Tuesday, 21 August 2018

My days are full of different things... and by the time I get to blogging, a lot of it gets forgotten.  Regular activities, like yardwork and prepping food, seem to fade away.  Articles I read, videos I watch, things I discover... they pass into a state of non-existence when I get here.  I wonder what to write about.

Life is really strange some days.  I just finished browsing through a long page or two of "headlines" after checking my emails and some social media posts/search links.  The world is not quite a good place when you only see the things that other people think are important... like crimes, politics, murder, celebrity gossip, and the "stories" I have been discovering since doing this browsing with 500 pages to flip through (of advertising) to even get near the headline details.  I still fall for some of them, but don't even want to look anymore.

This morning I thought my mini-fridge died so I had to save my food right away. After emptying it, I discovered a THICK patch of ice and wondered if that was the cause.  After cleaning (defrosting) everything and having it unplugged for hours, it came back to life.  Now I am watching the thermometer to see if it works right. I will have to prevent an iceberg from forming in the fridge, too.  I think it messed up the temperature process, but I don't really know.  It seemed to be turned off and defrosting, etc., this morning.

I am working on a PLAN for any future problems with it, too.  I have been freezing my summer harvests and leftover foods, so that would be a great loss.  I already threw out anything that might have been compromised before I realized what was going on... milk, etc.

The other big event for today was making more fresh tomato sauce... with spices and mushrooms, like a spaghetti sauce.  I ended up with 3 pint jars and the rest I ate with pasta.  It wasn't quite as good as the first one, but I'm working on it.  I have to figure out what my canning options are, so I have them in the fridge (2) and freezer (1).

Doing computer stuff has occupied my evening time.

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Earlier in the day I read through some of the articles I have saved from newspapers.  One was about the increase in seniors filing for bankruptcy   We are heading into the Boomer generation in retirement, which has been seen as causing financial problems with Social Security and other economy topics.

This was after I had seen a news report on one of the bail out countries ending their debt, and how they endured eight years of great austerity measures to reach that point, and how this meant they will be able to borrow money again.  (There's something wrong with that logic.)

It was also an article from the Detroit Free Press, so I wondered how much applied to their area alone.

No mention was made of the changing structure of families in our culture and how that would affect the situations of elderly people.  I wondered how many had opted to have no or just one child, if they were still alive to help, if they lived near each other, had good relationships... and more.

We are not the Walton's anymore... 

I lived in an apartment building once, and one day I saw an elderly person alone in an empty apartment unit -- lying on a hospital bed, not conscious.  I guess I don't know if they ever woke up because I only saw them that one time when I left the building to go somewhere.  Everything was gone and the apartment was empty again soon after that.  I wondered what happened.  I wondered why.  I wondered if that person was put there to die.  I wondered if they didn't have funding for a normal care facility.  It happened so fast, and there was no one to really ask about it.  I just remember how strange it seemed to see just a hospital bed in an empty apartment.

When I was younger, living in Hollywood, I saw an older woman in a dirty nightgown sitting on a bus stop.  I didn't know anything about senior issues then.  I thought she was just another Hollywood weird person.  I eventually realized that wasn't the case, many years later.  I remember her with great sadness because I didn't help her.  I have no way of knowing what happened to her.

I found a news item many years ago, a very small article in a newspaper somewhere, about a woman that was dead for six years before anyone found her... her apartment and utilities were paid automatically, so she had a large savings account when she died.  They found her after the payments defaulted and she was evicted.  No one from her work checked on her.  No one at the apartment she lived in checked on her.  She must not have had any family that was able to check on her.  No friends came for her.  It makes you wonder.  How did it get that way?  Why?  What happened to her...

People have been reported as being unable to remember where they live.  Gone wandering for months.  Somehow surviving... looking homeless.

We are a society that is separated from people who would otherwise be the ones to care for us, watch over our senior years, and more.  Jobs seem to be the main cause.  Climbing the success ladder.  Moving here, moving there... never belonging anywhere.

I have seen that technology is used to keep people from their loved ones.  How will we overcome these new acts of the criminal mind?  I don't really know.

For me, the focus has been to protect the Christian community somehow.  

Not just me, I could never do that alone, but to create a place for Christians to help each other.

We like to think that is already happening, but seniors get forgotten, even in church.  I remember being part of a very small church with most of their members being seniors, and many of them couldn't get to church.  I thought a daily check-in call might help keep in touch with them, find out how they were doing, if they needed anything, etc.  I wasn't there long enough to start that, but the idea is still with me.  If Working Together needs to use it, it will.

I wonder if any of my hopes and dreams and desires to help the Body of Christ gather for the future hard times will ever happen.  GOD is the one in charge, so I hope someone will see the need we have to change our patterns of being apart, not wanting to talk about our doctrinal differences, dying as churches and communities.  I guess it has to happen in every community.  I hope I can do something to encourage that one day.  Working Together was my answer to all these needs.

Being a Senior Citizen myself now, and seeing the increased persecutions we face as Christians, the future is growing more and more frightening... even in America.  I will die one of these days, so I won't have to worry about it anymore, but Prophecy will continue to come true.  The world we know will become like the days of Noah and like the city of Sodom... that means Christians will not be the majority.

Will we be able to live apart in peace, providing for ourselves, trying to have a community we feel safe in?  I don't know.  Maybe for awhile.  It depends on what the world becomes, and how fast, and where we are, and who is in charge, and if we are strong enough.  Will the economy fall, or war change everything?  Maybe GOD is in the process of judging us with drought, and famine, and disease.

I find it a horror of our world to see little babies dying of starvation, their parents desperate to help them and not able to... and then see how people in our country purposely starve and abuse and kill their children and others.  It is our morality that causes these things... our lack of morality.  But GOD is not allowed in schools, courts, personal choices, and laws... these are moral choices, too.

When I started talking about the bankruptcy of seniors being a sign of other deeper problems, I didn't mean to get into as much as I did... but I also did not share as much as I wanted to.  I can go on and on about serious things like this.

One important piece of information I heard in the past has stayed with me... someone claimed that the Boomers were the last generation to claim a faith in GOD and what the Bible stands for.

That will affect the world in ways no one even thinks about today.

I better go.
Until next time,
In Christ,

Deborah Martin

work2gather.us
Working Together Inc
Building for the End Times

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May GOD help us to gather together and create a community that will care for one another, young and old, weak and strong, poor and rich.  Amen.