did revive and has seemed to be working okay, so I have that. While I'd have liked to have gotten one of the newest Samsung Note 9's for "just" $999.99 and even suggested that to the Lord, since He seems to be so freely spending His money that He has on hand in "my" accounts. His reply, through the Holy Spirit, on that one was, "Now you are being sarcastic." Okay, okay, time to go to eBay and find a phone as close as possible to what I need/want that is more in line with how much, in good stewardship, I can spend. A used Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge is on its way and in Fayetteville, AR at this moment (yes, I'm carefully tracking its every movement). The concerning thing is that it is expected to arrive on my doorstep "by 8 p.m. December 4." That means I may well not have time to get my old phone switched out and set up before heading off to the hospital. (Sorry, a personal bump feature accidently showed up under the blessing heading.)
Time for the next big bump to hit. Now, you must understand, with the Sanford hospital just 2 miles down the road, it was easy to plan to go in on Tuesday at 7:45 a.m. to fill in the admissions stuff and then plan on someone to drop me off on Wednesday morning early for the surgery. And a sweet friend from church is planning to pick me up on Thursday, when I am released. All set, easy peasy, right? It seemed that way, until someone from hospital admissions called to make sure I was planning to be there on Tuesday morning at 7:45 a.m., "there" being 32 W. Gore Street, ORLANDO, Florida! What? Orlando? I called the oral surgeon and the bombshell went off. His hospital privileges are with Orlando Health, not the nearby Sanford hospital! ALL my transportation plans immediately flew out the window. Not only did I have to travel well out of my safe driving area, but join the busy morning rush hour commute two days in a row!
The Lord, of course, had all that in hand, too. Having traveled on the SunRail system a couple of times previously, I knew there was a train station called "Orlando Health" and that there were busses at each train station ready to take you to destinations like the hospital. That is even included in the train fare. Making the transfer from train to bus is an unknown for me-and my easily challenged senior mind frowns on unknowns, but on Tuesday when I go down, I can just leave early enough to allow plenty of time to work through it all. And I can WALK the .7 miles to the hospital, if need be. Definitely a blessing in this! Only the slight stress of having to drive the 3-4 miles to the train station in the dark on Tuesday morning left to deal with. (Driving in the dark was given up over a year ago.) But at 5-6 a.m. there will not be any traffic to speak of and it is a very familiar route, so that shouldn't really be a major problem.
The biggest blessing of all? None of these bumps and challenges are really major or entailing any long-lasting pain. At my age, that is huge. The Lord is just reminding me of how carefully I guard my own convenience and comfort. What a wrong focus in this sad sin-ridden world. I'm rich beyond compare-not just financially, compared to the rest of the world, but spiritually.
Please continue to pray for the Siawi believers. No one was able to make it to the conference held at some distance from them, so they've not received any of my letters and I don't even know if they have the revised Romans lessons in hand yet. Pray, too, that the revision of the Revelation lessons would progress well and with clarity and naturalness. How I miss having my Siawi cohorts on hand to help me keep things clear and natural!
Hebrews 12.2, KJV (because that is the version I memorized it in) resounds in my mind today. "Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God." Would that I'd keep my eyes on Him, and not on my comfort or convenience. It is easy for us seniors to look at the younger generations and call them the "Me, me, me generation" but am I any different? Or you?
Safe in His hands,
Linda
Linda_Krieg(at)ntm.org
232 Brazil Court, Sanford, FL 32771
Ethnos360 Hdqts: 312 W 1st St, Sanford, FL 32771
www.ethnos360.org<http://www.ntm.org/>
[https://ethnos360.org/logo/ethnos360-email-signature-2017-04-30.png]
This week, the Lord has decided it was time to do a little shaking in my life, testing my stand on those promises. No, He wasn't testing me to figure out for Himself how deep they went-He was testing, so that I would recognize how deeply they are anchored.
As I've seen before, it is the flies and gnats (or poisonous centipedes), not the tigers and lions in our pathways that can shake us from our complacency. What was true in Siawi is true here, too. None of the bumps in my road were life-changing or even major to most outside observers. But then, the blessings, too, might not have been obvious to those same observers.
While I feel we should dwell on our blessings, not our trials, or as I prefer to think of them, our challenges, for this to make sense, the challenges (which definitely clunked down in my mind as trials, at least at first) have to be explained for the blessings to make sense. (And if you ever doubted that I was a Bible translator in my "previous existence," that very Pauline serpentine sentence should have convinced you.)
First bump was a major one to me (probably because it takes aim at my pride). Though the oral surgeon had previously told me that it would take 2-3 months for my mouth to heal so that a new denture could be made, suddenly that seems to have changed. When he found out (because the implant doctor called him to explain what he was proposing to do) that I was planning to go straight from the hospital to the dental clinic for them to adjust my old lower denture, so that I could wear it for the 3-4 months it would take for the jaw surgery site to heal completely (sorry, I just can't stop the long sentences), the oral surgeon put his foot down. "No! She is not to have anything in her mouth for 5-6 months!" What?!!! Prune faced on a liquid or pureed diet for 5-6 months? Where did that come from?
Calming down my upset heart, the Lord reminded me of how I've tried to lose more weight, but been plateaued for a long time now. Not only will He be helping me, He'll actually be forcing me to do so, with this 5-6 month diet plan. And-I have a good blender, a new Ninja Pro (because the old one just died, right when it went on the "vital list" in my mind), and some one gave me a baby food hand mill, so I will even be able to puree foods when away from home at a potluck (maybe). So, while it is taking a bit for me to wrap my mind around all this, I KNOW the Lord has control of all this.
Next bump? The heavily used Samsung Galaxy Note 4 smart phone went wonky. Okay, for those of you still using the flip phones, I can hear your mumbling about that not being a bump, anyway-just a minor inconvenience. Just remember-we all have our lists of order of importance for things like that. For me, a good working smart phone is up near the top. The idea of dealing with the doctors, hospital, traveling back and forth and all that without a dependable cell phone is troubling for me, a single old lady who will need to do a lot of this on her own.
The blessing side of this? Well, after a complete meltdown, my present phone did revive and has seemed to be working okay, so I have that. While I'd have liked to have gotten one of the newest Samsung Note 9's for "just" $999.99 and even suggested that to the Lord, since He seems to be so freely spending His money that He has on hand in "my" accounts. His reply, through the Holy Spirit, on that one was, "Now you are being sarcastic." Okay, okay, time to go to eBay and find a phone as close as possible to what I need/want that is more in line with how much, in good stewardship, I can spend. A used Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge is on its way and in Fayetteville, AR at this moment (yes, I'm carefully tracking its every movement). The concerning thing is that it is expected to arrive on my doorstep "by 8 p.m. December 4." That means I may well not have time to get my old phone switched out and set up before heading off to the hospital. (Sorry, a personal bump feature accidently showed up under the blessing heading.)
Time for the next big bump to hit. Now, you must understand, with the Sanford hospital just 2 miles down the road, it was easy to plan to go in on Tuesday at 7:45 a.m. to fill in the admissions stuff and then plan on someone to drop me off on Wednesday morning early for the surgery. And a sweet friend from church is planning to pick me up on Thursday, when I am released. All set, easy peasy, right? It seemed that way, until someone from hospital admissions called to make sure I was planning to be there on Tuesday morning at 7:45 a.m., "there" being 32 W. Gore Street, ORLANDO, Florida! What? Orlando? I called the oral surgeon and the bombshell went off. His hospital privileges are with Orlando Health, not the nearby Sanford hospital! ALL my transportation plans immediately flew out the window. Not only did I have to travel well out of my safe driving area, but join the busy morning rush hour commute two days in a row!
The Lord, of course, had all that in hand, too. Having traveled on the SunRail system a couple of times previously, I knew there was a train station called "Orlando Health" and that there were busses at each train station ready to take you to destinations like the hospital. That is even included in the train fare. Making the transfer from train to bus is an unknown for me-and my easily challenged senior mind frowns on unknowns, but on Tuesday when I go down, I can just leave early enough to allow plenty of time to work through it all. And I can WALK the .7 miles to the hospital, if need be. Definitely a blessing in this! Only the slight stress of having to drive the 3-4 miles to the train station in the dark on Tuesday morning left to deal with. (Driving in the dark was given up over a year ago.) But at 5-6 a.m. there will not be any traffic to speak of and it is a very familiar route, so that shouldn't really be a major problem.
The biggest blessing of all? None of these bumps and challenges are really major or entailing any long-lasting pain. At my age, that is huge. The Lord is just reminding me of how carefully I guard my own convenience and comfort. What a wrong focus in this sad sin-ridden world. I'm rich beyond compare-not just financially, compared to the rest of the world, but spiritually.
Please continue to pray for the Siawi believers. No one was able to make it to the conference held at some distance from them, so they've not received any of my letters and I don't even know if they have the revised Romans lessons in hand yet. Pray, too, that the revision of the Revelation lessons would progress well and with clarity and naturalness. How I miss having my Siawi cohorts on hand to help me keep things clear and natural!
Hebrews 12.2, KJV (because that is the version I memorized it in) resounds in my mind today. "Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God." Would that I'd keep my eyes on Him, and not on my comfort or convenience. It is easy for us seniors to look at the younger generations and call them the "Me, me, me generation" but am I any different? Or you?
Safe in His hands,
Linda
Linda_Krieg(at)ntm.org
232 Brazil Court, Sanford, FL 32771
Ethnos360 Hdqts: 312 W 1st St, Sanford, FL 32771
www.ethnos360.org<http://www.ntm.org/>
[https://ethnos360.org/logo/ethnos360-email-signature-2017-04-30.png]
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