Living Hazzardously

Little pieces of our journey with Jesus

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All the toils under the sun

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So, it’s Sunday again and I have missed writing so much. I hope you too have missed reading my words, you truly are appreciated. We have been traveling and I don’t have my laptop working right now.

Jess and I took a needed trip out to Wyoming to visit our sweet grand, she is doing great and Miranda is glowing with the new baby due this fall… We never saw Alex as he was in Portugal. Sorry son, but we got to see Sophia, so we are happy now. Jacob and Abigail stopped in as they were home hunting in the Denver area but that too was a short visit as they buzzed back and forth, they are busy planning for July 20, marriage day… Wait, MARRIAGE? But he is our baby boy dressed up in the costumes of lions and sitting on carnival rides, is he too young? Nope, I blinked and now he is a man… sadness starts to drift across my aging face, as our youngest abandons Jess and I for his new “adulting” life. 

I had the honor of filling in for a pastor in Bigfork while he took the day off, I presented Sam’s Place to the congregation and I talked about the “Good Samaritan”, I think it went great and it felt so wonderful to preach again, it’s been so many years since my last opportunity. Then another missed blog post was when Jess and I presented Sam’s Place to another Bigfork congregation, together we did eight minutes but alone I did 25 minutes. We are always looking for more opportunities to present our mission in churches. Thank you Lord for the opportunity so far. If you know a church that would allow me to deliver this message, I would be honored to visit (even if its across country, I love road trips).

The balance of rest and work has become a larger part of my life as I continue to struggle with the never ceasing pain riddling this broken and aging body. Too much work? I shut down with pain… Too much rest? I shut down with pain. This is what it is like in my lonely struggle with this fibro? When Jess and I cuddle on the couch and she leans against my ribs, it is like laying on rocks, large rocks that press in on every point, causing so much pain that you literally can not relax, the pain increases on every point of pressure, and it’s not even a hard pressure, sometimes it’s the light touch of her hand that can cause me pain… I take it as long as I can but eventually, I do need to move. Sometimes just crossing my legs at the calf is pain invoking and I can only sit still for about ten minutes before reposition. Sitting in church on a cushioned seat takes about 15 minutes before the pain exceeds the threshold. Too much walking is better than too much standing. Every part of my body hurts most of the time, a balance of movement and rest is all I can do to manage this situation.

I remember back when it all started, it was mostly in my back, I knew so little and had no idea why I was in severe pain and the pain always increased with less movement. I was taking 8-12 200mg tablets of Ibuprofen a day and eventually even that stopped helping. So I started looking deeper, looking at diet, exercise, rest, reading, reading and more reading. As I started honing in on the symptoms, I discovered a thing called “Fibromyalgia” and reading about this, I started to understand, started to determine the reason for my pain and found I am a classical case of Fibro. 

Summer hits and I start to sweat, profusely! I don’t like summer, I don’t like the heat, I like cold and people “hate on me” for that. But I can promise you this, If you live with my condition, 50 degrees outside would start sounding perfect…. And direct sunlight would become your enemy and the least desired location for eating dinner would be that patio she loves so much…  patios with no roofs make me cringe. 

My research has pointed to “childhood trauma” and seems to be the number one contributor. My story of childhood is a sad and long tale. I still have a hard time traveling down the annals of history to revisit. A childhood of physical abuse, sexual abuse, paternal rejection, maternal substance abuse and so much more. My younger brother and I lived a life no child should have been exposed to… I don’t want a pity party, But this is a hell of a way to live. My younger brother and I pretty much got the shaft, and we never even realized it. Products of GEN-X means we were told to get out of the house at practically day break and not show up again until the street lights came on. Snowball fights that left ice chuck divots on our heads, pine cone fights that knocked out my tooth, and bike jumps on banana seat bikes that were never tall enough until you could clear the grand canyon with a 5’ approach ramp. This was all normal stuff and we never questioned where we could get lunch… There was always a friend’s house that had no parents home during lunch hour, water was always readily available out of any neighborhood garden hose, except for the old lady Gladys, She didn’t appreciate our front porch gifts and ding-dong-ditch-it.

Back to fibro, PTSD is a real thing for me and manifests as fibro today. There is no cure as it seems to be an autoimmune response to the developmental years creating a self defense response to trauma… Trauma? It’s such a long list that folks start to doubt the validity of my historical claims. I may share in this blog one day, but probably just in a memoir someday. It’s taken so many years to heal that I still have a hard time reliving all my “Mr Jones events” to get me to this point in my life. A scared little boy, frozen in time, that’s how I feel.  

Fibro today dictates my daily activity, most days it looks like this: I can work hard but need to take a break mid day or I will be shot by 2pm, a situation that can take up to two days of recovery, but If I take a break, I am usually good for at least 5-6 pm. It’s no secret I like to work, God has given me the unique skill set that lets me accomplish a lot of tasks, If I don’t stay active every day, I will become riddled with even more pain, that pain from not staying active is far worse than overworking, so it’s a balance everyday, even on vacations, I need to work somehow… Beach vacations are an absolute nightmare for me… sun, warmth and sitting… I would rather do anything else than sit in the sun, including mucking the cow barn alone on my hands and knees. . but there is a road of hope ahead

The book of Eccleseastes saved my life years ago with the wisdom written on those pages, yes, I mean it literally saved my life.  Today that amazing book guides my thoughts and actions so much.. All a man’s labor under the sun is futility without GOD… but the balance of work and rest is so vital “a single hand filled with rest is better than all the accomplishments of two hands put together”

So the important thing here is to respect work and not forsake rest, to love creation and reflect on God all day. I would encourage you to read through this book of wisdom and truly ask God to reveal his goodness to your heart. 

“How long before I can move in?”

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We are asked from time to time, “how long before I can move in?” or move back in? This place sounds like the place I want to live! Sam’s Place is coming along, slowly! Some stories about those who have lived here in the past are pretty horrible, the water leaks… the food… we hope to do better and ask for your help to do this…

It has been a good but long week, as I struggle to find enough time, I plead my case for help. We finally got our electricity back on and I have resolved many roof leaks, still have one to go before I start the next phase of roof repairs” . It is actually just managing the conditions and starting a standard of upkeep, unfortunately, we are just going to patch things together this year.

Jess is working hard to establish a 501c3. but taking “food handling” classes and taking tests and licensing and calls and administration for Spring Lake Heating and answering the work phone and being a mother and being a wife and looking gorgeous (she really doesn’t have to work hard for that last one) …

Al is excited to have his Basketball tourney… and in his words… “That’s all that matters, right Charlie?”

Things are going well, although a bit slower than we had hoped, our goal is to get partially occupied by mid to late fall of this year. Jess and I are taking a very overdue trip to see our baby granddaughter, this week. We can’t take Al as it’s just too stressful for him more than once every couple years and even then, he doesn’t really enjoy driving across the country and flying is not an option with Al, In fact, boating on our pontoon is too much movement for him as well… All things We are working on but it takes years of conditioning, it takes a lot of time!

Our Piggies are growing so fast and when I return, they will be moved into the summer forage area from the starter pen. The broiler chickens are feathered out so they can move into the summer tractor today! The Guinee’s are disappearing one by one, no trace but seems to be at night. We haven’t a clue but I am starting to think it has to be that owl is back, silent, deadly, no trace!

We have been filling our dumpster to the brim and I am certain we have become our garbage man’s least favorite stop on Fridays… but we got to clean out the trash, and so we keep filling it up…

So anyway, today is a short read, but let me tell you this… I REALLY APPRECIATE YOU ALL!! The time you take to read our blog means more than you know, the support we have seen in this chapter is so motivating, but even so, it’s a daunting task.

It’s not what you take with you when you leave this world, it’s what you leave behind… What’s your legacy?

Charlie and Jess Hazzard

Eating elephants? Table for one please!

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“How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time” I remember asking this question years ago to one of my youth group kids, they replied “I don’t eat elephants!” but metaphorically this student was trying to eat the proverbial elephant in one bite. I think sometimes we all try to do jobs in one full movement, metaphorically eating the elephant in one bite, but sometimes our perfectionist side takes over and we won’t start a job unless we can finish the job, in one fast stroke of intention. In the first case of eating in one big bite we usually become discouraged and stop. Giving ourselves the freedom to quit because we feel defeated. In the second case, we never start because we can’t imagine leaving something half done. 

In the first case we are highly motivated and step up and to play the game, energized and willing to fight anything in our way to make big results! Then we don’t see the results we expected, and we start to lose the drive to continue …This is self-evident in-house repairs, WE never seem to finish the trim until it’s time to sell the house. It also seems like my sons started out this way in life, starting a job and leaving my tools everywhere and the job half done (notice I didn’t throw myself under the bus?)

In the second case, when we see the project, we may even plan it all out but then we stop short of starting. We feel we can never carve out enough time to start and finish a task in one smooth block of time… So, the job just sits there, waiting to see the starting line.

So how do we decide what the correct level of motivation is? Too much at first? we burn out and quit… not enough at first and we feel like it will never even get done… I think this is easy to define, we just need enough to not quit. Enough to feel successful and productive start to finish.  And I believe this can be one of the most difficult things we face, starting and not quitting.

This project management requires discipline and dedication, experience and endurance, planning and perseverance… and in some cases it requires humility. Sometimes to make progress we need to ask for help, beg for help, and maybe even guilting people to help. Do you think guilting is manipulation? If I guilt my wife into cooking my favorite meal and she guilts me into a vacation because of the meal, don’t we both win? (maybe it’s because we both love to give the other whatever they ask for?) Be careful, manipulation can be from a selfish motive. But it may very well become a blessing to be guilted into helping… We can become a part of the bigger picture and discover success, satisfaction and symmetry of life. Take Road clean-up, by yourself is a daunting task, but shared with others becomes a community event. 

We are slowly making progress at Sam’s Place. HUGE thank you to the Bigfork 6th grade class a week ago on Wednesday… We filled my dump trailer three times with yard litter and branches… I got our new sign installed as they helped me with yard clean up. Then we turned our attention to the shed that was full of junk left behind from years of stuffing things into corners… the grand finale was cutting down the old sign, it fell and broke into pieces… ironic? 

We met with another inspector; this time we are looking at grants. We learned a lot and found out what we may qualify for, Jess is now doing paperwork and sorting out deadlines. 

The electric panels are all in, but we need to wait for Minnesota Power to install our overhead lines. We have a huge praise!!! We have been approved for a grant that covers about ⅓ of the electrical work so far, that leaves us to pay the remaining monster sized bill of about $40k, but it’s a necessity. We got another grant for the front door replacement, and now we need to finalize that project. Jess and I have made a few hard decisions and a few short cuts that we needed to settle on to make things work. It’s always hard to cut things out to keep in that budget, but it’s all part of being a good steward.

The electrical work came with a few expensive hidden gems like an electrical panel had caught fire and the breakers were “by-passed”. This was, I am pretty sure, probably from using all those electric heaters, because the boiler was dead. The upgrades do really look great, and it allows us to replace 1938 fuse technology with circuit breakers, safety first. 

These past two weeks I have been so busy getting the small things lined up, it feels good to be emerging on this side of these events:

  • Broiler chickens are set up in the brooder
  • Piggies are in the pen learning about fencing.  I picked up Mangalitsa pigs this year… Did you know this type of pig is called the “Kobe Beef” of the pig industry?  On a side note, why is it that every year it takes two days of fence repair before I can bring home the pigs? Seems odd to me. 
  • Caught two escaped piggies
  • The water line froze and burst in a few spots, that’s a future repair… Dragged out all the hoses for now. 
  •  Jess is running a fever, and I am running the program solo…
  • It’s not often I get a truck stuck in my own yard. But when I do, I bury it up to the axles.  I knew it was a bad day when I backed up, the truck slid sideways and immediately sank into the soupy mix… two days later, a lot of hand digging, a stuck bobcat… I can go to work again… 
  • 4000# of flooring is picked up from the cities and unloaded into Sam’s Place
  • I picked up al from his dad’s place
  • Jess planted her flowers this week, she loves her flowers,
  • Drax knocked one flowerpot over to sleep on the flowers
  • We bought more flowers 
  • I installed the brother in laws mini-split
  • Got the inner tubes installed in the lawn mower
  • Spent time with my bride

I love having weeks like this where so many things just fall into place and click, but it’s also nice to sit down and write my blog post, it is truly one of my all-time favorite things to do. I am exhausted just writing about the week!

Random thoughts, back to Sam’s Place… Our original hope “was” to maybe be able to reopen in only a few weeks, but we quickly determined, before we bought Sam’s Place, that it would take months… We still moved forward, trusting that God was and still is leading this mission.

Anyway, thank you for checking in with us and we look forward to getting the boat in the water and catching dinner soon. 

“It’s time to remember the important things, 

perhaps forgotten or maybe never known.”

Sky Pilot Frank Higgins

From Jess and Charlie at Livinghazzardously, 

God’s peace be your blessing until we talk again next week.