April 27, 2013 Greetings My Friend, I’m almost into retirement 5 years now and I am finally feeling settled and enjoying this new phase in my life. It has taken me a while to get here but now that it is here I am where I need to be. That feels wonderful. Routines continue to take shape in my life and since I am a person who operates better in routines I am once more feeling whole and alive. I have a fascination with organizing things. I love to organize and to read how to organize. It is something that excites me. Junior is an unorganized type of person in my thinking. He gets work done so he is not totally unorganized. He goes about it differently than I do and then I am confused how to fit in with him. Our home is never total chaos. It has stuff laying around that I’d rather not but it is generally clean. Junior doesn’t make a total hoarder. He will move stacks of stuff so he can mop the floor and then move it all back. He did that in his home before I came along. Junior takes a shower regularly and I’m grateful for that. These days when a stack gets under my skin I have a tendency to pile it in his office chair and the next time I go there the things are put away not stacked back where they were. Even in our companionable marriage we do find areas that don’t align up the same. I am more inclined to find a home for everything and then put the stuff in their place. Junior tends to let things pile up before attacking the pile. We seem to get to a point and it does not go beyond that point. For that I am very grateful. Hoarding runs throughout my family line. I have been one of the people who would go get them in order only to have them back to hoarding in short order. I am paranoid about piles. I am not excessively clean by no means but I am neat and I do like order. Part of my neatness is my ADHD ways I’m sure. For me to function I need order. I need to have routines. That is how I operate. When life is in dis-order I tend to fall apart. I tend to get confused and I have a hard time working my way back to order. The minute things are out of order I tend to start trying to make order. Mom was a hoarder. When I divorced I cleaned out her house. It was good therapy for me really. Each night I would be cleaning and hauling things and I’d go to bed tired and life began to take shape as a single woman. After the house was all cleaned up I’d find Mom with her newspaper around her and a book or two and she’d shuffle them around her. She needed stuff around her to feel safe. I was surprised at this behavior when she was in the hospital one time, her shuffling paper and stuff around. Then when she came home I also saw her shuffling her paper and stuff around her. She needed the dis-order in order to function. It did not have to be a total shambles but she needed some dis-order in her life. Junior is like that somewhat as well. He likes stuff around him. Right now he has a tool bench he made outside our door and under the porch. I can’t see the top of the table and I often see Junior move several things in order to cut a piece of wood. For some reason he needs the dis-order in order to create. Our home is turning out so nicely. I admire Junior’s creative ways with what he has done. He amazes me to no end but the dis-order drives me nuts. As the house becomes more finished as far as the renovating goes I find myself once more making order within our home. I could easily get mad at Junior but I tend to take my struggle to prayer instead. I usually tell God that I need help accepting my husband and his strange to me ways. The more I pray the more God opens my heart to Junior. I think from time to time God will also work on Junior’s heart and he will make order out of a pile of disorder on his own. I find I don’t get mad, yell or fuss at the messes within our home. I clean what I can and I live with what I can’t figure out how to clean. I let go of the need to be angry. That is really refreshing. I don’t do it on my own, God has given me the peace I need to deal with my husbands to me strange ways. I mostly am so grateful for Junior’s love. He is tender. He is thoughtful and in all of that I don’t want to be with anyone but Junior. We make a good team. That feels wonderful. We both have our strange to each other parts but somehow with God at the center of our lives we are able to blend our differences and be good friends. I love that. God teaches me to accept Junior’s ways. Junior accepts my strange to him ways and frankly our lives are sweet. We enjoy each other. I like that a lot! Sometimes Junior is more blunt than I’d like him to be. For the most part people take Junior’s bluntness fairly well. I’ve learned that this is Junior and I can’t change him so I can get upset or accept this quirk in his nature. Again I see his tenderness to me. I see a man who loves God deeply and tries to be the man God wants him to be. I couldn’t ask for more. I also see that most people seem to get Junior. Here in Virginia the people truly seem to get Junior. They often seem to see his blunt ways but they also seem to see that precious heart of his. These days I don’t seem to have a need to “explain” Junior. People out here understand the man he is. That feels real nice. Do you accept your mate the way they are or are you trying to change them? May God bless you, make His face to shine upon you. Love Janet