READ...

So I have a confession to make...that last post was supposed to get posted on Friday prior to when it was posted and somehow my computer had a glitch and didn't go through so I just hit send-not thinking about the date that would be listed on the top! However, my update is that I had a BLAST! We returned on Tuesday and although I was exhausted by the time we got home-the trip was exactly what I needed.  My mom, Kristin, McCade, and I had so much fun visiting our family from Kansas, Arkansas, and Texas.  All of my maternal female relatives and even some of the guys were there + kids!  We shopped, watched movies, painted fingernails, held babies, ate, and ate, and ate!  Times with the people I love are what really keep me going and help me to remember what is valuable in life and what is worth living for---I am so blessed to have people on both sides of my family, maternal and paternal relatives, who love me and care about me in spite of who I am or used to be (a really bratty teenager!). I believe that this is the blessing that God promised in the Bible... I thought about that a lot while I was in Kansas, as we are concerned about my aging grandparents. I believe that the blessings and love that we all share is promised by God to my Grandparents and their parents before them for their faithful servitude to him and raising their children to do the same.  Read   . You can begin your own tradition of serving Him even if your parents didn't teach you. Love of God and reading His word and principles is all that is required---everything else comes out of that.
   I also want to tell you about a book I just read...Thank you hubby... called Heaven is Real.  It is written by the father of a young boy who became incredibly ill and post-recovery began to tell his parents about things that happened to him in Heaven while he was in surgery, his tales are confirmed by his knowlege of things that were happening in other parts of the hospital while he was in surgery as well as knowlege of people he had never met and events and stories about Heaven that were consistent with Biblical teachings he was too young to understand.  The book is special for so many reasons and is great on a 90 Minutes in Heaven kind of way.  I loved it for a different reason.  WARNING***this could be a little bit of a spoiler but I hope not too much. It is still worth reading. *** Despite my current pregnancy, maybe because of it, I have been mourning the baby I was unable to carry and deliver. While I know that I didn't know this child, and was very early in my pregnancy, I still feel the loss in my soul. My heart is broken for that little life and I think and wonder about him or her often.  The mother in the book had experienced a miscarriage prior to having her son. Because he was so young and it happened prior to his birth, they had never told him about it and her pregnancy was lost very early so they didn't have a name or sex for the lost child.  The son later told them that he had a sister in Heaven who didn't have a name. He said she ran to him and hugged him and was so happy to meet him. She told him she couldn't wait for her parents to join her in Heaven.  He also talked to his parents constantly about how much Jesus loved all of the children that were there.  I can not tell you how I cried at reading this.  It meant more to me than anything I have been told or read.  I am still sad for the loss but I am so thrilled at the thought that I will one day be able to hold my child and love him or her in Heaven when we are both perfect and whole the way God intended us to be.  I believe that God is so sweet and that He encouraged Neil to buy this book while I was out of town.  I needed to read and be encouraged. It didn't make me forget but it helped me to understand a way that my God could be merciful and loving to me by allowing me to feel this pain.  My little one couldn't survive on this Earth so He saved him/her for Heaven. My Jesus is holding my sweet little one on his lap and loving him/her with a perfect love.  Although I still mourn the loss for myself, I now rejoice that the little one I lost is living a perfect existence in eternity with no pain or sorrow and I will hold that precious one again. Thank you Jesus for a blessing I didn't want and don't understand with that loss. I know you love the children "most of all."  I think all of the mothers of lost little ones will find some comfort there as well.