I’ve not shared this yet, but those who know my family personally will already know that my precious brother-in-law, Dave, has recently been diagnosed with renal cell carcinoma. In addition to this diagnosis, he is having irregular heart beats which may be caused from the tumor in his kidney. He could be the entire focus of my “Generosity” post this week, but, there’s something Greater to share.
As one of three girls in our family, Dave is like a brother that I never had. He has been married to my sister, Kristie, for 25 years and in all that time, we have never had a cross word (even though we cheer for rival football teams ;). He is a devoted father and husband in ways that include working out-of-state to provide for his children, sacrificially caring for my sister when she went through her own fight against cancer and lovingly helping his mother care for his aging father.
With my extended family, he has offered advice and shelter whenever it was needed, helped my parents when they need it and loves us all unconditionally (and that is quite a task in itself). But, what is so super fantastic about Dave is that in addition to being a loving family man, he also loves and adores his Creator and is one of the most fun people you will ever have the pleasure of spending time with.
Yes, he is almost perfect. Mr. Cozi and Jesus have him beat by a wee bit.
Suffice it to say that he is a blessing to our family. When we received the news of his cancer, he nonchalantly told me that, “this is just part of life. We’ll do what we need to do to fight this thing.” And with that, he has confidently taken the role of patient with his doctors and his wife, who is also a nurse. The generosity of the week, though, happened on Monday night into Tuesday morning of this week. Here is the text that my sister, Kellie and I received from Kristie on Tuesday morning:
I have to tell y’all this because our God is so sweet. Last night we were anxious about going to sleep because Dave’s heart rate has been dropping in the night and I feel like I have to be watching him all the time. I was so tired. I knew it was going to be really hard. But right before we laid down we prayed and the Lord reminded me that He never sleeps nor slumbers and that He was always watching, even when I can’t! How sweet is our God who never takes His eyes off of us! We both rested well and when I woke up this morning the very first thing that came to my mind was “you can trust Me.” I can trust our Father with Dave. He is Faithful! My heart has joy this morning!
And I have to tell you the rest!!!!!! Omgoodness He is so sweet!!!!! As I read the verse this morning Psalms 121: 1-4 it says:
1 I lift up my eyes to the mountains
where does my help come from?
2 My help comes from the Lord,
the Maker of heaven and earth.
3 He will not let your foot slip—
he who keeps you will not slumber;
4 indeed, he who watches over Israel
will neither slumber nor sleep.
Vs3..”He who keeps you will not slumber” as I read this I thought what do You mean Lord by “keeps” so the scripture reference for that word was this….. OMGoodness it’s so awesome!!!!! Here it is..
Psalms 41:2-3
” The Lord will protect him, and keep him alive; And he shall be called blessed upon the earth; And do not give him over to the desire of his enemies. The Lord will sustain him upon his sickbed; In his illness, Thou dost restore him to health.”
Wow that’s how our God keeps us!!!!!!
I was writing this post about him being a blessing in our family, as she was reading that verse on Tuesday morning. Now how is that for generosity? Our God is an Awesome God and is generous to us in our sleep.
Rest in Him. There is true joy in the morning.