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Happy Sabbath,

I had a challenging week this week and lost my temper and I’m not pleased with myself.  You know how you are hit with many small little things that annoy you and they just keep coming and happening for what ever reason?  Well, that was this week.

But the point of this blog is to testify of God’s kindness and blessings; His mercy towards not only me, but others I am blessed to have an ear in passing to experience.  So I will aim to focus on the good not only for this week, but future weeks.  This week did not go the way I wanted it to go and people have let me down including myself.

One thing I will talk about is today at church.  It is a nice day today and I headed out with my son to arrive on time.  I went into the usual room I sit in to hear the service (it’s a mothers room with a speaker and clear unobstructed view of the sanctuary, usually overrun with a bunch of loud children and teens who are either uninterested in the sermon who are doing homework or asking a litany of questions serving to distract me at every turn from the message). Today, the children from the Adventist academy I want to send my son to when I improve my financial situation were singing and doing the service.  I sat next to a woman who was very pretty and seemed to be in her 30’s, but she had a cane.  I assumed she sat there because of the difficulty she might have moving through the pews with whatever disability she had.  The other person was a mother of two usually well behaved children (one 5 and one 3), although today they were ignoring their mom and doing their own thing.  And then there was my son, who was bouncing all over the place and the pretty lady seemed to understand that 4 year olds act this way (most people are not so understanding). 

She was visiting from the church I should go to (closer to my home town next door and in the same town where I live now).  The lady was telling me as a young girl played the flute that that girl was her daughter.  She pointed out another boy and started talking about her family.  I smiled but and half heard what she was saying, but at first I didn’t care too much because I wanted to hear the service.  I didn’t want to be distracted by yet another person thinking this is the break room or something. 

Eventually, she asked if she could share her testimony, which turned into two testimonies that I was glad to have the opportunity to hear.  She told me one where she was not feeling well one day and was vomiting and I think she said she was laying down and prayed that the Lord not allow her to die.  She is usually in her room alone but lives with other family members in other parts of the home.  She prayed and someone reached over and grabbed her shoulder to give her that reassurance. No one is ever in that room with her, but God had it that one family member was in the room to reach over and grip her shoulder and helping them to know something was wrong.  They took her to the hospital and she said only a few words to the doctor and the next thing she knew, she was in a coma for a month. 

She had 3 brain anerysms that shut her down.  The hospital thought there was no hope and they should pull the plug.  She said that as they were deciding what to do, she had this dream while in her coma.  In the dream she was walking somewhere outside and heard the sound of her daughter making beautiful music some where.  She told herself she had to reach her daughter. She didn’t know where she was and was searching for her but then came across this tall white man who mirrored her body language and as she leaned and rested her head against her hand he did the same thing.  This white figure asked her strange questions seemingly to waste her time finally said to her that he was a god after she asked him who he was, but she denounced him and said that only Jehovah and Jesus the Son of God is God. Once she did this, he vanished and she was able to continue on to search for her daughter.  When she came to her daughter, the daughter approached her and kissed her on her forehead.  At that moment, she woke up from her dream and the coma and quickly recovered.  The doctors couldn’t believe how fast she recovered and talked about all their years experience with patients who have aneyrsyms and she was the first that recovered as quickly as she did.  If it were not for Jesus though is all I’m saying.

She also talked about her thyroid cancer. She was the only person in her family diagnosed with thyroid cancer.  She told me she was losing her voice and went to the doctor and they did a cat scan on her throat to find that she had a tumor/goiter growing inward.  They did a biopsy and said it was not malignant, but they did surgery to take it out because of the pressure and damage it was causing to her windpipe.  When they took the growth out, they did find a small part of it to be malignant.  I think more on this story because I was talking to my mother on Thursday morning and she told me that my cousin from NC discovered she has thyroid cancer.  About 40% of the thyroid was found to have cancer. I remember in 2013 or so when I went to Florida and rode up to NC,  her throat area had this huge bulge and no one really thought much of it.  I also learned that not only did my mother have follicular thyroid cancer many years ago, but my dad had thyroid cancer where he had to have chemo therapy.  I have had it in the back of my mind to discuss this with my doctor as I believe my own thyroid is having issues and I am taking a seaweed thyroid supplement to try to help improve it’s function before she decides to test me again and have me started on medication. 

I believe she was lead to tell me about these health situations for a reason.  God always does things for good reason.  Before we parted ways, she sang a song to me, “Remind Me, Dear Lord”.  I looked it up as she was saying the words and it was sung by Bill Gaither.  I also asked about a person who I went to school with who I knew was at her home church and she said she was still there with her mother.  She encouraged me to move forward and not run away from my past. 

We had a great talk and I came home to listen to the song she sang to me. 

Another thing I wanted to mention was that she was from Bermuda and had a cool accent and was definitely older than what I thought. The Caribbean people are such pretty people and I have watched videos on people from this region who have taken dna tests and shared their colorful and awesome results.   I have been thinking from time to time about my genetic ethnicity and have been drawn to the culture of people from the Caribbean as well, countries in west Africa and other places.  I decided at sunset last Saturday night to not only purchase a dna test for my mother as a birthday gift, but also a test kit for myself.  My dad had the Family Tree dna test which I found very disappointing and did not provide much real useful information. It said that his side was connected to the bush men in South Africa, and some randoms including Saudi Arabia, but when the researcher asked for more info and my sister told him that there was a black line, he offered a rushed and less thought over response to my sister for my dad’s background.  My dad has a unique british last name so she thought it was worth a shot to go the route with Family Tree DNA and all we were told was our ancestor was a trusted servant possibly from South Africa who may or may not have been enslaved, but ended up getting a bunch of land which was named a town filled with the black line for a stint in VA.  Native Americans (unknown tribes) were mixed up in there as well and my dad remembered family members looking like full blooded Indians, but looking at family now, it’s hard to see this except for in a photo of his mother (my grandmother). 

I am curious to know what percentage I am of this and that and even so my mother who has one of those generic last names given to her family in the south east. I hope I have mostly African blood and I have a long list of guesses as to what I might be comprised of.  I’ve been mistaken for Jamaican and Ethiopian at times.

That’s the one good thing this week, the test arrived earlier than 7 business days on Thursday afternoon and my mother and I spit in our tubes and I mailed it off before the post office closed the same day.

I am thankful for an opportunity to find out a little more about my family, what we are, and where we came from.  I am thankful for the testimonies of the lady I met today and the encouragement she gave me to continue living for Jesus despite my failures. 

I hope to speak some positive words of praise, joy, and excitement next week.

Again,  Happy Sabbath J