Just Be

I have a feeling this post is about to be brought to you by lots of random thoughts, or that's at least what I call them, so if you are about to take this ride, well buckle up butter cup cause I have no idea where it's going or what kind of drive it's going to be. If I'm driving you'll probably want to throw up a prayer or two also. Haha!!

I think this first random thought has occurred to me before but it decided to pay another visit yesterday and that was have you ever been driving and see a house that the outside looked perfect. Beautiful landscape, fresh mowed yard, inviting little front porch with the chairs and the table just waiting for you to sit down with your glass of tea, and you just can't help but say well that is just the cutest little house. And as you see the outside and how perfect it looks you imagine how it looks inside and think it has to be just as cute and perfect. But what if the inside of that house was a complete disaster, the layout was no where close to what you imagine, it's cluttered and worn, it's a mess. This can't be the same house. Sometimes I think people can be like that first part of this random thought. See I think oftentimes we spend so much time making the outside look good, look perfect but inside, oh inside we have got a mess but we think if we make sure the outside looks good we can fool everyone. I've never even really had the outside looking to terribly good but good enough to maybe fool people and what I would do is keep the outside looking okay and anyone that came by to visit well how about we just sit out here on the porch. Can't let anyone in. And I have spent most of my life like that.

 Now little detour before I try to finish this thought but you generally don't have to drive far to see a road work ahead sign and many times when I drive through a work zone I try to imagine why they have done what they did just to make an extra lane or whatever they may be doing in that particular work zone. I usually can't even picture out how it's going to look in the end. It just looks like a bunch of piles of dirt placed randomly, places dug up, detours that make no sense, and just a mess that doesn't seem worth it to make an extra lane or whatever they may be doing. Fast forward to a later date and the road work may be finished or finished enough that you can see why or at least better understand why they made the cuts, detours, and excavated what they did. Maybe all the delays and such was worth it after all.

On my road I am currently at mile marker 2017 and have drove 33 miles and my goodness has there ever been some serious road work, detours and delays - or what I thought was delays on this journey so far. It occurs to me that I may have wrote something similar to this before but if I have please bear with me because I just may open a door that I didn't open before or we may find out that a part of the road just got finished. And I'm just buying time because I can't believe I may be about to write parts of my story that I think may be time to write.

Picture it, early 90's Kentucky and a six year old me. Because you see six miles in my journey of this called life I had some major road work that was started. My parents divorced around this time and thus began a journey that has been interesting to say the least. So as it would be I would come to live with my dad. Somewhere around 8 years old I decided two things and I decided them I suppose in part because it's the only way I could make things make sense and because it was a way to protect myself. I decided that I would never let anyone else inside my house if you will and give them a chance to hurt me again and I thought that though I wasn't sure what I done I must have done something for God to hate me so much. This is also the part of my journey that I will now dub the detour of lies. So growing up I've never really understood or known a mother's love or what it is to have a relationship with your mom or a mom. I am thankful that God allowed me to be around and spend time with my grandma because she was a motherly influence growing up and bless her for putting up with me because I didn't make it easy. Not much worth going into detail through these miles of the journey just that more seeds of lies was planted and boy how those things grow and they grow fast with some seriously deep roots. Fast forward to 2002, my senior year of high school, and what also proved to be one of the most difficult years of my life thus far. My grandma was in her last year of checkups from her larynx cancer that she had battled five years earlier and what ended up taking her voice away. In the summer/fall of 2001 my grandma found out she had lung cancer and there was nothing they could do about it, she was to small to handle any kind of radiation or chemo - that would have killed her. So from around October '01 until January '02 my grandma fought a good fight against cancer and though she was stuck laying in a hospital bed at her house she never once complained. She'd wince and have a grimaced look of pain but you ask her if she was hurting and she'd smile and say she was okay. Though she was tiny in size the woman had willpower and strength so big it would have made Goliath look like an ant. On January 30th some may say cancer won but I say my grandma won the fight and she got the ultimate prize for all she went through here on earth, my grandma got to make her journey to heaven that day. Me on the other hand started my journey to rock bottom. I am not proud that I said what I'm about to tell you I said, in fact I have great regret over it but when my grandma died, one it hit me and it hit me hard. Because not only was she forever gone but I felt cheated cause I didn't get to tell her goodbye. So it was at this time that I once again realized or thought this was more proof that yup, God really hates me and I remember thinking God, I have no idea what I have done to you to make you hate me so much but that's it, I'm done. And I really at that point and for quite some time after that did not want to hear, talk or think about God, he hated me. And to be honest with you I hit a very deep depression after my grandma died and it stayed for a really long time but I didn't fully understand what it was at the time. Now I was done with God and was convinced that he hated me - that lie had grown and the roots was so very, very deep that it would take me years to fully grasp the truth.  Because you see God didn't hate me and He was already working out ways to help me see this truth...or He had been all along. Because around 2003-04 I got to meet some cousins, under unfortunate circumstances but it started a relationship with them and they quickly came to felt more like siblings than cousins and I love them dearly. One of those cousins in particular helped me more than she will ever know and she allowed me to come spend many nights over the years, and didn't say anything when I would stop by late in the evening for what was meant to be a five minute visit just to see her but often ended up me not leaving until 10 or later that night. It was these cousins that started talking to me about God and I never said I didn't want to hear about him but I have no doubt there was times I only half listened hoping they'd move on quickly but following them listening to them sing and what they would say planted another seed, this one full of truth. I started occasionally going to church with one of my cousins on Sunday mornings and on one particular drive back home in the middle of this depression that I didn't know I was fighting but I knew I was sick and tired of being sick and tired because you see during this time I would have times where I would think of how I could die and I remember driving and the thought came to mind why not just drive into this tree or cliff or whatever because everyone would be better off without me anyway, why didn't I just go ahead and get out of the way and on this one particular Sunday morning on my way home while fighting this I thought, no I said out loud something along the lines of God if you really are real and if you're there and I've not gone to far either let me kill myself or you save me. I don't care which but something has got to end I can't go on I'm sick and tired of being this sick and tired. Nothing happened that day. Before I go on I guess I should say I always heard about God growing up but we never went to church from the time I was maybe 8 or 9 until my cousin let me go with her and I guess I was 19 or 20 at this point. So I really didn't understand praying or anything. Now I don't know how long it was between my little ultimatum with God until another Sunday morning I went to church but on my own this time and just so happened my cousin wasnt there that day, I was in the pew by myself. When I left church that day, oh and this brings us up to 2005, I didn't want to go home yet so I went the really, really long way home and I can't explain it but I can tell you exactly where I was on my drive that I felt I needed to pray and I thought but I don't know how to pray and I thought well I'll just start talking and I did and I had been holding in a lot! Now if you haven't already shaken your head a lot or laughed here may be where you do but at this point I asked God to forgive me and well to save me and I felt a weight lift that I knew I had been carrying but didn't realize how much it had been weighing me down. I will not tell you it was a bed of roses after that day and everything was perfect, far from it actually. In fact there was times before where I thought the road was rough and several times through my life I'd dare to say I felt like I was on a road that was right in the middle of hell and I didn't think I'd make it through but it started me on my way to the road we can call the voice of truth. So I had kind of sort of mostly got that God didn't hate me after all but we're still on that house that looks perfect on the outside but don't you dare come in. However, over the years God placed some great people in my life that have become more like family than friends and a couple years ago God decided to let me meet another person that would quickly become like that to me. Over the years I'm not sure how much I still try to make sure the outside looks perfect while the inside is a mess, more than I should but I have let some people in and realized it's not that bad to do so. I was always afraid to open the doors that were in my house to be safe had them all boarded up but someone once told me something along the lines of that it's not all bad, some of those doors well it's okay to open them and I've been trying to open more of them and when I realize they are the ones that have lies well I board them up and try to go on to the next door. Is it easy? Nope. Some days I feel like I'm surrounded by those flames and those lies screaming at me but I'm learning ways to drown out those things with the truth. I'm learning to fight. I'm learning to let people in and let them see and know me. Further more, I'm realizing and am so very thankful because I can look back and see and better understand all those delays and detours and massive pits because there's no telling what I was saved from having to go through or deal with and perhaps best of all because of all of it I have got to meet some of the best people, who have and are helping me in ways they'll never know, who I love dearly and am so thankful to have in my life. And I can say thank you to every person that had a part, good or bad in this journey and I can honestly say I am thankful and so very glad things happened the way they did. I don't really have a relationship with my birth mom - and that's nothing against her, there truly is no hard feelings, hate or unforgiveness there just to let that be known. And I am also thankful because God is showing me so much and He chose to place certain people in my life and they are showing me and helping me understand what a mother's love is and stuff. And one day the road may lead to where I not only have those women in my life that have been more of a mom to me but I may have a relationship with my birth mom but until then I wish nothing but the best for her and I'm going to keep working on me. Many times people say if I knew then what I know now I'd change a lot of things. I wouldn't. If I could go back I'd just tell myself to keep on because I promise you it's worth it. It's proving to be worth every lie I have had to fight to destroy, worth every single one of the many, many tears I have cried, worth fighting through the doubts and fears. So now if we just sit on the porch for awhile it may just be I like to sit on the porch and drink a glass of tea but please know that some days I may try to keep you out and some days when I let you in the house may be very messy, cluttered and worn you can leave if you want or if you so choose to stay well thank you and if you even choose to try to help me make sense of the mess please know that I appreciate it even when those days are you just sitting with me.

Now you may be wondering why I titled this thing Just Be and if so it would be because today I had an a-ha moment and decided today I am going to just be. I'll just be thankful for the amazing people God has chosen to place in my life, to be thankful I have survived every single bad day so far and for how far I have made it on this journey, and I will be proud of the person I am and continue to become and realize more and more truths and destroy more and more lies.

And that's my story - so far - for those that have been part and continue to be a part of it, I most sincerely thank you for all you have done and am so glad to have each of you be a part of it.