With Challenges There Is Hope

      It has been two months since I've written on this blog.  These two months seem long - like a year.  I have been busy making decisions and sharing in grief.  Small decisions made concerning carpet for guest bedrooms, new flooring for my bedroom and bathroom, and new furniture.  Grief.  I still shed tears with thoughts of our loss.  In late September, we rejoiced with news of Laura and Patrick's news of pregnancy.  Grandchildren are blessings.  However, we faced grief when the babies died in mid October.  Plans were being made for the new babies, and we were all pitching in to help.  I had committed to help with the six older children as needed.  Since they had decided to home school this year due to the pandemic, I am keeping the three youngest three days each week.  Oh, this pandemic has changed our lives.  This pandemic changed plans, slowed down our pace of living, and created challenges great and small.

     I had plans for retirement.  After a year of planning, I retired January 1.  In January, I traveled to Panama with a friend to visit missionaries working with Nogbe Indians of Panama.  It was a blessing to see the work first hand and to see the reality of life on the Comarca.  We visited coffee plantations and saw the living conditions of the Nogbe working on the plantations.  I loved seeing the children with smiling faces running to greet us each day we visited.  Yes, I fell in love with the children.  After Panama, I went to my first swim meet in Knoxville in February.  My grandson, Wesley, was competing in the Tennessee High School State competition at the University of Tennessee.  It was a wonderful weekend with my daughter's family.  I got to love on the two young granddaughters, watch JJ mingle with friends, and witness Wesley's team win and place in competition.  My daughter and her husband had a mission trip planned for March, and I had planned to stay with their children in Murfreesboro.  Due to the COVID19, the trip was cancelled, but I went to Murfreesboro to stay with the children anyway.  It gave Pam and Aaron a week to get away.  Plans were cancelled or changed as the pandemic lead to a forty day closing of schools and businesses.  We were all quarantined to our homes.

     The quarantine slowed life down to almost nothing.  For a single person, it was hard.  I talked on the phone with my family.  I had visits with my son's family who live just a mile away.  Going without human contact for multiple days is too much of a slowed down pace of living.  With no meetings and very few visits, I had a few very bad days.  In order to keep my mind from despair, I cleaned every inch of my house and every square foot of my yard.  Also, I tore wallpaper from walls in back entrance of my house.  I had planned to start some updates on house, but due to COVID19, all businesses were closed.  I did get a new roof on house in April.  Then, summer came.  I started searching for flooring and did not make decisions until September.  Since businesses were closed, I have to wait for the new floors and furniture.  With each day, week, and month passing in 2020, life had slowed down but with many challenges.

     The greatest challenge in this pandemic was the separation from loved ones.  I had family in nursing homes who they could not visit.  Uncle Luther and Aunt Shirley's daughters could only visit with blown kisses and waves through the outside window of their room.  Then, Uncle Luther died.  The challenge of planning a funeral without his wife and their mother was unbearable.  So, they waited to have funeral when she could go.  Two months after his passing, they had a memorial service and live streamed the service.  Another cousin always checked her mother out of nursing home on Friday and took her back on Monday.  It happened that when she planned to return her mother, the nursing home was quarantined, so she kept her mother in her home.  She had the challenge of working from home and taking care of her mother.  That challenge was a blessing, because her mother died in her arms.  Again, we couldn't share their grief in person due to quarantine.  Then, the friends who were in the last stages of cancer.  They died alone.  What a time to be separated from loved ones with no one to comfort the living.  These challenges makes some look small.  We couldn't worship together, but we had services via live stream.  I spent my Sundays watching all my brothers preach.  Now, this is a blessing.  We could not go to weddings or celebrations.  Graduations were postponed to later dates.  I traveled to Murfreesboro in late June to see my grandson graduate high school.  I watched live stream from their home.  All these challenges and experiences will be memories in a few years.

    We have hope for a cure for COVID19, so we can put all the challenges behind us and move forward.  It is November and most of 2020 has been filled with quarantines, falling economy, systematic racism, riots, election year, political crazies, and much more of crazy.  In addition, we have the woes of predictions before an election.  This has been a season of false accusations on both sides of the isle.  However, I believe that all will come together if we keep our faith and eyes on God.  He is the only one who never changes.  God has been my rock during 2020.  I have faith that God will carry us through the rest of the year.  With the holidays of November and December, I can count my blessings and be thankful this year.  I'm looking forward to a wedding in December where Matthew and Alexis will start a new life together.  I'm looking forward to Christmas with my children and grandchildren.  Even though we all have had an extra hard and challenging year, we can have hope for 2021.  

Psalms 40:1-3

I waited patiently for the Lord; and he inclined unto me, and heard my cry.  He brought me up also out of an horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock, and established my goings.  And he has put a new song in my mouth, even praise unto our God; many shall see it, and fear, and shall trust in the Lord.