Another New Year

Around a month ago, the transplant doctors Arlynda has been seeing in St. Louis advised against her making another appointment.  For she is still too heavy to receive another liver, and her switching to electronic cigarettes is still not good enough for them.  This was not as devastating as it sounds, though.  For her non-alcoholic cirrhosis of the liver has not become any worse in almost two years, and we were already fairly sure that she would not be receiving a transplant.  Furthermore, the trip up and back to St. Louis has always been very hard on everyone—especially Arlynda.  Therefore, not going back up there was actually good news.

Ah, but let us now review some of my highlights from 2015.  For there was becoming what I am calling functionally-blind TWICE, having a light heart-attack and spending over two weeks not being able to stand on my feet (even while holding onto something) for longer than a minute, with all of my normal daily issues notwithstanding.

What is normal?  Well, there are at least a couple of hours each and every day when I do not want to spend the energy to breath because of how painful absolute exhaustion truly is, but since I have become conditioned to this and the dozens of other issues, they really should be considered notwithstanding.  No, I am really not joking about any of that.

Alas, the smart-alecky side of me would like to say that 2016 could not be any worse than 2015, but since I know all too painfully well just how much it could, I dare not.  Besides, 2016 already has a running start on being a much better year.

Much to my shame, I must admit that I have been fighting paralyzing fear for the last several days as I am writing this.  For around a week before Christmas, our local insurance agent called to inform us that we would be on our own if the dead tree in our front yard was to fall on someone and kill them.  Added to this was the underwriter for our homeowner's insurance policy wanting proof of how old our roof is before the first of the year or they would drop us, which would surely result in our mortgage lender foreclosing immediately.  Since we were fairly sure that mice took care of what proof we may have had of the age of our roof, we were looking at the possibility of being out on the street squarely in the face.

Oh yeah, letting fear get to me so badly is indeed something to be deeply ashamed of.  For our Heavenly Father has never failed to prove Himself faithful to our ultimate well-being, but being made acutely aware of the other Lazarus long ago sticks with me.  You see, most in the Christian community focuses solely upon the Lazarus Christ Jesus raised from the dead [John 11:1-45], but there is also the Lazarus who starved to death in this world [Luke 16:19-31].  So, with our Heavenly Father loving everyone equally, how can I be so arrogant to think that He would not subject me and my family to anything truly disastrous while millions upon millions are starving to death around this world at this very minute?  How can any “good Christian” without being personally (as in directly—not through an interpretation of a Bible verse) assured otherwise?

Thankfully, it is currently not looking like we will lose our home.  For our local insurance agent assured us this afternoon (December 29) that as long as we had a signed contract from a roofing company by February 17^th, which we will surely have, the underwriter would not drop us.  Hey, one roofing company has already given an estimate of $3500, and we are waiting on around a dozen more to come by and tell us what they can do it for.

Yes, we really were needing a new roof on the main part of the house.  For a leak in the utility room has been steadily becoming worse.  Since we really cannot afford to get a new roof at this time, we were being content to accept putting out buckets and much lower insurance coverage, but with the insurance underwriter pushing the issue, a new roof will soon be put on.

We thought we could not afford to cut down that dead tree, neither.  For several came by to offer their services for over $1000, but our Heavenly Father provided us with a wonderful older man, who will cut down the tree and haul off all but the smallest pieces for $250 in less than a week (if the weather cooperates).  I was not worried about the tree coming down until the insurance underwriter declared that they would not cover it—regardless of the circumstances involved (a storm that took down other trees, etc.).

Now, how are we going to pay for the repairs?  This leads to some more changes to the content of this site for the foreseeable future.  For I will cut back to publishing two [ATFs] on Tuesday and Thursday, along with an A Sunday Drive on Sunday (of course) while trying to focus more time upon developing an unobtrusive advertising application for blogs and smaller sites, which will have a revenue sharing plan that could prove to be a great blessing to all participants.  All in accordance unto our Heavenly Father’s will, of course.

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