As you all may recall, I made it public a few months back that I was moving away from my former neighboorhood. Well, we moved into our new place during the Christmas/New Year week, and it has been an awesome decision. More on that later.
Naturally, after having hauled all our "material possessions" to our new place, we embarked on the process of giving our old home a touch of paint, etc. Getting it ready for listing. I am not sure how long I can hold on to two mortgages but the relief of being away from that place out weights the rest. This weekend was no exception. We spent most of Sunday cleaning and painting, and it was also an excellent opportunity to pick up my mother-in-law, whom despite living with us at our new place, insists on spending the weekends back with her congregation. We drop her off on Fridays and pick her up on Sundays. During the week she technically misses that meeting. I say "technically" because she does not go to the nearby KH. Instead of calling in to listen to the meeting, she puts on a dress, reads the information and even sings out loud in her room. Although I am inactive or spiritually weak, I am a baptized male, and she should be wearing something on her head... LOL. I won't hold her to it. Small price to pay :/
Going back to the work I am doing at my former home, my wife talked me out of doing some of the work myself and decided to hire someone. Mostly the outside paint. I was, however, cleaning out my shed when I realized it needed to be finished. It too needed paint on the still barewood frame. I took out my phone and wrote it down in the to-do for hire list. Then in a sudden flash I also changed my mind.
It was back in February of 2016 when I first started painting it. I had done a good 80% of it before that day. I was a fairly warm day but not bad in terms of what summers are like in South Texas. I had this uncomfortable dizziness most of the day, and I was blaming the warmth although I knew I had been in worse before. All was fine until I had to step on a ladder. The dizziness suddenly became more than a nuisance. Mind you I have been an installation technician for a good part of my career, and I've also climbed telecom towers up to 500 ft. Getting on a ladder 3 ft off the ground should not have been an issue. As a tech, I have climbed countless rooftops looking for towers and sometimes did so with one hand while holding heavy equipment on the other hand on 26ft ladders, sometimes fully extended.
All that to say that I was shocked at the way I was feeling and I got terrified. I ended up in the ER that night because the dizziness got worst and would not go away. My BP was 180/100. The ER Dr assumed he had just discovered a case of chronic high BP and gave me a pill that I now know could have killed me. It was fine the first night, but this was a weekend, and he directed me to take the same pill until I saw my Dr on Monday. I woke up the next night like at 4 am, shaking uncontrollably. Turns out I was overdosing on BP meds and dropping my BP to the ground. In an effort to not repeat things I had described before, this was the beginning of a long series of health issues that were not real. Although it felt very real, it was all brought by chronic stress and anxiety. Don't need to explain it here. Many of us have been there before.
Long story short, I stood there looking at my shed and thinking... this is one honey-do that I did not finish thanks to the Watchtower. That wasn't the only thing that got suspended due to the motions of going thru the process of coming out to the family about my awakening, but it sure was the first one. After all the hell I went thru and all the feelings and anxiety, fearing for my life and my future, what better way to begin closing that chapter of my life than finishing the shed. I scratched off the list and went at it myself.
When I finished, I took a step back and meditated for a second. Took a picture and decided I was going to share it here.
