Desperate Love

 I’m almost positive every girl in the modern world has seen “The Notebook”.  It’s a great movie.  I guess it’s a ‘chick flick’ but for me it’s just a great love story.  Love isn’t easy.  Love takes work.  Love is choices.  Love is as forever as it is fleeting.  It all comes down to how you treat it.  I think. This movie captures all of that and more for me.   I can’t be completely positive because although I’ve had some love in my life.  I’ve never been married. I’ve never given over my entire life and future to another person believing that they will do the same and keep that promise.   I do have what I would call a ‘forever love’ though.  It was a whole lot like this movie.  Except of course for the all important happy ending.  My heart, dreams and prayers are still holding out for it but I also know we live in a fallen world in which God has given free choice to all of us.  So, just because Ally’s Noah took a risk and reached out for her, doesn’t mean my “Noah” will.  Even though, Noah’s Ally took a huge risk and trusted her life to him by coming back doesn’t mean I’ll ever get the chance to take that risk with mine.   I’m a dreamy realist I guess.  Pessimistic optimist maybe?    Either way for me, depending on the day, I can be filled with hope and joy or I can feel like the world and all my dreams and hopes are forever gone like so much vapor.  

Today, I am teetering on the edge of the vapor.  My heart really is broken.  I really am lonely.  My life does not look the way I planned or the way I expected.  I LOVE my life.  Well, so many parts and people in it, I do.  I really do.  My kids were always in my dreams and now they are in my daily life. There is no adequate way to express how thankful I am for them.  My best friends are two of the most amazing women I’ve ever known and thanks to them I am never and will never be truly alone.  I like my own company.  I’m not afraid of silence.  I can be happy on my own.  These are all answered prayers.  The thing is:  the prayer I’ve prayed since I was old enough to remember them, was and is, someone to love me forever.  Someone to share life with.  The other person that makes the rest of your life make sense.  The person that makes all of the other heartbreaks worth it and long over.  It’s not answered yet.  Or rather, maybe it was answered and I missed it?   Know what I mean?   There’s a scene in the movie that feels like it came out of my heart.. here it is:

 

Will she come back?  Will he take her?  If you’ve seen the movie you know the answer. In life we don’t usually get that information.  We don’t know the ending.  We don’t even know the next scene.  Right now I feel like I’ve been in the longest most boring holding pattern ever. I keep waiting for my love scene.  I keep waiting for my ‘happy ending’.  How bout  at least for the next chapter even?   I get to love and adore the ones I have and am left to wonder constantly if my ever pressing dream IS REALLY IN GOD’S PLAN FOR ME.  Today it’s exhausting. The world conspires against you when you believe in love and keep trying.  It calls you names like: Naive, Pathetic, even desperate.     I might be naive, I’m sure I’m pathetic to some people … one thing I know for sure is that I AM desperate.  Not in the way the world defines it but definitely desperate.  

I am desperate to keep hope.  I am desperately in love.  I am desperate to believe that no matter what my worldly circumstances are there is a Godly man with an other-worldly love for only me.  One that will fight for me, look for me, wait for me. . . find me. . . Love. Me.  I’m ok with being THAT kind of desperate.  I’d rather live with the hope for love than die living without it.  What else is there that matters more than Hope and Love?  I can’t think of a thing.

The cries of His broken-hearted daughter.

Yesterday was a hard day.  There are always a list of reasons.  Most of them are so small when compared to the worlds ills, but it’s not our job to compare struggles just uplift those we can and remind ourselves and others of the blessings and that we are not of this world.  This too shall pass.  Right?  Well, it will but till it does life kinda sucks.

 Dealing with depression sometimes means that I get completely self-absorbed and stuck in self-pity as well as trapped in real sorrow that seems like quick sand.  The more I struggle the deeper I sink.  Yesterday was one of those days.  I truly felt hopeless and pointless.  Mostly I felt ANGRY.  FURIOUS.  LIVID.  I really can’t find the right word.  It’s this soul eating, gut wrenching, hell visiting misery. The best description I’ve ever come up with for it is:  It feels like the devil is connected to your hip and constantly whispering in your ear and sometimes LIVING in your mind and spewing all these ugly, mean, painful “truths” at you and you can’t get away from it b/c it’s inside you.  Yesterday the ‘truths’ were: You are helpless.  You are worthless.  You’ve wasted your life.  You will never be loved.  You will never be beautiful. You are not important.  No one needs you. You are a burden.  You are a waste.  You have no future.  Your dreams are dead.  Your purpose is NOTHING. You ruined EVERYTHING with that accident and nothing will  ever be right again.  

As you can imagine I was not only miserable, I was a misery to be with.  Thank GOD He gave me a best friend and a soul sister who knows me and loves me enough to sit with me in my misery and who also knows when it’s time for me to leave.  She got me out.  She got me moving and she helped me close the door on it.  Turn it off.  That’s not to say it was gone but for a while it was quiet.  I woke up this morning feeling a little bit like someone with a hangover.  Groggy, sickly and wondering if I was going to feel better or have more of the same.  Then there was a ‘PING’ 

The ping of a message on my cell phone.  This message was from a friend I’ve known for a decade but been able to spend very little time with.  We’ve tried a few times but it just never quite worked out.  God’s timing.    God’s timing was TODAY.  She asked me to please come and let her bless my family and as much as I WANTED to do that I could see NO WAY that could possibly happen and told her.  She prayed with me over the phone for a way to be made and said “I’m gonna walk on faith that I’m going to see you in a little while!”  I hung up thinking yeah ok but that’s not going to happen. We have no way to get there right now and BLECH.  I do NOT feel fit for public consumption.  (Blech for me NOT her.)   Then,  God showed his Face.  🙂  That soul sister said ‘I’m in!’   I remembered some money I had put aside for gas.  My daughter got home from her friend’s house as we were walking out the door and her boyfriend was ready to be picked up on the way to the house!  

Now, the fact that God made a way and got everyone in place at the perfect time was amazing enough.   Then as icing on the cake we were all headed to Bridgeport to my sweet friend’s ranch…..WITH HORSES….WITH A BRAND NEW HOME TO CELEBRATE WITH HER…..WITH A GARDEN TUB …. A LAKE…TONS OF WINDOWS…..DOGS…. oh and did I mention HORSES????  Yes well, this is particularly significant when you realize that my 15 year old daughter was BORN to ride horses and despite years of trying we have never been able to find a place to have her ride on a regular basis.  She’s only been on a horse three times in her life and I can promise you it is where God made her to be.  She absolutely GLOWS with joy on the back of a horse.. or near a horse for that matter.  She has a natural affinity that could only come from her Heavenly Father.    Her sweet 5 year old brother LOVES horses but has only seen them behind fences and through car windows.  He hopped on his first horse bareback and off he went with that very same glow from heaven.  It was by far the most beautiful thing I have ever laid eyes on!  Both of my sweet babies glowing with joy in the element God created for them, in a way only He could orchestrate, in a place surrounded by precious people HE placed in our lives.  

He heard my cry.  He caught my tears.  He counted each one, and this once he showed me the very next morning how very much every single tear means to Him.  How very much He loves not just me but my babies and my soul sisters and their babies and how we are all connected to one another in His timing and His family and how He wants to use us all to bless one another all those precious animals that we got to love on and who we watched leap and play and express all the joy He gave them.  

I have gone from feeling barren and lost to overflowing and thankful.  Blessed beyond measure.  Brought to tears again.  This time tears of joy.  Thank you Abba.  Thank you Tricia.  Thank you Sabrina.  Thank you for one more day.  Thank you for all the blessings I thought I wasn’t taking for granted. Thank you for the ones I forgot.  Thank you for the sorrow that makes the joy that much sweeter.  

A Little History.

Ok so my first post was something laid on my heart to share.  I have quite a few stories that are similar and God always showed up in big and small ways and made sure I knew I was never alone.   I feel those stories are valid and they definitely serve a purpose but I don’t want this to become a blubber fest or  a pity parade.  I don’t need it.  *I* am SAVED. I am CHOSEN.  My suffering will be made for good in my life and the lives of others.  I know this and it’s where I want my focus to stay.

The dilemma is this.  When to share?  What to share?  How to I show you who I am in the Lord?  I found a quote on “Word Porn”

This struck chord with me.  I am trying to share my words, my thoughts,  my heart, my story, my soul.   I want to leave what happens after that in the hands of the Lord.    I promised Him and myself that would post once a week.  Now that I have a way to do that again I intend to keep that promise.    Please forgive me if posts jump around as the Lord leads me down His road.  I have no doubt we’ll get where He’s going an I intend to enjoy the journey.  It’s not like we are gonna get out of this alive right??  😀

So, I’ll start with where  I am today.  with just a tiny bit of history.  I was born with Cerebral Palsy The symptoms and how they impact a life are very individual.  It is a CONDITION not a disease.  It can’t be transmitted.  Parents who have it are no more likely to have a child with it than anyone else.

NOW:  I was born with it and it affected my balance, coordination and gait.  There is also some evidence that it affects my ability to compute spaicial relationships and possibly numbers and figures. I also had a lazy eye (that was fixed after three surgeries one as a kid and two as an adult)  I have zero depth perception.    *Side note: This makes 3D movies a total waste on me*lol    My walking from my preteens into adulthood was just  slight limp with my stronger and more stable leg being the left one and most people thought I had a sprained ankle.   There are always a few who assume WAY more but.. we’ll discuss that at a later date.  *cliff hanger*  😉

My children and I were in a T-bone type car accident on September 25th 2012.  The car I was driving belonged to my soul-sister/best friend Tricia.  I was making a left turn with a left turn arrow though a busy intersection and a woman coming towards us barreled through trying to make the light and slammed into us spinning the car into the next lane, totaling the car.  Thank GOD she hit where she did (the very front corner where the passenger side light is b/c a couple inches further and one or both of my sweet babies (14 and 4 at the time) likely would have died.    However, the full force of the impact landed somehow (through physics of motion according to my dad) on my left leg and foot.  Both of the bones in my left shin were broken, my ankle and leg were kind of shoved down into the floor and the ankle was absolutely shattered and there was  a giant hole in my heel.    The EMS workers didn’t believe it was broken so they pulled me out of the car by my ankles (FUN).   I was taken to the ER where I was wrapped in an ace bandage an sent home in a taxi and told good luck finding  a specialist.

A month (and a ridiculous amount of pain) later  I found one who rebuilt my ankle with metal and grafting which was rejected by my snooty little body (lol) so the metal was removed.  The wound still wouldn’t close so then he removed the graft.  It sill wouldn’t close and we discovered that somewhere along the way I had contracted a nasty staff infection that had spread to the bone.  I spent a few months on MASSIVE antibiotics  that made me physically ill.  The infection was finally killed, the wound FINALLY closed, and I began to try and walk again with nothing but a little bit of new bone that grew an a lot of “DEAD bone” that appeared due to poor circulation.  We are still waiting to see what that is going to mean for my future.

All of this to say that I am learning to walk AGAIN and trying to come to terms with the fact that I may or may not walk independently again.  This is VERY hard for me to accept or even consider. I went from being fully self-sufficient, single parent of two; to a semi-mobile, occasionally home bound woman who’s major goal at the moment is to be able to clean my house without assistance.

Oh how the mighty have fallen.  ;o)  Tongue in cheek of course.

In an effort to find purpose to all this and frankly to my life itself I began a gratitude journal.  I bought a polaroid camera and a scrap book and I am currently grabbing at least one image a day of something that makes me thankful or shows me an image of the God of Love that reminds me how very blessed I am. 

   I’m struggling but I am moving forward and that’s what matters.  I hope you will keep moving with me.  I truly believe there will be blessings to overflowing for all of us.  Cuz that’s just the kind of God I love. 😀

It has arrived!!

I just received my new computer so posting shall RESUME ASAP!  YAY!  More after kid bed time!!!!  Just for fun here’s some Elliot I told ya so dancin’ that’d I’m doin’ in my chair since my leg won’t let me do it standing up .. lol