My writing. Just this morning I wrote an essay about my favorite house. It was a house I lived in as a foster child. It was a single story four bedroom house, with a wide front porch. The short driveway ended at the side of the house under a grape arbor, wide and shady, laden with fruit. The house was unlike any home I’ve ever lived in, it was not a cheap cardboard characature of it’s neighbors, like so many houses in suburbia are. This house was different, unique, enchanting. It had hard wood floors and large windows and wood fire place in the front room, flanked by glass covered built-in book shelves. The back yard however, was where the magic happened. It was a full acre of fruit trees. In Los Angeles County, no less! There were persimmon, plum, peach and apricot trees. It was a paradise of hidding places and safe spots. The trees were groomed to be low to the ground and their branches created little rooms beneath them, where a child could lay in the grass, read a book and eat the half-ripe fruit. The house also had something I’d never seen before, a cellar. With an outside entrance you would step down concrete steps to the dirt floor of the cellar. It’s walls were poured cement and were lined with wooden shelves. What a wonderful place to play store! I raced the length of that lovely yard on my imaginary horses, my long hair whipping out behind me like a mane in the wind. My heart took flight also during those times and i felt joy, ever so briefly. It was a wonderful house, a warm and welcoming house, filled with hateful lonely people…and I loved it’s wooden beams and creaking floors. I lived there 6 wks.

Funny how this question relates to a dream I had last night…I dreamt my husband and I had traveled to another state to buy a piece of property. We were very excited about the prospects of buying this land and were examining the house built on it. The thing that struck me about my dream is that my husband was young again in it. We were still grandparents and I was the age I am now, but my husband was a young, strong 20 year old man. When I woke and told my husband about the dream, we laughed, but then I told him, “That’s how my heart sees you, you will always be the young man I fell in love with all those years ago…in my heart.”
We honor the tenderness within us by sharing it.

In March of 2019, while vacationing in Florida, we bought a house.

This may not seem like a big deal until you consider
1. Our current home was thousands of miles away in Michigan
2. So were our children and grandchildren
3. We hadn’t even begun to prepare our current home for sale

It was frankly, terrifying. We had talked for years about moving away from the harsh midWest winters for but one thing after another had cropped up and interfered with those discussions. Nevertheless…when the opportunity and the perfect house presented itself, we plunged ahead. Back in Michigan we advertised our house and 12 acres, and began a drastic purge of the last 35 yrs of our lives as we packed up our large house. We were determined to take just the neccessities…it’s amazing how much of our earthly goods we sold, donated and threw out.

Fast forward, the house and property sold, we tearfully kissed our children and grandchildren goodbye and we drove the rented UHaul all the way to Florida to “start over” our new life.

10 months later the COVID landed on our nations shores…but that a story for another time.

The lesson I took away from our leap of faith is that we are never too old to reimagine/reinvent our lives. Life is wonderful here in our new community as we build friendships and connections. We’re glad we took that leap.

Despite this year’s many challenges and the struggles I’ve faced as a direct result, I am feeling joyful in anticipation of Christmas. It was the one day of the year when I was happy, growing up, and ever since I was a newlywed in my own first apartment, I have rejoiced in the simple indulgences of the day. Gift-giving, special music and foods, the decorations, the lights….it’s always been a magical time of year. I feel myself caught up in the celebration, especially this year. Merry Christmas!

I think of the words of that wise, wonderful human being….Mr. Rogers. He told us in the face of tragedy, to look for the helpers. There are always those who are “coming to the rescue”, so to speak. In a world FULL of evil, we must deliberately look for what is joyful. Yes, lots of people have died this year, BUT babies have also been born. Bad Politics have dominated the headlines, while unsung heroes have continued their good work, unheralded. Plans have been disappointed, but within those disappointments, opportunities have risen, unexpectedly. God is alive and well and at work, in and through His people, His natural world and in His purposes.

It’s going to be all right.

I’ve learned that I am a survivor.

Growing up in foster care, abused and unloved, I couldn’t imagine surviving childhood. (I attempted suicide for the first time when I was 9 yrs old) Becoming a Christian at age 16 changed my life. By the time I reached age 17 and joined the Marines, I had a glimmer of hope. I married at 18, moved from Los Angeles to the absolutely foreign landscape of the American rural MidWest at 19 and raised a family in a home that was an hour from the closest mall, was heated with a woodstove and had a party line telephone. It was a struggle but I had real joy for the first time in my life. Then, one day the unthinkable, the unimagineable happened…my firstborn child, my 14 yr old son, the delight of my life, went on a sleepover at his best friends house in June of 1999. I kissed him goodbye at 3:30pm; at 5:30pm I received the phone call that rocked my world. He was dead. He had drowned while visiting his best friends grandparents house. A diver had to be called in to recover his body. I was devastated. I asked the Lord, that first night…”Lord, I never had a mother…couldn’t I have kept the boy?” I was hospitalized for severe depression two yrs later. I struggled for years to find my footing again, I was diagnosed at age 48 with bi-polar, PTSD and anxiety and put on medication that finally stabilized my many chaotic feelings.

I say all this to say, each time I’ve faced a challenge in life and I’ve felt I couldn’t go on…God in his mercy has provided a way. I live now in the light of his grace, enjoying retirement with my wonderful husband of 38+ yrs; my surviving children love and appreciate me and I have four beautiful grandchildren. Life is NOT easy. Life has NO guarantees. But Life is beautiful, rich and precious.

My memories are difficult, but I’ve also learned to let go of the hurt and embrace the here and now, with gratitude.