Following Him

It's been kind of a crazy week, but when you have a large family full of pets, why expect things to go smoothly, right? It started out as one of those days when you have to keep your priorities straight. We have an older friend who's been sick and is in a rehabilitation home. B-Boo and I had gone to see him the night before and he never knew we were there. The Drama Queen had wanted to go then, but I told her I'd see how he is and then possibly bring her the next morning before we got on with our day.

Well, yesterday was that morning. We're about to head out of town with our youth group and so I had a lot of stuff to do and a little time to do it in. I had to be finished by one because I needed to get the older kids home from school, one had a doctor appointment, then we had swim lessons, I still needed to get all of us packed and so on. I really did not have time to make another trip to the rehabilitation home. I thought to myself that he was probably still sleeping and would not even realize we were there again. I had pretty much made up my mind that when I went downstairs, I'd let the Drama Queen know we would go visit him when we got back in town.

About that time, she showed up upstairs instead. For once, she was ready to go. And while I'd been upstairs taking a shower and getting dressed, apparently she'd been downstairs making a get well card for our dear friend. It was beautiful, too. All decked out with hearts and glitter and a smiley face. She wanted to know if she could please sign my name to it, too.

And that's when I remembered my Bible Study that I'm teaching. It's all about teaching our youth how to follow Christ. It's really easier than we make it out to be. That's what I told them. I also challenged them to do something this week to follow Him in motion. I told them it could be as simple as sending someone a card, but to make sure they did something. And here I was, thinking about MY busy life instead of doing exactly what I'd challenged our teens to do! But the Drama Queen got it all by herself.

So we headed out to the rehab home. And our friend was gone when we got there. We found him. He was awake and alert and in physical therapy! He was not able to talk to us, but the minute we walked in a huge smile lit up his face. His wife was there, also, so we got to visit with her a little bit. The kids were able to help our friend with his physical therapy. When he'd zone out, the Drama Queen would get his attention again and ask him to try and touch her hand. Such a simple thing really, and so hard for our friend to do, but he was willing to try when he saw that sweet little girl encouraging him. So we walked our friend out to say goodbye and then went back in to help some more with the physical therapy. Both the man and the Drama Queen took helping to task. We'd moved on to colors now, so they'd encourage him to move his hand towards whatever color he called out. We stayed for a while longer and then headed out to our day.

And a crazy day it did end up being. Things went wrong in our normal craziness, but we managed to get through it anyway. At the last minute, with packing still needing to be done and dogs needed to be bathed, we found one of our pups had an ear infections. This meant a late night trip to the vet and more craziness.

But I went to bed last night, not stressed with all I did not get accomplished. I was not so worried about what I still needed to do in the morning before we left. Instead, I went to bed thanking God last night for my special children. It was a little girl with a big heart who reminded me just how simple it really is to follow Him.