I hadn't realized what day it was till I stop to checked the calendar before I wrote in my journal. But when I saw the date memories flooded over me. So many, many memories; memories I want to keep, to share and pass along. I think I will just dish them out one at a time, little by little the same way GOD chooses to teach us.  Isaiah 28:9,10 

We didn’t know what to do.  Things had been hard, really hard, Mac hadn't been able to find work, his UI had run out, our car had been repoed and I was so sick with the coming baby I had to come home from work.  We  had still had the truck and a gas credit card had come in the mail that very day, so at my father-in-law’s urging, we (my husband Mac, my 2 little ones- Jeri (4) & Kari (1) and I, a few months pregnant, piled into the old truck and off we went. The trip from Colorado Springs to Southern California, where Mac’s dad was living, was going good til we got to Arizona and were heading down a twisting pass. Then a combo of morning sickness & car sickness hit and was I ever miserable. 

But like it says so often in the Bible it came to pass When the roads straightened out, I got to feeling a whole lot better.  And I led the little ones to singing choruses.  Finally we got to his uncle's where his dad was staying, thanks to that credit card.  Mac's Uncle Cecil let us stay in his garage that had an old double bed in it and a teeny-tiny bathroom. Mac found a job plowing for a farmer. His uncle gave us potatoes so we were subsisting---surviving on potato soup made of potatoes, salt and water (mostly water). 

Being cooped up in the small space with my 2 little ones I was claustaphobic.  I was never alone unless I was in the bathroom. One time I came out to quite a sight.  There were my two daughters sitting on the bed. Jeri the oldest, held scissors in her hand and had a gleeful grin on her face and her little sister’s pony tails had been cut off at the rubber bands. Today I can laugh but it was serious them.  Jeri’s desire to do hair must have started really early for her. (Jeri has been sidetracked a few times- a move, a marriage- but she is again to start beauty school in August.)

The garage was really close quarters, especially with my 2 lively girls, so to get some time to think I would put the girls down for a nap and could only get them still by singing songs I remember my mom sang to me.  Like: When Irish eyes are smiling.   It was a neat time of bonding for us and sometimes I would fall asleep right beside them.  LOL

Not sure what the last straw was that prompted it, but one day Mac had enough.  He wasn't going to put us through this any longer. We called Dad and got an OK and then left for his place in Los Angeles.  Mac tried to find work but all he could find was a Jewish book bindery.  The wage was so little he was really discouraged and when he slipped and accidently cut off too much from an old Bible he knew he would be fired, so he quit. 

Feeling defeated he called his dad, who in turn drove to LA and encouraged Mac to hunt work in Meadow Valley where they had both worked years before.  Mac left us with my father and accompanied by his dad headed up the 600 miles to Northern, California and Meadow Valley.  He went looking for work in a place full of good memories from childhood, the place he'd come back to after his hitch in the Army and worked in the Meadow Valley Sawmill. But when they got there, there was no work for the old sawmill was closed down.  

But Roger, one he had worked with before at the old Meadow Valley sawmill told him of a job in a sawmill in a tiny town, off the beaten path- a town called Loyalton.  That man also gave him a letter of introduction and a reference. Mac was hired on the spon and although he hadn't done that precise job they were willing to train him.  Low man on the totum pole began working nights.  Before heading back south on a bus, Louie, Mac's dad, found a ramshackle house and arranged for an exchange for rent.  The 1st couple months were free if Mac would clear it and clean up the place. The rent thereafter was nominal so Mac gladly agreed.

You wouldn't believe all stuff the last renters had left behind, nor the filth… Mac wondered at first if he could even get the refrigerator clean enough to use, for it was rotten, pure stench.  But they nmust not have had a means to haul anything for they also left an old TV out in the yard.  Mac brought it in to see if it worked and was pleased to find out it did.  Sa he at least had that diversion to occupy his time off.

Mac can tell some wild stories of the next 6 weeks: stories of hunger; and fighting with the dog for a piece of cheese he dropped after his 1st payday; stories of pain --his dad knew he was passing a kidney stone when Mac described it to him over the phone & Louie's advice to soak in a tub of hot water really did help; stories of terrible loneliness but the company of our blind dog and the discarded TV did help.

A long 6 weeks later, hauling some 2nd hand furniture (my dad had refurbished) behind him in a trailer, Daddy drove me and the girls up 600 miles to Mac.  What we found was a crazy old house with slanted floors.  If the kids put roller skates on they would roll from one side of the huge old kitchen to another.  It made us laugh for we were young and were together again, there was food and shelter with room to move around and a yard and even a place to string up a rope to hang up clothes. 

Mac met Doug at the sawmill.  He was hired after I got to Loyalton and in about the same state as when Mac 1st got there so Mac would bring him home at lunchtime (11pm or so) and I fixed them soup and sandwiches.)  They were good times and much laughter.  Doug and Mac became good friends.  

Looking back at the struggles and the pains, and  the crazy things that made us laugh, I smile for I see how GOD used those times to achieve for us just like HE says in HIS word:  All of these things are for our benefit....That is why we never give up... our spirits are being renewed every day.  For our present troubles are quite small and won't last very long.  yet they are producing for us an immeasurably great blessings that will last forever.  So we don't look at the troubles we can see right now; rather we (choose) to look forward to what we have not yet seen.  For the troubles we see will soon be over, but the joys and benefits they have achieved for us will last forever.  2 Corinthians 4:15-18         Just think about that.

The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases- HIS mercies never come to an end.  They are new every morning. Lamentations 3:23

Hugs

Sharon