Me

I guess I am all over the place with this blog and maybe I should just narrow it down to one thing, something popular to read? I don't know. I really only started this to capture my thoughts and write.

I was taking a look at my facebook wall and saw that James Patterson had posted a contest. A writing contest. I have put it off and thought how no one would read  a short story from me, or I am just not good enough, but I caught myself today and said... out loud too... no one will ever know if I am good enough, to include myself, if I never try. So, I am going to go over to the website and read over the terms and sit down for once and start using my imagination!

I don't know how many books I started to write and then gave up. I don't know how many times I picked up my camera and because it wasn't the camera I wanted or the camera that I believed would only increase my potential, I just gave up. It's not about the tools, it's not all about the belief, it's about the person. Do you just talk yourself out of things that you know you could do, but because you just don't have enough faith in yourself and your ability, you just give up?

I am making myself a promise today. I won't give up... I will give my life over to the All Mighty and I will follow his lead. Sometimes you just need to rest, you need to recuperate, you need to unplug from the world you're in and you just need him to carry you. That's what the old poem was about right... footprints... while you struggle and you stress and you just feel like you can't go on, then you see only one set of footprints, that's not you walking alone, but it is that he's carrying you over the sand and he holds you high so that you don't have to go at life alone or manage the stress alone. I am going to pray for my forks in the road. I am going to ask for his help and his guidance. I am going to ask for him to carry me for a while, because I have pushed him out thinking I could do it all by myself and I am seeing that I cannot.

Being young... being naive, not understanding why things happen, growing up.

Being the child of a military man wasn't easy for me. Moving all of the time making friends in new places, making more enemies than friends. Certain things in my life created me, the strong me, the scared me, the weak me. I keep my secrets bottled up, I don't talk about them and I keep them safely secured so that no one will ever know and then they can't judge me. Finding out that when you're only a child bad things happened, so bad that your parents don't want to tell you about it, so to this day you still don't know. Being a teenager and bad things follow you, but do they follow you because you asked for it, because you let them happen? Becoming an adult and you marry, and you feel safe, but then again bad things happen to you and now you don't know what SAFE really is? Divorced and with kids and you want to be young again and be free again, but you love your kids and you want to protect them, but you struggle between the free and the tied down and somewhere you do what you can to have both and to live both ways and you make mistakes and you pay the consequences for those mistakes. You struggle with money, but there's always a roof over your head and there's always food on the table and there's always a job and daycare is paid, but there's not always a phone and not always electricity, but there's always a way to pay for the babysitter so you can have a night out with friends. Then something happens and someone comes into your life and for some reason you GROW UP and you don't need to drink, you don't need to party and you don't need to WORRY any more. You marry again.

I was told by my ex mother in law that she wouldn't read my palm because she was afraid of what she saw. She shared her fear with my then sister in law, who then shared it with me. My ex mother in law was afraid because I had a spilt life line and that could only mean one thing. I would live two different lives. Who knew whether I would die and be reborn, which some believe can be true, I don't know what I believed back then. But after my divorce from her son, and my second marriage, I started to think this was what she meant. Then a little more than a year after marrying my second husband I found out the true meaning to her fears. My life took a whole new direction. I no longer had ties to her family. I no longer had a reason to call my ex husband every month or for him to send a check to me any time his new wife felt like it. My girls who were the reason for that old life, now created my new life, and they were gone. It took every inch of me, it took every ounce of me, and I gathered it all up and once again I tried to carry it all on my own. I feared him, I hated him and I loathed anyone who tried to tell me that he was my savior in a time that I truly needed him. He was GOD.

As any parent who has lost a child asks... how? why? why me? what did I do wrong? not how can I go on, but how can I NOT go on?

He wasn't an enemy of mine. He wasn't anything to me any more. But he never left my side. When I wanted to hear my girls voices he managed to send me a tape of them laughing. Just out of the blue I get a video tape from a young girl and her family who used to watch the girls for us. The video was of the girls laughing at their house, playing with their kids and the young girl who babysat for us was behind the camera catching it all. When I missed the girls and wanted to be with them, he brought me their scent. It wasn't the smell you would think of when you're holding your children or child. It wasn't the baby powder that you used on their skin or the lotion you smothered on them so they wouldn't be dry and scaly. It was the smoke I had last smelled on their bodies after the firemen laid them in the grass in the yard. It was the charred smell I had stuck in my nose for weeks after we had them cremated. It was the burning embers of the house while I was trying to get to my girls in the upstairs bedroom and the flames I inhaled while sitting in front of the school next door watching my life as I knew it end before my eyes. The first time he brought them to me I panicked and ran around my entire house trying to find the fire and extinguish it. I cried when the smell was gone and I had realized it wasn't real and it wasn't my mind playing tricks on me. My girls had been there and now they were gone and I spent all that time fearing the worst when I should have been cherishing every last minute they had to give.

I'm not angry any more, I have my faith and it is strong and I do pray and I do thank him every day for the gifts in my life and instead of praying to my girls asking them to give him a message, I now pray to him and ask that he give them a message from me. I lived, I continue to love, and I now have two new gifts that the girls played every part in making come true. I don't get my visits any more, but I look in my boys eyes and I can see their sisters hearts and I know that even with my new life they are still every part of me. My boys will never really know their sisters, but they know that they have them and that they are loved just like they are still around. The boys know their names and they've seen the pictures and they know my heart aches for them now and again. My boys are an addition to my life and make my new life worth living and they remind me that there is an "ever after" and it's only going to be as happy as I make it for everyone. I give my life to him as a dedication to my girls and the thought that I will one day see them again. They are waiting on the other side for me. For me and their brothers and their daddy Jason they make a place for us.

I give my life to GOD, direct me, shape me, and allow me to represent him. I am in service to him and he has my alliance with him. My every day is possible through him.

I will be what he needs me to be and I will go where he leads me and for now, he leads me to you. My friends who need him, my family who grieve and want to understand him, may you all find in him what I have found, my salvation is him.

For those of you who know not of the insanity of life, I pray that you never have to go through what I did to get here, but that you find the divinity of life by getting to know the power that holds you up when you just want to lie down. Don't give up, don't put it aside, take charge and hold on for the ride.

Much love and sacrifice.
Me