January 30, 2010
Greetings My Friend,
My thoughts are taking me to a “line drawn in the sand.” There have been points in my life where I felt the need to draw the line, to say enough…. That moment generally comes with a lot of thought. It is not one I like, yet I find that sometimes it needs to be done. I no longer want to “go on” the way that relationship or situation is going.
The most obvious one would be my divorce. My husband asked for the divorce, I had asked for it and he wanted to reconcile. We did and then he asked for the divorce. For me, I wanted off of the roller coaster. Our whole marriage was a constant roller coaster ride and I grew weary of it.
Since I drew the line in my divorce, I’ve had to draw that line again three times. Each time it has been painful. Still, continuing on in that relationship was going to be more painful and not really bring any peace. I felt that letting go was probably the best. In my younger years, I would have held on for dear life. With Jesus though, I have had the courage to “let go, Let God.”
We moved to Virginia because we were discouraged with Michigan allowing pre born to be experimented on and was to be aborted. We were really troubled by it. As we settle here though, I find that our move had several purposes. We did not know this as we moved; it came as we settled in.
Over and over I sense that I need to leave the struggles I had in Michigan…in Michigan. Virginia seems to be a call to a new life, a new beginning. Part of our being here is it is quiet. During the summer, the porch was where I did quiet. I felt God hugging me, being very tender with me. Another part of quiet for me is it gives me time to “think.” As I “think,” I tend to reflect and then these reflections come out in written form. I feel God has called me to write about my discoveries and share.
Some of what I share is deep and personal. Believe it or not, there are times I’d rather feel in private and not share. As I journey along with God though….I find I want people to come to know the God I love. Part of the God I love is the way he helps me face each and every day. I am able to get out of bed, face each day now. At one point….I could not. I remember when my children were little, I felt so hopeless. Only Grandma caught my despair. She told me over and over that I mattered and I needed to quit thinking “those” thoughts. Because she got honest with me and met me where I was most desperate, I never did anything rash. I felt her love and I moved on. At that point I did not have a personal walk with Jesus. I knew who He was, had no idea of how to connect.
As a young girl, a young woman, I wrote my life story in my heart. I was going to grow up, get married and have children. I wound up having a career…still my heart was on being a mother. Many people for years did not realize that I had a career. I talked about my children and husband first and foremost. As my children grew older, I pictured that I would be “grandma.” Life has not worked out that way.
God has been very kind to me. As I have let go of dreams….God has given me new dreams. After my divorce, I prayed. I asked God to allow me to be married again and to give me a healthy relationship. I wanted a man who took his faith seriously. God granted me that request. My marriage has been a very satisfying relationship. We have had moments to be sure. Junior’s retirement….curb side shopping….my retirement and a general falling apart have been struggles we needed to work through. Still, we love each other deeply. I believe God teaches us how to love each other and it is through prayer, Bible study that we find many of our answers.
Writing is another dream. That one started out early in life. I’ve started and stopped a couple of times, this time I am seeing it through. I enjoy when I can put words down and I truly love giving God the accolades. I find joy in writing. I am grateful that I can have the quiet time to be reflective and share what I find.
I was able to retire young….I loved it. I retired at 54. When I married Junior I wanted to be retired with him. God has allowed me to be retired with Junior. God pointed us to a great Financial Planner. He helped make retirement a reality and we listened to him. To be sure, we are now on a fixed income, still we are doing ok. Another part of our move is that it is very cheap to live here where we are at. We can continue to live fairly comfortably, not extravagantly but comfortable.
So the “line in the sand,” was hard to do. I wish I did not have to make it. I look to a day where there will be a reconciling peace. That would be awesome. For now though, I look to God to lead me, guide me and direct me….well I want that forever at this point.
May God bless you and keep you, make His face to shine upon you.
Love
Janet

January 23, 2010
Greetings My Friend,
As I write this, it is the first week in November. Last Sunday November 1st, I was baptized in the river behind our house. So why would I go out into the cold water on a 50 some degree day and get baptized? That is the 64,000 dollar question.
My faith journey has been an important part of my life since my divorce. As I see the struggles I’ve dealt with, I see where I have not been alone. Describing what I see, what I’ve come to know….that is a challenge at times. Part of my faith journey has been learning how to have “eyes, that see and ears that hear.” As I have opened my heart to Jesus, I find times where I “see and hear” differently now.
As I look back at my life, I see where I was one of those people, like the kid in school who raises their hand wanting to give an answer, jumping up and down, kind of like saying, “me, I know the answer, ask me.” I was constantly trying to get noticed by someone, somebody, somehow. I wanted to be noticed, accepted, wanted….you name it.
I also didn’t want to get noticed as well. I learned how to blend into the woodwork, to not be noticed. In school, I learned to sit in the middle, the front and back got called on the most. If I was in the middle, I blended in and wasn’t noticed. I didn’t have to give answers because I wasn’t seen. I also learned to wear nondescript clothes with muted colors. This helped blend me into the woodwork so to speak.
My first big step came when I prayed the sinner’s prayer. I asked Jesus to be the Savior in my heart and I confessed that I was a sinner. Right afterwards, I did not feel any different than I had before the prayer. When I look back, I do see that was the point where my life really changed. One of the first changes I wanted to make was that I wanted to listen to different music. Then I wanted to fill my head with cleaner thoughts. I wanted to change, not because God was forcing me to, I wanted to change because I wanted to change.
As I went along in my faith journey, I found myself not being alone anymore. I have always liked being in a crowd, with other people. I did not like being alone and wanted to do everything with someone else. I was able to sit more quietly, to be content and not need to be entertained ALL the time. That was a huge change for me.
I found times where God was comforting me, encouraging me AND that felt wonderful. I had the attention I wanted and I LOVED it. I remember praying asking God to show me what being “still and knowing God was like.” Shortly after that I had cancer. Boy that hurt. Still as I went along and got so very tired…..I began to learn to be comfortable in quietness.
Part of what I like about being with Junior is that he is totally comfortable living a very quiet life. It is foreign to me. I love when I wake up in the morning and he has been up for a couple of hours, his quiet movements amaze me. He is content wandering around doing whatever. We don’t do drama. I knew drama very well, that’s all I lived forever and a day. Drama got to be…..too dramatic. I got so tired of it. This quiet life though, I find I enjoy it, crave it and long for it. To be honest, we do way more than I did in my “other” life. We travel. We get together with friends. We went to plays and probably will again. We go to church. We have done mission trips and hope to do more in the future. Our lives are full and rich.
As I move along in my faith journey, I find that I don’t need to be NOTICED so much anymore. I am learning to LOVE to seek another’s highest good. That feels real nice too. Seeking another’s highest good means there are times when I am not noticed. That’s ok, and I don’t mind.
So my life has been moving along nicely. My faith journey has been growing steadily, so why get baptized? The thief on the cross wasn’t baptized. What’s the “big” deal? I was baptized as a baby. Why do it again?
As I came to the baptism, I had two stories that God placed on my heart. The first one was of when the Israelites crossed the Red Sea. That’s why I picked the river behind my house. When the Israelites left Egypt and got to the Red Sea…..they had to learn to trust God. They were backed into a corner so to speak. The sea was in front of them and the Egyptian army was behind them. They had to learn to “Let go, Let God.” God provided for them. He led them through the sea on dry ground. They had to leave Egypt in Egypt. For me my Egypt is Michigan. I have had to let go of Michigan and the holds it has on me, the hurt, the anger…whatever.
The other story, I found myself thinking on was my faith journey. Through the years since I prayed the “sinners” prayer, I found myself growing, desiring to please God more and more. That’s one of my pretty much every day prayers. Lord, take me and use me this day for your Glory. I can look back and see what a difference my life has been as I have learned to “obey.” I know that I know that my life has been enriched beyond words because Jesus loves ME. As I learned about the symbolism of the baptism, I wanted to be baptized….to grow in my faith even more. When I was submerged into the water, I was dying to sin. When I came up out of the water, I was a new creation in Christ. The new creation in Christ has been appealing to me. I can see where I have changed – been made new if you will. I am looking for an even deeper walk, more changes that will help me to be……and I wait to see what “that” will be.
A new question comes to mind. Have you thought about Jesus? We will have to think about Him at some point. Why not now?

May God bless you and keep you, make His face to shine upon you.
Love
Janet

January 16, 2010

Greetings My Friend,

When my children were small, older people would counsel me, “Don’t say my child will never.” It seems the one thing you are determined your child will not do, is the one thing they will do. As I have gone on in my life, it seems that statement is true in general. The one thing you were never going to do, wind up being what you are doing.
I have run across people who tell me they are going to stay married….never divorce. At that point I want to tell them that when I married the first time, that was my thought, we’d be married forever, till death do us part. I did not marry with the idea that one day I would be divorced. When I went through Divorce Recovery, I was one of the youngest, least married in my class. I had been married 24 years at the time of my divorce. One lady had been married 40 years and was divorced.
When Junior and I talked about getting married, he asked me if I wanted to make a life commitment with him. That felt good to hear. I had been in counseling and he started to attend with me. He wanted to know what I was dealing with and wanted to help me through my struggles. After we were married, we continued with counseling for another two years. I believe it helped us a whole lot. We also took re-married classes to better understand the struggles re-married couples dealt with.
We learned that it was important to never use the “d” word. (Divorce) “D” was not an option. That felt good too. I found that if we committed to this then I felt safe. When I felt safe, I was free to grow, to make mistakes and not be kicked to the curb so to speak. We soon had a saying that helped us stay committed, “No D word in our marriage other than Death and it had to be natural causes.” To be honest, it felt good and safe to know we were that committed.
When there is a relationship, there comes a point where the two people will not see eye to eye on something….it is going to happen. We then started repeating our wedding vows, you know, “In sickness and in health, in good times and in bad, till death do us part.” It was silly and broke the tension. It also had a way of reminding us of our commitment to see this to the end.
As I read about people in the Bible times, early times in this country, I find that when a couple dated it was to see if they’d be good in marriage. Marriage was at the back of dating. I think that this is a good idea. If we dated as if we may marry that person, not just to have fun and then move on, we may have more stable marriages. I also ponder if we should be teaching our young people that dating is to find that person you will one day be married to.
I think we do a disservice when we marry with the idea of “if it don’t work out,….we move on.” Divorce hurts children, even grown children. Divorce hurts friendships. Many divorced people will tell you that friends may not have wanted to take sides, or friends did take sides. It is hard everywhere you turn. I also believe many children (most) have some sort of struggles when their parents’ divorce. Many feel they are in the middle,
I find myself wanting to teach young people about the serious commitment that marriage should be. I want to teach them how to look for the “right” mate. As I looked back, I found that there were many warning signs where that marriage should not have happened. Like when I fainted at the altar and then threw up. Even before that….we had fights that were violent. The red flags were all over the place and still I wasn’t able to realize what the outcome would be.
With divorce at or around 50% of first marriages, second marriages tend to have a 70% failure rate and the odds get worse after that, I find it scary. I also am concerned about the way we have “free” love. A baby may be conceived in a non-serious relationship. The mother may have the child and that child may not grow up with one of the parents, more likely without a Dad or a full time Dad. Children need Both parents. Women teach the child many things and a Dad also has valuable things to teach that child.
I believe that parents need to start stressing that the child should seek to be married, to be married when they have children and to stay married. They also need to stress waiting till marriage for sex. At this point I often hear parents say “well….I wasn’t exactly innocent and I can’t expect my kids too….” To be honest most of us made stupid blunders along the way to being an adult. Isn’t that our job, to try to redirect our children if possible, so they don’t fall into the same mistakes?
Will children make mistakes; get involved too soon etc., more than likely. Still many children listen and will do as they are told. Other children often learn from their mistakes. I know a young lady who learned a valuable lesson after she gave birth, the value of waiting. She learned that being a single parent is hard and not wonderful. She then waited till she married a young man before engaging in sex again. When I was a youth advisor, I had some kids tell me the reason they never did drugs were because of the commercials on TV., the ones where they showed the egg in the frying pan and said, “Your brain on drugs.” Again, if we make being celibate important, we may be giving our children a valuable lesson.
Wouldn’t it be great to see the divorce trend stop and marriages to be healthy again?
May God bless you and keep you, make His face to shine upon you.

Love
Janet

January 9, 2010

Greetings My Friend,

Character flaws are in everyone some way, somehow. I have had the opportunity to study mine recently….at times it has been painful. In my study of my character flaws I was taken back in time….where most of them began.

I have always had a tremendous desire to figure things out. Puzzling through thoughts is almost like a hobby for me. I can come up with three different scenes in a matter of minutes. It tends to annoy people a whole lot, which usually makes me very sad that I bother people that much. Part of the puzzling through process is asking questions….again this drives people crazy. To be honest…..I don’t even know I ask so many questions.

I started this behavior early on. At home as a child, I would come to the dinner table with questions. I remember getting the “sex” talk. They taught us the sperm cell and the egg cell had to unite. I thought about this and I thought on this for a long time. I could not figure out how the cells came together. I got fearful of the toilet. I imagined that my Dad’s or my brother’s sperm cells might leak out; I’d sit on the toilet and……. Finally I could not take it anymore, so I waited till dinner, it seemed like a good time to ask a question…. And I asked how the two cells got together. I looked up and saw jaws drop a mile, heard spoons clanking as they fell to the plates. Mom got up and left the table and Dad was sitting there with this look….. He eventually told me about the dogs in the yard and asked if I’d ever seen them come very close…..the light bulb went off and I was happy.

Another time I had a question. My girlfriend told me a joke and I could not get it. She used the “F” word. I did not know what that meant, never heard it before. So, I go home. At dinner I asked…..again I saw jaws drop a mile, heard silverware clatter. My parents started yelling and saying I was NEVER to play with this friend again. No one was telling me what it meant. I informed my parents that it can’t be a bad word because I did not know what it meant and repeated it several more times. Mom got up and walked out leaving Dad there with me AGAIN! Dad finally gave me an explanation that I could wrap my brain around. Again, when I learned what it was, I was happy and left the table to go on with my day.

One other story also comes to mind I was a newly married. I had a job as an insurance biller in a hospital. Part of the job entailed reading the doctor’s report so we’d know how to bill accordingly. I got one where a man was circumcised. I looked up and asked, what is circumcision? I heard pens drop, looked up and saw jaws dropped. They muttered that I needed to go home and ask my husband. I did and he showed me…….

As a little girl my Dad taught me that if I asked questions, I was showing I was interested in people. It was a polite thing to do. Sometimes I rattle off a half dozen questions and to be honest……I don’t even know that I do this. I am surprised when people tell me I am asking too many questions. As a writer…..I have a tendency to contemplate a lot of things. Again, I like to puzzle things through, and then I share what I learned. It really excites me to learn and to share.

Couple this with, I have an opinion and I love sharing what I believe and what I know and now you have an even more annoying person. Again, I don’t want to be offensive, rude or a pain in the neck…..but I am finding out that what I am trying not to be is exactly what I am

One of my life verses….I tend to have several….is Galatians 5:22-26”But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desire. If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit. Let us not become conceited provoking one another, envying one another.”

As I tried to figure out how to “overcome” these defects….very ingrained defects, I asked my husband if he would help me. It didn’t work; I was still being “me.” I talked to our Minister and he gave me a way to go. My goal at this point is to be quieter….don’t try to have a comment “all” the time. This will be hard, I love to talk. I have thoughts and I love sharing what I find. So….if I am quieter…..not as talkative…..you know my goal. Again, I am very sad when I am hard to deal with. As I continue to grow in the Lord, He is faithful and just in helping me be “all” that I can be.

May God bless you and keep you, make His face to shine upon you.

Love

Janet

Jan 2, 2010

Greetings My Friend,

I wrote 2010 and it seems so…..weird. Anyway, it is January 2 and my thoughts take me to New Year’s resolutions. As I have entered into my faith walk with Jesus, I find that making a New Year’s resolution something I tend to do throughout the year as I sense God prompting me to make changes in my life.

As I waded through my emotions after my divorce, I found an outlook that helped me. I began to see new beginnings all over the place. There was Sunday, the first day of the week. There was morning of each day. There was a new day, a new week, a new month, a new minute, a new year. As I wrote in my journal I found that each new page was an opportunity to start fresh again.

I was 42, divorced and felt old in many ways. Each decade tends to make me think I am old, getting beyond being able to learn something new, to be able to do new things. My divorce drove home the point that we can begin a new each and every day. I may not be able to do what I did as a teenager, a twenty something, a thirty something, a forty something…..I am finding that I still have many opportunities to learn and to grow. That gives me so much hope.

Our Sunday School Teacher in Michigan often asked us, “Is your walk closer to the Lord than at the beginning of the year?” This has become the gage I use in my life. At this point in the year….I tend to reflect on this. For the past many years, I have found that I have indeed grown. I also begin to see or to remember when God has been very close. Remembering has been another wonderful lesson. In the past I remembered the painful hurts. Now though, I try to remember when God drew close to me. As I learn to look back, to remember, I find myself growing. I find myself being able to “let go, Let God.”

What has God done for me in the past year? In November of 2008 after the elections we found ourselves very discouraged in our home state. Michigan had voted to experiment on the unborn that were to be aborted. We started talking about moving. It just flowed out of our conversations. At one point we felt that we were to REALLY move. We began with prayer. We continued to prepare the house to be put up for sale. As we were preparing, the house in Haysi came up for rent. My sister lived in that area and we had loved visiting it. We prayed again and felt that we were to take it, each step of the move process we felt God’s hand and guidance on us.

After I retired in 2008 I struggled with many health issues. As I look back, I struggled with pain. I had headaches to the point of vomiting and my neck had arthritis which led to major pain as well. The pain would make me want to sleep a lot. God taught me to eat every 4 hours for my hypoglycemia and aspirin helped me through the pain of arthritis. As I began to implement these habits I found my energy level returning. As I lay in bed day after day discouraged, my cat Alex would come in and snuggle me. His warm purring body was a huge comfort. A lot of the healing really took root in Haysi, where I could relax and think.

The front porch, here in Haysi was a huge comfort to me all summer. As I sat out there day after day….I felt God’s hand, God’s love upon me. Humming birds feeding off of the feeders were awesome. One hummingbird was a talker. It was fun to hear his chatter as he flew in for a drink. Sometimes they flew close to us, like they were trying to get eye ball to eye ball with us. Sometimes we saw deer coming down for a drink at the river.

I sense another change is coming. I don’t know what, where, when, I just feel that I will be moving in a new direction. I am prayerful as to what changes are to be made. I believe that if I quiet my spirit, then I can “hear” God. One of my favorite passages says, “Be still and know that I am God.” Since I struggle with being still enough to hear….I ask God to help me. I love retirement because I am able to make more time for Bible Study and prayer. As I sit on the couch reading, learning, I am able to discern, to grow and then to go out and do. That is my goal in retirement – “go out and do.” I don’t want to use these last years of my life in a vegetative state. I want to be productive, useful for God.

Happy New Year. What is your goal for this year? Is it time to begin your walk with the Lord? All you have to do is confess your sins – God will take you right where you are at and then ask Jesus to be the Lord and Savior in your life.

May God bless you and keep you, make His face to shine upon you.

Love

Janet