When Things Must Change

All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another. ~Anatole France

Did you think I had forgotten my sanctuary? I have not. I just have been learning more about rabbits (and other animals) and I have come to realize that I tend to learn by complete immersion. I actually am reading message boards again, which I dropped many years ago because most people gave them up or the boards changed and then there was the drama...which happens just because people are people. However, when it comes to raising livestock of any kind, people still like to connect with people, pick brains, talk about their experiences, ask questions, etc. 

My online journey has been interesting. I went from a local message board that chatted on things happening in our area, including all the politics, to just homeschooling boards and then I began blogging. There met a few friends that are still friends today, but the lives of many of my homeschool friends have changed. Some are not homeschooling because their children grew up. Some are not homeschooling the same because they have their children in schools, some are private homeschool hybrids and others placed their children in public high schools to get the necessary credits for college. Most of these friends now have jobs outside of the home, businesses they run from their home, or a combination of both. In other words, most have moved on with their lives and I felt a little left behind...and a little lost.

The last few years I could not just call a friend as I use to during the day when I needed to feel in touch with adults or just get a reality check after dealing with a moody and reluctant student most of the day. I came here and wrote about things, but these days I only have one reader, who is a very busy person as she has moved on to a ministry and has home businesses. I do not stay in touch with anyone as much as I used to do.

My daughter has another year in homeschooling then that season of my life ends also. After devoting so much of myself to educating the child, I wonder what she and I will be doing after it ends? I know what I would like to do...well, I have had this desire to homestead all my life, but I wonder if I am holding on to that just because I have always thought about doing it or if it is something I really do still want to do.

I feel as uncertain about what I want to do after homeschooling as my daughter does, but we are looking for land. Actually, I stopped looking because I felt my Lord tell me to not to look as the land would come to my husband, so I am to focus on my house which is a mess, stuffed with stuff from homeschooling, my mother-in-law's stuff, and just stuff that accumulated over the 20 years we have lived here. I will take it one drawer, one shelf, one corner, at a time. Monday, I tackled my sock drawer. Yesterday, the refrigerator. Today...hmm, not sure yet.

So, my sanctuary may be changing, along with me (and my house).

My Lord, guide us through these transitions. Make the path we are to take well lit and welcoming.

Background Workings of My Blog

It’s not lost on me that I’m so busy recording life, I don’t have time to really live it. -David Sedaris

Since March I have been considering giving my blog a new fresh look, but being that I have so many other more important things to do I decided to put that off. However, I began updating the css codes on my older posts so that all the fonts would be like the ones I have been using since 2011. It was low on the list of my priorities but I have been working this from time to time.

Then something else major happened to my blog that requires a great amount of time and patience to make it right again.

Since before I began blogging, I have had a Photobucket account. I stored all my blog pictures there and every picture on my blog was linked to there. This year, I decided to just up load them to Blogger directly when I make a new post to my blog and use Google Photos, which made it even easier to upload photos directly from my phone. So, I stopped uploading to Photobucket and I would call that a "Thank you, my Lord, for that nudge!" kind of thing, because....

A few months ago, I went to my blog to find that every single picture and graphic and including my backgrounds were replaced with this:

Sweet, right?

I thought I had misread and violated the original Photobucket policies and they just caught up with me, when I first saw this little annoying graphic that now took the place of every one of my pictures and graphics hosted there. But, no! I found that they could be seen not just on my blog but also several others as well as websites and other people were just as unhappy because it had just happened to them also.

Photobucket changed its policy in June of this year and did it in a quiet way, with a memorandum on their blog and then just no pictures. Now if I want to pay for 3rd party hosting that would be for the bargain price of $400 a year. Thank you, but NOT GOING TO HAPPEN! Some people use the pictures to make a profit from their websites, but I, and probably a significant number of others, do not. Some people complained that they were not able to download their digital images as if Photobucket was holding them for ransom, but they could. They just could not be see those pictures on their webpages.

I have downloaded all my pictures and graphics from my Photobucket account to my computer, even though most of them were already there. So, now I am working on replacing all my digital images by uploading them on each and every blog post. Photobucket is no longer my friend and I will be deleting my account with Photobucket. This unplanned project will take far more days than I have to spare, but my blog is important to me. I periodically download the entire thing to back up on my computer.

Why bother with all this? Because it is a journal of my journey in life and my walk with my Lord. In between the lines, I remember far more things that I did not share publicly. It not only gives me pleasure but chronicles many things with which I have struggled, loved, lost, and cherished. I am not ready to let it stay in a state of neglect and disrepair. I have seen so many blogs that have been abandoned or that have been deleted since I first found them. I wonder what happened to those people: why they started, why they stopped, where are they now. I feel a lost when they are gone, even though I did not know them,

No, I am not yet ready to give up on my blog.

Well, my Lord, it is not like I do not have enough to do already with this coming up as well. Please, help me to keep my priorities and perspectives in line with Yours.