the umsteads

Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Sunday, May 23, 2010

Photos from My Birthday Weekend

We were grateful to have a visitor from Maryland/Poland/Ukraine this weekend. It was such a treat hanging out with Pastor Chris.

Hana spent the night last night and is an amazing young woman and helper.

One of Henry’s favorite toys.

Dinner Guests

Faithful Friend

visiting friend

Psychotic photo

One of many happy birthday songs – thanks to everyone who called, wrote a note, sang to me or thought of me:).

Henry Walking

Henry has been pretending he can’t walk for a while now. He walks some when he thinks we aren’t looking. Today he decided he likes walking more than crawling. The best birthday present ever.

I was officially older than Vinny on Dave’s birthday December 3, 2009 or right around then. He is exactly 1 year, four months and 27 days older than I… or so he used to be. It was our little fight. Now that I am 33 and he was 32 when he went home, does that mean I am the oldest now? I am not the first to outlive an older sibling who went home at a young age. I like getting older, it’s just a strange moment in the little personal history of me.

Keeping Score

I had this thought today on our way home from church. Keeping score. You can tell, I can tell when I have the true Christ given freedom in my relationships and when I have truly forgiven and God has truly healed me. I stop keeping score. I remember when I was in Bible College, God did a deep healing in my heart. There were other relationships where I thought I had been completely healed, but God was/is faithful to bring in circumstances to reveal places in my soul that I had not yet let Him touch. I thought I forgave but still was expecting this or that person to meet a need in my life. I know we can’t live as islands, but we can live with our expectation being from God and not people. I can tell to this day when my eyes have shifted off God (and I know due to my frail humanity this will continue until I go home to be with God), because I start keeping score with a person. I did this for them or they never do that for me. You know those things we say in our heads. When I look unto my Great God, as Pastor Chris so beautifully expressed this morning in church, and take my eyes off myself and my problems, God gets really big in my life. When I focus on the score, my problems get even bigger and God is never big enough, in my eyes, to solve the problem. I want to serve a big God. I do serve a great God, but the paradox is – He is really serving me. He does the work. Thank You, Jesus. Amen.