After the Heartbreak

Well, as it turned out, the week I expected to be the busiest (and therefore no blogs) was the week that I had the most time to write. It's amazing how much time I have waiting on my hubby. He gets up and sits in the wheelchair for a change from the recliner so while I sit around waiting for him to get tired of sitting there I write. I push him to the back of the house so he can freshen up and check his emails, and I sit and write waiting for him to be finished. Then I push him back to the front of the house and position him in front of the TV and I sit and write waiting for him to want something else. So I've had all kinds of time to write. Seems like every time I put out a "you-won't- hear-from-me-for-awhile" blog, I end up writing the most.

It's a rainy day here in the foothills. It rained a little off and on all day yesterday and of course it rained the night before while I was out burying Mulder. We're supposed to get a good soaking rain today but so far it's been very light. I don't know if that means it's missing us entirely or if it just means we're going to get the heavier stuff later this evening. Regardless, I don't want it raining in the morning when I have to go to church early to prepare for communion. But that remains a big mystery as of right now. So many of the trees around town have turned color. To look out my glass sliding doors is to see a palate to Nature's beautiful colors spread out on the hillside. Yellows, oranges, reds, greens and browns. It's a dark day today so they don't look as vibrant but they are still beautiful to look at. On a sunny day some of the yellows are so bright it's a tiny bit painful to look at them. It seems that nature shouts with God's glory sometimes.

I got an email from Laurie and it sounds like she's taking things a little better than I did. She's a strong person. She always has been. I'm missing Mulder today and my mood matches the darkness of this rainy day. I don't like death. It steals from us. It comes and takes someone or something we love and never brings them back. I'm just heart sick over this past week. It's been a week I don't care to repeat in any way. But I will miss Mulder for a long, long time. My granddaughter just lost her cat a month or so ago. Seems like there's been an awful lot of grief going around the family of late. I have lost a total of five cats in the last couple years. I'm surprised I'm still sane.

I've got a busy week coming up. Maybe that's good. Most of it will be spent driving Michael to and from places. I need to get him over to the hospital for foot X-Rays. Then to the Senior Center to vote. Then on Wednesday I have to take him across the river to see his regular healthcare provider and then on Thursday I have to do a repeat and take him back to the same medical complex to see his podiatrist who did the surgery on his foot. Then for me, I have Small Group Monday morning, two meetings Tuesday night, a doctor's appointment to change for me, and a meeting Thursday afternoon. I was stressing over all these responsibilities yesterday before the funeral and my friend Joann leaned over and said, "Just do one thing at a time. That's all you have to do. One thing at a time." She changed my entire outlook. So now every time I start to stress I just tell myself, "Do one thing at a time."

Just made a trip out to the grocery store and it's raining pretty good out there. I tried to pick up some unleavened cracker bread for communion in the morning but they don't carry anything like that. I'm not sure if we have enough for tomorrow. If I don't have enough, I'll go back to the
wafers, I guess since I couldn't buy an extra box to use as insurance. Hopefully, I'll have enough crackers but I really don't think I do. I'll call Margaret and see if she's got some at her house then

[Well, I just had a basket of flowers delivered to my door. My son and daughter-in-law sent it to me for losing Mulder. My family knows how much I love my cats and how deeply I grieve when I lose one. I sometimes envy the people who can keep their animals at a distance and not come apart when they die, but then I think, no, I'd rather go through the grief and just love them with my whole heart and let it break when need be. But I have to confess that whenever one dies, it is tempting to become hard. I have a friend in my small group who would never understand my grief. He doesn't like pets of any kind. I think of what he's missing out on and I feel sorry for him. But right now, to be perfectly truthful, I feel pretty sorry for myself.]

I can drive over and pick up a box from her. [Whew! got that taken care of and I can stop worrying about tomorrow morning. That makes two excursions out into the rain and I hope it's the last one.] I had all month to remember to pick up more crackers from Margaret. We used to use the prepackaged communion wafers but then we decided to switch to Matzos bread and when we did that, Margaret was down in Sacramento and she bought a big case of the bread (crackers, really). That's why she had some. But this was a different brand. She said she bought it at Safeway across the river because we had run out of the ones from the case she bought. So I'll just start picking it up when I buy the grape juice for communion and bypass Margaret altogether. It's silly for her to have to "guess" when I'll need more. And it's silly for me to need to go to her to get them. I already buy the juice, I may as well buy the bread too.

I just realized I haven't had my quiet time yet today. I got thrown off because while I waited for Michael to finish in his bathroom I went into mine and the three devotionals I keep in there to be read "whenever" during the day were lying there on the counter and it just so happened that I had the time to read them all. So I guess in a sense I've had my quiet time. I just used different devotionals. Now I need to take these three devotionals and my Bible into the bedroom (away from the football noise on TV) and have my real quiet time with my usual devotionals. You know, I'm an impulse buyer. I hate that I am and I have always tried really, really hard to break that bad habit but it continues to hang on. Anyway, I'm glad that I have finally started reading my devotionals because I have nine that I'm currently using and they were all bought on impulse. Each time promising myself that I would actually read this or that devotional but then they always ended up just collecting dust. But since April or May I've been consistent with them to read all of them every day. It only takes a very few minutes to read a devotional (except for Streams in the Desert) and doing them the way I am, spreading them out, I end up pretty well bathing my heart and mind in Scripture and inspirational, spiritual thoughts all day long. And I'm finally reading the books I bought on impulse. It takes discipline to create a good habit and I've never really had any discipline to spare in my life. I am a great procrastinator. I always start out with the best of intentions, but don't have what it takes to continue something day after day and month after month. I've been six months on this routine and so far I've kept at it. That has got to be a record for me.

Well, it's getting late in the day so I should push myself away from the computer and get something done for the day. It's hard to do anything because of Michael being out here in the center of things with the football noise blaring from the television. I have to keep reminding myself that it's not football that I dislike so much as the crowd noise that goes along with it. I can barely walk through the livingroom what with the recliner opened up to make a bed and then a kitchen chair pushed up to the foot of the recliner with pillows piled high to keep M's foot elevated. Then he's got a coffee tray placed on one side of his chair and another small table on the other side. All the furniture is pushed back out of the way to make room for all this and the wheel chair. I can barely walk through the room, let alone do any cleaning or anything. And it hasn't even been a week yet! It's going to be a very long couple of weeks until he can start getting around on his own. But I can clean off my table and I think I'll have my quiet time in the bedroom away from the TV and then clear off the table. I've got my knitting piled there and I need to decide whether I'm going to make a blue or a red scarf next and then once I decide I can cast the stitches onto my needles and get started knitting. M needs his bandages rearranged so I guess I better hop to it. I don't know why that ace bandage keep loosening the way it does! It's frustrating!

Sorry for the boring blog but I'm trying to keep you informed while I deal with my own issues and I'm not sure what interests you the most. It may be that if I don't write a devotional, you'd just as soon I didn't write at all. I'm just never quite sure what appeals to people. A peek into my boring life or a devotional-only type format. It's my blog; I suppose I can write what I feel like writing. But I'd like people to enjoy what they read. I definitely will not blog for a few days as I know right now that I will not have time. So I'll take a break here and give you guys some air to breathe while I'm at it. Stay close to the Lord and I'll write again in a few days. Bye...