Special Surprise on Christmas Eve

Christmas was extraordinarily special this year for us thanks to an unexpected surprise my romantic husband had for us.

Unexpectedly once again Eric re-proposed to me on Christmas Eve and said he wanted us to renew our wedding vows. With only us in a private ceremony at home, we prayed together and with tears streaming down both of our faces, we reread our original wedding vows to one another making a few changes by adding more promises to them. We then exchanged our wedding bands again. (photo of mine is below). We both agreed it was a very special time for us.



It's memorable moments like this that made the holidays this year even more memorable. A time for new beginnings. And most importantly remembering what the real meaning of Christmas is, and celebrating Jesus's birth.

We have been through so many personal trials this past year and with God's help, we’re determined this year is going to be our very best in our lives and in our marriage. It was exactly what we needed, and I am so happy Eric thought of this idea.

We spent a wonderful Christmas Day with my whole family. The food, family fellowship, and the laughter from playing board games were something I will cherish forever. We missed being with Eric's son's and their families who live in PA, otherwise our holiday would have been perfect if we had all been able to be together. But thankfully we were able to talk by phone with them.

Fast forwarding to today, so far it’s been four days into the New Year, and I can not imagine what obstacles we’re going to overcome together this year and the amazing adventures we are going to have. I just know we'll do it with God's help.

I truly believe that we’re going to get the miracle of Eric receiving a liver transplant in 2010 that we’ve been praying for. We’re holding on to our faith, and believing this is really going to happen soon.

Eric's surgeon has requested that he lose 50 lbs, and so far he’s lost over 25lbs in just a few short weeks. We’ve been going to the fitness center working out on the treadmill whenever Eric is able. It feels good to get back into the habit of exercising again, and we’re both looking forward to being able to play golf again, going canoeing, and doing all the things that we’ve missed and want to learn how to do together.

Yeah, 2010 is going to be our best year ever. We have faith!

Opened Doors

To try to sum up the recent events, our lives have been a roller coaster ride these past few months. We know for certain that God works in mysterious ways. He’s opened doors that only He could have for us. We are living proof of this.

Eric’s health has steadily been getting worse over time and his physicians told us in January 2009 they believed because of the stage of his disease he had approximately 18 months left to live and the clock was ticking.

We knew that at our hospital in Philadelphia, Pa there were over 500 patients on their transplant list and over 250 patients with Eric’s O+ blood type ahead of him. And his specialist explained they would never be able to get him a transplant in time, and for us to consider options of other hospitals as they did less than 100 transplants a year.

I was not going to give up on my husband’s life that easily. We prayed about it asking God for guidance and to show us what to do. We were clueless how to do this. There were so many questions that we were concerned about, like what would we do with our home, Eric’s work, our children, and grandsons who lived nearby.

After discussing it I contacted Aetna and found other transplant hospitals they were contracted with and I began my intense homework of delving into each transplant center’s statistics, reputations, and best patient survival rates.

It was during this research I found out about the Methodist University Hospital Transplant Institute in Memphis. I found it was nationally recognized for its outstanding work and was listed as a center of excellence with Aetna. Once again I started making numerous phone calls to our insurance company, the doctors, and finance department and made the arrangements for Eric to be evaluated in Memphis.




If this hospital was good enough for Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs then it would be good enough for us. So I made an appointment for Eric to be seen by Steve Job's surgeon.

Immediately his current specialist helped by staying on the phone all day making phone calls personally. We made the 10 day trip down to Memphis to meet with the specialist and after tons of tests each day, the doctors gave us the thumbs up that they could help. This was sweet music to our ears, such a huge blessing!

His physician in PA has since transferred Eric's health care to the transplant center in Memphis where we’re expecting for him to get listed soon for a liver transplant hopefully within the next few months if all goes well. His MELD score (blood tests) have took a huge jump in the past two weeks, and this isn’t good news. It is good in the one sense that it moves him higher up the transplant list, --- but it also means he’s getting worse. Time will only tell. But we have faith.

Once again God has answered prayers, and opened a lot of doors for us that we could not have done on our own. Within one months time Eric has officially retired, we have put our home on the market for sale and had numerous friends and family helped us packed up our belongings, rented a 26’ moving truck and moved 1,000 miles way on Thanksgiving Day from Pennsylvania to Mississippi. The best part is that we’re now living only three short hours away from my whole family instead of 18 long hours away and can see them often.

Moving was bittersweet, saying many tearful goodbyes to all of our friends, church family, and leaving our other family members was heart wrenching, especially to leave our two grandsons five-year old Zachary and six -month old Owen. That broke our hearts leaving those two boys.

There have been so many highs and lows we’ve experienced this past year, and it’s brought us closer together and we are celebrating every day we are given. We have so much to be thankful for, and I hope you had a Happy Thanksgiving.

The Sweetest Gift

If someone asked you, what was one of the kindest, most thoughtful things that anyone has ever done for you that you have never forgotten, what would come to your mind?

A memory of this came to me as I was going through the contents a box of items I had stored away, I began reminiscing through the memories years ago, and a treasured reminder came back to me.

As a timid child, in the first grade my teacher was Mrs. Nicholson. She made it a point to assign each of her student's seats in the classroom alphabetically. My seat was the last one on the last row in the very back of the class, and her rule was there would be no changing of seats.

Our art and coloring activities time were immediately after lunch each day. Mrs. Nicholson would call us forward, row-by-row one at a time to select our crayons of choice from the large plastic gallon ice cream bucket that served as a communal crayon container. Because of the appointed seating arrangements, I was always almost the last child to choose mine.

Imagine the disappointment day after day when I selected my crayons knowing those of us who were the last in line only got the leftover broken crayons, while those who went before us always got the better ones. It hardly seemed fair and I felt deprived. I asked our teacher if she would consider reversing this order to let the last row go first occasionally but she held steadfast to her strict way of doing things, and wouldn't budge at my suggestion.

I soon began disliking coloring class because I never got my favorite colors, which were shades of midnight blue or navy blue. The only blue crayons I ever got lucky enough to pick out were short nubs, broken ones with the paper peeled off them. I managed to pick out the best I could of any leftovers blue ones. Blue was my favorite color back then, and still is today.



About thirty-five years later I received an unexpected package in the mail and as I began to unwrap it I was surprised to find huge boxes of crayons-- hundreds of crayons. I thought to myself, what will I ever do with all of these crayons. It was when I opened up the individual boxes the tears flooded my eyes, inside of each box revealed only blue crayons -- not another color -- only beautiful, brand new, never used perfect blue crayons with the wrappers still intact.

How my heart sang at 41 years old to receive this thoughtful gift, and read the touching letter that was enclosed. Surely no one else in the world could ever relate to this special gift.

Years earlier, I had told my then fiancé about the story about me disliking to color in elementary school, and he remembered this and took it upon himself to make sure I would never have to use another ugly broken blue crayon ever again. My sweet Eric went out of his way to buy up tons of crayons and hand pick out all of the blue ones to give to me.

When I asked him what he did with all of the other crayons, he laughed and replied, "I gave them to a daycare center, and apologized because there were no blue crayons in the boxes".


That was one of the sweetest, most romantic things anyone has ever done for me. I will cherish his kindness forever. Even today, when we take our grandson with us out to eat at restaurants and Zachary is given crayons and paper to play with while waiting for our food, Eric sometimes will reserve the pretty blue crayons just for me to save.

I can never look at another blue crayons again without remembering this precious memory of all those beautiful new blue colors my wonderful husband gave to me many years ago.

Singing with Delirious

My life as of lately has been somewhat chaotic, and filled with multiple hurdles to overcome. I haven’t wanted to chronicle all of the tremendous negative emotions I have been experiencing, instead I chose not to write anything.

I won’t bore you with details of the past few weeks suffice to say it’s been filled with doctor appointments, my extended 8-day hospital stay, and numerous obstacles with the Transplant center instead I want to focus on how good God is and the more positive things that have happened.

Eric and I were blessed to go to a Christian Conference again, and we thoroughly enjoyed the messages taught. We left with our souls refreshed, and with our faith increased. Even through all of our trials, we both know that God is Sovereign and will see us through this.


We sang along with the Christian praise and worship group Delirious? with lead singer Martin Smith. This group is incredible. We were blessed to be sitting on the sixth row, and was very close to the stage. It was so exciting. This was the eighth time we've seen them.

Over the past few weeks Eric has had his share of ups and downs, and when he felt up to it, he has been busy working on his novel. I can’t wait to read his final draft, and see it finally published. It’s quite interesting.

Now that our summer is winding down Autumn will soon be upon us and we will be enjoying the beautiful colors of the fall foliage and all the many daily blessings we receive.

Battlefield of the Mind

A recent event caused me to take a step back and re-evaluate things as I had perceived them. My thoughts had been mentally distorted about a particular matter. I was negatively thinking with my emotions about a burden and wasn’t able to be open-minded.

It’s so easy to lose yourself to cynical thoughts and have poor perception about things when your life is filled with chaos, anxiety and a lot of uncertainty. Yet, as a Christian, I know that I should leave all my burdens in God’s hands. When will I ever learn God sees the big picture, and that His timing is always perfect?

It’s when I am feeling helpless in the middle of a trial and facing difficult situations that I tend to ask, "Why Lord? Why are You allowing this to happen?" God doesn’t mind me questioning, He understands my fears.

It’s fair to say I should not be worrying about the future, but rather focusing more on the present. Regardless of the situation, I have repeatedly seen God's gracious, protecting, and loving hand working in each and every circumstance I have encountered in my life. He isn’t going to change today. He remains the same, and will always be there for me, I can depend on Him. God has demonstrated to me over and over again that His way is the best way, even though I can’t always see it.

I had been praying about this particular issue when I got a gentle reminder from God revealing His truth to me, opening my eyes. He knows what is best for us, and immediately upon acknowledging His truths, I felt a shift in my attitude and my thoughts completely changed and I was able to see things clearer and felt a calming peace about my burden.

This is the times that I can tell I am growing in my spiritual walk, this reminds me that I need to be constantly re-evaluating things in my life, and I pray I never stop doing this.

1 Peter 5:7 Casting all your care upon Him, for He cares for you.

Odd things happening at home

No much to report today, other than there is never a dull moment around our home -- only a dull looking flower bed now.



We live in a suburban area that is inundated with groundhogs and Whitetail deer and it’s not uncommon to see them in walking through our yard late in the evenings year round, more especially in the wintertime.

Never have we experienced a problem with either of them until recently. I have found evidence of hoof marks inside my now flowerless flower bed. The deer have obviously visited our yard during the night and had a feast from all of my flowers as a midnight snack.



All of my beautiful stargazer lilies blooms are now gone, nibbled up, with only stems remaining. I salvaged the last few blooms and put them in a vase on my table so that we could get a little enjoyment out of them. Other foliage has been torn and my azalea blooms and buds stripped, gnawed and sampled.





The deer completely ignored the green plants that I wasn’t fond of, leaving everything appearing as if it was all shrubs and weeds now.



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Something strange happened the other night. My son Adam was over for dinner, and as he was helping me set the table with the dinnerware, he also lit a candle as he knows we sometimes enjoy having candlelight with dinner.

Within minutes the three of us were eating and sharing conversation, when unexpectedly the overhead light went out leaving us with a dim flame produced by the burning candle. Our first thoughts were that the power was going out, but then we noticed the lights over the island bar a few feet away were still on.

Within two minutes the lights came back on again. We were all intrigued by this and discussed how odd that only one set of the light fixtures in the kitchen went out and then... it happened a second time.

This time we were laughing at how eerie this was. Of all the lights in the house that were on at that particular time, the only one to go off was the one that was above our heads.

Do you ever have problems with animals in your yard, or strange things happening in your home?

My Birthday

It seems the older we get our birthdays tend to come around much quicker than when we were young children and we were looking forward to them. I feel blessed to have been given another year. I was never one who needed a big birthday party to celebrate, instead I prefer the quieter times doing things with my loved ones to make my day to feel special.

Eric has made sure that my birthday has been a fun day for me. The day started out with phone calls with birthday wishes from several family members, and friends. Later my oldest son, Adam and Eric took me out to lunch where we all stuffed ourselves, and I enjoyed a slice of delicious chocolate cake.

After returning home to open my cards and gifts of a pretty bracelet, a nice wall plaque, and two books, Eric and I spent the whole day at two places that we love to visit. The Chester waterfront is located underneath the Commodore Barry Bridge and the other is Bartram’s Covered Bridge. Coincidentally on the day we got engaged we visited both of these places, so there are lots of great memories for us at these places.







The scene of the waterfront is now changing as a new Major League Soccer stadium for both the men and women’s teams is being built on the grounds and much of the former park area and many of the trees have now been removed. The existing boat landing, short boardwalk and fishing pier and places to picnic will remain. We enjoyed strolling along the waterfront spending time on the pier watching the numerous boats go by and children playing.



Bartram’s Covered Bridge is another very special place to us for several reasons mostly because that is where Eric proposed during a romantic summer picnic. This place is hidden off the main path, and it's a picturesque setting complete with an uninterrupted creek flowing underneath the bridge that travels downstream for miles. We have spent many hours talking while having picnics and skipping rocks across the brook while making plans for our future. We love this place so much we have a photo of it above our fireplace mantel.



I think all couples have “their own special place” they like to call theirs and visit frequently. Where are some of your special places?



Doing the simplest things with those I love at memorable places make the best memories on special days for me. I am already looking forward to turning 50 next year.