Apparently I'm still pretty busy

It's been over a year since I last blogged.  Do people even blog anymore?  Should I?  I don't know.  I never really did it for others anyway, I do it for myself.  So I just need to decide if I want to continue and today I do, so here we go.

Another year in review, still sticking with the short phrases method...

~ Fall 2022~

Still thinking about baby boy's wedding <3

Rennaissance with Jaden

growing up too fast!

Apple orchard with kids & grands

So stinking cute!

Met the Howard family at the Pinicon

~ Winter ~

Family Christmas at Hope & Connor's in PJ's!

Rotary lights on a horse-drawn carriage with my love

Vegas!

Sister, nieces, nephews, and grandnieces...love!

no more flight anxiety...PTL!

"Elton John Show" at TI with Hope & Connor!  

~ Spring 2023 ~

Nick & Katrina bought their first house

Watching our kids adulting = amazing!

Speaking of amazing...

HAWAII!!!!!

 He took me to Maui :) 

Love.

Brooks & Dunn!

~ Summer ~

Dad & Kathy's 40th party!

Family time :)

Photoshoot

Hysterectomy, long recovery, back to work

Bye-bye hellacious periods = worth celebrating \o/

Over halfway through to my MSW...WHAAAH???  

A lifelong dream coming true.

It's happening.

This is also happening...

~ Fall ~

Baby girl got engaged!!!!!

Wedding coming in 2025!

Also WHAAAAH?!

I love my family.

I love love <3 

I've been busy

and my brain can only spew out short phrases right now, so here goes a summary of my life over the last six months...

heart attack #3  

surgery for my bionic husband

intermittent fasting for the win

walking in sunshine is therapy

losing weight, feeling great

grad school, it's really happening

dream coming true

destination wedding...my baby boy got married!

we danced <3  

so many special moments

and forever memories

remembering how to study and take notes and write papers

loving it, killing it

I'm going to be a psychotherapist (whaaaat?)

buried my mom and stepdad...didn't realize how much that would mean to have her here by me again

started watching Modern Family :) 

hired someone to clean our house

got to see my sissy…twice!

she gave me the ultimate most awesomest purse evah!  game over :)

started using a big planner because it fits in my most awesomest purse…game changer

booked a trip to hawaii!  

mr. wonderful is taking me to maui :) 

the end

You Don’t Say!

Lucy and Elmer lived in the red house next door.  They were super old people, at least that’s what my four year old self thought.  I used to go over and visit a lot.  Elmer was always outside, wearing farmers overalls and a hat with a brim, walking around the yard or doing man stuff in his garage like my dad.  If he wasn't too busy he would smile and say hi to me which was nice, but I was there to see Lucy.  

I don’t remember exactly what she looked like, but I think she wore glasses and had brown, wavy hair.  Or maybe it was grey?  I didn't pay much attention to appearances then, and the same is true now.  If you ask me what someone looked like or what they were wearing I might have a vague recollection, but it will most certainly lack detail.  I'm much more likely to remember what someone said, or how they were feeling.  

Lucy was always in her kitchen with an apron on, busy at work making something.  I remember her rolling out dough with a rolling pin and sometimes she would let me roll it.  She always seemed so happy to me, carefree and smiling.  She would listen with delight to whatever I had to say…which was a lot.  I would go on and on (and on) about my favorite show…Gilligan’s Island, telling her every detail and according to my dad would even include the commercials (Lucy wasn’t the only one who was blessed with my Gilligan stories).  

And Lucy gave me the greatest gift…she listened.  She not only listened, but she engaged with me, as if she was truly interested and thrilled with every word. “You don’t say!” was the response she gave after every exclamation I made.  And that of course encouraged me to keep going.  

She never seemed to tire of it. 

I remember more than once my mom yelling to Lucy from across the yard that she could send me home if I was bothering her.  Lucy always seemed surprised at the thought and said no, that I wasn’t a bother at all!  And I believed her.  Such a sweet lady.   

She made me feel special, and that was something.  

I hope I was that kind of mom to my kids when they were little.  I wanted to be and still do.  I want my kids, my grands, and whoever I'm with at the moment to know that they matter, I'm really listening, and that besides Jesus they are the most important person in the room.  

"I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel."  - Maya Angelou

Fighting demons

I'm tired.

Fighting demons is exhausting, especially the ones that continue to haunt me long after I thought I had beaten them.  

It's a fight, nearly every day to keep trying.  To not let them win.  But the temptation is strong to give up and give in to unhealthy habits, and have immediate freedom from the struggle.  Whatever it is in the moment.

"Just have it, you'll feel better."

Escape.  Numb.  Give up.

"The fight is too hard, it's too hard to resist cravings and I don't have the energy."

"It won't matter anyway.  This one thing won't change anything.  Not really.  Not today.  I mean, look at me?"

"I can begin again tomorrow.  Or next week".  

Or never.

These are all things I tell myself, except they are all lies and I know it.  Even as I'm saying them, I know. 

Numbness wears off and escape finds its way back to reality.  

A reality that never seems to change.  

I can't seem to change it anyway.

God can, but He's slow about it.

And I don't appreciate that.  

When relief is what we seek, the last thing we want to do is have to wait for it.  

Change takes time and I hate that about it.

I crave the destination, but the journey isn't always pretty.  

It's kind of like riding in an airplane. 

It terrifies me.  I have lots of things in my arsenal to help me through it including meds and oils and wrist bands and snacks and music and alcohol.  "Flying Lisa" is a whole thing.  She's all about creating an alternate reality designed to numb out, escape, hide from the fear and the struggle rather than facing it.   

I don't want to live afraid.  

I don't trust God with my fear.   I tell Him I do, much like I tell others and myself.  But truth is I don't.  

Not really.

Not enough to let go of my arsenal of antidotes.  

Antidote:  a medicine taken or given to counteract a particular poison.

My poison is fear.  And it's deadly.  

It slowly kills the life I want to live, the faith I want to rely on, the truth I want to believe.  

What am I so damn afraid of?  I've been living with it my entire life, this fear, but I'm not sure I've ever really tried to figure out what it is.  What is its purpose, besides to destroy me?  Maybe that's the only purpose.  A demon's purpose is to be demonic.  To steal, kill and destroy, according to the bible.  

Maybe that's just it.  Maybe it's not more complicated than that.  

Demons have arsenals too, and their weapons are fierce and consistent.  They trip me up and snarl at me to stay down and sometimes I listen.  It feels safer to stay low rather than continue to be knocked to the ground over and over. When I"m crawling around in the dirt I don't have so far to fall.  I can sit there with my head on my knees and protect myself from inhaling the dust that gets kicked in my face.  

Except I'm not really protected.  I'm imprisoned.  

Security is not found in isolation, 

and freedom is not found in escape.    

The more I scrounge around in the dirt, the deeper the pit I inevitably dig for myself.

And a pit is not a home.

What's happening

 It's more of a statement than a question...or I guess it's both.  

What's happening.

I have a confession to make.  2021 has kicked my butt.  There I said it.  No sugar coating, just being real.  I'm not going to pretend that I've been riding waves of strength and peace as I've navigated through this past half-a-year since Vince's heart issues began (or surfaced, rather).  They began long before that day that he had his first heart attack in May and I suppose that's the root of my problem.  

It snuck up on him, and thus, us.  

And that's always been my greatest fear...being blind-sided.  Scary things are lurking in the dark and without warning, they will jump out and attack.  Call it fear of the unknown.  Paranoia.  Whatever.  I've struggled with it my entire life.  I'm afraid to be happy and calm because then I let my guard down and am not prepared for the thing.  

The thing that's lurking, taunting me, waiting to pounce.

And it leaves me in a constant state of fear of what if...what's next.  What's the next bad thing that's going to happen.  And it's this fear that steals my joy, and sometimes my faith.

Here's where I'm supposed to trust God.  I'm so tired of being afraid.  Trying to drown my fear with food, distraction, avoidance doesn't work in the long run, it just leaves me tired and parched, feeling weak and defeated.  

I don't really have the answers right now.  It's 3am and I'm tired.  What I do know is this...the truth does not depend on my feelings.  And the truth is that I have victory in Christ.  He has not left me alone to fight my battles without weapons.  He is there and gives me all that I need to live a victorious life.  The answer is in scripture, in Jesus Himself.  

That's where my focus needs to be...not on my circumstances, or my fears, but on Him.  I need to get on with living and not wait until things aren't hard in life to be happy.  Thank you God for restoring my peace and joy!  

Thank you for being my Savior tonight.

A spider in the toilet and other things that I didn't expect

I'm still not over the trauma of seeing a gargantuan black spider baby tarantula in my bathroom sink in the middle of the night a few years ago when I had to wake Mr. W to come and kill it for me (which he did like the superhero that he is).  I still think about it when I use the bathroom at night.  Once in a lifetime should be enough for a horror like that, but alas, last night either God or Satan thought I needed another experience of exposure therapy to either help alleviate my fears or re-traumatize me.  I haven't decided which yet.   I prolly shouldn't turn the light on when I get up to use the bathroom in the night, because then what I'm not aware of won't bother me.  But it's too late now, last night I did and now I know about it and IT BOTHERS ME.

I have this thing I like to do, it's super fun and it's called "ruminating over things that frighten or otherwise upset me until I am 10 times more upset about it than I was when the thing actually happened".  I've been doing it my whole life and thus I'm very skilled at it.  It works with most situations.  Take last night for example when I saw the spider in the toilet.  It surprised me, I flushed it down, did my business and went back to bed.  End of story - right?!  

Not so fast, amateurs.  I couldn't leave it at that...I had to lay there awake imagining how the spider got into the toilet, it must have climbed up the tank which means that spiders could be lurking in, on or around my toilet at any given moment including under the seat so now I need to check in on and around the toilet and under the seat EVERY SINGLE TIME or one could end up crawling on me when I sit.  Sweet.  Oh, and it must have crawled across the house and into our bedroom and past our bed to get to the bathroom and, well that means one could easily be IN MY BED RIGHT NOW so for every night for the foreseeable forever I get to check my bed for spiders before I get in.

See how that works?  Like I said, super fun.  

Now imagine what my mind has been doing since Mr. W's heart issues, which are a bit of a bigger deal than spiders.  

The difference with the heart issues is that I am not allowing my mind to go through all the scary scenarios like I do with the spiders.  I remind myself to trust God (which I do) and to focus on the positive (which I also do) and believe for healing and a long, wonderful future for us (which I also really do).  But like spiders, the worries and fears and what-ifs are still lurking in the dark corners of my mind, threatening to creep up unexpectedly and frighten or attack me without warning.  When I don't allow my mind to think about them, they reveal themselves in other ways.  

An ever present undercurrent of anxiety and fear, insomnia, panic attacks.  

They emerge at night (of course) and keep me awake.  My go-to has been to numb out on TV or food (or both) but that has not helped.  I should know this, it never does.  Well it maybe works in the short term for smaller issues.  But when it's a soul issue like this that has deep roots and a long reach, it needs to be brought straight to Jesus at the foot of the cross.  The foot of the cross, where the soil is wet with His blood and rich with healing and redemption.  Spiders can't remain there, they scatter at the sound of my fists pounding in the mud as my soul cries and wails.  And when He lifts my head, and speaks gently to me, I strain to hear His voice but He is patient with me.  He waits until I have the strength to look into His eyes and hear what He has to say.  He tells me He's got me.  He's got us.  It's going to be alright, He is with us and will never leave.  

And He reminds me...He is there in the dark too.