Monthly Archives: January 2016

Good news…

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The new heart is in and working well; they are going to watch him for about another hour to make sure there is no bleeding, and then they will close him up and take him to the CCU. So please keep those prayers a comin’!!!!

 

Prayers needed…

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My brother-in-law has been dealing with congestive heart failure for years, but this last summer it worsened critically. He was told that if he didn’t have a heart transplant he would die soon, so he has been on a list waiting for a heart to become available. After months of waiting, a heart has become available and he is in surgery now. So James and I are heading to Dallas to wait with my sister while they do the surgery. Since the procedure and the hours afterward may take most, if not all, of the night and the day tomorrow, I may be out of pocket for a while. In the meantime, if you will, please pray that the surgery is successful and that his body does not reject his new heart. Love and hugs, Natalie

mystery and majesty

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Julie (aka Cookie)'s avatarcookiecrumbstoliveby

“There is a certain majesty in simplicity which is far above all the quaintness of wit.”
Alexander Pope

“As Emmanuel, Cardinal Suhard says, “To be a witness does not consist in engaging in propaganda, nor even in stirring people up, but in being a living mystery. It means to live in such a way that one’s life would not make sense if God did not exist.”
― Madeleine L’Engle

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(foxgloves, Glendalough National Park, County Wicklow, Ireland / Julie Cook / 2015)

If it is small…is it any less majestic?
If it is tiny and hidden from common sight…is it any less a mystery?

Simplicity…
demure…
intricate…
and seemingly…
uncomplicated

Yet amazingly beautiful

An afterthought?
A random act?
A happenstance?

Did it surprise you?
Did it make you stop?
Did it make you smile,
think,
feel…?

Yours, Lord, is the greatness and the power
and the glory and the majesty and…

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1036. There is something bigger than fact: the underlying spirit, all it stands for, the mood, the vastness, the wildness. ~Emily Carr

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Time cools, time clarifies;
no mood can be maintained
quite unaltered through
the course of hours.
~Thomas Mann

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Moods
I am the still rain falling,
Too tired for singing mirth—
Oh, be the green fields calling,
Oh, be for me the earth!

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I am the brown bird pining
To leave the nest and fly—
Oh, be the fresh cloud shining,
Oh, be for me the sky!
~Sara Teasdale

But it is the spirit in a person, the breath of the Almighty, that gives them understanding. ~Job 32:8   ✝

**Image found on Pinterest

 

1035. To give vent now and then to his/her feelings, whether of pleasure or discontent, is a great ease to a woman’s/man’s heart. ~Edited quote by Francesco Guicciardini

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Clouds open up into rain,
You too should release your pain.
~Terri Guillemets

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We are dealing with the probability of something very, very sad for James and I. Our daughter’s husband quit his job before Christmas, and he has applied and interviewed with a place in Colorado Springs, Colorado, a job that he really, really wants and for which he is well-qualified. After the interview last Friday, they told him there were 3, including him, that would be considered for the job and that they would let him know this week. Nikki is our only child and so this is an extremely difficult prospect for both James and I, but my husband is taking it harder than I am at least for now. We feel like we’re just waiting for an axe to fall that will cut us off from them and our grandchildren. At this point James can barely talk about it or consider their suggestion that we move there with them if Chris gets the job and they decide to go. What makes it traumatic in a way for James, is that he and his brother were abandoned by their mother after she and his dad divorced. She just didn’t come home one day nor did she leave a note of any kind. So the two of them were taken in by their grandparents where they lived until they finished school. Needless to say, what his mother did left a deep scar in James’ heart and psyche which keeps him from dealing well with any kind of separation, and I’m hurting as much for him in this as I am at the possible move of our daughter and her family to Colorado. Intellectually we know that they have a right to their own life wherever that might be, that we truly do want them to be happy, and that things will work out for the best, but right now our hurting hearts are overriding anything our mind has to say about it all. So if I seen distant or not too responsive this week, please forgive me, but aching hearts sometimes struggle just to breathe.

…“Why does your face look so sad when you are not ill? This can be nothing but sadness of heart.” ~Excerpt from Nehemiah 2:2  ✝

**Images via Pinterest; collage created by Natalie