December 16 2014

December 16 2014 Greetings My Friend I look out the window and see a couple of birds eating the suet we have hanging. In my lap are three of the smallest dogs and Junior is napping. In the quiet I realize that Christmas will be in 9 days so I think about Christmas some more. My Advent lesson comes to mind again, “Am I enough” I hear God whisper in my heart. I respond with “Yes, Lord You are.” My response has taken me years to get to this point before Christmas Day. I have gotten to this point more often than not after the holidays were over with and day in and day out life started up again. This year I am good that no family will be here or we won’t be with family. It is what it is. We watched “A Wonderful Life” with Jimmy Stewart Sunday evening which always helps me keep life in a perspective with God at the center of it. Seeing Jimmy go through the scenes as if he never lived helps me to see that my own life hasn’t gone the way I dreamed it would but my life has made a difference. Today I am able to be grateful for learning to travel down another less traveled road. I am grateful for the hard lessons life has taught me because they’ve made me the person I am today. Most people saw me as weak and ineffective in my other life. Today many see me as a woman that is a survivor and it feels good. I find times where I am able to reach back and help someone who is going through the struggles I have gone through and I offer them the hope that I have, Jesus. I tell them the road has been long and hard at times but with Jesus I have found peace at doing the work that needs to be done. My past helps me reach others who are in the midst of what I was in. My present allows me to love Junior in a deep Godly way. The Bible teaches me of God’s love and as I read about His love I find myself “seeing” the gifts of love God gives. Included in this wonderful love I see a tiny baby born to a teenage mother, poor parents growing up and learning to be a carpenter. I see a grown Jesus teaching us about Father God’s love for each of us even the lowest among us. I can’t stop at that though I see the horror of Jesus’ death on the cross, before He got to the cross with all the abuse that was hurled on Him. In that I see how ugly sin is to God, how much God loves us that whoever believes in His Son shall have everlasting life.” The resurrection is the hope I have so the horror is awful but Jesus loved us enough to pay for our sins. I’d like to encourage each one of you this Christmas season to look at the gift of Jesus from His birth to His death and most importantly His resurrection. I pray if you haven’t accepted His gift that you do and not worry if you don’t feel worthy because we all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Jesus reached out to the lowest and gave them hope so everyone and I mean everyone is wanted in God’s kingdom. You must accept the gift though and allow God to work His wonders in your own life. May God bless you and keep you make His face shine on you. Love Janet

December 13 2014

December 13 2014 Greetings My Friend I compromised my lungs last night by entering into a home of smokers. They were sweet trying to open the door and smoke at the door but the stale smoke leftover smoke from years of smoking was still in the air and I started coughing and needed my emergency inhaler. I won’t do that again anytime soon. I can talk from our car or outside if the weather permits. Today I am struggling with congestion so I learn and attempt to move past this set back. So far I am able to maintain a fairly normal for me activity level and I will keep trying to work at the best of my ability. As I was talking with these friends I understood my role in God’s kingdom a bit more. I seem to be able to share my life’s journey the up’s down’s in’s and out’s of it all. I now share that Jesus is the only way I can move forward in my life and He is the hope I have. With His love I am moving out of many kinds of issues and for the first time in my life I am content in my personhood. Lately I seem to be meeting people of various ages that are struggling with some sort of disability and since I too have been struggling with my new to me disabilities I am sharing my journey. I share how I am striving with God’s guidance to live as full of a life as I can. I share some of my setbacks too. My help site groups are also helping me and I am learning from them. I don’t feel so alone in my struggles and I feel a connection to others who understand. This support keeps me moving forward and when I am able to reach back and help others that makes me feel like I am useful in God’s work also. I also marvel that Grandma C and my mother in laws older years of total loneliness does not have to be what my older years are. In the back of my mind I felt that was what old age was, that used up not wanted, needed feeling. I tried hard to make them feel wanted, loved etc. but somehow I was not able to. Today I understand that some of my usefulness comes from reaching out to others. I am attempting to hear God’s direction and in that I find a fullness to life. Life is definitely different today as an older woman. I have had to learn to readjust my thinking, my way of working to fit what my mind and body can handle. This has been a journey of several years but today I am able to fill my days with a sense of purpose and direction. I woke up at my regular time this morning. I started off my regular morning waking up on Facebook, Bible study and even prayed. In the midst of my morning waking up I fell back asleep for a few hours. I reviewed my day yesterday and I understand the tiredness and as the morning turned into afternoon I understood the congestion I am feeling. I may go down some more or I may be able to take enough vitamin c etc. to keep from going into full blown bronchitis, time will tell. The good news to me is I understand what is happening and I will roll with what is going on and then move forward accordingly. I am not getting upset because I may get sick. I have had enough experience to know the process and that I will come back more fully. I also believe that learning to exercise, eat well, move at my own pace etc. has helped me so I am able to come back easier. God has encouraged me to keep trying when it was easier to just sit. He pointed me to supplements that have given me a measure of my energy back and has also opened up the opportunities for medication to help me maintain. God is my sustainer and in that I am at peace with this phase of my life. May God bless you and keep you make His face shine on you. Love Janet

December 11 2014

December 11 2014 Greetings My Friend I was listening to a podcast yesterday that opened my heart to Advent in a way I had never thought of Advent. The podcast is Becoming More Christlike by Derrick Hutchinson ministries. The hosts were discussing the fact that this year they could not seem to get into Advent. The more they talked I started to see I have been on a journey for many years which includes both Advent and Lent. I have never done any studies for either season but I have tried to focus on the gift of Christ in my life. Generally by the time Christmas or Easter gets here I have a moment in church where my heart opens up and receives Jesus once more, many times in a deeper way. My earlier years of both of these seasons had revolved around family which I felt was about God. It can be but for me it was more about the “looks” of a family than the actual building a spiritual foundation for the family or myself. Since dysfunction ruled in my life I understood the pretense of a happy family I did not understand how to make it happen. At this stage I understand there is a difference in believing there is a God and believing God’s Word and ways. After 24 years of marriage and lots and lots of family get togethers on both sides of our families I was divorced. This meant that our children celebrated not only with their Dad’s family, my family and their spouses families. My son and his wife also celebrated with her divorced families which became an overwhelming task. There were many years that we celebrated alone as a couple for various reasons and those years were very hard. My grief started early in the season and lasted well past the holiday. Slowly though I found that grief came but at some point I felt a closeness to God. I kept hearing God say to me “Am I enough?” I felt He was and I also felt a piece of me was missing at the same time. It has taken years for me to get to the point of “God is enough, period.” This year I had my early grief as I understood we would more than likely not be with our family. Then I heard this message and I realized I am okay. We may have a few people over or we may not and that is okay either way. For me to come to this place of contentment early on is amazing. Junior and I are going to celebrate Christ’s birthday. I am going to take this most precious gift and look at it all the way to the cross. For me that is the true “joy”. That precious baby brought us a hope. He grew up and brought more hope. As Jesus reached out to the lost the lonely and the hurting I have found that means God wants all of us to accept this gift, not just the “pretty” Christians but even those lost, lonely and hurting people that are not so pretty. Today I want to give the hope I have to anyone willing to accept Jesus’ love. Years ago I remember a lady who was interested in knowing Jesus. She was obese, smelled bad and I was embarrassed to be seen with her much less bring her to church. It hurts to think I felt this way but today I want to bring hope to people like her instead of rejecting her due to her strangeness. God loves me and my strange ways so now I want to accept everyone in the manner God has accepted me. I have also learned that giving to others does not mean giving just to give. Sometimes giving is saying “no” I will not let you stay where you are. God did not leave me where I was even though He took me as I was. The more He loved me the more I grew out of dysfunction and into reaching out to others. God gives me what I need more than what I want and I attempt to love others in the same way. May God bless you and keep you make His face shine on you. Love Janet

December 9 2014

December 9 2014 Greetings My Friend Anger, that burning red anger is hard to let go of. Anger with people who have hurt me beyond reason is hard to forgive. I had good reasons to be angry to not want to hurt like this anymore. The hardest lesson has been learning to pray for the anger I have had and to forgive myself along with those I feel have hurt me deeply. One of the things I have learned in my faith journey that it is hard to stay mad at someone you are praying for and I find this to be so true. I try hard to not complain when I am struggling with a person. I have found admitting that I do struggle with loving people and what loving them looks like so I have learned to to admit my disdain for a person to God and then ask Him to help me to love these people. For some reason I find myself walking away from anger and a need to hold onto an unforgiving attitude. Sometimes I can even see the other person’s pain. God is also teaching me that forgiving doesn’t mean I say the word and that is the end of the matter. He teaches me that forgiving comes in deep layers and can be a huge process to heal from the inside to the outside. In this I am forgiving of my attitude. I learn that forgiving does not mean I allow the person to keep on hurting me. These days if someone wants to engage in harsh words I am able to walk away. I don’t have to buy into a person’s anger. I have even hung up on people who refuse to speak to me in a respectful way. I am learning I don’t have to use unrespectful words when I am talking to others about someone I am struggling with. I can say something to the effect that I disagree and leave it at that. I have not gotten to this point of having a forgiving nature on my own. My prayers have been the healing that I needed the most. When I do a review of what hell is from reading the Bible I find that I don’t want even my worst enemy to end up in hell. If I can learn to forgive, to let go and let God and possibly open a door to a faith journey for my enemy I am grateful all the way to the heart level. I have someone who abused me fairly severely. I know when I do see this person I find it hard to not enter back into all the nasty words with them. These days I keep my distance by not showing up anywhere near this person. In my heart though I have no animosity anymore, I do know I have a weakness and I don’t want to go back to those days anymore. The other thing I am learning in this very long hard process is I knew what I knew and it has been a journey learning how to retrain myself. Counseling started me on the process but I believe prayer has been the piece that has allowed me to let it go all the way. Sometimes I even hear God tell me to stay away. I believe He knows my weak area so He warns me. I do grieve that I did not know all of these techniques years ago. In the end though I am proud that I have learned no matter how late in life so I forgive myself for those years that I did not know any difference. As the Christmas season draws closer many people find the stress to be out of control hard. I believe that tiny baby we are celebrating grew up and taught us of the hope we have in a Savior. May God bless you and keep you make His face shine on you. Love Janet

December 6 2014

December 6 2014 Greetings My Friend To me “showing” the fruits of my labor has been so important most of my life. I felt when people “saw” then they’d know I had value and worth. I wanted that so much and did not feel I had any. As we settled into our new to us home I wanted it to be renovated and then begin to show it off so others could see Junior’s talents, our hard work etc. I wanted to entertain friends and family in a beautiful home. Junior and I are not the kind of couple that people want to hang out with. Prior to Junior it was a given for me to have family over, have friends from time to time etc. This marriage for some reason though Junior and I find ourselves quite comfortable hanging out alone a lot. The long length of time it is taking to finish our home grows more comfortable with me these days also. Part of the slowness has helped me get back on my feet again. When I first retired I wanted to continue to keep house like I did when I worked. I wanted to do housework in blocks of time and then head out the door to whatever. Health issues has taught me to do housework in spurts and it is working out rather nicely. I am learning to be comfortable with a whole lot less running and socializing these days. I need it too. In learning to slow way down and not having our home renovated in little or no time we’ve had a chance to learn the flow of life for us and we are making sounder decisions in the renovation of our home. At first we were going to hire a master bedroom to be added to our home giving us more square footage. That did not go as planned and I am ever grateful we didn’t have it done. Today we see how we want to expand the spare bedroom, add a master bathroom to the expansion which works even better than the original plan. The footprint of the kitchen has changed in the process also. With time to live in the home we see a better use of our space. Slowing down has been hard but in the end it is worth the four years we’ve put into this process with another year or two to go yet. Taking time to be alone as a couple has drawn us closer together. We are a team working for a common goal and it works out so nice. We could have had everything done right away and then spent more years changing. In the quiet we learn to seek God to listen to God and to grow content in God. There will be a day the major work will be done. We all know that owning a home is an ongoing process to keep it in shape so down the road Junior will always have some sort of work to do, it just won’t be as intense as it is now. This process has been a preparation time for us. A time to settle into retirement and to find our niche in our older years. Our days of short term mission trips are fairly much over with. Our days of leading workshops for remarrieds are over. Our work these days seems to be reaching into our community and coming alongside of others in need. My writing is a ministry too. Both of these types of ministry needs a lot of quiet time so we can be available as needed. In the taking time to reflect, we learn to turn our direction towards God who then points us to where He wants us to be. May God bless you and keep you make His face shine on you. Love Janet

December 4 2014

December 4 2014 Greetings My Friend I took the vacuum bucket out to the porch to empty it. Junior is working on the roof to the wheelchair ramp. I hear his hammering and my heart feels warm listening to him do his work. I walk down the porch and feel the extension on the width even more so. I was happy enough with the smaller width but now I am thankful that I have learned to be quiet and let Junior do Junior. Our home renovation has gone way differently than I would have liked and in the process I have learned to sit back, watch and be in awe of what is taking shape. My kitchen is functional but finished it is not. I don’t have nice counter tops even laminate ones. I have glass cutting boards lined up all over the place to work on. These days I do have a stove top and so I manage to keep us fed fairly well. I marvel at God teaching me to not voice each thought I have to Junior. I marvel that in this very long process that God has taught me “my way” isn’t the only way. Patience, I would have thought I was fairly patient until I met learning what being patient really means. In the quiet I have learned to build up my man, to let him take the lead on how to do the work he wants to do for me without irritating him into stopping all together. Little by little as the house has come together my health has gotten better and I am once more learning to be the clean woman of my younger days. I now do work in spurts and somedays those spurts can last up to a half hour or 45 minutes straight before I sit and rest. Other days I start all over again and work 5 sit 5 until I build up my stamina once more. In my heart I believe that we are in our forever home. No more moving unless to assisted living which I hope won’t have to be. In this house we are setting up our life routines. Our friend B who comes to stay from time to time laughs at our routines. She finds it cute really. Junior’s work starts rather early most days. He is up and doing an hour or more before my feet hit the floor. He does breakfast on his own. I do breakfast on my own and our day begins to intersect. We have lunch together most days. When the mail comes Junior looks through the mail and falls asleep for an hour or so. We sit in our recliners side by side chatting during his and my breaks. When break is over we both go back into our own work. We have tried hard to stay involved with each other’s day while giving each other time to be alone on our own. Our work has paid off rather nicely. I feel like Junior’s helpmate. I don’t have to know how to use man tools and he is happy with it. I do get to attempt to make our home comfortable for him to come in for breaks and at the end of the day. He beams with the house in order, not spotless but in order. When my children were very small I stayed home for a few years. At that point in time when I told people that I was a stay at home Mom, people seemed to think I was not very bright. It was popular to work, care for our home and family. Due to financial need I did go back to work. Today I see that there is a price for doing and being all things to everyone all the time. When I started into counseling I kept learning that in order to take care of others I had to first take care of me. I needed to rest, to have some interests of my own etc. I felt selfish but the more I learned to take those time outs the more I understood the need for self care. God teaches us to take time outs too. He created the world in 6 days and rested on the 7th. I also see Jesus went into the garden alone too. He took time to be quiet with God and then He would enter back into day to day ministry. For the longest time I thought that once I accepted Jesus as my Savior that I had to run and God would give me energy to run like a wild woman. Today though I see God slowing me down a lot. For me it has been health challenges. In these challenges I have had to learn there are many different facets to ministry. Sometimes ministry is to my family, to sit and learn, grow and then go and do. God does not require me to be “on” all the time. If I were then when would I spend quiet time with God learning His wants and desires for my life? May God bless you and keep you make His face shine on you. Love Janet

December 2 2014

December 2 2014 Greetings My Friend, It feels so good. I take a deep breath and exhale slowly. It no longer feels like my ribs are breaking and the crud is finally gone. I begin my day in the usual way and I feel those wonderful routines tugging on my heart strings and I have a song in my heart. I did it I went through another nasty bout with bronchitis and now I move along life’s path. Next I glance at the calendar and I find it is December. The Advent season is here, in a few weeks we will celebrate our Lord Jesus’ birth. There is such hopeful anticipation in waiting for Jesus to enter our world. In general a change seems to take place in everyday life. There is hope in the air. I don’t follow the Advent season proper. I do tend to stop and reflect on all the love that is given to this world in a tiny baby, the hope. For me though I don’t end there as I reflect in awe and wonder of Jesus leaving heaven coming into our world I for some reason tend to reflect on His whole life and His purpose for coming. As I do this reflection I absorb more of the love God the Father has for us. God created us to be in a relationship with Him. He gave us choice to choose Him which is awesome so Adam’s sin in the garden doesn’t seem so strange to me anymore. God gives us the same choice He gave Adam and we have the right to choose God and His ways or go our way. For the longest time I felt God’s ways were way too hard and no one could ever live up to God’s standards. I went off into life doing it by the seat of my pants and I messed my life up fairly badly. When I asked Jesus to be my Savior I found myself “hearing” the Holy Spirit’s guiding words, and felt His guiding touch on my life. At that point I started to see that we/I will never fully be perfect on our own. The Holy Spirit will keep working and refining us bit by bit and we change and I finally get it. As I learn I soon see God’s patience and deep love for me. I truly do matter to someone. God tells me all the time I am not my mother’s mistake, my sibling’s bratty older sister and the list goes on and on. I matter and the more I feel like I matter I grow into my own skin and like “me” just the way I am and the way God is creating me to be. The circle of Christmas, Jesus’ life, His death and His resurrection seems to be the underlying theme in my life anymore. It seems to be my first thought as I wake up each morning and the thought I come back to throughout the day and the last thought I have as I go to sleep at night. I never thought that I could ever fully train my heart to this depth of submission. I am learning to do this almost automatically anymore. Sometimes I fall off track only to find my thoughts once more going back to the Bible, to prayer and seeing how God has always been there, always will be. Giving baby Jesus gifts was a miracle so Joseph and Mary could flee the country when Herod wanted to destroy this gift to all people. Gift giving takes on a new meaning these days and I find that “Black Friday” sales are meaningless and my heart turns to “Black Friday” after Jesus died and the hope of His resurrection. May God bless you and keep you make His face shine on you. Love Janet