Thirty five years

Tomorrow, the 21st of January 2013 will mark 35 years since God gave me the most amazing gift possible. On that day, on a snowy mountaintop in Tennessee, Mary Margaret Sheridan said 'I do' at Jump Off Baptist Church.

It seems almost impossible that so many years have passed. I truly feel like it was just yesterday.

The wonderful thing about these three and half decades is that I have not for a moment regretted that wonderful day.

Life has brought it's struggles and difficulties. But Mary has been the strength by my side that has made it all possible.

Thank you God for 35 amazing years. May by His grace He grant us many more.

Sadness

Our house awakes to sadness this morning. Our dear little Jingo was hit by a care and killed last night. I say sadness because that is the feeling. If it were a child we would be devastated, crushed, heartbroken and in deep mourning.

But today we are sad. Sad because of all we will miss. I couldn't sleep last night thinking of all the good memories of Jingo. I missed getting him to let him out this morning. I missed his stretching to wake himself up. I missed the jangle of his dog tag. I keep thinking that he is behind my of the little sofa in the office.

I am going to miss him on my walk this morning.

I know we will move on. I know I will always miss Jingo. But for today sadness abides.

Sleep, and lack of it

Insomnia has always been my enemy. I jokingly tell people that I don't sleep and that is not far from the truth. Last night was another of those nights.

God has done a great work for me and I don't lose sleep as much because of worry. Applying simple Bible truths has helped there. But I think this 'no sleep for no reason' is even worse because at least then I knew why lent sleep. I try to use those times for prayer and am glad that I can. They other night I prayed a lot and yesterday s two direct answers to prayer. But last night I just couldn't sleep and am exhausted now.

I am looking forward to spring. Until about two years ago our long dark winter nights never bothered me. The last couple of years I have felt the darkness and it has affected me.

One thing that has helped me to keep getting out to walk is our Jingo. I cannot believe that I have a dog and like him :-).

A Good Sunday

I have really wanted to be more consistent on my own private blog. I started this blog eight years or so ago, delved back in with a couple of posts about four years ago, and it has lain dormant since.

More than I can recount has happened since then May 2009. Hudson was born prematurely about a month after that last post. Since then Beth and Ronnie had Kian in October 2010, Jay and Holly had Wil in June 2012, and Caleb and Karen got married in December 2011 and gave us Alfie two weeks ago today.

We almost lost Michelle in December 2009 when she came down with leukaemia and she batted that till June 2011 when she had a stem cell transplant which seems to have taken care of it.

Beth, Ronnie, Kian, and Zeke are all back in the US now. Caleb, Jay, Mary, and I have become Irish citizens. And all the normal passing of years have gone by.

Our church plant still struggles along. We constituted as a church in the summer of 2011 and we have a small but faithful group of believers.

I wanted to drop a post today as a reminder to myself. I was really discouraged this week about things in general, but especially about church attendance. For several days I have been praying for a good day today and The Lord answered. He didn't answer in a big and dramatic way, but in a way that both He and I knew what He had done. We then had a good Bible study tonight.

Anyway, we are going to give this thing another shot. Lets see how it goes.