The dialysis unit could not treat Ken today due to his weakened condition.  They will try again tomorrow.  If they still can't, he will be hospitalized.  This can't continue much longer.  I have told him not to feel like he has to stay here for me.  I do not want him to suffer like this because he feels like he is leaving me alone.  Ken knows that I want what is best for him, and that he is the love of my life.

There is a chance that a new drug they started today will give him strength.  But it is only a matter of weeks or days.  We will see.

I am fine.  Knowing that God has a plan for each of our lives gives me strength.  I may not understand, but I trust God's wisdom and can't imagine how those who do not know Christ and his precious love  go through times like this.

I will try and post tomorrow.  However, I am living in the moment right now.  Thank you for you prayers.  I feel so comforted knowing that there are people uplifting me through all of this.

There are some things that Peter said that I would rather he would have left out.  Hard things to hear.
1 Peter 2:13-15  "Submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord's sake: whether it be to the king, as supreme; Or unto governors, as unto them that are sent by him for the punishment of evil doers, and for the praise of them that do well.  For so is the will of God, that with well doing you may  put to silence the ignorance of foolish men:"

Stop at red lights.  Obey the speed limit.  Pay your taxes.  In other words, obey the law.  In this way people know that we live peaceful  and honorable lives, which is a testimony to Christ.

However.  However.  I am not a pacifist. Peter cut off an ear.  Even Jesus took a whip to the money changers in the temple.  I'm not advocating using a whip, but there is a time for protest.

In a gas station across from our Jr. High,  I asked a manager to put some magazines under the counter.   My concern was that they were inappropriate for kids who were coming over during their lunch hour.   The manager said, "No."  So I went home and  made a picket sign and started a small protest.  Within an hour the community heard what I had done, quietly agreed, and made themselves some signs. It grew so large that it ended up being news.  A friend in California called and said, "What is going on?  You are on National TV. "  Now it seems my protest was in vain--as porn is rampant and everywhere.

But that day, every establishment in our town that carried those magazines came down where I was picketing and begged me not to picket their stores.  "We've removed all the mags," they said.  "Our suppliers have already been notified not to bring them back." And all I had asked for was to put them under the counter!  I was amazed.  I didn't know you could peacefully protest and accomplish something like that.  I don't know if that fits in with what Peter told us. But knowing Peter, I don't think he meant for us to do wrong things against the will of God just because there is a law.  Peter certainly didn't.   He ended up getting crucified.  Follow the laws.  God's laws first.  I hope you don't get crucified.  

When Christ told Peter that Peter was a pebble, Peter got it.  He understood how the church was going to work.  In 1 Peter 2:4-9  he goes into detail about "stones, and rocks" and the allegory of building a church on the foundation corner stone that is Jesus Christ.  I am going to pick out some phrases.  You probably need to read it all.

Verse 5:  "You also, as lively stones, are built up (into) a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ."

Verse 9: "But you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a peculiar people; that you should show forth the praises of him who has called you out of darkness into his marvelous light:"

In these two verses we, the members of the church,  are described.  Peter calls us:
1.  Lively stones.   We don't sit and soak.  We do stuff.  Good stuff.
2.  Built up.   We learn and grow.
3.  A spiritual house.   Together we form a church where God dwells.
4.  A holy priesthood.  We are our own priest.  Each one of us is holy due to Christ within.
5.  Chosen generation.  God chose us before we chose him.
6.  Royal priesthood.   Jesus is King.  We are joint heirs.  Royal.
7.  Holy Nation.   This is probably referring to the Jews who are now Christians and all of us as well.
8.  Peculiar people.  I love this.  I am definitely peculiar.  We are all very different from the world.

Peter says the first point of all that is to offer up spiritual sacrifices.  (Not sheep, lambs or doves)  And he says that the second point is that we show others the praises of God.  Because he called us out of darkness.  Into His marvelous light.  Marvelous.  Peter said we had become something special to God.

When my children were young, we had a beautiful collie dog named 'Feet' that went missing.  He would never have left on his own, so we knew he had been stolen.   I kept telling the children, "It's just a dog."   I had never been an animal person and I looked at the dog as just another kid to clean up after.  He was never allowed in the house because I wasn't going to vacuum up dog hair up every day. I didn't know at the time that dogs had personalities!!!  I figured they were like turtles.  They needed to live outside.  The only difference of one from the other was size and color.

But  one day I opened the front door  and there was Feet, lying on the porch facing the door with his head between his paws.  His paw pads were bleeding and missing skin.  He had found his way home from some place far away and suffered great injury in doing do.

I brought him into the kitchen, cleaned his paws with warm water and put cream on them.  He licked my fingers.  He stayed in the house that day.  I realized that even though I hadn't loved him, he had loved me.  Someone has to love someone first.

Now I know about dogs.  They are all very different.  A few weeks ago I had six of them in my house all at once.  They all had very different personalities.  And one was my favorite.  He sleeps with me.  Where I go, he goes.  His name is Squig, and this morning he is getting his teeth cleaned for the first time.  And I am praying (!!!) for my dog that he will come through this safely.  My children all say, "Is this our mother???  Who is this woman??"

Someone has to love someone first before we can know what love is, what it looks like, how it feels.
1 John 4: 19  "We love him, because he first loved  us."

After Peter realized how much Jesus loved him, he was never the same.  When he writes something, he is passionate about it.  Do you think Peter had a dog that followed him on his journeys?? I hope so.

I don't know how I raised 4 children, taught at a Jr. College full time, drove 60 miles both ways every day, taught Sunday School at the church and cooked all our meals etc. etc.

Youth is wasted on the young.

Now I find myself wandering around wondering what I am doing.  As Ken always said, "Getting old is not for sissies."

1 Peter 2: 2 "As newborn babes, desire the sincere milk of the word that you may grow thereby."  We have to eat to grow.  The thing is, you need to desire to eat.

I love food.  But now and then, I find the day is half gone and I have forgotten to eat.   That is not healthy for a person's body.  It's also not healthy for us to forget to eat spiritual food.  You get a bad case of spiritual anemia.

You can't quit reading God's word and expect to stay spiritually healthy.  You just have to be consistent and stay in there.  Read.  Eat, digest God's word.

My dog ate the leather cover off of one of my Bibles.  And the first chapter of Genesis.  That isn't what I mean by eating God's word.

 I have a very holy little dog.  And he was totally unrepentant.

1 Peter 1:13 "Wherefore gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, and hope to the end for grace that is to be brought unto you at the revelation of Jesus Christ…"

Mind control.  You are in charge of your own.  Your mind can be trained to think right and instruct your body to do right.  Everything begins in the mind.  You need to fill it up with good stuff.  Peter says to gird it up just exactly as if you were going into battle.  Which we are.

Sobriety.  Don't be stupid.  You can't function at your best if you numb yourself.  If you numb your mind.  You need all your faculties to think.  And thinking is what you gird the mind up to do.

Hope.  I wonder all the time if today will be the day.  I told you yesterday that I look up every morning and raise my hands to a holy God.  I also check the East just for good measure.  Will Jesus come?  Hope is what we live by.  We believe.  We have faith.  And we hope.

Grace.  It is going to be brought to us by Jesus Christ.  I need some grace.  Taking care of Ken is getting more difficult.  He is trying so hard to do the things he needs to do and losing the fight.  I just hate it for him.  The two of us haven't ever done this before, and every day I ask myself, "Am I doing this right.  Could I do better."  Ken is the love of my life and watching him struggle is so hard.  He never quits, he just loses ground.  He is bigger than life--in his spirit.  But his body is not getting the message.

A lesser man would give up.

I have always liked mazes, puzzles, cryptograms and anything to do with solving problems.  When we took those tests that they gave us when we started school, where you had to look at a multi sided object from one perspective and identify where it fit from another view point, I could "see" it.  I thought everyone could do that.  I loved to sew and figure out how the pieces went together.  If I wanted to change a sleeve or whatever, I figured out how to cut a new pattern.  I always loved Algebra, Calculus, Physics.  They are puzzles waiting to be solved.  I guess I'm a female nerd.

I get up every morning, put on my robe and houseshoes and go out and get the paper. And then I come in with the paper and work the Sudoku puzzle, Cryptograms, and blog.  In that order.  I always look up, raise my hands to the sky, and thank God for the weather, the clouds, the sunshine or moon and tell Him what a good job He did designing our world.  I am so thankful to be alive.  There is so much to be thankful for.  (This month it has been five years since I had surgery for breast cancer.  I survived)

Maybe my desire to work puzzles has something to do with why I love the Bible.  It is like a great big puzzle.  If you don't know what the prophets said,  you don't know what you are looking for as the story unfolds.  It's all tied together.  But like a puzzle, first, you get the outside edges.  Then you work on one color, or one shape, and then you find a connection between what you have put together and some other part within the puzzle.  It begins to make sense.  And finally the last piece falls into place.

Peter didn't quite get it.  He had a big moment, "You are the Christ…" and then he denied Christ, cut off someone's ear, and finally he quit the whole thing and went back to fishing.  The last piece of the puzzle for Peter was the resurrection.  Then he was able to see the picture.  All the pieces were in place.

1 Peter 1:8 "Whom (Jesus) you haven't seen, you love; in whom, though now you see him not, yet believing, you rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory:"  He's talking to you and me.  Us. Those of us who haven't seen Jesus.  Peter saw Christ and wanted to rejoice with all of us who have heard his story and believe.  Nothing is more miraculous  than a 180 degree turn around like Peter's life.