August 4, 2012 Greetings My Friend, As I have been sitting trying to overcome the effects of the spill I took my brain has been prayerful and contemplative. I ponder “why” a whole lot. As I think I also reflect that at one point I had a desire to be a writer and a speaker. It has been a huge desire and in some ways I felt God placed this desire in me. I am becoming the writer with my blog and my book. I am not a speaker as of yet anyway. As I felt the desire I also felt I wanted to be famous. I wanted to go around giving the “hope” I had and telling everyone about my “hope” in Jesus. I saw Joyce Meyers, Billy Graham and Michael Youssef. Those are the ones I admire and feel a kindred spirit with. As I am convalescing I find myself sitting in the front room looking into the door area, hall area. I am in front of the fireplace and the TV looks out onto the door area. I get to see more of the “finished” look of our home and again I find that we will one day live instead of being in chaos of renovating. We have two area rugs on the floor as you come in the door. They look real nice. Bookshelves line one wall. Junior is building an entertainment center for our TV area. The entertainment center divides off part of the front room so there is privacy and a division in the room. That will be nice so if we have company and the room is messy it won’t be as noticeable right off. I like being out in the front room more now. We made one room a family room which now will turn into an office/bedroom area. I had not realized how closed in I was feeling with the TV in the family room. For a long time it was a “cleaner” area without the construction chaos so it felt wonderful. I get to see Junior’s innovative work and that is so much fun to me. He is so talented that I find myself amazed at his creative ways. I still find his work habits to be rough to deal with but in the end I know that it will be worth the struggle because we will have an awesome home. So I sit here looking at our home and seeing the potential. I also sit here and I am starting to ponder my health more and more. For several years now I’ve found myself stumbling more. If Junior and I take a walk he needs to walk on my left side. If he is on the right, I tend to drift toward him as we walk. When I was working we started working out at the gym and at first I found myself feeling more energetic. Then I started being tired before, during and after my workouts. I was nearing retirement and thought I was exhausted from working. My job went through a re-organization and my area’s work load increased a whole bunch. I was tired a whole lot. As I look back I see that again cancer seemed to play havoc on my energy level and again what I had been doing began to be a challenge. As I entered into retirement I felt that I’d probably take time off and rest for a while. Later I would look for a part-time job. I found I was sleeping a bunch. I would drop off to sleep without much prompting and I napped a whole lot. As we settled in Haysi I started walking again. I love to walk and have walked a good portion of my life. I have even done some other form of excise through the years. Exercise has been something I do and for the most part enjoy. I started walking down the road along the river and it is beautiful. Some walks found me following a heron down the river. There was such peace in the walks. When I got home I was exhausted and fell asleep right away. I kept at it for several weeks but I was still extremely tired so then I started with shorter walks. When we were moving into this house I often walked down the road. Along the way I would encounter a hill that was a challenge, I would see a horse and pet its nose and one time I had a deer cross my path. It was awesome. Again I continued to walk but I never felt like I was moving out of the realm of being exhausted. I soon stopped. I was finding myself sitting more and more watching TV which is something I’ve never done, watch a lot of TV. On occasion I would try to work in the house a bit and found myself getting under Junior’s feet and him being irritated with me so I watched TV more. As I started on Prozac I was gaining some of my energy back and it felt wonderful. So some of my lack of energy seemed to be depression and then I fell. Since the accident I don’t hurt much but walking in from the corner wears me out. I realize how badly my body was beat up in the fall at that point and tell myself I need time to mend. My activity level as a whole is way low compared to most of my life and it frustrates me to no end. As I have been pondering while sitting yet again I am starting to wonder if something else is wrong and to be honest it scares me. As I was pondering about what I wanted to do for the Lord I felt that maybe I will never be famous and that is ok. I am good with that really. To be honest I don’t think I’d have the energy to be a speaker flying around to different places. As I ponder I started to wonder….is this lack of energy part of God’s plan for me. Will I show God’s love by the way I handle my struggles? Those are the questions I ponder as I sit in my comfy chair. That is the main goal at this point in my life, trying to find what God wants me to do. So I write and share my journey with you. I enjoy my writing and to me it is a part-time job. I have realized that working is not something I am ready to tackle yet. I keep thinking I am on the mend only to be slammed down again. So I have given my struggle to God and told Him….”your will Lord.” I mean it to. I may not be a famous writer and that is ok, I am writing and I am thrilled with that opportunity. I do realize that I have more things to bring up with my Doctor and hopefully we can bring me back to a measure of the active woman I have been, until then…..I learn how to sit still and know God…. May God bless you and keep you, make His face to shine upon you. Love Janet

July 28, 2012 Greetings My Friend, I have had one of those weeks. My friend M was here for a visit and I love having her here. She has been here to see where the house was and as she comes back she sees what we have gotten done. It helps me see that we are making progress in making this house into a home. This year we thought we would catch some of the attractions around town. We were headed to Breaks interstate Park and stopped off at an overlook before entering the park. The Breaks is billed as the Grand Canyon of the East. It is beautiful and a trip to the park is always fun. They have a restaurant, hotel rooms and cabins for people to stay in. We can no longer do the trails but a walk along the road is beautiful. At the overlook we were going down the stairs and all of a sudden I was falling. I blacked out but from what I am told I rolled around a whole lot. I was hard to grab a hold of, the hill made it hard to get me. I would stand up and then fall again and roll again. I had a strange look in my eyes. All I remember is waking up on my back looking into the trees. I think I knew I fell, I’m not sure. I had pain between my shoulder blades. We were far from the hospital so we stopped off at our Chiropractor’s first. He x-rayed me and saw that I had broken a vertebrae. He sent me on to the hospital which was another hour away. By the time I reached the hospital, I had been in pain for several hours. At that point I told Junior that he is no longer allowed to call me a wimp. I think my husband is finally starting to see me instead of his ex. We tend to do that. We tend to have moments where we see something from our past when certain situations arise. My friend S calls them “Bus Driver” issues. She often has to stop and think who is in control, the situation from her past or what is going on in the present. At the hospital I was finally given pain medication and that did help me a whole lot. It was determined I needed to go to another hospital and that I would need surgery that this hospital could not provide. I was taken by ambulance another 2hrs away. By the time I was sent to the other hospital it was late. I told Junior and M to go home, go to bed and come when they were more rested. My Junior has been known to fall asleep from time to time while driving. I wanted him to be near and yet I wanted him safe more so. I was squeezed into the surgery schedule for the next day. I had surgery in the evening. I was keeping up with the pain medication and stomach medication because it could cause discomfort. At some point I found myself wanting to get depressed. I think Prozac helped me once again. I wanted to be depressed because for me retirement has been a continual process of overcoming. I thought I would retire young and then have many years before my health declined. Not so. Since retiring I have struggled to do day to day life. If I look back far enough I believe my struggles really began with cancer. It seems like after cancer I no longer had the energy to do what had been part of my life for years. I struggled to do my job at work. Recently I have applied for SS. I realize I can’t do what I once did. Each day is a huge challenge for me. Doing day to day life just isn’t happening. Each time I sense some forward movement, I find myself going backwards again. This is the feeling I was struggling with as I realized I needed surgery and that I would not feel well for some time. I found myself wanting to be depressed. I was able to move on though and not stay stuck in that thought process. In the past I would run through my mind’s eye all the wrong, the awful etc. Now the thought did pop into my head but refused to stay there and for that I am grateful. In my faith journey I find times where certain Scripture passages seem to come to mind. This time was no different. I saw the Apostle Paul and his request to have a thorn removed from his side. He prayed and asked for it to be removed three times. It was not and God told him that His grace was sufficient. I began to see that maybe in these struggles I am able to show “God” and others will be able to meet Him. So my brain thought “ok Lord. Show me how to be what You want me to be.” I also saw Job, he was a man who suffered great tragedies. He lost his children, his animals and then he had great sores. At one point Job bows down and says something like “are we to only worship God in the good times?” I learn that faith is a journey. It is a day to day learning to lean on God. It is learning I can’t do anything on my own. It is accepting “me” for who I am. At this stage in life I am a woman who struggles with her health and with her emotions. We were in MI recently and I met up with a couple of girls from my days of being a youth advisor. One of them told me that she knew I was abused back in the day. I was shocked, I thought it was kept hidden and then I find out that the kids knew. It blew my mind. Because of the way I carried myself though I gave her hope….she had an abusive step dad. She understood on some level my struggle. The kids back then gave me a reason to keep going when I did not want to. They helped me as much as I helped them. So I learn again to be what I am and accept it. I may have toyed with the idea of being a Joyce Meyers but God may have me living out another scenario. If I am doing what I sense God directing me to do then I find peace. If I do what I want, I don’t have peace. So I’d like to be a writer and God has blessed me with that ability. I may never be a speaker and at this point I am good with that. Yup I may be Janet who struggles with health issues at a young age. That is ok. I learn how to deal with my struggles and God often holds me so tenderly and well again that is ok. May God bless you and keep you, make His face to shine upon you. Love Janet

July 25, 2012 Greetings My Friend, I love Junior. I love him beyond words. Junior is still human and can be annoying. One of my struggles in life is denial. Mom was a major denial person. She would read while Dad would drag us around the room beating on us. She told the world that she had a good marriage. I did not see her happy at home. Mom was gone a whole lot. She volunteered after work, bowled and eventually went back to school. My fear is seeing Junior with rose colored glasses and not seeing the stuff right in front of my nose. I also remember by the end of my first marriage I had lost all respect for my husband. I did not like much about him. As I married Junior I did not want to lose respect for him so I started writing him a note each day. The notes focused on his good qualities. That has helped me a whole lot. When Junior retired he got into bringing things home to live with us. Junior can be a hoarder without much provocation. He loves things and wants them to live with him. I remember as he was going through this stage that I knew I could become unhappy with him, possibly lose respect for him so I started praying. I asked God to open my eyes and heart to Junior. God did. When I discovered Junior washing bag after bag of clothing and then taking them to Salvation Army, I found the true “heart” of my man. My man’s heart is a tender heart. I found that tender heart to be what I fell in love with. That tender heart has watched after me all these years and frankly I love his tender heart. I have gotten to the point that if we live like hoarders, I don’t like it but if it is with Junior, I am good with it. He is too good of a man to let that get in the way. As I struggle through depression, part of it is Junior’s work style. He will work for a bit on this and then go outside and work on that. He is not organized in my way of thinking. I get confused as how to work behind him so I sit. I get in his way often as well. So I sit more. He will do a good job, of that I am sure. I will love the final outcome. Till then I struggle. Junior is not a timely kind of guy either. He doesn’t mind walking into functions late. I hate that and I have learned to live with it. Junior does not pay bills like I did. I can’t anymore my depression has gotten that bad. We are in debt and I hate it. He does not worry like I worry. Junior is working our way out of debt and that comforts me. He does not get worked up like I do and that helps me deal with it. I do go to prayer a whole lot. I continue to tell God my fears and ask God to teach me how to live with this stuff. God is faithful and has opened my eyes when I need the opening. God reminds me often that Junior has never had the utilities shut off, never went bankrupt and has paid off a house. As I grasp that I settle down in my thinking. God showed me Junior’s heart when he was in his collecting stage. God showed me that Junior has never lost a home or went without his utilities. God reminds me that when we lived in MI our home took shape and was decent. So I learn to live with my husband. I also learn that I am not looking at him through the eyes of denial. I see Junior’s flaws. They are there front and center. They get hard not to see to be honest. Then God opens my eyes to Junior himself. Until I met Junior I never knew the touch of a tender hand on my body. For me to have my number one love language touch is astounding. For most of my life touch has hurt. Now I can’t get enough of Junior’s touch. Junior has no problem telling people that “they are going to hell, if they don’t accept Jesus.” That is a little bolder than I know how to deal with. Junior can be a in your face kind of guy. Then God shows me that Junior has a deep love and that he does not want anyone going to hell, even his worst enemy. This boldness is really love and again I find myself accepting Junior and his ways. Junior’s frank comments have been hard for me to process. By reading some of my blogs to him though he is learning how to talk to me in a way that I can grow. I don’t handle lots of criticism. In order for me to grow and learn I need gentleness. God has been so gentle with me. In God’s gentleness I have admitted that I am a sinner and God has shown me how to walk away from sin. So God has given us an outlet for Junior to learn how to teach me. Junior does not tell me I am lazy anymore. He does not tell me I am a hypochondriac either. As he has quit telling me these things, I have started changing. Junior did not want me on Prozac and after much prayer I went on it. Junior is thrilled with what Prozac has done for me and happier yet that I did go on it. My goal in life is to listen go God. I try to pray through most things in my life now including whether to volunteer some place or not. God guides me. He puts things on my heart and I begin to learn to do what God is guiding me to do. God guides me how to love Junior. Junior does not want me fussing all over him and I need to take a more hands off approach with him. When he wants me he will ask for me. I guess the Holy Spirit is truly helping me and for most of my life I did not realize it. I believe that reading my Bible I begin to see what God is and in that I am able to discern these thoughts. God is always true to what I learn as I read my Bible and in that I know if something is from God. If God does not teach it in the Bible I know that God did not give me that. May God bless you and make his face to shine upon you. Love Janet

July 21, 2012 Greetings My Friend, As I have gone through counseling I have learned that when you worry about every detail in your life you tend to be a self-centered person. At first this seemed strange because a lot of the worry was other centered such as “do I look ok” seems other centered. It is not. I have a tendency to want to make life all about me. I can site many reasons for me turning out this way and they may have contributed to my self- centered seeking ways. At this point in my life, I am who I am and I am changing as God directs me to change. As I read the Bible I also have a tendency to bring my “warped” thinking to the Bible. God is gracious and He always redirects me when I need to “hear” with a different set of ears. That is why I pray each time I read my Bible. I want to “hear” God, not what I think. I have been in and out of counseling so much of my life that I begin to view life from a counselor’s perspective at times. So I read my Bible with my counselor hat on at times. God will say He is the most important. Like” there shall be no other God’s before me.” At times the bells of counseling go off in my head and I question things. I talk to myself probably to God as well I’m not sure. Isn’t that self- centered? God is ever patient and I know deep in my being that God is God and I am a no-body. I hit the override button and then as I begin to make God #1 I begin to come around. That is the peace I feel lately. As I pray to God and ask Him to be number one in my life, God then begins to be number one. It is like my notes to Junior. The more I told him he was wonderful, the more he became wonderful in my mind’s eye. I believe the “A” part of “ACTSS” is important and has deepened my faith journey a whole lot. The more I tell God He is wonderful, the more I know He is wonderful. I am not brainwashing myself. I am learning that God is truly God and in that He is wonderful. I begin to see God’s power. Early on in my faith journey I focused on God’s power. David often said something like “marching on the tree tops” as he fought battles. That is where God was for David. I can almost see it as I read it. I can get the powerful thing as far as strength goes. The longer I journey I begin to see power is also in other areas. To me it is astounding to know “love”. God is a God of love. One person at a time I begin to love those I am near and at times I am astounded. Love can move mountains. Now wars will be with us till the very end. Actually the very end will result in war. The war is between Satan and God. Still war is not leaving just because I love like God does. Good vs. evil. That is the war that started in the Garden and will be here till the rapture. So I may go about loving and I still may get hurt. Still loving as God loves me is the way I want to live my life. God has allowed me to go through depression. To be honest it stinks. I want to be back to the girl that found hope in everything and I want to go out and “be” me. Nope, I struggle again and again with depression. Right now I am trying to get myself motivated into being a measure of the housekeeper I once was. I am trying to get myself out and walking. I have poor bones that need weight bearing exercise. I am a bit overweight. I need to get out of my chair and moving and I sit. I like sitting these days more than interacting with life. I am in prayer almost daily asking God to help me move beyond this moment. God is helping me to move. I am now on Prozac which is opening doors that have been closed for a few years now. God is guiding me and I am attempting to listen and do. It is a slow process and I feel impatient with the slowness. So I go back to prayer. I focus on God’s wonderful attributes. God is faithful. God loves. God is powerful. Truly God is wonderful. The question of isn’t that self-centered begins to fade. I start seeing God’s majesty and I marvel. As I pray I realize there is only one God and I don’t have to learn a bunch of god’s. That makes me happy. Now God is 3 in one…..that can be confusing at times but then I realize God is one….Father, Son, Holy Ghost is one God and that means only one to serve. That settles my mind a whole lot. As I look on creation I begin to believe God created it all. I don’t believe we were nothing and a big bang happened and a snake came up out of the ooze. I believe God created the heavens and the earth. I believe God created them in six days and rested on the 7th day and that is why we take Sunday’s and worship God. It is a day to immolate our Creator. He set the standard because we need to do that to live the way we were created. God is about Himself and in God I begin to move into life with a more peaceful pace. The Bible is continuing to open my eyes to God’s majesty. I learn how I was created and then I am more comfortable in my own skin and you know what? “That is ok.” So I am the girl who asks too many questions, is overly active and can be silly. God shows me that He is creating me to be this way. In this way then I am able to relate to people who can understand my struggles in life. Sometimes I help another out of the struggle. Sometimes God puts someone in my path to help me. I can write a gift God has given me and in writing about my life, I can help others. Yup, I think God is wonderful and God may sound self-centered but in the end God is right. He is the creator after all and so He should know. May God bless you and keep you, make His face to shine upon you. Love Janet

July 18, 2012 Greetings My Friend, I have more Prozac moments to share. Junior and I were talking and again he thanked me for not listening to him about going on Prozac. He then told me that he was very discouraged with me and I sense he wanted to pull away emotionally. That is a huge struggle for me the emotional detachment. I think I have been in many relationships through the years where we tend to leave each other long before we say our last good-bye. I want to worry something to death as well. I ponder all the various ways I should have or could have avoided the struggle. I struggle a whole lot in my mind why I am not wanted by various family members and will ponder what I did wrong till my brain is sore from all the thinking. I want to change to be what people want me to be only I can’t figure out what they want from me. Prozac is helping me to let go of all that thinking and pondering and worry. I remember a line I was given as I struggled frequently “this is how I am.’ I always felt people stated that because they were not going to change and if I didn’t like it well….. I would try to tell people that line but in my heart it just didn’t seem to work. I wanted to change to be what they wanted me to be. At this point though I think I am finally starting to live it. I am who I am. My goal is to be who God wants me to be. When I feel at peace with God my life in general feels peaceful. The older I get the more I want God to be pleased with “who’ I am. The more I live my life for God then I find the wholeness I have been seeking. I keep learning how to pray more, for many years I mainly prayed at night with occasional “popcorn” prayers throughout the day and of course praying over my meals. I have a FB friend who has stepped beside me and is mentoring me. It is so helpful and she has taught me to sit in my chair, my real comfy chair and pray. Now that I am not nodding off to sleep every other minute I find I can pray. I am enjoying this additional prayer time. I have my morning routine fairly much in place. I like to wake up with the computer. I FB, journal and do my e-mails. If I have paper work I will do that as well. Then I go to prayer. After prayer time I read my Bible and do a Bible study. I love my morning routine and I can see as our home is more settled that writing time will be in this time frame. I no longer want a full time job. A part time job does appeal to me so if writing became my part time job, I would be content. With the Prozac I feel that I am starting to be comfortable in my own skin. I do not need to be what others want me to be but I am who God is creating me to be. To be honest it feels wonderful. I guess this change myself dysfunction appeared early on in my life. I wanted to figure out how to not get smacked all the time. I wanted my parents to notice me. I wanted to be “good.” Good to me meant that I did the right thing all the time. The right thing though may not have been healthy. The “right thing” in my growing up years may have meant I would have given in to sexual abuse….to make others happy. Somewhere down deep I knew that was not “right.” I did hear about my parent’s sex life over and over. Day after day I heard how Mom would not….. Years later I realized that this was not something that you should discuss with a child. I am who God is creating me to be is a wonderful way to see myself now. I like learning to Agape love. God Agape loves me and I am learning how to Agape love others. Agape love is seeking another person’s highest good. In general that is what Junior gives me. Sometimes his “truth in love” can be a bit overwhelming. I am not a person who learns from being talked to harshly and I definitely don’t learn by being slapped up against the head. I learn best by example, by gentle encouragement. It is the way I learn. God has been very gentle with me as I have grown in Him. I have been hugged and at times I even feel God wiping the tears from my face…not literally but figuratively. I learn the way I learn and you know “that is ok.” Again I am who I am and I can’t begin to change every detail of my life to be everything to everyone. It isn’t going to happen. I love our current church family, even the old one. I am “me” and people have accepted me. I am not Junior’s wife and a non-entity without him. In a previous life I always felt I was my mother’s daughter, my husband’s wife and my children’s mother. No one ever seemed to see me as the unique person I was. I love to write. Today in Sunday school my teacher called on me regarding the book I wrote. That felt nice. My book had bearing on the lesson and I had an insight to offer and you know what? That felt real nice. I love being Junior’s wife. I love being a mother and I also love when I am seen as “Janet.” Each of those roles is sweet and to only be identified as only one can be hard. I am a person with different roles and abilities and when I am acknowledged in that way, it feels real nice. Who are you? Are you what you are or what others want you to be or are you what God wants you to be? May God bless you and keep you, make His face to shine upon you. Love Janet

July 14, 2012 Greetings My Friend, Thoughts at large: I have been writing my blog for 4 years now. That seems weird to think on. Anyway, I tend to read my blog to Junior. I read it out loud to him for a couple of reasons. The reading out loud helps me to ‘hear” what I have written. I also want to bring God into the everyday and I want to bring the God of the Bible so Junior helps me know if I am on the mark. As I read the blogs there are the ones where I discuss struggles we are facing. I want to be upfront and honest about my faith journey because that is what I am on is a journey. Again once we say the sinner’s prayer does not mean you become the “perfect” Christian right away. It has been a growing process and will continue to be a growing process. I can see where I once was and where I am now. I like the way I have changed and I feel peace even in the midst of my struggles. One of the benefits of reading my blogs to Junior especially the ones where we are struggling is that Junior “hears” and then I see changes. My blog on being a hypochondriac has turned Junior around for the most part. I am not hearing how lazy I am and I believe he finally gets my struggle to work my way out of this depression. I am getting fewer negative comments and that helps me move forward. So I read Junior the blog about me being lost with the house in dis-order. I struggle to follow his work style. He will work in the front room for a day or two and then he will build a dog kennel. Now the kennel did need to be put up because of complaints from the neighbors. That would mean he needed to stop and get that going. He wanted to put cement in and the weather turned bad so he came back in and worked in the front room. I had a hair appointment one day. Out here we tend to lump our running into a one day run. Junior went with me to get my hair cut and then we went to the hardware store where he bought some cement for the kennel. So today he is working on putting cement down and the front room is waiting. Through the years I have learned that Junior will complete what he starts. He will do an excellent job and I will love what he does. I am waiting anxiously for the finished product so to speak. The bedroom is mostly done. The closets need skin on them and an organizer put in. The bathroom needs the washer moved out, a cabinet moved in and the ceiling put up. We are close to being done in some rooms. What is close to being done does looks wonderful. As I write, I begin to understand that Junior does not see order like I see order. I remember when he retired and took over the house work. I came home and the counter tops were filled with things. I asked him to clean the counters off. He did not see the clutter I saw. So me saying I need a house in order does not register because Junior does not see dis-order. It would be hard for Junior to give me what I want because he doesn’t see with my set of eyes. The house will come together and we hopefully will live many years in it. For now though, I cope through the dis-order. I have started at the beginning of the Bible again. As I go through the chapters I find myself anticipating the upcoming events. I love reading about Adam and Eve and creation. We went to the Creation Museum one time and they had Adam and Eve in the garden. They were good looking people. For me I grew up with the Darwin theory and I was surprised that they did not look more ape like. I don’t believe that theory but it has impacted me. Now when I read about Adam and Eve, I see in my mind’s eye the Adam and Eve in the Creation Museum. As I read I hear over and over “I am the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.” For me this has been an eye opener. I have had people from another religion tell me that we worship the same God. Prior to reading the Bible I never knew the difference. Now though, to me if I want to know God then I need to read this book, not any other book. I need to read it because God says, “I am the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.” To me if I want to know God, then I need to learn from the book that teaches me this fact. There is Jacob. He is the son of Rachel, Isaac’s 2nd wife’s child. Rachel was the wife Isaac loved. He got duped into marrying Rachel’s older sister and then he had two wives. Jacob was not liked by his brothers and was sold into slavery. Jacob goes from being a slave to the 2nd in command in Egypt. It is an amazing story. Through the years I have learned that these events may have happened thousands of years ago but their relevance can still have bearing on today. I used to think that the Bible was too old for us to learn any good lessons from. Nope, not true. One thing I think on often is the “wilderness experience.” The Israelites wound up wandering around in the desert for 40 years. There are times I see in my own life I have ‘wilderness” moments. The two moves in two years to me was a “wilderness” experience. I am starting over once more and reading through the Bible and I am anxiously waiting for the lessons that will be for me this year. That’s the other thing. I continue to learn, sometimes from the same lessons a new way to deal with my life. Junior tends to pick one book of the Bible and reads through it slowly. For me I need to the read through plus. I read my Sunday school lesson and hopefully this year I can begin even another study along with the reading the Bible through. My brain tends to need to jump around in order to learn so this is what I do. Junior’s brain doesn’t need it and one book read through slowly works for him. Are you reading your Bible? You know for those that prefer to “hear” there are the audio Bible’s. May God bless you and keep you, make his face to shine upon you. Love Janet

Greetings My Friend, For years I have wanted to hear that what I have endured was abuse and it was bad. I want others to approve to acknowledge that what I went through was real hard. As I process with the aid of Prozac I find I still will ponder abuse and how it has affected me. Many times I want to be acknowledged for what I endured. I remember being told over and over that what I felt was not acceptable or right and I have wanted to do the right thing, believe the right and live right. As a child I wanted to live a “normal” life. The problem is what exactly is “normal?” Living the right life is also a matter of speculation as well. For me the right life is living how God created me. It means being true to my husband and attempting to be what my husband needs me to be. These are my goals in life. Are they normal? I’m not so sure everyone has those same goals. So “normal” is a matter of preference. For me the right life is to love deeply and giving of myself to those I love. I also believe I try to love my neighbor as myself. I attempt to read the Bible and each time I ask God to open my heart to the lessons I need to learn in order to live what I am learning. At this stage of my life I want to live as I hear God teaching me. Life without God was so painful to me. I believe God has held me when I felt unwanted by the world’s standards. I believe God took me as a sinner and is transforming me into a woman after God’s own heart. So I try desperately to not judge. I do find that God will be pretty straight forward on some things so I will attempt to be straight forward where I can. As I process a lifetime of abuse I am realizing others may not understand what I went through. I need to ask God if what I endured was indeed that bad and if others don’t think it was, well that’s their thinking. I know what went on. God knows what went on in my life. God comforts me each time I am in tears. God holds me ever so tenderly. I truly am finding out that I don’t need the acknowledgement that I have craved. My pain is my pain and no one truly knows what I feel. In that respect I have talked to someone who went through abuse. He and I sometimes will share and we understand on a deep level. He feels that his sister did not get the abuse he got. He is right she did not. I had a moment of relief recently when I asked out right if she was abused physically or sexually. She was not. As I pondered this with relief I am starting to realize that she may not have had the actual abuse to deal with but the crud that was going on was not easy to watch and live with. It hurts to see those you love struggle even if you yourself aren’t subjected to the same things. It went on in the home and the home was a constant state of friction. I remember this child petting on me as I cried. Her hand passed over my face or I felt a hand in mine. The person was hurting even if they weren’t being beaten or abused. As I grew up I often had to be an adult when I was too young to be one. I watched my siblings as mom visited Dad when he was in the hospital. I may have only watched them a short time but I felt the weight of the world on my shoulders as a pre- school child watching her siblings. I also felt that weight as I made lunches or breakfast for my siblings. Others may not have found it to be so much of a struggle but that is what I feel. So again it is not what ‘others’ think, it is what I felt. As it is with the young woman we don’t know what she went through. The things that went on were hard on everyone including the ones that did not receive the same abuse. It is different not the same and to be honest it was hard on everyone. That is the struggle I have known for years. My siblings seemed to think that I had a cake walk life. They felt I had a silver spoon in my mouth. I had my own struggles, not always the same as theirs. I had my own demons to process. Was theirs worse. I don’t think so. I think it was different. When there is dysfunction there is dysfunction. Many children will tell completely different stories about the same events. We all see with a different set of eyes and feel with a different set of feelings. So the exact same event may be totally different in the telling. As I continue in my faith journey I am attempting to love others even though they may not understand my journey. We may have handled the same situation differently. You know what “that is ok.” We all know what we know, live what we live and well…….again “that is ok.” I can then begin to have empathy for someone even though I have not gone through the exact same trail. That empathy is what opened my heart to God many years ago. He felt my pain and said He heard me. In that I find a wonderful life and a life filled with love. May God bless you and keep you, make His face to shine upon you. Love Janet

July 7, 2012 Greetings My Friend, There is nothing more than I’d like to do than to walk in God’s ways. It is on my heart consistently to seek the Lord and to walk in His ways. God has guided me through the maze of feelings about Prozac and I am seeing wonderful benefits from listening to God and being on it. God opened my heart to Junior when we were dating and Junior’s heart to me and we have enjoyed a wonderful relationship. God continues to guide me in how to be the woman Junior needs. Junior recently stated that he was getting very discouraged with me prior to going onto Prozac. He felt that I may become addicted and was not for me going on it. Through prayer and a consistent conversation with God I went ahead and went on it. I have seen wonderful changes in my personality. I am not afraid like I was. I even had a man work with me for a sleep study and fear did not reign inside of me. I generally have to talk to myself a whole lot when I need to deal with men. I went ahead and went on Prozac and I am continuing to see a difference in my reactions to life. The differences are good ones and healthier ones. As I have sorted out some of my struggles since being on Prozac I am finding that I am learning some valuable things. One of the struggles I have dealt with is my lack of “doing.” At one point in my life I enjoyed keeping house. I was never an immaculate house keeper but my home has been clean and neat. Since Junior took over the housework when he retired and I continued to work, my abilities have gone down the tubes. When we moved to Haysi I was overwhelmed with the smallness of the house. I found it hard to find a home for all the things we owned. We weren’t ready to get rid of everything at that point not knowing what we would do in the future. It did not make sense to get rid of furniture etc. So we hung onto a lot of things. We still need to assess what we will keep and what we will throw away. Our out buildings are still full of things and hopefully as Junior finishes the inside we then will get rid of even more things. It is my goal to be Junior’s helpmate. I want to be what he needs me to be. That is what I desire the most. In the midst of trying to be what Junior needs me to be, I have lost track of who I am and what I need. I am a person who thrives a lot better in order and is a float in disorder. Our house has been in disorder and I can’t figure out how to do the simplest tasks. Junior functions well even better in disorder. He is not dirty by any means but he is not as tidy as I like to be either. I have often marveled at our similarities. We both like dark chicken meat. We like the color green. We like to get up each and every Sunday and go to church. We both like trucks. We like a whole lot of the same things and it feels wonderful. I love when I am talking and I say “we like” as a couple we like a whole lot of the same things. We are also different. First and foremost he is a man and thinks like a man and I am a woman and think like a woman. We tend to confound each other with our different reactions to life events. I often hear him complaining about a woman in a movie and I think “wow” I thought she was trying to…whatever. At that moment I realize we don’t have the same set of eyes. He sees things from his male way of thinking. I see them from my female way of thinking. I meet many couples who are on the same page as far as their housework is concerned. They have beautiful homes, everything is in place. One guy I know gets off on cleaning and arranging the kitchen cupboards. Junior and I part company on housework. We have different needs. Again I am a person who thrives with order and Junior is comfortable in dis-order. So I have gotten to the point I sit most days. I do my journaling, writing, Bible study. Then I don’t know what to do anymore. I haven’t even kept the family room up. Mr. Junior thinks it is cute when the dogs are chewing paper and will give them various things to chew on. All of a sudden there is a huge mess and I am tired of sweeping and I sit with the mess. As I am coming out of my depression I realize some of my depression is I have forgotten how to be a housekeeper. I have never known how to keep house with Junior. He does not want a spotless home. It irritates him. I want a spotless home. Where does what Junior wants and what I want end? That is my pondering. I want to be what he needs, but I also need to be true to who I am as well. At this point I realize I will need to be what I need to be. I realize I will need to keep the house where I need it to be. I am re-learning how to get into housework again. My counselor has taught me to do one thing a day and that is my goal. I am doing a little bit each day. I am a list maker so in my mind if I have done one thing, that is one thing to check off. The hope is soon it will be second nature again. Each morning I pick out something I want to accomplish. Some days I actually get something done. I am learning to rejoice when I do and have patience with me when I don’t. I don’t believe God wants me to be swallowed up into Junior to the point I am no longer me. So I continue to learn how to draw the lines I need to in life. May God bless you and keep you, make his face to shine upon you. Love Janet

July 4, 2012 Greetings My Friend, Did you know that our country was founded on Christian principles? Did you know that the pilgrims were escaping the persecution and wanted to come to America to worship God and live their life as Christians? This is what I learned when I went to school. My thoughts today tend toward thinking about the Holy Spirit. As I state often I did not truly meet the Holy Spirit until I started praying to Him alongside of praying to God and to Jesus. For me I had to begin a conversation with the Holy Spirit before I began to truly understand Him. My prayers generally consist of praying to each person in the Trinity and in that I begin to understand and believe and live. I understand from reading my Bible that The Holy Spirit is our helper. Jesus said that when He was gone (in heaven) that He would send a Helper. So I have felt that the Holy Spirit helps me. I see Him as a teacher as well. I generally ask for Him to teach me. I ask that He teach me to have a good attitude. I believe our attitudes can often get us in trouble. I want to have the right and a good attitude. Then I pray that The Holy Spirit teach me the love, the will and the desire of the Father for me. I ask that it be weaved into every fiber of my being so that all of me worships God and loves God and serves God. I have a strong desire to be about God in all I do, even in my thought life, even as I am Junior’s wife and then even when I am with others. Next I pray that The Holy Spirit teach me to love, to serve, to give and to share the Gospel. Then I ask that I learn how to lay it all at the Father’s feet and let Him get the glory. Me on my own, I like making life all about me. I am my favorite subject. When I learn to make everything about God I find life much more meaningful. I have more peace even in my struggles. So I have been struggling with depression and to be honest I have found the love I needed to keep on going because I love God first and foremost. Through this process I am realizing I know the Holy Spirit more than I realize. That is one of my big questions in Bible Study groups, “How do I know when I am in the Spirit?” Recently as I have sorted through the junk of my growing up years I have found myself pondering how I was saved from some junk that I did not go through as bad as my siblings did. Somewhere in the midst of all of this pondering I am realizing that I knew The Holy Spirit and did not realize it. One of the first Scripture passages I recalled was where God said that He would place His laws on our hearts. As I pondered this I realized that The Holy Spirit helps me to know right from wrong. So when I was young and was a tattle tale child God had given me an out. I also read that God will give us an out when we are faced with trials. My out was my tattle tale ways. As I pray I often see that God has laid things on my heart. I am amazed because for me I did not begin my faith journey in earnest until my 40’s. Then I see that God laid on my heart to get an education when I was going back to my ex after I had left him for a few weeks. I did get some education which allowed me to enter the work force and earn a decent living. I never finished but I had what I needed to earn a decent living and I was able to support myself when I became divorced. As I pray I often see those moments where God has always been with me. The Holy Spirit was guiding me and I had the ability to “listen” and do. I did not do it each time but many times. I am amazed how God has always been right there beside me as I struggled to do life. I guess if I was more in tune with the Holy Spirit I would have realized when I was marrying my ex and fainted and threw up at the alter that He was talking to me big time. So you see I am able to discern sometimes and not at other times. As I prayed last year through my struggles one weekend I felt God talking to me. He would show me a scene from my past and then show me what I needed to know to deal with this situation that was a struggle for me. I also prayed about going on anti-depressant medication. This medication can create some serious problems if you go off of it too sudden and I knew that and that scared me. I wasn’t sure I was a candidate for this type of drug. I finally allowed myself to go on it and so far I am doing so wonderful on it. Junior and I have a very comfortable marriage. He is my best friend outside of Jesus. I believe as I pray each day that God is leading me to be the wife Junior needs me to be. The Holy Spirit is teaching me those things I need to be for this man. One of the first things I learned is when Junior gets angry I need to be quiet and leave him alone for a bit. It is hard for me to do on my own. I want to argue my point. Junior isn’t up to my point and will be more aggravated. I have learned to leave for a while. I am quiet and then in short order we are being best friends again. The Holy Spirit is teaching me to be quiet. I can’t do it on my own. So I do know the Holy Spirit and I am walking with God and life is wonderful. May God bless you and keep you, make His face to shine upon you. Love Janet