What Happened to the Country I Love

I never thought I'd see the day when there's so much animosity toward God, the country and Christianity.  I grew up at a time when we started each school day by standing, with our hands over our hearts, and saying the Pledge of Allegiance followed by a short prayer.  We proudly sang God Bless America and other patriotic songs in music class.  Patriotism was seen as a good thing.

Things are much different today.  Take a look at some of the headlines in the news recently:

• NFL players 'take a knee' during the singing of the National Anthem before games.
• Protests in the streets to call for removal of Confederate statues and monuments.
• School districts vote to remove "Robert E. Lee" from the names of schools.
• Nationwide protests and violence against police officers.
•  Ten Commandment monuments vandalized and removed from public buildings.
• Replace Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples Day.

It's not only happening in Washington D.C. and big cities.  It's right here at home, too.  In Amarillo, there's a petition to remove a statue of Robert E. Lee from a city park, and in Borger this week, American flags put out for Columbus Day were stolen and burned.  Isn't anything sacred anymore?

America is still the greatest nation on God's earth.  Baseball, hot dogs, apple pie and Chevrolet are still pieces of Americana, but how long will it be before they come under attack too?

I'm proud to be an American, and I will continue to show my patriotism!  May God bless America!

The Imponderables

There are some things I will never understand.  There are some things I wasn't meant to understand.  Why am I here?  Why was I born with this disability?  Why hasn't God healed me?

There are no easy answers.  We can read and study the Bible and still never understand everything that happens in our lives or why God allows certain things to happen to us. God usually doesn't give us answers to life's difficult questions. They're called the imponderables, and we all have them.

I heard a minister on the radio say it's always God's will for us to be healed.  He went so far as to say Christians should never get sick in the first place.  He believes we should live a good long life — at least 100 years — and then God will just take us to heaven.

In an ideal world, that might be possible, but we live in reality.  There are times in all our lives when things go wrong for reasons we may never understand.

I'm sure this minister doesn't mean to belittle those who are sick or disabled. I think he's really trying to help people when he says God never says "no" to healing and that people don't have to live with sickness and disease.  But we are all touched at some level by personal tragedies, whether it's cancer, heart disease, cerebral palsy, Down syndrome or a million other things that cause us to ask “Why would God let this to happen to me?"

I wrote to that minister I heard on the radio and asked if he believes God sometimes allows us to have ailments/sickness so His purposes can be accomplished.  I told him  I knew that God created me and that He must have a purpose for it.  If he didn't have a purpose for it, why would God allow me to be born with this disability?  He could've prevented it or he could heal me. 

The radio minister replied to my e-mail.  He said it is not God's plan for anybody to have physical imperfections.  He wrote, "God created you, but there may have been some genetic flaw in the genes, or something, that caused the cerebral palsy."

I know God didn't cause me to have cerebral palsy, but it didn't take him by surprise either.  Psalm 139:13 says, "You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body and knit me together in my mother’s womb....You saw me before I was born. Every day of my life was recorded in your book. Every moment was laid out before a single day had passed."

God knew I would be born with cerebral palsy.  I believe He planned the days of my life with that in mind.   If He didn't at least take it into account, wouldn't that mean His perfect plan for my life was thwarted before I was even born?  It doesn't make sense to me.

That's what led me to Dr. James Dobson's book, "When God Doesn't Make Sense."  Dobson says it's about keeping the faith when things don't seem to make sense.  Proverbs 3:5 says, "Trust in the Lord with all your heart; do not depend on your own understanding." 

There are some things we cannot comprehend and may never understand — at least not in this life.  I thought my life was over when I had to move into a nursing home when I was only 45 years old.  I had lost partial use of one of my arms.  What good am I when I'm stuck in this place?  I wondered that many times.  I couldn't type on the computer like I'm doing here.  I couldn't even lift my water glass to get a drink.  I felt completely helpless.

I had to learn how to literally live by faith and not by sight.  I couldn't go on my feelings.  I had to stretch my faith.

"What makes faith faith is that when we don’t understand what God is up to, we still trust Him," Dobson wrote in his book. "If you have to see it to believe it, it is not true faith."

I had to learn to trust God even if things didn't make sense at the time.  I had to stop trying to figure things out and let God be God, knowing that while His ways may be different than ours, God is just and His timing is always perfect.

I truly believe that. I know God must have a purpose for me the way I am.  Dr. Dobson used Moses as an example in this excerpt from his book:

When God called him, Moses complained that he lacked eloquence for the task — “I am slow of speech and tongue” (Exodus 4:10) — yet the Lord did not offer to heal that infirmity.... Why wouldn’t He eliminate this troublesome speech impediment? He certainly had the power to do so..... As I’ve said before, there are times when God doesn’t make sense. We can assume that the Lord didn’t heal Moses’ “slowness of tongue” because Moses, like Paul, was learning that his strength was made perfect in weakness.

I'd never thought about Moses' life that way.  If God could use Moses with his affliction, He can use us with all our limitations.  We just have to be willing to let Him use us with all our weaknesses.   

Dobson says we must never forget that He is God.  He wants us to believe and trust in Him despite the things we don’t understand.  God has plans and purposes to which we are not privy.  That doesn't mean that death, sickness and hardships are really positives in disguise. But it reminds us that God has promised to take these things and bring good from them.  Romans 8:28 says, "And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose."
Dobson also says we must not let go of our faith.  "Don’t demand explanations. Don’t lean on your ability to understand. Don’t lose your faith. But do choose to trust Him by the exercise of the will He has placed within you," Dobson wrote.

I've concluded from all this that it's all about faith and trust.  I have to have the faith that God will heal me in His timing, but I have to trust Him enough to know His plans for my life are perfect.

Dr. Dobson summed it up this way: "Accept the circumstances as they are presented to you. Expect periods of hardship to occur, and don’t be dismayed when they arrive. Lean into the pain when your time to suffer comes around, knowing that God will use the difficulty for His purposes — and, indeed, for our own good."

Trump's Trouble

What a mess!  After only four months in office, President Trump is the target of an investigation by a special counsel.  And for what?  Liberals like Up-Chuck Schumer and Dianne Frankenstein have accused him of everything from collusion to obstruction of justice.  They will stop at nothing to see that Trump is impeached.

Trump has good intentions.  He wants to create new jobs, fix our broken health care system and secure the border.  Those are admirable goals, but the Democrats are determined to block him at every turn.  It's about more than just trying to stop his agenda, though.  It's become a personal vendetta.  They want to bring Trump down.
I'll admit Trump is far from a perfect president.  He's made some mistakes, and he's bound to make more.  He's not a seasoned politician, but I believe Donald Trump truly loves this country and wants to make it better.

Democrats won't even give him a chance.  They've attacked every decision he's made.  Even when he fired FBI Director James Comey, whom the liberals blamed for Hillary losing the election, Democrats are trying to make it into a scandal.

The Dems are grasping at straws by accusing Trump of obstructing justice for telling Comey he hoped he would let the Flynn investigation go.  What's wrong with saying he hopes he will let this go?  That's like me telling that officer "I hope you won't give me a ticket."  Unless Trump offered Comey a bribe to halt the investigation, that's hardly obstruction of justice.

It's time to stop all this partisan fighting and start working together for the good of the country.

What a mess!

Precious Memories

When Mom passed away, someone gave me some really good advice.  He told me "Forget the regrets; Remember the good times."  I want to share a few of the good times Mom and I had together.

Mom and I took several road trips together.  Dad didn't like to travel much, so he'd stay home while Mom and I would take our little adventures.  Once, we took a bus tour into New Mexico and Colorado to see the beautiful fall foliage.  That was a fun trip.  We also made trips to Santa Fe, N.M.; the Grand Canyon; and Branson, Mo.  I remember one time we went to Branson, and my aunt Phyllis was with us.  We came out of a music show one evening, and Mom was pushing me in the wheelchair.  It was a huge parking lot, and part of it was on a hill.  As she pushed me, the wheelchair started rolling faster and faster and faster!  I looked back, and Mom was literally running to keep the chair from getting away from her.  Phyllis and I were both laughing.  It's a wonder the chair didn't overturn with me in it.  I didn't know Mom could run that fast, but she sure did that night.

Another memorable trip was a cruise to the Bahamas.  I'd always wanted to go on a K-Love Christian music cruise.  This took a little more convincing.  Mom wasn't too sure about getting on a ship in the middle of the ocean.  "Oh, I'll need to think about this for a while," she told me.  I said OK, but I knew the cruise would sell out fast so I had secretly sent in a deposit to save a space.  I finally convinced her to go, telling her we needed to do it while we were both still able to travel.  I'm so glad we did it.  It was a once-in-a-lifetime vacation.

If you ever saw my mom out somewhere, you surely noticed her trademark headscarf.  She wore it everywhere.  She'd tie it on even if there was only a hint of a breeze, which in the Panhandle is all the time.  While we were on the K-Love cruise, we were heading to the outdoor deck for breakfast one morning, and Mom tied on her headscarf.  I turned around and told her "Take that thing off!"  She didn't want to, but she did.  The scarf mysteriously disappeared for the rest of the cruise.  I was accused of throwing it overboard, but we all know I would never do something like that.

We weren't sure if Mom would need her headscarf when she got to heaven, but just to be sure we put one in her hand before the funeral.

Mom was always my chief publicist / promoter.  When my book came out, I didn't have a distributor.  I didn't need one.  I had Mom.  When she'd meet up with someone, she would talk to them, then she'd say, "Did you know Chris has written a book?"  I don't know how many books she sold for me.  People probably got tired of hearing her talk about me, but that was my mom.

Everyone knows that Mom loved to talk.  She would talk to complete strangers.  She would usually end by saying "I just want to tell you one more thing."  So here's just one more thing about Mom: People say she spoiled me, and I guess she did.  I loved every minute of it, and that's just one of the reasons I loved her so much!

Accepting The Unexpected

This journey through life is full of unpredictable twists and turns, and my life just took one of those unexpected turns.  I always knew that day would come, but I didn't expect it so soon.  No one did.

We lost my dear mama on March 23.  She passed away peaceably after a month-long struggle.  She had fallen in her house on Valentine's Day.  It was actually in the early morning hours of Feb. 15 when she passed out in the kitchen and fell.  When she came to, she found two paramedics standing over her.  She asked how they got in her kitchen!  Thank God her life alert system notified authorities when she fell.

Mom had a broken hip and a badly broken shoulder.  She underwent a five-hour surgery the next day to put rods in her leg and completely replace her shoulder.  Then the long recovery process began.

She was in pain.  A lot of pain.  Mom was moved from the hospital to the Pampa Nursing Center, which is where I also live.  Our rooms were across the hall from each other, and Mom began her physical therapy.

Mom tried to do the exercises, but she was just in so much pain.  The pain medicine made her sleepy and confused.  She did NOT like going to therapy.  We nearly had to force her to eat.  She insisted that she wasn't hungry.  She tried to eat and do the therapy, but I guess you could say her heart just wasn't into it. 

I could see Mom was tired.  She was 81 years old, and she had spent nearly 50 years of her life devoted to taking care of me.  I remember Mom saying she hoped she'd be here for me as long as I needed her.  During the four weeks that she was here at the nursing home, she was able to see how the nurses and aides took care of me and that I was in good hands.  Besides the nursing staff, I had Karen and my aunts and cousins to watch out for me.  I think when she saw for herself that I would be taken care of, she decided it would be all right to go on ahead to heaven. 

In her last few days here, Mom had a lot of anxiety, still struggling and worrying about those of us she'd leave behind.  Finally, her heart of gold just gave out.  They called it broken heart syndrome.   It's a real condition and is basically a temporary heart condition that's often brought on by stressful situations or anxiety.

Mom broke a lot of our hearts when she left because she was so loved by many.  But while her heart condition was fatal, our hearts will recover physically but emotionally we will always miss her.

It all happened so fast.  I don't think it has really sunk in yet that she's gone.  I keep expecting her to walk in.  I never expected it to happen this way.  I've just tried to accept it as God's timing.  He has a master plan for each of us.  The Bible says we walk by faith.  Sometimes, it takes a whole lot of faith to accept the unexpected.  But if we'll hold on to Him, God will see us through.