Hi everyone 🙂

I’m back from the craziness of the past year.  I didn’t mean to be gone this long, but you know how that is:  life has a mind of its own 🙂  As I mentioned in my previous post, I’m posting here to fill you all in on my absence.

This time last year I had no idea what the Lord had in mind for the rest of the year. I’d gotten my Christian Planner, Journal, and Craft Fellowship group started back for the new year well. However, just a few months later, I got a call from my landlady’s realtor (her nephew, it turns out).  After living there for eight years (four years with my husband and four years after his death) she decided to sell the house.  We had to move.

March led me to looking high and low for a new house to rent for my son and I in the same school district we had been living in.  I finally gave up and started searching in other school districts.

The search for the house to rent consumed me through March, April, and part of May in addition to packing up a whole house alone without my husband but with all his belongings.  That brought on its own emotional issues…

Then a few friends encouraged me to go to a realty office and see if I could qualify to buy a house.  I really didn’t think it would happen, but partly to satisfy my friends and also to give the Lord a chance to act (should that be His plan) I went to the realty office down the street from my best friend’s house.  I walked in sheepishly and said I’d like to find out if there was any possible way I might qualify to buy a house.

Long story short, I did qualify (a big lesson in letting the Lord have room to do His will here) and after another month of looking for houses to buy and probably driving my realty agent crazy with all my texts and calls,  (and not finding one in my son’s school district), I found the house we now live in and call our own.  It’s in my own childhood school district so I’m more than familiar with the area.

My main concern was my son being in his same school where he knew them and they knew him and his needs.  A huge concern for a child with autism!   However, I wound up being able to keep him at his own school after getting him approved for open enrollment.  That part was great, but it brought a new challenge of its own.

They couldn’t bus him to and from school, so I’d have to drive him.  That’s what I chose to do as it’s his last year of high school. So I drive him to school every day, back home, then back to pick him up again, and back home. Fortunately, it’s nearly all highway so even though it’s on the opposite side of our area, it only takes 15-20 minutes to get there.

Evan graduates High School in May.  He’ll walk with the rest of the typical kids to receive his diploma.  I’m already feeling a combination of pride and bittersweetness (is that a word? 🙂 ).  Proud that Evan has come so so far, and bittersweet that his daddy won’t be there to see our son graduate high school.

To back up a bit, the big move happened (with lots of drama and tumult I will spare you of here) in July.  A few friends, my own church and another area church (which is another story of how the Lord worked big time) both helped us move.  That saved me a lot of money since I didn’t have to hire a moving company. I couldn’t have afforded what I did without the many friends who donated to my Go Fund Me campaign.  I’m so so thankful for that!!

I was sick most of August with a really bad respiratory bug (not Covid) so I didn’t get a whole lot of unpacking done.  I got nearly everything unpacked since then, but definitely not everything organized and put away.  I hope to resolve that over the winter.

September through mid December brought a new health issue that was totally unnecessary to me that waylaid me and the only thing I got done was the absolute essentials at home and taking my son back and forth to school.

A few years ago I developed really bad pain in both of my legs. I was describing it in a facebook post and a dear friend messaged me and told me that had happened to him as well and asked if I was taking a statin medication.  I told him yes, my doctor had just put me on Atorvastatin when it looked like I had borderline high cholesterol.  He said his cardiologist warned him to stop taking it due to his pain as it’s caused a lot of limb pain in some patients. When he stopped, the pain went away.  I stopped taking it and a few weeks later, the pain went away.

Last January (a year ago) I had to see a cardiologist myself and told him about it all and he put me on a very low dose of Pravastatin.  It didn’t bother me at all for months, so I thought it was all ok.

After a few trips to the foot doctor and half a dozen trips for physical therapy,  it dawned on me one day when I was describing my feet pain as “debilitating”.  The same word my friend and I both used to describe the pain.  So I stopped taking the Pravastatin and three weeks later, that pain went away. Apparently, statin drugs are not for me.

The pain was so incredibly bad, it hurt to just stand for a few minutes to change my son.  It would hurt just sitting here watching TV. It really stopped any productivity at all for me till I stopped the Pravastatin.  So the entire fall was really painful for me, so very unproductive. Since x rays and an ultrasound at the foot doctor showed arthritis and a lot of inflammation, I started taking about every supplement I could find for inflammation as well as rubbing organic castor oil on my feet and ankles, and Voltaren: an arthritis gel.  It helped but not enough to manage the kind of pain I was in.

I’m feeling so much better now (aside from bone-on-bone knees). I’m trying to move forward emotionally now that the literal moving has happened.  Especially from December.  My husband and I got married December 1st, his birthday was Christmas Day, then the holidays themselves.  A new living situation without him.

This widow thing is not for the faint of heart, and my heart has been really faint this year.  But the Lord has been so good and has sustained us in so many ways.  I’m working at adjusting my attitude a bit.

Now for me:  Here I Am.  Take me as I am 🙂 For the next chapter of my life, Lord:  here I am. Lead me onward.