Food As Comfort??

 My daughters and I  volunteer as  childcare care workers every couple of weeks at a church. We have the babies ages 6-12 months or so. Sometimes the babies are fussy so we give them Cheerios or these organic puff things made for babies. Many of the babies are fussy because they want their moms or are hungry. We give them Cheerios or whatever snacks their moms put in the diaper bags but are we sending wrong messages by giving them food when they are not hungry and we just want to console them? Maybe at this age we don't have to worry about them learning to use food as comfort? It's so hard to know because you don't want to withhold food from a baby. That's just mean.
It's almost 11:30pm and I'm tired and I can see a ramble coming on because I'm too tired to think what to write anymore. I can tell because I repeated myself but I'm too tired and  sleepy to delete my repetition.

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving to my sisters in Christ. Enjoy your time with your families. And do yourselves a favor.  Forget about the greedy stores that have the audacity to open on Thanksgiving for their pre- Black Friday sales. Spend that time with family instead.

Thankful

We are so thankful  that Lord willing, we will be celebrating our daughter Kaitlyn's 12th birthday on Saturday. I confess that when she was diagnosed with cancer I was afraid she wouldn't be here for her birthday.
And Thanksgiving will be very special to us this year! We are thankful to the Lord for bringing us through and sparing our daughter.

Lift Every Voice and Sing

I remember singing this song in public school when I was about nine or ten years old.. It was special to me back then and now that I'm walking with the Lord the lyrics have a new meaning for me.  It was written by brothers James W and John R Johnson. The is from Hymntime/The Cyberhymnal.

http://www.hymntime.com/tch/htm/l/i/f/liftevry.htm

Lift every voice and sing, till earth and Heaven ring,


Ring with the harmonies of liberty;

Let our rejoicing rise, high as the listening skies,

Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.

Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us,

Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us;

Facing the rising sun of our new day begun,

Let us march on till victory is won.



Stony the road we trod, bitter the chastening rod,

Felt in the days when hope unborn had died;

Yet with a steady beat, have not our weary feet,

Come to the place for which our fathers sighed?

We have come over a way that with tears has been watered,

We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered;

Out from the gloomy past, till now we stand at last

Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast.



God of our weary years, God of our silent tears,

Thou who hast brought us thus far on the way;

Thou who hast by Thy might, led us into the light,

Keep us forever in the path, we pray.

Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met Thee.

Lest our hearts, drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee.

Shadowed beneath Thy hand, may we forever stand,

True to our God, true to our native land.

Singing in Church

I read an article in a recent issue of Calvary Messenger and the article was on the subject of singing at church. The title of the article is "Melody in Your Heart" by Timothy J. Meyers of Keysville,GA. The main point of the article was what is our focus when we are singing. Are we focusing on the music? Are we thinking about how good or not so good our singing is? Do we get irritated with singing the same songs? Do we get distracted while singing?

 I confess I sometimes get distracted during our singing time. I'll wonder if a song should be sung faster or slower. I get irritated if a song tune is changed from the original and I could go on.
After reading Timothy's article I really need to sing from my heart. Keeping my focus on the Lord and the words that I am singing. I believe this will bring honor to the Lord.

Spiritual Look Back

 I've been thinking about my spiritual life from the time I got saved and where I'm at now. I saw a YouTube video of my former pastor at the church( Pentecostal) I was going to. He was a brilliant man of God. He's with the Lord now but I wish I had gotten to know him better. I was still very much a baby Christian when I was attending so I was very confused about doctrinal matters but I didn't ask my pastor any questions about anything that the church taught.

I eventually left that church because I had moved too far away and no one lived near my new apartment. The church I started attending (Foursquare) was very different from what I was used. It was a mostly white congregation and my old church was all black. I was also used to the pastor wearing a robe and this one did not. After attending for awhile  it seemed like a good fit. The pastor was great and was knowledgeable about the Bible. I left that church because I moved out 300 miles away and church was the hardest for me to leave but God had other plans for me.
Anyway, I went to many different churches and through all my Christian life.  Since then I have learned that one should always check a church's teachings and if it doesn't line up with scripture then it is better to find one that does.

We attend an awesome  Baptist church with excellent teaching and the members are just wonderful people to be around. They love the Lord and each other. I can't begin to tell you how much this church has been a blessing to us and how much of a blessing it is to serve others.
More later!

Finally a Post

Well it's been a month now since I posted and I apologize. A lot has happened and some of the " a lot" has to do with my family on my mom's side. My siblings and I found out that we have living aunts and uncles that we didn't know existed.  A cousin found us through Ancestry.com. He found my mom who was his aunt.We don't know why our mom kept this a secret from us. It's very upsetting to say the least. Two of my sisters got to meet two of my aunts and their families. I wish I could have gone as they live in Los Angeles but gas is expensive and we just don't have the money right now. It was an emotional reunion my sisters were saying and apparently the aunts remember me as a very little girl and my little brother, Gerald who was given up for adoption but I don't know why.

 My aunts all look just like my mom. My mom passed in 2008 from cancer and I can't help but wonder how she would feel about us knowing and being in contact with her sisters. Her brother(95) is in Ohio and has some health issues so meeting him won't be happening :(
 Even her sisters don't know why she refused to have anything to do with them. It may be that she might have been a single mom so she might have felt ashamed? I really don't know.
It's been a rather emotional time for all of us. I do have a vague memory of  my brother when I was little and then all of a sudden he was gone.  I don't remember if my parents ever told me what happened. My siblings were born after Gerald was given up for adoption so they don't know him. They never even knew he existed.

So now I want to figure out how the Lord wants me to deal with all this. I have some thoughts on all these but I can't really share them here. There are few questions from my childhood that if I get to meet my aunts perhaps they can help.