October 31 2015

October 31 2015 Greetings My Friend I am getting ready to move into my day. One of the first thoughts I have is what can I make for lunch and soup comes to mind. While thinking about what kind of homemade soup I will make I find myself reflecting on one of my favorite stories “Stone Soup.” One day a poor man decides to throw some stones into a pan of water and places it on the fire. Soon people stop by and see the pan on the fire, they ask “What are you making?” He replies “stone soup.” Afterward they go off and come back with potatoes, vegetables, meat and spices to add to the stones and water. In the end soup is made for all to eat. More often than not this story runs through my mind each time I make soup. I think things like “a little feeds many, someone grew the vegetables, another grew the herbs and still another tended the cattle. I see how God brings others into our lives some to provide food for the stomach. I also see how special people appeared in my life when I was in need. Other times I see where the food I had also provided for others. I also see that the pot of soup is soon gone and once more I am thinking of making another pot of soup. Feeding our bodies is a daily requirement to be healthy and slowly I see that God is also the bread of life. For the longest time I associated “bread of life” with food for the body and I truly saw the need. What it took forever to grasp is that we also need to fill our “spirits”. In my younger years I felt there were many ways to find inner peace. God was always at the back of my mind but I felt we could get to Him through various ways. I was big on the Eastern religions and honestly I would sit in church thinking cleansing type thoughts. I wandered for an hour all over in my mind and I felt I had given God my worship. Later when I did not find the peace I so desperately wanted with all these “positive” ideas I found myself at rock bottom. In the pit of despair I finally began talking to God with my heart and my pain and my fear. For the first time I started “hearing” God. I was challenged to read my Bible and I was afraid that it was too deep for me. I started reading it anyway. I learned to pray “Open my eyes and heart to You and grow me to look like Jesus.” Slowly as I read day in and day out passages seemed to jump out at me. reading the Bible all the way through one year I saw God’s love for us even in the OT. I saw God teaching tiny step by tiny step. I saw His people time and again fall off the wagon so to speak and after a period of correction God was teaching, loving and leading. I have a deep love for King David. He loved God so much and God kept growing David’s faith in His provision. Then one day King David sinned big time. He saw a woman bathing on a rooftop, called for her, slept with her and sent her off. She informed him that she was pregnant. Her husband was in David’s service and eventually had her husband killed. He then took this woman as his wife. God sent Nathan the prophet to David to let David know God knew what he did. I see David repenting deeply. He knew what he did was wrong, he admitted it from his heart. David paid a great price for his sin, he lost the child. Later God gave Bathsheba another baby and one day he was to take his father’s place. I learn that we all will fall and if we are sincere in our repenting God is faithful and just and will forgive us. We can’t keep doing what we once did and we can be forgiven through Jesus. I think the original stone soup was “God loving us so much that He sent his only son that whoever believes in Him shall not die but have everlasting life.” I hear again “Go forth baptizing all nations in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost.” May God bless you and you make His face shine on you. Love Jane

October 29 2015

October 29 2015 Greetings My Friend Sometimes I struggle to get to sleep. One of the things I do that helps more often than not is to start thanking God one by one for small things like toothpaste and go from there like clothes to wear for me I marvel I have clothes for the cold and the warmer months. I also have shoes to wear for each season. Next I realize that I have food to eat throughout the day. Even in lean times there has been food available to me. As I think of a full belly I realize that I have always had a home to live in, heat in the winter, air conditioning in the summer. The more I think about a place to live in I find myself marveling at the structure of the house and the protection I have from the elements, wild animals, a safe place to go to when the world seems crazy to me. The more I see my home as a haven I realize I have had the income I needed to support the home, utilities to run the home, a bed to sleep in and furniture to sit on. Many times I am soon sound asleep. Even in my sleep I find that I am thankful. I have done this thankful journey when I wake up with nightmares. For a good portion of my life I would wake up reliving some sort of abuse done to me. Fear gripped me and it was hard to shake it off. After my divorce as I was learning to pray I stumbled across the thankful prayer journey. I must say my nightmares today are far and few between. My thankful journeys point to all the times God has been there for me. I have my basic needs met along with those fearful moments where He has come alongside of me. The more I remember through being thankful the more I realize God will be with me with the next struggle I encounter. With the current struggle of declining physical abilities I found myself anxious. People were pointing out my anxiousness even though I did not realize it. My doctor heard my anxious words and prescribed a stronger medication for anxiety. Now a few weeks later the anxiousness is fairly much gone and in its place is hope. Today I bent over picked Daisy up and started walking around the room with her instead of the walker. The more my anxiety has left me the more I find myself testing the waters so to speak like walking with Daisy in my arms and no walker. Each day I find myself working at getting stronger physically again. I don’t know if I will be walker free for the most part but each time I gain a bit more control life is not so scary, I sense I have more living to do. I also hear God say “ go forth Janet.” I can still go for presenting my struggles for God’s glory. I can give the hope that I have in Jesus. As much as speaking of God’s greatness I am learning that sometimes the best lesson is the one that is seen and not spoken. I learn to keep trying even if giving up seems easier. It is not over until it is over. May God bless you and keep you make His face shine on you. Love Janet

October 27 2015

October 27 2015 Greetings My Friend With the propane heaters in place it comes to me to make a mantle over them that will look like a fireplace. Dressing up the plain heater sounds like fun to me. Right now Junior is stacking cinder blocks on the sides of the heater. Once he finds a way to make them stable he will put a piece of tin and then a piece of old wood across the blocks. The mantle will give the room a warm friendly look. With the heaters there is a fire so even that will look nice although it is a uniform line of fire unlike real wood burning. There is something about a fire that can be warm and inviting on a cold winter’s day. As summer’s heat wanes and the cool days of fall appear I find myself thinking of ways to stay warm. All summer my thought was to figure out how to cool off. With my returning energy I brought my craft supplies into the TV room. We have some old crates set upright under the TV. I used the open spaces to put my craft supplies in baskets and now I will be able to craft in the TV room. The TV room is where Junior and I spend most of our time. We don’t usually watch much TV until later in the afternoon and then on into the evening. We tend to move to this room as we want to rest or to have a chat. We haven’t had a kitchen table to use in a few years so we eat in the TV room. As Junior tears down the kitchen/enclosed porch wall opening up the kitchen there will be a wall of windows. These windows are where I want our table to face when we eat, cook and such. There is something mesmerizing about looking out the windows to the woods on our property. I hope to eat our meals at the table again. I keep finding soothing places for us within our home. Both of us have PTSD which means for us we need peaceful settings to stay calm in. Until we moved to VA I have always served meals at the table. I felt the need to come together for a meal without a lot of interruptions. It is a time to focus on the others who are sharing a meal. I am longing to go back to this custom with Junior. Our move to VA seems to fill a need that I had, a need I did not realize I needed. Both Junior and I need peaceful setting to quiet our minds from the troubles of the past. We have 9 acres of land and our nearest neighbor is about ¼ of mile from our home. I remember wondering about all the dogs and cats that found their way to us. As the years go by I sense that God has sent us a fur family to love on. They bring a fullness to our lives and in a way they are the children we will never have together. Junior is a good Dad because he disciplines them. I nurture them and life is sweet with our children. They have a way of helping us to focus on them and less on the hurts of our past. I sense God’s peace as we strive to live with memories that try to plague us. I know now that our call to VA has been a place to heal and to find the work God has for us to do. I write, Junior renovates and often times we are reaching back into our community giving a helping hand to others who are in need. May God bless you and keep you make His face shine on you. Love Janet

October 24 2015

October 24 2015 Greetings My Friend Our faith journey is a long winding journey. I keep pointing a friend back to Jesus. I hear him tell me he is talking to God. I pray constantly to God asking me to direct this young man. I want to tell him to do things a certain way, ways that work for me. The thing is my ways may not be what speaks to him. I go back to the analogy that I am a seed planter and someone else may water the Word in his life. In the end God will be the one who will make the connection. As he struggles to understand things he buried long ago and have now cropped up again in his life I need to realize that part of the process is dealing with old issues no matter how unpleasant. A divorce brought all of the pain of the past out in the open and he is struggling to let go again. God taught me to remember. I began my remember journey with a few forays into past hurts. I needed to acknowledge them to understand that I had a part in the hurt done to me as well. I recall recounting a few painful incidents to God and crying. One day I heard God tell me to pray for this person and not ask for revenge. It was so hard to be honest because I had been wronged in a grievous way. About the only way I could pray for this person was lift up his name and move on. There were times I cried as I mentioned his name. Those times I could feel God holding me tenderly. I felt like He put me on his huge lap and patted me. I sensed He was crying for my hurt too. Slowly I felt the hurt leave me. I felt God giving me a final pat and then telling me to get up and go and do. For me I needed to be heard. In the world people told me it was in my mind, that those things did not really happen along with few other things denying that my feelings were real. When I finally felt heard I slowly was able to let go of pain and enter into life again. My abuser kept finding ways to stay involved in my life which meant I often was going back to hurt. It was hard to leave the past in the past when in life I was made to be the problem over and over. After years of trying with counseling and praying God laid it on my heart to ask my doctor for medicine that would help me. I worried this to death then I took the medicine and at this point I could finally put the past back in the past. As I looked back at this whole process I saw that years had gone by where I would move forward to fall backwards again. As I walk with this young man today I need to realize that his journey is not a quick fix and it may take him years to find the healing he desperately needs. I want his hurt to go away yesterday but in reality it will take time. He tells me he is praying and I find some comfort. I realize that I will need to keep pointing him back to the one great healer, Jesus. Today as I look back on our conversation I understand that God will never go against His Word. My next step is to bring up the need to follow God through the Bible. The Holy Spirit often impresses certain passages on my heart. Those are the passages I find myself referring to as I struggle. The first part of my journey was learning to remember the times God was there and not the pain. Each time God walked me away from trouble I needed to remember those moments. Slowly I was learning that remembering God’s healing in my life and I was letting go of past hurt. God taught me to be thankful and as I thanked God for more and more I kept finding a wholeness and the bitterness of pain did not rear itself as often. I am reminded again that we enter a journey that will last a lifetime when we ask Jesus into our hearts. God is not a God of quick fixes but of ever lasting changes. May God bless you and keep you make His face shine on you. Love Janet

October 22 2015

October 22 2015 Greetings My Friend The sound of hammering and sawing drift into my ears as I sit in my chair this morning. The sounds are sweet to my ears. I am grateful for the gentleman that stopped by and asked Junior if he could use some of his handyman skills with the house. He is working on the roof to the deck that Junior could not figure out how to get the pitch just right. Next Junior wants to see if he will install a door to the deck. These are little jobs but they are ones Junior struggles with to get right so the help is appreciated. While the handyman is on the roof I hear Junior out front using his electric drill. He is drifting to the porch and back to the kitchen and I find this sweet as well. I am writing, studying the Bible and doing my morning quiet time. The rhythm of life is sweet. I find myself grateful for this little mundane moment. It has been 4 weeks now since I last saw the doctor and she put me on stronger medications. I don’t seem to nap as much and I am feeling stronger not so weak with rubber like legs. I am not as winded either. I find I can move about a bit without my walker. I still find feel off balance as I walk on my own steam so I may attempt to get around in the house without the walker but I am not sure I can move around outside of the house without it as of yet anyway. The more I come back to having a decent energy level and strength I find joy that my downward decline is not nearly as far as I was heading. I still am not sure I will be back to my old new normal but I now feel like life is full again and I can do much. While we ran for a couple of days I stopped at a hobby store to start working on another hobby I have wanted to try for some time now. I got the supplies and I hope to start doing this along with figuring out the bobbin on the sewing machine so I can work on the quilt I started awhile back. Having a couple of hobbies that I can sit and do also gives me hope. Now when I can’t be physical I can be active sitting. Creating is fun too. It seems like God allows me to decline in health and then holds my hand as I learn to live within the limitations that declining health means to me. I find overall that I am grateful because I continue to learn to trust God and to lean on Him. I find I have an inner strength that I did not know I had. Of course this inner strength is not my own but God’s loving hand walking me through the things I need to learn which in turn amazes me as I find myself overcoming or dealing with obstacles. At the end of the day I love life even if I am not what I was at one time in my life. God has opened my heart to Him and He has taught me to be content. I am enabler by nature and I keep seeing that God is teaching me to not enable others as much as “able” them. There is a difference and today I see that difference. God wants me to reach out to the poor, the lost and the lonely. He does not want me to give until I run out of steam but wants me to give in ways that make other capable of doing on their own. Sometimes it means I help for a bit and then move on allowing them to learn to lean on God. It seems I hear Him teaching me to “open the door” and then let Him do the work. My friend Michele saw me years ago right after my divorce. She watched me as I began a serious faith journey and in time she reached out to me to help her out of the abuse she was going through. We went to Celebrate Recovery together, we both found ourselves growing. God called Junior and I to move and Michele continued her CR journey. Today she has a group of healthy friends and she is not getting involved with unhealthy relationships. I opened the door and God walked with Michele after He sent me away. He also has opened new doors for me. May God bless you and keep you make His face shine on you. Love Janet

October 20 2915

October 20 1015 Greetings My Friend I marvel again this morning as I look out the window. A hummingbird stops by for a drink from the feeder. Once in awhile I see 2nd birds but that’s it. The other birds have been gone since the end of September. We are continuing to keep the water in the feeder fresh for these stragglers and I marvel each day when I see them again. Being the worry wart I can be I wonder if there is something wrong and that is why he has not left. I wonder how long they can last in the winter in our area. Now there are flowers they can get nectar from but….and that but scares me. After I stop the worrying I think that this bird is going against the norm. Junior thinks he will fly away at the right time and be okay. This bird reminds me that we too as humans have moments when we run in a different direction than the norm. Many believers in Jesus tend to find that they are not the same as the “norm” as we strive to walk down a different path. My health issues can make me feel different too. I was out with my walker yesterday and I was surprised at the helpful people that wanted to open a door or make a path way. I was touched by their generosity. It was a new awakening for me. We stopped to eat at a restaurant, the server that seated us seemed to have an attitude. For me it was easy to think that it was due to the walker I made things difficult and she did not appreciate our being there. She may have been someone who tended to be cranky in general but for me I wondered if it was because I was inconvenient. As a follower of Jesus I make the decision to walk a different path and I understand that the way I walk is my choice. It is hard at times, God usually helps me to work out the discomfort and go the way He is directing me. As a person with disabilities that is not a choice I made but one I live with. Overall we have come a long way from the days where people did not want to see the disabled in public because they were hard to “look” at. Dad comes to mind. After he learned to walk again after polio he looked strange. He often was mistaken for a drunk. Dad was using his back muscles to balance himself and propel him forward. His one leg did not always respond well. In fact when he wanted to cross his legs he would have to lift the leg to place it on top of the other. One time at a shopping center he tripped over a crack in the sidewalk and fell down. He struggled to upright himself and a crowd of people stood there staring and making comments about the drunk who could not get up. Dad wasn’t drunk, he was disabled and the others did not understand or even offer to help him get up. He managed to upright himself and go on his way. The people with an invisible illness get a lot of flack today. Many think we make up our illness, we look lazy to others. The fact is getting out of bed and functioning day to day can be a huge challenge. We may not need a walker, a wheelchair or carry an oxygen tank with us but we still need handicapped parking just the same. On days where I feel so weak I need to get back to the car quickly I may have been perceived as taking a handicapped spot I don’t appear to need. We all have our struggles that no one else sees and it helps if we don’t have to defend ourselves just because we are sick but don’t look sick. May God bless you and keep you make His face shine on you. Love Janet

October 17 2015

October 17 2015 Greetings My Friend “Be still and know that I am God.” God speaks this to my spirit again today. I am wanting to rush my morning routine so I can do some housework. We have no place to go but I am ready to finish my quiet time and begin my work. I have had my run through Facebook, even a couple of times. I have looked at my emails and wandered around Hometalk seeing various projects that look tempting and then quietly I entered into Bible study time. Afterward I felt a bit sleepy so I laid back in my chair with my neck pillow inviting me to sleep a bit. I started chattering to God about nothing in particular. In the midst of the inane chatter I remember feeling thankful so I thank God for various things like a bed to sleep in, a neck pillow to cradle my neck. Between the chatter and saying thankful I slowly focus on my needs and want again. I marvel that when my needs are met my wants seem so trivial. I find my wanting the best house, car, jewelry to wane in my day to day desires. I marvel again that each time I need to eat that food is available. Soon I find that I am waking up again. Now I am not in such a hurry to get up and start working around the house. My mind wants to work in a quiet job so I begin to write. As I write I take breaks to look out the window and notice how the leaves are turning colors. I am content in the fall weather today warm and tomorrow not as warm one day at a time the summer’s heat leaves. Daisy needs to be let out. All the other dogs use the doggy door, she insists that I let her out. By doing this through the last few years I have had to focus on her and her needs and for a moment anyway I am not dwelling on my struggles. I have started moving more in order to care for her and I am so thankful she is in my life. I needed Daisy to help me refocus my life and at the right time she came along. She is my buddy as I wander around the house at first in my arm and now on the seat to my walker. Junior walks in and Daisy gets fussy barking. She is protecting me and I love that too. She can’t see very well these days and I don’t think her sense of smell is all that great either since she never seems to recognize Junior as he wanders in and out all day. He speaks to her as he comes in and shortly she quiets down. At this point I marvel on a need I had and a need God met. The more I am thankful and the more I learn the difference between wants and needs the more I begin to see the difference. Four years ago I fell and broke my vertebrae. At that point the doctor’s discovered my birth defect Chiari Malformation. They gave me little information on the birth defect so I found a couple online support groups. I continue to understand more so what is going on with my disability. As I think through what I happening now I find myself talking to God seeking His guidance as to where I need to go for help. We have had many back and forths and slowly I am seeing that I should allow the doctor’s to rule out the things they think it may be. Right now my doctor has me taking a stronger anti anxiety medication to help with anxiety and to help with the shaking. She has prescribed a stronger inhaler to help me with the windedness. They are helping me a little and I will go back in a few weeks to see the next steps she thinks is best. At first I was all over the place trying to insist they look into CM more. Today I am comfortable with all the rule it out steps. In God’s time not mine I will learn what He wants me to do. In the meantime I will let the doctor’s poke and prod. May God bless you and keep you make His face shine on you. Love Janet