Hello everyone. It’s Saturday evening, and it’s been a while. I want to start by saying that I hope each and every one of you reading this are doing well. The craziest thing happened, in case you haven’t noticed. I deleted my Facebook page, just as I said I was going to. Then, a few weeks later, I received an email saying the page had been reactivated! Well, it turns out it had to do with my blog programmer, who was also an administrator on the page. She had not signed off on deleting the page, so after so many days, it automatically reactivated itself. Apparently, we both had to sign off for the deletion to be complete. Have you ever? Yes, I have—and things like this seem to happen to me often! I usually take them as a sign that maybe deleting the page just wasn’t meant to be for now.

It’s been over nine months now since I started living on my own. I would love to tell you all that it’s getting easier, but that wouldn’t be completely true. The holidays are coming, and I think that may be part of why I’m feeling a little more melancholy than usual. Some things are definitely easier in some ways, yes. But life still has its moments.

I hadn’t felt well for a couple of days, and then I woke up one morning with a tooth underneath my bottom bridge hurting. The bridge is about six years old, and it had never really bothered me before. When I would bite down, though, it hurt, and by morning the pain was gone. Well, a couple of nights later, it happened again, so I went to the dentist. He put me on antibiotics, but I’m supposed to see a periodontist as soon as possible. He believes the tooth may have to be removed and that bone may have to be put in if I want to keep my bottom bridge.

Well, that has really upset me this weekend. There is absolutely no way I can afford a new bottom bridge. None whatsoever. At this point in my life, it would truly have to be a miracle from God Himself. I’ve been told dentures are out of the question because of the bone loss in my bottom jaw, so we’ll see what happens Monday. I’ll make the appointment and go from there. I don’t know when they’ll be able to see me or how long this process will take, but I’ll deal with it one step at a time.

Other than that, I’ve gotten almost everything fixed and taken care of around my home that had broken down or needed repairing after I decided to live here alone. You get my drift. So, I’m actually very happy about that. After having three contracts on my house that fell through, I started to have a gut feeling that maybe it simply wasn’t time for me to leave. Maybe God was saying, “You need to stay here a little longer.” None of us know why things happen the way they do. We just have to trust Him and keep moving forward.

Speaking of trust and faith, so many of you have said to me over and over, “Debbie, you’re such a faithful woman.” Well, I want you to know something. Everything I have been through during these last nine months has truly—and I mean truly—tested my faith and my trust in everything and everyone. I have had some very dark days. And this weekend, with my mouth hurting and not feeling like my usual self, I may be feeling a little sorry for myself.

But even through those dark days, it is by the grace of God that I’m still sitting here writing to all of you tonight. I don’t know where this is going to end with my dental work, my home, or my life, but God does. And I trust Him, even on the hardest days. I know this because when I look back over my life, I can see just how far God has brought me.

My brother and I were texting back and forth last night, and this morning he said something about how good it would be to go back to the 1970s again. I had sent him a video about being born in 1962. He was born in 1963, but the video was about how old someone would have been in 1978 and the things that happened that year. It brought back memories of what seemed like such simpler times.

But I told him that if I couldn’t know what I know now, I wouldn’t want to go back. I wouldn’t want to live in the house we grew up in again or go through the things we had to go through. We all have our stories, and I’m not going to go there tonight. What matters is that I made it out. At 70 years old, I’m still standing.

So, I’ll take where I am today, and I’ll move forward from here. No going back. No turning back time. Just pressing forward, one day at a time, with God leading the way.

Love,
Debbie ❤️