When I arrived home on a morning in late September, there was an e-mail from Brad asking me to consider speaking at the Sunday service before Thanksgiving. I must admit I didn't immediately fall to my knees and thank God for this opportunity. In fact, the first words out of my mouth were "no, I'm not doing that. I'm not ready for that."

But the more I thought about sharing my beliefs and my faith with you, the more I realized it was something I had to do. I feel blessed by God, and I want to acknowledge His blessings and witness to the important place he fills in my life.

I was born in Canandaigua, NY in the heart of the Finger Lakes. Sadly my mother died giving birth to me. My father was left with a newborn and three young sons. My oldest borther, Bob, was not quite four and my twin brothers, Dick and Jack, were 1-1/2. He struggled to keep the family together, hiring a housekeeper to watch us while he worked.

Jack was in fragile health and so went to live with my mother's parents in Baptist Hill, NY near Canandaigua. I also went to live with them at around four years of age. My grandma told me I was pretty unhappy for several days, but one day as we were walking up to the general store my grandparents operated, I grabbed her hand and said I'm going to stay with you forever, Grandma". I did until I went away to college and later married. Thankfully, even at such a tender age I had the good senses to know that I had landed on my feet.

For the most part I had a happy childhood. I had three girl cousins down the road to play with. My grandparents were good to us, but I always felt different because my family was not the norm. My greatest fear as a child was that grandma and grandpa would send me back to my father.

My father had very little contact with us, and we seldom saw our other brothers. This was especially true after my Dad remarried and a stepbrother was added to the family. We usually stayed with my Dad for a couple of weeks in the summer, and I used to cry with relief and joy when we got home again.

I know now my father did the best he could in a difficult situation, and I have forgiven him for his absence, but because of my childhood where I sometimes felt I had to earn love and acceptance, I've struggled to feel worthy of God's gift of faith. Thankfully, God has not given up on me.

My grandmother was a wonderful person and, no doubt, the person who had the most influence on me in childhood and beyond. She was the disciplinarian in the family. My grandfather was an assemblyman for Ontario County for many years and was gone away a lot doing political stuff and Grama was our rock.

She was not a "touchy-feely" kind of grandma, but I have no doubt that she loved us. Grandma and Grandpa lost two daughters--my mother at age 27 and a younger daughter at age 21 in a car accident. Grandma suffered a nervous breakdown at one point but instead of letting these tragic losses make her bitter, she took Jack and I into her home and nurtured us as best she could.

She took care of the general store they ran while Grandpa was in Albany during January, February and March of each year and found time to be active in church, Grange, Home Bureau and Red Cross. She loved to read and passed that love on to me and my brother. Our little village was fortunate to have library and both Grandma and I served as librarians over the years.

My early Christian training was started at the only church in Baptist Hill which happened to be a Universalist Church. I have good memories of church and Sunday School--learning about Jesus, singing familiar hymns, and participating in Children's Day exercises.

I attended a one-room district school until 8th grade when we were bussed to a centralized school in East Bloomfield. I loved school. I graduated at 16 in 1948 and went to Brockport State Teacher's College, now a part of SUNY, State University of NY, graduating in 1952.

At Bloomfield, I met my future husband, Hank Lay, and we were married in June 1952. We moved to Springfield, Massachusetts where he worked for the NY Central Railroad. We were there until Hank was drafted into the Army. While he was in the service, the office moved to Syracuse, New York, where we lived for 14 busy, happy years, where our kids were born--a daughter in 1958, a son in 1959, and another son in 1962.

In Syracuse we became member of a community church with ties to the United Church of Christ. After our children were born, I became more concerned about taking them to Sunday School. I began teaching the nursery class, joined a women's circle, and generally become more active.

In June 1970, the office in Syracuse closed. Hank was sent to New Haven, CT and told this would be a permanent move, but in November of 1970 we were notified we would be moving to Philadelphia, and we settled into Darley Woods in February of 1971.

This was a difficult move and a difficult year for all of us but especially for Hank and our children. I think of this time as the beginning of many changes and challenges which led to difficulties that erupted later in the 1970s for our three teenagers. Up until the 1970s, I had taken God pretty much for granted and certainly had no clue that our mostly happy lives were in peril. 1976 was an especially difficult year. We found ourselves dealing with depression, a teenage pregnancy, drug use, a teen marriage and then divorce, and the beginning of mental illness in one of our sons.

In the 1980s, our son was diagnosed with obsessive compulsive disorder, and in the 1990s with bipolar disease. Since 2003, he has suffered four heart attacks and has had many stents inserted in his arteries. The good news is that in the last year and a half his medications have been stabilized and he's doing much better. Thanks be to God.

Also in the late 1980s, our daughter's marriage ended in divorce because of drug use by her husband. She was left with a four-year old and a newborn. Eventually her husband died of AIDS. As you can imagine, this was a very traumatic time for her and our family. She and the baby had to be tested--an anxious time--but they were OK. She married again in 1990 and just celebrated 20 years of marriage.

Recently one of our grandsons has suffered depression and had sought solace through prescription drugs and marijuana. I'm happy to say he has been clean and sober for more than six months. I know there are no guarantees, but I live in hope and pray everyday that he will have the strength to stay committed to his recovery program.

Hank and I and our family, with God's help, has weathered these storms and others. I think we are stronger for what we've been through. I know I'm a more compassionate person.

I don't share these difficulties with you to gain sympathy or to feel sorry for myself. I've not been a person to say "why me?" Life happens, good and bad, and sooner or later trials appear. I feel blessed to have my faith in God to see me through.

We found Trinity in April of 1971, and I served as a deacon from 1972 until 1975. As the decade progressed, I began to pray everyday, to read the Bible, and to take tentative steps towards a closer relationship with God. A group of young Christians put on an Easter pageant at Trinity and at the end asked for people to come forward to rededicate themselves to God. I was moved to do this. Two of my brothers were born-again Christians, but I did not feel able to go that route. Instead, I think of my faith walk as a journey that started in my childhood and has continued all through my life.

The arrival of Brad and Barb at Trinity and their ministry here has surely strengthened my faith and blessed me in many ways. I thank them and you, the congregation, for all the love and caring in this church. I have made many cherished friends here through belonging to Covenant Group, Ruth Circle, the Book Club, and the Tuesday evening Bible study. I have found these small group ministries very rewarding in that I have gotten to know people's cares and concerns first hand. My Covenant group is especially dear to my heart.

I have heard people say "I don't need to go to church, I can experience God anywhere." Not to denigrate those mountaintop experiences...they serve their purpose. But for me, I need to have a church family. I need that strength every week. There are so many people in this congregation whom I admire and look up to--so much courage and strength displayed in difficult situations.

Prayer and reading Scripture and studying God's word with others have strengthened my faith. I am a member of the prayer tree and find it a privilege to pray for all who are in need of God's special care.

In 2003, I started visiting nursing home residents on a weekly basis. These special people have done immeasurably more for my faith than I can do for them. It's important to leave the walls of the church and spread our love and caring. In fact, it is vital to the future of God's church.

I'm grateful, too, for all the work and planning that go into our worship services. Brad's messages, the prayers, the music, the fellowship we share--all make each service special and meaningful. I love the praise songs and the drumming, and I applaud the efforts of all the staff to help Trinity grow with the times we live in. I love the old familiar hymns as well and they have their place in the service too.

In closing, let me say I don't have it all together. I still have dark times of the soul when I wake in the middle of the night and God seems very far away. I fret and worry over situations when I know I should let go and let God take over. My trust and faith in Him is still so weak at times but I'm persevering. I don't know what challenges lie ahead, but I know that God and Jesus and the Holy Spirit will see me through. We are not promised trouble-free lives, but we are guaranteed guidance and strength through the grace of God, the love of Jesus, and the intervention of the Holy Spirit.

I am thankful for the promise of salvation through Jesus' sacrifice on the cross, for all the blessings I have received, for God's world, for my country and the freedoms we enjoy, for my husband Hank who has been my help and support through 58 years of marriage, for our children and grandchildren, for good and caring friends, for food and shelter and the necessities of life, and for worthwhile work to do in and for God's church.

I hope and pray that Trinity will continue to be a vibrant church, a welcoming congregation, and a strong force for good in the community.

I've always been a planner-worrier. I've needed a plan for everything, a timeline and a deadline and a goal. Long-term planning is good to some extent, of course, in grown-up life, but I've learned over these last two years, especially, that MY plan is not necessarily the best plan. In fact, I've learned that the best plan is often just about the opposite of my plan. And that worrier part of my personality? That's gotten me nowhere.

My husband, Chris, and I joke that we've already hit all the major points of our marriage vows in pretty big ways. We've done sickness and health, richer and poorer, better and worse. But here's something pretty cool: The sickness has made us healthier, the poor has made us wealthier, and the worse has made us better.

On New Year's Day 2009, Chris was admitted to the hospital with a very serious illness, though at first I didn't quite realize how serious. It was not a good way to start the year.

I had a very angry, very selfish and petulant conversation with God on my way home from the hospital. I cried and cursed and screamed - I was angry with Chris for not taking better care of himself, I was angry at myself for not taking better care of him, I was angry with his doctor who I blamed for letting this slip by. I spewed it all out, then went inside and cuddled my little boy through the night. I was scared, so scared.

The next morning the phone rang early - it was the treating physician to talk to me about Chris's bloodwork, who said the words that still ring in my ears: "Mrs. Bachman, we've tested and retested your husband's blood, and frankly, it's a miracle that he came in here on his own two feet. In fact, we can't figure out why he's not dead."

Process that for a moment: A doctor is telling me over the phone, while I'm feeding 3-year-old Hayden his breakfast, that my 35-year-old husband-my best friend since college-should, according to all medical insight, not be living. Hmph.

The illness he was admitted for was merely a presentation of a much more serious condition. This is one of the times that it became vividly clear that we are not at all in control of the big picture, and no matter how hard you plan or how hard you worry -- life happens. It was a bonk on the head to change our priorities. A new Chris was born. He shed weight like water, he gained energy and enthusiasm, our marriage grew stronger and our family time became more vital.

Looking back I now realize that before this scare, our marriage was on cruise control. We were settled in to our routines, handling all our responsibilities, but sort of taking each other for granted. For months I had been praying for guidance in my marriage; I never expected that I would be shown in such a dramatic way how fragile life is, how quickly my world could shatter-well, it changed things for both me and Chris. Our sickness made us healthy, our worse made us better.

You know what happens when a marriage grows stronger, right? Baby! Hooray! We were surprised and thrilled, of course, to find out we were pregnant a few months later. But looking back, I was ridiculously anxious through the entire pregnancy: How could we afford two children in daycare? How would we fit diapers and formula and two kids' worth of clothing into our already cramped budget? In this rocky economy, would I still have a job when I came back from maternity leave? Could we even afford a maternity leave? How would I juggle two children while recovering from c-section surgery with Chris working such long hours so far away? I know, it sounds silly now that I know sweet baby Jake, and maybe I can blame the hormones, but really, I was terrified about the impact another kid would have.

It occurred to me in the middle of a sleepless night, that there was nothing I could do about all these financial concerns. It was all beyond my control. No amount of worry was going to ensure the furnace didn't break down. No amount of anxiety was going to guarantee my job security. No amount of sleeplessness would make caring for myself and my family any easier! It was time to give it up to God. So I prayed for Him to carry the burden of my worry, to show the way. I prayed that prayer every morning and every night, and I was sleeping soundly again for good.

God sometimes has a funny way of answering prayers. Three weeks before my due date, Chris came home from work early. Very early. "Well, I at least I don't have to ever make that horrible commute again," he said, and he slumped down on the couch next to me. He'd been laid off.

Until that moment, I'd never known the pain and anger and anxiety that comes with losing a job. So many of us are at least partially defined by our work. It's one of the first questions a new acquaintance asks - "So, what do you do?" - and co-workers often become our closest friends. Even if you hate your job and you loathe the daily grind, it's what you know, it's part of your plan. When you lose your job, you lose the plan.

I think I kept it together pretty well on the outside that first day, sort of, but internally - complete panic and terror! For over a year we'd been assuming my job was in jeopardy, then whammo - the other shoe dropped. One thought repeated over and over in my brain: "Why now? We're going to have a baby! In days!" I e-mailed Barb and told her what had happened and how I felt like I was losing control, and she replied with the same two words that she says to me often when I'm spinning: "One step."

One step, one step, one step--it became my mantra, because frankly, I didn't know what else to do. Everything we thought was solid had shifted under our feet - again -- so I had to take one thing at a time. You can't come up with every solution at once; you can't figure out your new budget and polish a resume and figure out the unemployment line and shop for medical insurance and cancel daycare all at this very moment. So take a breath. And pray.

So we prayed. Chris and I put our heads together on that couch and asked the Lord to show us the way: You've always provided for us before, Lord; please lift us up now and help us to figure this out.

And He did. In fact the 8 months in which Chris was unemployed were perhaps the happiest we've known. We spent three full months together, all four of us, while I was on maternity leave, the best three months of my life. It was such a gift, being together as a family while we adjusted to our new little person. Chris devoted his days to taking care of us, and we devoted ourselves to reconnecting as a family. We didn't have much spending cash, but it didn't matter - that's what parks and backyards and board games are for. We were rich with time-time for Chris to spend with his children, time for us to slow down and appreciate how good our life really is. The poorer made us so much richer!

The realization that really rocked my world, though, was how easily I could adjust-me, the impatient worrier/uber-planner-to not knowing what the next week would bring. I mean, somehow we managed to pay the bills and keep food on the table without really knowing when Chris would be employed again. And it didn't even drive me crazy! Because every day I prayed for the Lord to just show the way, to lead us to where he wanted us to be. And we were so happy, together, healthy, loving every minute with our new little miracle and his big brother.

A few weeks ago, Chris started a new job. A good job at a really solid company close to home. As we stepped back into the rat race, I got grouchy and frazzled and annoyed for a few days, until one afternoon while racing home from work to meet Hayden at the school bus, it occurred to me just how abundantly blessed we are.

The gravity of the circumstances of today's world settled on me, as I thought about the number of our friends and relatives who are currently out of work, who are struggling - really struggling! -- to make ends meet. And here we were, 8 months at much less income with an extra child in the mix, having the time of our lives! So many blessings. And when the job came along, it was a better work situation than what was lost. Then just this week, a new opportunity has come for me, which will surely bring a new set of challenges as far as work-family balance. But I'm not sweating it because I know we'll work it out--because the worse made us better.

Being a grown-up is so scary, isn't it? You wouldn't believe how many times I've looked around and thought, "nah, I'm not old enough to make these decisions or have these responsibilities." I've learned these last few years, especially, to rely on gratitude to keep perspective, and I'm trying to instill that in my children. I pray almost constantly - especially when I feel that worry voice creeping back into my head - I pray short little practical prayers, simply thanking God for my blessings, then asking for guidance: Show me the way, Lord. I know you have a plan, and I'm going to trust in you because I know that what you have in store for me is perfect.

Since I began praying this prayer regularly, there have been specific moments that I feel the Lord's presence at my side. Just a quiet reassurance, a feeling of peace that I've never known before. These are usually simple moments, too: rocking Jake in the dark wee hours of the morning, noticing the clouds wooshing by while Hayden and I walk in the neighborhood, snuggling on the couch with Chris and feeling the purr of my cat on my lap. Now I am more present in the small moments, more aware of how special each day is and less worried about what might happen next week or next year. I know now more than ever that God loves me and has a plan for me; Jesus walks beside me; the Holy Spirit works through me.

So, what am I thankful for today, as 2010 draws down?

I am thankful for the trials that have taught me to be less uptight about my own plans and to have an open heart and open mind so I may realize God's plans. And I'm thankful for my abundant blessings, especially for my healthy husband and children, who have taught me to appreciate the everyday wonder of the world. God is so good.

I am thankful today and every day to be part of this amazing church family. The love and joy and enthusiasm between these walls is palpable; there are Sundays I feel like I might just float away on a hymn! From the very moment I walked through those doors 12 years ago, I have felt we are partners in this awesome faith journey, and I so appreciate the way this congregation shows God's love in big and small ways. I have watched you move mountains! You have supported us with your love and prayers, you've become our family, you've given us roots. We're so blessed, so grateful.

I'm sharing my story with you today mostly because I know we all face challenges big and small and in between every single day-it's life, after all. But our faith gives us the tools and the forbearance to learn and grow and thrive with every bend and twist in the road. Thank you for the opportunity to share with you today. I wish you all blessings and peace.