Heaven, Healings, Haggadahs, and Hurling

Do you like the title? I was thinking of what God has been teaching me this week and they sort of all started with "H". I know that God is allowing this trial in our lives for a reason, so I have been really trying to see what He wants me to learn from it. I'm not sure who ends up reading my blog entries. It's wierd not knowing who your audience is, but some of the postings are even just a way that I can remember what I was thinking when I will eventually look back on this season of my life. So here goes... Heaven stands for a new book that I am reading. My friend Ashley Kostjuk gave it to me when I came to the hospital with her to visit her baby Reese. You can see what is happening with Reese if you click on the Kostjuk family on my sidebar. Reading this book is significant in my life, because God has allowed me to jump over a spiritual hurdle in my "race". To explain, I will have to give you some background about those back of my mind thoughts that I probably wouldn't normally want to share. It's a little humbling, but I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one out there that has thought like this, so I'm just going to be honest in the hopes that it helps someone else, and if I'm the only one well then I'm a dork. In the past, I would have not chosen to read a book on heaven. To me, it was kind of like not wanting to pray for patience, because then something totally frustrating will happen in your life expose your complete lack of patience and God will give you an opportunity to work on it. To me, if I read a book on Heaven it would be like saying to God, you've prepared me for heaven and now someone I love will have to die. Don't get me wrong, I do want them to go to Heaven, I just didn't want to lose anyone. Well, now that heaven is more of a reality, and we have had to think about death, I thought I should probably learn about heaven now. Even in the book store though, I was feeling superstitious about buying it. The book is absolutely amazing, and I have been reading things that are totally new to me, and that I have never thought about or pictured in my mind before. Did you know we may drink coffee in Heaven??? There is a section in the book about that. I'm so glad God opened this door, because in reality we will only live on this earth for around 100 years if we have a really long life, but we will be in heaven for eternity. I am enjoying learning about my future home, and it is not as "spiritual" as I once thought.
The second thing that I have been thinking about is healing. A dear friend gave me a tape from her church on healings, and it caused me to think about how God heals today. I know God can heal anyone at any moment, but is it always His will to heal, or does he allow suffering and trials for our good and His glory? I found a pamphlet at Grace called "When the healing doesn't come" from James 5 by John MacArthur, and our pastor Scott taught about how Jesus healed the woman with the blood flow from Mark chapter 5. God definately uses trials to get you to go back to his word.
The third thing that I had been thinking about a lot this week was Passover. In case you don't know, A haggadah is the book you read at the Passover seder. Every year we celebrate one night at my mom's house and one night at my dad's. This was one of my many "firsts" this year without my dad. The whole death and funeral thing happened so fast, but this weekend it hit a little harder when we didn't celebrate Passover with him. Rick (my mom's husband) said a toast for him which was really sweet, but it took everything in me not to lose it. Today will be a month since he died. I can't believe time has gone by so fast.
The last thing I want to talk about is hurling. I had to use an "H" word. Well, David is feeling more and more nauseous with each treatment. Today, he actually vomited. The good news is he did feel like going out to lunch at the mall afterward and getting pinkberry frozen yogart:) Please keep praying for him to be able to push though the rest of the treatments without it getting worse. We got good news from the doctor today. He said that the treatment is working, and he will only have 5 more treatments after today, Lord willing. At the end he is expected to be cancer free, so please pray for it to stay that way. If any of you get the Heaven book, let me know. I think you'll like it. Bye for now.