Thankfully Posted

Ive decided to, at the end of each month, write about the things that im most thankful for in the past 30 days.  New amazing finds, great books, etc.    I figure...If I love them...then others may too!

1.  I read the BEST book.  I get excited when I find a book that captures my attention so much that I cant put it down!  Its called "Even Silence Has an End" by Ingrid Betancourt.  It is the amazing story of a woman who was taken captive by the FARC, a terrorist group, and held against her will for 7 years.  She wrote her story with such....class and honesty.  Its hard to believe that this kind of thing is happening today.  We live in freedom so it was hard for me to imagine.  So many thoughts were running through  my mind while reading this book. Im thinking of starting an online book club.  It would be  lot of fun to discuss books such as this one with other women who love to read.  This book was definitely a winner in my book ;)

2.  I decided, about 10 years ago, that when I became an empty nester that I would finally be able to catch up on lost sleep.  From the time I became a mother 29 years ago, I ceased knowing what it was like to really, really sleep.  And then...INSOMNIA....grrr......nobody told me that insomnia hits at about age 46.  I became a morning person overnight....and a night owl too.  Not a good combination.  Finally and reluctantly after 2 years of this nonsense, I resorted to prescription medication.  Not good.  And then recently my daughter in law, Hollie, handed me a sample of the most wonderful little chewy, NATURAL, sleep aid!!  Before I even tried it I was sceptical and didn't think that it would work.  But I was more than pleasantly surprised when I woke up after sleeping like a baby, feeling completely refreshed!  They are called Sleep Squares. They are made by Slumberland Snacks and can be ordered online at www.sleepsquares.com     Sweet dreams to my mid-life friends!

3.  Now.. the next thing Im thankful for is something that is not new to me in the past 30 days....but I indulged in them this week.  So they count.  Charlies Frog Pond on Park Avenue in Rochester, NY serve Sauted Banana Pancakes.  They are the best pancakes Ive ever had....ever.  The banana in the title may make people hesitant to order them.  But even if you dont like bananas Im pretty sure you will love these.  You can get them minus the bananas though.  They serve them anytime of the day...not just for breakfast.  If you live in Rochester they should be on your list of "things I must do before I die".  Seriously.  

4.  I got an early Christmas present from my hubby.  It is a wireless keyboard for my ipad. Its pretty amazing.  I cant even begin to express how thankful I am for this new high tech gadget.  I can write anywhere  and no longer have to lug my laptop around with me.  This leads me to my thankfulnes for my ipad.  Greatest thing ever.  My family got it for me on my birthday last year.  I have used it every single day since.  Its like carrying around all my books, magazines, and computer in one little slim piece of awesomeness.  Really....honestly and truly,  two of the best gift I've ever received!

5.  I am very thankful for the Christmas season.  I love the lights, songs, decorations, traditions, snow.....all of it.  But I have to say,  my favorite part is that the whole country celebrates Jesus birth....even if they don't know it. There are no words to describe my thankfulness for the gift of Christ who brought to me the gift of salvation...which brings meaning and purpose to my existence.   In emulating Christ, I love to give gifts to those I love.  I really, really love that part.  I am thankful for my family more than ever this Christmas season!   Merry Christmas!!   

That completes my December list of "things that Im most thankful for in the  last 30 days"! 
    
~Colette

PLEASE READ

Dec 2010
17 Fri

I read the most amazing article yesterday.  All the news channels in Rochester, NY covered the tragic story.  But none came close to covering it as eloquently and beautifully as this man.  Although familiar with the writer, Bob Lonsberry, I have never met him.  Nor have I ever met the man or the family of whom he writes.  I just know that his words captured my attention completely.  I read it several times...twice out loud to others....and cried every time.  I felt like I was physically at the scene with Bob.  I felt what he felt and saw what he saw...every step of the way. Amazing, inspiring, heartfelt and sincere are his words.  I am compelled to make it the entry on my blog today.  Not only because it is so awesomely written but also because the story is a testament.  A testament to a selfLESS man, his wife and son, every person written about....who all showed a true picture of the love of Christ.  I desire to write like Bob Lonsberry, to live my faith like this precious wife, to serve others like these heroes and to finish well like Ken Parfitt.

~Colette      

SOMETHING I SAW YESTERDAY
As I ran up to him, the first thing I noticed was the Bible.

It was small, a pocket-sized book, in black leather.

It had apparently been knocked out of his clothing when the car hit him, and had landed beside him in the snow, down off the shoulder of the road.

That was yesterday, a few minutes after 7 in the morning.

It was frigid and there was accumulation and black ice and two cars had slid off the busy Interstate. He had stopped and gotten out to help.

He had been on the way to work, with his son, and he saw the motorists who needed help and he stopped. Countless others of us drove on by. But he stopped.

And got out in the blizzard and was going to render aid when out of nowhere came a vehicle.

He was struck and thrown and he landed where I found him, motionless in the snow, by his Bible.

There was a young man standing above him. A nurse from Strong Memorial Hospital was also there, and maybe another man, motorists who had stopped to render aid.

I knelt by the man in the snow. I could find no pulse in his right wrist. The nurse could find no pulse in his left wrist. She felt at his neck and I counted his breaths.

They were the breaths of someone struggling to stay alive. It was as if he was snoring.

I asked the young man what had happened and he told me that the man was his father.

He looked to be in his late teens or early 20s. He was well groomed and in business clothes. And his father was at his feet. It struck me what a horror he must be enduring. I asked him if he would pray for us, and he squatted beside his father and we three bowed our heads as he prayed and said “Amen” when he was done.

The exact details of what followed are kind of blurred in my mind, but a lady called 911 on her cell phone and I asked her if I could speak to the dispatcher. I tried to describe the gravity of the man’s condition and I told her we’d need Mercy Flight. It was a foolish request, given the conditions, and she kindly told me that they couldn’t launch in the blizzard. Then I told her that we’d need the county fly car and she told me that it was on its way.

He had a jacket on with the name of his company on it. The ID tag clipped to his shirt said that his name was Ken. Though he was unresponsive, I talked to him and called him by name and encouraged him and told him what was happening.

Traffic was heavy and slow and I kept looking up from the man to see if I could see any emergency vehicles coming.

The first to arrive was a captain from the Department of Environmental Conservation police. His presence was calming and professional. He and the Strong nurse checked the various occupants of the various cars to make sure everyone was all right.

A man from a utility – maybe the electric company or the phone company – came to offer aid.

As the minutes passed, various passersby brought coats and blankets from their cars to lay over the man. One gentleman took the coat off his back and covered the man with it. Then he took off his gloves and put them over the man’s hands.

At a certain point, the man’s wife arrived. She had been called by the son and, their home apparently being close, had arrived quickly.

“Where is he?” I heard her say. “He is my husband.”

I looked up when I heard those words, and saw a woman walking toward us. I was dreading her arrival. I did not want her to see or experience this. I could not imagine the pain and sorrow inherent in a situation like this.

She was dressed as conservative Christian women sometimes are, in a long dress, it might have been denim, and I think her hair was long and up on her head.

As she approached us, she was calm and business like. She asked how he was and what had happened.

Then she knelt and began to pray.

She may have held his hand, she may have leaned in toward his head. As she spoke, I cast my eyes down and reverently listened. She addressed God. Whether she called him “Dear Lord” or “Heavenly Father” or something else, I can’t recall. But she addressed him, and then she thanked him.

And she offered him praise.

Her words were not words of pleading, they were words of praise and gratitude.

And then she said something like, “If today you wish to call him home and take him from us – thy will be done.”

Thy will be done.

The line from the Lord’s Prayer. The hardest part of faith. At a moment when most of us would be begging God to give us what we want – to spare us our loved one – she asked the Lord to do his will, what he wanted. She trusted him, and had faith in him.

Where could there be a truer test or demonstration of faith than in the snow beside the broken and near lifeless body of your sweetheart and spouse? In that situation, there can be no pretense, no show, only the heartfelt honesty of a soul in direct communion with its Creator.

And in her moment of test, in her own Gethsemane, she literally prayed, like her Savior before her, not my will, but thine, be done.

But if it was not his time to die, if the Lord did not want to call him home, she asked for his life, for her and their children, and strength through the weeks of hospitalization and recovery.

And then she asked that this event would be turned to the glory of God, that somehow it could touch the heart of someone, that someone might find Jesus, that someone might come to salvation.

And that was her prayer.

While I listened for this man’s breaths, and rescuers sped on slippery roads, and neighbor helped neighbor.

Soon I saw a deputy and a trooper, and then a fire truck in the far lanes, and then firefighters around us and finally an ambulance.

They were angels in turnout gear.

They came with such a competence and earnestness.

One medic, a younger man, had an Avon patch on his uniform. He quickly worked to help the man breathe. Another medic, slightly older, had a Livonia patch on his uniform. He worked on the man’s body. Another medic soon came, directly from home, in office clothes, and with the help of the firemen the three of them loaded the man first onto a backboard and then onto a gurney and up into the Avon ambulance.

In a minor and unskilled way, they needed an extra set of hands, so I climbed into the ambulance with them as the doors closed and the rig pulled out.

It may have taken most of an hour to get to Strong Memorial Hospital. We stopped at one point to pick up the Livingston County paramedic. He was a stunningly professional man, and watching him and the others work was like seeing a nuts-and-bolts miracle.

It was high science and true compassion, a moment-by-moment tending of an injured man’s needs. Each medic attending to different tasks or coming together to achieve one. Like a choreographed dance or a loose symphony. I was grateful such people and such technology exist.

In his own way, the ambulance driver performed his own miracles. In stalled bumper-to-bumper traffic, over miles and miles of snowy highway, he pressed forward, moving between and around any obstacles that presented themselves, using his resourcefulness to get the patient where he needed to go.

In the back of the rig, I noticed in the pocket of the man’s shirt six or seven little tracts, religious pamphlets, about the true meaning of Christmas. The sort of thing that religious people pass out inviting others to get saved. As they pulled the gurney out of the rig at the Strong ED, the tracts fell to the floor of the ambulance, wet from the melting snow and stained with the man’s blood.

Later, I would recount this story on the radio, and receive e-mails from coworkers and church members. People who knew him and loved him.

He always carried the Bible and the tracts, they said. And he was the nicest guy they knew. He would do anything for anybody and he and his wife had eight children.

And for the past three years, he and his sons had built with their own hands a house for the family. A house for which they had only recently been granted a certificate of occupancy – a permit for the family to move in and begin its dream life.

He was a good man, doing a good thing, and that didn’t surprise anybody. He came to be hurt because he came to the rescue.

When I went to bed last night, his condition was very grave and prayer requests were echoing across the Internet.

And I couldn’t help but think of the verse from the Gospel of John.

“Greater love hath no man than this,” it reads, “that a man lay down his life for his friends.”

That happened on a cross once, and on battlefields countless times, and sometimes it happens on the side of the road.

I saw something sacred yesterday, and I hope I have communicated it adequately.

I hope I have done my part to help answer a good woman's prayer.


- by Bob Lonsberry © 2010