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The first of many finger pricks and pictures of Mom holding #BenBrave. Gathering facts is tedious. Often it involves discomfort due to fasting, finger-pokes, cuffs that squeeze uncomfortable sterilization swabs that sting, cold gels and even colder scanning tools, and loooooong waits. But after progressing over about 3 months from stomach flu, to pneumonia with dehydration, to anemia, and to possible enlarged spleen we had an answer! It was an 11cm x 8cm x 11cm mass next to #BenBrave's left kidney. Cancer type: Wilms tumor. The doctor was quick to add "this is treatable - operable" and even shared about a 2-1/2-year-old who had this and was now five, healthy and thriving. What a trooper! THOUGHT INTERRUPTION: You know, when you have a say in the care given, it is much easier to receive. The technicians would always ask this little guy which ...

Intensity of hurt and joy. Photo source: Pixabay.com We had some major "overcoming moments" this weekend. The joy we felt solving the problem together was intense. Anxiety. Overwhelmed. Helpless. Clueless. All seemed to prevail. But THEN ... problem solved. Breakthrough! Joy abounds. It was intense. We wake this morning to enjoy our victory yet, the intensity went full swing the other way. Those strong senses of gratitude and deep love and appreciation were quickly washed away with harsh words. Impatience. Sting of rebuke. Tears wanted to come and then I heard in my head "do not let Satan steal your joy." Immediately I thanked God for that reminder. This is the enemy identified. The ambush was intense. Brief. And the skirmish resolved quickly.  I wiped my tears and thought about the joy of yesterday and the hurt of just now. How equally intense they are. Then I remembered an even more intense joy. A few years back I was driving to work. One of my habits has be...

#BenBrave finds a jungle gym at our local dairy store.  "It's a Wilms' tumor," said my son. "And OU Children's Medical Center has one of The. Leading. Experts. on Wilms' tumor." Once again, God provides and amazes us all. You may read about Wilms' tumors on the American Cancer Society website. Surgery is scheduled and my son said, "unleash the prayer warriors". Prayer Warriors Unleashed What would we do without prayer warriors?  To me a prayer warrior is someone who has a personal relationships with Jesus Christ, believes in the Triune God, and you may ask to pray for you And. They. Will!  Their belief is critical to this definition because it unites our faith in prayer. What's the point in praying to a god you do not believe in? I don't want to disparage other believers in other faiths, but there is power in unity and I personally qualify my prayer warriors to tap into that unified focus of faith. I don't know a...

Hope in Scripture is not wishful thinking. Hope is guaranteed delivery. But you have to believe it. Draw on it. Count on it like you do the money in your bank account. It is there for the usage. Makes me think of the movie "You've Got Mail" but it isn't cute, is it? Just remembering that fateful day in February 2019 starts the flow of tears down my face. My son called from the parking lot. "Mom," he says, "as the technician performed the ultrasound I saw this blackness." At that moment he knew his 20-month-old son had cancer. He told me the technician's eyes filled with tears. So, he asked about what she saw and she was quick to apologize for her "lack of professionalism." She said, "You see, I lost my mother to cancer just last week." What is a father to do? Well, first. He cries his heart out. The lamentation from my son was gut-wrenchingly heart-breaking. We cried together on the phone while I liste...

My first step was to budget and follow our money in a way that made sense to us. I talked to many folks about how they managed their finances. Including my parents who lived debt-free their entire life with one tiny exception: the occasional XX-days-same-as-cash and their mortgage. Now, they had six children. Took us on family vacations. Put all of us through additional education after our high school graduations. And retired quite comfortably. I wanted that legacy to continue. So, what budget tool would work for me? We had to diminish our debt so we tackled it by adapting our own methods. Debt Reduction Ain't Easy It took two tries at debt-consolidation to realize that was not the answer. In both cases we ended up with the loan to consolidate and added more debt onto our credit cards. No reduction happening, yet. Plus, I had an impulse buy issue.  You know those handy-dandy items located by the checkout lanes? Those were made for me. I would stand there and ...

So in our 30s we had little to no savings; 5-figure debt; two boys we wanted to send to college and then we needed to think about retirement. And our income was pretty small - I recall about $45k for our household. By now, I was a Primerica Financial Services representative (2nd job). Through Primerica I brokered mutual funds and talked to people about liquidating their whole / universal life insurance policies, buying term insurance and, with the money left over, save into mutual funds sheltered in an IRA for their future. We called this "buy term and invest the difference." Conversations covered how much money is enough for life insurance and how much is enough for retirement. Determining the life insurance piece was easy. Here's how: Think of the insurance as income-replacement. To your current salary, add a zero. That's the amount of life insurance you need. Example: Someone making a $25,000 annual salary would need $250,000 of life insurance. Dur...

In my last post , I mentioned the writing of Christmas Redemption  and its presentation Dec. 10 and 11 at Aspen Park Baptist Church in Broken Arrow, OK. After we'd completed most of the writing, I was honored to lead a Bible study with the women of our church. The name is Fight Like a Girl  and was created by Lisa Bevere. In this study, Lisa reminds women about the amazing creation we are. She points out how important we are to God because He needed a solution to Adam's loneliness when He created Eve. She had a voice that was hidden inside Adam. God drew that voice out of Adam's side and made it so it could be heard together with Adam's. Teaching about the partnership and cooperation created in the garden of Eden was pretty cool. But even more amazing was living it out. In 1975 God brought my husband and me together and we married two-and-a-half years later. As I stated in my previous post , my husband is a melody man. He also loves words. He has written m...