Decision time

So far, our flat hasn’t sold, I like to blame the bug for that, and we have to make some decisions quite soon. If we expect to stay for the winter we’ll have to buy our wood and store it soon and buy new winter tyres for the car. September is being lovely which helps!

We haven’t been able to get to the UK because Austria is on the quarantine list, in that when we arrive, we must have 14 days isolated. How this is policed I have no idea but we would honour that. The one brief time where the quarantines were lifted, there were no flights.

I really want to see my son as he has had some problems, and I miss my kids like a heartbreak. maybe I just need to see and touch, but it’s there. The thought of Christmas without either of them looms like a spectre.

There is a glimmer of hope, if we have no bookings on the holiday houses, then we could do a trip home, driving, so Swingle comes too, shortly or just after Christmas, then we could stay a month and do house hunting too.

We’re both believing in God’s timing in all this, we’re praying for the person who will buy and keeping ourselves in belief. It just needs time.

Birthdays

I just celebrated my 59th birthday. A few decades ago, I would be considered ready for the comfy chair and and a bit of knitting.

Nowadays it’s just another start. I have to work until I’m 66 @:%=#**#=# it! I’m building my career as a writer hope to start some painting, and ride again.

So next year? Be warned! I’m planning a big 60th party in the UK. Then (don’t tell the pension people) I’m going to re-generate, following year I’m going to be 59 again. Good idea???

The Baize door is published!

I’m soo excited!  You can’t imagine the buzz from having a book on Amazon. Do have a look and maybe have a read!! It’s what I call rural romance, with countryside, romance, horses, equine assisted therapy, of course, dogs and Christianity!

Joanna has been sleepwalking through life living in her family’s ancestral manor house and running the Hazeley horse show.

Then a childhood friend, Diane, reappears, ruining the glorious isolation Joanna and her father have created. Diane opens a riding stable literally on Joanna’s doorstep.

So begins Joanna’s descent into a life of pain and frustration but then two totally disruptive puppies enter her life, and she needs Guy to help her with their training. They seem ill-suited until a tragedy sparks something more.

It is when Diane commits the ultimate betrayal that Joanna realises she must radically change her life.

But how?  Is there a way to reconciliation with Dianne? Can horses help? Will she finally overcome her past and pain to build a new life built on faith and love?

The Lottery ticket

June 2011!

We believe that God wants to prosper us – and of course that’s more than money, its Biblical and is so true for our lives here.  Andrew Wommack   has been talking lately about not limiting God and I’ve been trying to take it all in.  Dave and I have a vision of buying the flat next door and turning it into a B&B where we can offer free holidays to those in need, and we’ve been trying hard to imagine this running -well that’s easy, it’s the how we can’t see, so we’re just focusing on seeing the finished product!

 But I feel we’re getting little hints of how he works things for us.   I found a lottery ticket in Tamsweg and checked on the Internet and found it was worth 5 euros.  I felt maybe that I should go and hand it in, after all I hadn’t paid the price for the ticket. Honesty was making me want to do the right thing. Then I thought well the girl behind the desk will just take the money for herself.   Dave said maybe I should just put it in the church collection. This I did, only to find out afterwards he meant cash it and then put the money in!  I admit  I was trying to avoid having to explain my find, and the language problem,I  didn’t want  to feel stupid.  Maybe I was wrong and someone had gone to the desk to ask if it had been found -would you if you lost a ticket, I suppose you can prove it if you have regular numbers ? Maybe I’ve caused more confusion than God meant in my weakness. Still, we’ve just heard we’re getting a rebate on our electricity bill and I found a euro on the ground at Lois’s………

After Easter

My Easter tree and through the window, snowing!!

It snowed on Easter day which is the first time for us and the weather went cold. Great for the last of the skiers but a bit of a shock down here as we’d got into spring mode!

Easter turned out to be unexpectedly a blessing for us, and was a great day.  We both woke quite early and so decided to go to the Church service at Murau, our mother church.  The service itself was very traditional (I’m being tactful here) despite really hard word being done by the Pastorin. To our surprise, she invited to lunch along with the other  English family. We had a great time, great food, great chat, although mostly in English which always makes me feel a bit guilty.  Is it a compliment that people here only speak to us in German?

Then we trundled home and then had an evening meal with the Lungau English gang, which was again a real blast.  What a day!

Paggy is on the mend, just waiting for an all clear from the physiotherapist that he’s mobile  enough to go home.  He says he’ll discuss about the key when he comes home, but this time I wont let him evade it.  He even talked Dave into buying him a beer and sneaking it into the ward for him – at the time it seemed funny, but now we’re both having kittens and dreading getting told off when we next visit.

It’s now like another start to the year, Pentecost and Spring to look forward to, so why am I yo-yoing between great joy and manic frustration?

The Shack

I came across this book in the local library and downloaded it onto my Kindle as I felt I’d lose a lot in trying it in German!  I wont say much about the plot etc as you need to read this book yourself.  It’s a novel, it’s not a real experience, but it’s simple story of a damaged man spending a weekend with God and it had me mesmerised. Shame it’s called a shack, which sounds unpleasant but it fits the story, I’d rather it was a hut, as in the German translation!

It’s not the Bible, it’s a man’s agenda, but what God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit do in this tale gives a possibility, an imagining, of how this three-way bond could be.  I didn’t agree with all it said, but there is so much love there, so much of what I believe as a non denominational Christian, and which I’ve heard taught by Joyce Meyer, Andrew Wommack, Hillsong, Willow Creek, that there is a huge credence to it. 

It set my vision of God free, to  feel his love and touches of the spiritual world, the bigger picture, the more important picture.  Its set something free in me.  I’ve felt closer to tears and closer to God for it.  Read it and judge for yourself.

Of course, I had to research it  and saw the Pharisees and Sadducees on the modern formal American church condemned it – they would.  People who read it appreciate it! I guess the end timers won’t like it either as there’s no panic there, just peace. And there has been a law suit with  bickering  over the profits, so human and so of the devil to want to wreck (by the way, he had no appearance in the book). There’s also the Missy project wich asks people to promote the book, hence my bit  above!

Read it and decide for yourself!

www.theshackbook.com

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• The Shack (wordsofeternallife.org)