Absence-Love is always present

I feel that I owe you some sort of explanation for my absence. After all, showing you the love of Christ is the goal here and I can’t do that if I am absent. But I warn you, this isn’t a simple explanation and in my typical long-winded style I will give you a summary run down of the trials and successes that we have faced these many months. For those of you who could give a hoot, I will summarize: My health, our mission and our move. For those of you who wish to learn a bit more, stay tuned. Where to begin? I think Covid started it. Now, I know that Covid gets a bad wrap for everything. And to be honest, my health has always been ‘less than’ what a normal person should have to deal with… but I think this huge downward spiral happened after Covid. Now, I won’t bore you with the particulars because it is way too much. But here it goes… I was extremely sick the beginning of 2020 with what likely was covid but we didn’t know it was here in the states until March-ish. By March, I was recovering but dealing with mental and physical long-term after affects of the illness. Literally all of them. Lungs, skeletal, memory, heart, nerves, muscles… you get the idea. It took a year and a myriad of tests to figure it out. I must say that the Anti-Nuclear Antibody Test is vital to getting answers. That is what did the trick. I have been diagnosed with Fibromyalgia. Mayo clinic summarizes it as: “Fibromyalgia is a disorder characterized by widespread musculoskeletal pain accompanied by fatigue, sleep, memory and mood issues. Researchers believe that fibromyalgia amplifies painful sensations by affecting the way your brain and spinal cord process painful and nonpainful signals. Symptoms often begin after an event, such as physical trauma, surgery, infection or significant psychological stress. In other cases, symptoms gradually accumulate over time with no single triggering event.” I have it all. Especially brain and pain issues. How do I explain this other part shortly? I was given a medication for fibromyalgia that had severe withdrawals… but didn’t know that. It had stopped working as well any way. (Duloxetine) I ran out while on vacation in Arizona and spent a week unable to move without skull pounding pain, nausea, and dizziness from vertigo. Then I decided to stop the second medication (Gabapentin) because I was afraid it caused white streaks in my peripheral vision. That took a week or so to taper from. It did stop the streaks. In between all of this, we planned to sell our Skoolie bus and move home to be with family. It was a long time coming and difficult to decide. We thought that it would take a month or so to sell. However, in one day of the ad being up, a lovely lady from Bakersfield came the next day and bought it pretty much for what we were asking. We had one week to pack up all our stuff and turn it over to the new owner. Now, stop here a minute. Here we are, both suffering from our own skeletal issues, my brain fog and we are packing up 4 years of tools and belongings in one week. Every day was a major trial for us. Some days I just stared trying to figure out what to put in a box, what to keep out, what would I need access to until we are able to unpack in August in our home. My husband would not want to admit it but he suffered the pain of two bad hips and a bad back. It was brutal. We spent all day doing what we could and all night suffering the pain for it. I had no desire to communicate or move. But God. We got through it and on the day of, the bus was clean and ready for the wonderful new owner. But then, where do we go? So, as it stands, we were and are houseless and have been since the end of January. Technically, we are not homeless. We own a home that we are renting until August to my beautiful granddaughter. But it won’t be solely ours until August. We are so grateful for our family who have opened their homes to us on our visits. We have been able to make every moment count. But as you know, living out of luggage is difficult. My desire is to disrupt their lives as little as possible and to be a help while under their roof. For this reason, my laptop, books, office stuff, and other items are put away out of sight. I am working on getting into some sort of routine. But it is difficult. The bulk of my time is spent in service to the family for letting us stay here. My expectation, not theirs. I believe that you must be of service to those who host you in their home. You disrupt their lives. They give up their master suite and sleep on the couch, they do all in their power to make you feel welcome and comfortable, they share their time, space and resources with you daily…. It is the least that I can do. One more hurdle to go… from May 2nd to August 1st we are supposed to fly to Europe to meet the grandkids that we have never held and spend time with our son, daughter-in-law and family there. We have many trips around Europe planned with and without them as it may be our very last time in Europe. But alas, Putin decided to commit atrocities against the Ukrainians, killing innocent civilians and bombing their cities. This may mean changes to our schedule as well. I could use your prayers, but I think the Ukrainians need them more. I sent our support to our son in Germany. He and his friend from Poland purchase much needed items and take supplies to Poland to help the refugees. But he also told me that Germany has the German Red Cross who is legitimate and helping refugees as well. https://www.drk.de/en/ I cannot stress enough how much pain and suffering these people are going through. Lost lives. People who have been thrown into war, have lost their homes, their children suffering, no supplies, constantly at risk. We have it so easy sitting on the sidelines in our comfy arm chairs just praying for them. Let’s do something more, shall we? Help these brave souls monetarily. President Zelensky is correct. If we allow 'the beast' to eat Ukraine, it will enhance his blood thirst for more countries. Maybe ours. You see, the beast knows that we do not want war. The beast knows that we fear war with them. And just like satan and his minions, as long as we do little or nothing to help, he knows that he can take even more. Personally, I think that putin is very mentally ill and working with less than full mental capacity. His people are prisoners of his reign and have little to no access to the truth of what is happening. We need to pray for a way to bring truth and protection to those who are desperate to be free of his reign of terror. I am saying… as much as we have going on, we are NEVER too busy to love others in a real way. Help these warriors, please!! And pray that we find a speedy resolution to this horrific war.