Overwhelmed

So many times when I hear the word overwhelmed, it has a negative conotaion, a feeling of despair or stress. But recently, I received an email from someone I do not even know well who let me know she was praying for us. Her specific prayer was that we would be overwhelmed with God's love and peace during this extremely difficult time. Those words brought me such comfort and it is evident to me that God is answering those prayers.

I don't believe I can think of a time in my life that I have felt so overwhelmed, but in a positive way. People have surrounded us with God's love in ways large and small. Many may even shrug off what they have done, saying it was nothing. But it has been everything to us.

I am going to attempt to list some things people have done to show their love. This is by no means an exhaustive list because I still can't remember the last two weeks very well, and I know many people have done things for us that we will never know about. My purpose in doing this is to remind myself of the blessings God has lavished on us even in difficult times, but it is also to remind myself that all things done in the name of Jesus are a blessing to others and give glory to God for who He is. I encourage you to think about little ways to give God glory by serving others. I know I am thinking about it constantly now that I have been on the receiving end of such blessing.

So here goes: praying, calling, sending cards, making food, sneaking in our house to clean it while we were gone (this included our kids' friends cleaning our bathrooms!), mowing our lawn, writing phone numbers in cards so that we could easily call if we needed people, driving our kids to school, picking our kids up from school, out of town friends sending restaurant gift cards because they couldn't be here to make us a meal, feeding our dog, sending flowers and plants, sending cards two weeks after the accident to my mom to let her know she is not forgotten, teachers watching out for my kids and helping them remember things they should remember on their own but can't right now, principals giving my kids permission to come to their office anytime of the day if needed to get away, doing our laundry, coming to my mom's house to organize the large number of food dishes and making sure we were all eating (this sometimes got forgotten in the stress of the days after the accident) then cleaning up the kitchen and putting the food away, staying at mom's house and answering the phone while we were making funeral arrangements, watching children while their parents were preoccupied with arrangements, far away friends listening to our tears on long distance calls, blog posts about my dad, attending the visitation and the funeral, taking our car to fill it up with gas so that we would not have to stop to do that, coming to our home to get all the clothes we forgot to bring because we were so frazzled with the news, driving those clothes to us (2 hours away), sending a gift bag full of goodies for the grandkids, sending "letters from home" from our church family to encourage us (one for Ken and I and one for the boys from their youth group), sending memorial donations to great causes in the name of my father, sweet emails to encourage us, people who didn't know my dad allowing us to talk about him and share his life, people who knew my dad telling us things they loved about him, people at church stepping up to teach our classes, and the list could go on and on!

I am so encouraged after writing this. I hope I can overwhelm a few people with God's love today.