Dwelling In The Present

 When I see the same message in several things I am reading, it gets my attention. Lately, several blogs and the book Safe All Along by Katie Davis Majors have emphasized dwelling in the present rather than thinking about the past or planning/worrying about the future.

 Mrs. Majors uses Psalm 91 to impress upon us that we dwell day by day in the shelter of the Most High. It is my turn to give the devotional talk at choir on Monday. I just finished writing it up a few days ago and was ending with Psalm 91:1, 4a. I was tying the imagery of God as a "Mother Hen" tucking her chicks under her wings with a lament poem by Ann Weems in her book Psalms of Lament. Weems poem is in the voice of a wounded bird calling out to God to pick her up and bring her inside His house where she can heal. 

While sorting through stuff to donate to the Grace Village swap shop, I was motivated by my husband's recent comment that we might move from our condo to an apartment in the next 3-4 years. We are thinking more like 4-5 years now, but still a future down-sizing has been on my mind recently.

This week we met with the marketing/advancement employee to find out what would be involved in a move. It will be 12 years ago in July when we became residents of Grace Village. The process, the financing, the steps involved in transitioning from the condo to an apartment were revamped about 7-8 years ago. Getting better informed of the details has led us to think of using our RMD withdrawals from our retirement accounts differently.

 It also helped me to see the square footage difference between the two types of 2-bedroom apartments. I had actually been inside the two different types without knowing how they are labeled, and I had come away with the impression that the D+ (plus) had a rather small living dining area. Too small in my picturing of how we would integrate our furnishings and lifestyle into an apartment. We were given actual floor plans with the room dimensions of the two types. Though the D+ has slightly more square footage and a walk-in pantry which some people have converted into a laundry, a D which is what my sister-in-law lived in and what I am most familiar with will suit us best I think. I also like the larger closets in the D bedrooms. Still, it will depend on what is available if we find we need to move rather than want to move.

 There are 29 2-bedroom apartments currently. I now have a "map" with the 2-bedroom units colored in. Some I would most likely not prefer because of location (in the pet hall, facing the front of Grace Village where lots of cars travel and some park). They have been combining some small apartments to make larger ones, but the GV marketing employee said they have about run out of options to do that. 

Having the information pertinent to our future, I can now file it away and get back to enjoying my condo and each day here.

Discoveries

 I walked up the berm behind my house this afternoon to look at the large saucer-shaped blooms on the bush. Last night I searched the internet to see if these were hibiscus. Yes, it appears they are. They are so much bigger than the hibiscus that grew outside the kitchen window of my childhood. I should have photographed them 2 days ago as now many are shriveling up. The blooms last only a few days. 

Most of the flowers on the front corner of my house finished blooming weeks ago. Now what is left is rudbeckia. They have new buds coming on and should last a few more months probably.

We were asked to introduce ourselves to a new couple that moved into a condo down the street and serve as a "resource" for them. They are former missionaries with UFM that served in the region near Lyon, France. Today we drove them to the Robin Hood lunch in a nearby restaurant. My husband asked the wife if she had adopted French cooking/preparation styles. She said that she had and as a result most of their meals are made from scratch. I didn't think to ask what happens in the winter when fresh produce and herbs are unavailable. She did not make everything herself. She relied on bakeries and pastry shops and markets in the plazas, but the emphasis was on fresh.

This afternoon on Cafe Farine Sucre the blogger Chris finished her description of their two-weeks stay in a small village in the French alps near Chamonix. She told about the food they bought in the marketplace as well as trips to the mountain meadows. It gave me a case of wander-lust. 

I think it was on Ann Voskamp's blog that I read about Psalms of Lament by Ann Weems. I wasn't quite sure what I was ordering, but I found an inexpensive copy on Better World Books. These are poems written in the style of Biblical lament psalms. It is not the kind of book one would read straight through, but rather dip into slowly to read and reflect. I had assumed these poems were written in response to the loss of her husband; instead they flowed from grief on the occasion of the murder of her 21-year-old son. I shall start dipping over the next months. 

I am in a quandary about how to go about life now that our county has moved from high to very high risk COVID level. That risk is mostly relevant to unvaccinated people. We have a case of COVID in our Robin Hood neighborhood now. The woman was unvaccinated because her medical providers advised against getting the shot because of her existing conditions.

 I mostly do my grocery shopping online with pickup, but if I go into a store I might start wearing a mask again. It appears the delta variant causes break-through cases at times. If most of my county was protected, I would continue without a mask, but less than half of the residents have been vaccinated. Many of those are children who cannot yet receive a shot and with whom I have little contact. I don't know what to do about church attendance though. Attendees at churches in our area do not wear masks, yet I know they are not all vaccinated. I am still undecided about what steps to take as I interact with people in my community. My sense of protection has been eroded.