Where did 2023 go? So many different things happened last year and I suppose the only way to grasp the magnitude of it all would be to document what I can remember since I obviously haven’t been writing here.

There were two major changes in our home: the first being that our daughter and her family bought their first Texas home and were finally able to get out of living in a camper that was parked in our driveway for ten months! Hallelujah and thank God for all He did for them.

After they left and Hailey no longer needed a room for her or baby Leo, I redecorated that room and made it my sewing room. But the ‘not so funny’ thing was that even as I was painting, moving furniture in and decorating it, I heard the voice of God remind me that “You can do that but you know it’s only temporary.”

The first week of August we drove Jef’s dad to see his sister outside of Dallas and we spent time with my niece who was flying in to a Mary Kay convention and to meet our newest great nephew. Besides absolutely despising the traffic and almost being in multiple accidents, the trip back was an eye opener to how badly my father-in-law needed to be cared for and could not live alone any longer. By the third week of August, we had a bed, a desk and everything he needed to live here, including a wheel chair because he could barely breathe just walking from the kitchen to his room (we have a small house now!)

After that first week here and him learning that he couldn’t get cable and that getting him into the VA was a matter of life or death, he consented and spent three days having the fluid around his heart taken care of. It was an emotional roller coaster ride, but I am grateful to report he no longer needs a wheelchair, cane and he even walks (in a type of flip flop to let his hideous toes get air) down our dirt road for exercise!!!

Since his moving in, life, at times, has been challenging. I am literally learning that my life really is NOT my own and though I must have boundaries for my sanity, just this past week I realized that I pull back from getting close to him because I don’t want to go through the same pain I felt when my mom passed away in the next bedroom.

This journey has had so many different twists and turns as I’ve struggled to see things the way Jesus would want me to: how to love a man who, almost every single day, leaves jam or something gross on the handles of the fridge, when he comes in with his muddy shoes and I say, “Please don’t walk across the floor, I just washed it yesterday” he then wipes them on the rug under the kitchen table.

Trivial crap? Absolutely. But it’s those kinds of things that make me realize that Daune is still more concerned with her comfort and convenience than in laying down her everything to love an 89 year old man who has ALWAYS BEEN THIS WAY. I am not going to change him, so why not let Jesus change me instead.

Do I still complain too much? Yep, I do. How grateful I am for new mercies every morning. Every. Single. Morning.

Life is full around here. So full. There are chickens to feed, a dog, two cats (well, one eats mice, so he’s the easy one), and next week we start the second semester of a HOMESCHOOL CO-OP that Jef and I are invested in!

That has probably been the highlight of this past year: investing in the lives of over thirty students, their parents and developing friendships that will last for eternity. We are so fortunate to be in a place where we can do what we are doing now. We are doing it together, and after all the years of raising our own, now we get to help support and teach our grands, along with other kids from our church.

All in all, 2023 was a challenging, yet great year of growth, love, change and a reminder that no matter what we go through, we are never alone and God is faithful to perfect that which concerns us.

My goal is to continue writing like I used to when my parent’s lived with us. It helped to pound out on keys my thoughts and to see, after I’d written it down, what a great life I really had.

Let me encourage any of the four people who may ever read this blog to take time to jot down the goodness of God, the hard things you go through and then to look back and see how God worked out those hard things and made you more like His Son, Jesus…that is, if you choose to let Him.

Thanks for sticking around and reading to the end.