Writings From The Heart

Looking For The Beauty Through The Weeds

December 2, 2017

It isn’t easy for me to open my private heart, but when I do, it is my prayer it touches someone who may find themselves struggling with a difficult situation. It is my prayer that the hardships I have endured will provide hope and encouragement as well as strength and courage to see there is a new tomorrow.

design-1Trials are times when God refines us to make us the best vessel He created us to be. Unfortunately, they are met with exhaustion, confusion, indecisiveness, difficulty and weariness depending on how difficult the situation is.

I have experienced a season of hardships over the past almost 10 years. It seems we just go from one to another to another, while the first ones haven’t been resolved we are trying to navigate a new one. It isn’t pretty.

Difficult times such as these can weigh us down leaving us in a state of fear, confusion, anxiousness, insecurity, and find they are difficult to process. They produce states of minds where darkness can consume you leaving you discouraged and depressed.

This cycle of hardship leaves you feeling like a darkness of loneliness has consumed you, but my friend, I’m here to reassure you first and foremost you are not alone. The fear of loneliness doesn’t have to be what consumes you. There is someone who understands your situation and circumstances because I am there and have been for a long time.

I don’t have a 5 Step plan yet to get us out of this bondage. My way of processing all of the above emotions are to begin writing about them. Over the years as I would cry out to God seeking answers to my, “… but why God?” I would come out to the same solution. This being if we have to go through the pain and the yuk then my prayer is it isn’t in vane. I have pleaded with God that our difficulties would serve to encourage others, but to do this I have to begin to tell my story of years of trials and hardships that revolve around so many raw and challenging emotions.

I am also going to be brutally honest by saying I am a Christian, a believer of our God in Heaven, I am not as good as a lot of the women who are well known public speakers and authors. I have travelled my road in a messy and dirty way. I haven’t done it as gracefully as you hear from others when you listen to them and read in their books.

The formation of my blog is not pretty or elegant, full of lace and pearls, but when you read my heart felt stories, it is my prayer that you can relate to the painful circumstances and trials and are refreshed knowing if your journey is as messy as mine, that you are not alone. There are others who struggle just as much. It is my hearts desire you know if you are not following the ” perfect” 5 Step plan that you aren’t doing it wrong. Do not let those lies enter your mind. There is no right or wrong way to travel these difficult journeys.

My friends, what I have learned through these difficult years is that life is “Messy”. I truly believe in my heart there isn’t a right or wrong way to travel through difficult trials in life. All that matters in the end is that you “Survived”.

We will survive this and are surviving because God has not abandoned or forsaken us. He is still walking us through these hardships holding our hands and guiding us down these roads. He loves us “Unconditionally” with no strings attached. If you have walked away from Him, consider rekindling that relationship and allow that tiny spark, that is still in your heart, to become a burning fire again. Remember, a heart wrenching fact, He didn’t walk away from you, you walked away from Him.

I’m not trying at all to be on a soapbox, but I know first hand how hard these difficult roads are to follow. I may not walk the Christian walk correctly or appropriately, but one thing I know with 100 percent certainty, I couldn’t have done these years of hardships without God in my life. He has helped to keep my sanity and has guided my determination to survive after all these years. I am where I am today in my journey because of Him. Allow Him to guide you as well.

I will close by sharing a hug with each one of you who are in need of one right now. You will persevere in the end. Keep your chin up and allow God to hold you up while you are weary. His arms are strong enough and His heart is willing. You’ve got this my friend

                              iron

 

The Void of Happiness In Your Heart

To The One Who Is Struggling Today To Find Joy In Your Heart

1A289EE2-5947-4655-B6D3-22FB41B11571As we wake to this Christmas Eve Day there are many people whose joy is replaced by sadness and sorrow.

It is my prayer that the love of others fills your broken heart today and tomorrow.

I recognize your pain is real, but the love of God and friends can fill your broken heart and the void of happiness in your life.

Many hugs to each and everyone one of you and know that no matter how lonely you are feeling that you are loved this day and every day of the year.

May God richly bless you with a Love and Peace that can only come from Him this day and every day.

Many hugs to you who are hurting today and tomorrow. 💜

Blessings Come From Unexpected Moments

5099D2D0-A145-459B-AC9C-E33CE51DCA69I am thanking God today is Friday.

Today is the third doctor appointment for this week, let alone in the past twenty-four hours. Yesterday I started the day out at one with my husband, then I got home to take my Kiddo to one of hers and now I am back to another one for my husband this morning.

Today I decided to use my time wisely and write instead of vegging out while I wait.

As I left my husband to do the procedure, I was handed the all to familiar buzzer and told, “We will call you when we are ready to have you come back again.”

There was a time, not that long ago this wasn’t a familiar way of life. I miss those days. I am not sure if life will ever go back to them or not, but right now I am sitting right in the middle of this journey.

Our life has become multiple doctor appointments a week whether they be for my husband or for my daughter. I find myself sitting and waiting for what feels like countless hours whether it is for procedures or surgeries, or whether they be just for multiple doctor appointments.

I am by no means complaining, as I wouldn’t change anything about it. This is what you do for family. You jump over hurdles, you cross through valley’s and when life is good your enjoy the beauty of the peacefulness as you rest from what you have been through.

I am extremely thankful for the ability to have a life where I do not work outside of my home, so I can take care of my husband now and be there to hold my daughter’s hand and fight along beside her now she is grown. I by no means will ever take this for granted.

I am, however, writing from the raw depths of my heart and the tired and weariness of this on going journey we have found ourselves in. I never realized how exhausting endless doctor appointments could be. I guess because I never realized how much more there was to them then just driving to an appointment and waiting in the waiting room.

There is the endless worry over them. There is always a sense of mental processing going on. There is the endless researching to figure out what questions need to be addressed. There is the always trying to be a step ahead of the doctor so if they tell you something, then you know if it sounds familiar or not.

I have learned when people say to take your health care into your own hands, this is real. Thankfully, when you have doctors you can trust you are able to let your guard down some, but until that relationship is built, you are always at a heightened state of alert.

I think this contributes to this state of exhaustion. To those of you who find yourselves in a similar situation, my heart and hugs go out to you. Please know if I lived near you, I would bring you a bottle of water or your favorite drink and would sit with you as you wait. I know the empty feeling of loneliness as I sit here myself waiting here for another time.

I would like to share another thankful moment I have through this journey and this is the fact I am making friends with the staff, doctors, and nurses which both my husband and daughter have. This truly helps to make this time in life a little more pleasent one, if that is possible.

As I watch people while I wait here, I have learned there are many personalities that play into making a hospital experience an interesting one. You have your people who are sensitive and gentle. They do everything within their power to make you feel comfortable. They listen to you and try to find the missing puzzle pieces to help you feel better and they genuinely care.

Then there are the people who are helpful and sweet. They try to accommodate to your simplest of needs. We have one office I take Kiddo to when she is in excruciating pain from a migraine and when we check in they have a quiet dark room ready for her with nausea medicine all ready for her to take while she is being triaged. This is taking your job to a whole new level of caring and concern. They are truly angels in nursing scrubs and doctors coats.

We have also been in not so caring doctor offices too. We have been in ones where they were insensitive and cold. They were rude and disrespectful. I often wondered how it was that they were even in the medical field?

How can you be so insensitive to look at someone who is sick and in pain and dismiss their symptoms and tell them to leave your office, there is nothing they can do for you. After all I have been through to fight for my daughter’s health needs, this kind of behavior should not be permitted ever in the health care field. I am a believer that sensitivity goes a long way. I am believing God is a bigger man and one day this bad behavior will be addressed on a much higher level.

So with all of these befuddled raw thoughts and emotions, I will continue to walk through this long medical journey with both my husband and my daughter and I will try with every ounce of strength I have to give them the love, strength, and commitment to their on going health needs that I have.

It is my hope, if you find yourself in a similar situation, that my words somehow encouraged you to know you are not alone. There are other people who know and understand the loneliness, weariness, and constant concern you have for your loved ones.

We have to stand together, strong and tall, and travel along this medical journey knowing we are braver then we think, stronger then we know, and loved beyond measure.

Lastly, as we continue to take care of our sick and injured loved ones, please know in your heart, although they may not say it or even express it, they are thankful for you and would be lost without you.

As a parting thought, God is so good. I had just finished writing my post and was sitting here in my own little world of thoughts reviewing what I wrote only to look up to see a familiar face sitting down in front of me. How ironic as I poured my heart out about how lonley it is to sit here waiting hours on end for procedures and surgeries to finish, when God provided that unexpected familiar face in amongst all the strange faces in this crowd.

Now I know this post is meant to touch the hearts of others, so if you are one, know God hears your cry and knows your every tear. He is still walking with you. His only wish for you is to continue to be His faithful and obedient servant.

My Friend, continue to wait on Him, place your faith and trust in Him and when you least expect it, God will richly bless you with the desire of your heart, just as he did for me today.

Lastly, cherish those moments and keep them close to your heart. They will sustain you during your times of difficulties and weakness.

To my faithful friend, SSG K, if you read this today, you will never know how nice it was to see your sweet face in this crowd of loneliness today. You were truly a blessing from God.

Prayers Touch Hearts

To everyone who has prayed us through the past couple of difficult days, thank you. Your prayers are being felt. BJ touched many lives in his little world. I am deeply touched to know he was loved by so many. 🐾💜🐾

He is deeply missed in our family, right down to Shadow who is having a great deal of difficulty processing his loss.

It looks like my next few days will consist of giving him lots of extra love ❤️, security to know we are not leaving him, (like his brother did), and a lot of extra treats to make his grieving a little bit more bearable.

FD8AD2C7-6738-4171-B400-6E0EF696219DI am extremely thankful for our family friends for having the advanced knowledge to send out a set of Bark Boxes because this months will help to break the horror Shadow has in his mind of boxes now. This months box will be an extra extra special box. Thank you for loving Shadow enough to make him a happy little boy.

B6C58C3E-91BD-4BEE-BA8D-1F70A1429EADThank you for all the prayers and I ask you to continue as the days and weeks to come have to be lived with out my precious Little Guy. We have a huge void in our hearts and can’t wait for that void to be filled by his memories and not the pain of his loss. 🐾💜🐾

What Is Your Self-Worth?

Writing From The Heart

I struggle daily with finding my self-worth. I find it hard to compete with society’s standards because their standards do not match up to my own.

designWhen I was younger I was career minded until I got married.  Well, actually I was still career minded after I got married, but the Army gave us orders to Germany so it was time for my career to go on hold.  Across the ocean we went, but when we left,  it was only meant to be a minor set back and when we returned back to the United States I would jump right back into my career, but over two years into our three-year deployment my Kiddo was born.

At that point I had to make another important decision.  Was I going to be a working  mommy or a stay at home mommy?  It was a difficult decision for me to make because I worked so hard to get my education done so I could jump into my career when we got back, but then there was my baby who was now my responsibility.  God gave her to me to take care of and to raise.  How would I do that and have my career too?

After many long hours of thinking about this decision and many sleepless nights I came to the conclusion I would put my career on hold and be a stay at home mom.

As the years passed and she got older I had to make yet but another important decision regarding motherhood vs career.  Now I had to decide if she was to going to go to school or was I going to keep her home and homeschool her.  If she went to school, then I could jump-start my career as not that much time had passed.  I was sure my resume could still stand on its own merit at that point or do I keep her home?   If I kept her home to homeschool then my career would take a serious hit.  What was I to do?  This was another long thinking decision and with a lot of thought, I decided to continue being a stay home mom.  My career was no longer important at that point.

I have struggled with the negativity that comes along with being a stay at home and homeschool mom.  People are all to eager to share their negative opinions and “wisdom” with people like me.  I am not one who likes confrontation so I take their ugly words to heart.  Unfortunately, after years of this, I have come to believe this negativity as truth.

I struggle with this truth as I know it is actually a lie hidden inside the disguise of truth and due to the cloudiness of this lie, my heart has begun to believe it.  Now 19 years later and my time as a “mom” and homeschool teacher are coming to a close I am finding myself struggling with “who am I now?”

According to society’s standards I have done nothing with my life for 19 years.  I have no skill sets because I was “just a mom” and a teacher (but not a real teacher because I was a homeschool teacher).  So here I sit with a bunch of lies in my head and struggling with my self-worth because I chose to live a life that was not acceptable to society’s ideas of what is “normal”.

I have pondered this struggle with self-worth for a couple of years now.  I have found myself putting serious thought to what is fact and what is fiction?  What is truth and what are lies?  I have to search my inner being to find a solution to this question in order to fully live my life intentionally.  Without this answer, my self-worth will remain a mystery lost in years of hidden lies.

This isn’t the life I intended to live if it meant it would revolve around the lies I have believed for so long.  So self-worth, what is it for real?  What is mine?  Who am I really?

Has anyone else struggled with this?  I know Service Members tend to struggle in this area because they are so used to someone always telling them what to do that they forget they can make decisions for themselves.  They are used to leaders always telling them information that isn’t always true.  In the years I was in the Army, it was acceptable behavior to belittle your subordinates in order to get them to do as you needed them to do.  Unfortunately, this will wreak havoc on anyone’s self-worth.  So how do you survive this evil thought process?  How do you recover from it after the years of damage?

Well, I as I write this, I don’t have the answers to my questions yet. I am still pondering these questions.  Hopefully as I continue this journey of blogging my “true”and heart-felt feelings it will help me to discover the answers to these questions.

How about you?  Do you struggle with this or have you in the past?  If so, how did you find your answers?  Please feel free to share in the comments below.  It will be interesting to hear how you resolved this issue.