Hopeful1

My dear sweet darling daughter has opened up a diary here!!!! Please go and welcome her if you get a chance. She has been very candid right in her front page, so be sure to read that if you go there. Much of it you know from reading my diary but it’s good to hear her perspective too. I’m so excited that she’s here now. I hope she keeps it up!

I realize it’s been a few days since I’ve updated but I have so much stuff I’ve thought about that I want to share. I’m hoping I’ll have an opportunity to do so tomorrow. We had cottage Bible study again last night and, once again, it was wonderful. We’re going back to their house tonight for games and dinner. These folks are such wonderful warm people and strong Christians too. I know this sounds weird, but keeping in mind where I’ve come from, I’m just so thrilled to find some white people who really believe and practise true Christianity. You’ve got to remember that I’ve spent the last 12+ years in an African American church and prior to that I wasn’t in church for a long time. When I grew up the only churches I went to were the cold Episcopal church where nobody even talked to you or the Congregational church that my mom went to you where everybody seemed to be completely phoney and the white Christians I knew practised a very hypocritical faith — much — VERY much — gossip and judgement, no charity (in thought and action), lacking in gentleness, people cheated on others, there was drunkeness, shoot — you know I battled sexual abuse. When I entered the African American church, I thought I’d found heaven. I realize now that heaven isn’t anywhere on this earth, but for a time I felt that African Americans are more serious about their relationship with God than we, white people are. Now that I’ve been going to this Lutheran church since August and met these people, I realize that there ARE some white people who REALLY mean it (besides Mormons and Vineyard members, who I had come to believe were the only other ones besides African Americans who seemed to take their religion seriously but I just didn’t feel called to either of those churches).

So, anyway, I’m hoping to get some time to catch up with some writing tomorrow. There are a couple of thoughts and experiences I wanted to get down before I forget them. I’m looking forward to a fun night tonight which is good because I’m already missing my husband who is sitting at the airport right now excitedly waiting to board the plane to Amsterdam. This will be a terrific trip for him and I’ve prayed and prayed that God will keep him safe and that there will be no terrorists or evil people on his flight. I’ve warned him to get up and walk around several times during the flight to avoid that deep-veined thrombosis stuff that they get on the flights to Hawaii. I just couldn’t stand it if anything happened to him. I was sitting in his lap in the kitchen last night, cuddling all close to him with my face in his neck and thinking to myself that nobody in this world will ever love me again the way he loves me. I am so lucky to be blessed with someone like him. And, yes, I know I’ve complained sometimes. No one is perfect and no relationship is perfect. And you know what? I will complain again… just wait and see. But right now, he seems pretty perfect to me. And he seemed pretty perfect to me when I was cuddling with him this morning and enjoying his warmth and his scent and the way his big arms feel when he holds me tight and the way his voice echos in his chest when my ear is pressed against him. I love the way his body feels in my arms and I just can’t think of anybody else I would want sharing my home and sharing my life so I prayed a really strong prayer and we gathered as a group, my daughter, my son, my husband and I and we prayed that he would have a great time, be blessed, but most of all that he would be safe and watched over by God everywhere he went.