October 24 11:30 AM

Good morning friends,
The last two days have been a little busier for me as I had some travelling to do and had only the 3 youngest ones with me, but we are all together again.  Micah is doing well and the last couple of days has been trying to do more with his left arm.  He reaches out a bit with it like he wants to do something with it, but after it goes so far then his tone will tighten preventing him from doing more.  His OT told me that she was going to speak to his doctor about giving him a med that will help with the tone issue.  She feels that since he is trying that there is probably a lot more he could do if the muscles could stay relaxed.  Yesterday morning I was with him in therapy and they were working on sitting up.  He did very good and his OT said that while he was relaxed she was giving him very little support!  He is also holding his head up very well and practically turned it around backwards to look at his grandparents.  
Thomas is with Micah right now and he just told me that they have a little petting zoo there right now and he is taking him out to see, that should be fun.  
Still no sign of the tongue yet, but he is trying at least.  
We are doing well here, though we do miss everyone.  I just realized last weekend that I have not been to church since Sept. 6th!  That's quite a while for someone that grew up going every time the doors were open.  I have been trying to understand how people without a church family function in times of crisis, I honestly don't know.  You all rock!!  I would not function as well without the encouraging notes and kindnesses shown to us.  We have truly seen the "body" (not just our church) at work during these past weeks and it has brought us to tears again and again.  It hasn't mattered what the sign out front said, only that we have the same Father.  Isn't this as it should be? We should always be ready to lend a hand to our family members.  None of my siblings live with me, not even in the same state, but I would help them out in a heart beat if I knew that they needed it.  The same is true spiritually....God has a lot of children, we don't all live/worship in the same house, but we still have the same Father and should treat each other with love and respect.  A church with all the same type of people in it (i.e.  all arms or feet or eyes) is not going to be a church that functions well.  We tend to argue or disagree with others because of our differences, but that doesn't mean we should go find a group that thinks just like us.  We NEED to have all the parts of the body in each church.
Right now, a lot of churches function like Micah.  Sometimes a few things work, sometimes nothing works, sometimes we know what to do but cannot get it done.  Micah has a perfectly functioning body as far as the physical body goes, but his problem is that his brain cannot make sense of everything right now.  So even if we get all of our "body" parts together we still need a good head to get the whole thing working properly.  Someone to make sense of it all and help each of the various parts understand that they can & must work together with all the other parts because "All these are empowered by one and the same Spirit".  If we cannot do this, then the body will just be all over the place.  Arms trying to be legs, legs trying to be eyes etc...  We all have a part to play and we can't play it well if we trying to tell everyone else how to play there part.  I guess that this can be your sermon if you don't get to go to church tomorrow : )  Blessings to each of you, I wish I could meet every one of you!
Play your part,
Tina


PS  For further reading on this check out  I Cor. 7:17, 20-24, 12 - all of it