3 WEEKS IN

I watch old shows more than new ones for reasons too many to waste time sharing.  One of the "teasers" for Monk shows him cutting off bread edges (as I also prefer) and throwing them and the bread too into the trash.  Natalie asks, "What's wrong with those?"  Monk replies, "They're not snuff.  Got to be up to snuff!"  He keeps cutting and throwing away slice after slice.

I began a new year of life 3 weeks ago and that's how I feel, "just not quite up to snuff."  I want to be SNUFF!  I want my 75th year and every year after to be more than it's or I have ever been before.  

I do not want to feel less energetic, no, rather much more vigorous as if I could run a 5K.  I don't want to succumb to something silly as Pinkeye and have to stay home for days, no, I want to feel healthy,  vibrant and blossoming like the beautiful blooms all around.

Most of all, I want to wake up, jump out of bed and begin whatever great task I have to do and accomplish it well or more than that, fantastically.  So far these days, I've been waking up wanting to turn back over and go back to sleep.  No No No.  This just can't go on.  No matter what, this has to stop!

I don't do being "ill" well.  In fact I am miserable at it and in it.  I was trying very hard to be totally surrendered and accepting of the Lord's will over mine.  I kept reminding myself that if He were to decide to ask illness or bed-ridden of me that I would be faithful and obedient and could still do - at least I hope He would allow me - my most favorite thing - PRAY!  Dear Lord, please, if you were to decide that for my years left then do at least let me continue to be a person of prayer.  People could let me know what to pray and I could stay busy doing that each day.

But I am over the Pinkeye and I am starting to feel better so the hard part is to get busy and figure out just what He wants me to do and what I should choose to do to fill my time and fulfill my purpose and continue to do His will and be His servant and live it all to the fullest - SNUFF!

Yep - I have to measure up to being SNUFF!

How Worldly Am I?

In my devotions Sunday it talked about when Jesus tells His Apostles He is leaving but not to be sad because they will see Him again.  Of course for them it meant He was going to rise from the dead and they saw Him again in a few days.  For us it means we have waited over 2000 years and He still has not come back, but we have Him with us in the Holy Spirit's indwelling so we should be joyful.

I was thinking about if He were to come this very minute and everything of my life and this world were to be over and His new earth begun.  To be absolutely honest - do I really want to say goodbye this very minute to my family, my life, my things I enjoy doing or eating or looking forward to?

I'm happy He didn't come on Friday and we got to take a delightful and well planned trip to Chattanooga, Tennessee.  We wanted to celebrate our 75th, 50th and 20th milestone birthdays together while we were together.  Karissa was in Japan and I in West Virginia when MG had her 50th in June and Karissa will be back at Princeton when she celebrates her 20th on September 22nd.  We had a marvelous time - all we could have hoped for and much more.

I'm glad I got to be alive for another eclipse and one sort of amazing since it was ONLY crossing the USA.  I enjoyed a chocolate covered HOT Krispy Kreme donut that they featured special for today and my cute granddaughter waited in line to get a dozen.

I want to be ready to die at any moment.  I want the Dear Lord to believe I do consider this a foreign land and my real home is being built up there with Him and waiting for me to come.  I hope all my loved ones will be going with me so I won't have to miss anyone ever again.  I want to be joyful in all types of tribulation, suffering and pain that my loved ones are experiencing believing that this is nothing compared to the GLORY that awaits us all.  I want to think of our lives as James told us but a "vapor" meaning no longer than the breath I just took.

But I must confess I am not always in that frame of mind.  I am not always that ready to let go of any of it and definitely not this very minute.  Obviously I must keep praying and working hard at becoming more spiritually minded.  Yes, I must and I should pray that I start NOW.  Maybe we should pray for each other.  God bless.

ANOTHER BIRTHDAY

The first day of the rest of my life - UGH - YIPPEE YEA - ugh... I know "it's better than the alternative!"  Still - I consider my birth years like the New Year - a chance to start again but at what that's my problem.  Start what?   Accomplish what?  I want to write two books that continue to sit unwritten in folders of notes and attempts and and and...

I want to finish a scrapbook of my life and the girls that sits on many shelves in many not done yet scrapbook albums with boxes of pictures here and there and heaven knows where.

There is the stamp album of 40 years that I know my kids don't want or care about, so maybe I could make a few dollars for fun money.  Then I think of getting to the box or trying to evaluate it all with catalog values or the really hard part of finding a stamp collector that still exists, who would want to buy it. Seems impossible, so needless to say that has been put off for years not months.

I do have a very blessed and abundant daily life and it never ceases to make me happy.  Went to a church meeting tonight and when someone mentioned it was my birthday, Pastor ended the meeting with everyone singing HAPPY BIRTHDAY to me.  

I do want to make the remaining years the Lord has in store for me to be totally surrendered and used up by Him and Him alone and His work and His will and His plan for me NOT MY OWN.  

So in saying that then I must end with saying this - Dear Lord help me to be obedient, available, open and listening for your still quiet voice.  Simply said - Dear Lord HELP ME! Amen.

SO BORING

My dear friend commiserated lately that after 54 years of marriage having to fix one more dinner is just so boring.  It made me think about the things that I now am just too tired to care.  Still having to do it for  74 years-same old same old.  Well, it may seem funny,  but mine is brushing my teeth.

My dear mother was very careful to make sure we saw the dentist every six months and brushed every morning and night and so it goes.  Now I walk up to my sink and just stand there wishing I didn't have to do it again.

I'm better about flossing because I never did that until I moved in with my Mom at 48 and saw this 80 year old lady so faithful to floss her teeth every night.  I thought if she could have that habit then there is absolutely no excuse for me not to.  And so I began and so I do but that isn't boring yet because it hasn't been as many years.

I may have mentioned this one before, but my other annoyance is the end of a day.  I sit there in the midst of whatever I am doing or trying to finish and the clock strikes 11PM and I know it is really past time for me to be in bed.  Not only that, but I will still have to go into the kitchen and make sure the dishes are in the dishwasher and the counters and sink are clean.  Then I go to bed, have my evening devotions and sure enough the clock has already struck midnight and then some.  It is just so bothersome.  I haven't finished my day at all.  I just hate it.

Oh well, at least we get to wake up to a new day every morning.  That's a great gift and I truly am always grateful to my Dear Lord for granting it.  So off I go - can't wait to see what's in store and what new thing I will learn today.

BEING MYSELF

I did not know what to write about until I saw this message in a Jacquie Lawson Birthday card for old people.  "BE yourself, everyone else is taken." Oscar Wilde

That is so true for me - I have always wanted to be someone else.  I grew up wanting to be a ballerina for the New York City ballet.  Imagine how ballerinas look, size, weight, etc.  a certain body type for sure.  Well, now imagine me taking ballet for six years 10 till 16 from a very sweet understanding teacher who saw my desire and ignored the rest.  I was not so short as just plain chubby.  My body type has always been drawn to overweight not dreadfully so than to thin or skinny.  I won't say I lack grace or the ability to move nicely, but chorus ballerina for the New York City Ballet -- NOT!

I've talked about some of my dreams that I had to let die.  That one was major.  Then I wanted to be a Carmel cloistered nun which meant I would never see my family again nor even be allowed to go to their funerals.  I thought I was willing, but not to break my mother's heart, I hesitated and the spot was filled by another girl.  So that dream of total prayer and contemplative life in and for Christ also died.  I am not so sorry since the life in Christ I have been given has been quite blessed and wonderful in a million ways.  Still there are days when knowing I would only have to pray and possibly clean and do laundry too, well such simplicity can appeal at times.

When my life turned around and I became much more dedicated to God's Word and I fell in love with Bible Studies.  I wanted to be Kay Arthur - founder with her husband, Jack, of Precept Ministries teaching the world how to study the Bible inductively.  She teaches and gets to go all over the world to speak and to writers' conferences and Christian seminars and takes a trip to Israel every year.  But the Lord would always chastise and remind me, "Annalou, I already have Kay Arthur, right now I need you to become the person I want YOU to be.  So listen up, obey, learn and grow!"

So even though I will be 75 in a couple of weeks - I am definitely still trying to do as my Dear Lord said.  I am trying to learn and grow every minute of every day He has decided to grant me.

I hope and pray that you all are also seeing our older years not as a hindrance or a problem or annoying and inconvenient at times with what I want or hope or plan to do, but rather as the amazing gift they actually are.  For some it grants us more time, maybe even more money therefore more opportunities than ever before to do or become anything we have ever dreamed or desired.

A New Day

When I had to work 40 hour weeks all the time - Monday was a sad "back to it" kind of day.  Now that I only work part time then my days off are always this marvelous gift with all its possible surprises and miracles just waiting to happen to me.

I have been very happy to notice lately that the old cliche՜, "learn something new every day" is actually true.  I really do learn something new every day.  I get very excited over them even when they are - well others would say - "stupid" - but I jump up and down and say wow I never knew that.

Here is a great illustration - I love brown butter which means you put a pad of butter in your skillet and have to wait for it to brown.  Now if you walk away or forget you have placed that pad of butter in the skillet it will get very smoky and you will hear a screeching loud sound that almost breaks your ear drum.  Even when you stand up on a chair and push the center in it will NOT stop.  It just keeps screeching on and on and on.  It eventually stops after you open the front door and wave it back and forth thus dissipating the billows of smoke.

I thought those things were to protect us when a fire broke out on the stove or because of a candle falling over or whatever.  When I asked my friend about exchanging it for one that would not do that just because of smoke and no flames involved.  He very kindly said, "Annalou, it is called a "SMOKE" detector because it detects smoke.  It is not going off until there is no more smoke."

I am honestly telling you I learned something new.  For me I always thought it would be flames not smoke that set it off.  I promised my daughter I would NOT wander away from the kitchen when I put anything on the stove.  I've only broken my promise once so far.  I'm praying I won't again.

Getting older can be fun and knowing my mind is still interested it growing makes it a happy time too.

ONCE AGAIN

So  much for being more regular-hah!  Well again I am telling myself to do a blog every Monday before everything else, well after devotions, of course, and maybe breakfast and coffee too and ...

No, definitely before anything else so here I am.  My latest comment and sense of overcoming emotions about old age is this.  Lately it seems like time and I are in a race and time is winning out big time.  I want to ignore it or come out victorious or depend on the lesson of the tortoise and the hare - slow and steady wins the race.

Heaven knows I am SLOW so what's the problem?  Why don't I feel like the victor in it?  I definitely do not feel like I'm winning any victory in anything.  I do no accomplish all I wish to do in any given day.  I do not become more efficient, more productive, more successful or more determined to complete or even begin all those things I want to do or need to do or-on and on it goes.

What to do; what to do?  Funny I haven't thought to pray about it.  I pray about everything and I do mean everything so why have I not brought this to the Lord and begged His assistance, His wisdom, His overcoming power, His Holy Spirit comfort in it all?  Today I will do that.  Today I will follow through on the things I planned to do today.  Just today to accomplish it will help me to know I can continue to do it again tomorrow.

I won't plan to do too many things - just a few so I don't defeat myself from the get go.  So far so good.  I did my devotions.  Doing my blog.  Have a crafting idea I need to work on for a possible Christmas item I could beg my dear sweet friends to buy as gifts.  But it means I have to make it become a finished product first.  Yes, there's the problem.  Am I going to make it work or not?  Am I creative enough to pull it off?  I haven't a clue.  So far I can't quite get it to cooperate, but am going to keep on trying.  That will be enough to challenge myself with today.

If I have any followers,  then I  hope and pray you too can face whatever factors of getting older are driving you crazy and you will meet them with boldness, self-confidence and a trust that by God's grace we can and will face it all and be the victor.