Our family has suffered a loss. That is such a telling phrase- we have suffered-and we have lost someone near and dear to us. My sister Cheri's husband, Dave, has lost his battle to live longer here on earth with his family, due to a rare and unnamed form of malignant bone marrow cancer. He was fifty-eight years old, far too young.

I live my life in confidence of Dave's eternal home, but we are sad and feeling his absence in the lives of his wife and grown children. Father send your mercies, please comfort us and hold us up as we walk through these difficult days.

Many of the spiritual women's blogs I read are working on recognizing and expressing soul-felt gratitude for the gifts from God we experience each and every day in our lives. I will begin my list of "1000" today with these:

1) I am grateful for a God who loves me and knows me and sent His Son to die for my sins,

2) for grace so amazing, so freely given,

3) for mercy that rains down from heaven,

4) for guidance from His Holy Word written in the language I speak and understand,

5) for the love of a gentle, God-seeking man,

6) for birthed children and heart-birthed children who have grown to be God's servants in His world,

7) for grandchildren who enjoy being with me and light my life with joy,

8) for a home and nest to feather and care for with joy and fulfillment,

9) for health and life and breath,

10) for work to do that brings glory to my Father in Heaven.

Each Monday I will continue to list ten things for which I am grateful to God.

It is difficult to sit and wait. I have never been good at waiting, which is unusual, because in most things I am patient, but not with waiting.
We sit now each day and wait. We wait for doctors to name the villain in the plot to steal Dave's life. It has no name yet, but still the battle rages, and he grows weaker and more things go wrong. We wait for tests, and test results. We wait for treatments and therapies, and needles, and bags of IV fluids, and nurses and techs, and therapists, and still no name to the monster that consumes and kills in inches and moments and pain. We wait to know where he will move this time (move number five) and they don't tell us and move him when we are at dinner, and then we wait while he finally breaks and rages at his thirst and pain and wants to leave but cannot walk or breath, or live without the tubes and the needles and the doctors and techs, and the waiting and the waiting and the waiting.