June 15, 2017

Greetings My friend, When we bought this house 7 years ago this summer we knew it would take a lot of working to make it a livable and comfortable home. We needed a challenge, fell in love on the porch and when the opportunity arose we bought it for next to nothing. At first we were going to hire contractors to do the work then we discovered the contractor's that were around were overbooked and many of the people who were unemployed wanted to be unemployed. At that point Junior undertook learning to renovate and began in earnest transforming our home. He needed to work, he had not wanted to retire but due to his back he had to. Amazingly Junior could do much of the renovation himself with a little forethought. He used a pulley system, dragged heavy objects with his lawn mower and used boards on wheels to move heavy things around. Junior has worked very slow and switched jobs frequently doing a couple of projects at the same time. He also took an afternoon nap to rest and to quiet the muscles in his back only to get up and start again after his nap. Through this I learned to live with several projects at a time which felt like chaos to me. I also learned that Junior will stick with this craziness until a room is done for the most part, like floors needing to be done at the end of all the renovating. The more I watched Junior, the more I learned how to work with a broken body and slowly as each room was finished I was able to figure out how to keep the house in order again due to disability. Along the way we were grateful that we were not given a contractor because the more we lived in the house the better we could discern what would work best for us.At the start of the year Junior seemed to slow down and finally he told me that the doctor said he had a hernia. A couple of weeks ago he went in to have it repaired, afterwards urinating was difficult with the medical people putting a catheter to drain the urine then they took it out. Several hours later his bladder was full to overflowing so he needed to have the urine removed again with another catheter draining his bladder. His bladder filled then drained several times only to discover that his bladder was sprained. At this point he needs to wear the bag 3 weeks before they will attempt to wean him from the catheter. Junior has been in prayer trying to discern the lesson God wanted him to learn. He believes God wants him to slow down now, and as we are having Lowe's come in to replace a few windows he has discovered that Lowe's might be the answer to getting the help we need to finish up many of the projects that still need to be done. Even if the contractors don't finish, Lowe's will make sure it is done and done right. I believe God knew that Junior needed to do much of the work and He now knows that it is time for Junior to slow down. I sense that Junior is ready to slow down as well which means we will have more time to enjoy the porch he extended for us. Last night we sat out there listening to the quiet and chatting. We needed the time to unwind and regroup and I am thankful that God is pointing us in this direction. I also see that Junior can still be busy with "work", like refurbishing old furniture, building simple tables, end tables or even boxes. I see that I could help him as well. I even see that these projects could be done to donate them to the local thrift stores so that people with little or no money could have a nice piece of furniture. We have learned much these past 7 years growing and learning along the way. I am thankful for the work he has done and I am thankful that it is time to slow down and allow others to finish up what he has started. I look forward to working beside Junior on refurbishing furniture and giving it to thrift stores, to those we see that need what we have or whatever God leads us to. May God bless you and keep you make His face shine on you. Love Janet