Sunday Tears and Smiles

Dear Blog Friends,

That is…..I hope that you are still my blog friends. I have neglected you all for so long that I wouldn’t blame you if you have written me off as a lost cause. I have just about written me off as a lost cause too.  I am just not functioning very well.  I am sorry.

I have much to be thankful for. I know that I have been greatly blessed.  My pain is bad, but not as bad as it was…. and yet it seems that I can tolerate it less.  I have made a lot of progress in the 4 months since our accident and the 2 weeks since my surgery but the pain in my left shoulder blade, shoulder and arm seems to get worse instead of better.  Anything I do with my left arm hurts badly. That is one reason that I don’t type much to blog. The other reason is that  I feel I have burdened you with my woes long enough. … I mean really…I even think…. enough is enough!!!

I decided to make the effort of going to church today. I did not feel very good but I decided that could make it if I tried….. and I wouldn’t hurt any more sitting at church than I would sitting at home. I was glad that I went.  The opening hymn was “More Holiness Give Me”  by Phillip Bliss. The first verse says:

 

More holiness give me, More strivings with-in

More patience in suffering, More sorrow for sin;

More faith in my Savior, More sense of his care;

More joy in his service, More purpose in prayer.

 

 

 

I have always loved this hymn, but today it really touched me.  I must find a way to have more patience in suffering , more sense of my Savior’s care and more purpose in prayer.  I will try to do better in each of the areas listed in this hymn.

It has been a hard week for me for 2 reasons:

1.   I’ve wanted to be at the Snake River with all of my kids and grandkiddos…… it is the first time in 10 years that my son David and his sweet family were  able to come…. I am sad we missed it.

2. John’s sister, Celia, died. We are all thankful that her suffering is over. She has been in a terrible state for years.  John’s brother, Forrest and his dear wife, RoLayne have sacrificed to give Celia loving care 24/7 for over 2 years as she wasted away. We are thankful that God has called her home.

Her memorial service was yesterday. Our children and grandchildren were there and almost all of John’s family attended…. but not us. I could not make the trip to Utah and John would not leave me at home and go without me.  I cried all day. I longed to be there with our loved ones to pay my respect and celebrate her good life. Our daughter, Lynell read a letter that John and I wrote to express our love and memories of Celia….. but I wanted to be there with them.

Upps…What am I doing???   I’m sorry…there have been tears shed this week but this post is suppose to be about  my Sunday 6 Smiles… I have much to be thankful for and smile about… so here goes…

1. I am thankful Celia’s suffering is over and she has been called back home with our Heavenly Father.

2. I am thankful for the loving care Forrest and RoLayne gave Celia…. and for the beautiful memorial service they organized for her.

3.  Dathan and Lynell make me smile. Today is their 24th anniversary. We love them and their 5 children. We are thankful for each of them.

4. I am thankful that all of our children, their families and other relatives love each other so much and they had the opportunity to enjoy  this week camping together.

5. I am thankful they were all kept safe as they braved river rafting in Wyoming.

6. I am thankful for my friends who continue to support me as I recover

.

Thanks to the 23 of you who left me sweet comments last week. I so appreciate the well wishes and the prayers. Friends have come to visit, made us dinners, brought goodies and flowers, called and sent cards. Thanks for putting up with me even when I complain.  I will try to do less complaining in the future.

 Smile….Smile…Smile

I am sooooo lucky and soooo blessed!!!! Why the heck should I be sad??? I have way more than 6 reasons to smile. Doing this post has made me smile just thinking about all I have to be thankful for.

I hope that all of you have many reasons to smile too. I am sending you my best wishes and hugs, Grammy Lura

Sunday Surgery Smiles

What a difference a week makes!

This time last week, I was drinking broth, eating Jell-o and prepping for the surgery I would have on Monday morning. It wasn’t fun. I was dreading having surgery and the possible outcome.

I am glad that this past week is over…. what a relief!

I am still not feeling very well. It has been 32 years since my last abdominal surgery and I forgot how painful it is. I really am not up to blogging, but I have so much to to be thankful for that I just have to share my smiles with you.

Early Monday morning, we went to the hospital.   I was glad that the time had finally arrived. Waiting 28 days for the surgery was hard on me, my family and friends.

I was smiling that the long wait to have surgery was over.

I was smiling that Mindy came to be with me. 

I hated for her to have to get get up so early to be with me before the surgery but she wanted to come.  Having her there was moral support for me and for John.  She said that it made her sad that she couldn’t be with me when I was in the hospital in Utah…. and she wasn’t going to miss this opportunity. How I love this dear daughter!

(She didn’t get in this picture, but I was thanking the nurse who got my IV in on the first try. I have stubborn veins that don’t like to be poked and it usually takes several tries to get the IV in and working.)

I was also smiling that my dear friends, Sil and LouAnn  came to spend that day at the hospital with me too.  (I didn’t get a picture with them before the surgery because they would only allow one person at a time visit me and I didn’t have my camera when they were there. )

I was smiling that Dr. Hayes was my surgeon.

I have never had such a caring doctor. She treated me like a friend…. not just a patient that needed fixing.  At my pre-op appointment I told her that I was a religious person and I had faith that God would be with me during my surgery.

Dr. Hayes remembered that. She took my hand and right after this picture was taken she asked me if I would like to pray with her. Of course I said yes.

She said the sweetest prayer, asking God to bless me and help me during the surgery. After she said “Amen” I told her I would like to say a prayer too.  I thanked God for her and asked him to guide her hands and open her mind that she would know clearly what needed to be done during the surgery. After my prayer, her eyes were moist and she said it was the first time a patient had ever prayed for her. I told her that many of us were praying for her.

Ha… I am afraid that I didn’t have much of a smile after the surgery…. but I thought I was smiling in this picture with Sil. Sil came back after I got home from the hospital and spent 2 days with me.  What a sweet friend.

My surgery was 2 1/2 hours long, but it was 6 hours from the time I left for surgery until family and friends could see me. I took me a long time to wake up in recovery and be taken to my room.  It was a long wait for them.

We were all smiling at the good news….

They did not find any cancer cells…. Yeah!!!

Even though my ovary was attached to my bowel, Dr. Hayes did not have to cut into my bowel…. Yeah!

Dr. Hayes was able to do it laparoscopy….Yeah!   I only have 4 small incisions  instead of one big one which is much less painful and has a much faster recovery time.

…

I am still in a lot of pain and feel yucky…. but my heart is over flowing with thankfulness. I appreciate each of you who have expressed concern and prayed for me.

I feel very blessed and happy with the results of my surgery.

I hope that each of you are doing well too.   Gloria, I am praying that your mom’s surgery went well.  I look forward to getting back into blog world and reading about you as soon as I feel a bit better.

Until then…. I am sending you hugs and best wishes.

A brief Surgery update

This is Lura’s friend Sil blogging to fill you in on Lura’s surgery.  First and foremost, the surgery went well!  They removed both ovaries, one of which was attached to her abdominal wall and bowel, plus removed a bunch of scar tissue.  The surgery took 2 1/2 hours, and was able to be done laparscopically.(sp?)  The best news:  No cancer!!!!!  The surgeon said that her ovaries were “funky” (whatever that means!) and was sent in to the lab to see what the “suspicious”cells were.  But the frozen section that was sent in during the surgery for immediate examination showed a benign tumor, not cancerous!  Whew!! Relief!!!  She was in the hospital until last night (Wednesday) and now is home, recuperating.  She feels crummy, and found that it wasn’t a piece of cake, as she thought it would be.  I think that the additional onslaught on her body was more than it could handle, and recovery will be slow.  So please pray for her that the pain levels will ease and she will be able to be up and around again.  We are so thankful for her good surgeon and for all your prayers to date!

With all her pain and pain medications, she is not up to blogging, but will fill you in with much more detail when she is better.  She appreciates all of you, her blogging friends.

My Sunday story… Tender Mercies…. Read a little further.

I will be honest that I am a bit anxious about this surgery I am having tomorrow. John is nervous too…. not because we don’t feel it will turn out well… just because it is hard to face another hurdle on the road to recovery since having our car accident. The idea of adding more pain to my life right now seems hard.

…

The other night I was tense and on edge.

We had said our night time prayers…. I had taken meds to help me sleep…. but sleep did not come.

I’ve been given many books as gifts since our accident last March to read while I am convalescing.

Even though I am usually an avid reader, I’ve only read one of them so far. It seems hard for me to focus on the lines and my eyes blur.

That night the thought came to my mind that I should read one of my new books. I looked at the stack and picked one near to the bottom of the pile.

It is called Divine Signatures  The Confirming Hand of God by Gerald N. Lund

I started reading and found the stories inspiring. The premise of the author is that God is always surrounding us with “Tender Mercies”. Sometimes we recognize them as gifts from God and sometimes we barely notice them at all. Once in a while, God’s “Tender Mercy” is sent to us in such a direct way that we not only recognize it as a “Tender Mercy”, we know for sure that it was God’s answer to our prayers and our needs. Gerald Lund says when this happens it is like God is giving us His “Divine Signature”.

I read to page 30. I was touched by the sweet stories. I was still feeling nervous over my surgery but my eyes were tired so I turned out the light and tried to sleep. 

No Sleep came but the thought “Read a little further” did.

I turned on the light and read about 10 more pages and then fell into a troubled sleep.  I awoke about 3:30 am, tossing and turning wide awake.( I can’t really toss and turn  with my broken ribs but I wanted to.)  Again I had the thought “Read a little further.”  I said “Self, I have read 40 pages in that book. It is a lovely book but it is not really calming my spirit….. and I am too tired to roll over and turn on the light to read right now.” …. so I didn’t. I tossed and turned (figuratively) the rest of the night.

Early the next morning I was awakened with the same worried feelings…. and the same nagging thought “Read a little further.”

OK, I said to myself, I will read a little further. I read to page 43 which was the end of that chapter. As I was closing the book , I was impressed as clear as day… “Read one more page”. The feeling was so strong that I could not ignore it.  I opened the book again and turn to page 44 where I found this scripture from the Bible:

Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God:  I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness…. For I the Lord thy God will hold thy right hand, saying unto thee, Fear not; I will help thee.   Isaiah 41:10,13

I started to cry. These words filled my heart and my soul with light and courage.  It was like thousands of years ago, Isaiah had written these verses just for me.  It was just the right words to calm my worried heart. It was exactly what I needed to read. For me this was a “Devine Signature”

Even though I read the scriptures daily….. I am not an avid reader of Isaiah. I’ve read through Isaiah when I was taking an Old Testament class in College and when I was teaching Isaiah in our adult Sunday School class several years ago. Since then, I read the other books of the Bible and pretty much skip Isaiah because it is not an easy book for me to understand.  (I know real Bible scholars adore Isaiah…. I wish I were at that level, but I’m not.) ….

But….there it was….. this beautiful answer to my prayer to find peace and courage…. written just for me by Isaiah.  God knew me well enough to know I would not find this answer during my own Bible study…. so He sent it to me in Gerald Lund’s book….. on page 44…. I just had to read a little farther!

My surgery is tomorrow morning.  Today I can only eat Jell-O and clear broth because am going through all of the yucky pre-surgery  prep. I dread tomorrow, but I am not afraid because I know, as Isaiah tells me, God will hold me by the hand saying fear not, because I will help thee.

Thanks to all of you who have expressed your support, love and concern.

I appreciate each one of you. I will get back with you when I can….. or maybe Silvija will post for me tomorrow. She is coming up to be at the hospital with John and Mindy. 

Until I am back together with you, have a good week. May God continue to shower us with His “Tender Mercies”…..And may we have the insight to recognize them….. and when impressed to “Read a little Further”… do it.

Hugs, Lura

 

3 rules to a happy marriage..My anniversary words of wisdom or whatever???

As you learned from my last post, Saturday was our 46th Anniversary.

Since posting about our # 46 several people have asked me what is the secret of having a long lasting happy marriage.

I’ve given it some thought.  I’ve not come up with anything original but these are my thoughts on the matter.

 

When we were married we were students at BYU.  We had 3 years of college under our belts…. we knew we had  to go 2 more years to finish up and get our degrees and teaching certificate.  We had little savings.  I was almost 21.  John had returned home from serving at as missionary in Central America and had just turned 23.

We were young and trim and so much in love that we thought marriage would be a piece of cake. We couldn’t imagine ever finding fault with one another.

Like in the fairytale, we planned to ride off into the sunset and live happily ever after.

Then reality set in. Life turned out to be a lot harder than we thought it would be. We found out that even cake can get old and taste stale. Some days we were blissfully in love and happy…. and on some days we were barely “in like” and felt upset  and angry with each other.

The ebb and flow of happy/unhappy marriage when on for several years.

We went to church, prayed and read the scriptures regularly…. but I didn’t find out what real love is until I discovered 3 simple rules.  I am sure that you know them…. but until I embraced them, we were not truly happy like we are now.

1. I Pray daily that God will help me see good things to love about my husband and help me be a loving and supportive wife.

For years I prayed that God would change this or that about John. I finally figured out that me trying to change John wasn’t working, but I could change me and my outlook. That made all the difference.  When I quit nagging, pouting and complaining and started working on my own attitude and behavior, John became more and more loving and responsive to my desires. Look for things that you appreciated about your spouse and tell him/her.  As my acceptance and appreciation of John grew, so did our love for each other.

#2.  It really is true that life is going to hand you some lemons…. When it does you can pucker up and hate the bitter taste…. or make lemonade.

We’ve all heard this a 1000 times…. but it really is true.

As I look back on every hard/bitter experience I’ve ever had, I can see there has been a benefit and growth that’s come from it that I couldn’t see at the time.  Just trust God and turn to him in the midst of your sour days and He will give you the sugar to sweeten up your life better than it ever was before. It may take some time to realize it … but it will happen.

God has a plan for us… and a purpose for every challenge we face. He hears our prayers even when we think we are not getting the answers we want and deserve. I love the scripture that says,”Be still and know that I am God”

Sometimes, we just have to be still and trust that God knows what He is doing… and all will turn out to be for our good.

#3. It is more important to be kind and make your mate happy than to be at war proving you are right. 

No two people are going to see eye to eye on everything. In previous years, when John and I argued, and I knew he was wrong…I knew I was right we disagreed. I didn’t want to give an inch and could not let it rest until I hammered the point in to prove I was right. There was little victory in being right because that left both of us hurting and mad at each other.

(Note: No husbands were actually hit with a hammer during the making of this post.)

I finally learned that you can not be contentious and have the spirit of the Lord in your home.  Without the spirit of the Lord, you can not be really happy. Most disagreements aren’t worth a hill of beans in the long run. Keeping the spirit of love and harmony in your home and in your relationship with your spouse is far more important than proving you are right. … and … after you cool down and reevaluate, you often find that you weren’t so right after all.  Saying “I’m sorry” may not always be easy but it is nearly always worth the effort.

Those are my 3 simple rules to a happy marriage….Stay close to the Lord and your spouse and make lemonade. It has worked for us. We have never loved each other more… and we are still working on it.

My surgery is Monday morning. John and I are both nervous…. not because we are worried about the outcome as much as  we just hate that I have to go through another painful procedure. We both appreciate the prayers and concern you have shown us.   Thank you.

Hugs, Lura

Our 46th Anniversary

On that sunny Friday morning, 46 years ago,  when we were asked to vow, in a temple of our God,  that we would love and cling unto each other as man and wife for time and all eternity…. we looked at each other, across the alter into our star struck eyes and answered yes with what we thought was all of the love in the world.

We did not dream that we knew little of what love really was back then, when we said those vows. We learned that true love grows through time… through ups and downs…through thick and thin (or thin and thick in our case.)

I hadn’t made any plans for this anniversary…. #46… didn’t seem as important as 45 was  or 50 will be.   But after our terrible accident that almost took my life and I thought had taken John’s, I realized that every year together should not be taken for granted…. each is a real celebration.

So, even though I was not up to doing much, with the help of John and our friends, we had a lovely day of celebration.

It started out when John took me to breakfast… and barely fussed  agreed when I asked the waitress to take our picture

That evening we went out to our favorite Chinese restaurant for dinner with Mindy and Ernie and a nice group of our friends.

Then we returned to our home where the party continued. LouAnn brought us a lovely cake. Kris supplied the ice cream.

John and I surely appreciated our friends and family making this such a nice evening for us.

They had fun looking at our old wedding pictures… and noted that John and I have barely changed a bit….lol

And I got to enjoy the company and the fun right from the comforts of my…

 

…hospital bed. I am glad that John had my bed put in the family room… I didn’t like that idea at first but it turned out to be a great idea.

 

 

 

So here we are 46 years later…. It turns out that we are happier and much richer than we ever thought we would be…. maybe not as rich in money as we had dreamed… but richer in all the things that really matter…. having love, each other, a great family and wonderful friends is worth more to us than all the money in the world.  Yes we are truly blessed and very grateful.

It was a simple, but lovely day…. the very best way to celebrate our 46 years of marriage.  My heart is full of gratitude and joy.

Hugs, Lura

Smiles from the 4th of July

We had 2 great celebrations this past week. Monday we celebrated the 4th of July.  Yesterday we celebrated our 46th anniversary. Even though I feel a bit anxious about my upcoming surgery, with 2 special events this past week, I had lots to smile about.

The 4th of July has always been a special holiday for me.

The whole country comes together to celebrate our Independence. This year was extra special for our 11 year old EJ because he got to march in his dad’s high school band parade.

I was disappointed that I was not up to attending the parade this year, but EJ and Ernie gave us a sneak preview by practicing for us when we went out to Sunday dinner last week. That made me smile.  Then, bright and early Monday morning they headed off to join the band for the July 4th parade.

 

The kids and Mindy anxiously waited at the sidelines for Ernie and EJ to appear.

Everyone was cheering as Ernie’s band marched by.

EJ kept up with those high school kids, note by note and step by step. I wasn’t there to see him but Mindy kept me updated  by  phone and you can be sure   I was smiling.

At 10:30 John and I headed over to our Church baseball field/ picnic center for a patriotic program and a great pot luck lunch.

It was fun to get out of bed and the house. John happily wore consented to wear our matching red, white and blue shirts. Everyone was glad to see us and thought we looked corny cute. Smile…Smile

 Being with friends, singing patriotic songs, watching the program and having a great lunch made me smile. The kids even put on a patriotic bike parade for us. (It wasn’t quite as good as being at Ernie’s parade but it still made me smile.)

I was not healed enough to attend the Angel’s game and firework show with our kids this year…. and I was kind of bummed out  disappointed about that…

…but….

Craig and Kris were kind enough to invite us over to their home to join them, Jan and their family for their traditional 4th of July party. We didn’t want to intrude on their family time but when we didn’t show up at the appointed time, Jan called us and said they all wanted us to come.  Wasn’t that nice! We went over had a great time. They have a wonderful family.  We were smiling that they would include us in their fun.

 

That evening we went home and watched the Boston Pop’s concert and fireworks show. This annual program always makes me smile….. I love the Boston Pops.  I hope that I can be there in person one day. That would really make me smile

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These are my 4th of July smiles.

Let me know how you celebrated the 4th.

In my next post I will tell you about our Happy Anniversary # 46.

I am sorry that I have not done much blogging this past week.  I’ve been feeling kind of “out of it”. I will do better this week.

I am sending you best wishes and hugs.

Have a great week.