I woke up early Sunday morning and found the following arrows leading me to my office upstairs:
So, at 5:45 a.m., by myself in the hallway, I counted to three and opened my door....
Wow! There were balloons and streamers all over the place, plus lots of signs with loving messages from my kids hung all over the walls and windows! Of course, by then the tears were flowing freely! Just as they were getting under control, I saw the mailbox.....
Angie had made a homemade mailbox out of cardboard, painted and decorated it and then had all of the kids write beautiful notes or draw pictures for me, put them in envelopes and in my mailbox! It was stuffed full! (I really enjoyed her creativity in sticking the mailbox in a vase so that it wouldn't tip over!)
So, devotions Sunday morning were love letters from my kids....I think the Lord understands! It was incredible the way each of their personalities came out in their letters and notes! They each touched me in such a special way, but one that particularly encouraged me was from Alejandro, the most recent addition to our family. He is 12 years old and quite the handful at times, having never lived under loving authority, which most 12 years old don't particularly like anyway, and even less when structure, order and chores are totally new concepts (along with love, kindness and generosity, rather than revenge, self-defense and an "I'm out to get you" attitude towards the world in general). In his rough handwriting and misspelled words that appear to be more like those of a seven year old, rather than a 12 year old, due to the fact that he had never gone regularly to school, he wrote: "Thank you for accepting me because now you are my mom. Thank you for accepting me because now we are a family." I leaned back on the loveseat in my office and whispered out loud, with tears on my cheeks: "He's got it! He's got it!" (This was particularly moving because we had just gotten through one heck of a week together...I will leave that part to your imagination!)
Guess what? Jesus gave me a birthday present too! I teach a women's Sunday School class at church every week to about 30 women. It is one of the highlights of my week! We are wrapping up a series on spiritual gifts and I had been waiting for a particular email from a pastor in Canada with some information that I wanted to include in this week's class. After having given up hope that he would respond, on Friday morning I opened my email and there were the long-awaited and very-much-needed files! Praise God! Well, I didn't download them (blonde error #3657) because, if they are in my email, I can access them whenever, right? Wrong! We lost our internet connection on Friday afternoon for unexplainable reasons. By Sunday morning after having done every trick in the book (unconnect modem, turn off computer, reset modem, unplug everything, turn it all back on, etc.), and after having reported the problem to the phone company....nothing! I reset the modem AGAIN! Nothing! So, I sat down at the computer, opened Word and told the Lord: "OK, Lord, I am going to prepare the worksheet for the ladies with the blanks to fill in, even though I don't even know what goes in the blanks because the answers are trapped in my email. On the way to church, we will stop by Office Max and I will download the files. That will only give me 15 minutes to go over the material before we get to church. Help me out here, Jesus. You know I didn't get the info until Friday. You know Victor and the team are gone on crusade, Rosa is sick and I am in charge of the entire Ranch, school, cooking, etc." I felt total peace and started typing away on the ladies' worksheet. About 10 minutes later, out of nowhere, I glanced down and my internet signal was back! I started to cry (for the third time that morning) and actually said out loud: "Thank you, Jesus, for my birthday gift.....our internet connection....just on time!"
I am full convinced, now more than ever, that when Jesus calls we are to simply obey and He will provide all that we need in order to fulfill that call...even when what we need is an internet connection! (Albeit, He does provide according to His time frame which, in my opinion, is usually cutting it a bit close:-)
And, now, for the icing on the cake! Victor and the team got back home at midnight Saturday night from a great Evangelistic Medical Mission Crusade to Michoacan. So, we were all anxious to have some family time together! Victor surprised me by taking the entire family out to eat at his and my favorite restaurant. We hadn't eaten there as a family in over two years, so it was a very special outing! There is nothing that I enjoy more than being with my family and few things fill me with more joy than to be in a public place and have 18 kids of just about 18 different shades of color calling out, "Mom!" and watching all the heads turn! God is so good! (Even in the bad times... God is so good, because He just is good...He is the definition of goodness!)
It's the Zaragoza version of "The Last Supper" painting!
Chocolate cake will always make me smile like this!
2 comments:
Love Love Love! So happy you had a FANTASTIC birthday!
I absolutely love those pictures, joy at that table. Thanks for the post Julie. Happy Birthday. I just celebrated my 33rd a couple months back and I felt real old the other day when I was talking on facebook with a HS friend about our 15 yr reunion and she asked about our slideshow we did at graduation. We wondered could we get a copy to show at reunion. Oh yeah... we used SLIDES. WOW. Seriously... Am I that old that we were using slides still in 1997? Crazy. How far we've come. =) Kara Eisenga
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