“As you grow closer to God, you can’t help but grow closer to each other.”

A young man I barely know came up to me at church the other day. He knew Mr. FixIt and I had just been married. He was quite interested in knowing the secret to a good relationship. He wanted to know how you KNOW you have the right person. 

One might not think I know the answers to those questions, given I just entered my fourth marriage. That sounds awful, doesn’t it? Like maybe I don’t know what I’m doing. And, I suppose if you ask my two ex-husbands, they might agree with you. I would counter with a statement: I learned with the loss of each relationship. I learned to examine my own behaviors and contributions, or rather…lack of contribution…in each relationship. I learned about what I DIDN’T want in a relationship. 

“Lynn Nicholson opened her home for the Victorian Christmas Tour this weekend. Lynn has been a faithful reader for the last three years and it was a treat to visit with her!”

It doesn’t happen very often, but when it does…it blows me away.

Gasp! “It’s Ginny McKinney!” 

I had just stepped into the door of Lynn Nicholson’s house when I caught her eye from across the room. 

“The difference CBD Ointment made after just two weeks of use is absolutely remarkable!”

Refresher:

After Mr. Virgo died, I developed an autoimmune disorder. It took three years to diagnose what was happening to my skin. As you can see in the photo on the left, my skin thickened, dried, split, and peeled. Then it started all over again. Cycle after cycle. My feet were just as bad. Occasionally it would appear on my elbows or on random spots on my legs. Much mostly just the palms of my hands and soles of my feet. It got so bad that I had to wrap my feet with duct tape to keep them from splitting open. I went through thousands of bandaids as I had to keep my fingers wrapped constantly…for comfort and also out of embarrassment.

“My sweet cousin, Tom.”

I was seven years old when I fell in love with Tommy Allen. The fact that he was my first cousin meant nothing to me. The fact that he was home from the Navy wearing his sailor whites meant EVERYTHING. swoon He was dreamy. 

I remember that day like it was yesterday. I was playing on the floor with my brother. We had a bunch of little plastic barnyard animals and some Lincoln Logs, creating the wilderness cabin of Daniel Boone. It was a sweltering hot summer day and I wore a violet colored cotton dress. They say it matched my eyes. My bare arms were brown from the sun. My bare feet were brown from the WV dirt.

“Homemade chocolate cake…Grandma Lois’ recipe.”

My son-in-law’s Grandma is one of the sweetest and feistiest women I know. Grandma Lois is 90 and now lives in a nursing home. But up to just a few years ago, she drove herself around in her little Ford and assisted in a grade school classroom several days a week.

Grandma Lois and Grandpa Bud had an upholstery business. She was always a hardworking woman. She didn’t stop working when her husband passed suddenly. She’s the matriarch of a wonderful, salt-of-the-earth family. I tell people when Daughter #1 got married, she won the lottery with these wonderful people.

“Buckwheat Flapjacks & Bacon”

Twice a year, Spring and Fall, I go camping with the girls at Beaver Creek State Park near Liverpool, Ohio. It’s a Mister/Sister trip so we can bring our beaus if we’ve got ‘em. I usually go for a couple days alone so I can gab with the girls and drink coffee all day in my jammies. Then Mr. FixIt comes up and joins us. Much of the time, it’s him and about 15-20 women. He is in his element, let me tell you! He can gab with the best of them.

“Ron Rudolph and his grandson building bluebird houses in memory of his late wife.”

I have told you many times that Mr. Virgo sends me bluebirds. It first began when I stood by his grave…heart broken…sobbing, when I heard a birdsong nearby. I looked to my right and just a few feet away, a bluebird sat on a pole and was singing. It lifted something in my heart. I could feel my husband’s presence and it was comforting. Since then, countless bluebirds show up at odd times. Mr. FixIt and I have taken to saying hello to him out loud when we see them.

“The Little Max by Liberty Outdoors”

My good friend, Janine Pettit, has gone camping since she was a little girl. When her kids were heading off to college, Janine decided to be an ambassador and help women learn everything they needed to know to get out and “Go Places and Do Things!” 

I met Janine in the Spring of 2015 in Nashville. She had been a blogger for goRVing.com for quite some time, and asked if she could interview me. We had an instant rapport and I have subsequently appeared at least three times on her podcast talking about my journey. 

“My favorite ornament from childhood.”

I heard a mother comforting her child once. The little one was crying about something that had happened earlier. The mother said, “Oh…are you remembering how you were sad earlier?” I loved that. She wasn’t dismissing the child’s feelings and at the same time, she was teaching her “It’s not happening to you now. It’s just a memory.”

As we were decorating the tree yesterday, I was hanging the special ornaments Mr. Virgo and I purchased together. I felt a melancholy come over me. And, as this is what I do, I examined the feelings and let myself feel them. Then I remembered the mother comforting her child and I smiled. The melancholy I felt wasn’t sadness in the moment. It was holding the items we cherished and remembering how sad that first Christmas was after he died.

“Depression keeps you isolated from those who might help you.”

In between cooking and visiting with my family at our Thanksgiving dinner Saturday, I checked my Twitter account. Someone was asking a question about assisted suicide. I have a contact on Twitter whose husband elected assisted death when his Stage 4 colon cancer became untreatable. In order to connect the two, i had to pop out of his tweet to find her profile. But when I tried to find the original tweet with the question, I couldn’t find it. Rather than take the time to scroll through, I typed “assisted suicide” in the search bar.