Now, we blog!

I’m no parenting expert, but I do believe I have the best advice anyone can give their children. Are you ready for it? It’s this: When God puts something on your heart, listen. When He commands you to do something, DO IT!

While this advice may not be to intentionally create obedience in my children, I pray they do learn to obey their heavenly father (more than they do their earthly parents lately). No. This advice comes from my own experience. My hope is that they can avoid some of the heartache and conviction I have experienced over the last twenty years. That’s right. God’s been prompting me to write for TWENTY YEARS!

Such a long time, yet it seems like yesterday I heard His calling on my life. I did not understand, because I didn’t think I was worthy. That was my first mistake: thinking it was about me. At the time, I was married to an alcoholic tramp in every sense of the word. He traveled around for work and he slept around for pleasure. Being raised in the church all my life that was not how I envisioned my happily ever after. Truthfully, we were separated more than we were together. Therefore, I thought God wanted me to write a book to encourage women to stick it out in hard marriages. I even had a title picked out. Yes, my book was to be called: What? You mean EVERYONE’S life isn’t like this?! So cheesy, but that was me. That IS me, but I’m working on it. Or rather, God’s working on me. 

I never wrote that book. And over the next few years my life would spiral so hard and fast I wouldn’t have time to read a book, much less, write one. I wish I had written it. Maybe it would have helped someone, maybe not. The point is I’ll never know because I didn’t act on faith. I acted, or didn’t act, out of fear instead. I had a four year old at the time, and was working full time. When my husband came home for Christmas in the year 2000, he left me with the one thing I thought I couldn’t handle. A pregnancy. I was skinnier than I’d ever been and I STILL think he did it on purpose to get me fat while he was on the road… but I digress. Great material for my non-existent book! But I still didn’t write it.

I experienced my pregnancy alone except for my parents, sister and my sweet first born boy. My husband didn’t even grace us with his presence until my second baby boy was three weeks old. Yep, I pushed out a 9.8 pound baby by myself! That’s when I realized I didn’t need that man for anything else. After my divorce I thought maybe I’d write a book about single mom stuff. Going back to school, working full time, paying for everything on my own with government assistance. Great book idea, right? That’s where it remained, in my head.

Fast forward a bit, life got harder but my sister and I were helping each other raise our boys and avoid their adult counterparts. I had a stomachache anytime I had to call my ex and beg for money that never came, but other than that, life was actually pretty darn good. I have an awesome Christian family who happens to love me more than they should. I certainly never earned it. But that’s what being Christ-like is all about, isn’t it? Forgiving the unforgivable, loving the unlovable… 

A couple of years went by and I didn’t really think about the book. Then one night, the night before my birthday in 2004, my only sister, and very best friend, was killed by an underage drunk driver. I physically felt her leave this earth. Hardest time in my life, and I don’t even remember everything because God is just that good! I do remember I was bitter and angry and selfish and ready to fight anyone over just about anything. How could this happen to ME? Why couldn’t SHE lose HER sister instead? Why did He take the wrong sister?

She was a strong Christian woman with an organized home and plans for the future, and maturity and all the stuff I didn’t possess or even want back then. I had my one superpower, sarcasm, and I was good with that. I kept as many people at bay as I could. I cared very little about waking up in the morning, much less showering or brushing my teeth. And heaven forbid I actually put someone else’s needs first, like my parents. I mean, they had just lost their child, their first born baby. Yet, here they were, taking care of the basket case (that would be me) banging her head on the floor screaming out in denial over such an unimaginable loss. I couldn’t even fathom a world without her. For the first time in my life, I didn’t want to live. But I did live. I just didn’t write. 

We experienced a trial, a conviction and sentencing of the young man who killed her. I carried my anger to court everyday. Why didn’t I write about that? Too mad. I retreated into myself and lost my job because I just didn’t care. Didn’t care about anything. My boys didn’t have the best of me either. Not by a long shot. I went on to make a bad decision to move across the country with my ex so the boys could “get to know their father,” which they did. Boy did they. He took MY car and  left us stranded in a hotel room in Las Vegas. Couldn’t handle fatherhood. Or marriage. Or responsibility. Or reality. Why didn’t I write about THAT? Too embarrassed.

The boys and I ended up moving back in with my parents so I could finish my degree. God planted an amazing man in my path, and we married in 2009. He’s helping raise my boys to be good men, and brought two extra daughters with him, which in turn, has made me a MiMi! God even blessed us with a boy of our own in 2010! And after all that time of me thinking my uterus was blue, God gave us a daughter who looks and acts just like my sweet sassy sister.

Since God is still prompting me to write, my prayer is that it helps you realize everyone grieves, you aren’t alone and God loves you. Since this is 2019, I’m starting a blog. I’m being obedient. I’m trusting Him. I mean, this is all about His love for me and how that love got me through. How His love can and WILL get YOU through. A book will come. But for now, we blog!

Ecclesiastes 3:11