by Ginger Sanders

Created on: March 26, 2008   Last Updated: October 31, 2008

Trying to balance what is important to me in life has taken some real soul searching. To begin with I seem to do everything backwards. For thirty years I was self-employed and my choice of days off was my own. Since we scrambled for money all the time I only could afford one day. With rare exception, Sundays were sacred. With seven children Sundays were church and family time.

This last year I was asked to help a friend for "a couple" days on a job. It turned out to be the "Three Hour Cruise" from Gilligan's Island. I am still here on the island and I love it. I am the company troubleshooter. Trouble, of course, could care less if it is a Sunday and sometimes people's lives are at stake, consequently I have found myself having to rearrange my spiritual life.

The last child, a senior in high school, is about to fly the nest. The rest are making their own way with their families in their own churches and my husband prefers to sleep on Sunday whether he is in church or not, so now in my pre-retirement years I have a real job. Being blessed with a nice wage, medical insurance for the first time in a zillion years and some quarters racking up for social security, caused me to start looking for alternatives to worshiping on Sunday that I could live with. It was easy.

I found a home group. Home groups are little cell groups that churches have meeting during the week, usually at night. My group meets on Tuesday night. We alternate houses. I get far more out of this type of gathering than I did in a traditional Sunday church setting. We study, pray and eat. We minister to each other and over the last two years these people have become family.

My biggest testimony from this group came this last winter. Like family we love each other but don't always like each other. There was lady in the group that rubbed me the wrong way and I really didn't try to get close to her. I was nice but that was all I really felt I had to be. In November she told the group that she had cancer. This was quite conflicting for me. We are caring for a family friend in our home who has terminal cancer so I think I was more aware of her fear for the future and that she would need comfort from friends, not really sure where I actually fit in there.

One of the things we did have in common was our age and our long hair. Hers black, mine blond. She started talking about therapies and that she was considering cutting all of her hair off and donating it before treatments started and it all fell out. Being

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