Reality Check with Ann Downing...

This week, Karissa, who most of you know works with me, and Hannah, a great young friend, decided I was to have a day of "birthday celebration"... a WHOLE DAY! I knew I was to be picked up at my house and taken "somewhere" for the day.  What I didn't know was that I would wake up, walk out of my bedroom door to a sea of all colors of balloons all the way from my bedroom door to the kitchen where there was a red carpet with additional mylar balloons identifying my 70th.  Those balloons were weighted down with little glass (acrylic) slippers... some even having little stones on the toe.  AND, my desk chair was stationed at the end of the red carpet with a "queen's crown" balloon attached. We left the house with Karissa driving.  I only knew we were picking up Hannah and driving somewhere!  We collected Hannah; she had created a movie for me on her laptop...hilarious and sweet!!!!  Then, off to Opryland Hotel for what I was to learn would be my ...

I have a chatroom on my website.  Each evening, those who wish to come for about 45 minutes of visiting and praying show up as they can.  I'm grateful that I can be there most evenings. There's nothing magical about a chatroom full of people who pray together, but then, maybe there is. I'd like to think of it as "memorable" rather than "magical," memorable because, once again, it proves that those who pray together stay together.  Lifetime friendships have formed in that chatroom...some while praying, some while sharing a silly story of the day's happenings, some asking for info, some just "small talking" about the weather, our favorite football team, etc., or perhaps admitting to something ridiculous that we, in our humanity, did that day. Praying is always good, but I'm of the persuasion that praying with those you know, have shared a load of "life stuff" with, and listened to as they shared a special testimony of answer...

I have all kinds of friends on all kinds of levels.  I see them as serving different purposes... believing that God put them in my life for different reasons and different seasons.  Likewise, I am in theirs for a reason, and, perhaps, for only a season. I believe God did some of His best creative work when He created friendship.  Not just so we can have somebody to refer to as "my friend"... and if we want to "gain some points," so to speak, we refer to them as my "long-time friend"... and of course all of that is relative.  I may have known someone for a year and feel like I've known them all my life.  I'm thinking right now of someone I've only known, really known, for a few months, and yet, I honestly consider them a "dear friend." Of course, there are folks with whom I've been acquainted most of my life... am tickled to see them, hope to see them again, but I can honestly say that life's circumstances haven't calle...

I admit, I'm probably considered a "panicker."  Paul used to warn everybody, "if you have bad news for Ann, don't spill it all at once, just ease into it a little at a time." That sounds quite funny to me now, in a way, because as the years have passed, I have learned a little more about God's way of handling "not so good news."  But, here I am confessing that I can go into full-blown panic within the first 30 seconds or so after hearing what my brain processes as "the end of the world." Now, I know (or hope) you aren't taking me literally, but I also pretty well know that not many of us handle that "wham bam" news as we should.  We allow it to knock us off our feet before we even begin to start processing the situatuion or remembering which Scripture speaks to the circumstances.  Does that mean we have no faith in God?  I really don't think so.  If He is ineed a loving Abba Father, He sounds like He is someone w...