"THINGS"

"If we spend all our time focusing on and wanting the things we can't have, we will miss the joys of the blessings of the things we do have".    

--Brenda

MEMORIES?

The past year in my life has been hard.  I'm just gonna be real with you.  It's REALLY been hard.  My parents made the choice to go to assisted living and made the decision for their house to be sold.  This is the house where we moved when I was 13 years old and it was next door to the house where we moved when I was three years old.  You might say that you imagine I was devastated.  I will tell you that I was not.  There were parts of the whole sequence that were very emotional for me.  All of the sequence was exhausting physically and mentally to me.  But devastated?  Not even close.   We emptied the house of soooo much stuff and cleaned it up, listed it, and much more and it got a contract the second day.   Two and a half months after my parents moved, my sister and I sat at the the closing table for this house.  As we each signed our last multiple paper representing our parents, we both got very very teary eyed.  It was a closure of a time.  Simply a closure of a time.  It was the Lord's provision for my parents and His best for them.  Have my memories left with the sale of that house?  Not a chance or at least as long as I keep my "rememberer" as The Grandbaby calls it.   Do my parents accept their decision for this sale?  Nah.  They want everything to be as it was 30 years ago.  I know realism and it can't happen.  Time goes by and time makes a change in everything and everybody.  That's a lesson I've learned.  

The church congregation I've been a part of for 50 years voted to build a new church building several years ago.  I think it was finished about fifteen years ago and we have worshipped in the new place all this time.  The Lord has been in that church with his sweet Spirit, souls have been saved, prayers  prayed and answered, praise given, tears shed, and shouts of joy heard.  Some have been married there, some of had goodbyes said there, and many have been baptized and joined to this congregation.  The new place houses the growth of this congregation.  

Fast forward to today.  The old church building was in much disrepair and the longer it stood, the more that disrepair came.  Today was the day that it was pushed down.  I didn't go watch, I had no need to.  You see my memories are still in my "rememberer".  I was married in that church, yes.  I brought The Girl to that church.   I felt much in that church during the time we were in it, just as I feel in the church building of the same congregation today.  I will say that as I looked at the pictures of the rubble and noticed the front rails, I realized my strongest meaningful memory was a Sunday morning in the cold winter.  I had been recovering from a serious surgery and the Sunday had come that I could return.  The Girl was sick that day so The Husband went to Sunday School then came home to stay with her.  That made me arrive alone a bit late that morning.  I remember standing on the porch, overcome with emotion of thankfulness as I listened to the song being sang by the congregation.  My soul overflowed with peace that the Lord had provided for me to return....not to the church building, but to the church congregation and the Spirit living in them.  I realized it's an odd kind of a memory but then again, maybe not.  I think I felt the same thing in the new building on the day The Girl married The Son-in-Law as I stood in the foyer and listened to the piano playing and I realized yet again how faithful the Lord is in all our lives if we only trust in him.   Overwhelmed by the goodness of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. 

It's not in the building, it's in the heart.  The things of the Lord matter and those things are best felt in the heart.  As for buildings, the BEST house of God will be not made with hands.  

"For if we know that this earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens."  2 Corinthians 5:1

I will view THAT building some day....I hope you will, too!

Consider.....

DIFFERENT

Hello again, blog readers!  It appears I am finally off my hiatus or whatever you choose to call my long lapse in posting.    I credit the lapse to multiple, multiple doctors' appointments for the multiple, multiple folks I accompany to the doctor, a mind that is so very full of "stuff" that needs doing, a body that is so weary of doing that "stuff", and just plain simple distraction.  Truth.  It's a rare year when I miss making my Thanksgiving post.  Does that mean I'm not thankful?  No, it's just "different" for me.  My thanks to my Savior for all HIS blessings is just different that I didn't blog voice them this year....the thanks is unchanged and still remains sincere.  Happily, Jesus knows that.  

So here I am again.  Finally.   

The Christmas season held a lot of sickness for those I love most....two cases of covid, one for The Husband and one for The Son-In-Law, and another case of walking pneumonia for The Grandbaby.  They were sick.  In our almost 46 years of marriage, I can never remember The Husband having a fever of 103+.  Now I know he has.   As we say in the South, bless.    Thankfully all are recovered.

I knew after The Parents moving to Assisted Living that this year would be "different" in many ways and I knew probably those who moved would not enjoy it at all.  You see, they don't like "different".   The thing that's hard to understand is that though things SEEM different, the only thing really changed is their location.  And it's a nice, good location.  Their physical and mental healths are "different" now, but the fact that they are my parents remains unchanged.  

I was thinking that is how many things in life are.  Many areas of life have "life" that comes and makes things totally "different" from what we considered normal.  I voiced just yesterday how Covid changed the world those years ago in many ways with that "different" virus that required quarantine and masks and fear.  Now Covid is here and it's not really "different" anymore, just a virus like so many others.  But man did it make life "different"?  For sure.

Faces we love may be absent and that's different, be them moved up to heaven or just absent.  Grocery prices are "different" and that's not good for anybody, but it's still a fact that folks have to eat.  So we either accept the "difference" or we make the "different" okay or better.  

Just remember as this years progresses, we will encounter different daily.  We must remember that often different and change have their places.  Just to prove my thought process, if I keep in mind that if I rolled along just the same day after day after day, I might not have had The Grandbaby in my life.  What a despair that would be!  Sometimes things being "different" allows things to be better!  Different and change is not always for the worse.  

So for this first post of 2025 after my hiatus,  I'm sure I have you totally confused.  Just remember with all the "differents" and "changes", love and blessings and Jesus remain unchanged.  That's the BIG deal!