I'm Alive

James 5:16 (ESV) “Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.” 

I’m Alive

Everyone draws concern when I'm away from the social media platform for a week. I imagine they all think the worst and have me dead in the still of the night. But I digress they all might just wonder whatever happened to me as my daily postings come to a halt. I love you all immensely!

I wish I was well enough to bring you great news, but no, I’m down and don’t want to bring others down with me. It’s hard visiting the social media world and see everyone happily moving along, portraying the perfect life while I’m out here miserable. And I know, they all have imperfect lives also they just like portraying the facade. I just could never do that in all honesty. I like dripping truth onto the page and sweeping up the mess as I move along.

I’m now housebound for the summer. I was housebound for the extensive, extremely frozen over winter and now that we've jumped right into summer with a day or two of a spring feel to it, I'm housebound again. I'm grumpy and not liking anything these days so I figure if I stay away from my friends and the social media, I can try and mend without hurting anyone with my snide lashings.

My inability to walk came to a complete standstill last week when I had finished mowing. I used to walk with a limp but now I can't even make it down a pair of stairs, and before you start telling me to see a doctor, that's easier said than done. If you're willing to come and shower and clothe me and place me in the vehicle and take me to the doctor, (if you can find a wheelchair when you get there) then attending a doctors office is not in the picture any time soon. Yeah, it's gotten that bad in just a week. 

My writing has come to a standstill, my walking to a halt, my mowing at a deadlock, my showering when I can, my joy on hiatus. I now write in Yahoo notepad since my MS Word is malfunctioning. My walking, what little I can do, is done with a cane in hand, my mowing is now my husband's fun. My joy? Well, that's taking its sweet old time in resurfacing as the enemy thinks its time to hit me full force!

I thought my riding lawn mower was going to be my welcomed joy this summer, heat or no heat, I would be out and enjoying SOMETHING in the world, but no, it just wasn't meant to be for me. Last week when I got off the mower my legs nearly crumbled. I came in the house to sit down and sitting felt like I had just sat on an ice pick and no one could remove the steel point hitting the nerve in my back. I was in pain worse than I had been in a few weeks ago when I didn't want to visit family but I did. I could not lie down (still can't), I could barely sit, cooking was out of the question so I just sat, and cried, a good long sobbing cry. The uneven land out here and every jostle the mower took, so did my already damaged back. 

I've rested this week staring out the window at the squirrels, bunnies, and birds. We've had pretty intense heat in the upper nineties so peeking my head out the door even became an unbearable task. This is not the kind of heat that arthritic people can endure. I'm here and I'm alive. I don't have my peppy optimism and inspirational spring in my step; negativity from the outside world seeps in whether aimed at me or not, so avoiding the social world helps. I just can't bear to see people happily enjoying the very thing that will kill me in the foods they eat and post happily because well, it's not killing them, yet. YET!

I do like seeing people happy and changing the very way they view their obesity. To overcome weight problems is a chore and one that deserves high-fives and demands hugs! I hope in some way that my testimony of healthy eating has impacted many peoples lives so that they WANT to live and not just live meal to unhealthy meal. Death is final! No, we're not going to take our bodies with us afterward but I feel what we ARE taking is our negative unhealthy thoughts. They don't just go, poof, because we die, they shape our very soul in the here and the hereafter.

If we remain positive, feed on health and nutrition, maybe, just maybe when we face the Lord, we can share the joy we had living with him, our Father who wants nothing but the BEST for us! Forgiveness isn't about doing wrong and treating your bodies bad all your life then when you get to heaven say, "Oh, by the way, forgive me for not cherishing the very sacredness of what you created in me." You knew all along your body is a sacred temple but spitting in the Lord's face is easier than self-control, I get it.

I'm alive. Even though I don't have much to do in a day, I pray, hours on end. It seems like everything has been taken away from me and all I have to do is pray. So if you don't see me for a spell, know that I'm out here, alive. If anything drastic happens to me, I've asked my husband or son to inform you so you will never be left not knowing what happened to Joni. To stay positive, I need to stay away from the negative, please understand that. I need to reclaim the joy that lies out in the dry fields buried. I will be back. You need patience as much as I. My love to you, my friends!

All praise and Glory to God! 

Ephesians 5:11-13, “Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them. It is shameful even to mention what the disobedient do in secret. But everything exposed by the light becomes visible — and everything that is illuminated becomes a light.” (NIV)

May Fever and a Blessed Day

Job 3:6 “As for that night, let darkness seize upon it; let it not be joined unto the days of the year, let it not come into the number of the months.”

Did you miss me? I didn’t think so. 

Well, last week I caught May fever and wrote posts for five days in a row cornering me into an ‘I need a break’ phase. The weather has been a pleasant 60ish to 70ish, not the unbearable 80ish I, and my body, so detest. We’ve had plenty of rain that is keeping the roads nice and muddy and the grass long and lanky one day after a mowing. 

The farming season has begun with the trucks barreling down the road, tillers tilling the fields, and the ever sneezy atmosphere of the fertilizer sprays. Did I mention the tree pollen and my neighbors' twelve-inch grass blowing in the wind? Please don’t say, “Do the neighborly thing and mow it for her,” she has a working riding mower and only mows the property that she lives in not the property (trailer) she rents and keeps as a dog house. Ahh, the life in the country that I would not trade for the world!

Today marks our one-year wedding anniversary and yes, we made it a whole year, coupled with the thirteen years that we dated. We might go out to lunch and then take in an afternoon movie. No, I will not be seeing a Marvel movie, hopefully. Somewhere I matured and am so not into superheroes. (minus my Christian Bale Batman excitement). They just wear too thin in the CGI category and no real plot to the story with hot nobodies turned into superwomen somehow. I roll my eyes half the time frustrating the man beside me who grew up a comic book fan and has to see every Marvel movie ever made!

I won’t be doing my much-loved gardening this year since I don’t have a tiller, can’t do the garden work because of my back problems, so I’m just going to let what flowers come up, appear and tend to them upon arrival.

Today is Friday the Thirteenth and while many think this is a bad luck day, I see it as a GOOD numbered day since this is the day we wed one year ago, and it is our thirteenth year of being together. I don’t believe in luck but if there is such a thing, thirteen would be my lucky number! 

Minus the 35 MPH sustained winds, all in all, it was a good day. We went to lunch at the China Buffet and had a delicious very filling meal where we came home afterward to sit and feel bloated. This little woman fills up after two plates and dessert. We stopped at a nursery on the way home and bought some Salvia for my garden. They are hardy perennials that I know will return year after year.

We wobbled home and began watching a movie called Failure to Launch, a clean, funny, romantic comedy that had me in stitches! It starred Matthew McConaughey and Sarah Jessica Parker. I LOVE Matthew and have only heard of Jessica; never really seen her in anything before.  Instead of spending $40 that it would take to go to a theater we saved our money and bought plants instead.

By serendipity, the weeks end happened. I say serendipity because hubby was going to ask for the two days off but when he received his schedule, his boss already had him off for two days, today and tomorrow too. See? Friday the 13th is a GOOD day! We made it an entire year! Woohoo! Okay, after spending thirteen years together I thought that was funny. 

I’ve got great friends who all gave me well wishes and it turned out to be a blessed day. Now onto another movie… You’ve Got Mail! And a full moon tonight…… *twilight zone music plays*

God Bless!

Job 41:17 “They are joined one to another, they stick together, that they cannot be sundered.”