Happy Birthday!

Today is the 6 month anniversary of my PTE surgery!!!  It feels like a new kind of birthday to celebrate when I got my life back afresh!  I continue to feel great and grateful for all that God has done for me!  I was reading in 2 Corinthians yesterday and was amazed at these words in chapter 1.  I had tears in my eyes - not of sadness, but of joy!  Joy that I am on the other side and joy that I have been rescued!  Thank you all for sharing in my suffering and now sharing in my joy!  If I could write with the skill and inspiration of Paul, I would like to say something like this...

2 Corinthians 1:6-11 (The Message Paraphrase)
When we suffer for Jesus, it works out for your healing and salvation. If we are treated well, given a helping hand and encouraging word, that also works to your benefit, spurring you on, face forward, unflinching. Your hard times are also our hard times. When we see that you're just as willing to endure the hard times as to enjoy the good times, we know you're going to make it, no doubt about it.

We don't want you in the dark, friends, about how hard it was when all this came down on us in Asia province. It was so bad we didn't think we were going to make it. We felt like we'd been sent to death row, that it was all over for us. As it turned out, it was the best thing that could have happened. Instead of trusting in our own strength or wits to get out of it, we were forced to trust God totally—not a bad idea since he's the God who raises the dead! And he did it, rescued us from certain doom. And he'll do it again, rescuing us as many times as we need rescuing. You and your prayers are part of the rescue operation—I don't want you in the dark about that either. I can see your faces even now, lifted in praise for God's deliverance of us, a rescue in which your prayers played such a crucial part.