20 years of Love (sigh)

Sorry about that everyone! I know I haven't been very good about posting, but you know how it goes. Oh and uh, about the title, don't worry there's nothing mushy or gushy in this post so relax. This isn't Cinderella love, but about that hard, unselfish, never failing love that unfortunately isn't seen very often anymore.

Yeah I'm talkin bout marriage :) My parents just celebrated their 20th anniversary New Year's Eve! (So you can all post a comment later congratulating them!) My mom told me as we were setting the table for dinner that while she loves celebrating her anniversary on the day they got married, she doesn't really see it as their anniversary. "Every day is an anniversary for your father and I. Every day I thank God for the wonderful man he has given me. (in a whisper) I'm even more in love with him then ever." Now doesn't that sound so much better then Pocahontas', "I'd rather die then live a thousand years without knowing you! (fake sob)"

You know, Disney gives us a very good picture of what love isn't like. It isn't demanding, impulsive or impatient. My parents have shown me what true love REALLY is. It's patience, kindness, willingness to understand, trusting the character of a person, humbleness, the essence of chivalry, unselfish, peaceful, wise and honest. It always perseveres, always trusts, always hopes, always endures. Love Never Fails!

Love really is powerful stuff. :) Paul even says that should he speak with the tongues of angels, give all he owned to the poor and surrender his body to the flames, but have not love, it would be NOTHING! Wow! When I first read that I was like, "Woah! Back up! All that without one little ingredient would be....nothing?" hard to believe but true.

In some ways it's like baking a cake. Now, depending on the type of cake your making your ingredients are going to vary. In all the cakes I've ever baked there always needs to be some flour stirred in at one point or another. Without that flower, the cake would just be a watery bowl of egg, sugar and salt (Gag!) and no matter how much time and energy you put into that cake, if you forget the main ingredient, well, it just means NOTHING. You can't eat time and energy. And you can't live without love. Maybe you can survive. But God doesn't call us to survive.

This is the time for new resolutions, and this year, I'm going to strive to have more of my Father's love in my life. Not mushy, gushy, "Follow your heart after whatever", love, but the strong unconditional love of my parents. Just because your single, doesn't mean you don't have anyone to love. Of course for everyone it's different. I know my starting place is with my siblings. It's a funny thing about sisters. I would willingly give my life for either of them. It's just living with them that's the problem :) Maybe for you it's your boss, your neighbor, that girl that just ooooh....you want to ring her neck every time you see her, maybe it's that dirty little boy with the foul mouth in your Sunday school class (you know the one!) or maybe you need to go back to the beginning and fall in love with God all over again. Wherever you are in the list, make it a special point this year to have a love that perseveres, trusts, hopes, endures, and never fails. Blessing for the New Year :)

(four days late)

Goodbye

Today my Tia Reyna left. Here's a poem I wrote:

Goodbye

Sitting beside eachother,

Smiles and jokes

Trying to drown that lump in their throats.

It won't be long now before tears start to fly

It won't be long now before they say goodbye

While they sit there and wait

The remember a time

When they were both young still in their prime

The protection of the older

Unwilling to cry

The smiles of the other

When they didn't have to say goodbye

Now it is time

They hug and they kiss

They say "See you soon"

But they don't say farewell

For Christ binds sisters closer then life

And with Him as the end

They'll never have to say....

Goodbye

-Sarah Heidkerueger

My mom and her sisters didn't have it easy as kids. When they were preteens they were sent to Mexico to take care of their grandmother who was an irresponsible, bitter old woman. There were times when she would leave them for days with very little food. My Tia Reyna became their mother and had to care for them around the age of 13 in a strange country where they could barely speak let alone write or read a word in the language.
Thank God nothing bad happened to them while they were there. And because of that, they became very close and have remained close to this day. In fact, it was my Tia Reyna who lead my mom to the Lord. And because of her, eventually my mom's entire family became Christians.
It's always hard to say goodbye. Especially when your family. But with Heaven at the end of the road, we can have that assurance that no matter what, we'll see eachother again someday.
It's even like that with those of you one blogger whom I have never met in person before. We may never see eachother face to face in this world, but because we are sisters in the Lord, we can know that someday we will. That's definately something I'm looking forward to!

A surprise visit!

Okay, I just had to post this!
I have this Tia (aunt in spanish) who lives in San Diego, California. Her and my mom have the same birthday (1/14), even though they were born two years apart. For years my mom has been asking her to come to Chicago so they can spend their birthdays together, but for whatever reason they haven't done it. She did come two years ago, but before their birthday and only for a few days. Well, yesturday we were doing school when we hear a knock on the door, so I thought it was my boys. So since my mom and I were both busy we sent Anna to go open the door. So she opens it and comes back saying that she doesn't know who it is but they want mom. So I go to the door and there's my Tia from California with her camera poised and ready to snap the picture of my mom's surprised face. She motioned for me to be quiet and I stepped back in stunned obedience while my mom, (grumpy from being interrupted from her teaching) comes to the door, ready to tell whoever it was to leave, and gets the surprise of her life when she sees her sister, her luggage at the bottom of the steps, shivering and snapping pictures at will!
What a wonderful surprise! Well, we all had a good laugh and then ushered her in to get warm and talk like all good Latinos love to do, right?
Now for some of you this sounds pretty strange and you might be thinking, "Whoa! you mean she just showed up? No phone calls or anything and that was alright?" That's just how our family works. And we're so happy to see eachother, that it isn't a bother at all!
Don't you hope it will be the same for when Jesus comes back for us? Will we welcome him with open arms surprised at his sudden call, but thrilled that He's finally come? Or will we be to busy and ask him to reschedule? Will we be ready for Him? Or will we wish he would have come just a few minutes earlier or later so He wouldn't have caught us in an act of sin?
He said he was coming soon (which is more warning then my Tia gave). Be ready!

Vamos a comer! Let's eat!

What's your favorite food? I'm not sure I have one, but I do know what I do not like to eat. Pasta. Nothing with pasta except for my little brother's homade lasagna, but that's it! No noodle, no maccaroni and especially NO SPAGETTI!!!

It wasn't always like that. When I was little I used to love spagetti. But then one day as I was eating, my jokester Dad leaned over and whispered, "Doesn't that look like a plate of worms?" Well, goodby spagetti!

But honestly, how many people would kill to have a plate of spagetti. Something cooked and still warm. Something that was clean and made just for them, not something they had to dig through the garbage and fight off the dogs to get. What about our Thanksgiving dinners? Can you imagine how the sight of all that food would just floor a child who has gotten used to an empty tummy every night.

Oh to be able to fill the hungry!

As we plan our Thanksgiving dinners, lets take the time to thank God for the food we have. I know times this year are hard, and maybe some of you won't be able to afford a turkey. But even if that's the case, we can still be thankful to a God who has the name Jehovah Jirah, God Who Provides. Today, thank him for the food on your plate that he provides day after day.

Ducktaped Shoes and Lemonade

This a picture of my sister Andrea's old tennis shoes and they've got quite a story behind them. Incase you haven't noticed (or read the title), that really is blue ducktape wrapped around them. She'd worn those shoes out awhile ago but we just hadn't gotten a chance to buy her new ones until recently, so for about a month she wore them like that with a bit of ducktape covering the holes. She would change the color of the ducktape every now and then (once it was purple), and she even decorated it with stickers.

Whenever someone would comment on her shoes, and most people did (usually not very nicely either) she would smile and say, "I'm starting a new fashion!" Then she would giggle and wiggle her feet before turning and skipping away. At this reaction, most of the girls would exchange "what-ever" looks, roll their eyes and simper down the hall, their new designer boots clicking loudly against the cement floor.

I'm daily learning old lessons I thought I'd had down, but ones God gently shows my I don't. Sometimes he shows them to me with through his Word, other times he speaks to my thoughts, and other times he uses people close to me to either speak out or live out the message he wants to send me. In my sister's case the message was the age old, told-by-every-mother-and-grandmother-on-the-planet-and-preached-by-every-pastor-behind-every-pulpit, message: In everything give thanks.

Now I KNOW I'm not the only one who gets a little tired at times of hearing the same message over and over and over and over and over and over (sigh) and OVER again right? Ever wonder WHY we hear those messages so often when we've had them committed to memory since the age of four? How about this: Ever dared to askGod why? The answer is simply that God knows ALL. And no matter what we think, or do, HE knows if we really have learned these simple lessons that are read, spoken and pointed out to us so many time. Usually we KNOW the lessons, but we haven't LEARNED them.

This was something he pointed out to me through my little sister's ducktaped shoes. Did Andrea want to go around with ducktape on her shoes? Nope. But did she complain? Whine? Scheme and plot a plan for getting what she wanted? No. Because my little sister had actually learned that age old mother-spoken-pulpit-preached verse. "In everything give thanks". She didn't just give God an empty, "Thanks for giving me some dirty, hole ridden, worn out shoes and for not leaving me barefoot." Instead she proved her thankfullness and her reliance on her Heavenly Father by creatively inventing a way to wait for him to intervene. And she did so with a smile.

You've heard the Proverb: When life gives you lemons make lemonade. I'd like to add to that: and drink it with a smile. Maybe you didn't want lemonade. Maybe you'd planned for something else. There's nothing wrong with that, but do you really want to waste weeks, months or years moping because you didn't get what you'd planned for? Even one day is too precious a thing to waste, for we'll never have that day to live again.

So the next time you're given lemons maybe you'll take the chance to finally learn that little lesson, that God has been reminding you of. Maybe you'll remember my little sister's ducktaped shoes, her willingness to wait, and to wait with a smile.

Cyberspace and Death

Today I made one foolish click of the mouse and somehow deleted all my previous posts. (Yeah I'm still not sure how it happened.) I called my dad over to see if he could make any sense of what I had done, but he couldn't. Needless to say I was pretty upset. I'd posted quite alot over the last two months and it felt like I had basically taken my journal and thrown it into the fire. So as I was moping (and yes brushing away a few tears) my wise Dad said, "Isn't there something you could learn from this?"

"Think before I act." Popped out before I really thought about it. (It's the lesson I've been working on since birth).

Papa smiled. "Well, that's good. Anything else?" he coaxed gently.

"Like what?" I asked.

"Think about it. You spent alot of time writing down your thoughts, day after day. Pasting pictures and posting entries. And then with just a click, it was all gone."

"I know!" I wailed, wanting only to cry more.

"Don't you see?" My ever patient Papa explained. "Isn't that just like our lives? We think we're in control, that we know what we're doing. We spend alot of time on certain things that we think are important and then, suddenly, it all ends. We die."

I was quiet as this truth sank in. Over the last two months we've gone to two funerals and heard of lots of others. Walking by the caskets has always spooked me when I was little. But this time I couldn't help but feel awed. The person lying there was no more. Gone from this life forever. During their brief time on earth they had had choices to make and they had had time to change them. But now, that was all over and they were going to see the consequences and rewards of those choices.

Life is short. Very short. That's why it is so precious. Every minute is a jewel to be cherished and not thrown carelessly away. We are living in the last days. Our world has slowly been dying ever since Adam and Eve made that one wrong choice to disobey God. Every second brings us closer to that day that has been foretold for thousands of years, when Jesus will return. We don't have much time left. The board is set, the pieces are moving. The devil grows bolder with each passing day. The remnant is shrinking, the strongholds are weakening. America is not what she used to be.

We are in another garden. Unaware of the ever ticking clock and its quickly passing minutes. Again we are faced with a choice. Only one. It must be God's way, or our way. He can not make it any clearer. Hebrews 9:27 says, "For it is appointed for man to die once, and after this to face judgment." Adam and Eve had a choice and so have all the others who have been born, lived and died. What will your choice be? Choose quickly, choose carefully. You don't have much time left.