A SMALL MIRACLE...

Yeah, this is one of the small silly miracles God has blessed us with, but I have yet to post about a different small miracle that God has brought our way... Really are any of God's miracles small?

Last Friday I had my small group bible study with 3 ladies from our church and one new friend that I invited. These ladies have really embraced me where I am at these last few months. That has been a HUGE blessing. I can tell that they are ok with my tears and my quirky ways. I have enjoyed our time together so much.

Well that night I took a run in the dark. I must say, it was a bit freaky. I am a complete chicken so I have to explain our neighborhood... very small, basically just one big horseshoe with a cul du sac on the each end. It is literally less than a 1/2 a mile to the other side. I love it because I can either take the kids with or leave them and if they had a problem they could yell off the back porch and I could cut through the yards and be home in less than a minute. The boring part is I just do the lap over and over again... I really don't mind though. So when I say I went for a run in the dark... now you get it, I am not going real far.

It was a gorgeous night. Living in the country we get to see some beautiful night skies, gorgeous stars... I love it. It felt wonderful. Afterwards I went to lie on the bench in Samuel's garden and stare up at the stars. I was just amazed by the vastness above me. I can't help but wonder where exactly my Samuel is. I know where he is, in the presence of our God, but where exactly is that? I feel close to him when I am sitting in the garden we planted in memory of him. When I take care of it, weeding it and watering the plants, in a strange way I feel like it is the only thing this side of heaven that I can do to take care of him. I love sitting out there. Then it dawned on me... God bringing this new friend into town that I could invite to the ladies study was like a small miracle. I just laid there crying... it felt like God had done something that finally felt good to me. I will explain more about this new friend in a bit.

Now I know that God is doing good things for me everyday. But honestly when you are living with a part of your heart missing, not everything feels good. We have had such a rough year, by far the hardest of our lives. It has felt like one tough thing after another for us and many close to us. Another example of enduring this hardship is our friends the Petersons from the seminary. We just visited with them at baby Nate's parent's house after Nate's memorial service about a month ago. We just found out that Matthew has stage 3 Multiple Myeloma. The prognosis isn't very good, but I personally am believing God for a miracle for this man. If you think of it, would you pray for Matt, his wife Janet and their 2 girls. His faith is amazing, but I know they will need to feel the warmth and strength of God's embrace and the warmth of His people over the next months.

I know I shouldn't be surprised by all of the hurt, disease, and war in this world. The Lord states all of these things will exist for believers and unbelievers alike. It still doesn't make it any easier to see those you love struggling.

Back to my small miracle... I can really go off on a tangent I know.... my mind is so not focused these days...

Well, I think it was probably this past May someone grabbed me after Bible study one morning saying there was someone who wanted to meet me. That Sunday I met a delightful couple, Tim and Nicole. Actually they were planning on moving here this summer from Sweden... from Sweden, yes all the way across that big ocean. The crazy thing is before living in Sweden, they had lived in Wisconsin and gone to the church where I grew up. They were dear friends with one of my college roommates. When they lived there they had become friends with all of my dear friends growing up. Really the conversation felt so good, like home. When I asked, "Do you know so and so." They replied with crazy things like, "Yeah, if anything ever happens to us, they will get custody of our kids." "They would say Tim was in a Bible study with so and so" I responded with, "That guy and his wife bought my parents house, the one I grew up in." It was like that over and over again. It was almost comical.

They came back for a visit one Sunday, just 2 days after our birth mom delivered Joel. This young lady was just fine with my tears, and gave me a big hug. I don't know what it is exactly... if it is all the friends that we have in common. Or could it be that there is just a familiarity about someone who comes from the same place you do, the frozen tundra:) They invited us over after church last Sunday, and we had such a nice time getting to know them better. What are the chances that they would move from Sweden to Tulsa and come to our church? It seems crazy to me, yet at the same time it doesn't surprise me that God would work all of that out. To me that feels like a small miracle... and I like the way that feels!