Thursday thoughts

Thursday Thoughts About Waiting

Posted by teresak on January 13, 2011 5 Comments

How patient are you?

Imagine for a moment that you are sitting in your car behind another car at a red light. The light turns green but the car in front of you doesn’t move. What do you do?

Plan A. Lay on your horn and say things you shouldn’t.

Plan B. Tap your horn and wait to see what happens. If nothing happens you revert to Plan A.

Plan C. Wait patiently for the person in front of you to go no matter how long it takes.

I would like to tell you that I would always choose Plan C, but that wouldn’t be the truth. There are times when I have the patience of a flea (do fleas have patience?)

Part of the problem is we have become a culture accustomed to instant gratification. If we order something at a fast food restaurant we had better get it NOW. If we look up something on our computer and it takes more than three seconds to appear we huff and puff and wonder why it’s taking so long. The problem with living like this is that when we don’t get what we want when we want it….we get frustrated or angry.

One of the hardest things to wait for (in my opinion) are results from medical tests. Martha, my cousin with breast cancer, was supposed to find out if her chemo is working yesterday, but she didn’t. The hospital called and her scans weren’t sent when they were supposed to be so the doctors hadn’t had time to go over them. They postponed her appointment until tomorrow; two more days of waiting.

Mistakes happen. People who work in hospitals are human beings just like the rest of us, but that doesn’t make it any easier to wait.

Keep praying friends, Martha and I appreciate it.

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Don’t forget….

Today is the last day to sign up to win a copy of Shoe-la-la!

There are two ways to win a copy of this book.

1. You can go to http://www.facebook.com/pages/NanaHood-and-theNanaBlogs/179831745558 and then click on the LIKE button near the top of the page….If you haven’t already LIKED NanaHood, now is the time to do it! Then just post on that page letting me know you LIKED me!

I’ll choose one winner this way and the second from comments…see number 2.

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ShoeLaLaCover


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Thursday Thoughts on the Importance of Humor

Posted by teresak on January 6, 2011 8 Comments

Many of you know that my cousin Martha has metastatic breast cancer.  The week after her first treatment she lost her hair and she is now wearing a wig (and looks really great in it, I might add).

marhtaYesterday she posted the following on her site…

I had my CT Scan today. It was not very fun… the junk I had to drink had my stomach flipping and flopping… thought I was not going to keep it down… I went in kinda green, asking for a bucket.. They then said that usually you have to drink ONE MORE bottle! (I already gagged down two!)… but by looking at me they knew that was not a good idea, so I didn’t have to… I went and laid down on the table for the scan and put my Ipod ear plugs in my ears and he said to just be sure that they weren’t too loud because he needed me to hear him. I said that I am old and don’t listen to music as loud as teenagers. He said he understood- he is trying to raise three teenage girls and they are about to kill him. I told him that I had my three girls raised and he looked at me and said “And you still have your hair? How did you do that?” I pulled back my wig and said “I didn’t!”

I love you, Martha! I am praying for you and asking all my friends to do the same. She gets her test results next week.

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Thursday Thoughts on “How Do You Get To Heaven?”

Posted by teresak on December 30, 2010 4 Comments

When one of my sons was a little boy he asked me if he could climb a ladder to Heaven.

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I explained that he could not and cautioned him not to try it.

Years later when the twins came along they had a cat named Whiskers who ran away from home and used up his nine lives on the highway. Unfortunately they saw the scene of the accident and were very distraught.  I told them Whiskers had gone to Heaven and they were pacified until we passed back by later in the day.

“Mommy,” one of them said. “The angels forgot to come get Whiskers! He’s still there!”

Yesterday my GRANDdaughter, Abby, came running in the kitchen. “Nana, my fishy went to Heaven.”

I told her I was sorry.

“He went to Heaven down the toilet.”

Uh oh.

She thought for a moment. “Is that how people get to Heaven?”

I assured her it wasn’t. It’s easy to understand why children are confused by religious matters, but what about adults? What do most Americans know about religion?

A recent survey by the Pew Research Center found that…

On average, Americans correctly answer 16 of the 32 religious knowledge questions on the survey by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life. Atheists and agnostics average 20.9 correct answers. Jews and Mormons do about as well, averaging 20.5 and 20.3 correct answers, respectively. Protestants as a whole average 16 correct answers; Catholics as a whole, 14.7. Atheists and agnostics, Jews and Mormons perform better than other groups on the survey even after controlling for differing levels of education.

If you are interested in the rest of the survey findings you can read more about it here.

http://pewforum.org/other-beliefs-and-practices/u-s-religious-knowledge-survey.aspx

I found the survey very interesting and kept reading articles and responses about it. There is even a site that has the same questions that the survey had and you can see how many you can answer. (I missed one)

If most of us want to go to  Heaven, and I’m assuming we do considering that the alternative is not a good one, then why do we know so little about religion? I suspect it’s because we are filling our lives with other things and not taking the time to study and mediate on God’s word as we should.

So back to my original question. How do we get to Heaven?

I could tell you about my personal faith and what I believe to be true, but ultimately every human being on the planet has to answer that question for themselves. If you haven’t thought about it, I encourage you to do so.

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Thursday Thoughts On What To Give This Christmas

Posted by teresak on December 16, 2010 2 Comments

If you are still in search of the perfect gift for someone on your Christmas list I have a few suggestions.

“To your enemy, forgiveness.

To your opponent, tolerance.

To a friend, your heart.

To a customer, service.

To all, charity.

To every child, a good example.

To yourself, respect.”   Oren Arnold

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Thursday Thoughts on Faith, Hope, and Love

Posted by teresak on November 18, 2010 Leave a Comment

My mother’s favorite chapter in the Bible was 1 Corinthians 13.   I’ve read it a zillion times and I still enjoy reading it. It comforts me in a way that few things can.

Faith-

The Bible has this to say about faith in Hebrews 11:1

It is the confident assurance that what we hope for is going to happen. It is the evidence of things we cannot yet see.

I know that God hears my prayers and I know that His we will answer them. How do I know? Because He tells me He will and because I can look back over my life and see His hand in every good thing that has happened to me.

What are the odds that a girl from Kentucky would go on her first (and only camping trip) to the Florida Keys, camp next to a guy who was with his friends from Michigan, meet each other, date long distance, fall in love and get married?  What are the odds that a young girl who said she’d never have children would have five of them and love motherhood? How often do two people wed and stay in love, stay best friends and stay married for over 30 years?

God has been with me every step of the way and I am confident He will see me through.

Hope- I cannot imagine how dismal life would be without hope in Jesus. To think that this is all there is would be so depressing. Not that I’m not happy or appreciative. I am blessed beyond measure, but this life is NOTHING compared to the next. Can you imagine a place where there is no poverty, no tears, no sadness, no sickness? That’s the hope that comforts me!

1 Corinthians 15: 19 And if we have hope in Christ only for this life, we are the most miserable people in the world.

Love- The word love is used so often and in so many ways that we forget how it is really defined.

John 3:16 – For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.

That’s the meaning of love. That’s the reason we have hope. That’s the root of my faith.

Today my cousin Martha is in Houston getting her battle plan ready to fight one of this world’s biggest enemies: cancer, and while I am praying daily (and nightly too!) I know God has her in the palm of his hand and that my friend is why I am thinking today about faith, hope and love!

Read and be comforted…..

1If I could speak in any language in heaven or on earth F63 but didn’t love others, I would only be making meaningless noise like a loud gong or a clanging cymbal. 2If I had the gift of prophecy, and if I knew all the mysteries of the future and knew everything about everything, but didn’t love others, what good would I be? And if I had the gift of faith so that I could speak to a mountain and make it move, without love I would be no good to anybody. 3If I gave everything I have to the poor and even sacrificed my body, I could boast about it; F64 but if I didn’t love others, I would be of no value whatsoever.

4Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud 5or rude. Love does not demand its own way. Love is not irritable, and it keeps no record of when it has been wronged. 6It is never glad about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. 7Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.

8Love will last forever, but prophecy and speaking in unknown languages F65 and special knowledge will all disappear. 9Now we know only a little, and even the gift of prophecy reveals little! 10But when the end comes, these special gifts will all disappear.

11It’s like this: When I was a child, I spoke and thought and reasoned as a child does. But when I grew up, I put away childish things. 12Now we see things imperfectly as in a poor mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. F66 All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God knows me now.

13There are three things that will endure—faith, hope, and love—and the greatest of these is love.

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Thursday Thoughts on Finding Joy In The Journey

Posted by teresak on November 11, 2010 2 Comments

I’m sitting in a student lounge at a local university and there is a sign above an office door that says, Find Joy In Your Journey. Good advice. It reminds of another quote I saw years ago that said, Marriage is not the end of a search. It is the beginning of a journey. I liked that quote so much I had a lady write it for me (she could do calligraphy) and I framed it and gave it to Bill the first Christmas after we were married.

It sounds easy, wrapped up nice and neat in a sentence and put on a sign for all the world to see, but some folks spend their whole lives searching  and never find it. Here’s my take on why they don’t. When I was a little girl my Grandma Layne taught me a game. She called it finding the thimble. I had to cover my eyes (no peeping) while she hid her sewing thimble somewhere in the room. Then when she was ready I got to search for it. If I got close she would say “You are getting warm,” and if I was searching in the wrong place she would say “You are getting cold.” When I was almost right on top of it she’d yell, “You’re hot!”

When it comes to looking for joy there are a whole lot of people who are at the North Pole, so far away from the real source of joy that they are about to freeze. They think joy comes from instant gratification and they try one thing after another to experience a momentary spurt of happiness. Drugs, sex, alcohol, tobacco, whatever. If it feels good it must make me happy. Right?

A few years ago a man I’d known for years was killed while making meth in his bathroom. He left behind three sons who were good friends with my boys.  The oldest son was a senior in high school then. If the man who died could live his life over do you think he would trade the high he got from meth for watching his sons graduate from high school, or other special moments in their lives? I know he wouldn’t, but he won’t get the chance because he was looking for joy in the wrong places.

Real joy isn’t an instant high or a rush of emotion. It’s an inner peace that provides calm and security in the midst of life’s darkest storms. If you haven’t found your joy or if you had it once and want it back, may I suggest you start with prayer. Ask God to help you find it and then find a nice quiet place to read your Bible, study, pray and spend some time alone searching your soul.  The answer is there. The joy is free and available to all. You can find it, but first you have to know where to look.

Go find a Bible and as Grandma Layne would say, “You are getting hot!”

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