April 24, 2013 Greetings My Friend, My hope is Jesus. This hope sustains me and gives my life definition and a purpose these days. I continue to hurt and grieve but in all of that I have hope. One of the thoughts I continue to ponder is after we die. I hate thinking that there is nothing. We rot and return to the earth and nothing. In Jesus I find I have hope even in death. I like the thought of living in eternity. I think about the word eternity and find myself trying to wrap my brain around that thought. Eternity is forever and ever. In heaven we will not have pain or sorrow. I can’t imagine life without the ups and downs. I long for it but I can’t begin to imagine it. I then ponder what we will do in heaven. In my younger years I thought we would sit around on a cloud and play harps. As I get older I tend to see Jesus after the resurrection interacting with the disciples. He had a body, he cooked food, he walked through doors and he taught his disciples. Then I see Him ascending into heaven, floating upward until He is lost in the clouds or such. As I continue to look at this I then begin to believe we will have a body and we will have work to do. I also have a hard time wrapping my brain around the thought that Jesus is alive in heaven with his earthly body. I believe all this but I find it hard to realize that Jesus is in heaven in a body like we have. Most days I find I have hope when I bring these thoughts to the forefront of my brain. I am willing to live this life on a day to day basis with all of its ups and downs. When I want to give up I find that deep love of God to keep on keeping on. I have had my God hugs. I marvel at the people in my life these days. I believe that God has put precious people in my path for me to love, to be loved by and to live alongside of. That alone feeling of yesteryear is fairly much gone these days. When I start mourning lost relationships God reminds me often of the people that still want me and in all that I find hope. Part of my thoughts tend to be the amazement I feel with my marriage, this new house and our new state. I must say that I can’t go a day without pondering how nice life is these days. As I ponder our home in Redford I once more realize that it was a good home at one time in my life and now I am so in love with this new home. I can’t imagine living anywhere else now. This is new to me since I had a tendency to begin dreaming about the next house within a couple of years into the current new house I was living in. I now would like to stay here till the end. I miss being near family and then I don’t mind. I love the country setting we are in. I love the animals that have become part of our family. I love my walks, our drives and just looking out a window into the woods nearby. When I keep immersing myself in these thoughts and scenes I find peace taking a hold of me on a consistent basis. It feels nice. I continue to fall in love with Junior. He is the right man for me and I am the right woman for him and in all that it feels wonderful. We live in contentment and we rarely will fight. If we do have hard words it generally is when his back is hurting him big time and I have learned to pull away for a period of time and we will be friends in short order. My years of writing Junior a note and not mentioning his faults but telling him I love him have trained me to see his good qualities. I also think asking God to open my eyes and heart to him has helped me to not over focus on his irritating qualities and frankly I rarely see them these days. The hardest thing for me to overcome is to me his lack of organization. I think that has been a lot of the depression I’ve struggled with these past few years. I keep taking this to God and God keeps showing me how to let him be him and well I learn to be patient and accept that Junior operates to a different drum beat. When I can keep my thoughts to myself I find my man is content, continues to renovate and make me a pretty home. Again after my accident last year I have truly learned that Junior loves me deep inside of himself. I’ve known on one level that he loved me dearly but I guess I was waiting for the shoe to drop. I was waiting till the day my cuteness wore off and I was not going to be wanted only to find that Junior meant it when he asked me to make a lifetime commitment to him. In that type of love I find myself growing even more comfortable. I know I am not going to get dumped because I am no longer cute or fun. He likes all of me. Junior understands my strong points accepts my weak areas and helps me to be the woman God is creating me to be. I learn Junior’s strong points, his weak areas and God continues to point me to be what Junior truly needs, not what I make up in my mind to be for Junior. In all that we continue to grow and enjoy each other. Our love continues to grow deeper and richer. Are you praying for your marriage? Is it time? May God bless you and keep you, make His face to shine upon you. Love Janet