Email from my precious mama...

"Since my last email, I've been recovering from the third blood clot, which a cat-scan revealed it to extend all the way to the filter in my pelvic area. Each clot became progressively more painful and with more complications. After the swelling went down, I've been able to enjoy pool therapy every day to exercise the leg in order for the clot to dissolve and for new vein "bypasses" to be created replacing the damaged veins. Isn't it wonderful how God created our bodies to do that?

This Monday, June 14th, I'll be admitted to the Florida Hospital in Orlando and be put in the care of a vascular surgeon who will expedite the dissolving of my last clot. He will let my Gyn/Oncologist know when I am stable enough to be taken off blood thinner for surgery. I will be having the left ovary (with the growth) removed and possibly more depending on what is found. A recent pet-scan raised concern about the tumor.

We see God's timing of this surgery. Geoff, Melissa and boys are with us for the summer between their semesters of missionary training with New Tribes. They have been taking good care of me...and Dick; and will be here for several more weeks after I get home from the hospital. Thank you, Father! And thank you, Melissa and Geoff!

God has given Dick and me His peace. But to be honest, I am NOT looking forward to the surgery itself; and to the pain and 4 - 6 week recovery afterward. At the same time, I do know that God's grace will be there when I need it.

This past week has been a special family time with Andrew home for six days. Crystal and husband, Andy, drove up from Clearwater last weekend. How wonderful to have the whole family together for those two days!

Today Geoff drove Andrew to Hudson, FL (almost 3 hrs. away) where Andrew will be interning with the Word of Life Camp for the summer.

After Andrew graduates from the two-year Word of Life Bible Institute in August, he is transferring to Moody Bible Institute in Chicago where he will major in Missions.

Crystal and her husband, Andy, are planning on a year-long mission's trip in September if their necessary funds come in. They will be celebrating their first anniversary a week from this Sunday on June 20th. =))

God continues to be faithful and to encourage us through His Word and through His Body.


Below are two devotionals that ministered to me...

Resting in HIM...thanking Him for you and your prayers,

Esther

5-29. CHRISTO-CENTRIC
"Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus" (Philippians 2:5).

Just whose side are we on? The enemy who would occupy us with ourselves, or the Comforter who would occupy us with the risen Lord Jesus? The spirit of death, or the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus? "Know ye not that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are whom ye obey, whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness?" (Romans 6:16).

"If we have only learned the Lord at our own side, the tendency is to be occupied with ourselves, or to seek to be an object of consideration; whereas if we have been led by the Spirit to His side, His interests and concerns will singularly occupy us."

"The natural inclination is to make oneself the center of everything passing, how it pains or cheers oneself, even musing on oneself as if one were the one solitary object for the sunshine or the cloud to rest on. If I am a hero, or a martyr to myself, I look at and regard divine things as they suit my thinking about myself, and not as answering to what He is thinking of me. I am confining the Lord to myself instead of rising up and seeing myself lost in Him, and then following Him in all the greatness and blessedness of His work and ways down here." -J.B.S.

"We may love as Jonathan, and follow as Ruth, but until we know that we are united to the Lord Jesus Christ in glory, we will not be free enough from our own interests, to take up His."

"[Who] made Himself of no reputation, and took upon Him the form of a servant" (Philippians 2:7).
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5-30. "LOVE NEVER FAILETH"
"And to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fullness of God" (Ephesians 3:19).

God led the children of Israel into the desert with its thirst, that He might bless them. "For they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them, and that Rock was Christ" (1 Corinthians 10:4). It is for no less a reason that He takes us into the desert at times. "How shall He not with Him [Christ] also freely give us all things?" (Romans 8:2).

"Our Father disciplines us that we may be more fully free from the old nature, and find everything in the Lord Jesus. But He begins the lesson with the assurance, 'I love you perfectly.'

"'I bring you into the desert to learn what you are, and what I am; but it is as those I have brought to Myself!' He gives us a place with the Lord Jesus, but then shows us what He is and what we are. The discipline of the way teaches this; but if He, in His love, strikes the furrows in the heart, it is that He may sow the seed which shall ripen in glory."

"Those who receive deliverance from their troubles never grow like those who get strengthened in the difficulties."

"How slowly one learns that His sympathy is not expressed in removing the affliction but in raising one above it to Himself, so that He becomes so endeared to the heart that He is more an object to the heart than oneself." -J.B.S.

"The hand of God never deals but in concert with His heart of infinite love towards us." -J.N.D.

"Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous; nevertheless, afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them who are exercised by it" (Hebrews 12:11).