August Birthdays

 Posted by Amanda Silvey

      The month of August was filled with birthdays for us: John’s was on the 1^st, Grace’s was the 22^nd, Will’s was the 24^th, and Jacob’s was the 26^th.  

Needles to say, by the end of that last week we were pretty much tired of cake. (Well, at least some of us were.) J  

Happy Birthday Will, John, Jacob, and Grace!                                                                                                          

Will #22  ~  John #17  ~  Jacob #15  ~  Grace #8

"Behold, children are a heritage from the LORD,

 the fruit of the womb is a reward.  Like arrows in the hand of a warrior, so are the children of one's youth.  

Happy is the man who has his quiver full of them; they shall not be ashamed, but shall speak with their enemies in the gate."

Psalm 127: 3-5

When God Changes Your Plans . . .

Have you ever had a time when you felt like everything was under control and then it all was pulled out from under you like a carpet?  That happened to me this past week . . . .

Saturday afternoon I prepared for our Sunday meal so my Sunday morning would not be so hectic.  I slept in a little Sunday morning because many of my meal preparations were complete.  That morning I pulled out a large glass bowl from the refrigerator that held the potatoes, carrots, green beans, corn, and turkey I had prepared on Saturday for our Turkey Pot Pie.  I picked up the bowl to move it over to the next counter and it slipped out of my hands.  The bowl hit the counter and broke in pieces cutting up my hands as I tried to save it from hitting the floor.  I stood there looking at our Sunday lunch on the floor and my bleeding hands.

My first thought was, “I worked so hard Saturday preparing all this food and now it is all gone.  I have nothing else to fix for today.”  The only other meal I could have pulled out of the freezer was ham and beans; not a meal I could put together in the 40 minutes I had left before going to church.

At other times, I would have been anxious, thinking, “What am I going to feed my family now?”  I actually felt calm and had a sense of peace about the whole situation.  Just prior to this event happening I had been in the living room praying and reading God’s Word.  I believe this made the difference in my not falling apart.  God’s word is so powerful and so much needed during the difficulties of life. 

As you see in the picture above we ended up having a table full of food, mostly vegetables we grew in our garden and Amanda came to the rescue with her homemade rolls.  When I thought there was nothing else to fix, we ended up with a great meal full of good family fellowship.  The meal we ate was not what I had planned for that day, but what God planned.  Yes, it was a lot more work to get everything ready when we got home from church, but one of the verses I read that morning was Philippians 2:14,”Do all things without complaining and disputing.”

So . . . remember the importance of being in God’s Word on a daily basis because you never know when the carpet is going to be pulled out from underneath you and you will need God’s strength to carry on.

~Dana