March 28, 2017

Greetings My Friend, I am a detail person and when I mix up the details it bothers me a lot. When I was coming out of my abusive marriage, I had a need to tell all the gory details, I think because the look behind startled me as to what I put up with. I was counseled not to go into the details which took me time to learn not to do. Learning to not tell each little piece of information has been a long and winding road for me. Recently I read in my morning Bible study time "So that as it is written, 'Let the one who boasts boast in the Lord." I have been learning to give God the credit for the changes I am making in my life, the struggles I have overcome and even when good comes to my life. My prayer life and Bible study time is guiding the direction of my life. As I make the changes I realize the only way I am able to make the changes is because God is guiding me. I am surprised when I see the results of listening to God's direction. For the past 8 years we have had our house in Michigan rented out because of the housing market crash we were upside down. This year we are finally selling our house. Last June Junior and I were involved in a rear end accident. Junior went to the ER because he had something wrong with his neck behind his ear. He has been having his Chiropractor work on the problem and finally the claim was ready to be settled. We received money for the accident and for me it was hard not to tell how much. God is teaching me people do not need to know the amount. I do find myself thanking God for what He has done to help us through this struggle. I am thankful that Junior was not hurt any worse than he was. As I focus on these things the money we received seems less important. My boast is a thankfulness that we received what we needed and God watched over the whole process. At the same time our debt has gotten out of control, some of it is the renovating we have been doing to the old farmhouse we bought in Virginia. Some was spending too far ahead of a renovation and then finding we did not want to do what we first thought. God has been teaching us how to spend more wisely. We received enough money to help pay off some of the credit we had gotten into. More importantly I am thankful for the lessons we are learning and have learned. God has told us to trust Him. Trusting is hard for me to do so the last 8 years has been a lot of learning to trust. First we felt led to move from Michigan to Virginia and I had to trust to move from a state I had lived in for 50 years. I had to learn how to relate to a different weather pattern than Michigan. It is somewhat warmer where we moved, my allergies have gotten worse, my health continued to decline and through all of this I learned God was near. I have found the doctor's seem to listen to my complaints and have done an amazing job of helping me move through each problem. I trusted God for the financial end of moving that Junior would not loose our new home or our old one. I trusted God as He taught me to accept a work style that was unfamiliar to me. I trusted God as He showed me how to reenter keeping a home again as the house opened up through the renovating. I relearned how to work with my broken body. God has been my rock and my redeemer. When I did not think I would ever be able to work at keeping house again, God allowed the craziness of renovation to have me sit and rest and at the right time God taught me how to work when I can and sit when I can't. The details that help me now are to look at God and to see how He has made all this possible for me. May God bless you and keep you make His face shine on you. Love Janet