NOTHING TO SAY? REALLY?

I don’t know how people who write for a living do it.  I love to write, but will go weeks, sometimes even months, without having anything to say.  You’d think that with a move, from northeastern New Jersey, to southwest Florida, then to central Florida, all in the span of the last eight months, I’d have plenty of real life fodder for a blog.  You’d think. . . .  how about if I just ramble and see where it leads?

I can’t believe how long I resisted moving to Florida.  Jim would have gone as soon as he retired, years ago now.  I had my reasons for not wanting to go, EVER:  It’s hot, how will I manage?  What about leaving friends and family?  What about the absence of a change of seasons?  What about leaving our church family where we feel loved and “home”?  

Then Jim said, “What about a 55+ community?”  A “last straw” for me! I dug in my heels. “I don’t want to live with a bunch of old people,” said the nearly 70 year old woman who stared back at me from the mirror every morning!  

For quite some time I argued with myself (with much grumpiness and imagined foot stomping) over all things Florida and old people.  I asked the Lord to soften my heart if Florida was in His plan for us.  Eventually, I began to stop thinking of ME and start thinking of JIM, who worked hard and faithfully for 50 years with the same company to take care of us.  Shouldn’t I think of what makes him happy and not just what makes me happy?  Lo and behold, over the next couple of years, I discovered that I had made a complete about face in my thinking!  (Thank You, Lord!)  Suddenly it was, “Florida, here we come!”

But that wasn’t all.  A year ago we began looking at 55+ communities and bought a house in one!!  I’m still pinching myself.  We live in a lovely community with lots of friendly people – older and younger – than us.  They do things like play tennis, and pickle ball.  They swim and bike and fish and play golf.  I find that I’m rediscovering myself!

In our first house in New Jersey, we had this lovely sun room.  I filled it with plants and loved to take care of them and watch them thrive.  Our second house in Bergen County didn’t have a lot of natural light, so my gardening days were behind me.  Here, we have a community garden where I have a little garden bed and have started tomatoes and peppers.  How fun!  I plan to join the photography club and maybe do some crocheting with the sewing club too.  Then there are movie nights, ballroom dancing, an indoor pool, oh, and the gym.  I still hate it, but I go.

We’re surrounded by lakes where there is an abundance of waterfowl, including sandhill cranes, one of the largest birds in the world, with a 7 foot wing span!  I happened upon one of these majestic creatures the week we moved in.  Standing nearly to my chest, two of them were strolling down our sidewalk, and just for my entertainment, began squawking at me!  Now I can see them nesting in the nearby lake and am so excited to see adults and babies strolling around the grounds.

Part of what helped make the transition easier was that our youngest daughter and her family moved down just a few months ahead of us.  They have settled about 16 miles away, so we can have dinner together or get together at one of our homes for a barbeque, or go to Disney.  Having family here has helped us all through this time when we haven’t yet made friends.

Our church search continues.  We were surprised, here in the Bible belt, that it would take us so long to find a church that was not just doctrinally sound, with good preaching and an emphasis on the Bible, but also a place we might call “home”.  We searched the internet, listened to sermons from websites, checked our GPS to see how far they were, visited some.  We worshiped to the accompaniment of rock music, old hymns with a country twang, and a blend of hymns and praise choruses.  We had one awful experience of not only NOT being welcomed, but feeling decidedly unwelcomed – and survived!  

We thought we had found a church.  We even attended a coffee with the pastor to find out more.  It had all the components we were looking for, but neither of us felt like it was “home”.  Then someone told us about another church nearby.  We knew the denomination was more liberal, and so had excluded it from our search.  Then we heard the congregation had a parting of the ways with its denomination, so we decided to give it a try after all.  And we liked it.  It’s early to say, but we’ll definitely go back.  It just might become “home”.

Today was a glorious, spring like day.  During my quiet time I was thanking the Lord for the blessing of living in such a beautiful location, for a winter that feels a lot like spring back in New Jersey, for changing my mind about a move and helping me to love the place where I’m planted.

We’re still in transition (and haven’t yet experienced an entire Florida summer), but this new setting begins to feel more like home.  It took me about four years to do it, but I’m glad we made the move.

THE STORM RAGES, WHAT DO YOU DO?

It’s 5:30 AM and I’ve been awake for a couple of hours.  There’s a thunderstorm raging outside with torrential rain, heavy wind and periodic bursts of the lightening Florida is known for.  Jim, who jokingly says he sleeps the “sleep of the just” is happily zoning away in our bedroom.

Like everyone else, I’m sure, I wake up sometimes with things on my mind that won’t let me rest.  Tonight the storm woke me, but then my mind took over.  My brother is on my mind a lot these days, but there’s also another family issue that troubles me and disturbs my rest.  And then there are the exciting things, like a long anticipated move and furnishing our house.

What do you do when you can’t sleep?  I made coffee and tried reading for a while, hoping it would make me sleepy, but when I went back into bed, my mind was busy and the storm was loud.  So I did what I often do and began to worship the Lord.

Remember the saying, “When you can’t sleep, don’t count sheep, talk to the Shepherd?”  That’s what I do.  Long ago, I hit on what has become such a precious “can’t sleep” activity.  I begin worshiping the Lord for His attributes, beginning with the letter A and working through the alphabet.  I rarely get half way through before my mind lets go of its worries, rests in the awesomeness of my God, and I fall asleep.  I spent time doing that tonight and it was sweet, even if the noise of a storm still robbed me of sleep.

Let me share with you some of my thoughts.

Jesus is Almighty.  Mightier than a storm.  Mighty enough to keep my brother at rest, as if in the calm eye of a hurricane.  Mighty enough to defeat the forces of evil.  Mighty enough to fight all my battles without my having to lift a finger.  Mighty enough to eliminate ameloblastomas.  Mighty enough to change the toughest heart.

Jesus is Beautiful.  Not GQ magazine beautiful, the Bible says there was nothing about Him physically that would attract anyone to Him.  But beautiful in character.  Beautiful in forgiveness, in compassion, in kindness, in mercy, in grace.  So beautiful that He captured the attention of ordinary fishermen, of Mary Magadeline, of Zaccheus, of blind Bartemaus, of little children, of the Centurion whose servant was dying.  So beautiful that the thought of seeing Him one day, of looking into His eyes and seeing His love for me, thrills my soul with anticipation. 

Jesus is compassionate.  He stopped and saw those others ignored.  He touched lepers.  He heard what others didn’t and stopped.  He heard Bartimaus’s cry, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me”, and rewarded his faith by healing his blindness.  Jesus saw the widow of Nain, crying as the pall bearers carried the body of her dead son through the streets and He stopped and gave her back her son.  Jesus sees the situations that keep me up at night, He hears my prayers, and He stops, He answers.

Jesus is divine.  One with the godhead, Jesus enjoyed the intimate, unbroken fellowship of Father and Spirit.  He who made all that was made, who sustains it by His Word, was worshiped by angels.  He sits now at the Father’s right hand, having completed the work He was given to do, and now He intercedes for His own as Mediator and Advocate.  

Jesus is eternal.  He existed before anything that was made was made.  His was the voice that spoke all things into being.  He exists above and beyond time as we know it.  

Jesus is faithful.  Faithful to keep His promises – to never leave or forsake us, to finish the work He’s begun in us, to meet all our needs according to His riches in glory, to cause all things to work for good in our lives, to hear and answer prayer in accordance with His perfect will.

Jesus is gracious.  Lavishly, abundantly, beyond all we could ask or imagine.  We don’t deserve a thing from Him, but He gives to His children anyway because He loves us.

Jesus is holy.  Jesus is beyond me, separate from me in His holiness and perfection.  Jesus is fully righteous, pleasing to the Father in all that He does.  Were it not for His perfect, holy life, He could not have been our substitute in death.  

Jesus is just.  All around I see injustice.  Babies destroyed before they see the light of day.  Children abused.  Crimes committed and criminals go free on a technicality.  Wars begun by those who want what others have.  Poverty that robs young people of a safe childhood and a good education.  Scams that prey on the elderly.  One day Jesus will return and establish His kingdom and His justice shall reign.  

On and on I could go, but you get the idea.

The Bible has a verse that says this: “The joy of the Lord is my strength”.  When I worry, my strength wains.  Troubles are too big for me to carry and impossible for me to resolve.  When I focus on them, I can’t sleep.  My stomach churns, my jaw is sore from clenching it.  But when I focus on Jesus - the joy of knowing Him, the joy of contemplating His person and His character, and all the blessings that are mine because of what He did for me, His joy becomes my strength.  It calms me, increases my faith, and allows my mind and body to rest in the assurance that Jesus is well able to take care of anything the storms of life throw at me.

The storm without and within is quiet now.  I’m going back to bed.

PRAYERS PLEASE!

We’ve been here in southwest Florida now for four months, waiting for the house we’re having built further north to be completed.  We have adjusted well, I think, to living in Florida. We put the move off so long, debating if and when to do it, wondering if we’d like it when we got here, but now that we’re here, it’s really just like home was in New Jersey, without the winter climate.  We still go to the gym, and to church.  We make meals, we visit the library, we read, we do laundry, we clean.  Just the climate has changed.  And we’re really happy we made the move.

Several times in the last couple of weeks when the weather was chilly and gloomy, I found myself longing for my New Jersey “sisters”, some from Montvale Church, others from BSF.   I was seriously missing chats over breakfast at a diner, cups of coffee (and chats) at the kitchen table, fellowship (Bible chats) over a Bible study, prayer together with other women for our kids (chats with God).  It was so hard to feel motivated to do anything.  And all this time of waiting was wearing thin.

Just when I thought I couldn’t take much more, a couple of things happened. Knowing my need to hear voices and news from home, the Lord provided phone calls and e mails this week from some of those sisters.  It was good to hear about what they’d been doing and what was going on in church.  It was good to laugh and it was good to hear them say they were praying for me.  Wow, it really lifted my spirits!

And then yesterday we finally heard from the title company telling us that our house is nearly finished and we need to set a date to close.  This is the news we’ve been waiting for so we could make our final move two and a half hours north to central Florida.  We are overjoyed, making plans to order furniture, clean and move out of the condo and begin a new phase of life.  It’s so exciting.

Alongside this long anticipated joy, we have also had anxiety over a serious family crisis.  A month or so ago, my brother, thinking he was suffering from a sinus infection, visited an ENT and discovered that he had a tumor the size of an egg blocking his nose.  The tumor was removed and it was benign and we thought “Hurrah, the Lord answered our prayers!”, and that he was home free. 

 

It wasn’t long before he heard from the doctor with further news.  What he has is adenoblastoma, a very rare condition that invades the soft tissue and bone.  It typically begins in the jaw and spreads from there.  There are no symptoms, until it begins pressing on things as it grows.  It can be growing for years without any indication of its presence.

He was referred to a dental surgeon in New York City with experience in treating this kind of disease.  This week he went for a CAT scan of his face to determine how much involvement the disease has in his face and jaw.  He doesn’t have full results yet, except that it isn’t in his eye orbit, which is very good news.

I texted my sister in law the other night to tell her our news about the house closing and we then sent several texts back and forth about my brother’s health and the potential this thing has of changing their lives.  They are asking themselves things like, “If this is bad, will he be able to keep working?  Will they have to sell their house?  What if he doesn’t survive the surgery?”  Who wouldn’t be asking those questions in their place?

Suddenly, I felt awful that I was so caught up in my own things that I really hadn’t thought first how difficult a time they were going through before I sent my happy, “We’re closing” news.  How small my longing for friends, and the closing of our house seemed in comparison.

We are confident that the Lord hears and answers prayer.  We've seen Him do that in numerous ways over these weeks for my brother.   

If you are reading this, then I assume you are a praying person.  Would you pray for my brother George?  Would you pray that God, in His mercy and grace, might completely heal him?  Would you pray that He will continue to keep my brother and his family in His perfect peace as they wait to hear from the doctor next week?  Would you pray ultimately that God’s will will be done and that He will be greatly glorified in the outcome?  Thank you!