I need a small army of help! Over the next few months we will be permanently moving Dad over into my house, and my house needs all types of renovations that I had to stop working on when our parents’ health issues got real bad 2 years ago. I've gutted much of my house (2 years ago I removed the drywall, removed the kitchen, tore up my flooring, etc... basically began the demo in order to renovate but stopped to help my parents). Last June we started planning to move Mom & Dad over here, but everything got backburnered when I had to leave to run our summer camps, I got sick for a month, and I had to run a mission trip in Costa Rica for 2 weeks. During this time we came to the crushing realization that bringing Mom back home was no longer an option (I still need to write a post about this). Dad hired a highly recommended Elder Attorney to help us wisely navigate all the heavy decisions. To our amazement we found (or rather God blessed us with) a PHENOMENAL long-term memory care facility called Seasons (in Belleair) that Mom LOVES and we LOVE! She has so much fun there, and the staff literally makes everyday a celebration. Thankfully Mom's Alzheimer’s makes her think she is just there for the day. It has been a very smooth transition and an instant improvement to Mom's daily quality of life. But Dad's health has been the newest front burner issue, especially after he injured his knee and hasn't been able to walk for 7 weeks. He has lost his independence to live by himself at his house. To our astonishment, He was completely open to the idea and is totally on-board with moving over here. He even wants to fund the portion of the house we renovate for him. So funding is the easy part. The hard work is relocating all of our adventure gear & equipment elsewhere into the garage & storage container in the back of the house, but needing to heavily insulate & add climate control to prevent the degradation of expensive gear... plus renovating bathrooms, bedrooms, kitchen, upstairs, landscaping, installing fencing, etc. The only non-negotiable for me is that I want to do the work. That may sound crazy to some who know how overwhelmed my Sister & I are, but the whole reason I bought this house was a lifelong dream of renovating my house. I don't care if it kills me, but I refuse to contract out anything that I'm capable of doing myself (not things like electrical, gas, hvac, etc). I'll take oversight, expert directions, and help doing the work, but I will be physically involved hammering, drilling, digging, crawling, lifting, placing, installing, and everything else that I'm capable of doing for the renovation. You would have to pry the hammer out of the hand of my cold dead body for me not to be completely involved LOL. Having said that, I could use a lot of help with all of the work. I literally need a small army of helpers with this endeavor that not only includes helping with renovations for Dad, but also renovations for GTD, and renovations for me personally. I already have some of the materials and tons of quality tools. I just need a lot of help. This is something I will be working on nearly every day from now until summer with an all-day emphasis on Wed, Fri, & Sat (except when we are running events or major holidays). Just reach out to me and let me know if you're interested in coming over for a day or for several days. I have a wonderful friend that wants no recognition that comes over every Wednesday for about 10-12 hours and helps me get tons of work done. We are the same age and I can't keep up with him. We have a lot of fun as we do the work. Most of the work significantly helps GTD which is an official non-profit organization so it qualifies for students and employees that are required to have a certain amount of annual volunteer hours.
On a personal note, you can pray for me and our family. We are so exhausted and at times overwhelmed. We seem to have a health crisis about every 2 weeks on top of the regular caregiving that takes place every day. This year has been especially challenging. The past 2 years were very challenging, but I had a lighter event schedule due to all the shutdowns from COVID. But now we are on the other side of the COVID shutdowns and our event schedule nearly doubled this year which has me running all over creation (literally). I'll rush from helping my parents to spend days preparing for an event then leave town to run the event for several days then rush home to clean-up from the event then rush to help my parents. While I'm away my sister carries the full load which is A LOT... then when I get home I rush to make up for the caregiving time that I missed while I was away. Glory to God, the events have been outstanding, but rushing from thing to thing means that I can't stay on top of anything - friendships, relationships, consistent prayer life, mail, emails, text messages, phone calls, deadlines, mowing the yard, buying groceries, taking care of the dogs, vehicle maintenance, laundry, workouts (haha, I wish!), sleep... I could list a hundred things here, but hopefully you get the point. And it's not like things stay in suspended animation if I don't address them. Quite the opposite. Things breakdown and degrade when they are not maintained which makes the repairs more expensive as well as more time & energy consuming. On my good days I roll with it and operate in faith & joy as I watch things implode. On my more typical days I try not to think about it and just try to survive the day. On my bad days I'm so frustrated, pissed off, and weary I can't even put it into words. I'm like Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde. And that's the point. I'm exactly where God wants me to be. He wants to address the bad days. Like the "Again" scene in the movie Miracle (you can Google it) my Head Coach (God) wants to address the underdeveloped and immature parts of my character that give safe harbor to selfishness, self-centeredness, & self-absorption that reveals itself through inner frustration, inner anger, & inner weariness instead of operating in faith, peace, & joy. To address it He has to bring me face-to-face with it, and I have to get to the point that I'm willing to let it go. I'm not there yet. I'm too pissed off. In this one area I'm like Jonah setting sail for a different direction. God has called me to go to "Nineveh" which is a route and destination that I'm not on-board with so I've said forget that, I'm going to "Tarshish". I'm not exactly sure what my Nineveh is. I'm still processing it. But I think it has to do with me letting go of a lot of dreams, goals, & desires that I've been locked into since I was a kid (not trivial things, big things to me - things like building my Mom a mansion, being a great husband, and being a great dad, raising a family, pouring into my kids, walking my daughter down the aisle, playing catch with my son - tears flood my eyes as I type... I'm close to hitting the nail on the head). I don't want to let go of any of those dreams, but there are things bigger, better, & more important than my dreams - like God's Kingdom. Like the "Again" scene when the coach says, "The name on the front of the Jersey is a 'heck' of lot more important than the name on the back." I may have to let go of some or all of these lifelong dreams and that makes me angry... not angry at God, just angry. I'm like Jonah pouting, Saul kicking against the bricks, and Elijah sitting under the broom tree. But I know how the story ends. I will stop sailing towards Tarshish. I will stop kicking against the bricks. I will get up from sitting beneath the broom tree. I will eventually concede that "my" way is a colossal waste of time. I'm not there yet, but I'm on my way there, and even sharing this helps me take another step towards there. Sometimes I'm like how Winston Churchill described America, “You can always count on the Americans to do the right thing after they have tried everything else.” Nailed it. If you have read all of this then you deserve some type of award. That's sort of my self-absorbed update. Thank you for reading this and thank you in advance for praying. Life is a journey, and not all parts of it are sugar & spice and everything nice. Sometimes it's a process of letting go of the old and taking hold of the new. Sometimes that's a very hard process.
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