Tomorrow we leave for our annual, 12-hour haul to Iowa to celebrate Thanksgiving with my lovely, if-not-a-little quirky step-family. The bags are packed, the cooler stocked, and the GPS programmed. But, I wonder, if I'm ready. My four blessings have behaved like anything but all day long and I am bone weary. Satan, I see, is doing what I so often allow him to do--destroy my testimony. If you could have seen a replay of today's events you would understand. Suffice to say, Mama was on the war path.

Now, I will arrive in Dubuque spiritually drained; too ashamed to minister to my lost friends and family for fear of being a hypocrite. How do I tell them of "the straight and narrow" when I'm currently lying in a ditch?

But, praise be to God...His blessings are new every morning and we'll be driving through a whole lot of morning tomorrow. I can only pray that the next 24 hours will be better than the last and that some how He will be able to use me, however battered I may feel. The gospel power He has given me, is afterall, made of the same stuff that raised Jesus from the grave.

If you catch my post, please pray for me and my family as we venture into "Pop Country". There is a great darkness there. They need the light of the gospel desperately.

Blessing upon blessing to you all as you celebrate Thanksgiving.