Home Again

We drove all the way home on Thursday. It is almost 700 miles and took us a little over 12 hours, but it is good to be home.

Josh had a good day yesterday (Friday) and we settled in to getting some things done. While we were gone Kurtis (our youth minister) brought some youth over and had them help clean up our side yard and back yard. It was a blessing to have that done. And our neighbors have taken care of the 3 dogs which has been extremely helpful.

There are times, usually early in the morning when it is quiet, that it is easy to think that everything is back to normal (if we ignore the pill bottles and medical masks on the table). And then we remember that what was normal has changed to a new world view. We see things through different eyes, everything gets viewed through the lenses of the next hospital visit or the next fever. We hear people cough or sneeze and quickly move away, we leave stores or gas stations if they look dirty because a could or infection is life threatening to Josh.

We wash our hand compulsively and throw away a napkin if it drops on the ground. Our perspective has changed because of what we have experienced. As a result the choices we make are influenced by what we know.

One of the choices that we have is our attitude about what we are going through. Most people would not choose to have a family member get cancer, and we would not wish it on anyone. Now that we are faced with the reality that our Josh has cancer, we have the choice how it will effect our attitude towards God, towards others and even towards life and the decisions we make.

To be honest, there are times when we would like to stick our heads in the ground and pretend that it isn't real or that if we ignore it, it will go away, but it won't. The hardest thing to do is to face the truth and make hard decisions to both change our patterns and have an attitude of hope with expectation that when we have done all that we can possibly do (which at times feels like very little) we must put our faith in God to do the supernatural things in our lives.

There are mornings when getting up feels like a supernatural event, having a good attitude about the day seems impossible. But as we keep our eyes on Gods word, when we set aside time each day to dig into the Bible and fill our minds with thoughts from Him, then He begins to reshape our thoughts and feelings.

So how do you change a bad attitude? How do you take the bad circumstances of life and choose to rejoice anyway? In Philippians 3 it says:

¹ Whatever happens, my dear brothers and sisters, rejoice in the Lord.

What kind of God wants us to rejoice no mater what happens?

The answer is a God that has a different world view. When we begin to see our lives and the world we live in from a different perspective, it changes our attitude. In Romans 12, Paul challenged us (pleaded with us) to give ourselves to God, he went on to say that we should let God change the way we think, in other words, change our perspective so that we think about life differently.

So how do I go about rejoicing in whatever happens? By seeing the circumstances in my life from the same perspective as God. God sees things from the perspective of an eternity with (or without) Him. He gives us the choice to live with Him forever or live without Him forever.

When we choose Him, the momentary things of this world have meaning primarily when they have an eternal value. Those things that contribute nothing towards eternity have little meaning. But the things that draw me or others closer to a pattern of living like God created us to, those things last forever.

We are glad to be home for as long as God allows. We hope to enjoy the fellowship of our friends and church family for 3 weeks until we are scheduled to return to Houston September 28th. We choose to rejoice in whatever happens, because we know that as Christ Followers, for us to live is Christ (to show others Christ's love) and to die is gain (be free from the burdens of this live and be in the presence of God).

Thank you for your prayers and your acts of kindness. Your have been a blessing in many ways and have shown the world around us what it means to be a child of God.