Sometimes you simply have to wait for the next steps to be revealed.

Felt lost again today sitting in the hotel room, trying to function, and working my way out of the stress of being displaced indefinitely.  My husband, Steve, was able to contact the insurance company about out potential mold restoration claim and the word continues to be, “we are waiting on management” to make a determination.

Tomorrow I’ll meet a friend at my home, donn the respirator mask, and take down the Christmas decorations.  Thank you Cindy Jakacki-Null!  Later I may have an appointment to fix my hair; long overdue.  Life goes on, you know, and having things to do helps manage the stress of what still feels like a crisis situation.  I pray constantly and feel the Lord right here with me, ordering my steps, keeping me calm, helping me to shower and complete a load of laundry today.

That’s all I can do today.  Steve will be over later for dinner and stay with me.  I love and miss him.  I’m working on letting go of everything and living in a smaller increment of time than when I was very sick.  This situation and these feelings will pass.  I know this because I have been in this situation before and have seen the Lord’s incredible faithfulness, mercy, and blessing for His glory.  “It takes what it takes” for His purpose to be revealed in me and you.  I did enjoy some fellowship time at our church last night by the way; that was a huge accomplishment and the first time in many weeks . . .

My life was upside down in January of 2005.  The divorce I was forced into was finalized; my mom was suffering 300 miles away, the effects of lung cancer treatment; my car had died and needed replacement within a day; I had just settled into a new rental condo and a fire in an adjacent unit displaced me in a temporary apartment for four months.  I was traumatized by escaping through a firy stairwell.  While some of the circumstances were different, I felt lost then like I do now.  I was unable to tolerate the stress of working in a mental health hospital that requires each staff person to participate in take downs of out of control patients.  I sought outside help to sort things out.  Some time later, I confided in a couple of deacons at my church, psuedo-father figures, and asked them what to do.   They advised me to stabilize my situation through purchasing a place of my own.  Talk about a leap of faith!  I had not yet recovered from the emotional and financial ruin of divorce when the new crisis occurred.   I did what I had to do and moved forward on faith.

Soon thereafter, the Lord began the restoration process.  The empty rental apartment to which the insurance company had moved me provided no reminders of my former life and every opportunity to reflect, pray, renew.  Strange how things work together (Reference:  Romans 8:28).  I purchased a few simple items to make the place “home” and followed the Lord’s leading in re-creating my life.  Within a relatively short time, I was in a lovely new 2-bedroom condo in a very desirable area of town.  Financial blessings arrived in very unexpected ways:  gifts, insurance settlements, and more.  My new home was lovely and in many ways better than my town home in the past.  My balcony overlooking a lush courtyard was a menagerie of flowers, a window box from my childhood, a restored outdoor mirror, native grasses, sparkly beaded garlands, and a tea set for two.  The Lord provided me with yards and yards of cheap unbleached muslin from a local textile company to create a custom window treatment of which I’d always wanted.  Rich ceramic tile adorned the powder room in chocolate leather-distressed motif and in a sandy beach-like texture in the master bath.  My office reflected a Japanese company motif of which I had become fond with a sculpted cream carpeting.  Then came the mural . . .

In the center wall bisecting the unit, the true healing work began with a 15-foot collage of natural papers.  Words of poetic inspiration had become my writing therapy at that time and became the centerpiece of the design.  I had never done anything of this scale before and have not had a desire to attempt another project like it since then.  By the end of the year, the work was complete.  I had also finished a course with a healing prayer ministry about this time.  Yes, it was time to celebrate so much.  We held a special service in my home with the inner circle of friends who had witnessed and the Lord used to facilitate the transformation within me.  The inscription on “the wall” in drop-down area in the living room read simply in the words of Winnie the Pooh:  “I likes me best when I’m with you.”

Within a year, the next party in my home was an engagement party.  Wow!  How much fun we had with the scavenger hunt to help everyone become acquainted with the love of my life, Steve Horney.  The place was packed!  When I look at the pictures of that special evening one characteristic was clear:  everyone was smiling brightly!  Me too.  Tee hee.  The Lord had restored the years the locusts had eaten (Reference:  Joel 2:25).

So it is with great faith and a weak, recovering frame, that I wait expectantly on my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.  He was my strength in 2005 and is my strength now.

I think my laundry is done.  Talk atcha later . . .  :J

P.S.  The week before the fire in the earlier condo apartment, I had just finished painting a different mural on a center wall.  The design was a metaphorical representation of a bridge, symbolizing moving from one chapter in my life to the other.  I had hoped to paint a silhouette of a woman on the wall, pointing towards an outside window but couldn’t find a suitable design to copy.  Sunday night, January 19, 2005, I had just finished my laundry, cleaned my apartment and was settling down with my favorite snack when the fire alarm went off.  Turns out I would never return to live at that apartment again.  Many weeks later in relaying this story to some dear friends, they had a poetic explanation for me of the incomplete design:  I became the woman on the wall, crossing over the bridge to my new life.  Yes, I believe so!  Thank you Jesus for my new life and for being there with me every step of the way.  That frightful night you reminded me of my life verse that I gratefully depicted on the new mural in the new home.  Please see Jeremiah 29:11 for the hope we all have when we but believe in Him who saved us.