Thanksgiving

   There are a lot of things to be thankful for when I stop and think about it. But there are a few things that are looming so big in front of me that its hard to focus. I do love our God. He gives us new mercies every morning. His love for us is bigger than any of us deserve. His plan was never for us to suffer or to be brokenhearted. I know that is true because Jesus came to heal the brokenhearted. To set the captive free and to open the eyes of the blind.

   So I know suffering is not the will of God for us, although he uses it to draw us close to him. To help us see how badly we need him, and that life is so much more than what meets the eye down here. That he has a greater plan for our future. To restore to us what he created in the beginning. No pain, no sickness, no evil and no sin. But perfect joy and peace and fellowship with him.

   Sometimes I don't see things exactly like God does. It feels like he does things that are way wrong. That's because I don't know what he is doing. I don't know what his long term goal is.

  This Thanksgiving brings old pain and new, Last year we lost Tebo in an airplane crash. That was just way too sad. We all really loved him. But a part of me could understand that God was delivering him from all his earthly pain. Even though we really miss him. None of us would really ask for him back knowing how much he struggled and suffered with life as it was here. Well, we would like him back for a visit, if it were possible. One thing I really liked about Tebo was that even in the middle of his pain he still had time for everyone and he loved and cared for each one.

  What happened this year I struggle to reconcile. Why would God take My nephew's fiance? I didn't even know her yet. All I knew was she had a happy face and Justin was happy. He had found the one for him.What does God have in mind? Right now my heart is hurting for him.

  But I know in the center of my being That God is good all the time and all the time God is good.

So I pray that Justin, her family and all the rest of us can find peace in the middle of it all, resting in the fact that God is always absolutely right.What he does is done with amazing love, and that he cries with us knowing that we can't see the reason, and we don't know what he is doing or why.

  I think Heaven responds with great joy when one of God's children comes home. I am experiencing a real life scenario right now....... When our son Luc married Anna, they decided to live where her family lives. We were OK with that. Because we felt they need to be free to make their own decisions. But we missed them. One day Luc was in our lives and suddenly he wasn't. Yes, we had phone calls and all kinds of communication, but we missed him and hoped secretly and sometimes not so secretly that they would come live here someday.

  Now that hope is becoming reality. We wait with great excitement and joy and anticipation for their arrival. I am so happy! I feel like dancing! The joy of being together is incredible! But a part of me feels sad....I feel for Anna's family. Because they have to say goodbye. They have to let go. They won't be together anymore. I think God feels that way too. I think he sympathizes with our pain.