Take A Breath.....Turn Around

August 28, 2022

As I stand on the road of August 28, 2022 and look back at the miles I’ve just walked through this life......past the pain of watching someone I love dwindle.....past the Grief of Death....and past the near drowning from a flood....and stop, take a breath, turn around....and see the road behind me and all the life experiences that are now in my rearview mirror, its only then I can see my Rescue....my Redemption....and the Miracles that have been placed on my path.  

It’s this “looking back” that allows me to see with clarity my actual life and the beauty of the miles I have traveled.

Because the book of my life journey didn’t end with the pain, grief and near drowning.  These were mere chapters in a thick book...chapters that had a beginning and an ending.  Chapters that made me stronger....that built up my endurance muscles ......and brought me out of the dark woods and into the Light of a new chapter.

And I discover I’m still breathing....I still have more miles to travel...and I’m going to be okay.....because I’ve sneaked a peak at the last page and know how this story ends.

It’s only by traveling through these difficult chapters in our life that we now see with clarity where we once were blind....but now we see.

“Amazing grace!  How sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me!  I once was lost, but now am found; was blind, but now I see.”

The Mystery of Grace

 

THE MYSTERY OF GRACE

liz etheridge

A few years ago, my brother, sister and I made a trip to our grandparent's old home place in a tiny town in the center of Alabama. It had been years since any of us had been back to this place we used to visit every summer....and in all honesty, it was never a place I loved going. The crickets were huge, there was no running water, baths were taken in the river and an outhouse was not a place you wanted to visit in the middle of the night.

My grandparents owned 200 acres of pine trees.....oh ya....and a creek that ran right through the middle. For as long as I can remember, my grandfather in his striped overalls and his train engineer cap, along with my grandmother in her long dress with an apron....yes...always with an apron....would drive the old pickup truck down to Blue Creek and pan for gold with their grandchildren hanging out the bed of the truck. For my siblings and cousins, this was like going to Disneyland. For Liz, it was pure torture.

 

But along the orange-clay dirt road to the creek, we would always pass an old Methodist church with a cemetery next to it. My grandparents would eventually be buried in that very cemetery and the memory of a bee flying up my niece's skirt during my grandmother's graveside service will always be with me. But the thing about that old Methodist church I will remember the most is driving by it on Sundays and hearing the black people singing from the top of their lungs. Not a shy or embarrassed bone in their bodies......they loved the Lord and they wanted everyone to know it.

And as we drove up that old orange-clay dirt road a few years ago, I SWEAR..I could still hear them singing. The church has long been abandoned, the windows broken out, the grass is taller than the tombstones and a mild wind could blow the walls down. But as I walked into this room full of memories, I found this old Methodist hymnal laying open on the floor, partially eaten by rats and among piles of old bulletins from 1979....opened to Page 285, "The Mystery of Grace".

I smile as I think about that person who, so many years ago, set that hymnal down on the wood plank floor, just for me to find.

Aww....the Mystery of Grace.

Couples Adventure Challenge #5

Ready for another Couples Adventure Challenge??

Get Ready.....Here We Go!!

 

For those of you who don't know what the Couples Adventure Challenge is, its a book that challenges us to disconnect to reconnect as a couple. To unplug from the norm and have fun scratching off challenges (dates) that, if you scratch off a date, you HAVE to do it. You agree to commit to what ever the challenge behind the scratch off says.

 

As we scratched off the new Adventure Challenge #5, we discovered we were being challenged on something we are very bad, awful, dreadful and plain old SUCK at. COOKING.

It said, "Go to a bookstore and pick out a cookbook. Ask a STRANGER to open the book and pick out a recipe of THEIR choosing. This is your meal for the night!"

I remember Wayne and I just looking at each other in horror after reading this. We headed to the Allen Library....asked a Librarian where the Cooking section was, and located a book by Joanna Gaines of Fixer Upper. We headed back to the Librarian, explained what we were doing, and let her pick out her selection for us to complete.

She smiled a coy smile, rubbed her hands together, and got to looking through the cookbook. She was a mercifully kind lady named Cindy and picked out a Lemon Pie. WHEW! My perfect dinner meal! 

 

 

So yesterday, we completed Couples Adventure Challenge #5!! This was a lemon pie FROM SCRATCH.....crust and all....a favorite of Joanna Gaines and we SLAYED the pie!!! Perfection!....well, with the exception of Liz forgetting to take the seeds out of the lemons before putting them in the mixer, but other than that, it was PERFECT and more importantly, FUN!

 

 Check it out.....

 

 

And look who got a BIG OL' piece of Joanna Gaines' homemade lemon pie made with our very own hands for Adventure Challenge #5!??! The Librarian, Cindy, at the Allen Library who chose it for us to make....thats who!!

 

 

A New Chapter

 

 

Yesterday....I closed a chapter in my life.  A 27-year chapter.  Bittersweet in a way....exciting in another.  

 

 Today is Day 1 of Retirement.   

I was BLESSED in so many ways to have worked for my late-husband Chuck's company he founded in 1986 for those 27 years.  Chuck was a visionary.....could see how to do something in his mind and could build it precisely how he envisioned it.  He saw a "need" for specialty computer room air conditioning in the Dallas area....one of the first to specialize in doing so.....and without a costly college degree, he created and grew a small 2-man company to a major success, placing high dollar computer room air conditioning on the roofs of many of the downtown Dallas hi-rise office buildings.  

 

After 14 years of building the company, his only son Troy moved back to Texas from California to help his Dad who was starting to feel the effects of Multiple Sclerosis and took over the business a few years later.  It was an absolute dream come true for Chuck....his son picking up where he left off.  His legacy lived on.

And after 17 wonderful years of working with Troy, I handed the boxes of files over to him yesterday.  I felt the breeze of the page turning as I walked away. 

 

I needed you to know how GRATEFUL I was to Chuck for asking me to work for him 27 years ago.  It's not always easy for husbands and wives to work side by side.....but working with Chuck, and then Troy, has been the easiest and most wonderful job I have ever had.  They both allowed me freedom to do the things I love; coffee with the girls, volunteering and taking care of the people I love when they needed me, all while doing Sales Tax and Payroll Reports and keeping the books balanced. 

 

And today, the page has been turned and a new chapter is staring back at me.  I see only white space waiting for me to fill with souvenir memories and hair-raising experiences.  

 

And BTW, if you need HVAC (air conditioning) for your Home or Business, please consider calling Troy Etheridge at C & E Air Conditioning Service, Inc. for a quote.  You won't be sorry....he'll give you the "Friend-Of-Liz" Discount!!

 

http://www.computerair.com/

Day 2 of Chapter 62

 

Today is Day 2 of Chapter 62

*

 

This week, Chapter 61 ended and Chapter 62 began, in the book of Liz. It’s funny how, when we get to the end of one chapter in our lives, we start seeing that “white space” approaching that each end-of-the-chapter has....and we start reflecting back on the moments, experiences and growth that the ending chapter wrote into its pages.

That white space is called “Pause”. 

 

A time of reflection....a time to remember the words and pictures and memories before moving forward into the mystery of the next chapter. To learn from the mistakes and give thanks for the joys of the ending chapter which makes us wiser as we slowly turn the page and carry them with us into the unknown.

 

 It’s God’s unique way of reminding us to see Him in every part of the ending year....and to take Him with us into the blank pages of the year ahead.

And this past year....Chapter 61....has been a feel-good chapter in the Book of Liz. Full of new hope, fresh eyes, healing heart and a great deal of love. Chapter 61 was a good read.....

 

 

If you’ve read this far, I feel sure you, (insert your name here), have been an important part of this chapter in my life. And I have no doubt you remember the chapters in my life that weren’t such an easy read.....they were full of struggles, floods, pain and....death. But my Chapter 61 is proof...PROOF....that even the hard-to-read chapters eventually Pause and a new chapter begins. Goodness is birthed out of pain.

 

 

Thank you for all the heartfelt birthday wishes and love you blessed me with. I’m taking you with me into Chapter 62!

P.S. Here's some snippets in the final pages of Chapter 61....

 

 

I Will Be With You

I ran across an old journal entry this morning from six years ago; sometime in the middle of 2016.  A particularly difficult year.  No.  That's a lie.

THE most difficult year of our lives..  

There were many things that made that year what is was.  Started with a flood that forced us to flee our home...insurance for everything but flood which caused us to find ourselves in debt after working years to be debt free....a raging infection in my husband's foot that forced us to sit in a doctors office every week for most of the year and ended with a diagnosis of cancer and surgery.

And during it all, there was the feeling of being inches away from falling off a cliff of despair with nothing to hang onto.....except the invisible hand of God.

In that year of despair, I found myself face to face with Grief.  Depression.  Abandonment.  I wanted to run...run far away from it all.  I wanted it more than anything. But there was something within me that wouldn't allow it.  

And so I journaled...I blogged...and I prayed.  I took the words from within myself and released them to parchment,  computer screens and God's ears.  

 Here was my journal entry.....

“Father, I’m spent.  I feel sometimes like Chuck and I are standing on the edge of a cliff and each saying to the other, “You go first; you jump first.”

Yesterday we spent the last dollar of the $90,000 flood loan on the house and we're no where near finished.  I must admit, Father, I’m ready for this chapter to end.  I’m spent.  I’m exhausted. I’m hot.  I’m tired.  And yet, I know this journey is necessary...and far from over.  

It’s almost like a type of baptism, isn’t it Father?  Everything in our lives changed because of “the water”.  The going down into the water and the coming back out different.  A baptism of ourselves.  Trusting You to change us through it all and placing our worries and fears in Your hands.  Letting You carry them for us.  And even when we "chose" to carry them ourselves instead of handing them to You, You stayed right us.....You never left us. 

I read something yesterday that said, “God has prayed for you, Liz, that your own faith may not fail - and even when you do fail....that your faith will grow stronger than your failure.”  These were words Jesus said to Peter.....but they apply to me as well.  That God....yes, GOD Himself...is praying for ME.  “You will fail, Liz, but I have prayed for you.....that your failure would not destroy your faith...but would DEEPEN it.  I have prayed for you, Liz, that the very thing that was intended to kill you, will make the faith already planted in the deepest soil of you, even stronger.”

I Will Be With You......Always.

When You Least Expect It....Magical Things Happen

 

 

Yesterday, we met up with our awesome friend, Art, for dinner in downtown Ft. Worth at one of his favorite restaurants to celebrate an early birthday meal for him together. 

 

As we were “toasting” and “visiting”, we found ourselves chatting about the church we all attend, Fielder Church in Arlington. They had recently started a Wednesday night prayer gathering each week and since we now live in Allen, Wayne and I hadn’t yet been able to attend. As Art started sharing about it, our waitress quickly came up to our table and said, “Are you guys talking about Jesus? I LOVE Jesus!”.

She was amazing! Her boldness....the twinkle in her eyes....the love that radiated out of her....was nothing short of magical! We all felt it....and we felt we had just been handed a chunk of gold.

 

She then asked, “Can I pray with you guys?”. We were like “ABSOLUTELY!!”. She set her tray down on the next table and sat down next to Art, grabbed his hand and prayed. She prayed blessings over each of us....she thanked God for the blessing of this new friendship....and she thanked God for rescuing her when she had been lost in this crazy world we all live in.

And as my husband put it, "Was our waitress sent to bring Light to Art on the eve of Joyce’s (his late wife) birthday and by bringing a HUGE piece of lemon cake? Was the Light “literally” shining so bright on us at dinner that we had to move our seats?"  Yes.

Webster's definition: "Angels…a spiritual being serving God especially as a messenger. 2 : a person who is very good, kind, or beautiful."

 

A nugget of gold she was.....and it reminded me of a scripture that my Mama Doris told me earlier this week: 

 

 “I could have no greater JOY than to hear that My children are following the truth.” 3 John 1:4

 

 

Tuesdays With Pappo: "On Monday!!!

#tuesdayswithpappo

 Tuesdays With Pappo on Monday!!!

God's Breath On Her Face.....

 

My Heart SOARS when I see this picture.....

 

Bella. 

 

I ran across this picture from my granddaughter's Instagram page today. Sweet Bella riding in her sister’s convertible as the sun sets with a content smile on her beautiful face....hair pulled up in a pony....overall shorts and tank top on....and feeling God's breath on her face. It’s the picture of a girl with God's DNA pouring out of her......Why does this make her Lele cry crocodile tears?? #Lelesgirls