I survived.  But blogging every day may be a thing of the past.  Julie, my adopted fifth child, told me to write about God changing his mind about something.  One thing I remember is (In the Old Testament) a man was told by God that he was going to die.  He begged for more time and God gave him fifteen more years.  In those years, he had a son who is one of the most evil people in the Bible.  Maybe it would have been better if he died when he was supposed to?

If God isn’t capable of changing his mind or being influenced by our prayers, why pray?  He says "Ask, and you shall receive.”  I don’t think we get everything we ask for sometimes...because it is not in the “Big Plan” or in our best interests (God sees the future)  but Jesus said  if your son asks for a good thing, will you give him a bad thing?  I would look it up but I don’t know how to write and search Google at the same time.  Tech incompetant.  I’ll try to get my quotes together next time I write.

A number of you have asked why I quit blogging....I have been really ill.  I thought for a couple of days I was done for.  I had a nurse for a week...which probably was what kept me going.

I don’t know what I would have done without my brother...He is the smartest doctor I know even on his worst day.  He coached me through it--by phone.  Along with an emergency room run and antibiotics.

Good thing is, I made it.  But I don’t know that I will blog every day for a while.  I am really tired. 

Someone said, I’ll pray that God’s will is done.  I said, “God is not the author of sickness.  Jesus spent day after day healing the sick.  Pray for healing.  It is never God’s will to make us sick.  And He says to come to Him and ask...”  He has been gracious and I am better...I’m on the mend.

 This is post 2530.  I don’t really believe that is possible, but when I multiply it out from nine years ago, I guess it is.  I wonder if I have used up all the words God has allowed me for a lifetime?

I might as well say it...I am not doing very well.  So I am not going anywhere, doing anything, or anything else.  I have someone coming in everyday to get me started.  That said, I will try to continue to bore you with the details of “nothing.”

God bless you.  I’ll keep keeping on if you will too.  In the last few days I have heard from dozens and dozens of you. Thanks.  I am better...and getting better.  I just have to figure out what I can eat and what I absolutely can’t.  I found out today that I can tolerate almond milk so that is a plus. I had never tried it.  

This year is evaporating, I’m still thinking in terms of January 2020 when all the crazy started.  I can’t seem to keep up.

Kidults...the new word for kid games for adults.  I love games, puzzles, etc.  Anything that makes me figure things out.  Maybe that’s why I became a mathematician? 

This year is winding down.  I still......don’t have anything Christmas up. I did go back to the closet and look at all of it.

I don’t need anything.  I don’t want anything.  I don’t want to take care of anything.  And the things I would like to have are foods the gastro-guy says I can’t eat anymore.

He left me some things that I like.  Right now it is all liquids.  Which is ok.  I can do it.  I get to add foods back one at a time to find which ones I can tolerate. 

I told my sister Lisa, and my brother Bill, that I am taking all the hits for the family so that they won’t have to.  I got all the genetic anomalies. 

    

Every day it is something new.  Friday night, I thought I had appendicitis.  Pain so bad I could hardly walk.  Becky took me in to the emergency room and said “Mom, quit talking.  Just let them take care of you.”  She knows me pretty well.  

It reminded me of when Ken had it and we couldn’t get him to go to the emergency room.  He kept saying he would be ok.  Jon and Scott picked him up under his arms and drug him to the car.  He was past the point of resistance.  It had ruptured already.  Marines.  They can be stubborn.

But I had a bad bout of diverticulitis.  I warn you all, don’t get that either.  Horrible horrible pain.  But today, I think I’m going to live.  The pain is better.  When I got to the emergency room, they rammed a needle up my arm and hit me with morphine.  Thank God for morphine.  Tomorrow I see a gut doctor and he will tell me what to do.  Basically, He’s going to tell me to quit eating anything I like.  I’ve been on a liquid diet for three days and that is the pits. 

I have been cleaning out paper....and ran across meaningful scripture that I had written down.  It caught my heart:  

“Who am I Lord and who is my house that you have brought me this far?”  2 Samuel 7:18-29.

That 18 year old girl who had never been anywhere, who married and was alone in a strange world of the Marine Corps...no friends, no car, no family, couldn’t cook, didn’t know how to do anything but play the piano and marimba...God has brought me a long way.  Who am I Lord? 

Five children, ten grandchildren, 9 great-grandchildren.....my “house” now that I have now.  I couldn’t have imagined it back then.  I can hardly imagine it now.

What do people do who don’t know God.  How do they make it through the ups and downs of living a life?

The tornado alley has moved east.  Oklahoma always got it.  Right up through the middle of America...every spring and summer.  But now, with the shift in the weather pattern due to warming of the earth, the tornados have shifted to Mississippi.

My friend Sally lives in Mississippi and every time I watch the weather now, it is going right over the top of her.  Those of us in Oklahoma have a storm shelter, or know someone who does.  The southeastern states don’t have very many of those.  They are at the mercy of the wind.  And it is destroying entire towns and killing a lot of people. 

I don’t have a shelter, but my neighbors do.  I’ve only gone to Jeanine’s twice since I moved here.  And only once of those times because of the siren--it came across the top of us, but lifted and jumped I-35.  My daughter Becky’s neighbor lost part of their roof.  But in 8 years being here...all I can say is “Thank You Lord,” and spare my Mississippi friend Sally.

Purpose.  That’s what I’ve been praying for.  I don’t have to feed Squig, or let him out now...so after I do the crossword, what do I do next?  I would not have ever imagined such a thought back in my thirties!!  But now, I don’t have a job, I don’t clean my own house, don’t have children...what do you do when you don’t have anything particular to do?

Well.  I have prayed for direction and yesterday I got a jolt of energy about a stack, (five or six stacks) of paper on my dinette table that I have been avoiding for a year (years).  I started sorting it yesterday, and today, I am putting paper into files.  So I can find what I want when I want it.  Which I haven’t been able to do for at least five years...since I moved here (across the street from where I lived when I moved here.)  I don’t know if you remember that story.  I had a steep driveway.  This house has a flat driveway.  I probably saved my life a dozen times trying to go to the mailbox.  Just by moving across the street.  I gave up three baths and three car garage  for two baths and two car garage.  And it’s still too big.  But in Edmond, that’s the way it is.

This morning when I sat down to read the paper, I noticed that the room was gloomy.  I hadn’t opened the blinds or gone out the back door in five days...because I didn’t have a dog to let out.  I might as well not have a back yard!!

So I opened the blinds and let the sunshine in.  I will go outside in the back yard come spring...I’m going to be a dope and try to plant okra again.  It will give me a reason to enjoy the back yard.  I worked really hard planting shrubs, astilbe, iris, asparagus, silver mound and purple clover...so I will try to keep it going another year!  

The weather has been so odd this year that I am surprised that any of it lived.  I had Ron cut the barberry back to the ground, it was 9 feet high and had taken over the flower bed.  It has already started to sprout again.  Life continues...I am better today, just still so sad.

The worst part is when I come home from somewhere and nobody greets me at the door.  For two days I thought I was never going to stop crying.  But today, I am just horribly sad.  I know that is the way it is going to be.  Sad, and lonesome.

I realized that since 1970 when Ken got back from Viet Nam, I haven’t had to go to bed by myself.  That’s fifty-two years.  Friday, Saturday and Sunday night I kept reaching out to see if Squig was there.  I know why a stuffed bear brings a little comfort.  I kept hugging my pillow.

Grief is one of the ways we know there is a God.  Only He understands where grief comes from.  When I have prayed these last few days, I have asked Him how he stands the death of all the people who reject his love.  I am reminded of the scripture that says, “What is man that you are mindful of him...?”  Why did God knowingly invent, create, people that have the capacity to break His heart?  It makes no sense.  Maybe that’s what love is.

My grandson David helped me bury Squig this morning.  I can’t stop crying.

Squig was so sick in the night, I held him...quietly, he looked in my eyes saying, “I trust you.”  It was time.  He let me hold him like that, until it was over. He just quietly waited on me. 

I’ve never cried like this in my life.  I think it is because everyone else that I have loved went in their own time.  Squig was depending on me to stop his suffering.  He just lay in my arms waiting.  He was ready, I wasn’t.

The vet who has cared for him this last year told me, “You have done a remarkable job of caring for this little dog through his illness...”  It didn’t help much.”  I did my best...it just wasn’t good enough.  The only thing that makes it bearable is that he is with God and like all the ones I have ever loved, I will hold them all again.

Here’s my advice for the day.  If you have a craving for lobster, don’t buy one of those packs of frozen packs of claws.  I succumbed, and when I tried to break them open, I found out why they were so cheap.  It took a hammer.  I had to go outside in the cold and crack them on concrete!

Carolyn had bought me some lobster thing-a-ma-jigs you break them open with years ago because she knew how addicted to lobster I was. (The guys used to take night flight time--which they had to get so many hours in--to fly to Maine and come back with the plane hold full of lobster)  But the lobster clamps couldn’t touch the shells they were so hard.

And when I finally got the meat soaked in butter, they were awful.  I threw it out.  And I never, never throw food out.  So, hearing all that, I’ve saved all of you from trying lobster that way.  Go to Red Lobster if you first hock your jewelry.

Monday.  What will I do this week?  I would never have asked myself that question ten or twenty years ago.  Maybe instead of “what will,” I should think “what can” I do this week!  The options are getting fewer and fewer.

Sunday, my class taught me that instead of trying to lift the big black bag out of the trash, I should turn the container on its side and pull the bag out.  Duh!!!  Why don’t I think of these things.  We do what we’ve always done without thinking about it until we can’t do it any more.

Like I’ve said in the past...all the people who have found easier ways to do things at this age have gone on to glory.  I’m learning.  I know I can’t lift a trash bag up and out of the container anymore.  Jeanine, my friend across the street will get the trash to the street.  She doesn’t have much and so she brings hers over and we just use one trash container.  One step at a time I’m learning stuff.

I lose my phone at least once a day.  Usually I can retrace my path and find it...if I can remember my path!!  It is very traumatic.

Today, I went to breakfast with Ann--as usual on Fridays.  We were on the way home and I realized I couldn’t find my phone.  We went back to everywhere we had been and I remembered I had sat down to wait on her on a sofa at one of the places.

And Ann...kind soul that she is to me...went back in so I wouldn’t have to walk and tear up the pain in my back.  She called my phone when she went into the place and sure enough, the phone had fallen out of the side of my purse and slipped under the cushions on the sofa I had been sitting on.

Thank the good Lord that the sofa hadn’t been sold yet.  I have got to start asking myself every time I move from one place to another...”do you have your phone?”  It is amazing how dependent we have become on our cell phones.  It is now my true brain storage place.

I think I skipped a day of posting.  Any more, I don’t even know when I do that!  I’ve been driving myself nuts editing.

My friend Carolyn was blessed by God with the gift of discernment.  Last night, in despair, I told her, “I can’t do this anymore.”  She said, “Janie, you are a great writer, but you are editing the wrong book and making yourself sick.  Stop it.”

  

Just like that!  She knows me really well.  First: encouragement--you are a good writer.  Second: You are stressing yourself over something you don’t want to do and wasting time on the wrong thing.  And third:  Stop it.

I went to bed last night with a light heart and didn’t need anti-acids.  I woke up this morning ready to edit what I’ve been wanting to edit instead of facing a job I was doing for a publisher I don’t know.  Thank God for friends.  They see right through us to the problems.