November 29, 2016

Greetings My Friend, I am learning a lesson from the Holy Spirit. This lesson I have understood through the years in regards to "stuff" and being swamped in too much of it not in regards to the memories I have had with certain pieces of furniture. For sometime now I have felt overwhelmed with attempting to keep up with dusting. I have a love for nick knacks and the stories they have in my heart. I am particular to old things, to crosses and pieces with the birth of Jesus. I have something on every flat surface in the house. Some of the flat surfaces are crowed which means pulling each piece off, dusting it and then putting it back has now become a major chore, I have finally realized my memories are starting to own me instead of me owning them. Another problem with dusting is finding a way to get rid of the dust without over waxing the furniture. It came to me, more likely from the Holy Spirit to use a bowl of water and Castile soap which has olive oil in it. The soap is not as rough on my hands as other soaps and the oil nourishes the wood. I have spent several days going from room to room and part of the process has been to get rid of some of my treasures. I have filled up a couple of laundry baskets of things so I am proud of my work too. I will donate most of these treasures to Brother Wolf, an animal rescue thrift store in our town. Last night as I was working on our sitting room it came to me again I think I was prompted by the Holy Spirit to say good bye to some pieces of furniture I have. This endeavor was a bit harder to let go of but I did and I am happy with how much less crowded the room looks. Junior and I are thinking about getting a recliner love seat for the sitting area so I set the 2 recliners we now have on the wall under the mirror. I took out Grandma Chearheart's old shelf unit, the end table with snack tables underneath the table and placed the snack tables beside the 2 chairs. I took the glider out of the corner, put my sewing machine in that corner with a little person (like my size) rocking chair in front of it. The whole room feels good and looks a lot better. It was hard to let the shelf unit and the end table go. Grandma Chearheart was my encouragement as a youngster and a young wife. She knew when I was getting severely depressed and told me to stop thinking those thoughts. I loved her glistening eyes whenever I came in the door, someone loved me for me so letting go of this reminder of her was hard. God started a conversation with me around this time as I was feeling lost without these old reminders. He pointed me to look at Aunt Rosemary, the hoarder in our family and how lost she was when we asked her if we could get rid of an old raggedy piece of clothing. He showed me Mom and Dad's hoarding where it was hard to find a path in the basement, the smell of the old shag rug as I slept on it the night Dad died and brought to mind Junior's willingness to move piles of stuff so he could clean the floor and then move the same pile back to the same spot. The last memory struck me the hardest with the collecting of nic knacks and memory pieces that I had in my life. God next brought to mind the sense of loss I feel with family and seemed to ask me "who was my family?" My heart replied, "The family of God". As I thought this thought I understood it was time to fully accept the family of God as my family, that is where I feel wanted, valued and useful. The past is gone, it was what it was but it is time for me to live in the present, in the family of God celebrating what I do have. I also sensed that God was not telling me that I needed to live with totally modern things but to be blend my life into His. I have a love for variety, a tendency towards a time gone by blended with the comforts of today. I felt God was saying that style was okay but don't hang onto things. There is a season for everything and the season of remembering another life is now over with. At the end of my conversation I felt I was good with letting Grandma Chearheart rest in peace. May God bless you and keep you make His face shine on you. Love Janet

November 27, 2016

Greetings My Friend, I am almost done with pinning the memory quilt and once more I ran out of pins. Afterwards I decided to work on a sheet blanket since I had 2 sheets to work with and a woven throw. It will be a warm blanket for watching TV or to use as a warm blanket for the spare bedroom if we have company. I like the one I made a few weeks ago a lot but I did not have a full sheet set to use so I made the blanket too narrow. Pinning the memory quilt and then pinning the sheet blanket quilt wound up making my back muscles to tighten up. These days I am learning to stop when my muscles begin tightening up on me. I used to try to work past the discomfort but I learned that if I kept pushing I wind up having pain instead of discomfort. I am able to quiet my muscles most often with resting, I also find that doing the other exercises I have learned are helping me too. Today we went to town to pick up a few things so I used my walker at 2 of the stores we went into I did fairly well. I do believe the medication is helping me regain some of my mobility again and that feels awesome. Right now I am using the walker when I am out, at home though I do not need the walker. The tiredness associated with trying to work my gait normally seems to have left me. I am also looking on line at some of the natural supplements to see if they can help me stay on the lowest dose of medication longer. The exercises are helping too, I am amazed at my energy level over all and the things I am able to do again. I almost feel like I have been handed my life back which is exciting. Of course down the road I will more than likely decline again, I understand that so while I can I want to do all that I am able to do with Junior. I am working hard at making meals again to have ready to eat at lunch and dinner. Breakfast he is on his own. My goal through out this disease is to not allow discouragement and despair to over take me. God continues to be my strength in all of this in that I find the courage to keep going, to be thankful for the small steps forward and accepting when I am in decline. At this point I am grateful to know what is wrong with me and not trying to find the right combination of things to do for energy, how to walk straight or why my gait is out of whack. It is the unknown that has been the most difficult to deal with, so knowing is better thank not knowing at this point. Along with sewing I have been working on dehydrating food and right now I am trying my hand at dehydrating cranberries. I decided to give them a try since they are around for the holidays and I am developing a taste for them more than raisins when cooking. My first couple of batches have been on the fairly dried to a crisp state. My struggle is I put them on and forget that they are drying until they are crunchy dry. They need to dry from 12 to 24 hours so I believe I need to find a way to remember. Learning new things helps me too and since I have always loved to learn I have many things to learn. In all of this I find that I have not lost my hope and when there is no hope there is no desire to keep pushing past the the struggles of disease. God reminds us a whole lot in the Bible to not worry, to trust Jesus and for some reason it helps me to face life, disease. May God bless you and keep you make His face shine on you. Love Janet

November 24, 2016

Greetings My Friend, We paid off the wood,coal burning stove yesterday and it will be installed early next week. We should be able to heat the house more evenly this winter than we have for the last several winters. The old stove was just that an old one we picked up cheap, to see if this was a good way to save money on our energy costs. We have found that around here we can buy loads of wood rather cheaply although with 9 acres we will be able to get our own wood with the woods we have on our property. I am thinking we also will use less propane as well this year. The nice part is the propane tends to be a back up system for times we are away and such. The other nice thing about the stove is it has a window in it for us to see the fire. I admit that I have just about gave up on dusting, for some reason I do not enjoy it like I once did. Anyway, I have been waking up rather stuffed up lately when it came to me that the dust is playing havoc with me. As much as I did not want to dust, I decided if I wanted to breathe then dust I must so I decided to try another route to dusting. I used Castile soap and water and the more I wiped down the more I found myself liking this idea better than using a spray to pick up the dust. Castile soap has either coconut oil or olive oil in it which also helped not dry out my hands along with the oil nourished the wood. I got half the bedroom done so I need to finish the other half today but I did wake up so much less stuffed up and clearing my throat and all of that yuckiness. I have a tendency to like nick knacks a little too much and I have decided I may work at dusting better if I got rid of a lot of the things setting out. At one time in my life I loved taking all the pieces, wiping them, the tops of the furniture then putting everything back. Today this whole process seems so tedious to me which is why I am contemplating putting all the nick knacks away then when it comes time to dust all I have to do is remove the doilies and dust. I am grateful Terri introduced me to her sister Sharon who has Parkinson's Disease as well. Having someone to ask questions helps a lot. After I attempted to walk a trail with my wheelchair as a walker the other day the calves of my legs were not happy. I had a nagging discomfort in the calves of my legs so I sent Sharon a text/email asking her how to quiet this discomfort. Sharon responded for me to lay on the floor and rest my legs on the wall up in the air. This trick settled down the discomfort I was having. I learned from both Sharon and Terrie to ride my incumbent bike/ellictipal whenever I start getting tired and to make it a habit to do it most days. This too is helping my stamina a lot and a quick ride often revives me when I am starting to wane on energy. My Chiari friends have taught me much about having a support network of friends who understand your struggles and they share between them different things they find that help them. I have also learned a lot about having invisible illness' in regards to the effect that people often do not look sick. We all have the idea of a handicapped person displaying physical signs of inability to do things. The fact of the matter is many with disabilities have no outward appearance of struggle. The Chiarians have headaches that resemble migraine headaches only they are worse. Mostly the headaches are due to CSF in balance. Not only do I have PD, I also have a few other things wrong such as asthma, oestoporosis, PTSD due to abuse and anxiety more than likely associated from a lifetime of abuse. Today I have walked away from it but the effects still are there. I believe that is why Junior and I have so many pets. In my heart I believe that God has guided Junior and I to seek alternative energy for our home, has guided us with our marriage, my illness' and our PTSD. I find myself grateful that I do not have to face all these struggles on my own, God holds me, comforts me, sends me friends like Sharon and reassures me that Junior is here for the long haul. May God bless you and keep you make His face shine on you. Love Janet

November 22, 2016

Greetings My Friend, "I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly." What sticks out to me right now is the last sentence, "I came that they may have life and have it abundantly." I used to think abundance was having lots of things, stuff and maybe a loving family beside me. Today I do not see the abundance of what God gives me in material things. I see abundance in a day filled with work that I love and for me it is caring for Junior. I am so content calling him in to eat, making him good food, taking time to be as healthy as I am able and admiring the work of his hands. I am content watching our home turning into a comfortable place for us and to invite friends in. I am content that I have finally said good bye to the painful life I once lived. Jesus helped me get to this point, a lot of counseling and a little anxiety, antidepressant medication. God said to leave Michigan and bit by bit the life I lived there is truly in my past. I have my little family of fur children that are always happy to see me and are never embarrassed to accept me as their Mom. Life is good. Today abundantly is this quiet unassuming life I am leading. I have an answer to why I stumble over my own feet, why my hands shake when I am not on medication to control the shaking and the heaviness in my chest is asthma. It is distressing that I have these things but at the same time I accept it and enjoy what I am able to do. Sometime soon I may not be able to do for myself at all, I think about it some. I know God is guiding me to do things to keep my body as stable as I am able with medication and exercises. At the end of the day I rely on God for just about everything anymore. I want to think I give God all of me and if I am honest I more than likely have a few strongholds somewhere deep within me. Today though when God tells me He wants another part of me I do not argue with Him like I did for a while. At the end of the day I have learned it is for my good and I will be grateful for giving that part of me to Jesus. I have walked away from a huge amount of pain, I have done things I never thought I could do and now I am living an abundant life, a life I dreamed of for most of my life. I have accepted that I am not the same as most people and I am good with that too. To God I am to die for, a daughter of the King. Junior treats me a lot the same way, I am the wife he longed for who wants to be seen with him and enjoys his humor, to us it living in abundance. Believing God is the Father, Jesus is the Son and because I believe the Holy Spirit speaks to my spirit showing me how to walk into the pasture and rest in the green grass. God is good and I am thankful for this life. May God bless you and keep you make His face shine on you. Love Janet

November 19, 2016

November 19, 2016 Greetings My Friend, We recently celebrated Veteran's Day. I have learned in the last year or two how important these holiday's are to our military. We ourselves took advantage of Applebee's offer of a free meal for veteran's. Junior understands that many veteran's are there feel lonely and not appreciated. Junior takes time to walk around and talk to fellow veteran's while we wait for our food. My heart see's the need of being able to talk to another veteran so he talks to them. I believe Junior receives something from those he talks with, this need is deep. We have a friend who is often at home alone for these holiday's and he reaches out to Junior wanting a chance to be accepted. Unfortunately the Vietnam veteran's came home to a country who was rude to them and shouted out very ugly statements. What the general population does not know is that this ugliness resonates deep in a lot of veteran's from that war to this day. They still feel the lonleiness and disrespect. Many veteran's also feel bitterness toward our government because the rights to care is difficult to receive or a problem acknowledged. PTSD has been around under different names for years and more often than not the veteran's are not made known what is going on with their strange behavior. Some spouses have given up on the military spouse due to extreme anger and depression. Some have nightmares that are so vivid that the veteran wakes up back in a battle they fought, holding their spouse captive. Other spouses may stay but leave emotionally, they may make their own life with family and friends excluding the veteran. Then are the spouses that hung on for the ride and stayed with the veteran with time eventually revealing the struggle the military veteran was dealing with, such as PTSD. The VA knew that Junior's good leg was going to get worse, more than likely he would need a knee replacement and his back would suffer due to the amputation throwing his back way off. Junior learned this when he needed to retire due to back problems. His work also required a heavy demand on his back, if he had known he might not have taken on such a heavy load to his back. Equal rights were coming into focus around the time Junior came back from Vietnam and he was turned down for job training because his disabilities were not the focus of equal rights at that time. Finding a job was difficult for him, getting training to better himself was difficult and he wound up taking a job in a factory making paint. He wanted to move on but his PTSD made it hard for him to be employable in most work situations. Today I understand how veteran's feel more fully, some want to be acknowledged while others are happiest just being accepted for the gift they gave to their country. I do know that the men and women relish the military holiday's and feel lonely when family and friends take the holiday lightly like for the long weekends or picnic's without time spent in reflection of the price of freedom on our military. I sat eating by myself at Aplebee's the other day while Junior walked around talking to other veterans and I was thankful for my husband's need to reach other's. My goal now is to allow Junior to reach out as he needs to so other veteran's can have a chance to remember, to let go and to live more comfortable with the war they fought. May God bless you and keep you make His face shine on you. Love Janet

November 17, 2016

Greetings My Friend, In Malachi God is having a discourse stating "Will man rob God? Yet you are robbing me. But you say, 'How have we robbed you?'Bring the full tithes into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. And thereby put me to the test, says the Lord of hosts, if I will not open the windows of heaven for you and pour down for you a blessing until there is no more need." God is challenging us to bring our offerings to Him. He wants to bless us and will not bless us unless we trust and obey His commandments. God instructed Israel to bring their first fruits to the Temple. When Israel did so the Priests were fed, the people received plenty of rain and their crops grew. When Israel slacked off their giving then their ground dried up and produce did not grow. Along with the physical blessing there a spiritual blessing when you give from your heart. I bought into the idea for years that all we did when we brought our money to God was to make the church grow fat, the poor and needy were neglected. As I settled into adulthood though I started to see a lot of good that the people's giving did do. I was the recipient of some of the offerings made to the church when I was a child. It has stayed with me the kindness of the heart of a church family helping a family in need. Junior received from organizations as well when he was growing up. People felt inclined to give to groups like Salvation Army and his family had clothes and food. We do give money to the church and often times we give of our excess to organizations that help others in the community. In my journey of giving I have learned to give of my money, my time and of my excess. God bless' us if we have a heart for giving. As a young woman our income was tight so I started giving of my time at church by being a Choir Mom who helped put robes on the young ones or sit with them during the service. I went from doing that to other things within the church and I grew in confidence and faith. When I married Junior I learned about giving to organizations the things we no longer use but are still in good order. We have a bin to throw things in and when it is full we donate the items inside the bin. The giving spirit is what God is teaching us to desire and the more we learn and grow in this the more blessed we feel. Giving of my time on mission trips usually finds me being blessed by those that I am giving to. It is the most wonderful moment on each trip. I am sad my health no longer allows me to go on mission trips although I have found ministry of giving right in my community today. My blog is a ministry of giving and sharing, so is my Facebook page. We live in an area where the economy is usually down which means we have the opportunity to encourage, drive or some other type of giving. Sometimes we need to be given to as well, this was hard for me to grasp. I was in the wheelchair at the grocery store the other day and I had picked out a package of frozen vegetables and went a little further only to discover a larger package so I was trying to turn myself around and put the first package away. A lady saw me struggling and offered to help me. I was grateful and accepted her help. She had an opportunity to minister to me. I struggle because I think I am supposed to always give and not receive until one day it came to me (more than likely the Holy Spirit convicted me) Sometimes we need to receive so another person can give from their heart. Receiving and giving needs to be fluid and we do not always need to be on one end or the other all the time. When I was young Dad had polio and our family was in a lot of need. We received gratefully and as our parents were able to get on their own feet they no longer needed all the gifts from the church and from many others. They taught me to take when in need and then to give back when our period of need is over with. One of the first things Mom and Dad did that I remember was they gave Dad's wheelchair to the church. They had a supply of medical equipment that was available to others in the church first and then the community at large. Mom and Dad also gave of their time and talent a whole lot since their income was tight for many years. Finally when their income grew after Mom finished college they gave of their income more fully. Giving from the heart is giving back to God what He has already given you. It is a wonderful journey growing in giving from the heart. May God bless you and keep you make His face shine on you. Love Janet

November 15, 2015

Greetings My Friend, Junior has decided to sign up for Facebook and I am challenged by his upfront, blunt statements. I know him, that his heart is right with God and his goal is to get people thinking and talking. I also know that some people can get aggressive when they are challenged which makes me want to soften my approach when I speak about what I believe. This is not Junior's way at all, so my desire to "fix"him is met with irritation. I learned many years ago to be thankful for your spouse, I decided to write Junior letters before work for many years. In the letters I only wrote what I admired about him, mainly for myself for the times when I got irritated with him. The letter writing imprinted on my mind all his good points and drew my thoughts from a constant nit picking I am more in tuned to. After we moved to Virginia I was dealing with changes not happening very quickly in the renovation process and no clue to how hard it is to work with a broken body. The time frame in my mind was not nearly enough time for him, I tried to understand and not having a broken body at the time I was unable to fully understand his struggle to get things done. One day I found myself irritated again so I took my struggle to God. God laid on my heart to ask Him to open my eyes and heart to Junior, that opened my understanding so much. I started to watch Junior work and I saw a labor of love. He is renovating this place as a huge gift to me, to us. He wants it just right and will tear things out many times until it looks just right and done correctly. God also keeps bringing another picture to my mind, it is a mission trip we went on to Wales. We were learning street evangelizing, each day we went in a group, a person took out a huge pad of paper set it up on a tripod and began talking and drawing. While the talking and drawing was going on we started conversations with the people that came by to watch. Junior is not able to stand for long periods so he went to the bench nearby, ate his lunch and began conversing with people that sat near him. One time the group finished up and there was Junior in a crowd of people talking about his faith journey. These people were not the well dressed office workers that stopped to see the picture being drawn, they were rather rough looking and speaking, Junior had their attention, there was a back and forth going on in the conversation. As a woman I want to fix my man, God reminds me that He will do the fixing, it is my job to respect Junior. Junior read something he wrote to me, I cringed and God convicted me to accept what he wrote. Junior writes like he talks and his grammar is less than perfect, I cringe at that too. Again God reminded me Junior is not "me", he has his own way of reaching out to others. Then I understood that Junior will attract those that he can relate to on his Facebook account, they will understand his grammar, his strange way of spelling words and know that his heart is right with God. I am learning to just say "sometimes you challenge me" to Junior, this gives me the opportunity to let him be himself, allows me to be challenged but to let him be him. I always find that genuine heart of caring and concern for others in Junior, that is what I fell in love with and I am still deeply in love with him. I am grateful God keeps convicting me to leave Junior alone because the work he does for the Lord is uniquely beautiful and wonderful. God gets the glory even if Junior's words are rough, his grammar is less than stellar and at the end of the day Junior has given Good New's to some of the undesirables just as Jesus did when He was here in the flesh. After all, isn't that the whole goal, to offer hope to all people, the sick, the lost, the lonely and the hurting? May God bless you and keep you make His face shine on you. Love Janet

November 12, 2016

Greetings My Friend, Today is Junior's 70th birthday and I have known him for 19 years now, being married for 18. His birthday and our years together makes me think about where we were when we first got married and where we are right now. For both of us we were in a previous marriage, we both were divorced and I was new to Single, Divorce Recovery where Junior was a facilitator and a member of the singles group. I looked up to him to find my way around ,he was my facilitator in Divorce Recovery. We did not date while I went through the workshop and Junior fought with himself to let me learn the ropes of being single and the desire to date me. I wanted to practice dating but I learned that I needed to give myself time to heal, to mourn the break up of my marriage. I was married for 24 years, Junior was married almost 20 years, the way he tells it 19 years, 11 months,3 days and who's counting how many minutes. We were falling in love rather quickly and we knew our chances of making it were lessened by me being divorced for such a short time and him being my first boyfriend after divorce. We finally ran off to Toledo OH and got married, from then on for several years we learned all we could about building a Christ centered marriage and all the pitfalls 2nd marriages bring. We started praying daily for a good 10 years together, we were in an accountability group, attended remarried workshops, retreats and Bible studies for couples. Retirement hit for Junior which started changing our patterns slowly, like praying in the mornings he had retired due to back problems which meant he was not functional for a long time in the mornings. Six months later I found out I had breast cancer and I wound up sleeping around the clock. I worked for another 4 years before I retired, by then Junior had figured out retirement for him and how to work with his back problems as for me I began a rather spiraling decent into many health issues. He practically moved us by himself from Michigan to Virginia when we felt led to move. Once in Virginia I kept getting worse for another year or two when I began working my way back to some sort of energy and health. Praying and Bible study had gone out the door and we both did our own reflection time but that was about it. Our home did not need renovating but an overhaul which means there has been a lot of chaos as we worked on bringing order to the disorder of the place. When we moved here we had a bedroom for the TV room and a room to go to bed in that is about it. Slowly though more rooms began to take shape and we found ourselves returning to some sense of normalcy and routines. Still missing though was our time in prayer and God's Word. We talked about it here and there, we wanted to but we also liked our private time with God. Next I started using the wheelchair and going to Sunday school with Junior in the same class. Periodically we would pull out the weekly study guide our class uses and go through it and then we let life get in the way. We started again last night studying the lesson after a serious talk and I am praying that this is the start of getting back into the Word together. We discovered Sunday evening is not a bad time and I believe it is going to stick this time. We rest most of the afternoon on Sunday before heading back to church for a Bible study and we believe we can come home and study the lesson for the next week at this point. With the craziness of the world anymore I have a need to keep drawing closer to God as an individual and as a couple. Once our Bible study time is a habit I am praying we will begin prayer time again. Not only do we learn God's will we also learn what is going on in each other's heart and I believe this will help us face my disease of Parkinson's head on but I will know what Junior needs, how to be a united front as we face the community and world around us. We both know that a marriage needs constant attention for it to continue to grow deep.May God bless you and keep you make His face shine on you. Love Janet

November 10, 2016

Greetings My Friend, I am writing with a heating pad on my back. I have met the rigid muscles I have read about full force. Back in the spring I was introduced to a back that seemed to freeze up, at that time I did not know I had PD or what rigid muscles were, today I get it. I noticed in the spring that if I bent forward for long periods of time that my back froze up. I thought I was out of shape real bad, I recall deciding to not sweep the floors with a broom because the constant bending over stressed my waist and back out too. Yesterday it seemed my entire back decided to go rigid and the process of thawing it out was a very long one. After a rest of a few hours I got up to move around only to be met the rigidness again. I do not have a bathtub to soak in so I need to find other ways to quiet the overly stiff muscles down, right now the heating pad seems to be doing the trick. My concern this morning as wrote in my journal was how can I be pleasant in light of serious discomfort. I have met many cranky people who were in major pain so I understand the crankiness. I want to be a pleasant person overall especially when I am out shopping. Retail people put up with all kinds of cranky customers and my goal is to be a bit of sunshine in an otherwise difficult day. When I got to the part in my journal about what I wanted to talk to God about I asked Him in a round about way how I can bring Him glory especially when I hurt real bad. I made much the same choice after my divorce as well, I had seen women who were so rough due to what went on in their marriage and frankly I did not want to be like that either. The world is ugly enough without my adding to the darkness of a bad attitude where ever I was. So far I am tolerating the discomfort and I am able to be quiet as I deal with it. Usually I will mention to Junior what I am dealing with so he knows to leave me alone and he does. I appreciate that a whole lot. When I am able to be friendly I open up to my generally cheerfulness again. Now that this rigidness can strike me out of now where I am concerned with how to deal with the huge discomfort I can go through and still be pleasant. I more than likely will not be wanting to be silly or overly chatty but at least I would want to be pleasant. I believe that God will help me through this process of trying to be pleasant just as He did when I got divorced. I had a few moments of craziness but in general I was decent with most people. I do admit I got testy when I had to deal with my ex, there was a lot of hurt and anger I had with him. Once again I find I reach my older years the time when I thought life would be good, no major new lessons to learn since I thought I had learned them all by now only to find that life is a learning lesson until my last breath. I am grateful I have had to learn how to be flexible with the moves and a new culture in the south. My new lesson now is asking God to show how I give Him glory by teaching me how to react with great distress in my life. May God bless you and keep you make His face shine on you. Love

November 8, 2016

Greetings My Friends, I sense God wants me to write about my faith journey and I have been doing this now for 8 years. In my morning Bible study time recently I was drawn to a passage that reminded me to be truthful in my journey of faith. "....but let your "yes" be yes and your "no" be no...." In sharing my faith I need to admit those times that the road I am on is a difficult one and right now the journey of Parkinson's disease is a rather scary journey. I journal my daily Bible reading and I am finding it so helpful, today as I wrote about what is on my mind and wrote my prayer I found myself focused on the end stages of PD. I will be an invalid, not able to care for myself at all and that is scary to me. The more I move into this disease I will regain my tremors only it will be with both hands along with other body parts, this too concerns me. Recently I have found how to live with so many things and at present I am living life and enjoying it. I am in a safe relationship, I am gaining confidence to do new things and learning how to do old things in a new way. I have emotionally accepted life right where it is at without some people I have longed for in it. Life is good other than my gait issues. I have medication that keeps my hand tremors down which allows me to write (well print), to keyboard, to sew and so many other things. I have accepted the wheelchair use which is only when I am out in public since I am unsure of my gait issues and falling. Last week I received the diagnosis of PD and part of me is fearful another part knows God is with me. After I wrote out my thoughts and prayer I read the Bible's daily reading. My reading program reads out of 4 different books each day which helps me stay focused and absorb better. When I finished I had the overwhelming thought that I needed to focus on today with an each day attitude. Today I can do all of the things I mentioned and I need to be thankful, even grateful that I am able to be where I am. I need to read to understand and then seek to find ways to stay on top of my disability like doing balancing exercises, building my core muscles and learning new things. When the perceived concern which is really fear for me tries to entice me to focus on the negative I need to lift that moment up in prayer asking God for support. I need to have an attitude of gratitude even if I am struggling. At the end of the day I find the more I lean into the struggle I will find a strength I never knew I had and without Jesus I would not have had. I need to live with the hope I received the day I accepted Jesus as my Savior a hope of one day receiving a body that is not broken and afraid. Right now though lessons are preparing me strengthening me for a day to come. Next I find myself looking to the cross again. God had me do that when I first began my faith journey and I balked at having to look at all the pain Jesus went through. I finally gave in and my years of praying through Jesus' last moments helped me grow in endurance and strength. I found hope instead of wishing. I am going along real positively right now and the thought pops into my head "what about..." Right after that I ask God to help me not go there and I forgot what the last part of the "what about" was. Jesus was afraid, he was anxious with the disciples and was sweating blood as He asked Father God "take this cup of suffering from me, not my will but your will." Jesus did not want to go through all of that but He did. I see Father God sending angels to comfort Jesus and I know I will receive comfort in my journey of PD. When Jesus came back from the grave, He was not angry but very loving, He showed the disciples many things and I find that if Jesus was okay with all that He endured I will be good too. For now though I am on a journey that is scary at times and I will do my best to share how God is working in my life and to grow through each stage of PD. May God bless you and keep you make His face shine on you. Love Janet

November 5, 2016

Greetings My Friend, My niece Alicia called me this morning, it is the first time in several months I have heard from her and it is always a joy to talk with her. She is married, has a family, works full time and is going to school so time for her is limited. We keep up with each other in between phone visits on Facebook or Instagram, we like different statues and it is a way to touch in between phone visits. When I found out I had Parkinson's Disease I texted her and we chatted for a bit that way. She was at work and does phone calls for her job which means we talked between the calls. Today I got to say it to someone who loves and I was surprised how easy it was to say. I also moved off of the need to talk about it rather quickly which surprised me. In my older years I love being checked up on from time to time. I need to know that my concerns are real and my life is important to someone. Alicia has been able to put up with moments of rambling when I hurt and rejoices over my accomplishments. Alicia also calls her mother more often than me and this too makes me happy, she understands the need her mother has to hear from her. Many young people do not seem to understand this need but see the older person as a drag on their time and energy. That is sad too. I admit that when I go out and come home most days I go over to the phone to and check caller ID for a potential phone call from my children, which is rare to never anymore. My heart grieves for a moment and then I get busy with loving the fur family Junior and I have adopted. I find myself thanking God for the family He has started placing in our lives. We have Debbie and Boogie, our church family whom we love to pieces and our fur family and one day I discovered that life is rather enjoyable. The move from Michigan and the 2nd move from Haysi has upset my balance in life quite a bit and now that our home is more of a home these days that unbalanced feeling is leaving. Junior and I have been happy with the cooler weather so we can take Daisy and Brendy along for our errands. The girls give me company while Junior runs into some of the stores without me and we feel like we can spoil our girls with little treats. When we get home we have a brood of fur children waiting for us to be loved on. Roscoe our rescue cat is slowly working his way out of the spare bedroom to mingle more with Junior and I. We seem to have made our little family which gives us comfort, someone to care about and for and it even helps us with our PTSD. Since we have been in VA I find the setting, the fur family keeps us calmer and quieter these days. I see that God has had us move here for many awesome reasons even if getting settled seems to have taken forever. My lesson is that God has invited me into the Family of God and if my earthly family is distant I now know that my heavenly family is always near. Ruth sent me a reassuring message when I missed church a few weeks ago and it meant so much. My on line family encouraged me as I faced the diagnosis of PD and a trip to the ER had people praying for me. God has taught Junior and I to reach out to others more often in acts of service and in the process He has shown us His faithful love. With each lesson learned I find myself growing and loving even in the hurts of life. God is all I truly need. May God bless you and keep you, make His face shine on you. Love Janet

November 3, 2016

Greetings My Friend, Today I thought I would work most of the day pinning the quilt and after 2 naps I started the long process of pinning. Some of the process is taking out the teeny tiny stitches that went off course when I tried to sew the seams on the new sewing machine. It took me a while to learn how to set the tension so the stitches were tiny. The line of stitching was hard to keep straight and after the 2nd row I knew I wanted to do something else. A little Youtube and Pinterest research I found a process called tying off a quilt. To get a better idea I asked Susan at Fabric House in Pound and she was a patient teacher as she showed me how to pin first and then the process of tying off the quilt. I am able to stand and I do fairly well leaning into the table as I pin but I do tire out so I need to take breaks. I am working on Saturday after a week of baking, sewing and having an over night visitor. As much as I rest during the week the weekend means I am tired which is why it took 2 naps before I could get going on my pinning project. Part of me wants to ditch the pinning routine and tie off the quilt in the center of each block but I will not I want to do the best I can. I am not a quitter in general but there are times I walk away never to return which what I did with sewing years ago. I messed up a skirt I was working on this week. I finally gave up because I when I realized I needed to make a full panel to make the skirt fit I had cut up the last piece of material so I could not make a panel. On another day with a lot of conversations with God I made another 2 skirts, one fuller by adding a panel and one more streamline. I have started asking God to guide me with this quilt, with other sewing projects. Actually it came to me to ask God for help after trying to figure out how to do it on my own. With the quilt I have been talking to God since the row of machine stitching went off track so I need to take out stitching, some I am able to leave alone as I move into the project. A few nights this week I sat watching TV ripping out some of the stitches. Today I pinned and ripped out stitching while working at the kitchen table where I have the quilt laid out. This is the standing I have done on and off for a few hours. Right beside me is Daisy wanting her share of loving on as I work. I love it as I talk to her fussing about it in baby talk. She gives her little bark when I have not fussed with her in a while. It makes me giggle as I rub her. I do not get upset because she is keeping me focused and calm in this endeavor. She quiets me a lot. Junior is my encourager too, he believes in me and frankly that helps me so much. Forever and a day I only heard that I was not capable, was too dense etc. so all of this encouragement opens me up to keep going. I am learning that I am capable of so much more than I ever dreamed of and at times I see I began my journey of venturing into new projects was that long ago dance with God when I learned that I was loved and had value. He also pointed me to state my thoughts and not blend my words into the woodwork of life, be upfront even if others do not agree. I still have moments when I want to blend back into the woodwork of life but today overall I try the harder projects, say the harder to hear things because I am accepted as I am and for what I do. I have given myself permission to make mistakes and this quilt has a few spots that are not "just right" but that is okay. I am trying which means it is not a dreamed about project never started. May God bless you and keep you make His face shine on you. Love Janet

November 1, 2016

Greetings My Friend, "let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil:hold fast to what is good. Love one another with brotherly affection. Out do one another in showing honor." I stop first at "let love be genuine", mainly the word genuine lingers the most, I think on this and I come up with do not be fake, do not love for what you can get but let love be genuine. I love with all my heart I think and then I am convicted, no I have loved because I was afraid to be alone, not wanted and basically I gave my soul away to whoever showed kindness to me for a minute or two. I had a desire to love someone so that the broken pieces in them would respond to my love and appreciate me all the more. Once more I hear "let love be genuine" and I realize that even though I thought I was full of love the genuine kind, I truly was not as loving as I thought I was. The is a sobering moment! That was the past I think so I do an introspection of myself and I ask "is my love genuine now?" To be honest I do not think I ever met true love until I met Jesus in the pit of my life. The strange thing is Jesus told me that I am special, I matter and by the way I love those warts you possess too. Wow! I remember those things that were dark and hidden down so deep I was barely aware of them. One day brought that secret sin up and boy was I ashamed. I did not want to face God with that sin but God told me to trust Him and He reminded me that He loves me even with that secret sin, "okay, I thought?" The strange thing is God took my hand and began a journey with me walking away from that dark and deep sin that plagued my soul. Later when I reflected I was amazed that the desire for that sin was gone and in its place I had an admiration for God and His power. Soon I started looking into my life and lifting up those other dark sins I had and God graciously began walking with me teaching me how to give them up and showed me the destruction that they played in my soul. The more I was accepted and the more I walked away from, the more my idea of loved changed. I saw my need to be a co-dependent, enabler and that these traits were not healthy at all. I learned Agape love "seeking another's highest good" and wanted to learn how to love in this manner. God has been teaching me this wonderful trait and I have so much more to learn, to last me a lifetime. God showed me what He did with His chosen people and told me to write, to warn and I have tried to stay faithful to this. God told me to use my life and write about His saving grace in my life of the hope of Jesus to all people. God has given me courage when I had to write things that are hard for me to do. In the process I keep loving God and His love keeps reflecting back in my heart. As my thoughts return to where I started I see the difference between loving in the flesh and never finding that empty space in me filled. Next I see that my desire is to enter into each day loving as I have been loved by God. Today I love all people and I learn to not love in dysfunctional ways. I like that. I find again God's ways are the best and the Holy Bible is a valuable book for each of us to read and get to know God be thankful for our Lord Jesus' strength. May God bless you and keep you make His face shine on you. Love Janet