January 28, 2011 Greetings My Friend, A statement I often hear intrigues me “The dash between the dates” on the tombstone. That dash is the sum of your life. Who were you, what were you about. I have had counselors pose this question to me through the years. I must say on occasion I do ponder this thought. In some ways it goes along with two week’s blog asking ‘who am I/” As I ponder I am also intrigued by how I am perceived by other people. I love playing games that will tell me what my personality type is. I also know that when I come to the end of my life I have a desire to know that I mattered and in some way that I have made this life a little better. So what would I want people to say about me? This has changed through the years. In the beginning I wanted to be known, be famous etc. As the years have gone on though I want to think that I have made people happy, loved deeply and make a difference in the lives around me. I no longer have a need to be famous. I think the famous thing was a child that was always raising their hand and saying “me, ask me.” I was the oldest child. The three of us were stair step children and Dad having polio didn’t help me get the attention I craved. A good indication of that is when I tried to give my sister and brother away to neighbors who had no children. At this point I have learned I can live without family. I don’t like it but I can live and be fairly content. When I talk to my close friends and feel their love my heart melts. Mr. Junior warms my heart. He looks at me like I am beautiful, he talks to me like I am truly his helpmate and he touches me like I am his special woman. For a long time the man in my life looked at me like I was beautiful. He told me I was gorgeous and then he treated me like I was nothing. As the kids were growing up I would tell them that they were English, Irish and German. Their father told them they were not. They were French and Polish. That says I wasn’t important big time. As I have begun my faith journey in earnest I have a desire to give back to God all I can. He rescued me from the pit of despair. He has told me that I matter and he holds me when life hurts big time. I feel like I came to the Lord late in life and don’t want to waste a day. As I look upon the cross and see the horror of what Jesus endured I have a huge desire to give back to God. I have been rescued from the pit of hell. I am grateful beyond words. As I journey on I find that many Christians not the pew sitter ones but the ones out and doing are very thankful people. They want to go out giving to others the hope they have. There are people who are “works” oriented. They believe by doing good works they will get to heaven. That is not how to get to heaven. You need to accept the gift of the cross, the gift Jesus gives us. I believe we have to ask Jesus to be Lord in our life. When I pray through the cross and I try to pray it each night I find myself with mixed emotions. I am grateful for what Jesus endured and so sad that He endured all the ugliness of before the cross and the cross. I am so sad that my sin cost Him so dearly. As I come through this prayer time I find my desire is to go and do. I give back what I can because I can’t begin to say “thank you” enough. I also am learning I can’t give enough and that I can go in a wrong direction if I am not careful. I am a writer, I love to write. I believe God has called me to write about my faith journey. The hope is to help others in their faith journey. I am not a musician and trying to make music would frustrate me to no end. Junior and I have felt a need to reach out to the community here in SWVA. He has guided us as we have reached out and I feel like we have helped and are helping. I find that I need to be in prayer. In prayer I am able to discern the direction I need to take. One of the things I am questioning right now is working with the thrift store. I like it. I enjoy it but I am missing going quite a bit as well. I am sick, I have errands etc. I like to be dependable and I am not feeling very dependable. I am showing up at the church without missing….so I question the thrift store. I believe God has created each of us to be and do in very special ways. I have a friend who ministers to the Muslims. I am not gifted to do the extensive work she does. Another friend teaches Sunday school. Again I am not a teacher. When I see that God has gifted me in a special way I find a wonderful excitement within me. I like the uniqueness of being ‘special’ as far as what I am called to do. I also don’t feel ‘better than” the next person. I am who I am in Jesus and I love that feeling. God has told me over and over that I matter, that I am precious. In that deep love I have so much more courage. What does the “dash” say about you? Have you given your life and the meaning to it a thought? Is it time? May God bless you and keep you, make His face to shine upon you. Love Janet

January 21, 2012 Greetings My Friend I am thinking about friends today. As I write we are in Myrtle Beach visiting good friends. I met E when I was single and we both met our husbands a about the same time. We married within a year of each other so have gone through much of life together. I met E as a single woman in the single’s group at church. We went to the Labor Day weekend at Mackinaw Bridge together. We had such fun riding up to the bridge on the bus talking and then sleeping in the cabin together at night. We shared the sting of abuse hers was more mental abuse and our friendship has grown through the years as we went from being single to re-married women. It is wonderful that our men enjoy each other as well. V is able to make Junior giggle non-stop. They are active and like going out to eat, to the show, to the gym for water aerobics and shopping. We like that a bunch as well. As I think about our friendship I think about K and M these two women I have known since my days of Sunday school as a child. They have been close friends who have weathered the storms of life with me. There is MB from work that I still am in contact with. These long time friendships have held me when life was awful. They also are the breath of fresh air who will laugh with me when life is good. P is also a friend I have enjoyed more fully since moving to VA. As I write I keep thinking of that one more friend I have and it warms my heart to feel each one of them again. I think life would be so hard if I did not have friends. These friends have stepped in when my family had little or nothing to do with me. They have made me feel liked and wanted when I have felt so unwanted. Because of their love I find that I can go on when I’d rather not. At this stage of my life I believe my friends have been given to me by God. I seem to meet them when I need them or they need me. We seem to go beyond the one time chat and develop into a deep love for each other. B has let me reach out to her and in the process we have become coconspirators in silliness. I’ve been taking her to the cancer center now for a few weeks. She stays at our house during the week so I can take her for treatments. While she is there she helps me with some of the housework. She is helping me get back into the routines I have been struggling with. I help her by taking her for radiation. We have chats and some of the chats help me process life. It is the friends that truly help make my life enjoyable. MB comes to mind again. We worked with each other for 10 years. We often chatted and she took my side when a co-worker decided to yell at me and throw things on my desk. She sat on the other side of the wall and heard what was going on. She would let me know I did nothing wrong when I was struggling to deal with the anger. I was paralyzed with worry/fear. MB brought up that she heard the whole thing and then comforted me. Little did I know that in a few years I would be the one to comfort her? P’s Dad is still alive. He feels like the father Junior did not have. Dad talks to Junior in a Dad kind of way. So P shares her Dad and that gives Junior that Dad moment. Through the years I have had women step in and fill the gap for my mom as well. Mom had to work due to Dad’s polio. There have been a few women in my life who nurtured me the way I need to be loved on. They gave me the love I needed when my own Mom had to tend to keep the family together. Friends sometimes give us what family can’t for whatever the reason. I am grateful for friends. In recent years as I have struggled and needed to talk I have called friends. I have called different ones at different times so I would not wear one out. It was so helpful to me and each person was able to open my eyes to what I needed to learn. It was awesome. V & E are a few years older than I am. E is teaching me the struggles with health she has and as I reach the health struggles I find her comments helpful. Junior has dealt with pain for most of his life due to his amputation and back issues. For me I have not had a lot of physical pain and as I am developing arthritis in my neck I find that the pain can be unbearable. E has taught me “that getting old is not for sissies.” I realize that as I age I will have health struggles and I learn how to cope through those struggles because of her silly comment. B also has health struggles and I have learned to do what I can when I can from her. E my former landlord taught me that if I do 5 minutes of work that was 5 minutes more than was done previously. I learn to work when I can and be content in that. I find I have more patience with myself because these friends have taught me to accept what I can do. So I am going to soak up V & E’s love while we are here. I am going to tell jokes and we will always enter into a discussion on our faith. I grow and I love it. May God bless you and keep you, make his face to shine upon you. Love Janet

January 14, 2012 Greetings My Friend, Since being married to Junior my life has settled in so many ways. Long gone are the days of anger and screaming and throwing things. My need to be right at any cost is gone. My need for constant attention is gone. I no longer wake him in the mornings with “can we talk”. I am not who I once was. I have continued with counseling and accountability groups through the years. They have helped me not be over needy when I’d rather be. As family has rejected me I have found that life can still go on and for the most part I can find life enjoyable as well. I believe my faith journey is what truly sustains me along with the counseling in conjunction with my faith journey. Counseling will help me see what I need to do to change. God though is number one in my healing. One of the hugest struggles I tend to have is “who am I?” If I listen to my family then I am self-centered, not very bright and annoying to no end. If I listen to my friends then I am caring, compassionate and funny. So who am I? This is something I am consistently trying to process. Especially given the fact that I am not wanted by family I find myself struggling. To be honest that is what I desire way down deep in my heart to be part of a family. As a young woman I tended to gather around me old family treasures. There was the trunk that was our Grandfather’s first wife. There is an old book shelf that was handmade by some past distant relative. There are the tin type photo albums and of course there is the gate legged table that Grandpa and Grandma bought used back in 1928. I asked a guy one time and the guess is the table was probably made in the 1890’s. These old treasures became the family I did not know. On Dad’s side of the family I had only met my grandparents a few times. I never met my Uncle and his family. On Mom’s side there was her brother and his family and a couple of cousins. As we grew up we basically lost touch with each other. So these family treasures are what linked me to the past. Through the years God has given me some very loving and caring friends. They tend to step in and have become the family I long for. ML that woman will talk to me, hold me when I struggle and we have known each other since we were children in Sunday school. K and I were Sunday school friends as well. There is M now who I know from work and we have maintained contact since I have retired. We share the sting of abuse so we hold each other up as we process an abusive past. There is p that I have truly gotten to know in a deeper way since moving down to VA. In MI we knew each other but we traveled in different circles. Down here we have had the opportunity to grow this relationship and I find I marvel at the similar paths we are on and have been in. There is B who is my cohort in mischief. So I have surrounded myself with women who love me and let me love them. The church family down here continues to astound me. They “get” me. They allow me to be silly and they tend to see I have some intelligence as well. As we have settled I have immersed myself into the community. It feels wonderful when I am out and about and I am greeted by someone who knows me. I was driving one time and someone started honking and calling my name. I was so surprised because I had gotten used to not being known. That was fun. I was startled though. I was contemplating this “who am I’ and wrote on FB. I went through my growing up stuff. My life in general and at the end I said “my family thinks I am self-centered, insufferable and not too bright. Then I said that my friends tend to think of me as caring, compassionate and funny. Then I asked “who am I?” As I said I struggle with this a lot. I also realize that we do not have to become what others see us to be. I learned that real well as I left a life of abuse. My fear was going into another relationship of abuse. I wanted to leave that life behind. My counselor kept telling me “healthy finds healthy.” That saying really motivated me into getting healthy. It motivates me to get into counseling when I am struggling. It took me a while to find a counselor out here but now I have one and I am going. The real nice thing is I generally only need to go once a month. I need an assist if you will. My conclusion on FB was that I am a child of God the most high God, a child of the King. It is in my faith journey that I have found ‘me’. I find if my heart is in God and I listen to God then life moves along fairly well. When those very painful moments come then I talk to God even more so. I talk to God most days. I start at bedtime. As I wake up in the night I talk to him and then finish in the morning. As I go through FB I find people to pray for. I like that a whole lot. I have even put on FB in the evening’s people that I know of who could use prayer. I started this with my nephew who got burned and at this point it may become a permanent nightly request. One lady puts out before she heads to bed ‘may the angels dance around your bed.’ Who are you? Have you thought about this question? May God bless you and keep you, make his face to shine upon you. Love

January 7, 2012 Greetings my Friend, I am thinking about goals. In general I am a goal setter. Goals help me do life. Goals give me that moment to check off and feel a sense of accomplishment. The start of a new year is often a time to begin to think on what I want to do with my life. As I reflect on my walk with the Lord I tend to also want to discern the direction I want to take. To me they go hand in hand. Since beginning my faith journey later in life I tend to not want to waste my life with too many wrong turns. Goal setting helps me to focus and move in a direction that will help me accomplish as much as I can. The retirement process as I have stated has been a challenge for me. I’ve been working hard at doing day to day life in general. The move has kept things in a state of flux. The one thing I wanted to do was write while in retirement. I am doing that with this blog with the book I wrote. I’d like to write other things as well. Part of my process is trying to figure out what I want to write. I have several pages to a book started. I’d like to write the polio story. I believe there are many ways to go with this story. My main goal would be to show how God has worked in all of this. It is amazing really. The doctors told Dad he would not live. He did. They told him he would not walk. He did. Then there is the struggle to survive in a day to day way. When I look at it I can’t help but believe God was in the midst of all of this. I am toying with writing another blog. This one I’d like to aim at the young people in my life. I want to impart some information on life. I want to introduce them to Jesus. I want to have the conversations I wanted to have with my children and now these grandchildren. I remember as a teenager my Dad told me I wasn’t to have sex. When I asked why he said because the Bible said so. I wanted him to show me where and he couldn’t. I believe in my heart that if he could have talked to me about the “why” I would not have entered into a sexual relationship. We will never know if this is true or not. It is something I do believe though. I felt inadequate with praying. I would like to teach kids about praying. I would like to try to help them to choose to enter into a relationship with Jesus. Each generation must find Jesus. I would like to open that door so they could choose wisely. It is strong in my heart. Part of our goal when we moved to VA was to reach out to the community. SW VA has many 3rd generation people on welfare. Many don’t know how to work. Now that we are settling into a neighborhood my heart asks how does this look. In Haysi most of the neighbors were transient and on welfare. With a more transient area the new people to encounter is greater. In a more established area that chance to encounter the un-employed is smaller. Still there may be ways to reach out. It may be new ways. I’m not really sure. At one point I thought I would like to do a Bible study for the working women. In this church the Bible study I go to is during the day when most of the women are at work. We are all retired as well. The working woman is out in the world more with those who do not know Jesus. So I have a desire to help the working women. Right now though the house is still in a state of flux and I have never been the ‘teacher’ type. So I am still thinking on this. I am thinking again about writing. I’d like to develop a writing routine. I am thinking something like I write on certain days. I also need to learn how to market my book more. I need to learn how to keep track of the money that I make as I sell this book. Lately I’ve started praying that someone would step beside me to help me process these aspects of writing. I want to look at this as my career. I want to take it seriously and to do it well. As the house continues to be more finished I’d like to settle into a housework routine. I remember my mother-in-law about now. She was always busy with keeping her home nice. I loved seeing her in her business. I had thought that doing housework would be something I would spend hours doing. I am realizing that housework for the most part would be minimal. It may require a quick pick up, some sweeping; making the bed and keeping the sheets clean etc. Junior loves to do laundry and has done it for most of our marriage. He is doing dishes. I grew tired of that routine and my skin I wasn’t tolerating the soap very well so he is doing the dishes. I want a dishwasher and he doesn’t so in my thinking, he can do the dishes and he does. Of course I want to start working in a better exercise routine. We are going to the gym for now. As we settle in and the house is more finished I hope we will have a place for exercise equipment and I can have a better exercise routine. I’d like to go for more walks as well. So the goals are forming and it feels nice. I have things to work toward. What are your goals? May God bless you and keep you, make his face to shine upon you. Love janet