Brent had outpatient dialysis for the first time yesterday.  He will be having this Monday, Wednesday and Friday for the next several weeks until he starts the training for home dialysis.  Since home from the hospital, he has had days where he has felt fairly good, fairly bad, days he has felt tired and in pain and nauseated.  My natural tendency is to let my mood be affected by how he is feeling that hour.  But I was challenged by the sermon at church over the weekend on idols.  My pastor said an idol is "anything we look to for our sense of well being other than Almighty God.  When I look to how Brent is feeling for my sense of well-being, then that becomes an idol to me.

One day over the weekend, I was feeling discouraged and then read this from one of my devotionals:  "Do not yield to discouragement no matter how severely stressed or surrounded by problems you may be....  Flee every symptom of the deadly foe of discouragement as you would run from a snake.  Never be slow to turn your back on it, unless you desire to eat the dust of bitter defeat.  Search for specific promises of God, saying aloud of each one, "this promise is mine." 

So that is what we did.  After the kids were asleep, we went through different scripture and picked out promises that God has given us and we said, this promise is ours!"  There is power in believing God is who He says He is!