Sunday
Monday
- None
Tuesday
- None
Wednesday
- Resting up… #
Thursday
- None
Friday
- Saying our final goodbyes to Mom in Riverside… #
Saturday
- Watching Frasier and winding down after a long week… #
Sunday
Monday
Tuesday
#Wednesday
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Saturday
Tags: Twitter
Here are a few links to places where you can sign an online guestbook for my Mom.
The Memorial Service for my Mom will be on Tuesday June 24th, 2008 at 11:00am. A light lunch reception will immediately follow the service.
The service and reception will be held at:
Journey Of Faith Church
1243 Artesia Blvd
Manhattan Beach, CA 90266
In lieu of flowers, when thinking of my Mom in the days ahead, please give generously to World Impact.
Dear Freinds-
Mom went home to be with Jesus at 6:15pm on June 18th, 2008. Her family was at her side as Jesus ushered into His loving arms.
Tags: Deborahames
You were probably wondering when I’d get around to posting my thoughts on the recent unexpected turn of events in my Mom’s condition.
I guess 3:42am is the perfect time…
Right now Mom is sleeping and I am on night watch making sure she takes her medication and is able to stay as comfortable as possible during the night. It’s hard to imagine that just a week ago Mom was pretty much able to get around on her own without supervision. She was able to have normal conversations and was able to eat normal food. But over the next few days she slowly but surley lost more and more of her ability to breath and the ability to care for herself. By Saturday she was being watched and cared for 24 hours a day by those of us in her immediate family in conjunction with Hospice. When Dr. Jilani gave his official word on Monday it had already set in that we were dealing with a shorter time line than any of us had imagined.
So this is our first week of caring for someone that will be going home to Jesus soon. How soon we don’t know and even Dr. Jilani told us, “For your sake as much as for my sake I can’t give you a time line.” That means we are faced with the struggle between life and death from now until we say our final goodbyes. Our perspective has changed and it has changed rapidly. One minute we lived out each day never thinking that it could be her last; now we pray each night for just a little more time to spend with Mom. One more laugh, one more hug, one more tender kiss on her cheek before our Loving Savior ushers her into a paradise so filled with joy and peace that there are no tears and no pain and no long nights like tonight, wondering how you’re gonna make it through until morning.
Don’t think it was easy for me to write that last sentence because despite the fact I know where my Mom’s soul will be, it doesn’t change the fact that I will miss her the rest of my days on earth. For now I probably shouldn’t list all the reasons why I’ll miss her (mostly because that would end the post here due to a short circuit in the keyboard from all the tears) but suffice it to say that the reasons are plentiful and depth of her influence in my life is unimaginable. It’s hard to think that a day is soon coming when I’ll reach for my phone to call for her advice on a homework assignment and realize that there will be no answer. Or that a day is coming when my wife walks down the aisle and looks as beautiful as Mom did on her wedding day (despite the spilled milk on her dress). Or that a day is coming when I show my kids one of the rare pictures of my Mom and tell them that Grandma Deborah was an amazing servant of King Jesus, was named after a judge in the Bible and had touched many lives on her short time here on earth.
But for now our family is living in the present and we are all learning how to care for Mom in a way that will most glorify Jesus, despite our sad hearts and heavy burden. We have already learned a lot in the process. We’ve learned that we need to work together as a team. We’ve learned that sometimes you have to make the small victories just as important as the big decisions. We’ve learned that the Bible and prayer have a whole new meaning when someone you love is dying. We’ve learned that even though our pespective has changed our God has not. He is still the same God that gave a blind man sight and made a lame man walk. He forgave the prositute and ate with tax collectors. He walked on the water, calmed the storm and asked some terrified disciples an important question:
“25He said to them, ‘Where is your faith?’”
-Luke 8:25a
Tags: deborahames.org, Luke 8:25
Please visit my Mom’s blog for an important update on her condition as well as a few prayer requests.
Tags: deborahames.org
Sunday
#Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Satruday
Tags: Coffee Bean And Tea Leaf, Cubs, Dodgers, Hermosa Beach, Shallyn Coco, Strand, Twitter, Whose Line Is It Anyways, WWDC 2008
Sunday
Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Saturday
Tags: Twitter
Dear Thug(s)-
Hope you’re not offended by the word Thug but then again you committed a crime and broke into my car so I don’t really care if you are offended or not. Oh yeah and… YOU FORGOT THE RADIO MORON!
Something tells me that you’re not too bright. Perhaps you should have taken my $200 flashlight so that next time you can see better, but it seems you left that behind too.
Maybe you had your $75 headphones on and were distracted by the loud music playing in your empty head. That would explain why you left my iPhone headphones behind after you went through my glove compartment.
But maybe, just maybe the thing you should have taken was my $150 police scanner.
Because when the cops use the fingerprints you left in my car (and you did leave some) to find you and hunt you down, you’re going to wish you had some warning to run from the SWAT team that kicks down your door, uses a flash-bang grenade to make your ears ring and your eyes blind. And I hope when they shove you to the ground like the scum you are you’ll think, “Why would they go to all this trouble when I didn’t take anything?”
Because you did take something from me. You took away my sense of security and safty. True, I live in the ghetto and the likleyhood that you live in the ghetto too is very high. But you chose the wrong white-guy to attack last night. Because when the SWAT team carries you out of that house I’ll be there with the $3000 camera that you left in my trunk to put your incompentant, ugly face all over the news so that when your thug friends bail you out with their crack money, you’re Mom will beat you silly like she should have done when you were younger.
Oh and if you’re thinking about coming back to my hood and back to my car and trying again, you better hope and pray the posse I’ve rounded up doesn’t catch you.
Tags: Break In, Canon XL2, Firestorm, Flashlight, iPhone Headphones, Kenwood Stereo, Nissan, Police Sanner
Alright party people! Here is the final version of that Music Video I told you about where I was the Director of Photography. Thanks to my friend Cesar, who trusted me with the camera and with this project.
Enjoy!
Tags: Gayle Skidmore, Paper Box
The creative geniuses at Sabayenda sent me a link to a radically cool website yesterday.
This is one of the cleverest uses of a website I have ever seen… It does take a minute to load and begin, but once it does it’ll do all the work for you!
Tags: Ajax, Goldberg Machine, HTML, Sabayenda
Normally I like to wait for the official story and direct quote from the source, but I wanted to blog about this while it was still fresh in my mind. Some of you may have heard that Barak Obama “resigned” from his church this weekend. In the circles I run in most people don’t really resign from a church, they leave the church. In fact, not to long ago a friend of mine had this to say about folks leaving the church. Hundreds of blog posts and articles have been written about the reasons people leave a church. I think for Barack Obama it came down to two main issues.
First, Obama left the church because the presidential campaign began interfering with the church’s ability to function. Dozen’s of calls each day, as well as parishioners being harassed by the media turned the place into a circus. The attention shifted from what the church should be doing, to containing the firestorms that kept erupting every time Obama commented about his faith or the church.
Second, Obama left the church because the former pastor’s words, as well as the words spoken by current speakers, were erroneously attributed to his ideaology and message. Obama repeatdly shared with his critics that not everything that was said from the pulpit in the church lined up with his point of view, or how he believes the country should be run. The most damaging statemtents that were frustrating to Obama were the various racist statements that were made by his former pastor. I’d like to add the the most inflamatory statments made by the former pastor were made after the pastor retired from the chruch and had moved on.
This brings up an interesting conundrum.
First, in our day to day lives we represent the chruch we go to. At work, at school, at home and online if you have a church that you call home you are representing it in one way or another. Most people think that their behavior should only be above repraoch if they are in leadership or work for the chruch. But I think Jesus would disagree. Granted, their are folks in the chruch that have issues of sin that may haunt them and plage them throughout their Christian walk, and thus they are not fit for leadership. However, I’m talking about the average person that regularly attends the same chruch, gives of their time, talent and treasures to the church and yet their life outside of church is lived differently. Perhaps even worse, is when churches ignore immoral behavior and continue to allow someone to represent their chruch and in turn represent Christ, despite their actions.
Second, in it’s words and actions the church represents us. When a church ignores poverty, allows unrepentant sin to continue and preaches a message contrary to the Gospel, it reflects on who you are as a church-goer. Is it okay to stay at a church that allows women to be pastors, practicing homosexuals to serve and preaching pastors to subvert and dillute the Gospel? What about something not so obvious… like a preaching pastor that denies a 7-day literal creation? Or an Elder board that allows baptism and communion to happen only when it is convienant to the worship schedule? Or Deacons and Deaconesses to spend more time gossiping during their prayer meetings than serving the needs of the body? When do the actions of your church cross the line and begin to reflect poorly on you?
I know for Obama, he was VERY patient and VERY careful not to leave and abandon his church at the first sign of controversy. From the beginning Obama was very clear that the chruch was very important to him and that he had willingly overlooked the faults of the past, as well as the words and actions of his foremer pastor. Obama made it clear that he was a part of the chruch, but that he had his own individual ideas and thoughts when it came to running the country. Obama only left AFTER a guest speaker had made sarcastic remarks about one of his rivals in the campaign, which we all know is something a speaker has no business doing from the pulpit. I am sure it was a tough decision for Obama and his family, but I believe it was the right one. Hopefully the church will learn from it’s mistakes be able to recover from the firestorm and hopefully Obama will be able to find a new church that will allow him worship his Creator in a slightly less controversial environment.
Tags: Barack Obama, Church, Election 2008, Firestorm
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Tags: Twitter
