On moving forward and looking back

I was looking at my lesson plans from last year to see what resources i had for this coming week. I mean, why reinvent the wheel, right?

Anyway, this took me right to the less lessons I wrote for Thanksgiving week last year. The week I headed to the hospital for a stomachache and came home with less insides and secret cancer. I also signed up for the Thanksgiving dinner, which is the event I left early last year because of the pain in my stomach.

I was looking through old blog  posts tonight and I read through the first post I wrote post surgery. Rereading about the ultrasound and that terrifying moment of waking up with a bandage on my stomach and a tube in my nose bright back more intense feelings than I would have expected. You can forget a lot in a year, apparently. I guess that explains why my 7th graders cannot seem to remember what we learned about persuasive writing last year... but anyway.

You may wonder about the point of this post. Why look back on that? Why remember? What's the point?

In bible study tonight, we looked at some Psalms. I was struck by the fact that even the praise Psalms have parts about times of trouble, and the lament Psalms have memories of God's faithfulness in the past.

I may not always be up. I'm not actually, and it's something I've really been struggling with. But I have a God.. the God who I remember has been faithful in the past... through the surgery, recovery, and so many other storms. I can see how he used some of them, and I can use those memories to remind me to trust him to use the rest.