January 15 2015

January 15 2015 Greetings My Friend Phrases I am mulling over: “And Abram believed and it was counted righteous” I hear a couple of thoughts to this. First all you have to do is believe, God is God and Jesus is His Son. I stop and think, “I believe all the way down in the bottom of my heart.” Believe that is it, nothing more but I find my belief grows stronger when I read the Bible, pray, worship and live my life as if God is God. The next phrase is one I wrote in my journal after reading the Bible. The question I ask is “How can I serve others today?” I wrote “Live what I believe and believe what I live.” Along with this I also “hear” ‘share the Gospel and sometimes use words.’ My lesson is to live what I learn from God. Paul wrote “Be imitators of Christ”. This teaches me that as I learn I must put into practice the things I am learning in my faith walk. It is in this way that “I am a new creation in Christ.” The more I learn and grow in my faith journey the more I change and grow to be like Jesus. I will never be as perfect as He is but I do change from a self centered person into a God centered person. The more God centered I get the more caring, loving and “whole” I am. I am not the dysfunctional loving person I once was. For me I am an enabler and I tend to think my enabling ways are healthy. They are not, in fact my enabling ways doesn’t help me or the one I am enabling but keeps us both stuck in the muck and mire. The only way I have been able to even begin to break my enabling traits is “believe God.” Day by day as I pray, read the Bible, associate with other believers. As I grow in God’s love and learn then I find myself being encouraged to “go forth and make disciples of all nations.” My old idea of evangelizing was beating people up with the Word. Today I understand that evangelizing is learning to be in relationship, to live what I learn and to believe in the changes God is making in me. When Junior and I are out in public people are watching us. I don’t always realize how we affect people but we do. Sometimes we are silly and enjoying each other as others watch us. Sometimes Junior is talking to me as an equal and others see us. Once in a while I am bragging on Junior and I am heard. These small ways are spreading what we live and believe in a quiet manner. I don’t always have to be in public to live what I believe also. As Junior renovates he is working for me and on to the Lord. As I clean, cook for Junior I am working as on to the Lord. Sometimes Junior comes in and tells me about a struggle he is having with one of his projects and I listen, give a back and forth which allows him to think out his project. For me as I have been learning to live with disabilities I find myself talking out ideas that I think will help me. Junior offers his input and this helps me to be proactive with my health issues. These little things are ways we believe and live what we believe. Our belief is both internal and external and in the quiet of our lives we find that we are sharing the Gospel. May God bless you and keep you make His face shine on you. Love Janet

January 13 2015

January 13 2015 Greetings My Friend Part of the kitchen renovation will include tearing the wall down between the kitchen and the enclosed porch so we need to move and empty the things that are along that wall. We have a bookcase we are using for medicines and supplements that needs to be moved. While at the store yesterday I bought some more baskets to organize the bookcase and instead of using the bookcase I have found a closet that will fit these things. My goal is to organize the baskets of meds within the closet. This is exciting to me so I am sure this will be done in short order. Junior has the front porch railings up and is working on the extension to the back deck right now. I know that the kitchen is months away from being worked on further. I long for it to be done but I also know that Junior is working out the rest of the interior design in his mind as he works outside on the deck. I also know that when he gets to the kitchen in earnest he will do an awesome job. Since the kitchen is in some order the waiting isn’t as hard as it has been in the recent past. I am finding myself wanting to do other things like painting the hallway or the spare bedroom and it is hard for me to reach a point of starting these projects. I understand Junior’s pace so much more so these days. Getting our home ready for the holidays was trying and I’ve spent time coming back to my energy level again. This means painting may not happen for some time. It is what it is. In due time things will get done. Learning to be content in this has been a journey and now that I have arrived I find peace and patience like I have never known before. This peace and contentment also applies to life in general. I was who I was and I am now who I am now and that too is okay. I marvel at the transformation my life has taken on. God has been the transformation of healing so many areas of my life. Before this faith journey I made lots and lots of attempts at changing and even made a few small changes but with God I see a huge transformation. I am no longer afraid of my shadow. I have no problem talking to strangers these days, even men. I have been so afraid of men for so long and now I can talk to another man without fear that he is going to harm me. For the past few weeks I get up to do my morning on the computer and as I go to prayer I fall asleep. When I wake up I finish praying and then begin my housework routines. This too isn’t cause for me to beat myself up anymore. I wake up and begin my day. At the end of the day I have walked, worked and wrote. I have that fulfilled feeling and it is good. For some reason I have been given the “job” of learning why I am the way I am. The more I learn why the more I find an understanding and an acceptance of my life. My cousin will often explore our families dysfunction with me and in that I learn why I allowed things that I should not of allowed in my life. ML has been a long time friend and has let me do the exploring as well. With these two people letting me bring up the past more so I have learned and at this point my past is my past, I can close the door. If someone opens that door I don’t worry about a flood of emotions haunting me because I have dealt with them. God has taught me to do this work and I am so grateful. I feel that I am entering into this New Year ready to move forward wherever God leads me. May God bless you and keep you make His face shine on you. Love Janet

January 10 2015

January 10 2015 Greetings My Friend It seems to take a while to fully enter into the New Year sometimes. I wrote the year as 2014...so goes life. I caught my mistake and corrected it so I am once more into this year. Life’s lessons seem to be learned by going backwards relearning, regrouping and then moving forward. The older I get the more comfortable I am with the walk backwards from time to time. I have quit berating myself because I seem to need to go back and start over. The years are teaching me that this backward movement helps to imprint the lesson more so in my mind. I learned this lesson with exercising. I found myself building up time, stamina and muscle tone only to get bronchitis and have to start over again. As I had bronchitis one more time though I saw that I bounced back a little quicker and I am noticing that bronchitis is coming to visit me less often. These days when I have to start over I am grateful because I see that my effort is paying off. I learned the same lesson with my emotional health too. This one has taken me decades but I believe that I have worked out all the pain of life I have dealt with. I will have moments of remembering but these days I also know that I can move out of those moments quicker and I don’t stay as long. God and counseling has given me the tools to work through old hurts. I don’t shove them in a corner only to find them haunting me again. I have dealt with them one by one with God’s help so they no longer rule over me. I keep learning the lesson that dysfunction took years to build up in my life and it will take years to build a healthy life to override the dysfunction. The same lesson can be applied to my disabilities. My goal these days is to do what I can to be proactive and accept the things that cannot be what once was. I am also learning that there will be times I will lose an ability I just had and I am now okay with that. I still grieve the loss of my child’s interaction in my life. Today though I grieve for a moment and then move on. When I look back I know I did the best I knew how to do even if it wasn’t the greatest and that is all I could do. I sense God has understood me and forgiven me my past so I move forward in His love and grace. If the door opens again then the hurt won’t be in the way to building a new relationship again. I see that “old age” is teaching me to be content, accept who I have been and to keep striving to be a better “me” than I was yesterday. It is here that I am able to learn the valuable lesson “let go, let God.” My trying to help God to help me is less these days and I am able to leave my struggle at the foot of the cross more readily. People who knew me back when I was a wallflower will still respond to me as a woman with no backbone, no intelligence etc. They don’t want to see that I have changed and I can’t make them. God is teaching me to accept this and to revel in the “now” with the people who see me as a survivor. They see my strength and growth and I don’t need to prove anything to them. I can’t change those who want to pigeonhole me into the past so leave it there. The lesson I learn is to live in the “now”. God has seen my growth and He is enough for me today. May God bless you and keep you make His face shine on you. Love Janet

January 8 2015

January 8 2015 Greetings My Friend My daily trips around Facebook give me hope and confidence to proceed through life. I send off a lot of funny to me anyway pictures. I find myself internalizing many of the Scripture passages I see and pass on. Those remind me again of the faith journey I started years ago and help me to stay on this journey. Somedays I feel so low and then I read “I will never leave you or forsake you, I know the plans I have for you, to prosper you not harm you” and I find myself perking up again. Christmas passages brought me the familiar telling of Jesus’ birth and for some reason I found comfort in the familiar. Other times I read about Jesus’ resurrection and at that point I am giddy with hopeful anticipation of a better day. Many times I read the help sights about Chiari Malformation and find I am not alone. I understand so many things that I have dealt with in my life that now make sense. Right now my heart has been in deep prayer for many of those that are hurting way more than I hurt. Unfortunately surgery for the CM patient only means that the symptoms are halted for a while not permanently so they face multiple surgeries. CM also blends in with many other problems so there are the struggles to face those defects as well. Right now I am in a quiet spell with my difficulties. I have balance issues and dizzy spells. I have learned to eat protein and I am finding my straining headaches come less often. Essential oils and supplements are helping me sleep, breathe and stay calm. Eating healthy is helping me with my weight and exercise helps me bounce back from illness better. My energy level is so much better and chronic fatigue is managed. Today I truly know to work when I can and sit when I can’t. I know that if I do this I will come back with energy again. Christian friends also help me a lot. I feel another support network with my Christian sisters and brothers as they encourage, lift up prayer concerns and such. I have learned to pray throughout the day by lifting up the concerns I find out on Facebook. One of my Chiari friends has had major surgery and has struggled to come back. I have been asking God to intervene for her. Other friends have lost a loved one so I can pray for them. The opportunity to pray for people gives me a sense of purpose. Somewhere along the line I heard that it is easy to pray for those you know and care for but learning to pray for people you don’t know takes my faith deeper. Along the way someone will let me know they are praying for me and I am bewildered that someone else cares for me enough to lift me up in prayer. For me I have felt like I was useless and unwanted more than loved and cared about. These prayers seem to give me a sense of “life”. Junior is the start of my learning that my life has worth. I believe God put us in each others path to speak worth in to each other. He too felt unwanted more than wanted. Junior has always respected me, listened to me and the more he treated me with value and purpose the more I felt that I was truly a child of God’s. I’ve also been able to do the same for Junior and to be honest I have only been able to do this for Junior because I am constantly seeking God’s input as to how I need to fill Junior’s needs. I am fairly certain Junior is seeking God’s guidance in relating to me as well. I have learned that my Christian family is more than the people I attend church with and I see “the body of Christ” with a new set of eyes. May God bless you and keep you make His face shine on you. Love Janet

January 6 2015

January 6 2015 Greetings My Friend Since this is the 6th of January already I find myself mulling what this year will bring me. For me when I retired and my health went south, we moved 2 times in 2 years I have been building back up to the point I am able to move through life again. I can’t move like I once did but I am moving and doing and my days feel full and good. Since reaching this new state of being able to move about again I start to ponder where my life journey and my faith journey will take me now. I ask myself what are the goals that I have and am I listening to God’s direction? When I follow God’s lead I know that I will enjoy the journey much more than trying to do life on my own steam. My focus for so long has been “get back to some sort of doing”. I have reached that level and now I think of more goals to achieve. I want to be still and reach out to people in my community. I have enjoyed some new friendships from doing so. I love seeing someone who was lost find their footing and go on to having a productive life. I pray this is still part of the work God wants me to do. If it is not I know that whatever He wants me to do I will find satisfaction in it. I learned to get onto instagram last year and used it mainly to post pictures to Facebook. I am starting to see that this is another outlet to meet people, to share pictures with others and even to share my faith. I’d also like to delve further into Twitter. I see some more growing and learning as part of my journey in life. As I get excited about new endeavors I look back and find myself wanting to continue to grow in my relationship to Junior. I still want to be the wife he needs not what I deem he needs. My prayer for my marriage will be a huge part of my journey this year. I also want my relationship with God to continue to grow deeper so I want to continue reading my Bible, digging deeper into the questions that my mind comes up with and of course attempting to have many conversations with God. By doing this I believe I will have “ears that hear and eyes that see” God’s plans for me. Deep down I also pray this is the year that my children and I can overcome the divide that divorce has brought to our lives. I pray my daughter will let me back into her life and my son and I will be able to grow our relationship deeper as well. I pray I get to know my grandchildren more so as well. In God’s timing though, not mine. The renovations are still going on in our home so I pray that I will start to see our home finished looking and being fully lived in. I pray this year Junior can get the yard going with his gardening and landscaping. I believe we will be further along for sure, seeing the end in sight is another thing. We will see where this year’s work will take Junior and I learn how to keep our whole home clean and running efficiently. I look forward to some more decorating and that is a job I love to do. I am excited to see where this year will take me. May God bless you and keep you make His face shine on you. Love Janet

January 3 2015

January 3 2015 Greetings My Friend The push of the holidays are now over with. I find myself sitting a bit more even taking an extra nap here and there. The day in and day out routines await me and I am happy to embrace them again. The visits were awesome and getting our home in shape was wonderful. Our dogs surprised us and were well behaved with all the people we had over. We find them overall well mannered in general but with company they acted like kids on their best behavior. At one point we wondered if we needed to make them stay outside during our visit. I couldn’t seem to move past an issue I’ve been struggling with Junior on. I prayed asking God to help me accept this quirk in his personality but I found myself upset. I talked a bit too much once more and I realized that he was hitting a spot in me that I felt disrespected. Once I understood this I knew I needed to have a heart to heart talk with Junior. God had softened my heart to the point I did not need to flare in anger over this grievance but I did need to let Junior know how I felt. I was able to tell Junior with loving words what was bothering me and I believe he will respect me. God has shown me that I can have a need and I can voice that need without anger and expect the respect of having my need met. Sometimes God teaches me to let Junior do his own thing and sometimes I sense God teaching me that it is okay to insist on having something I need to be met and taken seriously. I think about “truth in love” again. For me most of my needs in life were met with asking, not being heard and then having my anger flare and maybe then my need might be heard. I am thankful that the anger flaring part of getting my needs met is fairly much gone. Junior has treated me with such respect through the years that today I understand “truth in love” moments more clearly. I also am learning to meet those deep needs Junior has. I believe in my heart that Junior has set the tone for us to have this give and take in our marriage. Junior kept telling me that to be a leader he had to be a servant. At first this seemed strange but the more I read my Bible the more I see Jesus lead in this way. I understand now that we tend to be willing to do things when we are heard, accepted and loved. In all of this I find myself accepting more readily and letting go of fighting to get things my way. I learn new ways of doing things and at times I see Junior changing the way he does things more to the way I do them. This blends us so much that the team in us becomes our normal. “The two shall become one” rings true in my heart. Slowly I see how a man and a woman can blend to be one and I see that as a Christian I become part of the body of Christ. May God bless you and keep you make His face shine on you. Love Janet

January 1 2015

January 1 2015 Greetings My Friend For me the 1st of the year calls up lots of memories. Mom and Dad married on January 1st, Grandma C’s birthday was January 3 and my son M was born on January 5th. All of these were right behind Christmas. As the years have gone on my mourning is minimal a flash and it is gone. I rarely can go by these days without a thought. Today I understand and I am able to allow emotions to come and I also know they will subside soon enough. I still don’t grieve the passing of my parents much. I did love them somewhere deep within me but I don’t miss them too much. For me all the arguing is gone and it is a relief. As the years have gone on I learned that we were never going to settle those questions and my wanting life settled didn’t mean they were ready. As I move past these memories I find myself looking forward into the New Year and pondering where the road of life will take me this year. The past year has shown me a “settling” of life and entering fully into my retirement years. I understand that I won’t be able to do what I once did and I have found a way to do life with limitations. I find a fullness to my retirement. At the back of my mind I thought I’d be Grandma C and feel so lonely and unwanted. This past year God has shown me how much life I have still to live, to give and even to share the Gospel. Junior and I have reached out to our community once more to a couple in crisis. With the reaching out I am reminded that when Jesus walked this earth He did not save each and every person. I have a lot to give but I can’t give all I have which is a struggle I have. In my mind if I am not giving my “all” then I haven’t even tried. As I learn God’s love for me I find that God will push me. He loves me enough to encourage me to reach beyond those old boundaries and to try new things. When I do step out in faith and reach out further I find a sense of accomplishment. With this thinking in mind I try hard to not be an “all in all” to someone, I can’t be if I wanted to be. My sense at the start of this year I will continue writing, cleaning, cooking and reaching out to those in my community. For me I am also learning to give as God does realizing He does not always give us everything we want but He will give us what we need. I sense I am also still learning the difference between wants and needs. As I learn these differences I find I will react to others in much the same way. The more I learn the “needs” outweigh the wants I find that I want a whole lot less in life. I want to love with all my heart. I learn to love with my heart from God as I learn to trust and obey I also learn to love as I am loved. I keep finding that I am much happier with a Junior hug, a puppy snuggle than I am with a fancy car, a designer purse etc. Father help me to “hear” Your voice and to do Your will. In Jesus name. May God bless you and keep you, make His face to shine on you. Love Janet