Daily Archives: November 25, 2012

Improvement

This information came from Bruce to Verle to me. Bruce and Maureen visited Tom yesterday (Saturday). They found him working on his laptop — doing a program for work. He spoke in complete sentences, very close to normal speech, only occasionally having to stop to find a word. It seems that though Tom keeps having “spells” in which he is functioning very poorly, we are seeing continuing improvement overall in his functioning. His speech has greatly improved from when we were there Thursday. The fine motor skills of his right hand were still weak on Thursday — he had trouble picking up things — but his hand grasp was so strong that my hand was still a bit sore the next morning!

The following devotional thoughts came to me this morning when I was half awake and praying for Tom:

For each of us who follow Christ, our position is clear: “By grace we are saved through faith, and that not of ourselves, it is the gift of God, not of works, lest any of us should boast.” Paul often speaks of boasting only of “the cross of Jesus Christ.” Like Paul, we have times when our faith seems weak and we may even have doubts — but our position is in Christ — it’s not based on how close to God we feel at any given moment, or on how much we DO for Christ.

The next verse, a favorite of mine, builds on the above and ministers to me today:
“And now just as you trusted Christ to save you, trust Him, too, for each day’s problems; live in vital union with Him. Let your roots grow down into Him and draw up nourishment from Him. See that you go on growing in the Lord and become strong and vigorous in the truth you were taught. let your lives overflow with joy and thanksgiving for all He has done.” (Living Bible – Colossians 2:6-7)

I’m also reminded the He is God and I am not — I have to entrust Tom to Him — God knows what is best and loves Tom even more than we do!

These thoughts are very helpful to me as I struggle through this — I hope that they might be helpful to you, too.
Peggy/Mom/Grandma

How you can help the Stahrs

We have set up a care calendar for Tom & Karen to make it easy for friends and family to see updates on how Tom is doing, and also to find out specific ways that we can help. Hopefully this will make it easy for Karen to let us know what she needs. The calendar is up and running with a place where you can sign up to bring meals, and also help out with light housework. More needs will be added later, so you’ll want to check back from time to time. Also, Karen will be placing updates on the news section of this site.

Please check out Tom & Karen’s calendar at the following address:

www.carecalendar.org
Login: 132382
Password: [contact a family member]

Please feel free to forward this information to anyone else you think may be interested.

Thanks so much! And if you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Pastor Christy Ross
Jaynes Street Church