71.......93..........?

Last week I posted about 'letting go'.  This is a continuation.  I have a 'grand daughter free' day today, so I have been taking advantage of the quiet house and getting lots of work done on my two businesses.  Sending mail, making videos and just general office work that kind of gets neglected with two young children here every day.   My husband came home from his day job as a chaplain at the hospital shortly after noon.  He had a bite to eat, sat down for a bit then was out the door.  He often is puttering around outside working on one project or another and today was no different.  He had made a contact today while making his pastoral rounds and found a source for some free fill dirt.  So off he went with his trailer.  About 90 minutes later he pulled in with a fully loaded trailer and pickup bed of dirt.  Now he's working on filling in those wonderful garden beds that he worked so hard on 3 years ago.  

71 years old, 93 degrees outside and he just keeps on.  Our world and social media feeds are blowing up with reports of violence, hate and acts so despicable it's hard to even imagine.  Sometimes we just turn it all off and 'be'.  We take care of this small piece of land that we have and are thankful.  We do what we can for our daughter and granddaughters because we love them.  We pray constantly that their world will somehow change from what it is now and their future isn't as dismal as it appears it will be.   We also have local friends facing family issues that tear hearts in two, and accidents that destroy lives and shatter dreams.  We also know that God is in our lives.

We don't escape heartache.  We have sorrow, anger, sometimes even despair. More than that we have hope.

hope: confidence in a future event; the highest degree of well founded expectation of good. 

Hope differs from wish or desire in that hope implies the expectation of obtaining the good desired, or the possibility of obtaining it.  Hope always gives pleasure or joy, whereas wish and desire may produce or be accompanied by pain and anxiety. (Websters 1828 American Dictionary).

It is still hard to let go of the vision I had for the back yard and those garden beds.  Waylon teases me about not getting out there and shoveling dirt with him in the 93 degree heat, and I answered "I will in the morning but not right now!"    Where he and I differ is he just keeps on, he does what needs to be done.  I dwell in the 'what if' or the 'what could have been'.  It's hard to let go of dreams, whether they are trivial, like back yard garden beds, or truly important like dreams of a safe and peaceful world.  I am working on letting go of a lot of things - both physical and emotional.  It is a long and difficult process and only with God will I make any progress at all.  Dreams that have been held close to my heart for 59 years are hard to let go of.  

Ecclesiastes 3:9-15 What do people really get for all their hard work? I have seen the burden God has placed on us all. Yet God has made everything beautiful for its own time. He has planted eternity in the human heart, but even so, people cannot see the whole scope of God's work from beginning to end. So I concluded that there is nothing better than to be happy and enjoy ourselves as long as we can. And people should eat and drink and enjoy the fruits of their labor, for these are gifts from God. And I know whatever God does is final. Nothing can be added to it or taken from it. God's purpose is that  people should fear him. What is happening now has happened before, and what will happen in the future has happened before, because God makes the same things happen over and over again.

I will keep on hoping.  I will keep trusting in God and believing that His ultimate purpose and plan will be fulfilled.  As humans we may do all we can to destroy God's plan, but that isn't possible - so I will keep on with hope.