How many times do we have to rehash yesterday's news before we can put it to bed? I remember after my second marriage ended, I was in Kissimmee, FL visiting a friend. It had been a full year since the grand finale, yet my second marriage still lay smoldering at my feet for all to see.

My friend had company over one night while I was there. We went out to dinner and, as was my modus operandi, I rehashed the entire ordeal in morbid detail to this complete stranger. She sat and listened carefully, nodding every now and again...which only served to encourage my expansiveness on the subject of "how I was done wrong". Finally my friend, who had become decidedly uncomfortable, interrupted and said, "You know, Ginny...maybe it's time to just leave that alone and move on." My immediate response was to bristle. How dare she downplay this horrendous tragedy! She obviously "doesn't get it" (even though she was a former psych nurse and "got it" all too well).

Last winter I thought I was done here in West Virginia. I missed my children and my grandchildren. I was bored, overweight, and more than a little frustrated with my life. I wanted time to go faster because I thought the farther I got from the day Mr. Virgo died, the better I'd be. At the same time, I didn't want to wish my life away. I was at a crossroads when my life exploded and things started to get interesting. I started getting messages from my soul.

About twelve or thirteen years ago, one of my friends lost her husband after a brief illness. Three of us decided to take her to Mexico where she could unwind and let her hair down. How that woman found the strength to do that, I will never know because we went less than a week after the funeral! I cannot imagine how she survived that.

Nature nurtures me. Living at the river was one of the most beautiful seasons of my life and came at exactly the perfect time. Not two years after losing Mr. Virgo and the fiasco caring for my elderly aunt had become, the river offered me the peace and tranquility my anguished soul needed to heal. I'm grateful to my friends for that opportunity. And now, God has provided for me yet again with the opportunity to live on the family farm.
The seventy-odd acres of the farm consists mostly of hilly woods with about five acres or so of tillable land. A portion of the backside of the farm was clear cut several years ago and is now filled with brush. I didn't go back on the hill for the longest time because I couldn't stomach looking at it with my beautiful woods missing. I remember the first time I ventured back, I cried at the sight.

I've talked to you a little bit about the Prayer of Jabez and how those two little scriptures have impacted my life in a big way. I read that little book every week and there's something in it I've begun to do recently...with amazing results.

Bruce Wilkinson talks about events he calls "Jabez appointments". Part of asking for expanded territory is asking God to bring someone to him that he needs to talk with and share some light. Wilkinson recounts in story after story, tales of being in the right place at just the right moment. Since the rest of the prayer has been working so well, I decided to try getting some appointments of my own.

In keeping with my promise to my family and sister/friends, I never divulge my exact location till after I leave. The Girl Campers met at Beaver Creek State Park in East Liverpool, Ohio this weekend and...OMGosh...it is beautiful there! I want to take one last camping trip in TOW-Wanda this fall and I might just go back there.

Yesterday was so much fun. We gathered for breakfast then sat around a campfire all morning chatting. I took a long walk through the campground. This is a really big park! We went for a tour of the Pioneer Village. There is a working grist mill where they still grind wheat flour, buckwheat flour, and cornmeal and sell it in the trading post. After the tour, we watched a demonstration of a wood-fired cell phone charger! I'll tell you about it tomorrow.

One of my favorite things to do is camp with one of my girl camping groups. I didn't get to camp at all this summer so this weekend I came to a state park in Ohio to meet up with the Girl Campers. Janine Pettit does a podcast about camping like a girl and her listeners started clamoring for opportunities to get together. I got to visit with Janine last weekend at Country Living Fair. When I heard the Girl Campers were meeting this close to me, I couldn't pass up the opportunity. I didn't bring TOW-Wanda because it takes two people to get her out of where she's parked. So, I took this opportunity to camp in my tent. If you ever want to have a great time, camping with a bunch of women is such a hoot!

I once asked a framer when you can consider yourself an artist. She said, "When others recognize you as one." I asked my artist friend, Marion (whose work I greatly admire) the same question and she said, "When you order business cards with "Artist" under your name. The same goes for writer, speaker, gypsy. I am all of the above.

I don't know what happened to the post I wrote for yesterday. I suppose it got lost somewhere in the airwaves along with the video of my talk Sunday night. Facebook isn't always cooperative, is it?

While trying myriad ways to post that video, I had a lot of time to reflect on just how far I've come in the last several years. There was a time when the thoughts of speaking in front of a group of people would have sent me into a tizzy. Stage fright kept me from doing many things I would have liked to do in my life. Community theater, musical performance, and even stand-up comedy are all dreams I've had at one point or another...but fear kept me from pursuing any of them.

We can make things so complicated sometimes. Yesterday I spent about five hours in a local restaurant with abysmally slow Wi-Fi trying to upload the video of my discussion on the Prayer of Jabez. From now on I'm just going to record them live. I never did get that video to upload. I'll have to wait for a time when I'm in high speed Wi-Fi. I wasn't happy as I struggled with the connection over and over. I forgot this simple chart because I had my nose to the grindstone.