For You have delivered my soul.....

"Your vows are binding upon me, O God; I will render thank offerings to You. For You have delivered my soul from death, Indeed my feet from stumbling, So that I may walk before God In the light of the living. " Psalm 56:12-13 Back when I gave birth to Hannah, I remember hearing the pediatrician saying, "come on, baby, come on." Dave even told me that she flunked her first Apgar test and it didn't register why not. I didn't dawn on me until Hannah was about 10 years old that she had been born dead. I don't think I could've handled it before then. 10 years later my heart skipped a few beats when I realized the truth of the matter. When David was 3 weeks old he was diagnosed with spinal meningitis. They called it "aeseptic viral meningitis." I knew that wasn't as serious as bacterial. Then 3 weeks later the county called to get a report on it because it was so dangerous. That's when I learned aeseptic means unidentifiable, which means it needed to be treated as bacterial and could have been just as life threatening. My heart skipped a few more beats. On Mother's Day, 1999, with the whole family in the van, I hit a car that had run a stop sign. It spun and hit us. No one was significantly hurt. All our hearts skipped beats!! My son, David, who was 11 years old at that time, asked me a later what had we done for God to punish us that way. I replied "Punish!? Davey, He saved us! We could've hit her head-on and killed her. She could have hit us directly in the side and seriously injured if not killed any of you. God did not punish us, He protected us!" There are so many times in our lives, if we would stop to think about it, that God does protect us from harm. So many we won't know about until heaven. I don't think we'll be asking God questions in heaven because we'll be like Him and know. Which means we'll also get to see all the ways He was at work in our lives protecting and leading us and orchestrating the details to bless us. Instead of dwelling on what is wrong with our lives now, perhaps we should concentrate on what isn't wrong and spend our energy walking before the Lord in the land of the living! And praising Him, by all means, with hearts full of thanksgiving!