I'm in Maine spending a few days at the hospital with my Dad as he begins the road to recovery. My husband's Christmas gift to me was a ticket to fly home and see Dad and Mom....little did he know that it was scheduled for the exact time that I needed to get here! (That's what my husband referred to as "Divine intervention"!)
I packed a few craft supplies for my trip, knowing I would have some time to make a few cards for my "Maine Mom" while I was here. I only brought two rubber stamps with me....one that I knew I could use my Prisma pencils on and the other one I thought at the time would be easy to incorporate into a few cards. Some water color paper, a little ribbon and tape and I figured I was good to go!
When I pulled out this stamp today I paused long enough to read it and looked at it in my hand with a bit of shock. Out of all of the hundreds of stamps I own and this is the one I put into my suitcase:
"He spoke, "My Precious Child, I Love You and would never leave you... When I saw only one set of footprints, that was when I Carried You."
My Dad has been quite ill in the hospital for several weeks battling infection. All of us who love him have waited each day for news of his condition, there was nothing we could do to help him except for the one thing that meant the most.....We could pray and allow God to carry him through this. We couldn't remove the infection, we couldn't decrease the pain, we couldn't give him peace, but as the words ran through my mind I recognized that we didn't need to because God was carrying him through it because Dad is His child and He loves him.
A card on Dad's wall from someone at Dad and Mom's church referred to Matthew 8:3 which says "And Jesus put forth his hand, and touched him, saying, I will; be thou clean. And immediately his leprosy was cleansed." No other can heal like Jesus and this is true in the case of Dad. We cannot understand why Dad ad Mom are walking through this, nor can we see what will happen in the upcoming days but what we can understand is that God is carrying Dad because He loves him and faith in this can bring peace for us all.
For those of you that know Dad or have read about him on my blog, you'll know that he is an encourager to many, even during times that he himself needs to be encouraged. I would ike to ask you to send our Dad a card of encouragement as he continues to recover at the hospital as he'll be here for a while longer. You can send cards and notes of encouragement to him by mailing them to:
Eastern Maine Medical Center
Attn: Richard Blake, Room 398B
489 State Street
Bangor, ME 04401
Until next time,
Theresa
