Today could have gone either way. I could have slept till 8, gotten dressed, eaten a fresh tomato sandwich for breakfast as I usually do till the store bought become tasteless in early fall in the South, made the bed, brewed a K cup of donut shoppe coffee in the keurig, doctored it up (because I am a sissy java drinker) added crushed ice (because I pretty much don’t drink anything in the coffee arena but iced coffee), and headed out to the garage to work the entire day. I could have listed maybe 15 or so items, dealt with Ebay customers and their interesting and challenging needs. I may have rifled through boxes from my last private pick at a friend’s house, kept items that were worthy to sell, then boxed and loaded the remainder in the car for my next donation drop off at a local thrift store that services domestic abuse victims and veterans. I likely would have skipped lunch in an effort to keep the work train running, then closed down shop about 6 unless I worked late, which I do at times, and head in to find out what may be quick to fix in the air fryer. I’d eat in front of the TV, I’d shower, watch more mindless TV, occasionally read a chapter or two of a book if I could force myself to concentrate long enough, then fall into bed to do it all again tomorrow…exactly the same way. Unless a family member had a need, or there was a random event I attended with the grandkids, or I had groceries to buy or other mundane errands or tasks to perform, this has been my chosen life for the last two years. I could easily have blamed it on the covid scare, or the economy and gas prices, or the death of a family member, but that would not have been true. It was my chosen life. I pulled away from everyone and everything and oddly in the process I didn’t become negative. I didn’t have that much emotional input into my own life.

I became…well…neutral.

But something has happened in me slowly over the last couple of weeks, and I can’t quite ferret out the reason or a specific trigger. I realized that neutral was even worse than being negative, and I was damaging my inner Rhonda in my neutrality. So I started to do small things, seemingly insignificant things to self care again. I noticed with much study that I had taken to doing everything FAST. I was doing everything fast even if I had nothing that had a timeline of completion. I was showering fast instead of enjoying the water and the moments in that steamy cave, just thinking. The dinners I was fixing were filling enough, but weren’t contemplated or planned, they were just another to do item on the list. I had stopped reading books for pleasure and was annoyed at myself when I was sitting and doing what I thought was “nothing”. I have always had a big, strong voice to go with my big strong personality, but I ridiculously found myself talking so loudly I was hurting my own ears. True story!

But today? Today was different. Today I slowed down.

I chose to no longer be a fair weather friend, either to myself or to others I had forced into acceptance of my relationship neutrality the last few years. Today I got up early, put on make up and comfy clothes, and went and got myself a new-ish haircut. Then I met my friend Beckie for lunch for the first time in two years. And I will look back at this day as nothing special and everything special. We chatted, we broke bread together, we laughed, but mostly we reconnected. And although I had myself on a self imposed thrifting ban till the end of the year in an effort to get rid of my backstock of inventory and build the bank account…I went to not one, but four thrift stores today. And it was glorious, unrushed, and fun.

Fair weather friends are those who are only around when you are not experiencing troubles. They want no negativity to deal with, they want nothing demanded of them, they pretty much really don’t want to be bothered, but they do want to be center of everything. They skeedaddle at the first sign of anything that requires them to put themselves second. And that’s what I had become to myself. Funny to think of it now, hermit behavior and having my nose to the grindstone made me into a fair weather friend in my own life. Stepping out today brought me out from under the fair weather umbrella and encouraged the beginning rays of my former inner sunshine, and I am thankful. I felt a very peace, real but unnamed peace, for the first time in a long time.

Hiding under the umbrella of work or obligation is not always good if it becomes a lifestyle instead of an exception. We end up trading the great for the good.

I think tomorrow, even though it is a work day for me, I will begin a bit differently. I think I will sleep in a bit. I may even have to have a HOT cup of coffee and a fudge striped chocolate cookie. I have a feeling that myself won’t argue much. Tomorrow is the beginning of becoming my own best friend again.

Growing up, I was always very Type A. I was often the leader in a group of kids. Many times I chose the game we’d play, I chose the teams, I decided when the game was over. Most often this happened by default. Others didn’t want to choose, they wanted someone to include them in their activity. I never quite understood that. I figured being ‘in charge” was a foundation of happiness and contentment. This pretty much played itself out in my dating and marriage relationships, my sibling interactions, even my adult friendships. If a group was to go out to eat, for example, I would feel obligated to step in and determine the venue and day and time of our meet up because frankly everyone was trying so hard to defer to others nothing would get decided.

In the last few months, I have spent time reflecting on my current life a bit, and discovered I don’t “go places” or “do things” with no mission or agenda. When I do leave home,  I am usually alone and have a list I need to accomplish before returning.  I have allowed myself to downsize my life past an acceptable point, and I don’t really even know how or when it happened.

Several weeks ago my adult children and their four little ones went out west for two weeks on a family vacation. During that two weeks I did see my mom for dinner a time or two, I got out and shopped in the thrift stores which is enjoyable but technically work and I was alone, and I sat at my desk and worked pretty much every single day they were gone.

That’s it, for two weeks.

Looking back on that, I am not having a pity party…I am just seeing how my life sizing has affected my personal relationships, friendships and overall emotional and mental health in many ways. I used to be a social butterfly, was always getting invited places and was busy in church activities of one sort or other. I square danced for several years and there was always that activity to interact and bond with people. At Christmas there were parties I went to, fellowships and potlucks, friends hitting me up to have a coffee and an hour chat pretty often, even though they knew the business I owned at the time kept me very busy. They knew I wanted to be included, even if life was hectic.

I sat outside about a week ago and pondered this all and came to a startling conclusion. I am not included, as I once was. I don’t go to friends’ homes for dinner, or sit around their fire pits and chat till late. I don’t attend movies, basketball games, or high school football games anymore because…well, no one asks me anymore.

I have unintentionally become a social hermit. In trying to simplify my life (a GOOD thing) and rid it of the GOOD  things in honor of keeping the GREAT things, I life sized it right down to un-include myself from other people and their lives and love. Wow, what a revelation.

So this week I made a dedicated effort to include myself in other peoples’ lives and not just family. Family is easy, they are there, no effort is really required when you want to include yourself, because you are part of the gang already. I also started life sizing UP by hesitantly throwing out a few fishing lines for coffee and chats with a couple of people I’d like to get to know better. There are only two answers someone can give, right?

As a Christian, too,  I know I have to be careful not to be too busy. I also know I have to be wary of those I let into the inner circle of my life because we have to be on the same page spiritually and otherwise. So life sizing the other direction may get a bit tricky. But I have always been a collector of “people”. I like to talk about shared experiences, but I also love to listen to others tell about their adventures, their families, laugh, get advice, and just do life with others.

The Bible says that if we are to have friends, we must show ourselves friendly. George Bailey was called the richest man in town because he was all about life sizing and inclusion. And his friends included him right back because he embraced them first. Maybe it’s time for me to become a leader in my own life story again, bring on the old Type A, plan, execute moments. …and time to super-size my tribe, one latte’ at a time.

Growing up in the South was unique. I guess maybe that’s why I never left it. I was born in Memphis, Tn, moved across the line about 5 miles away and have been here all my life. I have never lived anywhere else. Being completely transparent here, it was not always pleasant growing up southern, but all my experiences gave me texture and color in life. Looking back is always fun, and gives perspective as to my choices along the way, and why I am where I am today in my life, relationships, family dynamic and so forth. The South has been a good filter for understanding myself, and the South has been good to me in general. God has used it to make me who I am, and who I want to be.

In my younger years, my parents both worked. I had a black “Mammy” to come in and clean the house, fix food and take care of me. Yes, we called her Mammy, and that is how she introduced herself to us. To this day I collect black Americana mammy dolls because it reminds me of a simpler, sweeter time gone by.

Over the past few years, particularly the last 2 years, I have made some changes in my own life path. I have retired from the estate business and gone into online selling exclusively in a much reduced capacity. I could choose anytime to ramp up and scale the business, but I don’t foresee that happening. I make plenty to pay my bills, tithe, keep a bit for a rainy day, travel, indulge in activities with friends and family, and self-care in ways like getting my nails or hair done by a professional. I am enjoying a much prayed for simplicity that had eluded me for years. Even though logistically I have not moved away from the area, in many ways, personally and professionally, I feel I moved back home.

I enjoyed much of the estate business and truly miss the interaction with new people and return buyers. There were people who attended all my sales, would never miss. I loved catching up with them, they would tell me items they were in the market for like Raggedy Ann dolls or World War 2 memorabilia, or chat about the cool things in the inventory that reminded them of their childhood, and it was uplifting. I know now that the uplifting part was due to these familiar faces and folk sharing similar experiences with me, even though we didn’t grow up together. They were usually from the South as well. Many astoundingly were raised in part by a mammy, as I was. Some of these had gone to college, then forged out into the world of business, transferred from our area and “did life”, only to choose to retire back in the South. The South provided roots for their old age years. They had come back by choice to their simple southern life.

I remember a particularly slow estate weekend a few years ago. It was the second and final day of the sale, weather had been pretty stormy and we didn’t have a great attendance. So there was a lot of down time to sit on the furniture (that hadn’t sold) and chat at length with some of my favorite buyers. Somehow conversation turned to growing up stories. I listened as the chatters got more and more animated in their retelling of events during their childhoods. Distinctly Southern phrases peppered in conversations with these folks during these exchanges, lyrical and quick. We laughed constantly during  vivid descriptions of the pea-shelling that took place on the front porch with “mama-an-em”. That set off in another direction as especially the men tried to one up each other with a Southern phrase. We were all laughing so hard over words and idioms like:

“Papaw’s chair was all cattywampus from his sideways rear-sittin”

“My brother weren’t worth a hill of beans”

“Mama came outta that kitchen and was madder than a wet hen”

“ She pitched one holy hissy fit”

“Neighbor was too poor to paint, too proud to whitewash”

“He didn’t have a pot to pee in or a window to throw it out of”

“He’s so lazy he won’t hit a lick at a snake”

“His brain rattles around like a BB in a boxcar”

If you are a Yankee or a foreigner, Google is your friend. You can find the definitions there.

One admonition was common to all the buyers, and myself, that day and created the largest laughter and nodding of heads when one little old man uttered it. “Anytime I was gettin’ ready to leave for anywhere, my Mama would yell out ‘ Make sure you put on clean underwear!’” All of us, men and women alike jumped in on that conversation. There was the woman who, on her wedding day, heard that phrase right before walking the aisle, embarrassing the poor girl in front of her bridesmaids and groomsmen. . A grizzled old fella laughed and said he was leaving to serve his country overseas and Mama yelled the phrase to him as he was boarding the boot camp bus, much to his chagrin. His comrades made it their endless joke in the barracks anytime they would go out on a mission. There was the corporate executive who was flying to give his first convention speech, and in a phone call his Mama gave the underwear reminder. I sat and laughed with all the others, but today a few years later I think about that phrase in a bit different light.

I moved to the house I am in now about two years ago. The home I moved from was my resting place for almost 30 years. I never saw myself uprooting and leaving, but I did. When I readied to move, along with my children, there were multiple yard and estate sales we hosted to rid ourselves of things we weren’t needing at the new home, or things we had outgrown. We were scaling down and cleaning up to make a God ordained move.

I wasn’t very sure I would feel like I was home in the new place, although I would learn how to manage. I had loved my other home, it fit me. I had gardened there, raised my daughter there, knew every crack and crevice in the driveway, all the sheetrock bumps. I ran several businesses in multiple rooms, I had spent two marriages, and two divorces there. In the beginning of this new venture, I felt like I was a fish out of water (another phrase). But so many things fell into place on the selling of my old home, the finding of the new one, we closed on it quickly, I had a full price offer overnight on mine…it was all just too much to be my plan. I knew God was in it, although I felt a bit uncontrolled and afraid of the change. I didn’t want to make a mistake by moving, or not moving. But God has really shown Himself to me in this place.

The years leading up to the move were my years of ridding myself of things I didn’t need to carry with me anymore along the life path God already had in action for me, although hidden as yet. I had pared down my gardening, not intentionally, but due to no time to invest since I was working 14 to 16 hour days, 7 days a week. I sold things because finances were tight many times as a single woman, and some things just didn’t serve me anymore as much as the light bill getting paid. I took jewelry to the gold and silver buyer and paid the mortgage a few times. The upkeep of the home fell to the wayside as I was barely able to keep up with it physically myself anymore and it became too costly to hire anyone for anything but the most urgent repairs. My beautiful home was just becoming a house.

God was preparing to answer a prayer I had had for many years. I was praying for my life to simplify and become peaceful, and He was taking away things I no longer needed, and replacing them with a move back “home”. God quietly and gently was allowing some unusual feelings to start to filter in at the same pace He was moving me forward to a new life. I knew I was not where I belonged anymore, but couldn’t figure out how to go back home. God had to jumpstart my move by creating godly discontent in my own life with the way things were. Yes, godly discontent is a real thing.

Where I live now, and they way I live is easy. I get up when I want, I go to bed when I want. I never set a clock unless I have an early appointment, which is ultra rare. I have a mother-in-law’s wing which is small but cozy and my grandchildren have dubbed it “GiGi’s Bungalow”. It is usually tidied within an hour. The gardening I do is in pots, not stretches of ground I need to tend, and it is simple and beautiful, comforting actually.  I can rise up on a beautiful Southern morning, drink coffee and watch the birds outside my window, then walk 10 feet to the garage and start my work day. My family is in the main house but close, so visiting, babysitting and helping each other is simplified since we all live together now, but we each have our own degree of privacy. I knew all my neighbors at the old house, many had lived there the entire time I lived there, and yes, I miss them. But here, with no neighbors to speak of, I am more content than ever.

It is…well…simple. And I can only imagine how stagnant my life might have been if I had turned down God’s gift  of a change.

It took my willingness to get rid of my vast amounts of old stuff, including my beloved house, and simplify my current life before God instructed me to embark on the move I had been praying for over the years, and just didn’t know what I was really asking for. I thought I was in the home I was going to die in. But I was wrong, and I suddenly knew what I had to do. I stopped filtering God’s leading through family, friends or otherwise. It became all about God and me. He told me what to do, He gave me the clean underwear speech, I got ready and when the time came, I moved physically, emotionally and spiritually with ease. God had for years admonished me to “put on clean underwear” and cut down the chaos and clutter of my life, because He knew I was about to go somewhere else. God uses our comfort levels with a situation, such as where we live or the job we do, or the relationships we allow into our life, in a multitude of ways to teach us about ourselves. But I have learned that it doesn’t have to feel bad to you personally for it to be good for you. Sometimes God gives you the feel good thing, just as His awesome gift to you and you alone because you asked, and He graciously said ok.

I think the lesson to learn here is this: God is always moving. He is never stagnant, He is never unhearing or unfeeling. He says He will give you the desires of your heart in many cases, if not most, when you have prayed with a cleanness of heart and mind and followed His road markers. He places His good desires there in your heart and mind, then He makes the way to give those to you, even in unconventional means. And that’s where another good ole Southern phrase comes in handy. There are times He tells you to put on your (clean) big girl panties, and do as He says, even if it is scary and unclear what may be on the other side of that phrase.  I try to make sure I am always holding everything and everyone in life with light fingers, and wearing clean underwear because I never know when God will say “It’s time, now git to movin’ already, time’s a-wastin’. “

Recently I have been reading through the book of Jeremiah. It is not always the most “feel good” book of the Bible. In fact, there are a lot of passages that speak to very dark places, hidden things, repeated issues of the men of old. One of the passages I read this week talks about idolatry and I started thinking more deeply about those idols in my own life that have kept me in the dark in my Christian walk.

We can all think of eleventy million things as believers that separated us from the love of God  before we began our walk with Him. Even in a believing walk we backslide, sidestep and shuffle around the commands of God to fit our own agendas. All of us have lied, cheated in some way, stolen, done embarrassing things that were sinful. The hardest thing to wrap my mind around is when I repeat those behaviors even though I lived through them the first time, God forgave, I was cleansed, I thought I had learned to be an overcomer, only to fall right back into the same sad pattern of sinful choices and unforgettable regrets in my life that would continue to haunt me long after God forgave and forgot them on my behalf.

Why do we revisit our past sins over and over? We say it is so we will not forget how we hurt the Lord and denied His power in our lives. We want to keep the lessons so we don’t repeat them. But is that all there is to it?

In reading Jeremiah this week, I had a kind of eye-opening. Our old sin was washed clean, done, over, never to be brought up to us again. Jesus said we were freed of it, we were not to be shamed any longer, HE was crucified and took the guilt away…but in our minds and hearts there are just some memories of stupid things and horrid choices that have become idols in our own lives. We keep crucifying ourselves over the past sins, rather than living a crucified life in Christ now. We make our old sins into new idols.  

What is an idol? It is something God says cannot be placed between us and Him. This means anything. It means money, people, a job. But more than that it means old baggage, old sins, dirty shame- driven behaviors. Satan brings those things to mind in tiny ways daily. We smell a fragrance that reminds us of a certain person, and we revisit the sin of the flesh moments we may have shared. Satan whispers a song lyric and we remember it playing in the location a sinful event came to fruition and changed the whole course of our life. We run into a past partner in sin randomly in a mall or at a party and the  feelings of embarrassment and guilt rise up and overwhelm us. But why? Because we have let those people, places and events become hidden idols in our lives. We worship them by focusing our mind on them. We sacrifice to them by filtering our future relationships, friendships and choices  through the lens of the poor engagements we experienced with others in the years that have gone by. Rather than becoming fully forgiven and forward-marching believers, we have chosen to carry a scarecrow.

Jeremiah 10:5, New Century Version, talks about this odd figure, the scarecrow, standing alone in a field surrounded by luscious fruit.

“Their idols are like scarecrows in melon fields;
    they cannot talk.
Since they cannot walk,
    they must be carried.
Do not be afraid of those idols,
    because they can’t hurt you,
    and they can’t help you either.”

And when I read that passage, I saw myself carrying that hay stuffed idol around, scattering broken bits everywhere I walked. He would have stood in that field and eventually succumbed to the elements of time and weather, but no.  I chose to yank him up and tote him around. He couldn’t talk, but as I carried him, he would shout “see here, look what I did, who I was, how I have lived my disgraceful life.”  That straw headed fool became a macabre badge of courage that I would pull out to explain away my harsh moments of personality, my shortcomings, my sins in the here and now. Jesus died and offered His fruit to me, He placed me in the middle of a field of a potential feast, but I conditioned myself to focus on the scarecrows of my life. By continuing to embrace the stain of the past sins rather than the forgiveness, I was finding my fulfillment, satisfaction, security, and significance in idols each time I spent my mind and heart on those dead pieces of my past.

We know, as believers, Jesus died for all our sin…not just the convenient ones, not just the “not too bad ones” in the eyes of the world. He died for all of them. We are grateful, we are awed, we are humbled and honored to be God’s children. Then, just like Rachel stole Laban’s household idols and hid them by sitting on them in her saddlebags when she was on her way to begin a new life, we tend to take just a few things from the old life with us, even though God said leave them behind. We carry them, like the scarecrow from place to place, never really able to deal with them or rid ourselves of them because they should not have come with us at all. We jam them right down in the field of fruit, and they get the focus of our attention. And the scarecrow has a name…it is Angst.

I think we take our own idols with us because we are afraid. We are afraid we are not forgiven for all. We are afraid that we dishonor God by forgetting our past. We are afraid that if we don’t “fix” our past life, we will never be able to enjoy a new life.  Nothing could be further from the truth.

In the last two or three years I have learned when Satan brings to mind past transgressions, I play a mind and heart game with myself. I look at it as him enticing me to worship old idols of past sins instead of worshipping my Savior. Those things no longer deserve my attention, I cannot speak on their behalf any longer giving reasons and excuses for past behaviors. It is an unnecessary and fruitless use of my time and Christian walk. I am not to help the idols walk to another place and time in my life either. They were put to death long ago. The scarecrows have no life, they cannot walk, they cannot talk, they cannot hurt, they cannot help. unless we do it for them.  They just simply cannot do anything without our willing involvement.

Gone is gone, dead is dead, done is done. It’s time to leave those scarecrows out in the field of the past, pick some of the abundant fruit God offers, bring it  into our new life, and go in joy to the next place He chooses to love us and use us. Scarecrows have no brain, and we cannot sit in the company of the brainless.  The walk is easier without the weight.  But just for good measure, it probably wouldn’t hurt to strike a match and flick it over our shoulder as we make our getaway, just in case.

In the 70’s growing up, I always loved the singing group Bread. So many of their songs were tender ballads and were a salve for my soul when I was experiencing difficulties with either my surroundings or coming of age decisions. They crooned me into a peacefulness and helped me reset. One song came to mind this morning, the song “If”. There is a section of the verse that says:

If a man could be two places at one time, I’d be with you,

Tomorrow and today, beside you all the way.

If the world should stop revolving spinning slowly down to die,

I’d spend the end with you.

I thought about those lyrics this morning, and shed a little tear. You see, my Dad is 80 years old and in, what appears to be, the last stages of Parkinson’s disease. That is a difficult thing to see in print, but true nonetheless. Parkinson’s is not an easy disease. It is harsh, lingering, as the symptoms and issues tend to play hide and seek. One day Dad is more than lucid, recalling events, people and places that I can’t conjure up easily. Other days he is confused and withdrawn, often hallucinating from the meds and in chronic pain. Breathing is with much effort, swallowing is strenuous with the tiniest food pieces, sleep is his constant companion due to fatigue trying to accomplish the simplest of tasks. He is a shell, in many ways, of the man he once was. Those caring for him, primarily my 80 year old mother since he is still at home at this writing, have to be on ready at all times to respond at a moment’s notice to whatever scenario the disease may present as the days move forward. My dad could be with us 10 days or 10 years, we have no way of knowing God’s timetable. So we try and give him the comfort we can, and we wait. He is remembering himself in scenes of the past, but he is living out the not so pretty scenes of the present. At times it can be very painful to watch his physical and emotional struggles and hear his frustration come out in the many hard words he speaks to each of us and others now. But we keep in mind he is spending his end in two places, as the song lyrics say.

The last several weeks have seen Dad admitted to the hospital, going through several tests, then procedures, and he has not been a happy camper. There is belligerence at times, again due to the disease in some part, and my dad has always been strong willed, so there’s that playing into his care presently. He is not always kind in speech, he is not always aware of his surroundings completely, he is frightened, and he is trying to grasp his ending.

And Mom is there.

She tends to his needs, listens to his griping and fussing, brings him clothing when his others are in need of washing. She has health issues of her own, so caretaking is more difficult than it would be if she had a strong body herself. If he is released from the hospital, he may go back home this next week. He cannot walk on his own. He requires 24/7 care now and he cannot take care of himself, so his personal care will fall in large part to mom. But she has decided, as long as she can physically and emotionally do what he needs, she will spend his end with him.

I have thought much lately of the way I chose to spend my beginnings. Not always a good choice was made, and it is sad to think about this as I watch my parents and their current struggle to maintain their relationship in the face of something they cannot control like this illness. I found my past self not always giving my time and effort to the best people or groups of others. My focus during my beginning was  squandered, investing in things and people that would not be able to make it to the end with me, nor I with them.

Hardship is definitely a tough teacher. Observing challenging circumstances of others becomes the teaching aids during our own learning curve of life. I am 60, no spring chicken, but today I am more and more seeing the value in choosing who and what I draw into my own life, both in the way of experiences and also companions. Each choice I make will reflect on who and what I  “spend the end with”. When I come to my last moments on this earth, I hope to be passing my time with those who want to spend their own end with me as well. In these days or years or moments leading up to my end, I want to embrace my mission to practice love and kindness toward those who are investing in me. I want others to heartily desire to spend my end with me, not just help me survive it. If so, I can say with the writer of Ecclesiastes, “Better is the end of a thing than the beginning…” and I will be so grateful for the blessing of peace that will come when I finally and quietly lay this old body down.

As a young child, I was always in church. My mom and dad, even as young parents, made sure my sister and I were in choir, children’s programs, picnics, revivals and any other church related activities. At the tender age of 7, God reached down and spoke His life into my heart, and I have never been the same after receiving the unconditional love of the Savior. We attended church schools and got an education that was proper and prepared us for college, if we so chose, and we did. Yes, we were both in the classification of “not like the others” in our respective peer groups. On the outside, I appeared to be a really great kid.

But living out the “not the same” was different. Once I walked the aisle and was baptized, I though naively I would live a clean, pure life with ease. At the age of 7, I didn’t know that profession of faith was only my beginning of a constant struggle of flesh and godliness raging at every turn.  I was a “good kid” in the eyes of the world. I was a decent student, tried to obey my parents and live a pure life. As I grew older there were challenges cast, but not in the same areas of many of my friends. I didn’t do drugs. I was not a participant in behaviors that would land me in detention or suspension from school. I wasn’t involved in the sexual awakening of some of my peers during high school. I saved myself for marriage and it was a decision I made by myself and contentedly. I wanted to be the stellar kid, and I was in many ways…but it wasn’t easy. Looking back I can see the struggle was in reconciling the new mind and body and life with the old Rhonda. I thought the two  were ok in coexistance, but I was so wrong. There was always an underlying draw to go right up to line that my Christian life had drawn in the sand, peek over it a little, maybe even stick one light little toe over the line…just to see what would happen. I didn’t break free of that pull until much later in life.

This struggle was deeply spiritual, and it took many years to realize it and what the root of it was. Although God had given me a new life, new hope, and new purpose, I had not laid down the old Rhonda, I had chosen to take her along into my new life.

In my 20’s and 30’s, I attended Bible Study Fellowship along with hundreds of women for several years. Daily Bible study became a way of life for me and I looked forward to meeting with my small group of friends each week, discussing the scripture assignments and marveling at God’s work in all our lives. We shared our struggles and successes, and for me it was a way to push down the old Rhonda, but never quite putting her away forever. I made her behave better, but she was still tied to me under the surface of what I allowed the world to see of me every day.

One week, we went in to listen to the lecture given by the leader of the branch of BSF I attended. I admired the way she could speak in front of a group and teach truths that I had not understood in the daily readings. She was a tool God used to bring those truths to life for me. One week, we were studying the passage of scripture where Paul spoke about “the body of death”. I can only say at that moment for the first time in my life as she spoke, I could feel my spirit quicken inside. I knew this was something I needed to study further to understand my own struggles in doing what God commanded but still wanting to cross the line in so many areas. I began to realize wanting to cross it was the same as crossing it in God’s commands.

So I began to study, and this is what I learned.

Paul wrote of the body of death in Romans 7:24-25.  “O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death? I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin.”

In Biblical times, when someone would commit a crime, the ruling tyrants in the area didn’t feed, clothe, house them in jails in many cases. If someone stole, the offending hand was cut off. A liar may have his tongue cut out leaving him mute for the rest of his life. And a murderer? That person may have to bear the body of death. As soon as the condemned was pronounced judgment, the body of the murdered would be chained tightly to the murderer, back to back in most cases, but face to face in others…lip to lip, heart to heart, eye to eye. This was done right in the courtroom in front of friends, family and curious spectators. The putrid, filthy, rotting corrosive body was never disentangled from the every day functions of the offender, and he was forced to live in the streets. The convicted then dragged the corpse through the alleys and thoroughfares , unable to hide from the stares of common folk, frightened children, and visiting dignitaries alike. One look at the stinking mass of humanity was enough to turn the stomachs of any who saw and made an indelible memory in their own minds. The humiliation was great, the grotesque image burned into the psyche of those who saw.

As the dead body continued to deteriorate, the gaseous emissions would reach the nostrils of those in close proximity, the body bloated and began to lose its parts to the horror of spectators. Retching in the streets became a common sound. The body of death began to eat into the body not yet dead, and start its devilish journey that would end quickly in the additional and sure demise of the one bearing the dead body.

And when I read those descriptions, I knew in my own soul, this was me. But at that point in my life, I was still wanting to control myself, by myself. And God gave me over to the body of death for a season.

I had watched God reach down and save me from a life of sin as a 7 year old child. I had even seen Him work as I presented the already fairly clean portions of me to the general public. I served among His people, I taught, I brought His songs to hundreds in many churches and venues over the years, I led women’s groups and Bible studies, I wrote articles for Christian magazines. Even after all this, there came a time the body of death I was carrying began to eat into the new body Christ had given me as a believer at a faster pace in new ways. Spiritual bondage had set in and I had chained it to my own life by my choices and subsequent rationalized behaviors.

As time went on and the old thoughts and sins would arise inside, I began to live more and more of a chained existence, and  I suddenly felt I could not break free . I made poor choices, I chose outright sinfulness in my lifestyle. I engaged in patterns that were tying me back to the old self. Although I was able to keep this secret life under a cover of a smiling, happy believer, I knew that the body of death I had been dragging around with me had begun to eat into my very body and I was headed to a real disaster.

Where there’s rotten fruit, there is a rotten root. I began to see so many attitude changes emerging, I began to pile on bad choice after bad choice in an effort to “feel better”. I began a relationship that was full of rotten fruit. The old saying “Our secrets make us sick” was never more true than it was during those five years of my life. The body of death continued to eat away at the beautiful life God had given me years before, and everything I was choosing was adding more and more chain.

Buried things will eat us alive, guilt makes us ill and can last a lifetime if we feed it. I had been feeding old guilt and shame with new guilt and shame for years. We are not truly set free until we rid ourselves of the need to impress people and even God with all our actions and self deprecating behaviors. I knew to be freed, I needed to have someone “with skin on” that I could talk to, confess to, be held accountable to. And God brought a miracle person into my life almost immediately when I began to pray to be delivered from the allure of my buried life. In the unconditional time spent with this friend I began to pour out the detailed sadness of many years, the embarrassment of the choices I had made, the longing to right the situation and remove myself from its grip. Confession was good for my soul, and God was the caretaker of my heart and mind through it all. He gave grace to the listener, I was never sitting in condemnation, I was never let to feel unworthy and my words were accepted just as I was. I worked out my struggle in the presence of this friend, and am so grateful God didn’t require I do it alone. God cut off the chains from the old Rhonda, laid her back down into the dust of the earth, while raising me back up to the new life I should have been living all along. I thank God He brought me out of that bondage. And I thank Him He is still in the business of cutting chains and healing. I regret the years wasted on the one hand, but thank God for that experience because I have been able to be the listening “chain cutter” for others.

God has shown me He is enough for me, and I am enough for Him. Much of the chain I had forged was in trying to impress others, looking for approval, seeking to measure up so to speak. I looked to others…the wrong others…to let me know I was ok. Some of that started in my childhood, but much filtered into my adulthood because the old Rhonda refused to die. I carried all the old grievances into my new life and it played out in all sorts of ways. Now I find myself looking back only long enough to remember how far I have come, as I tread forward confidently.

To stay on track, I do ask myself a lot of questions…

Why am I angry? Why am I wasting so much time in self pity? What makes me feel content and is it a godly contentment? Why do I shame myself for my past choices when God has been gracious to forgive me? Is He not my perfect example of forgiveness, even of self? Why do I have a hard time with rejection and have a difficulty believing someone can love me but still not agree with me? If I put down a sin years ago, why I am I resuscitating it in my mind? Dead is dead, dust is dust…right?

Today I may still have times of mental, emotional and spiritual trial but I know I never have to deal with self alone and in secret again. As I keep the word of God close in my heart, and gather godly friends with listening ears and good counsel close by as my bolt cutters, any chains I may attempt forge will easily fall away, and that loathsome body of death is left to perish in the dust. These days the fragrance of my new life is much preferred over sin’s big ole stink.

I am not normally a person who makes New Year’s resolutions. It is not because I have nothing to resolve, far from it. It is more that I tend to keep short accounts with myself in most areas.

 I am pretty organized and use my time efficiently. As a professional organizer for years, I researched all kinds of methods, teachings, studies, webinars and the like in effort to stay abreast of the most current tools to put a home or business in order. I taught classes and webinars myself on time and paper management. I set up retrieval systems with my clients based on their inventory and their personalities so they would not only be successful in clearing the clutter of their lives, but they would be able to maintain the system once my tenure with them was over. It was important I keep my own schedule in hand so I did not get derailed by my own little things while I was helping others with their big things.

I pay all my bills well before the date due. I watch my bank accounts daily, move money efficiently, and then tithe and pay the entire month of outstanding amounts due at the first of the month.

I am usually the on time person, unless caught by traffic or inhibited by others. I live with my kids and grandchildren so I may have to run a gauntlet or two on the way out the door.

I buy Christmas and birthday gifts all year long and am not forced to purchase during the heaviest traffic nor the highest priced slots, but can bargain shop and find really cool items. The only things I usually wait to purchase near the holiday or birthday in question are the extras I can’t say no to during the season, and they are put away for the following year if they are not age or time sensitive.

When I get up in the mornings, I read my emails around 10, then not again till mid afternoon, with a final reading before bed. I task manage most business related things this same way. I don’t “handle” anything unless it is urgent and I did this even when I ran a company with a staff of 18 and 200 customers. Most things these days are not termed as urgent so they can be handled in those 3 time slots easily.

Although now that I am retired my time is a lot more flexible by choice, I still pretty much work out in my listing area from 10 till 6 daily with no breaks or lunch. If it is a sourcing day for my business instead, it is preplanned far in advance and on certain days of the week.

I do use a daily planner, have for years. I also use highlighters, paperclip sections, and stick post-its all through the thing till it looks more like a messy scrapbook. But it works.

I have certain “assigned” cleaning chores I perform daily. I vacuum on one day, dust on another, etc. I usually tend toward easy meals when I cook, and I cook normally only on certain days with planned leftovers.  The leftovers coincide with the days I know I will be out of the house sourcing or running errands for a long time. I know I will have a good meal when I get home and not have to do anything but nuke it.  

So staying focused, particularly in the organizing area normally  comes easily for me. In doing a study years ago on the spiritual gifts, I took all the tests and so forth. It came up with the label of “administration” as my spiritual gift. It didn’t surprise me. I have pretty much always been the one with eye for detail and could implement paths of success without much thought when it came to the areas of cleaning and organizing.  I was a natural leader in these areas. I was boss of it, I owned it.

But then there was the area of physical health and care.

All my life I have been the yo-yo girl. Up and down with weight, an extremist one moment, sloth the next. I have lost 40 or more pounds at least 3 times in my 60 years, always putting it back on in record time without very much effort. Whenever I was on task with the weight regimen, I would walk for exercise, or go to a gym. In an effort to make myself obey myself and subdue my wretched longing toward food sinfulness, as Paul says in I Corinthians 9:27 ASV I would “buffet my body and bring it into bondage, lest by any means, after that I have preached to others, I myself should be rejected.” I led women’s groups during the height of two of my weight loss sagas. I took on this verse as a sort of mantra, and it worked for a while. But then during some years of self reproach and general disinterest, the word buffet pronounced “buff it” morphed more into “buff fay”. I stopped walking. I stopped prepping my foods. I stopped cooking for myself and marked it up to a “busy schedule.” I am single, so with no one to cook for, eating out was the easiest solution to nourishment, or so I pretended. I do have arthritis and it is difficult to get up in the morning and head out for that brisk walk. My body groans no matter what kind of condition I am in physically. But that, like the food choices, was just an excuse….a reason wrapped up in a lie.

The truth was I wasn’t a very good boss of myself. And frankly that is as it should be for a Christian. We are not to do things by sheer fortitude and brain muscle. It might work for a while, but we are answering to the addict, and not the Counselor. God says a lot about self control in the Bible. He addresses all types, including gluttony. If He knows so much about it, you would think we would be willing to follow His leading without a second thought. But we assume we will be kinder to ourselves if we try to control everything, do it on our own plan, not bother Jesus with it. He has more important things to do than monitor our diet and exercise, right?

Last summer, I went on a 3 day sourcing trip. It was in June, the weather was scorching and it was the mid-point of the covid pandemic, but yard sales were opening up. So I attended a multi-location highway sale over one weekend with a friend. I had been very active in my estate business till the close of 2019 and had retired at the end of the year. From January till June, I was busy, but not as physically active. I was already overweight and was making a feeble attempt to get the weight back off, but had not really dedicated myself to success. We had gone through a huge home move, lots of craziness, and well…I was giving myself a break. And it proved to be a bad break with self control. Making my way through that 3 day trip was near toture.

In the months leading up to that trip, I was sitting most days for 8 hours and listing items online to sell because the pandemic had gone to priority one and we were all in lockdown. I set up my postal pick ups at the house so I was not even physically going to the post office any longer. Grocery store visits were shut down and food was delivered, so even the tiny exercise experienced during those tasks died. My arthritis woes kicked in even more because I had had a 400% increase in business during the lockdowns and was using my activity time a.k.a. walking slots for listing and shipping instead. Each day I would plan to get back on the wagon. Each day my physical body would decline. Weight rose, and all kinds of issues surfaced.

Then God sat me down even further through a knee injury after that yard sale trip. I couldn’t hold up my own weight to walk, dress, prepare food or anything for almost 5 weeks. My children were bringing me food at dinner time and helping with any other tasks as they could. I was sleeping in a recliner because it hurt too much to lie in the bed. I would stay up till 4 and 5 in the morning, finally falling into an exhausted sleep for 3 or 4 hours, then barely be able to drag myself on a walker to the bathroom and back. Showers were an hour process and even more exhausting, so they were cut down to twice weekly. Anyone who knows me knows I am a clean freak, so that was not fun.

I was sitting even more still than I did in the lockdown period by this point. I had a lot of time to think… and God had a lot to say. I am not normally a crier, but tears came often and unexpectedly. I started thinking about how I had come to my current physical condition. I realized I was experiencing MORE pain than I needed now because I had not taken care of my body prior to my injury. I may still have injured it, sure. But I would not have been down that long, scared, feeling alone. I had spent years sacrificing the important on the altar of the urgent by working on everything else but me. And God had stepped back and allowed me to be my own boss for a while.

So one day, I began to read the scripture concerning the body. My mind started to wander to secular programs on TV along with health articles. I ordered books from the library with all different kinds of food plans and techniques from paleo to pescatarian to intermittent fasting. By the time I could walk again, I thought I had this motivational gig in hand. I was gonna SLAY this thing! And then I stepped on the scale. I had gained a large amount of weight already during the lockdown, and the numbers were even higher now from my weeks of near total inactivity. Discouragement set in and I was pretty defeated in spirit.

But then God stepped in as boss once again. It wasn’t a dramatic “ah ha” moment, or a talk with a friend, TV show, or even a bible verse that wrought the desire to ask God to step in again. He just told me, in His own gentle quiet way, I was a crummy boss of me. He let me know, just through quiet meditation that there was nothing wrong with my body that a change of focus wouldn’t fix. He told me in my spirit to put down the cookbooks, turn off the TV and stop focusing on the wrong things I had been doing.  Instead I needed to focus on doing more right things, then just repeating those over and over without trying to control everything. He used my own inspirational words I had given to others over the years of leading women’s weight loss discipline groups…Do the next right thing.

And a deep Godly desire to simply do right was born out of that time of refocusing between June and September. My focus was corrected, and I sat back a bit and let God do the directing.

I started to study the Bible again. I began to embrace and enjoy more of the simple things. I cut my schedule back again and as my strength returned I began walking again. 10 minutes a couple of times a week is not much in the world’s economy, but it is a lot in God’s economy. Every time I chose to do right, I was stepping to the side, staying out of God’s way, and letting Him be the boss. I selected His simple path of eating whatever I want within 1500-1700 calories a day and  increased water intake a little each day. I am making it a set plan to get more sleep (still working on that one) and just enjoy all parts of  life more in general. If I had been boss I would likely be paying a high price for a food plan or the ingredients of no telling what kind of dishes, joining a gym, and everything else I did when I was boss before.

Since October I have dropped 20 pounds without much effort at all. That’s the fun news to share. The not so fun fact is there are around 50 more pounds lurking that need to be shed to be physically manageable and more active without as much pain. But where I end up numbers-wise is not my focus at all. My current physical situation, my regret over not maintaining my prior losses, my increased arthritic pain…none of those are to be my focus. Where I am now spiritually in relation to Who is my boss and what He is telling me to do…that is to be my only focus. If I take care of the “do”, then the “don’t” will take care of itself.   

Who is your Boss? Is it laziness, sloth, overeating, under-exercising? Maybe you drink too much, stay up too late, try to control others with your perfectionism. Are you attempting to boss those areas yourself by sheer grit and determination rather than just doing the next right thing? My future weight loss path  may look like a huge task to me right now and I could get a mite discouraged. But in refocusing when I feel the urge to control, I will gain the real prize of being spirit led in this journey. My only plan is focus on Jesus, take the next single step well, and keep telling myself this can be done. According to Desmond Tutu, even an elephant can be eaten one bite at a time.

I woke up with Hagar on my mind today. I really can’t say why. My devotional study has been in a different section of the Bible, my personal spiritual inner man (or woman I should say) has been comfortably reading the redemptive stories found in Esther and Ruth most recently, so no Hagar to be found there either.

But Hagar was on my mind.

So I started reflecting on this scriptural character this morning in a more directed manner. If I haven’t learned anything in this 53 years I have been a believer, it is to follow God’s plan instead of my own. I am not as quick in the shifting of gears as I should be, but I am better than I once was, so I will count this as noteworthy progress.

In reading Hagar’s story again, I was reminded about how hard her life really was in many respects. She was a slave, even more… an unloved concubine. She was tossed from Pharaoh’s hand to Sarah, then to Abraham, and ultimately found herself cast out by her master and mistress into the wilderness. The name Hagar means “wandering”, and her life certainly bore this out over her recorded storyline.

Hagar was never first in anyone’s life. Emotionally abandoned by person after person, time after time, she had to have shed many hot tears and internally questioned “what is wrong with me, what have I done to deserve this ill treatment?” Then the natural inclination to conclude “ I must be a very bad person, worthless.” Hagar is a heart-rending picture of all of us in our quest for emotional affection. We place the burden of our wants and needs in the hands of someone who will never be equipped to fill those needs…be it a parent, a child, a husband, a friend. We look for our own self worth in others, and when that doesn’t come, we label ourselves as worthless, and even worse, undeserving of love and affection.

Once Hagar began to experience desertion and abandonment by significant people in her life in the emotional and physical sense, her spiritual wounds grew very raw and deep. Her whole life, up to the moments in the wilderness, had been driven by others’ selfish choices and commands. Hagar had lost her own path in life far before she was cast out. She had elevated the opinions, beliefs and subsequent sinful actions of others above God and His word to her. His promises given to the family she dwelt with and served, fell on her deaf ears because their own fallible words and actions toward her screamed more loudly. Hagar had been introduced to the God of Abraham, she had to have heard the promises of God spoken in her presence as she went about her days of service there. But she chose to cast those pearls aside, as she was cast aside, and dwelt for a very long painful time in the wilderness, alone and fearful. She had a look at her circumstances and experiences, and then chose to believe man’s utterings, and not the word of the Lord concerning her.

Hagar had made a grave error in her thinking which drove her life in a different spiritual direction than originally intended. The people who had taught her all she knew about God turned out to be desperately flawed believers. Rather than looking at Abraham and Sarah as fellow truth seekers, she looked at them as truth-sayers. If they didn’t love her, care for her and spoke harshly to her…then that must become her own self truth as well. She wandered in the wilderness, finally giving up, weeping and afraid.

Hagar had been running a long time, more than once actually. She had run from Sarah physically when she was pregnant by Abraham and Sarah abused her, and then she was told by the Lord to return. Interestingly, she did as the Lord told her at that point. She went back, served in the household, her life began to come under submission once again. And then an event happened that changed her course and thinking again…Ishmael was born. When mistreated once again by Sarah, Abraham….the man who was supposed to be her protector basically packed her a bag and threw her out of the home, and Hagar was running once again. Each time she had a choice to believe man or believe God when her circumstances were presented and she had to obey the authority she found herself in service to on earth. Each time, she looked at her circumstances where she was placed and chose to believe earthly man’s words also, to her own detriment.

But God’s voice graciously came to her in that wilderness. She had had all stripped away by this point. There was no home, there was no protector, no champion. She had no friends, no sustenance for body or spirit. There was nothing between herself and the Lord. But God asked her the question she needed at her lowest spiritual and emotional point then. “What is the matter, Hagar?” Then immediately followed with “Do not be afraid.”

That was the moment, I believe, that Hagar’s faith became alive. Her circumstance hadn’t changed, her own feelings about it hadn’t changed. She had all the truths in head knowledge. Heck she LIVED with the family of the promise. What changed her?

But God.

This is what changes all of us…God pushes aside all the sad words, the unkind treatment, the abandonment, shame, spiritual wounds. He offers us eternal truth and unending faith in place of lifelong untruth and fear. Faith comes when you have something in your heart before you have it in your circumstances. There was a tiny fire within Hagar that had caused her to question her past. She ran from it, rather than face it. She hid rather than holding on to the real truth.

We do this, yes? We may even be believers, but we allow wounding of our psyche as the cruel words of others are accepted as truth. We base our feelings and emotions and wellbeing on those who are every bit as flawed and messed up as we are. We embrace shame rather than casting shame into the wilderness. Instead we banish ourselves to a life without hope while we run highlight reels of our past.  Over and over and over we see pictures in our mind of what someone said or did to us, poor choices we made, sins we chose over purity of body and spirit. We all have sins in our current lives or consequences of mistakes in our past that need to be dealt with and put away. That will never change until we enter our eternal reward. The real test of our beliefs comes in those times of our personal “but God” moments. We have to ask ourselves the right questions. What is the matter really? Why do I hear the words of others so clearly when they are not edifying and leading me to the Lord? Who do I choose to believe? Is God telling me the truth about me? If He is, why do I choose to live as if I don’t believe Him?

God will always leave a few weaknesses in us to leave us humble, that’s a fact. BUT GOD wipes away all the past, all the untrue words, all the emptiness and emotional abandonment. It is up to us to choose His sweet wooing over our sorrowful wandering. There comes a moment you are called to end the war you have with yourself. Be strong in the Lord, and He will fight for you….even if fighting YOU through the lessons of hard circumstances is part of His plan. When you come to your “But God” moment, be ready to move forward, and do not look back. Ask Lot’s wife how that looking back thing worked for her…

Happy New Year 2021!

In reflection, 2020 has proven to be a challenging 12 months to many in the world. We have seen so many “firsts”, and sadly so many “lasts”, and our minds are still trying to wrap around the events. A pandemic, racial and social injustices, riots and looting were in the news daily almost immediately after the Times Square ball dropped and 2020 launched. I think all of us watching, in person or on television had such hopes and dreams for the coming year. Little did we know, in the blink of an eye, the world as we knew it would radically change, in many ways forever.
As I have scanned posts by friends on social media all day today leading up to the 2021 launch, the biggest group have been those who have wished the current year away quickly. Most voices have spoken of the horrors and heartaches, fussed about the inconveniences and regrets that have upset their personal apple carts all year, and condemned this year as nothing short of hell on earth.

Maybe I am in the minority, this was a very good year in many ways and I am so thankful for it.

This was the first year in our current home where there are trees to climb (not me, the grandkids), bugs and critters to explore (again not me), and we have watched it transform inside as we placed our things, moved them around, decorated, lovingly arranged all of our necessary and unnecessary “stuff”. More importantly it became a wonderful haven to shelter in place. The children never complained about being away from friends. They learned to play differently, and so did we adults. I was here with my family, and I so realize I was one of the lucky ones. I could watch them play outside, was able to work while seeing them chase each other across the yard, involve myself in flagging the start of their foot races, and sit quietly outside in the early morning hours and listen to the cardinals call to each other, laugh at the squirrels rustling through the leaves, and feel the warmth of the sun on my face as I sipped coffee and drew in the quiet pleasure of the day.

I had retired from hosting estate sales in late 2019 in anticipation of moving, and when the lockdowns occurred, I had a garage jammed with all kinds of inventory just waiting to be listed. People came to online stores like mine in droves to purchase not only necessities, but also trinkets, games, puzzles…anything to make their quarantine a bit lighter and happier. Ultimately I experienced the best year in sales since starting an online store. I had nowhere to go, nothing to distract me, I was listing items all day each day and the inventory was going right out to eager customers and even a few movie prop companies. I had never employed the scheduled shipping from porch side offered by USPS, but did…and even now I rarely ever spend my billable time standing in a line at the post office anymore. This “inconvenience” turned into a benefit, as many other changes did in the last year.

I got to know myself better in 2020. I had wandered away from friends, and sadly away from God in my daily Bible study habit. Too many shiny new objects had grabbed my attention over the last few years, and my spiritual health was lagging far behind and secular pursuits had replaced the Originator and Fountain of true meaning in this life. As a result I could see some characteristics I needed to discard from my personality, gathered information and gave myself incentives for new habits I needed to form, and old good habits I needed to resurrect came back to the forefront.

I employed a food delivery service with prepped meals for a time and started cooking for myself again. I began studying foods, combinations for healthy eating, how certain combinations aid in the body’s systems. I began to slowly but surely lose weight just by making better choices for myself and spending time on my daily meals rather than letting hunger dictate my food diary and fill it with empty calories. I was a caterer for several years, and always cooked when my child was growing up. As I strayed from healthy practices, I also could see a coinciding slide in my spiritual health. Looking back, it is really amazing to see how that turned around with the choices I started making in food and drink.

As the lockdowns lifted I was able to spend more time with family and friends again and I noticed the quality of the time had changed along with a personal desire to fill more of my time with people and less with noisiness and things. Time spent with others felt simpler and richer, not strained or pushed. I noticed things about my physical home more as my spiritual home began to rebuild inside. That is a forever process, and it is changing quickly some days, and moving slowly others. But it is all at the Lord’s pace for me, and comfortable. I don’t feel compelled to do things anymore, I feel privileged to be able to clean my home, garden a bit, sweep the walk, and do the chores.

Then one day, God chose to bring a friend back into my life after many years…someone special who prays with and for me, someone who gives me guidance, someone who is on a journey toward physical and spiritual health also, and encourages me in both my own business and spiritual life. I am still marveling that this prayer I have prayed for some time now was answered in the way it was, at the moment it was, and through the person He chose. I had asked for “bread”, and God graciously did not give me a “stone”…I am so grateful for this one beloved friend who is an unexpected gift of 2020.

Then through a recent chain of events God answered one last prayer in an unusual way. I will share more details later perhaps, but suffice it to say I was feeling a deep need for a time of retreat alone to regroup, study, think. For the last few weeks I had been considering several places to travel to at the turn of the year and was about to book the time the end of January. But God has redirected me as of today to stay home for a couple of weeks, as I did in the first of 2020, and refresh myself while safe in my little hippie bungalow. I will take a retreat time instead within the home I love, surrounded by the people I cherish. I will have time to study, to learn, to listen. Coffee will fill my belly as the sounds of nature fill my ears, and truths wander through my mind. Simplicity is my chosen path for 2021, and this is a great way to begin.

As I turn the page into 2021, I am excited to know the great things I experienced and gathered in 2020 are going forward with me. I am hopeful and expectant that God will continue to build on my lessons of the past year and next New Year’s Eve I will have even more miracles to share and grand stories to tell. Who knows, maybe I will finally write that book I have been tossing around for many years now. 

I will mark the past year as living up to its name…2020. My eyes have been opened to new things, my vision has become more clear, the spiritual cataracts are falling away, and the healing has begun.

So here is a kiss of goodbye to 2020 and a kiss of hello to 2021. I pray for only the best for all who read…

Happy New Year and much love to all of you!