Reason to Rejoice

"To laugh yourself is to love yourself." Mickey Mouse This past week has been a week full of planning, remembering, tears, and laughter.  As as family, we attempted to put together the pieces of Aunt Donna's life and place it into a box...a box that would fit into a square six feet under the soil that God created...in the same place of her beloved husband of twenty-five years.  Fifty-four years and a week. That is how long the Lord gave us Donna Bisbee in the flesh.  Thirty-five years is how long I was able to have her.  As I attempt to pull together a few memories of my life with this incredible person, I hope that you get a glimpse of just what she meant to me. I am not sure I can actually recall being two years old, but I was told so many times about being Aunt Donna and Uncle Harris' first child that I feel like I can remember the actual events.  They apparently took me to Wet 'N' Wild (now Hurricane Harbor) and Six Flags, and the zoo more times ...

I love when I am reading a story and I feel this special connection to the characters in the story.  I love even more when I read my Bible and the Lord speaks so clearly to me.  No, it isn't audible speech from the Lord, but it is definitely a Word from Him and the closer I get to Him, the more I am privileged to enjoy this.   Something quite interesting struck me as I was studying about Jacob in my Bible study a couple of weeks ago.  The very fact that God promised Jacob all of these blessings when his name means "deceiver" was the first thing that I found a little fascinating.  Even more than that, as I was reading and studying I kept thinking, surely at some point, we will see how God is going to punish or rebuke Jacob...but we don't...at least not that I recall. Let's talk about this for a minute.  Jacob marries Leah thinking she was Rachel because Rachel was his favorite.  Then, because it wasn't Rachel, he works for 7 more years in or...

I love doing Bible studies.  I love sitting around the table with women of all ages and just "doing life" with them.  I love the wisdom that comes from knowing that others have been there.  Most of all, I love learning that there are things that God wants me to know in the quietness of the room filled with only Him and me. The ladies of our church just started a new study called Seamless by Angie Smith, whom I have grown to love over the years by way of her blog.  I can already tell this study is going to change my life.  In short, this study is designed to take you on a 6-week journey through the Bible as seamless story.  I am on the first week and I have already learned so much that I did not know.  I don't consider myself a beginner, necessarily, but I am certainly not a Bible expert.  I have just fallen in love with this study in a very short period of time, and my prayer is that it will allow me to fall deeper in love with Jesus.   ...

For the past two mornings, something  has made me wake up at the amazing hour of 4:00 am.  I had a small procedure last week and cannot workout right now, so it was not for getting up to workout, my alarm was not set, and frankly, I did not want to get up at 4:00 am.  Yesterday, I got up, did some laundry, did my Bible study, made lunches, picked up the living room...you know, normal "mommy things."  This morning, it was different.  I woke up to what I thought was the house alarm beeping.  Not like it was alarming, necessarily but what I thought I heard was it beeping about 4 times.  Anytime one of our doors opens, the alarms beeps.  I know that all of our doors were locked (and re-locked 5 times because I have an OCD husband), but I also know that I have a 9-year old daughter who sleep walks.  Long story short, everyone was still sleeping, no doors had been opened, and there was no one {that was not supposed to be} in our home.  I wen...