Every time Google updates I have to remember passwords, verification codes etc. and it drives me nuts.  Why do I need all that to blog?  

I have to learn to slow my movements down.  I have always been "quick" and done two or three things at once.  With four kids and the chaotic lifestyle I led, it was necessary or I wouldn't ever get through the things I had to do.

But now, I use a walker and quick movements are counter productive to say the least.  Older people fall.  Our balance is out of whack.  I can manage without the walker, but I promised that I would use it and I've kept the promise.  I don't need a broken hip--which is what most of the over-the-hill-gang seems to break.  Learning to do things different than you always did is difficult. New" doesn't come easy.  And I don't like change. I am a creature of habit.  When I was so sick last month, I quit blogging and now I am putting it in line before the crossword so that I do it and don't forget--until one of you reminds me.

Every time I write a book, it has to be edited, and edited and edited.  Which I couldn’t possible do without Carolyn.  I fix a sentence, call her and read it to her, and she changes a word or says delete that sentence.  I can’t edit my own writing very well.  She puts up with me.  And is an excellent word-smith.

Today I have finished the next (third) book I am going to submit--now that I have found a publisher who likes what I write.  And I am starting the first editing run-through of a book I have  written about my grandmother.  The first time I do this, I delete, delete, delete...because just like when I am talking, I repeat myself.  And don’t know I have done it.  My friends know and put up with it???

Amy...thank you for the notes you send me and updates on your children.  Looks like you are doing a great job and about to have an empty nest.

I have been on a tear...cleaning out superficial pieces of furniture and the junk they contain.  I have a beautiful desk that is useless.  You can’t get your knees in the opening because of the carved walnut edges.  I bought it because it was pretty.  Stupid, stupid, stupid. 

I am tired of things that don’t work.  I emptied the drawers, found a new home for things that mattered and threw a ton of junk away.  It is empty.  Out, out, out it goes.

I have emptied five drawers of stuff in the room I spend most of my time in.  They are now orderly.  A month ago, I had prayed for God to give me motivation to get something around this house done.  Like Pilgram’s Progress, I had slunk into the slough of despond.  Be careful what you pray for!!!  Wow, did He ever motivate me.  Thank God for helping me do what needed to be done.  It is so satisfying to have “order” in my home.

When I was growing up in the forties and fifties, women shopped.  It was a big deal.  Up and down main street , looking in the windows that were staged to invite you in to buy--which very few of us could afford.  Stores specialized in one thing.  Not like Target and Wall Mart.

We all wanted to touch the product.  Hold it up, try it on.  We don’t do that any more.  Amazon is too convenient.  We are too busy to shop, and don’t really want to do it anyway.  When women went to work in the forties during the Big War, there was no turning back.  They didn’t have to ask a man for money. They made it for themselves.

And more than anything else that has happened in the last 80 years, it changed the way America functioned.  I don’t know if it was good or bad--with a female work force, the family changed, and mom wasn’t there for the family like she used to be.  Meals changed.  Child care changed, main street America closed their doors.  I lived through it.  I didn’t go to work until I was 39 and I thank God I didn’t have to.  Ken always gave me the paycheck anyway.  “Manage it,” he said.  I won’t be here most of the time and you need to know how.”  That was the truth.

There are words in my Bible that I put a circle around as I read.  One is the word “If.”  Another is the word “Ask.”  And “Woe.” 

 I’ve told you that I color.  Coloring is so satisfying!  When I open my Bible, “The kingdom of God,” jumps off the page in yellow.  The word “Faith” in purple, and the word “Spirit” in blue.  Everything I have memorized is green.

All of that helps me remember things.  And I never take notes.  If you do, you lose them, or put them away and never look at them again.  I selectively write in the margins of the Bible.  One or two words are enough to jar your memory.  Like the word “daily” in Luke.  “Take up your cross daily...and follow me.” The other writers don’t include that word.  But Luke was a doctor and got the prescription exactly right.  You have to do that every day.  Daily.  Words matter.  I like them.  And each writer of each book in the Bible uses different stress words.

People ask me, “Can God do anything?”  I think there are things he can’t do, like lie, or break his promises, etc.  But on a larger scale, “Does He know everything?”

That’s a different question.  We were talking about predestination in the class a month or so, which Calvinists believe--that some are chosen to be saved.

The problem is that if that is true, at the instant a baby is conceived, it is doomed or blessed.  And if God knows that baby is doomed, he is authorizing a soul to Hell.  How people can believe that a holy loving God would do that, I don’t understand.  The Bible doesn’t teach that.  So the next question is, “Does God know everything?”  If he can do anything, can he choose not to know something? That is what I believe.  I think He offers salvation to every soul and since he can do anything, he chooses not to know and keeps hoping that soul will choose Him.  “Come unto me,” He never gives up.

All of you are being so patient with me.  I just haven’t been able to think about anything but which pill to take next.  But I am through with the antibiotics, I feel like I’m going to live.  I’m slowly...putting things back on my to-do list.  Things like blogging.

I have spent hours on lists of what I can eat now, and what I can’t.  Luckily it isn’t going to be too hard for me.  (Kathy, they have taken me off white bread...that’s the hardest one.  Your rolls.)

My prayers have been in the “Ask and you shall receive,” category.  God is merciful!  I guess I still have a purpose.  If you are “out there” and feel discouraged, just know that God has a purpose for your life.

I haven’t taught my Bible class in over a month and the “girls” have taken the ball and run with it.  It makes me feel so joyful to see how far they have come in their Christian lives since I took the class six years ago.  They really don’t need me anymore.  That is very satisfying.   God supplies our every need.  That is so awesome.