Fifth Grade

    I can't even explain how adventurous my years at my school have been. They have been unbelievable, daring, surprising, and interesting. There are so many things I have learned like division, matter, and plot twists, but I've learned beyond the academic side at my school! I've learned how to be trustworthy, empathetic, and more than anything patient!

     I have had a very exciting, bold and strange fifth grade year! I've participated in many extra activities and projects. I've helped my teacher with beyond what I knew I could do. I've probably done at least twenty to thirty projects in my years at my school. There is one extra thing I've done that was not a project but it took work and patience. That is Glee club. Glee club was awesome. I got to be myself and no one cared if I hit the wrong note on the first three runs straight. Now, don't get me wrong, I cared and was very embarrassed but that's okay because I learned that they care about me and they didn't care if I hit the wrong note if I got it right in the end.

   Today was my fifth grade graduation even though I'm not out of school yet! It was very exciting because I'm so close to officially being done with school! My last year of elementary!

Dear fifth grade, 

It's been nice knowing ya! Tell the world to watch out because I'm coming at 'em!

Mother's Day 2016

Mother's Day was sweet.  The kids and I attended a family funeral on Saturday and had the opportunity to take some Mother's Day pictures.

It's not very often we get a picture with just the 4 of us anymore...

My mom and her two babies ... 36 year old Baby #1 and 32 year old Baby #2

Three generations picture ...

Me and the loves of my life ...

It was also fun to take this pic:

I brought Mom a plant in 2008 and we took the bottom picture.  So, this year (8 years later) - we decided to try and re-create it.  The best part?  Because of nutrition and the oils, we actually look younger eight years later!  haha  (Only Julie looks older.)

The last fun picture we got was this one:

My church does this fun thing about 5 times a year where they have a photo booth you can jump in that corresponds (usually) with a special day.  So, Julie and I jumped in and took a quick picture.

I am blessed to have been raised by an INCREDIBLE woman that I call Mom.  And I am incredibly blessed with two amazing children and have the privilege of being called Mom.

Adulting

Growing up, all I ever wanted to be was an adult.  However, adult-ing is hard.  Life is so dang hard. Two weeks ago I was trying on wedding dresses and today ... I'm not.  I could not grieve because I had a huge show I was producing when everything fell apart.  I literally had hundreds of people counting on me.  You can't drop it all and selfishly fall apart when people are looking to you.  When that was over, I needed to make it through the week and take care of the kids.  (Somebody has to make dinner, pick everyone up from school, run errands, etc...)  There's not a backup plan there.  I reserved the weekend to fall apart.  Friday and Saturday were set aside to just completely lose it.  I went to see my therapist on Thursday and was completely ready to fall apart Friday night after I dropped off the kids with their dad for the weekend.  (Yes, I calendared a break down.)

However, I received a phone call that my precious sister-in-law was losing her sister - her 35 year old sister.  Thirty-five is too young to die.  It's horrific.  It's completely unfathomable.  How do you pick up the pieces and do the norm (like laundry, diapers and meals) when you've lost your sibling.  I can't even.

So, it seemed a little unfair to fall apart over a broken relationship when people near me were grieving something so big.  Something so terrible.  Something so heart-breaking.

So I folded it up neatly to be dealt with another time.

Grief is a funny thing.  It hits you at the oddest times.  Toothpaste commercials.  Snippets of conversations you overhear walking down the hallway at work.  Observed glances between spouses. Billboards.  Ridiculous.  I hate surprises and grief is a surprise.  It's like the annoying cousin that jumps out from hidden places and scares you at the most inopportune times.

It is easy to hold it all together as long as you distance yourself from everything and anyone.  Do not hold ANY meaningful conversations.  Do not connect on any level.  And for the love of kleenex, do NOT attend funerals.

To make it through this weekend, I had to not feel.  I know that may sound cold, but I don't mean it that way.  It's simply self-preservation.  To think about the loss my brother and sister-in-law were experiencing and to pack it on top of what I'm currently grieving was too much.

I had a moment in the middle of the service where God showed me a gift He had given the family (in the assurance of Candace's salvation) and I just nearly lost it.  Then, I watched as my brother's best friend hugged him and sobbed.  The room started to close in around me at that point.  And then the final blow was when the deceased woman's mom hugged someone who must have been a dear, dear friend and she broke down.  I'm talking the "ugly cry" as Oprah would call it.  The sounds that came out of here were not human.  And they pulled on every inch of my mama heart.  It was at that moment that I looked to my right and to my left and saw my two most precious gifts in the world - my children - and I had a choice to make.  I could fall apart and just lose it right there in the floor under the pew in the auditorium.  I could hyperventilate and sob and just let all of it out ... every last bit of it.

Or I could hold it together a little bit longer.

My kids need a mom who can hold it together.

So I grabbed my water bottle and began to drink like I'd never seen water.  I forced my body to attend to that instead of my emotional state.  Then, I grabbed my phone and began surfing Facebook.  Rude? Some might have seen it that way.  Necessary?  More than anyone will ever know.  Disconnect.

Life is hard.  As a little girl, I planned to grow up, get married, have children and just do life.  I never factored in divorce, job loss, disorders, health problems, surviving a sociopath/narcissist, dating at 36, horrific experiences, etc...

There are seasons in life.  This is one that I can promise you I wouldn't have chosen.  I don't understand alot of what God is trying to teach me right now.  I want comforts.  I want easy.  I want less pain.

I once heard it said, “Pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our consciences, but shouts in our pains. It is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.” (C.S. Lewis)

God is shouting right now.  Sometimes I'm shouting right back.