Smiles

It is a lovely summer day! How about these temperatures? Goodness... it is warm. The test I had done on Monday was fine. No problem with my kidneys or anything. I am very thankful. I do need to figure out why my left side is hurting but hopefully it will not be anything serious. Thank you for your prayers. We are heading off in a short time to the Red River Family Encampment. It is always such a blessing and great time of family reunion for us. Will and Wes have attended this event every year of their lives. It is fun to get away to the mountains and cool down and fellowship and worship with thousands of other Christians.

Hope that your day is going good and your summer is wonderful. I will leave you for today with this little story that my Mom sent me. It is really good. Blessings. Amy

From the book: "When the Game Is Over, It All Goes Back in the Box" by John Ortberg"

"The shape of our family life is changing these days. One of my daughters is spending a semester in Europe, another one began her freshman year in college. We have seen this time coming, of course. And I'm glad it is here. I wouldn't want the kids to be living at home when we're in our nineties and they're sixty something. But still, moments come that surprise us with the fearful beauty of life and its brevity A few days after both the girls had left home, Nancy went grocery shopping. She picked up three potatoes in the produce section, and the thought hit her: We used to be a five-potato family. Then Laura went away to school, and we only needed four. Now Mallory has gone, and we're down to three. Soon it will be Johnny's turn, and then we will be back to the two potatoes who started the whole thing. Nancy, who is usually more of a thinker than a feeler, just stood there in the grocery store with three potatoes in her hand and cried

Then she got a pack of chocolate Ho Ho's and ate them and felt much better.

Our potatoes are going away. I am thrilled for the great adventure they're in. Parenting is the one job in which success is measured by making yourself obsolete. And I enjoy the freedom of this new season. But I'll let you in on a little secret: sometimes I miss our potatoes!

What I feel for my kids is only an echo of what God feels for every person I see. The homeless man sitting on a corner hoping someone will put a buck in his cup. The arrogant, unethical boss at work. The suicide bomber in Iraq. The extra-grace-required person who hassles everybody in the family.

A while ago, one of my potatoes was snowboarding and sailed sixty feet in the air off a jump and landed on his neck. He wound up with a separated shoulder, mild concussion, bleeding liver, and some lacerations. The story has a happy ending, but when I had raced to the hospital, I remembered something I had read about how certain moments have the power to remind us about how much of our lives are temporary and how the permanence of love is what binds us together. It was written by a man named Wes Seliger. It is, in its own way, an echo of the wisdom of Paul.

"I have spent long hours in the intensive care waiting room watching with anguished people, listening to urgent questions: will my husband made it? Will my child walk again? How do you live without your companion of thirty years?

The intensive care waiting room is different from any other place in the world. And the people who wait are different. They can't do enough for each other. No one is rude. The distinctions of race and class melt away. The garbage man loves his wife as much as the university professor loves his, and everyone understands this. Each person pulls for everyone else. In the intensive care waiting room, the world changes. Vanity and pretense vanish. The universe is focused on the doctor's next report. If only it will show improvement. Everyone knows that loving someone else is what life is all about.

Could we learn to love like that if we realized that every day of life is a day in the waiting room?"