Confessions of a Bad Blogger Pt. 1

Last week, you remember... when I was grovelling , hoping someone was still reading, I said that I might tell you later why I had been such a bad blogger... so here it goes.

I guess you could say it all comes down to the fact that I starting praying for my block. Let me 'splain....
This summer our pastor and elders encouraged us to go for evening walks with our family and start praying for our neighbors, in an effort to really start loving our neighbors as our selves....
Well on my walks I really felt like I wanted to start setting aside a couple hours a week to make myself available to my neighbors if there was anything they needed prayer for or just anything in general, little did I know I wouldn't just be doing something a couple hours a week.

The very next week we got the news that my neighbor of 32 years, Frank was in the hospital with pretty serious cancer.
Frank was released a few days later and came home to no one. Frank was a very grumpy guy that had alienated everyone in his life, especially his family.
The first night Frank was home, he said he had never been so scared in his life, he said he had been bombed in WWII and never as scared as he was that night.
Our hearts went out to this man, who for most of my life had been mean, crotchety, vengeful and on rare occasions cordial...
Let me give you a little back round on the cordial part... haha
I remember about 12 years ago Frank yelling across the lawn to me, "Cynthia, you'd be a beautiful girl, if you just learned to push away from the table..."
Or there's the time I made him a pie for his birthday and he told me "Don't ever make me one of those again, I gained 2 pounds..."
So you get the idea.... but we offered to help get him sorted with getting his house clean, a live in care taker, meals on wheels, funeral arrangements... the list goes on... It ended up being much more than a few hours a week.
It was so amazing to see this man, who for most of my life, I had lived in fear of, linger when I hugged him or held his hand... or even tear up when he told me stories of some of his personal achievements or about the day his ashes would be scattered at sea.

I want to tell you more about my time with Frank before he died, but I'll leave it at that for today, but before I go I want to introduce you to a web site that is hosted by CATALYST an organization in IL that is trying to encourage people to actively engage in praying for their neighbors.
It's called Pray 4 Your Block, their aim is to encourage people to be actively praying for their neighbors and when you sign up a flag is raised on the map to encourage you and others of who is praying near you...
As you can see right now I'm the only one in CdM, actually maybe in Orange County, and I know there are many of you already praying so raise your flag!
This has been such an amazing season for our family, in actually doing what we believe and what Jesus asked us to, praying for our enemies, loving our neighbor as ourselves, we have been so blessed... but more on that to come....