Becky brought me a Kurig coffee maker yesterday for my Sunday Bible class.  The women were having to walk a really long way to get coffee on Sunday mornings and some of them have a hard time doing that.  Their ages range from 50 to 97! 

I have almost finished cleaning out the closet in the spare bedroom.  Tomorrow, I am going through all of the things that Ken left.  Books, papers, etc.  It’s time.  Anything I don’t know what to do with, I’ll put in one of those under bed plastic containers on wheels.  Maybe someone else will know what to do. They named the Pryor, Mayes county American Legion after Ken.  Maybe they would want it.

I found a million letters he wrote me.  He was gone on two 13 month deployments and wrote almost every day.  And some other three month deployments as well.  That would be 365+30+365+30+90 +++.  He was really good to write.  I did too, but he didn’t have a way to keep the letters I wrote.  They are gone.

I want to read them again someday...but probably never will.  The ones from the Vietnam war should be interesting historically.  He wrote about the air strikes he ran, and everything else imaginable.

I am going to have two completely empty bedrooms when I get through with this clean out.  It feels like I am on a diet and have lost 100 pounds.

It is amazing what we keep.  All of the Christmas stuff is going out except one little tree.  I can’t manage decorating anymore.  It’s actually a relief.

I am really making headway in cleaning out my closets.  I found around 15 scarves that we wore back in the 70’s-80’s.  Who wears those any more.  Not me.  

Also found a stack of hats from my chemo days.  I’m sure someone would like to have them.  Because I’ve decided I’m 13 years clean and I am not going to need them again.  Praise God.  So many women who get breast cancer don’t survive.

If you live to be 90, I think you will have had every disease known to mankind.  I’m halfway there?

I have now emptied two bedroom closets.  With four bedrooms, what do I need two of them for.  I only use one of them when people come over to stay the night.  

Actually, I live in three rooms.  Master bedroom, kitchen and family room.  The dining and living room and three of the bedrooms--I never go in.  The house is too big for me, but it’s what I have.  I am thankful.  I live close to three of my children.

Jeanette brought me Chinese for lunch.  Her son Brad always makes enough for me to have some.  Family and friends are a blessing.   

Something came over me yesterday!  I got up with “intent.”  I decided to empty (I do mean empty) out a closet in one of the bedrooms where I had stacked everything I didn’t want to deal with when I moved in this house.

It wasn’t as bad as it could have been because I had labeled the containers and had used those plastic pull out drawer kinda boxes.  

But before you can do a job like that, you have to rearrange where you are going to put stuff you want to keep.  So I started with the closet in the master bedroom that has two twelve foot shelves near the ceiling and a bunch of four foot, and two foot shelves at either end.  It is a huge closet and I had just been tossing stuff up there I didn’t know what to do with.

I threw stuff out.  Repurposed purses and shoes I never wear to Goodwill and took clothes there as well.  Once the shelves were empty, I reevaluated the things I was removing from the other bedroom and started a Godzilla transfer of what was worth keeping.

I bet you have a job like that you need to do--that you have put off for years as well.  If you do it, you will end up so sore the next day you won’t be able to get out of bed.  I hurt in places I didn’t know existed.  But.....I’m going to keep at it today and work my kinks out or die trying.

I was teaching 1 John, chapter one, and found another “if.”  Which is not unusual.  I often find things when I reread something.  So my count at this point is 17 “if’s.”  Conditions for knowing you are a Christian.

My count for “Write, written, declare, message” is 17 times as well. 

John has a unique way of writing his messages to other Christians.  No other writer expresses themselves like John.  He wrote five of the books in the New Testament and as you read them, you notice the words he repeats over and over.  

Another word he uses is “abide.”  Another is “love.”  Another is “know.” I’m still counting those words. I’ll give you an update.

I color the words the same color as I find them.  “Write” is blue, “know” is dark pink.  “If” is yellow.  And so on.  Green is verses I have memorized.

When I go back to that book later, the words jump off the page.

I don’t know how you study scripture, but this method works for me.

Everybody needs a study method.  I respond to color.

My ladies who clean for me every two weeks came today.  They don’t speak English, the lady who runs the company does but she is rarely here and so I can’t communicate with the cleaners to tell them what I want.  The company head says they are documented.  I certainly hope so.  I point, and they nod their heads like they understand.  Who knows.

I caught a second mouse today.  I don’t know how they got in.  This house is the most air tight house I have ever lived in.  It never gets dusty.  I am going to reset the traps tonight.  I need a cat. 

Two of my neighbors commented on how they would never set a trap or throw a mouse in a trap away.  They wanted to know who got rid of the mouse.  “I did,”  I told them.  They thought that was horrible.  They’ve never had a husband who was deployed for 13 months at a time.

The thing I didn’t like to do was fill the gas tank.  Ken always did that.  But if you are alone, and living in a strange place, you learn a lot of things you never knew about.   

You don’t know how to appreciate living in your home town until you don’t.  Everyone there knew me.  Nobody knew me in most of the towns we were deployed to.  It’s harder without good friends in a strange town.

The letter, 1 John, will clear up all the doubts you ever had as to whether you are a Christian.  He wants you to have no doubts and starts with the fact that he personally has seen, heard and touched Jesus in the flesh.  He uses those three of the five senses to accentuate that.

He continues with the fact that he is declaring, recording, telling, but mostly writing it all down so you will know. (He uses that word “know”  40 times in King James)  John doesn’t want you to have any doubts that what he is saying is the truth and he wants you to have a written record of what he is saying.

John then starts by saying “If” 16 times. Chapter 1:3 says, “And hereby we do know that we know him if we keep his commandments.”

Chapter 3:12b “...if we love one another, God dwells in us...”

Chapter 3:20a  “If a man says, I love God and hates his brother, he is a liar...”

Chapter 1:8a “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.

There are 13 more “if” statements...look them up.

The description of what your life looks like when you let God in is very clear.  John was the one whom Jesus loved.  John doesn’t pull any punches.  If you keep doing the same old things you always did after you say, “I believe,”  You need to reconsider whether you are changed, or not.

My friend Jeanette and I have been working on a sewing project for the last three weeks.  We finished it yesterday--finally. 

If you are a seamstress, you know that if you aren’t an expert yet, it is because you haven’t ripped out at least one mile of stitches that were not done right.  Rip, rip, rip...and you will never make that mistake again.

I am sure it is the same for carpenters, carpet layers, brick layers and any other precision skilled worker.  Redo requires tearing apart what you have just done--and doing it over again--the right way.

I consider my self an expert seamstress.  I made everything my girls wore when they were small, and much of what they wore as they grew up.  I remember making my son Scott a suit, and when he tried it on he said “I  can’t wear this, the buttonholes are on the wrong side.”  I had not remembered that men and women had buttons on opposite sides.  I threw the suit in the trash.  Hours and hours of work--for nothing.  But I never made that mistake again.  I made every mistake imaginable--once.

The Christian life should be like that.  When we realize that we have made a mistake, we realize it, repent, start over and do right from then on.