End Times

I've been thinking a lot about end times. It scares me. It used to scare me for me, but not anymore. Now it scares me for Hollis. I know that I can handle it, but my sweet little innocent baby, can he handle it? I know that if Hollis accepts Christ he can handle it, but no one wants their children to suffer. Especially, no one has children thinking that they will have to endure persecution. We all work very hard to make sure that our children do not have to suffer anymore than they have to. When things are out of our control, there's nothing to be done. But, we have to remember that things are not out of the Lord's control. He is the omnipotent one. We also have to remember that the tribulation is a result of human sin. Now, I don't know how if I'm pre-trib or post-trib, but I know that things are going to get worse before the Lord makes his appearance. We can sit here and "blame" Adam and Eve, but the truth of the matter is that any one of us would have done the same thing. We also should remember that at the end of the world heaven is waiting. I haven't always  looked forward to heaven, simply because I don't know if my loved ones will be part of my life there. I mean, our loved ones are the greatest part of our lives, we can't imagine anything better right? But the Bible tells us that it is better. So far beyond our imaginations, that we can't grasp the reality that something could be better than loving and being loved. I try hard every day to have faith, and trust that God knows what's best. That's always been hard for me to do when it was just me, but now that I have Hollis, it's harder than ever. Just because as a mother I think I know ultimately what's best for my son. I can worry about what we are going to have to endure or I can learn to enjoy life right now, and prepare myself for what's to come. I used to think that preparing myself meant wallowing in fear and worry. But, I've learned that that only makes me weaker. You can take life seriously and still enjoy what's left of it. I've never had tragedy strike in my life, so I don't know how I would be at handling chaos, but I do know that the Lord tells me he gives me strength to endure all things. "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me." Phil. 4:13 Let's remember that as Christians we are the strong ones. Let's have confidence in our one TRUE God. In turn this will give us confidence in ourselves to stand up and fight His battle, and preach his gospel unto all the world.

We had a great weekend! We took Hollis to the zoo for the first time on Friday. It was sooo much fun. He had a blast. We had a blast. The grandparents had a blast. A blast was had by all. The zoo has kind of become a special thing to our family, accidentally. Dane and I didn't go on our honeymoon until the week after our wedding. We stayed at the Peabody on our wedding night and went to the zoo the next day. Then when my sister's due date rolled around with Jack we decided to go to the zoo. (He was born twenty minutes after his due date. 12:20 I think...) So, we also went on Hollis' due date.( He was nine days late...) Didn't work for Hollis. That was the last time we were there. Anyway, we've kind of made it our family thing. Here are a few pictures of the day.

 I don't know if you can tell, but his shirt says, "I'm a little bananas". This is the best picture I could get.