The Pain

I am not being metaphoric. I am experiencing a physical pain that seems to be getting worse. All the doctors want to do is give me pain killers. I wish they could track down the source of the pain and do something to stop it. I know that doctors don't have all the answers, that they are simply human, and most of the time they are simply guessing as to how to treat people for different conditions- okay, they are educated guesses, but I think a lot of the time the doctors would do better by listening to their patients. When I know what is wrong, I tell my doctors what to do for me to save them the trouble of guessing. Problem is, this time I don't know what is wrong. My neck, shoulders, and upper back hurt the worst at the moment, but other times it may be my lower back, my legs, or my feet- even my arms. It seems to travel without rhyme or reason. It's hard to think, or do anything else when you are in pain.

My prayers keep getting longer and longer, which is a good thing, because it is good to spend time in prayer, cultivating a perosnal connection to the Creator, and because my prayers are becoming less egocentric as I ask Him to help other people, but I get so busy asking Jehovah to help people that I forget to tell him how thankful I am for the things he has given; the day I started this blog was the last time I had to call 911 because of my husband and son fighting. Dispite not having any money, we have somehow gotten through this month, and we have not gone hungry or went without anything we really needed. Jehovah has provided everything we needed as we needed it, and I am very thankful.

I saw part of a television program today that was showing the conditions in Haiti. It is so hard to take in. Most of us will never have to experience that sort of devastation, Lord willing. It showed bodies just lying alongside the roads. People covered them up, but they had no place to take them, and no way to get them anywhere if they did. There was a toddler who had to have her leg amputated because she had been trapped in the rubble of what had been her home. There was another infant with a head injury. It just makes me want to cry thinking about it. I wish I could do more than just pray for the people. Some people blame God for natural disasters like this. They even refer to them as "acts of God," but God does not inflict indiscriminate punishment on people via earthquakes or huricanes or any other act of nature. These things just happen. God does not cause them.

When I hear an Amber Alert, I pray for that child to be found, but I always put the condition in my prayer "if it is not already too late," because I know that God will not ressurrect a child that has already been killed in order to answer my prayer. He does answer those prayers though, because the abducted children I have prayed for, the ones I have been able to follow up on, have all been found and returned to their parents. I bring this up because I think we have to be reasonable in our requests to God. As another example, if someone prayed to God to be able to float at will, God will not answer that prayer because He will not defy the laws of physics for someone. God created the laws of physics, and he created them for a good reason, so it is unreasonable for us to expect him to make exceptions for individuals. So then, we have to take responsibility for our actions. If we are going to do something dangerous such as mountain climb, sky dive, bungy jump, etc... and something goes wrong, we can't expect God to stop us from falling. We need to have strong faith in God, but strong faith is not an excuse for reclessness. If we choose to do risky activities, such as mountain climbing, it is our responsibility to take the reasonable precautions to insure our own protection. If you remember right, when the son of God was being tempted by the devil, not even Jesus would throw himself off the temple and expect God to save him. (Matthew 4: 1-11) We must not use our prayers in order to test God.

I guess that got a little preachy, didn't it? I don't want this blog to be preachy. I think God loves us whether we believe in him or not, and I want this blog to be an encouraging place, not a place that lays on guilt or fear.

My friend Tiffany is an atheist, and she is one of the most beautiful people I have ever known. I am adding her to my prayers because she is going to have a baby on February 2, via c-section, and I know how frightening it is to be cut open like that. I prayed fervently before both of my c-sections. I can't imagine going into an operating room without having God to trust in. So, please, Jehovah God, be with Tiffany when she goes in to deliver baby Charlotte, keep them both safe through the operation.

A Little at a Time

Well, the Lord keeps providing- a little at a time, but it is enough.

Last night, our neighbor's car broke down, so he gave Todd some money to drive him to work today, which put gas in our Blazer so that when my friend Jeanette called, I had enough gas to get to her place, because she wanted me to help with some cleaning. She gave me twenty dollars today, so I was able to get some bread and other things we needed. Then Jeanette's mom asked if we could haul some furniture to the dump for her tomorrow, so we will be able to use the money she pays us for that to get some more cat food. Two weeks ago I had no idea how we would get through to the end of the month, but now the end is in sight, we are going to make it, and we did not go without anything we needed. Thank the Lord for seeing us through.

I am sad that the feral cat we were feeding has not been around for five days. I want to go to the SPCA and see if he is there. Maybe they will give him to us if he is.

Yesterday Graham came in the house crying his eyes out and he was holding a puppy. He said that our neighbors had the puppies outside in the cold and their mother could not even get to them, and they were crying.

I took the poor little thing from him and it was shivering so bad. I told him to go get the other one and we turned up the heat a bit. It took fifteen minutes for the poor little things to stop shivering.

Graham thought Ishould call animal control because he thought the puppies were being neglected. I looked at the pups and they were nice and fat, so I knew they were not being neglected. I told him to wait until their owner came home and I would talk to the man.

When the man got home he said he did not know the puppies were outside when he left that morning, and he thanked us for keeping them warm and for feeding them while he was away. Graham felt much better. It was nice having puppies visit for a few hours. They were sooo adorable.

My mother is getting divorced. This comes as quite a shock to me because my mother does not believe in divorce- but her husband does. It has me very worried about Mom because she does not have enough money to live on without Harry. I don't know what she is going to do. I wish I could afford to help her out, but I can't, so I have to pray for her.

She married Harry out of a sense of gratitude because he helped her with my grandfather, and she could not have cared for Grandpa on her own those last couple years. Grandpa could not be left alone, even for short periods of time, and besides going stir crazy from being bound to the house, Mom was so tired because Grandpa would stay up all hours. He was getting to be too much for her to lift when he needed help getting out of a chair or out of bed, and keeping up with his incontinence was a nightmare.

Harry is a good guy. He treated my mother like a queen, but she said that made her feel smothered. The one big thing that she could not live with is the fact that Harry is racist. He hid it from her before they got married, but it came out afterward. Mom hates racism. I think she tried to enlighten Harry, but she realized that she could not change him and gave up.

Mom has written four novels. One of them is a murder/mystery/romance novel, and the others are a fantasy trilogy that could be bigger than Harry Potter if you ask me. They are the kind of thing young adults and adults would both like, and they are like nothing else out there. She has spent years writing them. I hope she can get them published and that they will generate some income for her.

I also need to pray for my friend Anrdea (not her real name). Andrea and I went to high school together. We reconnected on Facebook when it came time for our 20 year reunion. We are both living in California now, but we are about two hours apart, so we have not actually seen each other. We have communicated through email, and then we started calling each other every week to do a Bible study together over the phone. She has been a big source of encouragement to me. The book we are studying is called Breaking Free and it was written by Beth Moore.

Andrea has a ten-year-old son who is autistic. Now there are different degrees of autism, from the little I know on the subject. Her son is more than mildly autistic. He is non-verbal, and she said that he bigger he is getting violent.

Now, like I said, I don't know much about autism, except that it is a devastating condition, but I remember reading a short story about a boy with autism and when he got to be about the age of Andrea's son, his mother ended up having to put him in a group home because she was no longer able to take care of him. I think the mother in that story was a single mother, and so it would have been very hard for her to handle on her own. Andrea has her husband to help, but the stress a condition like this must put on a marriage must be tremendous.

I also have a friend who adopted a boy with autism. He also had cerebral palsy. She spent the first couple of years trying to snap him out of the autism. She thought with proper diet and care he could recover from it. When that did not work out she started taking him to see specialists. They flew all over the country looking for a medical treatment that would cure the autism, and while some kids do have miraculous improvement on certain treatment, her son did not. There were complications from the cerebral palsy too that made things more difficult, and eventually she ended up placing the boy with another family who had the resources to take care of him.

I also remeber a movie I saw about the mother of an autistic boy. The movie was based on a true story. The mother was devoted to her son, but she was forced to put him in a home when he got too big for her to handle and he could hurt people.

I want to tell Andrea, to sort of give her permission to put her son in a home where there are people who are trained to care for him. She needs a serious break. And she wanted to have more children, but did not do it because she knew she needed to devote her time to her son. She is at the age now where she could still have another child, but if she waits much longer she will be too old to get pregnant. She has certainly done her job in caring for her son all these years. I know she loves him though, and I don't want to come off as callous. I know she loves him as much as any parent loves a child, but when they get too big for you to be able to handle, the safety of you, the child, and others needs to be taken into consideration. From what I understand, autistic children are less attached to their parents than their parents are to them. I am sure that depends on the degree of autism. I guess I should pray for understanding before I try to give her any advice though.

So I have a lot of things to be thankful for. Jehovah keeps providing what we need when we need it. And I have a lot more things to add to my prayers.

If you have any prayer requests, please post them. Thank you for reading.

Still Praying

I am still praying for help with our financial situation. I don't know how we are going to buy cat food and toilet paper, or put gas in the truck. I will sure be happy when this month is over.

My financial counselor tried calling me yesterday, but I was on the phone with Tate's counselor, so I just let it go. I tried calling him back afterward, but I could not get through. I am going to try and call him this morning. I hope that it is good news he has for me. COS said my transcripts had been mailed on Tuesday, but I am paranoid that something will go wrong. Jehovah knows we need that money.

There is a new program at school for Tate, and he actually seems excited about it. It is called Reconnect, I think. Anyway, it is supposed to encourage him and help him with his other classes. I think this program may be an answer to my prayers for Tate. Something has to get through to him.

I also need to include my friend Sandy in my prayers. She moved in with a man named Craig after knowing him about a day. She met him at a bar. That is sheer desperation. I know why Sandy did it. Her ex, Richard, blew her entire month's income on New Years. She was desperate for someone to save her financialy, but why would a man bring a stranger into his home so quickly? Sandy said he is caring for his elderly father. I imagine that he was desperate for some help doing that. Does a relationship begun in desperation stand a chance? She is lost. I pray that she finds her way, and that this guy she moved in with does not turn out to be a psycho or a woman beater or something.

Graham is doing well in school. He is wearing his glasses dispite the broken nose piece, and he finished the highest work book that his resource teacher had for him in reading, so now he is reading from the same book as the rest of his class. I am so glad that he has progressed so well. Now I need to pray that he gets the hang of math.

I am still praying that Todd finds some relief from the pain he is in. He slept a little better last night than he usually does, but he still woke up twice in pain.

Oh, there are so many people to pray for. The situation in Haiti following the earthquake should be in everyone's prayers. Just the thought of what those people are going through is overwhelming, but Jehovah does give people strengh to endure.

The stray black cat we have been feeding has not been around for two days. I have known unaltered males to disappear for up to two weeks at a time, but I am still worried about the cat. He has gotten so tame with us, but he is still very skiddish when around others. I am afraid our landlord set out a trap and caught him. If that happened, I don't even have gas to go to the SPCA and see if he is there. If that happened, all the months we put into taming him will have been for nothing. He will be too wild to be adopted, and will end up being put to sleep without anybody who loves him :(

Just as a foot note, I wanted to explain that I use the name Jehovah when referring to our Creator, and I am aware that the name can be offensive to some. I am not a Jehovah's Witness, but I was raised as one, and therefore I still feel the need to refer to God by the name I was taught. I hope that will not stop people from reading.

If anybody has any prayer requests, please let me know and I will pray for you. If any of you would please include me, or any of the people I mention in your prayers, I would be very appreciative. Thank you.

Bumpy Roads

I knew that there were going to be some bumps in the road. We hit one.

Tate had a friend spend the night, then Tate spent the night at his friend's place, then the friend came and stayed at our place again. I knew the boy was not the best influence on Tate, but I felt bad for him. His father is out of the state and the boy is completely alone.

The boys rode the school bus together in the morning, but instead of going to school, they went to the friend's house to ditch.

I called the school to check on Tate, and when I discovered him not in class, I tried calling the boy's house, but they would not answer the phone. I did not have enough gas to go to the boy's house, so I called the police department and had them go to the boy's house to check on them. The officer called me and said that Tate was walking away from the house as he pulled up. The officer said he could not transport Tate, so I called my mother and she went to pick Tate up and take him to school.

I am so lost. I don't know what to do with Tate. I need to continue praying, and praying hard.

Still, things could have been a lot worse. Tate was disrespectful of his dad when he got home, but Todd did not let it lead him into a physical confrontation. I am very thankful for that.

I have been praying for an answer to help out my mother and us in our financial situations, and I got the idea that maybe we should move in with mom for a while. I don't know if that is the answer to my prayer or not. I am going to talk about it with everyone involved and keep praying on it until I am sure.

Graham broke his glasses today, and I can't even get him a new set of frames until the first of February. I don't know what he will do until then. It makes me so sad. My life is controlled by money instead of the other way around. Jehovah, please help us.

Smooth Sailing

The seas around here have been pretty smooth the past few days. There was even a few minutes of laughter when Tate found a bottle of bubbles and got the cats interested in them. It was nice to hear him laughing as the cats broke the bubbles.

Todd has been in quite a bit of pain because of his back, and so I am praying for him. He wakes up in pain every night, sometimes more than once. He needs to get a good six or seven hours sleep once in a while. Sleeping in shifts is really bad for your health.

Graham wants to be woken up at 5:30. A little girl is here visiting her family, but she is from L.A. She and Graham took a shine to each other, but she has to go home tomorrow, and Graham wants to go help her pack her stuff up and say good-bye. It is so cute.

I want to thank Jehovah again for keeping the tempers in our home from flairing the way that they used to. I ask that things continue to improve; that the anger and pain will be replace with patients and joy. I also need to ask for God's help with our financial situation. We've lost $135.00 a month, and we needed every cent of it. There is absolutely nothing I can cut from our budget to balance it, so we need to somehow replace that money each month. If Todd's SSI were to come through, that would be a huge blessing.

If you have any prayer requests, you can post them here or email me at danna.hobart@yahoo.com

Giving Thanks

Today I am giving thanks for the peace that has begun to settle on my house. Today Todd asked Tate why he spanked the dog, and Tate told him that the dog had peed on something. Todd scoffed and claimed that the dog had not, so Tate replied, "Okay, I peed on it then."

A response like that from Tate would normally send Todd into a rage, but instead he just replied back, "Now that's a possibility."

I had to laugh because I had not heard the playful tone in Todd's voice for so long. I sighed in relief. So, Thank you, God for keeping Todd's temper from flairing today. I am very grateful.

I ordered my book for school today too. I need to pray that my financial aide will arrive in a timely manner so that I can get the lot rent caught back up before we are in danger of eviction.

I am also praying for my friend in New York, Paul Long. His step-father just died and now his father's health is failing. I am praying for his father's health and for his family to find solace in their time of grieving.

If there are any prayer requests, please leave a message. Thank you.

Our Daily Bread...

Today was the first day for my online class. I had to post a bio, read and respond to the bios of my classmates. I was amazed that at the university level, so many of my classmates did not attempt to use proper English or punctuation. I should not judge them harshly. They don't have the experience writing bios that I have.

I need to ask Jehovah's help to do well in school. This first class is really called "University Success," and so far the reading has been very dry. My other class looks more interesting. It is called Christian Worldview. I honestly have no idea what to expect from it, but I am approaching it with an open mind.

I am looking forward to taking some of the lit and writing classes. I am also looking forward to some brush up classes on critical thinking and philosophy. Just going to take it one step at a time.

I also need to ask Jehovah's help with our financial situation. We are a month behind on our lot rent, and I only have enough money to cover this month's rent, but nothing to put toward catching up what we are behind. I have faith that he will help us with this situation because he has helped us in the past. Once when we were out of food and Todd had no gas to get to work, I prayed for help and that very day, on his way home from school, Graham found a $100 bill lying in the middle of the road. It was just enough to get us through.

Often when we pray for things like money, our prayers are not answered in the way that we expect them to be, but that does not mean that our prayers were not answered, because somehow. Nobody starves to death, and nobody freezes to death. We always make it, don't we?

I also want to thank Jehovah God that there has not been any fighting in the house for the past few days. Things have been peaceful, and that is just what I asked for.

As always, if you have any prayer requests, don't be afraid to ask.

Please Help Me...

I start school tomorrow online; Grand Canyon University. I am excited and nervous. I decided to do this all so last minute- I still don't have my classes added. The school still doesn't have my transcripts. I am worried that there are going to be some hang-ups.

I need to pray for Jehovah to help me with all of this because the thought of it all is overwhelming me at the moment. I also need to pray for the anger and hate that fills my home to be replaced with joy and love.

If anybody would like me to pray for them, please leave a comment.

Prayer Requests

I don’t want this to be a preachy blog. I am not going to try to force people to believe in God if they don’t, and I am not going to get sucked into a debate over the existence of a Creator. This blog is simply my way of reminding myself to start praying more often.

Even if you don’t believe in a Creator, you can’t argue with the scientific evidence that prayer does work. (http://www.plim.org/PrayerDeb.htm)

At some point before my grandfather’s death in February of 2007 I stopped making prayer a regular part of my daily routine. Up until that point, I had a daily dialogue with Jehovah. I don’t know why I stopped praying regularly. It wasn’t that I lost faith. I think that I just became too weighed down with other things. Looking back now, it was at that same time that my life started going down hill. Instead of turning to Jehovah for help, I simply became more and more depressed which caused my health to deteriorate and my family as well.

Tonight, Todd started raging over a pair of jeans. How silly. I was on the phone with my mother, thanking her for giving us her old washing machine, and I told Tate to get a load of clothes together, and Todd wanted a pair of jeans washed. Now, if I had not been on the phone, I would have told Tate to include the pair of jeans in the load he was doing, no big deal, but, I had warned Tate not to overload the washer earlier, and I don’t know if he thought that his dad’s jeans would break the proverbial camel’s back or not, but he did not include the jeans in the load he gathered. That made Todd mad, and he followed Tate into his bedroom to try and make him include the jeans, I guess. Before I even knew what was going on, Graham was screaming and I heard Tate say that he was restraining his father. I dialed 911, because I have told them that every time they get physical I am calling 911. I am not putting up with the physical fighting any more, and I don’t have any other consequences to give them, so I called 911, and Graham took over on the phone while I went to try and break up their fight.

I don’t know why Todd was so worried about the jeans being done in that first load. It is not as if it is the only load of clothes that will ever be washed again. His whole reaction was completely unreasonable.

The police came and basically just scolded the both of them.

After the officers left, Todd called me a “cop calling bitch,” and told me not to bother calling him for supper, but when supper was ready, he ate it.

He was angry for hours, told me that he had had it with me and with Tate, and all of his usual digs and insults. So I did something that I don’t normally do; I prayed. I prayed for Jehovah to take the anger from Todd’s heart and grant him wisdom, and almost instantly, he stopped fuming and started talking normally again.

So I have decided to try and remember to pray on a regular basis. I am going to pray for patience and wisdom. I am going to pray for good things to happen to our family. I am going to pray for the things we need from day to day, and I am going to pray for others. Please post any prayer requests you have and I will say a prayer for you.