For I Know One...

Little Hadleigh's fever is gone today, but she is still coughing and has a bit of a runny nose. Originally I did think that she might have a little hay fever...but since she has been running a decent fever, I don't think it is allergies, and I think it was a bit more serious than a cold as well. The good news it is on the way OUT.

The past couple of days I have had some time to reflect more on the retreat. Barbara Barker was the speaker, and I thought was very timely. Barbara's husband is Frank, and he was the founding pastor of Briarwood Pres in Birmingham. He spoke at a single's retreat I went to several years ago, so it was neat to hear Barbara. She is a pretty random lady, so a lot of the time she was just telling stories from her life, but the majority of them were cool.

She told us about this one time they were having a group of 60 folks over to the house (which apparently was almost a daily experience) for dinner. She got everything ready and then left for work. When she returned she realized that she had left the roast on 500 degrees instead of turning it down, so she had burned dinner and the house smelled like smoke. Their guests were to arrive in an hour, and she wanted to freak out. At that moment she had this image of all the saints in heaven on one side of her and all the demons on the otherside ( I can't remember if she said demons, but this is my version of the story). The demons were like...you have failed! Give up, yell at everyone, blame everyone else, etc. The saints were like...we were beheaded for the faith, you can fix this, have faith. So, she ran out to the store, grabbed some ham, ran back and continued as if nothing was wrong.

What I realized through this story and many of her others, is that life is full of all these little battles. How will I respond when things don't go my way? What will I do when I burn the roast, or when some crazy forgets to change our bank info and overdrafts our account, or when Hadleigh won't take her nap. Will I see this as a battle? Will I respond in faith, or in the flesh?

And all of these things translate into larger things as well. What will I do when I am just lonely for a friend? What will I do when I just want Dave to have a normal/stable job? What will I do when I feel overwhelmed with taking care of Hadleigh and feeling sick from the new baby? What will I do when the transition back to Atlanta just seems too hard? I feel like on all of these accounts I have just failed miserably. But, I now have an opportunity to respond in the correct way, in faith trusting the Lord. He can give me the strength to overcome these things and to live by faith.

On the way home I was remembering a quote from the movie Luther. If you haven't seen it, you must for it is just a small picture of the great faith of Martin Luther (you can borrow our copy if you want). I know this isn't a direct quote of Luther's, but if you read any of his works, you can see that this thought is very prevalent, not to mention scripture supports this idea, just check out Romans 8.1 for starters.

So when the devil throws your sins in your face and declares that you deserve death and hell, tell him this: "I admit that I deserve death and hell, what of it? For I know One who suffered and made satisfaction on my behalf. His name is Jesus Christ, Son of God, and where He is there I shall be also!"

On a lighter note, here are some fun picks of Hadleigh. She gets to help her Dada do all sorts of fun things, like fix the car. I also caught her with her new crawl...pretty funny!