Blog for August 5th, 2024
Refreshing the Soul
First of all, Happy 15th Birthday Bubba! My Beautiful grandson. Man, I love this kid. Also, I must say that I am loving the Olympics, I am proud of my homelands teams and athletes, they are amazing.
So, as I write this blog, we are rolling down the 395 up in the Sierras, almost to Nevada state line. Yep, we’re on vacation. I love these mountains; they are very refreshing to my soul. As we’ve traveled this road, we stopped at a friends house and spent the night. We left there the next morning and we stopped and seen our granddaughter, her husband, his brother and our beautiful grandson. I gave him birthday presents and hugged and loved on him. Seeing them all refreshes my soul and makes my heart happy.
Traveling along the side of the Little Walker River refreshes my soul too. My husband showing me one of his most favorite spots on the planet, Devil’s Gate, makes my heart happy. He says he has seen a couple of places like it- in New Mexico and North Dakota. Beautiful.
As we head onto our oldest grandson’s place, where him, his gorgeous, sweet wife and two adorable little boys will also, refresh my soul and make my heart happy. I love them all so much. Plus, during the week we will drive onto my nieces and spend time with her and sweet family, they too, make my heart happy and refresh my soul. I am so blessed.
However, before we left our town, we attended our neighbor’s funeral. He died suddenly in his sleep; it was an aneurism that ruptured. Life is so fragile and fleeting. But I must tell you this, they have lived next to us for abut fourteen years and in the beginning, they were doing drugs. Even then, they were very good neighbors, quiet and stayed on the DL. They had a little boy and him and my Bubba use to play together with their cars and Star Wars swords and action figures out in the front yard. They were so cute.
That little boy is now 19, 6’1” tall and has learning disabilities that will inhibit him from having a full life. But at his dad’s funeral, the boy or rather young man, got up to the podium in the church and recited John 3:16 without notes, and it was amazing. The whole service was very refreshing for my soul. I was surprised, uplifted and blessed by the whole event. I never knew that my neighbor loved the Lord so much and they talked about how much fun he was. I shared about how helpful he is too, because he would water our trees and pull weeds without us asking. They said he was always helpful around the church. Wow!
My husband said, as we were driving away, “so, all those people we thought were their connections were really their church friends!” Wow! Shows you what we know. I was also blessed by some things the pastors shared, about loving people, even when they are hateful to you, love them anyway. Wow, again, it refreshed my soul.
Plus, I seen an old friend from the program there with her daughter, who is also in recovery and her son is engaged to our neighbors daughter, wow! It was all uplifting and refreshing for sure.
I have been working on a particular character defect, as I wrote about last week, pride. I shared that inventory with my sponsor, and she asked in the beginning if I had a solution and I said, I already knew the answer was prayer and trust my Higher Power to help me with this issue, I still felt like Crum bum about it all. I couldn’t shake the feeling in me that something was not right.
Then that night, on a Thursday night zoom meeting, I heard a big solution from the speaker, he said that he prays each day to be a blessing to others. Wow! That was huge for me, I felt my black veil lifting, knowing, that I too could use this daily prayer. Then, at Melvins funeral, the pastor said that thing about loving people. Wow! I have felt my soul soaring, refreshed and happy.
We’re almost to the kid’s house and again, my soul soars. These kinds of times have been few and far between for me, so I’m gonna try to enjoy this feeling and be happy for as long as I can, just keep riding this wave like those Olympic suffers do. This is the payoffs of recovery for me.
Question of the Week: Have you had your soul refreshed lately? If not, I encourage you to keep praying for it until you do. God is good to help us through the dark times and bring us up out of it, refreshing.
