Deep breaths

Breathe in God, breathe out anxiety, breathe in God, breathe out anxiety.  For the second day in a row I've been hit by a panic attack and missing Gar.  This grieving process is so odd, and so unpredictable, it's frustrating.  Here I am, doing my best to keep my life on track and moving forward when for no reason at all I take two steps back.  Yesterday I was driving home from the bowling tournament and all of the sudden I am so anxious about Gar being gone.  I kept driving and praying "God help me work through it".  Today I was driving along and all of the sudden I was panicked about whether or not Gar was in pain and whether or not he knew that he was leaving me along before it happened, then all of the sudden I started to panic about not seeing him until I join him one day, I hope in the distant future.  While I don't understand it at all, I've got a sneaking suspicion about why they happen.  When Gar died, at first it was like a scab that had been ripped off of my whole body, the pain was awful.  Then the pain settling into a dull throbbing in my consciousness, always there.  Now I am reaching a point where my feelings are becoming more back to normal,  feeling normal joy over things, starting to look ahead in the future, making positive moves toward all of this.  Then all of the sudden the pain comes back and surprises me, and I panic.  Kind of like getting a cast removed and learning to use the part that was broken.  Usually when this hits, it's followed by anger with Gar and with God.  Thank goodness our God is a loving God who helps us through our anger.  So I pause and pray, and breathe in God, breathe out anxiety.  God is good, all the time.  

March Madness

Ever since Gar started bowling, our form of March Madness has been the Midwest Blind Bowling Tournament.  This year the MBBA tournament was in Chicago.  It has been a great weekend.  Annie and Kari started bowling on the league this year and came to the tournament.  When they were little, we used to take them out of school to attend these tournaments, so they are old pros at the tournament scene.  This year they came and had a lot of fun.  I know that Gar was looking down with a big smile on his face, watching them interact with all of our blind bowling friends.  I missed Gar so many times, but was so comforted by the many people who were friends of Gar's on this league who would stop and tell me how much they missed him and what a great guy he was. One of the best parts of going to a tournament is being able to hang around with all of our friends from Pittsburgh and other cities, especially our friends Maggi and Bob.  I wish that I could just pack Maggi in my suitcase and bring her home with me.  Gar was talked about and remembered, and we had lots of laughs over some of our past tournaments together.  I could feel Gar's smiling presence the entire time.  A couple of times, waves of loneliness would sweep over me, but I'd stop, pray and move on.  Overall, it was a bittersweet time, but not as difficult as I had anticipated.

The March Madness that I will return home to is the renovations going on in preparation of getting my house on the market.  I am very blessed in the fact that I found a couple of handymen who I could trust, so they were busy working at my house while I was playing in Chicago.  When I get home, I will really have to crank it up.  We have a roll off for renovation trash, and I need to take advantage of it and get a lot of my excess garbage in it.  So it's going to be a busy week.  There are many times during this process that I get overwhelmed by feelings of sadness, fright and loneliness.  When this happens, I have learned to let it go through tears and prayers.  I came to a huge life realization a couple of weeks ago.  When Dad died and life moved on, I had God, Gar and Mom to rely on.  When Mom died, I had God and Gar to rely on.  Now that Gar has died, it is just me and God.  In order to move on with life, I needed to fully realize that it is only God and I.  Don't get me wrong, my kids and grandkids are fantastic, but I can't count on them to do the things in my daily life, it's not their job.  They are all living their lives as Gar and I raised them to live them, and I do not want to be a burden.  So it's just me and God, and realizing this has freed me up a lot.  God is so good, and I can call on God at any time!!  So I move on in this March Madness walking with God.  What a way to walk!! God is good, all the time

Ash Wednesday

So I'm just home from Ash Wednesday service at church and I'm exhausted.  I forget from year to year how draining Ash Wednesday services can be when you are an assisting minister for both services.  I love and dread Ash Wednesday and the season of Lent.  It's my time of introspection and reflection.  Some of the wilderness journeys are harder than others.  This year I had a feeling of apprehension that I have not had before.  The last seven months have been a wilderness journey for me like I have never had before.  A part of me fears that I will experience something else, and I just don't have the strength.  I'm lonely and I'm low tonight, so all I can do is through myself in the arms of God and pray for strength and endurance.  I wanted to blog this tonight because I want to capture it, and on Easter Sunday I want to be able look back and see the joy in the Resurrection.  I do know that because of the end of the Lenten story, I will stand with God and be with Gar again.  This does give me hope.

There was another thing that was going on tonight.  I felt like God was tickling the edge of my consciousness, a tantalizing thought, just out of my grasp that I could not see.  So I wait patiently.  And so the Lenten journey begins, a time of darkness and yet the promise of hope.  A time of Christ's great sacrifice and our great gain.  I know that I do not walk alone, I walk with God, and for this I give thanks.

Getting things ready

Yup, back blogging again.  I determined this morning that I need to be able to have a safe place to release some of my stress, and to me, this is a safe place.  Be warned that today I am feeling a bit of the "Negative Nancy", so if you want to quit reading now, I don't blame you.

Today is the beginning of the two month drive to get this house emptied and ready to stage for sale.  This day didn't just sneak up on me, I've known it was coming for a long time.  The problem is that I spent a large part of January and February feeling sorry for myself and not getting anything done.  This weekend I realized that it is just two months until May 1, so I'd better get my fanny in gear.  I am blessed in the fact that I found two handymen to get the bigger stuff done, but other than that I am on my own.  Nobody is going to get it done if Nancy doesn't get it started.  There's a lot of work to be done, and a lot of sadness as I get ready to move from the place that has been home for our family for the last twenty-five years.

I've decided that over the next two months, I am going to look back  on our family history in this house and write it down, in case kids or grandkids want to know, and then it will be saved here.  Today I will start with how we found the house.

We left south Minneapolis on April 1, 1986 and moved to Coon Rapids where we rented a small two bedroom bungalow.  It was good space for a family of four, and Jen and Liz would come every other weekend.  We were told the the house was going to be sold, and would we be interested in buying it.  We were seriously considering it when we found out that Jen and Liz would be coming to live with us on a regular basis and we needed more room.  So the house hunt started.  We knew that the market would be limited as we would need special consideration for financing, aka our credit sucked.  One day I found an "owner will finance" home in the Anoka County Union.  We went and looked, and it was in the process of being built.  The owner was a very fatherly sort who was willing to carry a contract for deed with little down.  We had Gar's aunt Diane look it over.  She thought it looked good, and we decided to buy the house.  I will always be convinced that God was the true realtor in this whole deal.  We were a block from Cross of Hope Lutheran Church.  What I did not realize when we moved to this house was that we would gain a family at Cross of Hope and that my faith life, and my sobriety would grow so much from all that I learned there.  Gar, our daughters and I created many wonderful memories in this house, memories that I will treasure all of my life.  But now it's time to move on in many ways.  First and foremost, it will be a relief to get rid of the mortgage.  Secondly, I would not be a good steward if I were to stay in this house that is designed for a family, with just me and my dogs.  I trust that God will find the right family for this house, and I pray that they may have as many wonderful years as we have had.