God has been faithful and Aunt Mary is dancing on the streets of gold, guest blogger Adrienne Ross

Aunt Mary--my aunt who helped raised me--passed away 2 years ago. In fact, it was 2 years ago last Sunday. When she went into cardiac arrest a year before that and ended up on life support, doctors tried to get us to take her off life support rather than do a tracheotomy. We opted to do the trache surgery, which then meant she had to live in a nursing home--unable to talk, eat, or even move on her own. It also meant that because she had assets--2 houses in her name--and because the nursing home, doctors, etc., would have to be paid, we would be forced legally to sell at least one house, as insurance won't pay until you exhaust all assets. (Those of you with elderly parents might want to keep this in mind. Get stuff out of their names or they'll take it.)

This was the house where I grew up. Not only had we lost the aunt we knew, but we lost our inheritance, but she was worth it. It was difficult all around, and for a year, I traveled the 3 hours one way down to Long Island each Saturday and returned Sunday, sitting by Aunt Mary's side and giving ‪‎my Aunt Alma‬ a break from spending every day--practically all day--there.

After Aunt Mary passed away, there was even more pressure to sell the house. It had to be sold, and the longer it took, the more stress Aunt Alma had. Dealing with lawyers and realtors and the nursing home people and doctors was hard enough after losing her sister, but then there was the cost of heating the house--which was very expensive, along with other costs. Every time it seemed we had a buyer and a contract, it all fell through--time after time. It was a few years of struggle and stress, and then the thought that they would try to make us sell the other house, too--the one Aunt Alma lives in--was added stress. It's not easy to sell a house in the county that has the highest property taxes in the nation! We just kept praying in the midst of the frustration and, admittedly, nervousness.

Now the good news: Finally...I said, FINALLY...we have sold the house! Aunt Alma closed on it and handed the keys over yesterday! Praise GOD! What a journey! And though we have lost so much in the process, we are so glad God has, once again, shown Himself to be faithful, and we have no regrets for making the decisions we did. In that time that Aunt Mary lived after her trache surgery, we saw her begin to move her body, reach for items, squeeze our hands, and attempt to speak. We saw God at work--and we're so glad we chose life. Aunt Mary is now dancing on the streets of gold, and it's all good. As for us, we're moving on!

Ms. Ross is a former high school teacher of English and now owns Adrienne Ross Communications and is a motivational speaker and writer.

Guest blogger Sarah on retirement

Illness forced Sarah to retire; so she's reevaluating her life.
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It's an interesting thing to retire. We all dream of it, we work for it we know that someday we will enter into that time frame of our lives when everything is supposed to be amazing. Kind of like the ultimate carrot at the end of the stick idea. However, some of us (like me) arrive at that point unexpectedly and find that we don't know how to respond to questions from loving, caring friends about, "How are you adjusting to retirement?" In the interest of reminding myself of how things are progressing, I am going to keep a journal of sorts to list out things that I am finding that I can adapt to very quickly. If that in anyway helps some of my friends as they also make this transition, all the better.

There are certainly things that are different and I'm finding that it's OK, that it's different because life was never meant to remain the same. For me, right now in this first month of official retirement, it's all about perspective. I can bemoan those changes sometimes considered losses or...I can rejoice in the changes that I consider major gains.

The first of these gains is what I am considering to be the throwing out the rulebook about time. Having to go to bed by a certain time because you HAVE to get up by a certain time because you HAVE a major responsibility to others and yourself to show up and do your job. If you are someone that doesn't necessarily sleep on a regular schedule and the pressure of HAVING to do so only makes it worse, consider this a major gain. I think in time I will figure out what my "routine" will be, for instance I just started to cook at 9 pm on a Sunday night and it doesn't matter because...it just doesn't matter. If I am up until 3 am (as I often am) then so be it. Unless I have an appointment (which I don't have very many of these days), it just doesn't matter. So the rulebook for me about going to bed and getting up and doing it over and over again until I've reached the point that it took me 2 days to recover from doing that 5 days is a row - is now over and I will be making my own rules from this point out. It is an amazing feeling of freedom which reduces the stress in my life greatly, which in turn improves the quality of my life and so it all is a process...but a process that I will be defining and making fit this new period in my life.

Stay tuned!