Stress Anyone? # 5 continued

We have discussed several ways to get rid of the unwanted stress in our lives like, rest, exercise, lots of sunshine, sharing with others and also giving of ourselves and our means if we have it. All of these have been such a great help to me and I am sure my daughter would say the same thing.

There is one important step in getting rid of stress that I have saved, so that I can leave this subject knowing I have done something helpful to all of you who are extremely stressed.  We were extremely stressed and have made great strides in getting rid of it.

Sometimes when we are stressed out to the max it is hard to concentrate on anything that takes using our minds and thinking things out and sorting things out.  That's the way it seemed to be with my daughter.  She would get up in the morning and take her shower and get ready for the day and while she was doing that I would read my Bible and pray and ask God to be with us through the day.  Then while I was taking my shower she would do the same, only maybe not as intense to start with because of her stress point being so high, but she was trying and that's what counts.

When we knew we were about to venture out on a mission we always asked God to bless us and be with us.  I believe He went with us everywhere, we were so blessed to have His presence with us and it seemed that everything we did turned into a blessing of some sort.  We were so blessed to be able to help people that were poorer than we were, and they were so grateful for the help.  Just little things like a tip to the maid that cleaned our room every day, a tip now and then to the gardener, and little things that we thought they would like to eat as a snack.  The waitress or waiter that waited on us when we were having lunch out we would tip, the boy that bagged our groceries didn't get a wage, they just received the tips people gave them and they were always grateful.  One boy at the hotel really blessed us with his big smile and hearty laugh.  He would try to help us speak spanish and we would try to help him speak English, and it was a fun time.

Some fun in life is also a healer, as long as it is clean fun and no one is getting hurt by it.  We just really had a good time with everyone that we associated with.  It was wonderful and all in all the Lord had our healing time all planned out and we thank Him for His healing of our emotions and spiritual needs too as well as other needs that we had.

I believe that most of the things that we learned about stress healing, can be done wherever you might be except for sunshine.  Depending on where you live, sunshine might be a problem, but all the other things that helped us so much are available most anywhere.  Just ask God to lead you and He will if you are sincere and your stress will fly away.  I believe both of us have experienced some important healing that was really needed.  I have always loved my daughter but I learned to love her even more as we fellowshipped together day after day, she became so precious to me, I still spend time with her.
She picked up a flu virus from the family when we got home and I have had the opportunity to help her and it in turn has helped me to stay busy, which is a real blessing to me.  So don't forget the few lessons we learned about stress and try them out, you just might be blessed as we were.  Grandma Joan

Stress Anyone? Continued Part 4

Well, here it is tomorrow and we took the ferry to Cancun and the pastor had promised to have a car for us to get around in and he wasn't there, so we sat outside and waited.  He did have a cell phone that I am sure someone supplied him with.  So my daughter called him and he said he would be there soon. We knew it was suppose to be a van that we were going in, so we saw a van pull up and pass us a little ways and we thought that might be him, and it was a dirty van and my daughter made the remark that she hoped the one we were going in would be a little better than that.  Well, guess what?  It was much worse, it was a big old yellow work van that he had borrowed.  He didn't have a car.  It smelled so bad when we got in that I thought I was going to lose my breakfast.  The stench was terrible.  We came to the conclusion that they don't bathe real often because of their living conditions.
He had his family with him, which we didn't expect, but it turned out it was a real blessing.  His wife was dressed very poorly and the only one who was dressed nice was the youngest girl.  The rest had great needs and the youngest probably did too.  She just had on her very best.

We were suppose to go to a store in a mall that was cheaper for the Mexican people and that we did and it was so crowed with clothes hanging on racks, I couldn't get through very well with my wheel chair without pulling everything off the racks.  So they took me out in the mall where I waited for them.  Fun to watch people and the mall was a beautiful, huge mall, big as any I have ever seen here in the US.  We ended up visiting two malls in Cancun, not that day but a previous day.  My daughter has a very giving spirit and she was the one supplying the needs of these people and she ended up outfitting the wife with a couple of nice outfits, and Teacher Ben as we called him with new pants and shirt and the children with new clothes. Teacher Ben was so grateful that he had tears in his eyes of gratitude when she was outfitting his wife. Then we took them to eat at the mall where they have all the Subway, McDonalds and all those places and they each got what they wanted to eat and we enjoyed a nice meal with them.  They ended up calling me the bag lady because I had all the shopping bags piled up on me, they weren't heavy just a lot of them.  It was funny and fun.

By the way, the van got aired out a lot and was tolerable most of the day.  It was a fun day and a happy day, but a very tiring day.  Teacher Ben was going to go back to the island and work some more that evening.  He lives in Cancun and travels back and forth on the ferry to work and home.
That evening he told us later that he sold two tours and was all elated over that, so it was a good thing he went back over to work.  He was so happy with the new clothes he kept saying, 'thank you very much, thank you very much'  over and over and the night before we left he came to our hotel to say goodbye and mostly all he said was, 'thank you very much, thank you very much.'  Talk about being happy and stress free, helping others is one of the best stress relievers there is.  So if you are weighted down with stress, get out and see what you can do for someone else, it is one of the best ways to let stress go.  I will never forget his gratitude, it was overwhelming to me.

Well, there are still other things we did and one very important one that I want to share with you tomorrow.  So hang in there, the best is yet to come.  Get out and help someone less fortunate than yourself and see if it doesn't do wonders for you.  I pray that you will be more than blessed with these ideas on relieving stress.  They really work, and most of them you don't have to be in the Islands to do them them, you can do them right where you live.  See you tomorrow,  Grandma Joan

Stress Anyone? Continued Part 3

I hope you are enjoying our little journey in the Caribbean Islands.  It was such a healing experience for both of us that we will never forget the experience and how much it has helped us.  I am not one to go very far all at one time, usually if we have traveled, my husband and I always did it in an RV and our feet on the land, but this time it was an air journey and something very exciting to look forward to.  Flying frightens me and I usually cry when the plane lifts off, it is a nervous reaction. Then when the plane touches down I am so happy, just the opposite feeling.  I got over the crying feeling but always happy when we touched down.

The first time we rented a golf cart we toured the whole island except for a little arm that we went out on later.  The island is only 5 miles long and half a mile wide, I think I mentioned that earlier, so it didn't take long to do the whole length.  On the way down to the point at the other end, we stopped in the only town other than the one we were staying in.  They are not big towns, not at all just a wide place in the road with lots of shops and dwellings.  This place had a little park in it and there were ladies in the park with heaps of used clothes that they were selling.  My daughter saw a couple of children on the sidewalk across the street from the park and so stopped to share some color books and crayons that she had brought with her purposely to share.  When the ladies in the park saw what she was doing, they surrounded her, all wanting color books and crayons.  She didn't bring near enough but it made a lot of little ones happy and mammas too.  It was such a good experience that we took the ferry to Cancun and bought more crayons and books, for another trip down the island.

Well, this first trip we went clear to the end and as I was in the wheel chair, we got out and she took me to the very tip of the island and she left me up on the point as she went down a path by the water, the ocean wasn't beaches there, it was rocky and she enjoyed her little hike down there which was not my thing to do, I am terrified of high places.  On our way back to the other end where we were staying, we noticed a little settlement of shacks, and I mean shacks. Made out of whatever they could find and probably some even had dirt floors. Well, we couldn't get that out of our minds, we decided we had to do something for these poor people.

We got acquainted with a man selling tours, snorkeling, scuba diving and the like and he was pastoring an Evangelical mission down the island a ways and we became good friends with him and decided to take him with us down to his mission.  So we went through our suitcases and took out all the clothes we thought we could do without until we got home and took crayons and pictures to color and two bags of fruit juice candy and some book marks and guess where he took us, your right,  down to the poor settlement.  That's where his little mission was and we had so much fun, his sister helps with the mission and they were so glad to see us and so friendly.  We gave away all the crayons and pictures to color and all the candy and his sister kept pointing at the bag of clothes and so we opened the bag and tried to give the clothes to those who wanted them, and then we gave her the bag to distribute at the mission.  There were three rutty roads with dwellings on both sides, I couldn't tell you how many homes but very many.  We also gave away some book marks but they were in English and I don't think many of them spoke English so we didn't give all our book marks away but we did give the pastor some to use at his mission.

I have to say that that trip was a very healing trip, just seeing the joy on the children's faces and on the mother's faces too and how happy we made them that day, was so healing to both of us.  My daughter was so happy to help them that we decided to take the pastor to Cancun or meet him there and take him shopping.  Well, I guess I should wait until tomorrow to tell you about that trip.  It was worth it's weight in gold.  We had to cross in a ferry to go to Cancun and it was an extremely enjoyable day that I will tell you about tomorrow.  So, don't forget that another healing element in our lives is helping others, find something to do for others, if you can't give things away, you can give yourself away to the needs of others.  May God help us to always put others first in our lives and our reward will be in heaven.  We may never see results here but we may see lots of results there.
See you tomorrow.  Grandma Joan

Stress Anyone? Continued Part 2

Yesterday we learned that lots of rest for extreme stress is important, not sleep, but rest.  Of course sleep is important but we were forced to rest a lot more because there were not a lot of things to do in the evening and we were in a strange land and didn't know how safe it was to go out in the evenings.
I am not one to have a great fear of the dark and so one evening I suggested we go out instead of going to bed.  So go out we did.  Other people were out walking and the evening air was warm and so refreshing, we just really enjoyed our evening walks.  There was usually a cool breeze along with it. So that ended our going to bed real early, we still got to bed around 8 or so, so we were still getting plenty of rest and still getting out among other people.  There was no crime there so it was the perfect place to relax and enjoy the cool evenings.

On this Island, there were lots of outdoor shops and indoor ones too, and the shop owners or workers would hound us to buy.  After about a week there they saw that when we did buy something it was something we were looking for and they got helpful in helping us find what we were looking for and they seem to understand that we weren't just frivolously buying and enjoyed talking to us as we went by, and sometimes we would stop and chat, my daughter loved to try to learn spanish so she could chat with them.  We had taken a spanish course together years ago and I had learned that I could understand it better than speak it and she was learning to speak it so it worked out that sometimes when she didn't understand what they were saying, I did, but she could talk to them a little and I couldn't.  So we learned that learning is a great way to relieve stress, try learning something new, like a hobby of some sort or another language that might come in handy where you live.

Another thing we did, was relax on the beach, sunbathing was a great way to relax and get lots of vitamin D.  We came home pretty brown, but I have to say that the sun there was a lot more intense than I have ever felt before and I have been lots of places where they have very warm summers, but the intensity of the sun there felt like it was blistering me, I found out that she didn't feel that at all so guess it was just me because I never got burned and neither did she.  But just relaxing in the sun was very healing.  Sometimes we would just lay in the sun by the pool and relax but she enjoyed the beach more.  The sand was hard for me to walk in but we made it most of the time together, once in a while she got brave and went for walks alone but only a couple of times.  There was always no problems.

So exercise, learning something new and sunshine are great healers for stress.  There are still some more very important things that we learned while there that I want to share with you but you will have to wait until tomorrow for a couple more real important ones.  Until then, I'm so glad to be back and have time to visit with you each day and have the strength to do it.  Grandma Joan

Stress Anyone? Part 1

Yes, I know that wasn't a very smart question but God helping me, I am going to try to help you get rid of the unwanted stress in your life.  I believe we all have stress and a certain amount of stress, I am told is good for us.  It keeps us on our toes and challenges us to have a goal and to work towards that goal.

However, there are stresses that we can do without and my daughter and I had both been under some stress that we could have done without.  Both from different sources but both having the same effect.
Emotionally worn out, and on top of that my blood Hemoglobin went dangerously low and I couldn't function at all when it came to doing anything but sitting in a chair.  For me that was the ultimate low.  I have always been an ambitious person and yes I have had emotional upsets but the last one did a number on me that along with my low hemoglobin I was just sitting in my chair waiting to die.  I really didn't want to do anything either.

On the other hand, my daughter was trying to run from hers and she was on the go continually, always going and I would watch her trying to get away from her stress and it would wear me out just watching her go, go, and go some more.  Every day and all day.  It was wearing her out.

Now I know that everyone cannot possibly go to the Caribbean Islands to get rid of the stress, but perhaps you can do the same thing at home that we did there.  The first week or so that we were there we went to bed early, I mean early, like 5:30 in the evening, for a few nights we would just lay there and talk and listen to each other and that was very healing.  Then we would watch the only English channel on TV and it was ER room experiences and that would keep our mind off our problems and see other peoples problems that were worse than ours.  So getting to bed early was very healing, I think anyone who has undergone extreme stress should get plenty of rest and find someone that you can trust and talk it out.

During the day she wanted to go, but guess what the only way to go was to walk or rent a golf cart.  Golf carts rented for $37.00 a day and so we couldn't do that more than two or three times so our alternative was to walk, and I couldn't walk very far maybe half a block and be winded and in a lot of back pain, so she was pushing me in my wheelchair most of the time.  That was stressful for me because I thought it to be too much for her, but she was so sweet and I soon realized that she was doing it from a willing heart and I could relax and enjoy getting out and like I said she liked to go and so go we did.  I was not use to it but it was good for me not to sit around waiting to die.  I did learn to walk more,  maybe three or more blocks at a time and that was really good for me.  And she was walking all the time.  So Exercise was another good thing that we were doing.

Well, sorry time as run out for today but tomorrow I will continue to give you some good pointers on dealing with stress that we learned.  In today's stressful world we need all the help we can get and don't forget that God is our helper and for us He sent us on a long journey to get the help we needed. So I want to share with you what you can do to help with your stress.  There are some good pointers coming that really topped it all off.  See you tomorrow.  Grandma Joan

The Story of the Ant,

Proverbs 6:6-8  "Go to the ant, you sluggard, Consider her ways and be wise, Which, having no captain, overseer or ruler, provides her supplies in the summer and gathers her food in the harvest."

I have thought of this verse many times throughout my life time and always saw how busy the little ants were often carrying something twice their size and always so very busy.

While we were in the Caribbean Islands, I was lounging by the pool one day and a little ant crawled up on my lounge and without thinking I flicked him off into the pool.  I looked down and he was struggling so hard not to drown, my heart went out to him and I reached down and saved him from drowning, he scampered off on his noble errand.

I have a different outlook on ants today.  That little thing was so helpless there in that big swimming pool and he was doing his very best to stay afloat, his little legs were working so hard to keep alive.

Are we like the little ant, trying to stay spiritually afloat in this sinful world?  God is waiting to reach down and save us, lift us out of our sins and plant our feet on solid ground.  The Word of God is our solid ground and we need to spend time with Him each day in prayer and study of His Word.

We can be like the little ant and scurry away sharing what we have learned from our time with God each and every day.  We can go about our work and talk to God as we are working and not just talking to Him but listen, He may just have something special to impress upon your mind as you contemplate on His love and care for you.

God speaks to us through His Word, and also when we are obedient to His Word, He can impress our hearts of things we need to do or what ever is on His mind for us at the moment.

God bless you as you walk with Him day by day and don't forget to be industrious like the little ant and Thank God for rescuing you from your sins and saving you.  Grandma Joan

I'm Back again, can't stay away from all my blogging friends

It's true, can't seem to let it go.  So considering that God has something to do with it, I'm back again. My daughter took me on a wonderful vacation in the Caribbean Islands.  It was the best vacation I have ever had and so healing to both of us.  She was suffering from stress and so was I and it just did a lot for both of us.

The little island we were on was one half mile wide and five miles long and no crime, we could walk the streets in the cool of the evenings and were perfectly safe.  We were there one month and the weather was in the eighties most of the time.  Had to have a fan on at night to sleep good and and we made many friends, not by name but by sight.  Most of the time I was in my wheel chair but I did try to walk as much as I could and the people came to recognize the wheel chair I'm sure as we only saw three or four the whole time we were there.

We sunbathed on the beautiful beach and the water was not cold but cool, and felt so good.  We went out one day  when the waves were a little bigger and one hit us so hard it broke one of my ribs but it's all well now.  It was fun even when I got hurt.  We had such a good time.  The Caribbean ocean is one of the prettiest oceans I have ever seen, a beautiful turquoise.

The hotel we were in had a nice swimming pool and we sunbathed there too.  The pool was just outside our hotel room.  The gardens around the hotel and pool were kept up very nice and looked so lush and pretty.  There were gecko's around and one Iguana.

The gardener was a little Mexican man, he wasn't young but very sweet and we gave him a tip now and then and some cookies and when we left we gave him a nice gift of peso's and he was so happy, he grabbed me and gave me a big hug. We always tipped our maid and the boys that helped us with our luggage, it doesn't take much to make them happy.

There are not a lot of cars on the island, most people get around on a moped or golf cart.  You can rent either one and we rented a golf cart and toured the island and my daughter gave out color books and pictures to color and color crayons and we decided to give some of our clothes away and it was so much fun.  I gave one lady a pair of  my nearly new pajamas and when she got them she turned  and ran home she was so happy.  It was a very poor village and they were all so grateful.

I want to go back.  But don't know if I ever will but the place and people will always be in my heart.
The only bad thing about the whole trip was the plane ride home.  We had to go to Miami and we were in the air seven hours.  That was a little tough but worth it all.

I hope you enjoyed the little trip to the Caribbean, I probably will mention it often as it will always be in my mind.  I pray that all my bloggers will join with me again and we will study together and get ready to meet Jesus when he comes and then we won't be separated by all those many miles.  We can be neighbors.  See you tomorrow!!   Grandma Joan