Thanks for the prayers!

Thanks to those of you who prayed! I fully expected Amy to be in bed doped-up on pain medicine for several days, and while she isn't healed yet, she looked much better and felt much better this morning. Don't stop praying! I will post some pictures so you can see the improvement already:

Last night (June 1 approx 10 PM - approx. 5 hours after incident):


23 hours later:


Don't stop praying! :)

Love, Claudia

Prayers Please

Please pray for Amy. This afternoon she was cooking on our charcoal grill when some meat grease flared up and burned her on the right side of her face/neck and right forearm/hand. We spent a little time in the ER and she's got first and second degree burns on her face and first degree on her right forearm and hand. She's short a LOT of hair that got singed and about half of her right eyebrow is gone, but she is going to be OK. Her eyeglasses saved her eyes and she was right by the garden hose so she was able to extinguish her hair and get the burning stopped quickly! We go back to the ER for a recheck tomorrow. Please pray for total and rapid healing!

The blessing is that we had two friends over when this happened and Catherine was here, so they were able to take Phillip and Christopher with them while I went in the ambulance with Amy. The boys did GREAT everything considered! PTL!

Also, please pray for us financially as Amy has no health insurance.

Love, Claudia

Meeting Old Friends for the First Time

This past weekend I got the chance to meet a new old-friend, Paula Schwarze. Paula saw our story about the service dog project in the Muncie Star-Press online (she now lives in NC, although she is from Muncie). We began to correspond via email and found that we have a genuine sisterhood in Christ. There are so many of you out there like Paula.... Old friends I've never met. What a rich blessing God has given me! Thanks to each of you who pray for and think of me and who KEEP IN TOUCH. Don't stop praying!!! I am SO WEAK.....right now I am struggling with depression and it is your prayers that lift me up to the Father that keep me afloat. Thank you. I love you..... Claudia

Just falling...........

I have been so tired and breathless and it frustrates the beejeebers out of me! I still think I should be able to do all the things I used to do... and I can sometimes (for a minute or two). Christopher has been a BEAR for the last couple of months. His meltdowns are increasing, he's biting himself and leaving bruises and he cries....which makes ME want to cry, but I can't because that adds fuel to the fire.

Today, I wanted to take some things to my neighbor across the street, Bob, who has advanced lung cancer. Amy and Christopher were going to go too and I was going to take my Jazzy. I made one HUGE strategic mistake. I turned the Jazzy around on the ramp (no problem there, the ramp is not steep and is very, very wide) and then (problem enters here) I decided to back down the remaining 12" of ramp, thinking I would turn around in the driveway. Well, there's one little problem with my ramp. It is not flush with the pavement at the end. In fact, it has about a 1.5-2" lip. This is something we have to get adjusted, but is, for the most part live-able...unless you go down the ramp backwards! I got to the edge and the whole chair just fell over backwards! The saving grace was that I had the headrest extended as high as it would go and my head it that instead of the PAVEMENT! Needless to say it was a HARD JAR to my body and my neck is killing me now. Otherwise, nothing was hurt but my pride.

I was able to raise the left armrest of the Jazzy and just roll out of the chair onto the ground and then get up onto my hands and knees....and it was then that I felt a bug fly into my hair and I reached up and grabbed it to sling it out and got stung... it was a wasp. Add insult to injury (or injury to insult!).

This all upset Christopher, of course. None of this was on the "agenda". SOMETIMES I HATE AUTISM! Then I feel so bad for him... how unpredictable and out -of-control his world must seem! Dang it!

I finally gave up and asked Amy to just run the things over to Bob while I sat on the couch nursing my wounded pride and sore neck.

Thanks for letting me "vent". Sometimes I just don't know what else to do....

Love, Claudia

Coincidence? Maybe NOT......

Just last night I was feeling that sinking feeling I get now and then... I even posted it as my status on MySpace.... "Claudia feels like life is passing me by... everyone else's life goes on..." Then today I got this devotional (once again, from Ephesians Four Ministries):

The Place of Nothingness
TGIF Today God Is First Volume 2, by Os Hillman
05-25-2008
"Be still and know that I am God" (Psalm 46:10) .

Do you find yourself in a place of nothingness? There is a time and place in our walk with God in which He sets us in a place of isolation and waiting. It is a place in which all past experiences are of no value. It is a time of such stillness that it can disturb the most faithful if we do not understand that He is the one who has brought us to this place for only a season. It is as if God has placed a wall around us. No new opportunities - simply inactivity.

During these times, God is calling us aside to fashion something new in us. It is a place of nothingness designed to call us to deeper roots of prayer and faith. It is not a comfortable place, especially for a task-driven workplace believer. Our nature cries out, "You must do something" while God is saying, "Be still and know that I am God." You know the signs that you have been brought into this place when He has removed many things from your life and you can't seem to change anything. Perhaps you are unemployed. Perhaps you are laid up with an illness.

Many people live a very planned and orchestrated life where they know almost everything that will happen. But for people in whom God is performing a deeper work, He brings them into a time of quietness that seems almost eerie. They cannot see what God is doing. They just know that He is doing a work that cannot be explained to themselves or to others.

Has God brought you to a place of nothingness? Be still and know that He really is God. When this happens, your nothingness will be turned into something you will value for the rest of your life.

I'm looking forward to seeing the deeper work.. I am definitely the person who is described above who has "been brought into this place when [God] has removed many things from [my] life and [I] can't seem to change anything."

Thank you, Lord, for the ministry of Ephesians Four and Os Hillman through their words that seem written so often just for me. Amen.

Love,
Claudia