If the Reid family of the Copperfield area is reading this....thank you.

One of my favorite parts of the movie "Dumb and Dumber" is near the beginning of the movie. Harry and Lloyd have both lost their jobs and have come home to find that their pet parakeet has been beheaded, only they don’t know he’s been beheaded because they are dumb. And dumber. In despair Lloyd cries out, "We’ve got no money! We’ve got no jobs! Our pets’ heads are falling off!" The last couple of weeks in the Long family have been pets-heads-falling-off kind of weeks. We’ve had broken toilets, showers & windows, hives, illness, a family pet put down, a car in the shop, more illness and my Dr. Pepper exploded on me in the van one afternoon. And though these are small things compared to what others may be going through this week, still the poo just seems to keep on rolling sometimes, doesn’t it? On Friday evening I popped into the study to check something in my email and caught a glimpse of the Connecticut news story. For about the fifth time that day I began to cry at the horror of the whole situation when suddenly my doorbell rang. I opened the door to find a note on the door mat which read, "Thank you for being such a blessing by displaying your nativity scene!" The note is referring to one of our Christmas yard decorations (no, not Morris...I assume my thank you note for putting him out will come later this weekend). It might as well have been Jesus on my doorstep that evening the way that note reached me. It’s not the first time we’ve received one. We have a family in the area that does this each year and if I could figure out where they lived I’d hug them. But it’s just the small, but oh so important reminder that comes to us in the midst of all the other madness in life that OUR FAITH DOES MATTER. That it means something to put it out there and to share it. That what we do in Christ’s love does not go unnoticed. We are surrounded by things that break, bodies that fail us and hearts that despair. We MUST be God’s hands and feet in this world. We’ve got to put God in the middle of it. It is too important not to. XOXO...Kelly