Give Thanks to Local Heroes

      On 9-11,2001 America was attacked.  There were more than 3,000 people who were killed that day.  Some were American citizens, some were visitors to this land, some were the first responders to the scene.  Yesterday in Fulton, IL, a town of fewer than 4,000 people, had 2 devistating fires.  Fire fighters from many surrounding communities came to pitch in and assist the local volunteer fire department.  The majority of these other community's fire fighters are volunteers as well.  There were also EMT's and policemen that responded as well.

     I personally had an encounter with EMT's and volunteer firemen after an accident I had on 11-24-81.  If you are a follower of this blog you may have seen in a prior blog that my legs were caught in a corn picker on that day.  I spent 2 hours in that picker.  I had many on-lookers surrounding me.  One was a neighbor lady who was a nurse that eventually put an IV in my arm to replish my fluids after I went into shock. The local volunteer fire department came to my rescue to releas me with the jaws of life. Later EMT's came administer some immediate care and carted me off in an ambulance.  Over the next 7 weeks as I stayed in the hospital I had 8 different surgeries on either leg.  Thankfully the doctors saved both of my legs and by the middle of May I was playing baseball again.  ( I dramatically condensed the details on this event so if you  want more you may ask me so time.)

     As Thanksgiving approaches, we all tend to reflect on the many blessings we have.  Those blessings vary from person to person.  We can be thankful for employment, health, family and friends.  This year I am thankful for all of those things and many more.  I give thanks to God Almighty for each of those blessings.  But this year I want to express my thanks and grattitude to First Responders:  Policemen, Firemen, EMT's, National Guardsmen and our soldiers.  After the 9/11 attacks, our local fires and my own accident, I realized that these people do a wonderful job each day and they deserve all of our Thanks.  So, I Thank You All.

 

Lost Love

     Who can understand what God's plan is for any of us?  But Who can fathom the depths of His love?  It is really not for us to know why God does anything, but it is up to us to have the faith in Him that He has a plan for each of us. 
    
     These are the first thoughts that come to mind as I ponder the loss of yet another loved one in this life.  A dear friend of mine through grade school and high schoo and into college,Chris Wagner, just lost her brother, Bruce or Skip as everyone knew and loved him.  Skip was only 48.  Way too young for our human minds to understand.  God's calender is different for all of us.  Our age is really not known by our birth date but by how close we are to our death date.  And no one knows when that is.  A 75 year old woman still may have 25 years of life on this earth making her young but a baby, who dies at only 13 months is old at just 1 year.

      I have had to endure many losses over the last five years.  My 19 year old nephew died 5yrs. ago, my father-in-law died 4 yrs ago.  My own dad died 2 1/2 yrs ago and this past summer we lost precious Noah, our great nephew at just over 1 year of age.  In the past I have lost countless aunts, uncles and grandparents.  Each one of these losses are devistating and I miss each one of them dearly.

     But in some way, when you lose a loved one from your school days it hits exceptionally hard. 
We lost Allen Trone shortly out of high school.  Ken Wheat died at a young age, shortly after college.  We lost Sherry to cancer and others to even more tragic deaths over the years.  I currently have a couple of friends that I loved dearly in college who are clinging on to this earthly life due to cancer as I speak.  Each of these will be or already are dearly missed in this life.  And now, just in the last couple of days, we have lost Skip.  But oh, what a wonderous life each of these will have in heaven if they knew their Savior here on earth!  I can't wait to be able to rejoin them and rejoice with them when I meet my maker!

       I have very fond memories of each of these that I have mentioned.  As for this most recent loss, Skip, I remember him most through 4-H and sports in school.  Skip was 2 yrs ahead of me in school.  I can remember as a 6th grader how most of our basketball team looked up to him both literally and figureatively.  Skip was a good role model at this point in his life as well as being very tall so we looked up to him.  I also remember him in high school baseball as part of our "Lickety Split" outfield.  I also remember him and his family as the only famers raising and showing Spotted hogs at the 4-H fair in our area.  There are a lot of  fond memories for me in the by-gone days.

     Oh what a wonderful life it will be for all of those lost loved-ones that knew their Savior here on earth.  I was just reading in the book of Luke this morning that we don't know when that day is coming so we need to be ready in our hearts and except Jesus as our savior.  I can't wait to see those loved-ones again as we rejoice together in the presence of our glorious King in heaven.  Maybe then we will finally realize why God does what he does when he does it.  Or maybe, at that point we just won't care any more. 

The Adoption of Our Bundles of Joy

The first topic that has been burning on my heart here recently is adoption. I have 2 primary reasons for discussing this topic. One's name is Jake and the other is Sam. My wife and I adopted these two opposites from South Korea when they were each babies. They are the love of my life and wouldn't trade them for the world. Or for the trip they made half way around this world to get here. Adoption to me is one of the true expressions of love because it's an expression that is a two-way street. It's our expression of and the desire for our kids Jake & Sam and their desire and need to have place in a loving two parent stable environment. I believe adoption is a true gift from God. Without going into a lot of detail right now, we were having problems conceiving and carrying to term our own natural babies. Jake and Sam were born to young girls that were not in a position to be able to raise them so God put the 4 of us together as a family.

I look at life as sort of a chess game that God plays. He gave us free will so we can make some moves on the board and he makes counter moves based on our dumb decisions. He always knows how everything turns out. To everything there is a reason and a time for every purpose under heaven. When I was 17 for example, I made a decision or a move, if you will that changed the course of my life for ever. At the time I had no idea that this tragic error would eventually lead to the most beautiful additions to my life that I could ever imagine. That decision was to try to get 1 stalk of corn out of the head of a corn picker while the picker was running. What followed is a series of events that will both haunt me and bless me the rest of my life. On November 24, 1981 (2 days before Thanksgiving and what would be my future wife's birthday) I got both of my legs caught in a corn picker. This event landed me in the hospital for 7 weeks and had me endure 8 surgeries on my legs in that time as well. There was an insurance settlement that came from this whole ordeal. (I am simplifying this part extremely for right now. Maybe I'll blog on that part another time.) This insurance settlement would be put in place for the blessings to come down the line but at the time I could care less about the money, I just wanted to keep my legs and walk again.

Fast forward 10 yrs. To when I married my lovely bride Connie. She was a school teacher and had always been surrounded by nieces and nephews so naturally she wanted children of her own. After about 2 years of marriage we decided to start trying to have kids. We struggled with conceiving and then struggled with being able to carry to term. After a long process of trying to medically to over come infertility through pills, and shots and God only knows what else, we decided to take a different path. I can still remember my wife standing in my mom's living room attempting to give herself a hormone shot with 1 of the longest needles I've ever seen in my life. After 3 or 4 phantom practice runs she finally tossed down the syringe and said I can't do this any more. The next day she started scouring the internet to find out what it would take to get the ball rolling to adopt children.

She checked into as many domestic sites as possible like Lutheran and Catholic Social Services, etc. We started the process of filling out paper work and meeting with social workers etc. We had a meeting with Lutheran Social Services filled out a bunch of paper to adopt a baby. At the end of all of that the lady calmly and politely said we should be able to get a baby in 3 to 5 yrs. And sirens went off in Connie's had that screamed 3 to 5 years are you kidding me.

After that visit and the disappointing news there she decided to check into international adoption. This is where she was introduced to a wonderful agency; the first to bring babies home from Korea after the Korean War. This was Holt International. Did I say it was a wonderful agency? It was fantastic! Grandma & Harry Holt not only had 6 of their own kids, but they went to Korea in the '50s to see the babies that the American soldiers left behind that were unwanted in their culture and decided to bring 8 more home to live in the U.S with them and that is what opened up the flood gates that would eventually bring more than 50,000 babies home from Korea alone from 1953-1997 when we brought our own first bundle of joy, Kim Su Nam (that's Jake to you and me)

Remember I talked about the chess game and the insurance money yadda yadd yadda. Well this is where that all ties in. Were it not for that insurance money from my dumb choice in 1981, I would not have had the money to bring home and adopt that bundle of joy. The whole process went smooth as silk primarily because we were working with the most experienced most professional adoption agency, Holt International, that there was. I think God knew we had struggled enough so this process went without a hitch. We started the process (paper work, FBI check home study) in January of 1996 and after Jake was born in October of '96 he was home by January of 1997. Just think only 3 more months than if Connie would have carried him to term. We could not have had a more pleasant experience. I thank God for his chess moves, provision and for giving a young Korean girl the courage to let us have a beautiful baby boy. Three years later we decided that our little Jakey needed a playmate and we wanted another bundle of joy so we went through the whole process again with Holt and we were able to bring home our Sam. The laws had changed a little so it was a little different process but one of the best things that Bill Clinton did was to have a 1 year adoption tax credit for those who adopted and we were able to take advantage of that. Again using pretty much the rest of that chess money from 1981. The process is tough. The waiting in tougher, but neither is as tough as a young mom in Korea to make the decision to give up a boy that she knew she couldn't raise on her own and allowed us to bring our boys home and raise them in a healthy 2 parent environment in the U.S.A.

There you have it. I thank God every day that he knows what moves to make even when we make our dumb moves. I thank Him for provision of both money and 2 beautiful boys who are now 14 and 10

This is a new venture for me.  If you know me at all you know I'm not real high tech and I don't like change.  So this is really branching out for me.  I just wanted to have an avenue for me to be able to spout off every once in a while.  Some where I can run to and either hide or to truly express what's rattling around in my brain.  In this blog I will be discussing what is on my mind, thus the Just Me title.  I will tend to rant about the things that influence and affect me.  I will become very political because that's a big part of my life.  So if you don't like that kind of discussion, you better jump off now.  But if that's right up your alley I look forward to the debate, but I hope you eventually agree with me.  I will also discuss my family because they are important to me.  I will dabble in sports, but primarily in the baseball season because that's really the only sport that matters to me.  I will jump head first into life on the Mississippi River because that's where I live.  I will talk about religion or rather my relationship with Jesus Christ because I like to talk about my king.  There will be many other topics that will be discussed as the need or urge arises.  So climb aboard we're heading for a fun ride.  Thanks for joining me.