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