December 26, 2012 Greetings My Friend, My goal in life is to live for God and for God’s glory. I try to think about God and His ways throughout the day and then live as I hear God directing me. So Christmas and Easter are important holidays for me. I love contemplating the tiny baby Jesus. I love pondering that he was born like we are born from a woman. I love pondering Baby Jesus being a baby, needing His diaper changed and nursed. At this point in my pondering I begin to see that our Lord and Savior lived life on earth as we all do. We all don’t have the same story but we all know hunger, anger, joy and the list goes on. As I feel God’s loving arms around me I find that I am not afraid of being alone anymore. That is a feeling I have known for most of my life and these days I’m good with the fact that I am not popular, liked, wanted or whatever. I have God’s love and frankly that is enough. God does give me more than His love though and I marvel. I have Junior and since I fell and broke my vertebrae I have sensed Junior’s deep love for me. For the first time in my life I feel like a wanted person, wanted and loved. God continues to hug me and then pushes me out the door into the world to love others as He loves me. Being a loved wife is so precious. It isn’t about my looks or my fun way of being so much as the man flat out likes every part of me even when I am being difficult. For most of my life I have hated my nose. It is long and as a kid my family often teased me or when we played I had to be the mean mother or a witch because I had such a long nose. Then I met Junior and the man is in love with my long nose. He’d like to kiss on it. I won’t let him because I can’t breathe and that scares me. He thinks I have cute toes. It feels wonderful being loved. One of the statements I often reflect on is “God first loved us.” The longer I walk in faith the more I sense that love. God loves me enough to not let me do things that aren’t good for me. Sure I can take drugs and God won’t stop me, but I know I shouldn’t and God gives me the courage to stay away from drugs. This goes for just about anything in my life. The more I read my Bible and pray the more I begin to see how God wants me to be. We are all different. I tend to be able to relate to hurting women, often abused women. We tend to find each other and I believe that is because God places them in my life. Now Junior relates to some very unsavory types. Types of people I have never run into to be honest except briefly passing by type of thing. Junior hung with these types of people for a good many years and he knows them deeply. Again I think back to our trip to Wales. There was Junior standing in the middle of to me very scary looking guys. You know tattoos, piercings all over, big burly rather scary looking guys and there Junior is in the middle of them talking like an old friend. These guys were talking back and forth with Junior and Junior was telling them about Jesus. These guys were listening and not making fun of Junior. If I’d had tried to tell about Jesus these guys would have not “heard” me at all, maybe even tried to hurt me. With Junior, they listened and respected him. We have friends who minister to the foreign born in our country and if fact are getting ready to go to an Arab area to reach out to Muslims. They are in their 60’s and just starting to go into overseas missions. They generally have foreign friends hanging around. They know how to relate to them and help them and that is their calling. I know a young man that seems to have the ability to have people drift by his house as he barbeques. This is an awesome mission field as well, I’m not sure he is reaching out for Christ but people stopping by and hanging out and conversations can lead to how we trust in the Lord. He also could be encouraged to walk deeper in his faith with those that are. It is a wonderful mission field right there in his neighborhood. For me I have found that sharing my faith isn’t saying “Jesus” as often as I can as much as it is about sharing my love of life, love for others and living the best I can in the Lord. I do get a tad bit irritated when people tend to think that just because I am Christian that means I have every answer, every right way of being down pat. To me I am on a journey, some days are exciting, some are boring, some are tiring and so my journey takes me through many different phases. In those phases I learn and grow. In some ways I believe that we are preparing to live in eternity here on earth so we have many lessons to learn before entering heaven. If we don’t accept Jesus then we are preparing to live in hell. To me that would be living a life of addiction or murdering people or such. I believe we need to try to offer the hope we have the best we can to others. There is always that moment when you connect with someone and they begin to understand what you understand and they then go on to live a life in the Lord. For me it isn’t about getting someone to say the sinner’s prayer. I believe I am a seed planter so what I offer may be a nugget and another nugget is added by someone else and in the end God is the one who turns that heart toward Him. My goal is to live for Christ. I may fall down, re-learn a lesson or two and hopefully by the time I die I will be what God has shaped me to be so I can live forever and ever. That is a hard concept for me to grasp even now 14 years later on my faith journey. Can you imagine a life with no more pain, sorrow or sadness? I can’t. I find though that is the hope I live for though. Without that hope I would find life a very scary place to be. In hope I can face pain and sorrow. How about you? Where is your hope? May God bless you and keep you make His face to shine upon you. Love Janet

December 22, 2012 Greetings My Friend, So Christmas is front and center of my thoughts. For the past several years I find I can’t think about Christmas without thinking about Easter as well. Our Savior came into the world as we come into the world, a baby born of a woman just like we all came into the world. I marvel each time I say my prayers that Jesus started life like us, died and had every emotion we go through. We all don’t go through the exact same situations but we all are happy, sad, angry etc. As I embrace my faith journey I find a lot of comfort in knowing Jesus knows what it is like to live in a body, to experience each and every emotion we all have. As I think on a faith journey I also realize that relationships are not a one way affair. It takes two people talking, calling, visiting and interacting with each other for a relationship to work. It is the same with God. In the past I knew how to pray when life was hurling bombs at me and then I did not pray until the next bomb hit me. As I have entered into this journey of faith I find that connecting with God on a daily basis I find that I am in a relationship and when the journey gets rough these days I know that “this too shall pass.” For me praying, reading my Bible and even thinking “What would Jesus do?” often helps me to stay close to God. If I am not doing these things then I begin to make up in my mind what I want God to be, you know “A loving God wouldn’t” type of thinking. We can’t know God if we never seek God except when we want something. Prior to my faith journey in earnest I often found myself making God into what I believed He should be. You know “A loving God would never….” type of thinking. We have to talk to God to listen to God and by reading the Bible I find I begin to know what God likes. I also find I can’t just read the Bible, I need to ask God each and every time to open my eyes and heart to the lesson God wants me to learn. When I prepare my heart to hear God then I will. I will often read the same lesson a few times and learn a new thing so I think I will be reading the Bible till my eyes give out or I die. When my eyes give out then I will more than likely listen to daily Bible readings. My goal in life is to walk daily with God. As I said earlier I can’t think about Christmas anymore without thinking of Jesus dying on the cross and His resurrection. When I put the cross into the birth I find I am more grateful for the gift I have been given. For me I tend to pray through each of the last hours of Jesus’ life and in that I find a deep love from God. God provided for our salvation and I marvel. He provided His Son and Jesus came of His own accord. I don’t know about you but even though my son in his mid-thirties I would not want to see harm in any form come to him. So I marvel at God providing a way for us to be in relationship with Him and atoning for our stupidity. I also have learned as I read the Bible how God had the Israelites remember all that He had done for them. For me that is a marvelous lesson. Some people journal those moments but for me I tend to remember my moments as a part of my prayers. I call them my thankful moments and I try to remember the times where God showed up and helped me. One of the things I am going back to a lot lately is when I was a child I had a big mouth and told everything on anyone. I knew that this was frowned on but I did it anyway. As I look back I see that God laid that on my heart and frankly I was spared a lot of sexual abuse. I did suffer physical and emotional abuse but sexual abuse was not added to my struggles. These days I don’t have the strong need to tell “everything” to “everyone”. So gone for the most part are the days where I remember my hurts and replay them in my minds eye. My goal these days is to remember when God was beside me when I needed Him the most. Like the time I pulled out in front of a car too soon or the hugs I have felt through the years even the times I was sent to the porch to watch nature unfold in front of me when I hurt so deeply. As I remember I find strength to live the current struggle and I know that that struggle will end and I will see a happier moment. I don’t try to pretend that life wasn’t that bad as well. I try to remember the awful stuff in a general way. It was there, it happened and pretending doesn’t ease the pain. These days though I give that to God and God comforts me and even has me go out and touch someone for Him. So I remember the fists thrust against my body but I am not angry. I don’t hate my abuser, I really don’t. I don’t want to be best friends and when I see him at family functions I tend to recall the angry face he presented often but overall I forgive this man and even Dad. Mom well I have indifference no hatred for sure. I puzzle that I can’t seem to move past the indifference but I am grateful I don’t hate Mom. I know Mom’s job in life was very hard. She went to work to support our family when Dad had polio. Mom made sure we had a roof over our heads and food on the table. Mom stuck by Dad when it would have been easier to walk away. So I have a lot of respect for Mom. Yup it is Christmas again. Have you walked through the Bible and found Jesus? Is it time. May God bless you and keep you, make His face shine upon you. Love Janet

December 19, 2012 Greetings My Friend, I’m out in the truck at the Michigan house we still have no power. I have my computer charging up on an inverter in the truck and I am filling my time waiting for more light in the house so I can paint the trim to the doors etc. I tried painting yesterday and it was dark and I missed a whole lot of the frame so today I decided to wait for better light to work in. Junior is outside cleaning up the yard, trimming trees and such. He has made a lot of progress. He too wants to paint but it is cloudy and difficult to see so he finds other work to do. We have had a very productive week and are on the last two areas that need paint. The yard has been cleaned up and shrubs and trees trimmed and again it has been a very productive week. It is quiet and I hear the voices of the children on the playground at the school across the street. There is always a moment in my heart when I hear children playing on a playground and it feels so familiar. I remember back when I was in school. I remember back to when my children were in school. It is a comfortable sound to me. I guess I’m in memory lane a lot this week. I don’t try to stay in memory lane all the time but these trips back flood my brain with fond memories. I always felt it was good to let the kids walk home from school. I felt so many of life’s lessons were on the playground and on the walk to and from school. I remember when my children were in kindergarten and I would walk them to school. They walked home with kids from the neighborhood after school. Many days they’d run in the door telling me all about what the encountered on the way home. I remember trying to get them to talk about their day. Usually I got “it was ok or not much went on” I soon learned to ask them about lunch and the playground happenings and I found out all kinds of information. I was shocked when my 5 year old began to tell me some of the stuff that was talked about on the playground. In my heart she was way too young to be talking about such grown up matters. It was an opportunity to put my input into their thinking caps. I remember one of my daughter’s teachers’ telling me how she liked to whisper real loud to her friends. My daughter was a talker and loved to be outgoing. I found more information about what the kids were thinking and trying to deal with by listening to the lunch time/playground talk than asking what they did in the class room. The parent teacher conferences and report cards helped me know how they were learning. Yup this week we are at the old house seems to bring back memories. Unlike the years I lived in fear of what my ex could possibly do to me, these memories are pleasant and remind me I have been a Mom and I did the best I knew how with what I had. Was I perfect? Probably not but again I know deep in my heart I did the best I could with the information and life I had lived up to that point. It hurts to look back and see all the dysfunction that went on in the home but again I did what I could with what I had. People tend to think if you have a good job, make good money then you should have the answers to life. For me anyway I have found many people who have book smarts and no common sense. I see it more and more as I get older. Just because a person has a degree, a fancy job does not mean they have any common sense. The older I get and the longer I am in a faith journey with God well I find that I am able to make better choices in my life. It did not make sense to move to Virginia. We felt led to move, we moved and there is not a day that goes by where I am not thanking God for where we are. I would have thought living in the country was not for me. I’ve lived in the suburbs my whole life with a couple of years on a farm in Colorado when I was very young. I grew up and settled in a suburb and raised my children in a suburb so I figured country living would be way too hard for me. Junior and I love where we are at. We love the slower pace to life. We love the people and frankly I’m ever so glad we moved. It has days where the journey has been difficult for sure but in the end I am where I need to be and love it. I can’t go a day without being thankful for the house we have now. It is perfect for us as we grow older. I love the backup systems we have in place for when the power goes out. I love the laundry on the same floor as our bedroom. I love the wrap around porch. Yup I believe God led us to this new home and again I tend to thank God each and every day. Mine and Junior’s relationship has grown deeper. I have learned that Junior meant it when he said “for better or for worse” in our marriage vows. I need to trust Junior more because I can’t run to girlfriends when he annoys me. I have to learn to live with his strange to me ways and frankly I find I love him even more so. As I get older my heart wants to walk with God in all areas of my life. I am learning to let go of the need to control each detail of my life and when I can let God be in control I am amazed at the peace I have. Have you thought of letting God be in control? May God bless you and keep you, make His face to shine upon you. Love Janet

December 12, 1012 Greetings My Friend, We are in Michigan at our old home. We’ve been painting and cleaning up so that we can rent the house out again. We’ve stayed in the old house again and I had wondered if I would miss it. Nope, I don’t miss it. I walk around and remember some of the times we had here. It was a good home for us when we were both working. We moved closer to both of our jobs and our church so that part was real nice. It was a small but not too small home so keeping it up was not a problem. We had the Grandchildren spend many nights with us. I can walk around each of the rooms and remember different times we had with them. For me I loved baking with my Granddaughter. Papa Junior loved taking the Grandson outside and giving him boards with a hammer and nails or a shovel to dig holes with in the yard. We had an oversized stuffed frog that we put on the bed and A loved dressing it up. She’d put on Papa’s clothes, a necktie and then we’d go in and admire her work. A also loved taking pictures of her creations and we loved her using our camera. I felt she had a real knack for taking pictures of course I was smitten because she is “my” beautiful grandchild. Still she seemed to have a real knack for picture taking. In the evenings we would watch a video and eat popcorn. Oh those were the days. They are wonderful memories but no I’d rather be in Virginia now. I love our home an old farmhouse. I love the renovations Junior has made so far and anxious for the day he will be done. I love my walks along a quiet country road with a pack of dogs following alongside of us. Our drives are beautiful even the drive to the grocery store. Life is slower and so peaceful and I love it. Then we also had monthly Bible study groups at our house which I loved. When we come back to Michigan we often will get with these dear friends for a night of remembering and catching up on our lives. We usually will have a potluck meal which is always fun. Junior and I grew in our relationship here as well. We lived in his house until we sold it and found this house. We got to know each other fairly well here. As much as we felt we knew each other before we married we learned even more after moving here. I am a neat person and Junior is more comfortable with clutter all around him. Junior had one of the bedrooms as his office. He kept it cluttered to his heart’s content and the rest of the house had order for the most part. For some reason the kitchen table was a constant battle to keep under control, still is in our new home. We formed our habits at this house. We formed our style of being a couple at this house and the memories are good ones overall. Junior did get into lawn art for a bit and we did get a letter from a neighbor unsigned of course asking that he quit with the lawn art. Still, the memories are mostly good. Actually I smile when I think about the letter. My Junior is a man who is creative and sometimes his ideas of art don’t match the world’s idea. My man is precious and I love him and all his unique ways. I learned to talk with God when my guy is doing strange to me things. I don’t go tattling on him. I don’t ask God to change him. I ask God to open my eyes to my unique guy and God is always faithful and opens my eyes and I fall in love more so. I feel ever so close to Junior. It is a marvelous feeling to feel so connected with another human being. He is a man and for the first time in my life I am able to comprehend the maleness in a man. Prior to Junior I wanted to be close to a man but they generally hurt too much to invest my deepest being in. I can say Junior is my best friend. I believe when Junior taught me that he wanted me to go to God first he taught me a valuable lesson. Again the goal is not to ask God to change my guy but to understand him. It is the Agape love in action again and I must say I love it. I have needs for sure and if I am seeking Junior’s highest good I find that when I have things I need to be taken care of, they seem to happen without my asking for them directly. God knows what I need. God will provide when I need it. That is an awesome lesson. I don’t have to keep tabs on my needs because God will. If I am going about my life and living it for God’s glory, well I seem to have my deepest needs met without asking for each and every need. When I find things to be a struggle to deal with God will help open my eyes to what I need to see and I grow and learn and well life moves along ever so comfortably. I believe in my heart the healthiest way to live is for God and His glory. Part of me thinks “isn’t that selfish, self-centered?’ As I keep going back to God, reading my Bible and praying my way through life I find that it may seem like it but God’s way is the best. He is the creator so He should have an idea of what we need. It works for me. So we continue to settle in Virginia and I love our new home and our new way of doing life in retirement. I am finding answers to my health concerns which brings peace to my inner being. I love being a “mom” to 8 different pets. I am learning a new culture which at times is confusing but the longer we are here the more we grow in their ways. The past is a pleasant place to walk back into. The present is precious as we learn and grow in the Lord and learn what “old age” means to us. Ten years from now we will remember our first years in Virginia, our first rental home we lived in and I will recall special moments. So we walk in the past for a bit and then continue living in the now. Yup it all works out. May God bless you and keep you, make His face to shine upon you. Love Janet

December 12, 2012 Greetings My Friend, Right now I’m in the midst of morning quietness. I have read the Bible passages for today on my computer, wrote in my journal and now I am writing a blog. I have peacefulness as I go through my routines and love it. Yesterday I had my esophagus stretched and my prayer is that I will be able to get food/liquids down a whole lot easier from now on. I have one more test next week and then I think most of them should be done. I will have the nerve endings checked in my legs and hopefully will find out why I am so unstable these days. It is the Christmas season and I find hopefulness residing within me. This year has been a year of accepting life as it is. I have learned to love the people who God puts in my path and accept their love. I am no longer hurt beyond belief when I don’t have love where I want it to come from. I find that I continue to marvel at Junior. He realizes he may not be the handsomest guy and he accepts it. Me I still want to be that pretty woman, for my age of course. I have learned that it is Junior’s heart that I love and his looks are made more precious because of his heart. Junior tends to be neat in his appearance. I appreciate that. Sometimes he gets into running around in his bib overalls with paint splatters all over the place. Once in a while I don’t mind him running around town etc. with them on. Lately that is about all I see him in. He is even going to evening church with them on. Evening church is casual but personally I would like to see him in unpainted clothes. I’ve told him how I feel about his constant bib overall and paint splattered look. Because Junior cares he is now changing out of the messy look and into a more cleaned up casual look. The men in my life prior to Junior wore what they wanted weather I liked it or not. Any requests to not wear certain things or even to cover up things went unheeded. The man in my life would then want me to be at my best like a decoration for his arm. If I wasn’t then I would deal with an unhappy guy. I have appreciated Junior being considerate of what I like. Junior also seems to get that I don’t have a lot of stamina. As I get older I realize that maybe my low blood pressure has contributed to my lack of energy. I have dealt with anger because I would need a nap after taking Grandma shopping on Saturdays. Junior will let me lay down when I need to and then we do what we need to when I get up. I guess the letting me be me that Junior allows me to do makes me love him even more so. He seems to get that I’m doing what I can as I can. For a while he thought I was lazy but lately he gets I just can’t do things I’d like to at times. Due to his back struggles I think he understands that lack that resides within me. Junior constantly tells me that I am beautiful. His eyes light up all the time when I am near. As he enjoys me for whom I am well I fall in love with him even more so. Gone are the days where I wanted to impress people for who I am. I no longer need that constant confirmation because I have it from the man I love. I don’t need the constant approval of family anymore either. In my own way I was constantly seeking approval and more often than not I did not get what I was searching for. As I get older and with Junior I find a contentment in being me and I believe my faith journey has helped me to accept that I am whom I am. I felt for a long time if I had a good job that people would be impressed. They weren’t. If I had a real nice house people would like me more so. Nope, I wasn’t liked better or worse. Even the car I drove I thought would bring me the approval I so desperately needed. These days I tend to go to God for my confirmations. God holds me so tenderly when I hurt. God pats me and then says “get up and do.” I find as I continue to seek God that God places people in my path who like me for whom I am. As I let go of my idea of where acceptance should come from and embrace God’s love I find that I am content in my own skin. Junior has been able to do this for a good long time. I am just getting to that point. As I was starting to date Junior I told him I was looking for “boring.” I guess some of the women he dated told him he was boring in a negative manner. To me I find I love this new life where drama is not the cornerstone. I love the quiet way we go about our lives and frankly it feels wonderful. Gone are the days where at the slightest provocation a fight broke out. Gone are days where every life event was told with a flare of excitement. Junior and I just do life in a quiet way. I love it. I watch Junior as he works. Some days as I watch Junior, he seems like he doing absolutely nothing, just wandering around. I know though that as he is wandering around he is working. He works in a way that is foreign to me. I also know that in the end the job will be finished and it will be awesome. I am ever so thankful that Junior told me that I must go to God first. I take Junior to God often, not to complain but I ask God to open my eyes to Junior’s ways so I can accept the man that Junior is. More often than not I can see the preciousness that Junior is and I continue to fall in love with him. May God bless you and keep you, make His face to shine upon you. Love Janet

December 8, 2012 Greetings My Friend, It is a quiet rainy morning so far. I am finding a peace with the rain gently falling outside. I had a doctor’s appointment yesterday so some quiet time feels good right now. Later I will go see a counselor my once a month visit. I have been at my computer since I woke up. That has been my routine in retirement. A while ago I was able to receive a daily reading of the Bible on the computer so that is now part of the routine in the morning. I love it. I wake up by looking at FB and then I go over and read my Bible Scripture for that day and sometimes I journal on what I am learning, hearing. I then go to a journal page and write all the thoughts floating around in my head. It is a way for me to review what I need to and then leave it there. Sometimes I then write a blog like I am doing now. It works and frankly it feels wonderful. Gone are the days where I get up rush the kids off to school and then to work. I can’t do that anymore. Sunday Junior got me up late and I could not get myself functioning to leave on time. I stayed home. Gone are the days where I roll out of bed and hit the floor running. I can’t do that anymore. If I force myself too much I will end up vomiting or plain worn out. So I try to leave myself plenty of wake time to wake up when we have morning errands and such. I need at least an hour to sit at my computer and wake up. As I continue to get older my body reminds me that indeed it is not as young as it used to be. Housework…I remember the days where I could tackle huge projects in a few hours and today I need a few days to do the big projects. Being retired allows me to work more slowly and move more slowly. I am baking muffins again and I love that. I am looking for a bread maker and I think I will like that. Since I am not sure I am hoping to pick one up at a yard sale or thrift store. That way if I am not a bread maker well I won’t have spent a small fortune. I long for the kitchen to be complete and it probably won’t be for some time. It is what it is. Still we have it fairly cleaned up….counters set up kind of and well it works. I make soup often and that is one of my favorites. Now muffins are part of my mornings and sometimes a snack to munch on so again it works. I haven’t started making my low carb chocolate candy yet….it is going to happen soon I believe. I am also going to start doing my crafts….crochet dishrags and cross stitch. I’ve started reading magazines again and I love that. These days the TV doesn’t come on till after 4:00 which makes me very happy. Having a recliner in the entry way is real nice…no TV there and I fill my day doing small things then I get up and do some sort of housework….this new habit is working and frankly I enjoy it. We tend to run a day or two during the week which works nicely. I have time where I am out and about and time at home. We generally will take a walk in the mornings. We are going to the end of the road more and more which is a good half hour there and back. I feel like the walks will help my bone situation to be stronger. I have always been a walker and love my walks out here even more so. Junior works at things most of the day. He stops for breaks often at the computer or in the recliner near where I am. Those little breaks are nice. We chat. We plan and enjoy each other’s company. I generally will call Junior in when I have made lunch and we eat together. By leaving Junior alone while he works I am giving him the space he needs. Frankly I like alone time as well and then I like couple time. We run errands together, chat throughout the day so we connect as well. I also see my writing time as my part time job. I love writing and since working is out of the question at least for now this seems to give me a sense of purpose. I don’t make any money but for some reason I’m good with that. We have a good income so money is not an issue. Junior is working our way out of debt and that makes me real happy. Another health issue will be taken care of next week. For some time now I have been swallowing food or liquids and I can’t get the food/liquid down. It stays there and I struggle before it comes back up. I am going to have a scope put down my throat and somehow it will stretch things out so food should go down easier. Again I sense some of my struggles are coming to an end and frankly that feels good. This doctor has been spot on with her remedies. In a few more weeks I will have a test done to see why I am stumbling and I hope there will be an answer. I believe praying has helped me. When I feel panicky I get a sense of calm. As we go along the doctor sends me for a test etc. and slowly I am finding answers and ways to deal with my struggles. I also am learning over and over that my body is getting older and thus it is not able to do what it once did. I continue to pray and I find that God is holding me and frankly I don’t feel so alone or scared or angry. Do you trust God with your life? May God bless you and keep you, make His face to shine upon you. Love Janet

December 5, 2012 Greetings My Friend, Thoughts at large, We went to one of the activities found out here a Pioneer Days event. It was not huge with so many people milling around you can hardly move but large enough to have a few tables of food, items for sale etc. It was fun. The food was good. We also saw people from the community we know mainly from church. That is fun. We’ve been around long enough to be part of the community now and frankly that is a wonderful feeling. We met C and M and their tiny dog…. That was fun. We saw G at a booth selling things and then S was at a food booth oh and A was at a booth selling books….it is so much fun when you know some of the people and can stop and chat with them. My mind seems to be going off in different thought patterns today. While journaling I note that it is the little things in life that touch the soul. On FB I wrote about eating a warm muffin and drinking a cup of coffee and how nice it was. I did get a “like” to my comment. I ponder again the little things in life are what truly move us. We bought a new car this week. We enjoy it and feel we will be ahead financially due to it being an electric car. It rides nice. We save money on gas. As nice as that all is it was the muffin and coffee that warmed me way down deep inside. I loved the taste in my mouth, the warmth of the coffee on a cool morning. I loved floating around reading FB, journaling and the whole moment was awesome. The car…it feels good to work our way out of debt, it rides nice, it will be easy to handle….still it was the muffin and coffee that really made my life feel good. Giving has been rolling around in my mind as I read 2Corithians. That has been an awesome lesson in life for me. As a young mother money was tight so I started giving of my time. I loved being a youth advisor. I loved reaching out to teens. I loved them accepting me into their lives. The teen boys began to teach me that not all men need to strike out in anger. I learned that the boys were sensitive as well. As my marriage ended and I began dating I began to seek out men who were gentle and I loved it. I no longer had to face life with a fist in the face whenever life was difficult for the man. I’ve been married to Junior now for 14 years….he has never hit me. He uses his deep voice from time to time to let me know I’ve crossed the line and I then stop, go to another room for a bit and we don’t hurt each other and I have learned to say things like “take that back” when my feelings have been trampled on. Junior then takes back his remark and we are friends. These days we don’t enter into those moments where we are trampling on the other’s feeling nearly as often as we once did. As I married Junior he said that he gives 10 percent and then I said I donate my time and we have done both throughout the years. I find life to be sweet if I don’t hold onto my money, my time like I won’t have any more to give. I find a deep peace when I give and life to be sweeter. I am also learning that I am not required to give to every single need. I can’t. I try to listen to God and give when I am prompted. Again I feel peace. As I read my Bible I see Jesus did not heal every person that needed healing. I see Jesus got angry and now I am not afraid of my anger when it tends to arise. I do take my anger to God and He will direct me. That is such a peaceful moment. Junior will anger me from time to time. I talk to God and God will guide me or even open my eyes to show me Junior’s heart and frankly I fall in love with Junior over and over again. The more I allow God to guide me I find myself being comfortable in my own skin. I do have to admit that I needed medication to help me move out of depression. I believe God gave people the knowledge to make that medication so I can function. I love seeing a home instead of renovation junk everywhere. The house is picked up these days, the floors moped and the day is moving along nicely for me. Junior continues to finish projects and with each finished project I find joy and peace. I drove our car into a ditch on our property. I’d like to talk to myself and beat myself up. Junior was angry but gentle in his anger. I felt safe telling him. He fussed a little bit and then we moved on. I have learned another lesson, no distractions when I am driving, turning on the radio…..concentrate…..so it is a hard lesson but I get the point now. Thankfully I did not hit another car or got injured. I learned and now I move on. I find life to be about learning lessons even in my older years. I feel that if I am still learning then I am able to grow in the Lord and frankly that feels wonderful. Again I see God’s patience with me and that too feels ever so wonderful. Are you allowing God to grow you? May God bless you and keep you, make His face to shine upon you. Love Janet