Yesterday my husband drove me 300 miles to Boise for 1 concert, then 300 miles home.  Yes you got it, 600 miles round trip for 1 concert without staying over night!  This was a 17 hour journey all together including 10 hours of driving, 1 hour eating dinner, and 6 hours at the venue.  He had to be back at work today so he slept in the car while I went to the concert.  Who is this I saw in concert.  Casting Crowns and Matt Redman.  Yes the Concert was excellent.  Even more so than that, the Lord was lifted up in worship by thousands of people in once place, always something amazing to be a part of!

One of the things that I was able to do while I was there was take part in meet and greet.  I was able to say hello to, and shake hands with, the members of Casting Crowns, regular people being obedient to what God has asked them to do.  Here is a question for you.  When was the last time you told someone “Thank you for saying Yes when the Lord said “do this for me” because now He is using you to minister to other people, even though you don’t always get to see the impact, God sees it.”  Have you ever told someone “thank you for saying Yes to God?”  I did that last night.  I told them thank you for saying “Yes” to God.  How many times do all of us tell God “Ummmm…I don’t think so!” or just “No”.  How many lives have been impacted because they said “Yes”?  I didn’t know what kind of reaction I would get.  They thanked me for encouraging them, they thanked me for telling them it mattered that they sacrifice to do what God has asked them to do.

1 Thessalonians 5:10-12 says “He died for us so that, whether we are awake or asleep, we may live together with him.  Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing.”   Something we are to be doing, encouraging one another.  So here is my challenge to you.  Think of someone you know that has impacted the lives around them because they said “Yes” to what God asked them to do.  It might be your pastor, a children’s worker, a bible study leader, an usher, the treasurer or someone you know is praying for your church.  It might be the person you least expect .  Ask God who you can encourage by thanking them for saying “Yes” when He asked them to be obedient.

This morning I called the movers and set up the official move to our new house!  On October 21st we will complete the process of buying our first home, and then on October 26th the movers will come pack, move, and unpack our things!  I sit here contemplating the fact that since June of 2006 this will be the 5th time I have moved.  I am beginning to understand how my husband felt as a child growing up as a missionary kid, though his moves didn’t usually involve floods.

The last two times we moved were earlier this year when we had our flood and we had to move out of apartment for several weeks.  Then at the end of the clean up process we simply moved back into it.  Those were move numbers 3 and 4, and I still have boxes left unpacked from move number 4.  This move is for a much more exciting reason!  Buying our first house is a dream come true.  I told my husband sometime during this process “thank you for making my dream come true” and he looked at me and he said “the second one” pointing toward our son.  I call them dreams because there were times in my life I didn’t think either of those two things would be possible, now I will have both.  When my son was born my first dream became real, and now my second is becoming real.

Though it means I have to move for the 5th time in just over 3 years, the feeling of having ones dream fulfilled is amazing.  This dream is a dream for someone else, which makes it even better.  You see, this dream is a dream that my son would have a backyard!  With a house comes a backyard-so dream fulfilled.  When we went to look at the house he cared more about the backyard than where his room might be, and that tells me he is getting something he has dreamed about too.  So to fulfill this dream, on October 26th we will undertake our 5th move since June 2006.

Standing in the pool yesterday at physical therapy I had to just stand, shoulder depth, feet apart, turning my head side to side, and discover the result.  Not so good!  I ended up losing my balance several times.  For those of you who have known me a few years, the pool is a place I spent a lot of time for several years.  So to not be able to do the simplest things in the pool now is quite a shock to me.  I stood there swaying back and forth trying to catch my balance, not doing a very good job of it.

Then the next interesting feeling came when I had to hold small paddles and swing my arms underwater, that was great!  Made me rock back and forth in the water losing my balance so many times I would have fallen over on land!  To know that my physical body has been through a difficult journey the past four years is one thing to deal with.  But when I realize what having a small part of my brain removed has done to my abilities it is a difficult thing to process sometimes.  I stood in that pool swaying back and forth, thinking to myself “I use to spend hours in the pool a day, now I can’t even stand up straight in it!  Wow I really am messed up!”

Today though I think about how I stood there looking back and forth, or swinging my arms back and forth, and it wasn’t the standing that was the problem, it was the distraction.  That got me thinking, how often do we sway because we are not standing, looking where we are going, but looking side to side?  Paul tells us in Hebrews to “fix our eyes on Jesus”. (Heb 12:1-2)  Why?  So that we won’t get caught up in the sin that so easily entangles us.  We need to not be looking side to side, but looking ahead, focused and fixed on the goal ahead of us.  It is when we start looking aside, getting distracted, that we start swaying.

When I was using the paddles in the pool I stepped backwards to correct my balance problem.  When we are looking side to side, and we sway, that is when we reach to grab something to stop us from swaying.  Those things off to the side, those distractions, those sins that entangle us, they are not the things the Lord desires for us.  Have you ever gotten so distracted you grab onto one of those things to keep you from swaying?  It happens.  Problem is those things are sometimes like those paddles I held onto, they make you step backward.  Backward is not a good place to go with God.  There is however a fix to this, and that is to remember that even if we turned our heads, stepped backwards, even a lot, all we have to do is turn forward again and there stands Christ.

If you spent a significant amount of time with someone and 1/3 of the time you spent with them they were sick, hurting, having surgery, recovering from surgery, having seizures, recovering from seizures, being diagnosed for yet more odd symptoms, or just plain having a bad day because they were tired of feeling like that all of time, how would you react to that?

Seems like an odd question I know-but tomorrow my husband and I celebrate 12 years of marriage, and for 1/3 of that time that is exactly what my husband has dealt with and his reaction to it has amazed me.  It was 4 years ago that I started to get sick, and in this last 4 years my husband has never wavered in his commitment to me, he has never told me he had enough, he has never gotten angry because of our situation, and he has never once allowed what is happening to shake his firm belief that the Lord is faithful to us.  1/3 of our marriage I have been sick, and not just with a cold!  1/3 of our marriage I have been just about 1/3 useful!  Yet my husband has still been 100% committed to what he said when he stood with me 12 years ago and told me “for better for worse in sickness and in health till death do us part”.  We have had our sickness and our worse.  I’m not saying we won’t have more, what I am saying is I know my husband won’t waver if and when it comes again.

So tomorrow when we celebrate our 12th anniversary I will thank the Lord for Mike, and for giving me just the right husband for me.  I will thank the Lord for giving me a man who didn’t just utter words on our wedding day, but who made a commitment to both me and the Lord to stand by what those words meant.  It may be true that 1/3 of the time we have had together has been in sickness and the worse, but because it was with the Lord, and because Mike stood by his commitment to me, the burden of it was light.