The Land of Ozz

My wife and I both felt led to attend church on Sunday even though we both were pretty exhausted from the events surrounding our son Caden’s hospitalization this past week. Caden had been out of the hospital less than 24 hours. We took turns attending church since we did think it would be wise to take Caden. I took Riley and attended the 9:30 service at Seacoast Summerville. I cut out before the last song and rushed home so that Sherry could make it to the 11:15 service. Our attendance was well rewarded with a message from Pastor Greg that was by a video he found on YouTube about a Lion, a crocodile, and a herd of water buffalo. You need to go over to Pastor Greg’s blog to get a look at the video and then listen to the awesome message that he delivered by downloading a free audio or video copy of week five from the antidote series at Seacoastresources.org. The message is packed with Biblical truths as well as some pretty detailed facts about how Seacoast Church operates being a non-denominational church.

After watching the video and/or listen to the message, you might find a close comparison between our little family and the baby water buffalo. We have found ourselves getting attacked from many sides during this past week. If you were to look at our family over the past several weeks prior to Caden’s surgery then I suspect you would have a noticeable look of surprise on your face. The things I wrote about concerning Caden’s health this past week were obviously the most important, but by far not the only things we have been facing.

For instance, in the past month or so we have had many other attacks including a few financial ones. When have been clipping along on a tight single income budget for some time now and a few financial attacks are almost expected from time to time.  We try to stay prepared with an emergency fund, but that was pretty much wiped out recently.  Our clothes dryer went out, our microwave bit the dust, and our refrigerator stopped cooling twice within a two week period. The refrigerator incidents spoiled a considerable amount of food on both occasions. It was only about a month before all of this that our central air conditioning system stopped working. Don’t forget to factor in how Sherry must have felt being 7 months pregnant with no A/C when we are used to running the house at about 72 degrees in the summer. These repairs and replacements have reached into the thousands of dollars. Never mind the fact that we have been trying to scrape together some extra cash to prepare for the newest addition to our family who will be born in August. These things plus many others that I am not at liberty to disclose along with the build up of emotions related to Caden’s surgery and hospitalization resulted in a fresh batch of stress for everyone in our household.

I feel like we have played the part of the baby water buffalo in the YouTube video. The praying readers of this blog as well as all of the names listed in my Thanks to all post on Caden’s Page, and countless others around the world who have been praying have been playing the role of the water buffalo herd. These folks have fought for us as the agents of the enemy (financial issues, bleeding, fever, and fear) have crept in like the lions and crocodiles trying and devour our little family. Our strong support system within the body of Christ continues to help protect us against attacks like the herd of water buffaloes came to the rescue of the baby water buffalo.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 2nd, 2007 at 2:21 am and is filed under Faith, Family. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.