THE PETERSENS

Such as, neck pain!  Three years after the accident, I am still suffering from random bouts of neck and lower back pain.  Yesterday and today have been particularly bad.  It is days like these where I am tempted to believe lies such as these…

• God doesn’t care enough about me to heal me completely.
• I am all alone in my pain and distress with no one to help me…God doesn’t hear my prayers.
• I deserve to feel 27 years YOUNG…and not 27 years OLD.

So I have to turn my eyes and heart to Truth such as this…

• God does care about me and He loves me deeply.  That is why He has given me this “suffering.”  To rejoice in it, so that I turn myself to the hope I have in God.

More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to  us. Romans 5:3-5

• I am not alone.  The Lord is always with me.  He will neither leave me nor forsake me.  Also, I am blessed to have my brothers and sisters at TCC who have offered to help me in various ways.  I am far from alone!

Blessed be the Lord!
For he has heard the voice of my pleas for mercy.
The Lord is my strength and my shield;
in him my heart trusts, and I am helped;
my heart exults, and with my song I give thanks to him.
Psalm 28:6-7

• I deserve nothing, except the severe wrath of God!  All that I have right now is way more than I deserve already.  Instead, the Lord has shown me His mercy and He has made me His child.  I am a daughter of the King!

For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a    good person one would dare even to die— but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we  have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled  to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life.  More than that, we also rejoice in God through  our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation. Romans 5:6-11

Meanwhile, I guess you’ll all be hearing a lot from me.  I’ve been trying to take it pretty easy, so I am resting on the couch a lot with laptop and cell phone on one side and Bible on the other and children tumbling around all over.  It’s a beautiful sight.