My Mom

Today is my mother's birthday. She has been gone a little over 8 years and I still miss her terribly. Today I was sad thinking about her and that she did not get to see the answer to her prayers - our Annalynn. I know she prayed for a child for me for many years. She prayed for us faithfully and it was so hard when she died to know that she would not be here to pray for us any longer! A couple years ago I was reading the book "Prayer" by E.M. Bounds - these words comforted me so much -

"The most important lesson we can learn is how to pray. Indeed, we must pray so that our prayers take hold of God. The man who has done the most and the best praying is the most immortal, because prayers do not die. Perhaps the lips that uttered them are closed in death, or the heart that felt them may have ceased to beat, but the prayers live before God, and God's heart is set on them. Prayers outlive the lives of those who uttered them - outlive a generation, outlive an age, outlive a world.

Prayer is not fitful, short-lived thing. It is no voice crying unheard and unheeded in the silence. It is a voice that goes into God's ear, and it lives as long as God's ear is open to holy pleas, as long as God's heart is alive to holy things."

I know that the prayers she prayed for my child were answered when God put the thought and plan in our hearts to adopt Annalynn!!! If she were here today I know that her heart would have been so happy to welcome our darling girl home and welcome her into her heart and home!

Thank you, mom, for being such a faithful person in our lives - I miss you and pray that I can be the mother to Annalynn that you were to me!!!

The first picture below is from 1964 - we were just home from Africa and the church had fixed a house up for us. The second picture was more recent - mom admiring her clematis.