With Apologies to Anne

One of the many things that I love about my husband is that he wakes up EVERY morning with what we've jokingly refer to as his "song of the day." It doesn't matter how tired he is, or what's going on in our lives, but he always has something that he wakes up singing. In 13 years of marriage (Yay Us!) I don't remember them ever repeating either. Anyway, he always wakes up with a song in his heart. Some days I appreciate this, and some, not so much! There are many times that I will end up with some annoying little ditty looping non-stop through my brain. :-)


Today, for one of the first times, I woke up with a song of my own.


Back in the early '80's, Anne Murray (I know, not exactly one of the hit makers for someone who came of age in the 80's, but I still think she has one of the prettiest voices around) had a hit song called "A Little Good News," which I've had running through my head all day. Since I could only remember the main line: "We sure could use a little good news today," after about the 376th time, I decided to give my brain a break and look up the rest of the lyrics. It's amazing how much this song, written 25 years ago, still applies, almost word for word, to things happening around us now. I know that I'm not alone with getting depressed when I look at the world around us, and I'm almost to the point that I don't want to read a newspaper or watch the news on TV. Sometimes I think that ignorance would truly be bliss.


The last few days in our family have been crazy also, with many highs and lows... It's funny how life can make such rapid turns. You're cruising along, and things may even be dull, and then all of a sudden some small thing happens that changes everything.


As I wrote before, Josh had been at home for the last week and a half. We really enjoyed this visit home and did a lot of things together as a family. He left bright and early on Monday morning (on the road by 6:00 a.m. - ugghh!). By 7:00 a.m., I had a phone call from him. He had stopped at the scenic overlook near Bear Lake to take pictures and apparently two of our kittens had climbed under the hood of his car, unbeknownst to any of us. One of them sadly didn't make it, and managed to do quite a bit of damage under the hood. Because of this, he ended up spending a day and a half in Kemmerer, Wyoming getting repairs. The other kitty was crouched on his battery, and was NOT a happy camper. Josh has ended up keeping the kitty, which has yet to be named: sparky, lucky, and AC Delco are all in the running. I wish I could have taken a picture of him showing up for his first official assignment as a Special Forces guy with his little kitty in tow... We're just glad that he made it safely and are so impressed with how well he has rolled with the punches.


Tuesday evening my dad had another health scare. For those of you who don't know, he has been a diabetic for many years, and has spent the last several years undergoing dialysis to keep his kidneys functioning. He and my mom have had the rare opportunity to do a home dialysis program which they do 6 days a week. That evening he started having some heart problems, something that he's had several times here lately. Mom decided that she'd better get him up to the hospital. However, when she started to put him into his wheelchair to load in the car, he passed out and gave us all a huge scare. He has atrial fibrillation and will need an ablation procedure, which is where they go in and try to kill up the specific area of the heart that is misfiring. He should be coming home tomorrow, but will need to schedule this surgery. Please keep him in your prayers and prayers for my mom too...


On a brighter note, Evan and Braden have been at World Changers in Salt Lake City since Saturday, a program our church participates in where they volunteer on a work crew to help do housing repairs for low income, elderly, and disabled people. They'll be home this coming Saturday. There are 200 youth working there this week from all over the U.S., and we are so glad that our boys get to be a part of it. I have been checking the World Changers blog each day (http://www.slcworldchangers.blogspot.com/) and was surprised and tickled to see Evan's smiling (but extremely grimy!) face as one of the photos for Tuesday. He managed to call home for a few minutes tonight, and was raving about how wonderful an experience they're having. They were also featured on Fox News (http://www.myfoxutah.com/myfox/pages/Home/Detail;jsessionid=959F438FC49DE500B9578FFAFC2F0364?contentId=6932507&version=1&locale=EN-US&layoutCode=VSTY&pageId=1.1.1&sflg=1). Check it out! I'm hoping, in the days to come, to catch glimpses of Braden too, who is apparently on a different work crew than Evan.


This type of story was just what I needed after the hard week we've had, and a great reminder that there ARE still good things going on around us. Tonight, rather than Anne Murray's timely words, I'm going to make an effort to go to sleep with the words from an ancient song, but one that is ALWAYS true, Psalm 23.