Peace in the Valley

Today Joan Gohn picked Sara and me up and we went to Jer's in Marble Hill to eat and then we went back to Joan's farm so Sara could see her horses. It was so peacefully perfect. You wonder why life can't be peacefully perfect also! But it doesn't seem to be the case for most families.

I am praying for my sisters and brother today and for the Brown girls and for my own children. I want them to see something useful that they can be or see. God did not put us on the earth to be animals without eyesight nor did he put blinders on us so that we would no longer see pain that exists.

I pray for Betty Ann's children--lost their grandfather and life will change for them--already has--they have known loss and emptiness and they need to learn that life will not lame them but it may take more effort to take a step and deal with the story that they are now living.

I am now on Facebook with Denise Simmons and I want to pray for her. She is a part of the family that feels disjointed due to nothing she has done. We have people everywhere in our family who feel like second-class citizens and they should not have to feel that way. They are either family or they or not and if they are, no one has the right to make them feel that way or that they can only go to something when someone else is not planning to attend. I pray for Harry's family and for his soul.

Donald Miller's third point: HAVE COMPASSION. Some people register pain more than others, but resentment is an open door for the conflict to win. Don't resent somebody else's pain, even if you suspect they are playing the victim. Give them what they need for much longer than you might need it yourself.

This one hit me in the face. I thought of the Good Samaritan and the episode in the Bible. I have said often in teaching that I would jump off the first time and do exactly what he did--however, if I saw the same person on the third time, I would say "Hey, you are on your own this time!" I am exceedingly generous but my patience runs out fast so my compassion is limited to people who run with it in the way I want them to run. My compassion has progressed within family circles to the idea that I first am going to protect myself. I do not intend to be a human punching bag for family members. I am alarmed and devastated by the poor examples of mothering I see in and out of the family and I cannot be still. My ideas go over like Mother's Day at the Orphanage and yet, I continue to press on. Is compassion shutting your mouth up and letting people make chaos out of their children's lives or is it continuing to talk what no one wants to hear! Maybe it's the latter and I am not showing compassion. I think that I will try it for awhile and say nothing. That surely was not what I learned from my Mother who stood her ground in the church and at home when she saw mothers not sterilizing their children's bottles or letting them run like crazy through the building. It did not win her a lot of friends but it did not stop her from saying what she thought because she thought that that child had a right to be taught right ways and fed in right ways! Sometimes, I was embarrassed but the end she sought was the right one! Daddy would never have confronted a person so directly!

Okay, so that was compassion--compassion for a child! This is not an easy subject. It has many tenacles as one looks at it. Here are some subjects I think of:

Matthew 9:36 "But when he saw the multitudes, he was moved with compassion for them, because they fainted, and were scattered abroad, as sheep having no shepherd."

It comes from the Greek word Splagchnizomai and means literally, "to be moved in the bowel"

or in our vernacular, "to have our gut wrenched."

But it is always, a feeling that produces movement. Christ saw the multitudes and didn't count the house for a numerical figure; he was gut-wrenched to figure out how he could minister to them, physically and spiritually. Compassion--what a word!

I pray for compassion for these family members:

Jamee Shelby --Her heart is so hard. Can she ever be the little girl she used to be again?

Amy Galemore --She is so tired of the Cooper family making her feel she is on the family edge of everything that I pray that she will feel something for somone in the family;

Betty Hearnes -- I do not want her to leave this world with an ugly feeling for everyone she comes in contact with; I want her to want to do something kind for someone again and for her to recognize that all of us have lost something dear to them, not just her! I need to be more compassionate instead of distancing myself from her at a time when she needs more security.

Annie Finnegan -- I am so angry at her for her constant using of other people to get what she wants and her allowing Layne to do what she chooses to do. Parenting is not for sissies and she has opted out of growing up and being a parent. She is so self-centered that it sickens me and I don't know what I can do (or should) do about it.

I need to be more compassionate to my family members. I have lost that in my heart because I have been stomped on so much recently -- in my mind!