The Good with the Bad

Well, Thanksgiving has come and gone and it was wonderful yet there came a moment when it was so darned sad. My ultimate favorite moment was when my 1 year old precious neice fell asleep on my shoulder. I had been taking Dave Ramsey's 13 week Financial Peace University Class and it ended the week of Thanksgiving. I had kind of felt myself beginning to slip a little because for me, the class was, especially towards the end, becoming a dual-edged sword. Inspiring hope and despair all in the same moment. The parting words of Dave Ramsey were basically to get ourselves into prime positon to be successful in all aspects of our lives and that if we had any "cobwebs" holding us back, that we needed to work on getting rid of them. I decided then and there to make an appointment with my pastor and his wife.

How wonderful they were to take time from their lives to meet with me. How wonderful it was to trust them enough to be totally frank with them about my cobwebs. I miss my family. I miss the life I had. My husband was my best friend and I miss him. As much as I miss these things, I know, beyond a shadow of a doubt - that God has all of this in His hand. I see the blessings daily that He is bestowing upon me and I take none of them for granted.

I spoke with a friend two days ago who has fallen into a depression for a few reasons and I really shook him up. I pointed out to him that he needed to flex his joy of the Lord muscle. That he needed to possibly lie to himself until he realized he was ok. You know, if I really took a look at my life, I would be so darn depressed, I might just fall out. I paint it every day so much better than it is because as non-great as it is, it is fabulous as well.

Things like this. How blessed am I to have the opportunity to leave my house every morning by 6:39 a.m. to make the 6:50 bus, walking in the freezing cold, or the rain, or to have to run under the huge clump of pigeons that poop everywhere, or walking in the dark, or the sun rising. My gosh, how blessed I am to experience any of these things. Some would only complain about these things, I find them a joy and thank God daily as I'm walking under any of those circumstances.

Today I had a neat experience. I am doing the program Insanity and am really beginning to feel an inner "core" strength starting to come up in me. I woke up at 4:17 this morning and said "Self, you're up, go get insane." OH MY GOSH!!! It was a totally insane workout. I felt so good laying on the floor when that 39 minutes was over. The instructor on the DVD was on the floor as well and I had to laugh as he said while laying there, "Sh.. that was bananas". I laid there and said that it was certainly something. A woman at work that I don't really know said to me that I looked good and asked if I was doing something different? I told her about the program and she is thrilled that as soon as I am done, I'm going to loan it to her her for her and her to husband to do together. I put it on my Outlook Calendar to pop up in about a month.

I signed up for a Saturday morning golf class at the junior college to help cut the cost of the monthly bus pass (I wanted online walking/jogging, but next time around). Anyways, I am the coordinator of the food drive at my job and to raise some monies, I co-hosted a white elephant gift sale. It was neat that I got the opportunity to meet even more people at my work site. Well, I was in a group and I stated about signing up for the golf class and a woman that I had never seen before asked me if I had golf clubs. I don't and my plan was to wing it with something from a thrift store or whatever. She told me, I have golf clubs and I will bring them to you tomorrow. Wow. I told her that the class goes til May and she basically doesn't even care if or when she ever gets them back. You know, there are some really good people in this world and God will place them in our path at times.

We give and we get given to. Isn't it neat how that just works out. I still suffer, possibly because of the holiday season, with missing my husband, STBX, daughter's father, whatever or however I am supposed to refer to him, but I have to take the good with the bad. The good is my life is just like the song that says "We'll all float on ok... Alright already we'll all float on..." I am so floating. The cool thing is that I am floating on the wings of love and I will take the good with the bad. I learned a lesson with the meeting with my pastor and his wife. That is THE LAST TIME that I am going to go by my feelings. I was about to fall apart because I let how I felt come into play and I was feeling like crap. No matter how I feel, I vow from now on to keep on. To persevere. After all, I'm still walking those 4 flights of stairs everyday.

Today I ask you to join me in prayer thanking God that we are right where we are supposed to be to bless others as well as to be blessed by others. I ask you to join me in prayer for my co-worker Lupe who began another round of chemo and after only the first one is doing poorly. I ask you to join with me in prayer that we all take the good with the bad.

Hallelujah!!