Here We Are, Lord! Send Us Today!

"Whom shall I send? And who will go for Us?"
Cries the Lord of Heaven and Earth
Echoing over the world as a crashing wave
Awaiting an answer from a trembling turf

A turf full of His children whom, in their youth,
Begged to be sent out in might
Hear now the call in their comfortable lives, and
Run off to hide their wills in fright

Why ask to be sent if you wish not to go?
As if ministry is just a whim or vice
Do you forget that your lives are not really your own
But subject to Him who paid the ultimate price?

Dear friends, do not think I write this as if it only
Applies to you and never to me
Because I am just as guilty as any who trod this dirt
Of forgetting who I was created to be

But right now I stand and I renounce my claim
Laying aside my will for all to see
So that, unhindered, I can rent the veil of Satan's night
With my cry, "Here I am, Lord! Send me!"

My friends, will you join me in this call of the Lord's
No longer content to sit idle in life
Fully knowing the way is not as easy as what you're leaving
But eternally worth the joy and the strife?

May it be that as the Lord cries His call for service
Echoing over this world as a crashing wave
He will not wait long for the trembling turf to answer
"Here we are, Lord! Send us today!"

-Tammy Craig <>< 8/15/09

Hands Holier Than Lips?

So I was listening to my Christian radio station down here yesterday, when an ad for a business impact partner came on the radio. The tagline for this business partner said that they believe the following:

"Hands that serve are holier than lips that pray."

For some reason, that caught me the wrong way. Putting some thought into it hasn't really led to anything conclusive on my part. Any thoughts? Why would this be true? Why would it be false? Is one better than the other? Or does it all come down to just motive?

Hmmm...Heart Attack, You Say?

First off, wow! I managed to post every night this week! I'm so impressed with myself, lol. I hope I'm starting a habit here.

Now, Saturdays are supposed to be health updates. I decided 2009 would be my year to get healthy. Finally lose the weight and get to wear baby tees ten years after they've gone out of style. Judging from the past month, maybe I should have started this health thing earlier...

The past month my blood pressure has skyrocketed. Most people would blame it on the fact that I teach sixth grade. Well, this is one thing for which my little "angels" have no responsibility. The past week, I've had random pains in my chest, neck, jaw, and shoulders, as well as having a hard time breathing and extremely high blood pressure. Several nights this week I've gone to bed with the fear that I wasn't waking up in the morning, because I felt so bad. Tuesday night/Wednesday was the worst. I felt awful that day. It was so bad, I stopped by the fire station on the way home, because my best friend was on duty. He's a paramedic, and I let him hook me up to the EKG machine in the ambulance. Yeah, if you know me, you know it had to have been bad for me to allow him to do that. The fear on his face when I was explaining everything made me worry all the more. If he was concerned, that scared me more. That night almost took me to the hospital. I ended up, thankfully, getting ahold of a doctor friend in Maine. He was able to get me set back up on my meds, which I was lacking down here, not having insurance to have a doctor. This is why I never went to the emergency room, although I should have.

FYI: Did you know that a lot of women have different symptoms of heart attack than men? A lot of times, we women don't have the chest grabbing, I can't breath, I can't feel my left arm symptoms. Some symptoms of the "silent heart attack": shortness of breath (check), nausea (check), vomiting, pain in jaw, chest, shoulder, arm, back (check to all except back), unusual fatigue (check), indigestion, gas pains (check), heartburn, anxiety (check), sweating, lightheadedness (check), and, believe it or not, an impending sense of doom (um, not waking up in the morning? check). Those, of course, are not all of them, but a lot. As you can tell, I had a lot of the symptoms. In fact, my doctor friend told me, from what I had described, that it was very likely I had had a very small heart attack earlier this week. Scary much?

Of course, my first thought was, wait a minute. I'm 28 years old! I can't be having a heart attack! But it can happen. My family is riddled with heart disease. It killed my grandfathers (both Dad and Mom's fathers)...it killed my aunt (Mom's sister)...my mom has heart issues...my dad has heart issues. Between family genetics and the way I've cared for myself over the years, it was only a matter of time.

So that's my story. As I sit here typing this, I'm still feeling little pains here and there, and sometimes it's a little hard to get a full breath. But after being on my meds again for the past four days, I'm feeling a bit better. We've also decided to bump me up another pill to hit the blood pressure more aggressively. All in all, I would really appreciate your prayers. For someone my age with no health insurance to be dealing with this, I am still a bit scared about how this is all going to pan out.

There is a good part of this week, though. I've lost 8 pounds this week! Yay!! ;) Love y'all!

"They're Just Trying to Impress You"

The title is what one of my sixth graders said about the fourth/fifth grade class this week. I teach 4th-6th Bible (35 kids...same time...yikes!). Yesterday I gave them an essay assignment. We just got done with the first series of Moses, from his birth to the crossing of the Red Sea. The students had two days to write me an biographical essay on the life of Moses that we had studied so far. I knew a lot of my kids, even though I told them they had to write me three paragraphs, would think they were trying too hard to give me a whole page. The fourth/fifth grade class, however, by the end of the first day, had me pages, and they only had to write two paragraphs! One fifth grade girl handed in three pages! I told my class that the other class was showing them up, and that's when the above statement was said and agreed upon by the rest of my class. I looked at them and told them it's nice to have people try to impress you every once in a while! Then the same student said, "Well, they're scared of you, too!" Technically, this is true. I think most of the elementary school is scared of me. *sigh* I wish my sixth graders still were. But if feels nice to have students who actually still want to impress you. The question of whether or not I'm impressed still remains to be determined. They can write me pages, but it doesn't mean it makes sense on paper. It kind of makes me feel good, though, just knowing the kids want to work hard for my approval. Just their effort wins that. Guess I'm doing something right. Otherwise, they wouldn't care, right?