Laughter Is The Best Medicine

Yesterday I mentioned that for a great summer dessert recipe you should go to my God Spot blog. Here what the recipe looks like.

It was finger-licking good.

I made the dessert to serve to some women who were coming over to play cards.

If you've read some of my past blogs you'll know I belong to a club called First Tea @ Five. It's quite an exclusive club, and the cost of membership is extremely high. Not one person is standing in line excitedly waiting to be admitted; because inorder to qualify as a member you must give up something you love more than life itself. Yet in 3 years the membership has tripled.

Its a club where widowed women meet and share how God is reinventing their lives.
I had no idea when I went to Florida searching for purpose that God had something like this group in mind. And yet in hindsight I can see how he had been grooming me for years to take on this responsibility.

In the song "Hold On" tells us God will find us at just the right time. Whether he finds you at the bottom of a bottle or at the bridges highest edge, he will meet you and he will speak to your heart.

The story of my need for God didn't begin with the sudden death of my husband, I realized in time my heart would mend.

I didn't feel the intense need for God when my unmarried daughter made the announcement that she was expecting my first grandchild, nor even the 4 am phone call to bail my son out of a neighboring county jail.

Instead of seeking God and taking his yoke upon my shoulders to help me carry the load I blamed him for my husbands death while I swore at my husband outloud for leaving me alone to shoulder the burden of two wayward children.

If those things didn't push me into the arms of my Savior, then surely it had to be my diagnosis of stage 3B Hodgkins Lymphoma. Nope not even that, for death seemed welcoming to a still grieving widow who felt she had nothing better to give the world.

No, for me it took falling in love with a man who didn't share my same feelings, that found me turning to the Lord in desperation. I was at the bottom and unable to make something I wanted so badly come to fruition.

I have a feeling I had DESPERATE written all over me. Everyone was offering unwanted advice.

I hate the kind of advice people give you when you're single.

One of my favorites was "you'll never find anyone who can measure up to Ed." I wondered if they really believed Ed was that perfect or if they thought he was the only one who could put up with someone like me!

One of the most frustrating was and still is " You'll find someone as soon as you quit trying"

Hellllooo.... has anyone ever tried to make themselves quit looking? As soon as you quit looking, you start looking around to see if anyone has noticed that you've quit looking. That's like saying "Don't think, let your mind go blank."

It was in one of those "Be patient" moments God kept referring to, where the idea of First Tea @ Five came about.

How does one be patient when your heart is lonely and seeking connection? For me it meant keeping busy with people. Even hard physical labor allowed my mind have a heyday. But I found that time spent with people, not sitting around gossiping, but having fun together, keeps my mind off me and put it on us.

It was revelations like this that finally allowed God to speak to my heart through 1Timothy 5:11-16, “As for younger widows, do not put them on such a list. For when their sensual desires overcome their dedication to Christ, they want to marry. Thus they bring judgment on themselves, because they have broken their first pledge. Besides they get into the habit of being idle and going about from house to house. And not only do they become idlers, but also gossips and busybodies, saying things they ought not to. So I counsel younger widows to marry, to have children, to manage their homes, and to give the enemy no opportunity for slander. Some have in fact already turned away to follow Satan. “If any woman who is a believer has widows in her family she should help them and not let the church be burdened with them, so that the church can help those widows who are really in need.”

I felt a chill around my shoulders as I read, and I felt as though God had opened his word and pointed his finger down hard on that scripture as if to say “Here is what you’ve been asking for. This is my purpose for your life!” Thus began First Tea (1 Timothy) @ Five (chapter 5).

Last night 4 of us from the group got together at my house to play Euchre.




AC brought a bottle of wine someone (me) gave her at Christmas time. BB brought her famous kettle corn and DM brought cucumbers from her garden.


We've all been so busy doing life that we didn't realize how much we needed to take time out of our busyness and get together to laugh. Believe me we laughed and laughed and laughed. One sip (seriously I mean one little sip) of the wine made BB and DM break into hot flashes. There was a beautiful warm breeze blowing in from the patio but I had to turn my a/c to full blast to cool these two off. That's the last time I buy cheap wine for a friend. Maybe it's only supposed to be consumed in cold weather since its called Winter White.



But anyway last night proved we aren't this:





















But rather this:
















WOMEN LAUGHING AT LIFE & LOVING THE LIFE GOD SO RICHLY BLESSES

Is God Enough for Us?

One day as he was teaching, Pharisees and teachers of the law, who had come from every village of Galilee and from Judea and Jerusalem, were sitting there. And the power of the Lord was present for him to heal the sick. Some men came carrying a paralytic on a mat and tried to take him into the house to lay him before Jesus. When they could not find a way to do this because of the crowd, they went up on the roof and lowered him on his mat through the tiles into the middle of the crowd, right in front of Jesus. When Jesus saw their faith, he said, "Friend, your sins are forgiven." Luke 5:17-20

Saturday would have been my 39th wedding anniversary.


I realized it as I was returning home from a relaxing, rejuvenating trip north with a group of my high school girlfriends, 4 of my closest friends.


I posted earlier of these friends I like to call my "burden bearers".


Well this weekend it was my turn to do some of the bearing, because two in the group are suffering from broken hearts caused by broken marriages.

Both marriages were second marriages and I have lived vicariously thru both of these women since my husband died.

I was hoping that one day I too would meet a second love and walk off into the sunset locked in each others embrace. But lately I've been wondering if it really is possible to live happily ever, and if it isn't............... will God be enough?

I once read that God sometimes removes people and things that stand in the way of our committment to Him. It didn't seem very fair to think that God might have removed my childrens father from their life just to bring us all to a fuller understanding of Himself.

But, I know that if my husband was alive today or if God had allowed a special man to become a part of my life, that I wouldn't know my God the way I do. Why would I need God when I had created a god of my own. I worshipped my man and trusted him to love and care for me.

But in the blink of an eye, it was all gone.

But God has promised "Never will I leave you, never will I forsake you" Hebrews 13:5

I would never have believed it was possible to carry on a two way conversation with God or that I could feel his presence thru the touch of a stranger if I hadn't experienced it for myself.

There's so much I've learned that I want to share with my hurting friends, like letting Jesus be the one to fill the hole in their heart.

But right now they are not too receptive... but then again... neither was I when my heart was raw and oozing in pain.


I want so much to teach them how to fill the void in their hearts with love for God.
I want them to know that God is the only one that they can truly trust to never walk away.

But I recognize that glazed look in their eyes, the one that is daring me to try and take away their hurt. I recognize it because of all the times that same glaze stared back at me in the mirror.

This morning in my quiet time with God I laid my frustrations before him. "Lord, how can I get through to them, how can I make them see how much they need you."

"Luanne, they already know about me", God whispered. "Let me show them what I can do for them, just like I showed you. Let me do my job and you do yours.

Your job is to be the same friend they have been to you. Let them see how much you love them and how much you can feel their pain.

Dress their wounds by making them smile and help them forget their sadness for a time. Send them little notes that say you care, share your hugs and take them to dinner and let them talk.

Carry them up to the roof top with your prayers and lower them to me on a stretcher of kindess. Then step back Luanne and let me do what I need to do to make them well."

It would mean so much if you would join me tonight and help me pray for their hurting hearts.

Til We Meet Again

Back in high school when we first started dating, my husband Ed was a confident, good natured, upstanding young man, who could have had his pick of any girl in the school. He was an all star athlete, and he picked me over all the others. One of the things I loved about being married to Ed was the way he was always so encouraging.



I miss getting ready to go somewhere and hearing Ed put his stamp of approval on the way I looked.

Whenever I was starting a new endeavor he'd get just as excited as I would. His eyes would twinkle and hug me he'd whisper in my ear "You are going to do just great."

I often wonder what our life would be like if he were here today.

Most of our life together centered around sports. First Ed was playing, then coaching, then coaching our kids. And when I played softball he'd sit right in the stands and cheer for me. "Come on Luanne you can do it. Great Catch or Good Hit, You're doing great. "

We both had a strong belief in God, but neither of us had what I would call a strong walk.

I think I was more like a Pharisee, I looked at the letter of the law, the thou shalls and shall nots, and always made it all about me.
Ed on the other hand was more like Peter, messing up, but in the end having a heart and mind that got it right.

I would love to be able to share the passion I feel for Jesus Christ today with him. We had a great marriage, but I know we could have had an even greater one had we been walking in God's Word, and not treading around the outside of it.

Sometimes I picture Ed at God's side when God begins leading me into a new direction. God elbows him and says "Ed come here! Watch this. Look what I'm going to get her to do this time." And as I begin to do what God asks, its as though I hear him cheering me on in that encouraging way of his. "You can do it."

That's why I have so much trouble taking in today's scripture reading.

Some Sadducee's, who say there is no resurrection, came
to Jesus and put this question to him, saying, “Teacher, Moses wrote for us, If someone’s brother dies, leaving a wife but no child, his brother must take the wife and raise up descendants for his brother.

Now there were seven brothers. The first married a woman and died, leaving no descendants. So the second brother married her and died, leaving no descendants,
and the third likewise. And the seven left no descendants. Last of all the woman also died. At the resurrection when they arise whose wife will she be? For all seven had been married to her.”
Jesus said to them,

“Are you not misled because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God?
When they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but they are like the angels in heaven.
As for the dead being raised, have you not read
in the Book of Moses, in the passage about the bush, how God told him,
I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob?
He is not God of the dead but of the living. You are greatly misled.” Mark 12:18-27

A few months after Ed died I attended a support group meeting. I was 44 at the time. An older woman in her 70's was also there, having just lost her second husband a few weeks before.

During one discussion another woman said " I guess I will just have to take comfort in the fact that one day I will be with my husband again in heaven." The older woman spoke up telling us that she didn't believe her husband would be her husband in heaven.

I was aghast! She seemed so sure of this and so resigned to the fact that I couldn't argue, but I was going to believe something different. The idea of Ed not being my husband in heaven was unthinkable.

I never went back after that.

I think of that conversation every time I read the above scripture. My feelings, no longer raw, I can understand that woman a little better. In heaven she would have two husbands. How would you choose. I also have thought about couples who stayed in a loveless marriage. Would you really want to have to stay with each other in eternity as well?

I guess none of us know what heaven will be like... just that it is sure to exceed even our greatest expectations.
But until God shows me differently I'm going to take comfort in believing that not only will Ed and I soar together one day, but I'm believing that when Jesus comes to lead me home he won't come alone and as I lay taking in my last breaths I will hear that familiar voice whisper in my ear "You're doing great. You're almost home."