I’ve been sharing my Top Ten Tips to Cope for the past few months. Since I’m 67, well, you can guess it’s taken me a while to figure out this coping stuff. I’m still working on it. But, life and loss (and God’s help!) through the years have taught me a few tough lessons.
Today’s Tip for Coping: WORK
When my husband left me in the midst of moving a huge farm, office and 37 years of accumulation, welp, my life was in chaos. All I could do was work. I have to say, in the midst of crying, lifting, sorting, loading and…letting go, I learned the lesson of WORK, Tip #8 on my Top Ten.
With God’s help, I and precious friends got everything moved.
After my move, when life was still disordered, I worked to carry flowers and rock and brick to create order and beauty in a Healing Garden at my new location.
I learned the peace of working on wondrous creation. I’ve since worked to create two Healing Gardens.
Hurricane Ian was a hard work assignment. This storm swept away the last remnants of a dream life in Florida. Welp…I had to get to work. Here’s a little more on my hurricane experience:
On September 28, 2022 Hurricane Ian swept in and imploded my home in Florida. This was the last remnant of a dream of retiring with my husband in Florida. He abandoned that dream and then Hurricane Ian swept in to bring more loss.
I was perplexed and heartbroken…again. But, I got to work.
I started shoveling out ruins including books and belongings, furniture and familiar things, massive messes and memories.
All the things I had tried to rescue from my ruined marriage were now soaked and scattered. Life in Florida had imploded like my roof. But…I got to work.
Work can be therapeutic. Work keeps you focused on, well, good stuff. When you’re shoveling out books soaked with moldy home insulation, you focus on cleaning up, not ruined keepsakes.
When you’re trying to move piled up shingles and avoid errant scorpions, you don’t have time to cry over a lost roof.
When you’re packing every piece of salvaged life into a car which has been crunched by a fallen tree – just to keep your stuff dry and locked up, you don’t worry about when you’ll be able to get that stuff out.
Now I’m on the other side of that work.
I’ve settled in a different home along with my locked-up stuff
I look out at a little Healing Garden I worked to create over a sewer pipe!
I’m OK. I pursue tasks. I try to help others as I work.
What type of work do you do to get through? My professional friends find peace in corporate progress. My builders show care in completing projects. My servers find solace in solving problems.
God has a few things to say about work:
“Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters” – Col 3:23
But we urge you brothers to do more and more and to aspire to live quietly, and to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands, as we instructed you, so that you may walk properly before outsiders and be dependent on no one. – 1 Thess 4:10-12
I can do all things through him who strengthens me. – Phil 4:13
Confessions of a Type A Woman 
I work on cleaning out Mom’s house so it can be sold. She passed in February. This is a nightmare trying to figure out if some of her stuff will fit in my house. At least I do not work for corporate America anymore.; That is a blessing.
Keep up the good work. Sending prayers for blessings your way.
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Im so sorry for your loss. Thank you. I still caretake many family memories. I carry them place to place – hopefully, one day, my children will have a home for them. I have moved our business and two sets of parents, plus my own household. Lots of memories – which is hard because you must touch each one ❤️
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