Always A Challenge

Ecc. 9:11 “I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.”

Always a Challenge

It’s not easy

It’s really hard waking up every single day in a peppy mood. I wake and am so grateful to be awake one more day but let me tell you, every day is a daunting challenge to merely stay alive. While my mind is focused on the positive the dark and evil of the world try too often to slither into my thoughts and screen.

While most wake, go on in a mundane fashion as if their whole life is in front of them because honestly none of us really know when the time will come, I wake to the challenging days before me. Life for me has changed so much in five months, I used to take for granted eating a slice of pizza, or eating something from Subway or placing food on my plate that, while unhealthy as all get out, was delicious. 

Each morning I look at the sunrise differently as if this was my very first dazzling one, the sunset as if it was my very last purple-glazed one, I fall asleep praying that all will be right with the off-kilter world. I wake to a new unblemished day and face challenges, minute after minute, hour after hour. Everyone else seems to be going about life in a ho-hum matter-of-factly manner.

I watch as people shuffle about, children laugh and play, parents doing what parents do and that’s loving on their children. People are hurriedly rushing from point A to get to point B. I feel as if I’m sitting high on the balcony overlooking a flurry of activity and me, just an observer biding my time.

I didn’t want life to change for my husband either but such as it is, it has. I try to continue to make home cooked meals but that in itself is a challenge for me. I stir the delectable sauce or check to see if the noodles I can’t eat are done and place a meal on the plate that I can’t partake of. No, I now make two different meals one for me and one for him. Yes, he says he is more than capable of making his own meals, and I get that. My duty as his other half for fourteen years is now shifted, like a planet off its axis, so I try to keep it as normal as possible and do what I can.

I do believe change is good in so many ways. Maybe that is what God had in store, to wake us (my husband and me) up so we could appreciate the smell of the fragrant roses or enjoy the simple fluttering butterfly more; to bow down to His gloriousness as many just pass the wonder of it all by without a second thought.

I thought I was the most appreciative person alive but now I’m even more appreciative if you can imagine that. But please take note; every single second of the day is wrought with a challenge. With three illnesses upon me, I’m not just facing one mind-bending dastardly disease; I have to be blasted with three, tiring, pain-filled, hurdles to coast over every single livelong day.

I’m not whining I would just like you to think twice before finding my journey somewhat lighthearted. I’m doing so much better than I was five months ago, feeling great and not knocking the hurdles over, nope, I’m soaring but it is not without its grunts and groans. To be honest, I feel as if I’m climbing Mount Everest in blizzard conditions, being tossed about by the winds; or crossing the Sahara Desert in a windstorm where the sand on my face feels like shards of glass being slung at me. 

If I disappear for a day or two, it is more than likely because I’m tired and beat. If I don’t write for a day or two, it is more than likely the Sahara has dried me up, words and all. If I seem distant, you’re not to blame, I am being challenged and am out here trying to do the best I can to overcome everything thrown my way. As humbling as this is, I have to bow down and admit first and foremost…it is always a challenge.

God bless each and every one of you! 

Heb. 12:1 “Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us,”

Holy Week ~ I See Him

Eph. 3:3-4 “How that by revelation he made known unto me the mystery; (as I wrote afore in few words, Whereby, when ye read, ye may understand my knowledge in the mystery of Christ)"

I See Him

I see Him in the light of day

I see Him in the clouds that sway

I see Him in the breeze He breathes

I see Him in the soul that seethes

I hear Him in the songs of praise

I hear Him in intuitive ways

I hear Him in the reprimand

I hear Him in the Promised Land

I touch Him in my daily need

I touch Him in diurnal deed

I touch Him with my active prayer

I touch Him with each wisp of air

I taste Him in the scented dew

I taste Him in His words so true.

I taste Him in the daily bread

I taste Him in the cross He bled

I see, hear, touch and taste

The scent of Him in honor placed

For all I see and all I do

It is my God I share with you.

Deut. 4:29 "But if from thence thou shalt seek the LORD thy God, thou shalt find him, if thou seek him with all thy heart and with all thy soul."

Storing Up Treasure

Col. 2:2 “That their hearts might be comforted, being knit together in love, and unto all riches of the full assurance of understanding, to the acknowledgment of the mystery of God, and of the Father, and of Christ;”

My neighbor is a hoarder. You know the ones you hear about on reality TV shows? She has piles of pallets sitting here and there, wooden crates stacked over here, trash everywhere so much so I feel like I’m living in the county dump until I walk outside and realize this is my neighbor’s treasure.

I saw a meme recently and it said:
“A spotless house is a sign of a wasted life.” 

I kind of took umbrage to that remark because my house is very clean. I wouldn’t go as far as to say ‘spotless’ but if you knocked on my door right now I wouldn’t have to run around straightening up before I opened the door. Does that mean I have a wasted life because I see cleanliness as next to Godliness?

Some people who are not too clean might like reading the above meme because it makes them feel good knowing they haven’t wasted their life cleaning their home. Maybe some people take pride in a dirty home, I don’t know, my neighbor sure holds no shame in her mess building, so why do I love and appreciate a clean home?

I was raised in a house with six kids, both of my parents worked so it was up to the two girls to clean the mess left behind by the others and often I found myself cleaning alone. I was married to a man whose mother was a hoarder and at her house, there was a path to the kitchen, bathroom and bedrooms but clothes and trashy treasures lying around in case they were needed one day.

What is so funny is that my ex and I would clean her house immaculately when she went on vacation and within a day of her returning home, it was back to the same mess. It was as if the mess cradled them to sleep at night and gave them a secure feeling of safety. 

I used to clean houses for a living (when my back was able) and I loved cleaning for people who couldn’t do the hard labor themselves. I had one lady who would clean before I even got to her home but insisted she didn’t and would pay me to do the finishing touches. Fine by me! 

Now that my back isn’t what it used to be I can’t do the cleaning I would like to do but I still keep a nice house AND have a life. Oh dear, but has all the time I spent cleaning mean I’ve wasted my life? Why do I let a stupid meme get to me? Guilt because I’ve wasted my life cleaning and LIKING it clean?

Just to clarify, I LIKE my house spic-n-span. Now more than ever I appreciate my tidy house you know why because I’m still able to do what I can to satisfy my need-to-be-clean urge! In a couple of years I probably won’t be able to sanitize my house due to disability and I’ll lay there wondering why I wasted all that time cleaning when I could’ve been doing… what? 

Thirteen years ago I left behind every treasure I owned except for what I could fit into a small u-haul truck and most of what I brought was for my son. My cleanliness I brought with me and to this day my home here is as clean as the one I left behind. Cleanliness is a part of who I am. Not for any other reason than the enjoyment of smelling freshly washed linen, newly mopped floors, the aroma of Windex wafting through the air. Ahhh… life is good when it is a clean life.

Some people treasure trash while others treasure cleanliness. Whatever the case may be as I’ve heard many a time in my life, you can’t take what you have here with you when you die, but one thing I can take with me…my clean pure soul and that my friends, is good enough for me! 

Matt. 6: 19-20 “Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal: But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal:”