June 9, 2016

Greetings My Friend, Since getting a functional kitchen last winter I find myself enjoying it a whole lot. I love making home made bread, jam, applesauce and this week I started dehydrating strawberries. Canning seemed to huge a task which I am not up to these days but dehydrating sounded like something I could tackle. My first attempt at dehydrating was solar dehydrating which proved to be a flop. I then decided to try using an electric dehydrator and my first attempt was a success. I am making less processed meals these days and I am proud of this accomplishment. I am even making things that I can take for a quick meal on the road which means we are not eating at fast foods as much. Moving out of the kitchen I have finally gotten a sewing machine I can figure out and I am in the process of making a 2nd quilt. I ordered bandannas from a wholesale place on line and I ordered the same size bandanna's to make it. It happens that I received a pack that was a different size, larger. I have figured out how to use them to fill in the sides of the quilt which is not quite the size of the sheet I am using as a back to the quilt. The amazing thing about all of this is my mind is functioning again in a way that it has not in a few years. My health issues played havoc with my thinking for such a long time that I was concerned I would never come back. I am not where I once was but today I am a whole lot better. For me getting my mind to be active again has been a journey not unlike getting my body to be active again. For the longest time I set my thinking on how a room needed to be decorated, how to work with Junior on planning out the room to best suite our needs as he renovated. This simple little start has helped me to work up to learning new things and even how to do old things in a new way as my handicaps inside of my body keeps leaving me. I am scared of what is going on more because of the unknown. I am also thankful because God keeps guiding me to going further than I thought possible. He continues to be my hope which is my motivation to keep on going. As I focus on God and He brings me to deal with these huge life changes I find I am grateful. In a logical worldly way this does not make sense but in a spiritual way I am starting to understand more fully God's awesome power. This is where I meet God in awe of Him. I learn to accept the changes sometimes in long drawn out ups and downs of emotions. He continues to hear my fear, calm my fear and then sends me into the day again. I no longer believe I can achieve perfection on one try. I do see that one step leads to the next and then to the next. God is on each step with me allowing me to fall, to try again and one day I discover that I have made it to the next step up. Each step of this journey seems to keep moving upward. For the longest time I felt that God would give up on me if I could not master that first step, the second and so on. Today I know He accepts me at each step just as He did the first day I gave my heart to Him. I feel this is much like when Junior asked me to marry him and right after he asked me if I was willing to be married to him for the rest of my life. I made the commitment and now I see he means it too, I no longer worry that he is going bail on me when the going gets tough. This is the commitment I feel with God and now I feel safer with my walk. May God bless you and keep you make His face shine on you. Love Janet