You Raise Me Up

Today the lyrics from the song "You Raise Me Up" by Josh Groban are heavy on my heart. For the past few days, I have felt like the verse is where I am. I am weary. I am not going to blog about whats going on to make me feel so, just that its how I am feeling. My heart feels heavy today. Here are the lyrics:

You Raise Me Up (Josh Groban)
"When I am down and, oh my soul, so weary;
When troubles come and my heart burdened be;
Then, I am still and wait here in the silence,
Until you come and sit awhile with me.

You raise me up, so I can stand on mountains;
You raise me up, to walk on stormy seas;
I am strong, when I am on your shoulders;
You raise me up... To more than I can be."

The chorus reminds me that even when I feel exactly like that verse, God is with me and raising me up on His shoulders to accomplish more than I can on my own. Even when I am feeling down, He is still God. He is still strong. He is still my provider. He is still my hope. He is still my joy and my peace. He is still worthy of my praise. So today, on a day where I feel like just being in bed and sleeping all day, I will get up and go out to do what He has asked me to do. I can only do this because it is HE who has given me the strength to do so.

Thanks Lord, for raising me up so that this heaviness falls away and is replaced with your quiet, powerful peace.

Chaos to Peace :)

I have had a very interesting week so far. This was the first week that we had the new kids coming and they are super cute! It has been nice getting to know them and having them get used to me. I can feed them now without them getting upset and put them down for naps without tantrums. This is nice :) On Thursday I actually spoke in German with the older man I had so wanted to have a chance to talk with again. I have seen him almost every day and wave at him and smile no matter how far away he is. It's funny but I felt a connection with this man. I wonder how his life was, if he was ever married and if so if his wife passed away or if she is still alive. I only ever see him with his little white dog and I don't know...there is a sadness I feel about him. Strange to me how I can feel something for someone I don't know. Anyways, so I was walking to work and he was walking his dog back to his home. I smiled like normal and started to say "Guten Tag" like normal when all of a sudden he starts speaking to me! The ironic part is the night before, i had started a blog about how I cant wait until I can speak to him in German! I didn't post it because I had a feeling like it was unfinished. So he starts speaking to me and I have no idea what he is saying. So, by the grace of God I am able to pull up all the German knowledge I have and tell him (in German) that I am from America and am learning German but only understand a little bit now. I told him my name and asked his. I feel funny about putting his name on here for now so lets call him Joe, which is so obviously NOT a German name huh? Anyways, so Joe starts talking again and I tell you I have NO idea what he is saying but all of a sudden it comes to me and I just know he is asking about work. So i tell him I take care of children. He then tells me I speak good German and I say thank you and that's it! We walked our separate ways and I had a smile the size of Texas on my face :) I was so encouraged!

So, it was a normal day and I stayed at Claudia's for dinner because we were going to the store after. By the time we were done at the store, my eye wouldn't stop watering and was feeling like I had something stuck in it. I get home and take out my contacts only to have it become even worse. I Washed my eye out with some eyewash and thought I would go to sleep to see if its better in the morning. Well, sleep did not come. It was so painful that I couldn't sleep. I had a small glass of wine as it usually makes me sleepy and that did nothing. I took nyquil which knocks me out and that did nothing. I ended up calling my parents at 1am because I started to get a little anxious. My left eye just kept watering and burning. They prayed for me and I tried to go back to sleep...well I got one hour of sleep and then decided I needed to go to the hospital. The cool thing is that here there is a hospital just for eyes and it happens to be around the corner from my house :) My Aunt had to walk with me as my eye was swollen shut and I couldn't really see that well. I went in thinking it was just a scratch or a hair and it turned out to be a severe infection with the possibility of me losing my cornea if it was not treated immediately. I was upset but the funny thing is I never got scared. I knew that it would work out and I felt this was an attack on my joy as I had just had such an amazing day. I was not letting this take it away!

I went today to the hospital for another checkup and the doctor was quite impressed. She said that there was a lot of improvement and it looked great. I told her I have a lot of people praying for me (you know...this stuff just comes out...it's like I don't have a filter...which I guess is a good thing because if you think to much before you want to say something, chances are you wont say it...lol) and then I was like oh! I hope I didn't offend her! Well, you know she said "Tell them to keep praying because it's working!". I almost fell out of my chair! Lol! Awesome :) So I have another appointment on Thursday and will be making even more progress by then, I just know it!

German lessons are going well and I am making good progress but that is for another blog another day :) I try so hard to make these blogs short but it just doesn't happen. Thanks to everyone who has the patience to read them! I am glad that my learning lessons are able to minister to people :)