I Read Too Much

This past Sunday at church Pastor gave a message called "This New Year."  As the week has unfolded and I've ready many, many Facebook posts regarding resolutions and changes people want to make, coupled with all the challenges that my running groups have put out there, I have decided I'm not making a resolution.  It isn't that I don't think I need goals or changes in my life, we all do.  Each and everyone of us need a goal and change.  We need the discipline that a good goal creates and the necessary pain that change gives.  Now, don't misunderstand what I am saying, change for change's sake isn't good, but I think if you were to look deep  you'd find one thing.  I know I have.  Allow me to explain. Year's ago, when I had my first interview for a promotion with my company, I was taken aback by a question the manager asked.  I should tell you that I am a very outspoken person (no, it's true!) and in some circumstances, like when I'

If I had it to do over again, I would still keep 2013 for all that it was.  Now, yes, I did have a rough go of it.  I questioned my faith, I turned my back on the things I knew to be right and true, I lost my husband, but despite all of that I found so much more. I found the blessing of true friendship.  I found that while not everyone who says they are your friend really is, but that is ok.  Every person has the choice to accept and listen and believe the stories they want.  Truly life will go on because there are those people who, despite your flaws, see the person you are, the person God created you to be, and still they love you and guide you and help you to grow.  These are the models of true friendship. I found that I do have perseverance.  I could have let the ick of my life cause me to fail at school, not focus on what I had to do, and override all that I had already accomplished, but I didn't.  I continued to continue on and not only did I graduate, but I did it with a

This year the days leading up to Christmas have been a bevvy of mixed emotions for me. Yes, last year I was wreck.  You all read it, here, in black and white.  Yet when I read back over some of those posts I wonder where that woman is who had so much faith.  That woman who clung so hard to the hope that just maybe she would receive a Christmas miracle after all.  It didn't come.  I secretly, well, not really, I publicly believed in it.  Don't get me wrong I still believe in miracles.  I still believe that God is in the miracle making business, I just know that that wasn't mine.  Despite all that, despite how I feel and the sadness that overwhelms me most of the time, I cannot actually forgo the season, as much as I may have wanted to.  I have my Littles to think about.  They, these precious gifts of mine, do still believe in miracles and it is my duty to provide them with that.  So, I set out this year to do the best I could with what I have.  We decorated our tree with a

If there is one thing in this world that I am the worst at, it is having patience.  Well, I guess that isn't entirely true.  I have no qualms about waiting in lines, at the doctor's office, at a stop light, etc.  Where I have issues is with waiting on God's timing.  I'm battling that right now.  You see, I'm done waiting.  I hate this.  (Yes, I am going to whine for a bit here, but bare with me, I think it will work itself out in the end.)  I hate this time where I am stuck going no where.  Where I've quite emphatically expressed to God what it is that I want and even to a degree how it should be.  Yes, I do know that isn't how it works! The Bible tells us to be still, to know that He is God.  It also tells us that He knows the desires of our heart.  Then it goes on to tell us that He only wants the best for us.  God is pretty awesome like that.  Yet, we, in our humanness, can't see the big picture.  We are creatures driven by wants and desires.  We ar

...isn't always gold.  A few months ago had a friend told me this I'd have stared at them with a deer in the headlights look.  I mean what does this really mean?  Time has given me some perspective on this.  Time and a hard lesson learned.  Here's the thing, pain can cloud our judgment; especially pain that is caused by loneliness brought on by heartache.   I wish I had enough words to describe this pain to those who have never experienced it before.  It is debilitating.  It can and will reduce you to nothing before you get to that point where you are able to stand again.  This pain is magnified even more, to some degree, by the length of time you were with the person.  But, not always is this true. In February of this year, when the ex-Mr. moved out completely into his own place I had a long talk with my friend, Anna.  Well, I had many, but at this time she told me to stand my ground and to remain steadfast and to seek the Lord to heal my broken heart.  She told me that

I know that Thanksgiving was a few days ago and, true to form, I am late on this post.  I have been a bit quiet lately, but that will be remedied soon enough.  If you were to ask 10 random people what their favorite holiday was most likely half of them would say Thanksgiving.  It's true.  One of the most overlooked of all holidays is the one most people hold near and dear.  It is my absolute favorite holiday.  Now, don't get me wrong I love Easter and Christmas for altogether other reasons, but Thanksgiving is that one day a year when family gets together and there is no pretense, just the joy of being together.  This was my first Thanksgiving without the ex-Mr.  I want to tell you that I spent it in a funk and couldn't move and was debilitated by the grief, but the truth of it is, I wasn't.  No, in fact, I have to tell you it was the best Thanksgiving we have ever had.  The reason?  We all got to be who we are.  You know how when someone doesn't approve of your fam

A while back I wrote to you about how I love to run.  I do.  I love to run.  It is one of the things that defines me.  In that post I was open about how I only run shorter distances, about how I seem to lose the energy when it comes to the long run.  That was then, this is now.  In the months since then, yes months, I have grown to enjoy the long run.  There is something altogether amazing about the long run, allow me to explain.  I am not a fast runner by any stretch of the imagination, but I am not really that slow either. I am kind of right there, in the middle.  Of course this doesn't mean that I'm not out there trying to improve with each step that I take.  I have ran many distances.  Short, quick, one mile out and back taking up roughly 15 minutes of my time all the way to just shy of an 18 mile loop, which I did at an average of 9:24min/mile pace a month or so ago.  (My next goal is a 20 miler) It is said that a mile is a mile no matter how fast you run it.  Truth.  Th

There are days when it is really hard to see things in the right perspective.  Days that turn into weeks and well, those into months.  In fact this whole past week has been an extremely rough week for me.  Now, I won't deny the moments in it that were great.  I had a few, all of which involved my Littles and doing things with them and for them.  But the times that were the hardest were the ones where I was left to my thoughts.  It is amazing the pull our thoughts have on our lives.  The way we think can lead us to a place that is so lonely and sad that even medication can't pull us out.  Well, personally speaking of course. This deep rooted depression has taken its toll on me.  I've gotten myself to the point where I don't sleep and I cry almost non-stop.  My heart is broken.  Completely.  Wholly.  I'm lost in the despair of my loneliness.  It is truly without a doubt the most crippling emotion.  I do not enjoy this by any means, but it isn't something that I

Last Sunday I wrote to you about the lesson we are learning in Sunday School.  Well, today we continued where we left off discussing labels and how they can either define us or build us up.  I've thought a lot about this lesson over the course of this week.  I've thought about the negative labels people have applied to me in the past several months and those that I have applied to myself.  I've been labeled by others as wayward, wild, and unkind.  I've labeled myself as unworthy, unwanted, and undesired. It is taking me time to let go of the me inside of me.  This person who likes to have all the control, this person that likes to help God on His quest of making me into the person He designed me to be.  A question was posed of us this morning to the effect of; what have we sacrificed in our lives to remove the labels that we have applied to ourselves.  You see, I cannot remove those that others gave me.  They, after all, are their opinion.  They belong to them.  They

A year.  It is quite remarkable the difference a year can make.  I would be lying if I said I didn't cry today, that I put my big girl panties on, a fresh smile, and made it out the door to face the world.  But I did.  I cried.  Actually I sobbed.  I bawled.  I wept out loud.  At church.  At home.  All day.  We made it to church and I had the pleasure of  wonderful conversations with some dear friends.  Then at that end of the service I had a few more that came up to me at the altar and prayed with me and for me.  One held back my hair and rubbed my neck, another had her arm wrapped around me, another was holding my arm, and so many, they cried with me.  They cried, aloud, with me. And they prayed because they know. They know that even though it has been a year ago today since the ex-Mr. made the choice to walk away, my heart is still hurting.  They know that I am still in a lot of pain.  Truthfully, it has a lot less these days to do with missing him simply because time can truly

These past couple of weeks I've been a mixture of emotions.  Some days I feel like I can conquer the world and others I feel like the world has conquered me.  I try not to focus on the calendar, but because the hours will it to happen the days keep turning one into another anyway.  Its the way of things I guess.  Time doing that thing it does.  Only those who have passed on are truly free of its inevitableness.  A year ago my days had their own issues, but I was sitting here without a doubt, behind this laptop, keying in some snarky bit of wisdom or more likely a string of random sarcasm as a woman who thought she knew who she was.  Never would I have thought that the days after would begin the journey that I am still on.  Those days which felt like years each turned into days that flew by.  In some ways I've grown stronger.  I'm doing those things that I never thought I would be able to do.  I am supporting my girls all by myself.  I am doing it.  The mommying isn't

One thing I do not miss about school are the tests.  Oh my goodness did I hate taking tests.  In fact, I was always that student who would ask to write a 10 page paper in place of taking a test.  Yes, there really are people like me!  Ha!  I've been out of school now for a few months.  In fact, when I was finishing up people would ask me what I was going to do with all my free time and I'd just look at them like, "are you crazy?  I'm a single mom of three, there is no such thing as free time."  Yeah, I still think that way, but I do have my 'every other weekend'!  I digress.  The truth of it is, even with two degrees and no immediate desire to go back for a third, I have not stopped taking tests. In all honesty, none of us really do.  Life in and of itself is a test. My devotional today was so applicable.  It truly hit home with this fact.  We've all been in that place where ick has happened.  Where we have been dealt a bad hand, we've been given

Well lovelies it is October.  This month has finally arrived.  I haven't been on here in a while, but I have checked in to read your comments.  Last month was a month of a lot of firsts for me.  I started off telling you about it and sharing a lot of the things I learned.  I had a milestone last month.  I ran my first half marathon.  My goal was to come in under 2 hours.  I finished at 2:03:25.  I started too slow (10 min/mile pace), didn't pick my splits up soon enough, and had WAY too much energy left at the finish.  But, I will take this as a win and another learning experience.  There is so much to learn about running, but I think it is what you learn about yourself when you run that really makes the difference.  I am learning that I really do have what it takes for the long haul. But is was how that month ended and this one began that I really need to share with you.  First, I must say that today, today is seven weeks that I have been without a man in my life.  And I am

My middle little, the one who is extremely sassy, drama-prone, loud to the nth degree, impressionable, and full of genuine love wanted to go through scrapbooks tonight.  This should have sent alarm bells off in my head the minute I walked back in from my walk/run tonight.  (Yes, I tried to run even with my injury, yes, yes, yes!) I tried every tactic I could think of to deter this.  I made up one condition after another.  It wasn't so much that I didn't want to spend the time with her; I just didn't want to go through those blasted books.  Those books that I poured untold hours, obscene amounts of money, and unmeasurable amounts of love into creating.  I USED to scrapbook.  USED to . You know, back when preserving family memories meant something because forever wasn't supposed to end. We started off somewhere in the middle of her toddler years.  I was never good at chronological order.  I made that a goal with the littlest little, but I'm like at 8 months.  Yeah,

We've all heard some variation of the saying, "when one door closes another one opens."  I really hate that saying for many reasons.  I think the biggest reason is that a closing door is often looked at as the goodbye, the end.  The door can be gently closed, slammed shut, pushed in firmly, what have you.  However you look it, it is a severing of something - ties, time, plans, memories, relationships, etc.  But what if we look at it from the other side?  Not as the person on the outside, the one who no longer has access to what ever the thing may be.  What if we look at it from the inside?  Then that closed door could became a symbol of hope, comfort, and happiness.  I've had a lot of doors closed on me in the past 11 months.  Doors I never thought would.  I have also tried to open doors; doors that just wouldn't budge. As these doors closed, none by choice, until yesterday, but I will get to that later, I crumbled a little bit more.  Each time a bit of me fell

She wore a baggy hoodie as she shuffled down the sidewalk.  Her face down cast while wisps of light brown hair slipped out from under her hood.  She's trying to run away, like every day before; run until there is no sidewalk left, but it doesn't, it doesn't end.  She can't run away from what's truly following her.  It is relentless.  It is fearless.  It is consuming. It has chased her for years.  Some years she has felt safe, she has felt it wasn't there and that she had finally outrun it, but she was wrong.  Dead wrong.  Because it was laying dormant.  That's what it does to make one think they have beaten it.  But it is merely waiting for one to let their guard down, and she did.  Now she is struggling to find a safe haven, a place where it can't reach her again. She'd tasted its sweetly intoxicating vileness before.  She tried to be strong, show others she was big enough to beat it, prove to herself that she didn't need anyone but herself

They say that healing takes time, that getting over a major life event takes time.  But what manner of time are they talking about?  And who are these elusive "they"? We get time.  We know there are 60 seconds in a minute, 60 minutes in an hour, 24 hours in a day, so on and so forth.  But how do you truly account for the time it takes to "get over" something.  I need to be honest here.  I'm not over it.  I'm not, not completely - really.  I mean I was with him for the better part of 11 years.  Don't get me wrong.  I THOUGHT I was over it.  I THOUGHT my heart was healed.  Actually, I THOUGHT my mind was healed.  But I was more just hiding from it.  I think the true tell is the amount of time I still TALK about it.  And I do.  A LOT.  Truth, I talk about a lot of things a lot!  Heartache being the biggest one.  I'm going to get back to more lighthearted subject matters.  I know I will.  I'll find my snarky whiticism and have you all in stitches a

I've done a lot of reading in the past week. I'm finally opening books I received for graduation and ones I bought for myself during bouts of clarity.  All I can say is, wow!  Holy geez people I wish I'd have cracked these puppies open straight away.  But, and here is the kicker, I wouldn't have been receptive to what they are saying.  Nope, not one lick.  That often happens when you turn off your listening ears and put on your own way of doing things.  I think what is most tragic is that over the course of several months I had heard what I knew to be truth, yet kept on keeping on.  We do that, don't we.  We tend to want what we think is best, most especially when it makes us happy and makes our heart smile.  I'm having a hard time now with negating the truth and fully accepting it.  But what I do know is this, I made a mistake.  Hear me out. We all know I run.  I use my time while running to clear my head and open my mind and heart.  I use it to run from thin

Have you ever been angry enough to fight?  Of course you have.   You are human.  Don't deny it.  It's alright.  There is no one here that will judge you.  I'm sure you are curious about why this topic, why now?  I mean I never got angry enough to fight in the whole past year.  That's just it.  I was.  I just didn't act it out in the way most people thought I should.  I didn't allow the hurt to produce the ugly side affects that anger can cause.  But now, now I want to share what I am angry about.  What I think all women should be angry about.  Truthfully, what all people should be angry about - the degradation of marriage. I will never deny the role I held in the breakdown of my marriage.  Sure, I wanted more than he could give. I wanted him to be someone he simply wasn't.  I wanted him to become a man that God had not created him to be.  It's ok.  I admit that.  I really do wish him happiness in his future relationships and I pray that some day he mee