January 3, 2017

Greetings My Friend, Yesterday afternoon and this morning I found myself talking to 2 people who needed to talk on the phone. One is in major pain due to her hip going out on her and she is waiting for hip replacement surgery, the other is struggling with the potential life threatening cancer she has. Both friends are scared, angry and find that their life is taking a change they are not ready to enter into. I understand that need to talk especially when you can't get out and socialize. I went through a few years of trying to socialize as I dealt with exhaustion, severe vomiting and the whole ugly scene. I learned about Facebook and other social media sites which started to fill the void of social activity I used to be involved in. Junior has a friend who will call him to help him struggle through the craziness of his life, all of these people know what they need to do but they need a friend who cares. I have also learned to avoid answering the phone if I can not give the person the time they need to talk. When I can I then will call them back. The one friend who has cancer is someone that has struggled with depression and bi polar problems,she has never learned to allow others to share their struggles with her. Each time I feel like walking away God shows me He is working in her life so I stick around until I want to give up again and talk to God about how I feel. The beautiful thing is I am starting to see progress toward her faith journey. She has always accepted God is real but she has never got down to walking with Jesus, her cancer is making her face her mortality and I am grateful for her heart working on her faith walk. I think this is the point I had in mind as I thought about this topic of being available to listen to people who are in a struggle opening their heart to listen to God and His direction for their life. God also showed me again that ministry is not always about working at the food bank, teaching a class or being a church secretary. Those are the types of ministry I thought I would do when I retired and to be honest I miss this type of work. When we first moved down to Virginia I found that both Junior and I were able to come alongside of people who needed help in our community. We found ourselves giving rides to appointments, to the food bank etc. As my gait issues continue to get worse we discovered that it is time to pull back and find ways to take care of ourselves. While we were learning to take care of ourselves I discovered a ministry on line, some of it is my writing and a lot is being with friends who are Jesus followers and disabled. We share our struggles and our disabilities along with pointing each other back to our faith in Jesus. At this point I can now turn around and point my 2 friends to take advantage of social media. It did take me awhile to learn how to deal with social media, a fight once or twice and now I have a better grasp of how to keep some things offline. I would find it hard to be at home alone all the time but with social media I am able to have friends and to be honest it keeps me connected to what is going on in the world. In recent weeks I have also had a few conversations with people who have different life views than mine and I have learned we can still be friendly even if we do not believe the same way. God has so much work to be done and I have discovered God is not done with me yet even when my health fails so bad I can do nothing but pray I will have a very responsible job in God's kingdom work. May God bless you and keep you make His face shine on you. Love Janet