News & Posts

October 2024 was filled with chaos, confusion, and distractions for our nation and families. We pray our readers were spared or at least will recover from the events. Hurricanes, wars, rumors of war, politics, and drama combined to debase our thoughts and lives. In this blog I share how we handled events we found ourselves dealing with. I may not fully convey the turmoil and undercurrents the events inflicted, but I will share a bit of our struggle to maintain a positive attitude. Reference Ephesians 4:2-3.

We had close family in the path of both Helene and Milton. Helene came at the end of September with horrific damage far inland in the Carolinas, where some of my cousins reside. We were in contact with them, and I volunteered at our church to haul supplies to the area, but my offer went unfulfilled

A cousin asked me to bring my chainsaw and come cut up fallen trees, but common sense told me not to venture into a disaster area without official contacts.

Our children and grandchildren in Sarasota had weathered Helene relatively unscathed. We had prayed heavily for a hedge of protection and knew our prayers mingled with millions of others. Hurricane Milton, drew a direct path on their town and since they are just a few hundred yards from the bay, the storm surge was expected to take their home.

They evacuated to the Fort Lauderdale area and my wife immediately bought the two grandchildren and herself plane tickets. In one day, she swooped in and brought the children back to our home. The operation came off without a major hitch and was covered by our prayers and those of our friends. The children were safe, and the grandchildren were with us. Damage to material things would be as it would be.

The Florida kids seriously thought they suffered frostbite from walking out of Eat-n-Park and to the car!. The next day, they enjoyed a fall pumpkin patch experience like can’t be found in Florida. They enjoyed a corn maze, obstacle course, corn pit, zip line, apple cider slushies and corn dogs. Being a refugee ain’t all bad!

They enjoyed joining Grammy for her 4th grade Sunday School class, a first for them. As we studied the Israelites in the desert, one home-schooled 4th grader informed us all that the word ‘manna’ means, “what is it?”

Our 8-year-old soccer fanatic was able to enjoy watching two local soccer games while here. He boldly went to the team huddle after one game, informing the player we went to watch, about the mistakes of the coach in how the playing field was set up. Apparently, he wasn’t wrong.

The undercurrents beneath the hurricane involve culture, politics, religion, and ego. Attitude either overcomes an issue or enhances it. We choose to be overcomers through God’s strength. Fortunately, all these issues were set aside for the good of human survival and under the threat of the storm, rational thought prevailed. Like most families, ours has differing opinions on how life is best viewed. Who thinks what or why doesn’t matter to the point of this writing or in life and death situations. We were blessed to be able to help, none of it was viewed as a sacrifice, and the children brought with them few belongings, but much joy. For the next week we shared this joy with them and with their two cousins who live near us. To have four children aged eight and younger was a handful for two grandparents, but the rewards exceeded any disruption of our routine.

As the week wore on, we wondered when and how we would get the children back to Florida. Miraculously, Milton changed course ever so slightly, and just that 5-mile difference in the huge storm spared the Sarasota home from damage. The community’s infrastructure was disrupted, with streets blocked by fallen trees and debris, and no power or water.

We decided to hook up our camper and take a slow ride to Savannah, Georgia, where we would turn the children over to their parents. In addition to the Florida kids, we would take a seven-year-old and our ancient beagle. We chose Savannah because this is where my wife’s sister resides in a nursing home. A niece with a teenage son lives nearby. We viewed the chance to visit as an added joy.

We are adventurers and have never let fumbles or missteps ruin our travels. If things don’t go as planned, our motto is to shift gears and keep on. Traveling in a vehicle was never a thing for our beagle, so he panted heavily for the first few hours. We coddled him for reassurance, but then, the beagle developed gas. His releases brought tears and shouts for open windows. The gas bombs became a point of laughter and accusations as to who was the guilty party.

We travelled all day with construction delays, potty stops, and a walk at the New River Gorge Bridge. Well, I said we were making this a camping trip, keep in mind the camper we were using is the one we lived in while building our home 16 years ago. The first night, in the cold hills of West Virginia, we discovered the furnace wouldn’t ignite and the floor outside the camper’s bathroom had softened from a water leak. When we arrived at the campground the store was closed, and we couldn’t buy firewood. Even though temperatures dropped, and darkness shrouded in, we let the kids unwind at the camp playground.

My wife hadn’t brought her winter coat, the one with her ATM and credit card in the pocket. We slept in our clothes covered with blanket and towels. Our spirits remained high, and we fended off grumpy thoughts.

Our phones told us our next day’s stretch would be 5.5 hours, which promised us plenty of down time at our lakeside camp in a warmer South Carolina. After ten grueling hours we arrived at our next campsite with the feeling we must have been abducted by aliens, but no, it was the three hours of traffic getting through Charlotte, NC and other construction delays.

In addition to our travel foibles, I was receiving text messages from my children about a most disturbing situation. My ex-wife, their mother, has dementia, and whose husband suffered recent stroke symptoms and personality changes. His brother is a defrocked Catholic priest who has dark sealed history and has entered the picture to manipulate financial matters to gain access to my ex-wife’s rather large estate. He has an attorney and has installed himself as his brother’s advocate. His latest move has been to go to court to claim my ex-wife is a burden and detriment to his brother’s health. Text messages from children report a court order to place their mother in a nursing home in leu of home care, which she can well afford. To add to the indignation, my daughter is to be the one to take her to the nursing home. The ex-priest has convinced her mother my daughter is evil. To be sure, I struggled with resolutions of a sin nature.

As we traveled, I prayed for divine intervention and my wife read Psalm 27 aloud. I prayed silently, in search of God’s face rather than his hand. My prayers in no way asked for a specific solution, rather I stated the situation and asked for intervention. It struck me that my ex-wife, who was raised Catholic, was never a believer and didn’t like priests. Now one is trying to take away all she has. The enemy loves to infiltrate religion and other noble institutions to lead people away from God. This premise certainly would make for a good novel or novella.

Our second campsite in South Carolina was at the lake’s edge. When we booked it, we pictured ourselves walking the nature trails throughout the area. We showed the children the glaring signs warning of alligator dangers posted between our site and the waters. Watching the pond, we spotted alligators drifting in the calm waters well offshore, it was a bit chilling.

We began receiving conflicting and alarming texts about the care of our grown grandson, a Navy veteran. He suffers severe medical conditions, and the protocols at the hospital were threatening his well-being, to say the least.

Our new camp was a half hour drive from the Savannah nursing home. We had plenty of firewood, plenty of sunshine, and warm evenings. The nursing home visit was bittersweet, as my wife’s sister was extremely frail and bedridden. The staff came off as rather inept as they told us we would have to wait to see her as she was in the bath but never came to where we waited to tell us when she was dressed, and they had placed her in her bed instead of in a wheelchair.

The bonus, the 17-year-old great nephew came to the nursing home to meet us. It’s nice to see a young man with a caring heart. The people camping next to us were North Carolina Helene refugees who evacuated before the storm hit. Now, they couldn’t return home because of the damage and had decided to travel the country until the roads to their house were reconstructed. Again, an example of attitude overcoming a dire situation.

On Sunday, the parents arrived, and we enjoyed a leisurely lunch with them before they headed south with their little hurricane refugees. The camp grew silent without three children, as we now had only one, and he is a joy unto himself. He became our full focus. One of the signs of how successful our days were was when the Sarasota parents gave us feedback from the children’s teachers. They said the children were calling their teachers Grammy by mistake!

Another bonus was a text from my daughter, the court order turned out to be a recommendation, not an order, to deliver their mother to a nursing home. I can’t explain how it had all been hashed over by the attorneys as an order and now all the sudden, it was no longer a court order, and arrangements were underway for in-home care for my ex-wife, with no interference from her husband or his ex-priest brother. In my mind, nothing is so evil as someone who claims to be a man of God and yet drives people away from salvation by engaging in evil and selfish works.

Our grandson survived his hospital stay and returned home to recover and heal.

Shortly after we arrived home a fellow author and friend handed us his latest work., Stop Your Stinkin’ Thinkin’ is all about taking charge of the damaging thoughts within our minds, by Richard W. LaFountain.

“Bringing every thought into the obedience of Christ.”

After reading the intro and first chapter, I felt this is what we just lived. Our attitudes had overcome, not only overcome but turned the tables on evil. When you come under attack, never feed your enemy with negative thoughts and actions. Rather, remember Philippians 4: 8 & 9.