on a lighter note

i had my sweet, little Jadzia over for the day. mama has started working nights and she spends the entire day with our little fireball so i offered to take her for the day so kelly could sleep.

she's such a fireball! we had so much fun. she'll be three in a little over a month, but she is the tiniest thing. i put her in the stroller and we walked down to the beach just a short walk from my home (lake ontario) there is a wonderful park for the kids and because the storm you see in my other post was brewing, there were few people there. we enjoyed that beautiful 'calm before the storm' time and played in the park for a little more than an hour.

what fun. i've promised to take her over tomorrow should the weather hold and i'll take some pictures of her running from one area of the park playground to the other. it is a great jungle gym and she made good use of it today!

well, i brought her back for her nap at 1:00 and needless to say, grandma's house is waaaaaaaaay too much fun to have a nap at so she ran around and terrorized me while i attempted to put together a new filing cabinet for the room i am going to be using as an office.

then we had THE STORM. that was way too much fun to sleep through. well, the little sweetheart finally crashed on the couch after her bath. i'm sure she has not moved for at least 2 hours now .. here's a picture ...


don't you just love digital cameras? we get such great shots sometimes!

we thought we were in the ark ...

we had an incredible storm today. the thunder lasted longer than i have ever heard it in my life! this is the water rushing down our driveway. thank God our house is about 8 inches above the ground, otherwise, we would have had very wet floors.

there were areas in toronto where the water was three feet high! wow.

what's going on??



i don't know how clearly you can see this, but it is a piggy bank that stands at least 5" high and it is well under water. this is at my front door!

mingling the seeds ...

We had a visiting pastor speak at our church today and he had quite an interesting Word for us ...

He based his sermon on Deuteronomy 22:9 "You shall not sow your vineyard with different kinds of seed, lest the yield of the seed which you have sown and the fruit of your vineyard be defiled."

this guy had us jumping all over the Bible to support his comments. i did not agree with everything he spoke on (a little unbalanced on the 'name it, claim it' side - there's nothing worse than one pastor commenting on another pastor's sermon, huh?) but i wanted to write about one part of the sermon that really impacted me.

when he talked about 'seed', he talked about it in relation to the Word of God, but also to our words. i've often taught that our words have life. they will either give birth to life or death in our lives and those around us.

Proverbs 4:22 Keep your heart with all diligence, For out of it spring the issues of life.

Luke 6:45, Matthew 12:34 ... For out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks.

He went on to talk about us speaking life and death over ourselves at the same time ... mingling our seeds ... and receiving the harvest of defiled fruit. When we speak 'i know God will heal me, i've been healed by the stripes of Christ' and when it takes longer for the healing to manifest itself, we say 'i wonder if the Lord is trying to teach me something from this illness' that we are in fact sowing different seeds into our lives. those of faith and those of unbelief.

theologians like to argue about this concept almost as much as they do election and predestination.

while i am not going to provide an answer to this, i want to share what the Lord showed me ...

this is profound because my husband and i have struggled with illness almost from the first of april this year. first me with gallbladder and torn ligaments in my ankle and then him with a serious enough back injury to put him off work longer than he has ever been in his 40+ year career.

we've wondered what we've done wrong. we've prayed. we've fasted. we've rebuked the enemy and infirmity. we've asked the Lord to show us what to do. but we have still been left to struggle through this illness and glorify the Lord as much as we could during the process.

i've always been impatient with people who will ask you how you feel and when you tell them the truth they say: 'no, you are healed by the Stripes of Jesus!'. i looked at the cast and felt the pain in my foot and wondered, 'well, where is it?' why would i want to lie when the truth is, i'm injured and in pain and to tell someone that i was healed would be a lie.

what the Lord showed me was ... from the moment that the illnesses started to manifest, even before they started to manifest ... the healing power of Christ on the Cross was manifest in our bodies and our lives. and since 'greater is He who is in us than he who is in the world' and since 'the very power which raised Christ from the dead lives within us' ... all we need to do is agree with the healing work of God and speak into it rather than not.

another way of saying it - according to our friend:
the facts are ... the ankle is sore and ligaments are torn.
the truth is ... the power of Christ is working in that ankle to bring it to complete healing ...

now that i can wrap my mouth around. that i can take into my heart and believe.

the challenge is to speak life into the situation or the illness like 'i thank You Lord that Your power is working in my ankle to bring it to complete healing! not 'i don't think this thing is healing, etc.'

it doesn't help me to explain to the precious couple who came to me this week asking why their ten day old baby died when they had been speaking these words of life and faith over her, but i guess that is another post, huh?

i'm not questioning my faith ... hear me ... i know the Lord is faithful and that He heals ... i received a complete physical healing from multiple sclerosis eight years ago! i just needed to look at it another way.

what do you think???