"Places Where Grace Is..."

...soon to be so amazing." from the song, "Unredeemed," sung by Selah

"But now, this is what the LORD says-
HE who created you, O Jacob,
HE who formed you, O Israel:
"Fear not, for I have redeemed you;
I have summoned you by name, you are MINE.
When you pass through the waters,
I will be with you;
and when you pass through the rivers,
they will not sweep over you.
When you walk through the fire,
you will not be burned;
the flames will not set you ablaze.
For I am the LORD, your GOD, the HOLY ONE of Israel, your SAVIOR...
...You are precious and honored in MY sight,and I love you."
Isaiah 43:1-5

Dear Praying Friends and Family,
As i sit on the wooden rocker on my front porch, there is a cool breeze blowing, and "Troy," our Maltipoo is laying by my side on the porch where i am sitting. I finally have felt able to write you after these past two weeks which have been very, very full, and exhausting to me physically and mentally at times. Just as i began to write, my neighbor cranked up his riding lawnmower across the street and began cutting his lawn:)...oh well, so much for a perfect setting for writing! Life is not perfect is it...
I have eagerly desired to write you these past couple of weeks but each time the HOLY SPIRIT used my circumstances to prevent me....either i was busy, or too tired after being busy:). Don't get me wrong, i'm so very thankful to be able to work hard and be our "lawn boy," and clean house. In the meantime i have been doing a lot of thinking and reflecting on what to share with you. A lot has happened since i last wrote you. Last weekend was a monumental weekend of celebrating GOD's wonderful grace in our family's life: Johnny and I celebrated our 27th wedding anniversary on Friday. We actually didn't celebrate until Sunday evening, when Johnny took me to see a "Letters to Juliet," a "chick-flick," as he calls it. I though it was romantic, and it was fun to get away together and watch a movie together as we often did when we were dating. We had planned to get a bite to eat afterwards, but he had a bail bond call to answer, and while he was in the jail, i went sound to sleep in the car. When he finished his call, i told him i thought i'd just like to have a "chocolate covered dip cone from "Kreme Delight," so he took me there to get one, and i fixed him something to eat when we got home. Maybe not the most romantic celebration ever, but considering our weekend last week, it was a miracle we were able to celebrate at all. I completely forgot to get him a card til the day of our anniversary. GOD's wonderful grace and goodness in our marriage is a story in itself, having dated for four years when neither of us were CHRISTIANs, and living in sin. GOD reached down and drew us to HIMself, and in 1982, a month a part from one another we both experienced the grace of GOD to save us from our sin. "For by grace are you saved through faith and that not of yourselves it is the gift of GOD, not as a result of works that no man should boast. " Eph. 2:8-9. I praise GOD for redeeming Johnny and me through the precious blood of HIS SON JESUS CHRIST and bringing us together to be one in HIM, 27 years ago, May 28th, 1983. "For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your forefathers, but with the precious blood of CHRIST, a LAMB without blemish or defect." I Peter 1:18,19.
On the other end of the weekend, Memorial Day, our baby girl graduated from high school. What a wonderful time we had with our dear family and friends who came to support us and celebrate this wonderful time of GOD's grace in all of our lives. And we do appreciate so very much, you taking time out of your holiday weekend to come and love us with your presence. Thank you for all of you who worked so very hard making the graduation and reception so very special. Your labor of love is so greatly appreciated. We appreciate so many of you who couldn't be there but supporting us with your prayers and thoughts. GOD bless you, dear ones!
You have heard me share many times in these emails how Hannah Beth almost died twice as an infant from a growth across her windpipe. Because she was on high doses of steroids, we were very concerned about the long term effects to her health. At the same time Hannah Beth was sick, i was going through literally, a "firestorm," of my own health issues. Shortly after Hannah Beth was born, i had a severe allergic reaction to Macrodantin, and was instructed by the emergency room doctors to take Prednisone. My body was beseeched with seering firey pain for months afterwards, along with other very painful issues going on. In the midst of this "firestorm," my husband and i decided we had to move back home so i could have help with our two young children. HB was 2 months and JM was 2 years. So, Johnny left the pastorate for what we thought a short period of time, and moved back home and began working for his family in the restaurant business, of which GOD has kept us here. There were many, many, many times i wondered if I would make it to see my children grown, and when GOD put the desire in our hearts to homeschool our children, I wondered how in the world i could ever do it. But I will tell you how GOD did it through a very weak vessel: "HE said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you for MY power is made perfect in weakness. Therefore I will gladly boast in my weaknesses that the power of CHRIST may rest upon me." II Corinthians 12:9-10.
Each one of you reading this letter is and has been GOD's grace and power to us along our homeschooling journey. You have prayed for us, you have encouraged us when we were going through the hottest fires of our health issues, and sudden changes in our life's direction. You have helped us through your example, your family's example, you have taught us how to be parents, and discipled us as CHRISTians. You have loved our kid's and cared for them when i was away in Texas for medical treatment, or other times when i so desperately needed help. You have kept our school records and encouraged us and done all the paperwork that overwhelmed me concerning homeschooling. You have patiently perserved with me to help me with my medical issues, and ten thousand other ways that would fill the pages of many, many books to list them all. I am especially grateful to the LORD for my dear husband who has loved me and worked so hard to provide for our family so that i could be home to be with our children. We are so extremely grateful for our parents on both sides who have loved us and supported us on this journey when i know you had your doubts about us homeschooling in those early years. Thank you for all your love and support we could not have done this without you. GOD gave us grace by putting in our children a great desire to learn, and figure out things. HIS grace has made it easy in that regard to be a homeschool Mom. You guys have been the two best students a Mom could ever have...and what a scatter-brained Mom you have had to deal with! We've butt heads, and continue to at times, but how thankful i am for your quick forgiving spirits you both have for the weaknesses in your Mom and Dad. (Now our neighbor is weed eating:..."My grace is sufficient for you, Mitzi, to write even when the weed eater is running. Paul wrote in much more difficult circumstances...My power is perfected in your weakness to be irritated and distracted. I love my neighbor's very much...just wish he hadn't picked this time to cut and weedeat his yard. Well, LORD you put this in his heart to do it now, thank you. LORD, please help him to finish quickly!). How i thank the LORD for each of you, for the part you have played in HIS grace in our lives to help our family reach this place where our homeschooling journey is "officially," completed. "I thank my GOD upon every remembrance of you," as I reflect on this long and often times difficult journey, filled with HIS grace and mercy. "My GOD shall supply all your needs in CHRIST JESUS," and i can say a thousand times a thousand that HE has used you, our dear friends and family to do provide HIS grace and give us what we needed for the journey of homeschooling. Thank you for being GOD's grace to us...we love you and appreciate each one of you and the role you have played so very much. To GOD be the glory, great things HE has done, and truly, truly, truly, "GREAT is THY FAITHFULNESS," and truly HE has "restored and redeemed the difficult years of my health issues," a thousand fold with HIS grace and favor in our lives.
In the midst of our family celebrating GOD's grace in our marriage and Hannah Beth's graduation...our extended family had another wonderful celebration of GOD's redeeming grace last weekend. My niece, Elizabeth Jones Bennet, was married to a wonderful godly young man the LORD brought into her life about a year and a half ago, in a place Lizzie had rather not been. Let me back up a few years ago so you will get the bigger picture of GOD's grace to redeem "what the locusts have eaten," in her life. Lizzie's Daddy killed himself when Lizzie was a sophomore in college. He and my sister divorced a few years before that. HE had been a pastor, and was presently serving as a Minister of Music and on staff teaching religion at a college in Tuscaloosa. Needless to say, the divorce, and Neil's death was very devastating to our whole family. We've not experienced divorce before in our family, and truly, "the children are the broken pieces when a home falls apart." We saw and experienced the difficulties that my sister and her children and my brother in law encountered, along with his extended family. To this day, we don't know where my nephew is...he is still estranged from our family and has been since shortly after his Daddy's death. Upon her Daddy's death, Lizzie not only lost her Daddy and brother, but her Daddy's side of the family turned away from them despite repeated efforts to reach out to them. During my niece's college years, GOD provided my sister with a very good paying job in the Mountain Brook school system as a librarian. This enabled her to help her daughter pay for her college education after her Daddy died. A few months after my niece graduated from the University of South Alabama, the LORD took away my sis's job, and gave her a wonderful husband ,instead, whose wife had died a few months before. Dennis has not only has been a soothing, stablizing provider and godly man in my sis's life, but he has been a wonderful Daddy to Lizzie, and he gave her away at the wedding. After Lizzie graduated a couple of years ago, she found it very difficult to find a job in her major of journalism. She has worked several different jobs, and after spending the summer in Washington St. a couple of summer's ago, GOD opened up a job for her to work for a newspaper in Vicksburg, Mississippi...the last place my niece wanted to be. As GOD would have it, this is where she met her husband to be and his godly family. Her career with the newspaper there was short lived, but GOD had other plans for her to go there and this past Saturday she became Mrs. Jonathon Bennett! All i could think of at the beautiful outdoor wedding, which followed a morning of thunderstorms in Alabaster, was GOD's goodness and grace in my sister and niece's lives to bring them these two godly men and their families to love and care for them. Jonathon has a very large extended family and never again will Lizzie have a lack of family to love and be loved by. Yes, it has been a very difficult road for my sister and niece, but GOD in HIS goodness and lovingkindess has redeemed those very difficult years, and I praise HIM, praise HIM, praise HIM, for HIS work in all of our lives to "redeem," the brokeness and "to grant those who mourn in Zion, giving them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the garment of praise instead of a spirit of fainting. So they will be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the LORD, that HE may be glorified." Isaiah 61:3 This is one of my favorite verses and promises of GOD to Israel and HIS Bride, the Church. I have lived to see HIM fulfill it over and over in my life and the lives of my loved ones. As I reflect on last weekend, I see GOD's redeeming grace, in our marriage, Lizzie and my sister Jill's life, and the culmination of our homeschool years through Hannah Beth's graduation. To GOD be the glory, great things HE has done. HE is so very faithful to keep HIS promises, though at times we are baffled by GOD's ways in our lives. I love the line from the great hymn, " Praise to the LORD the Almighty.".."Hast thou not seen how thy desires have been granted in what HE ordaineth?"

This past week as I was cleaning house, mopping and dusting, cleaning commodes and all that good stuff,(By the way thank you for your prayers for our housekeeper. Hopefully she'll return in a couple of weeks after being bitten by a brown recluse spider, but if not, I am so very grateful for the health to be able to clean our house...yes, I am! Having a housekeeper that comes and cleans once a week may seem extravagant, but for me and my health issues, she has been another way of GOD providing HIS grace to our family and i am so very grateful to HIM for her ministry to us), I heard a song on my computer that i've never heard before. It stopped me when i heard the words and i began playing it over and over and GOD began showing me what HE wanted me to share about our family's lives and how HE has worked to "redeem," the very difficult and hard times in our lives. It is called, "Unredeemed," and Selah is the group that sings this beautiful, true, and most powerful song of our Savior's love and power to redeem the broken places in our lives. I pray that the LORD will use it to minster His love and grace, encouragement and comfort to your heart in the difficult places you may be walking at this time... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZqqCSoXZtQ.
Well, the mowers have ceased, along with the weed eater and blower:). After the gentle rain shower that fell as i was writing this, it is very, very peaceful. HIS grace was and is sufficient to help me write just like our lives...GOD brings the rain, and supplies the grace to walk through it...and then comes the sunshine. "Weeping may endure for the night, but joy comes in the morning." Psalm 30:5. You are GOD's grace to me, and how I thank GOD for each one of you. Thank you for taking time out of your busy lives to read these reflections of my heart of HIS lovingkindness and faithfulness...." places where grace is soon to be so amazing."
With all HIS love,
mitzi



"There is no reason why we should not ask for large things; and without doubt we shall get large things if we ask in faith, and have the courage to wait with patient perseverance upon HIM, meantime doing those things which lie in our power to do." Streams in the Desert, June 4

"Make thy petition deep." Isaiah 7:11