By Sherry Hopkins

Community Columnist

Life’s circumstances has a way of weighing you down until you feel like a bobbin at the end of a fishing line. Up and down under the waves and ripples and over the same. It becomes tiring. Very tiring.

So late last past year despite our circumstances I decided I would no longer be defined and confined by them.

We had been doing a Bible Study for about six months that dealt with life and struggles.

Once you become a believer in Jesus Christ as your personal Savior, according to scripture, you no longer need to be tied to this dark ugly world.

Wow, that was easy. Well, let’s just wait a minute buster. The Bible is indeed an instruction book for daily living. But and I hate to use that word because it kind of negates everything I just stated. BUT living out those commands and instructions can be a challenge all to themselves. It is a minute by minute commitment and focus that requires a great deal of mental and emotional strength.

So the catch here or the saving grace as it were is that God leads us and guides us each step of the way. Even when we move away from the right path or step in a big hole we dug for ourselves or hit a roadblock.

Deciding to become unencumbered by life is a big step. And with each and every big step I take in life I try to prepare myself mentally. Back in 2006 I decided I had had enough of the obese weight condition I had created for myself. I decided in a moment to do something about it. BUT I gave myself a month to prepare.

I started and at the end of that year I had lost 78 pounds. It was a struggle and a challenge but I wanted to be unencumbered by that weight. In 2014 I decided I was ready to retire and I needed once again to prepare myself, this time mentally and financially. This took a month or two longer because money was involved, but at the end of that year I was retired.

So I now find myself having been weighed down by yet another circumstance in life and that is Dear Don’s health. I need to step out of this circumstance. Now wait a minute I am not talking about abandoning Dear Don because we have both convinced our selves that he could not live without me. HA!

No, I am going to pull us both out of the mire of waiting and wondering and despairing over whether SS will approve his claim. I will take a month to prepare and then it is full speed ahead. Our life will not be defined in 2019 and beyond by the federal state or local government.

We are going to make this the year we become unencumbered. Last year we were both able to make many new friends and some of those already feel as though they have been in our lives forever. There love and support have buoyed us both.

We are going to go back to the way we lived our lives early on. Slow easy free days. We will stop listening for the phone to ring, or waiting on the mail to run. We will go about every day with purpose of freedom, unencumbered.  On a lighter note I have noticed lately dear Don keeps using the phrase, ‘What are WE going to do to help?” This is usually asked following the news of a death in the family of a friend or a need in our community. So what’s the problem?

The problem is before he can get that WE out of his mouth and into my ears the W has turned upside down and is now an M and the word is ME.  What am I going to do he really wants to know.  Well, let me tell you what I’m going to do. I am going to continue being free, unencumbered and watch to see what HE does.

Stay tuned.