Happy Anniversary Darling

Hey sweetheart. I loved when you would call me that. I knew you meant it and I miss you saying that to me. This is our second anniversary apart and I have been doing so well. Steve I know you would be so proud of me as you were always my biggest cheerleader. I want you to know I am strong about tomorrow although today I had a couple of rough moments as I thought back on that stupid day when you died. I say stupid, because although we were together 30 plus years I choose to go back to then that awful day. There are so many better days to think back on and I am choosing those for tomorrow and future anniversary dates.

You told me a few times, that you held me back from becoming the woman I should become. I remember arguing with you so often about that statement. That was such a lie, because it wasn’t my time yet. I had to have all the experiences under my belt so I could come out and flourish as I am meant to. You were part the best part of my training. You taught about unconditional love and you made me feel beautiful whenever your eyes fell on me from across the room. You taught me about faithfulness because you never glanced inappropriately at another woman in my presence or told me how beautiful she was. You always made a point of lifting me and reassuring me of my beauty and helped me recognize and feel secure about the beauty of God within me. Even when I had my surgery and I felt hideous, you adored me and loved me with your care and concern for my well being as you nursed me back to good emotional health about the wretched scar that I now embrace. When it feels swollen I am taken back to the time I was so loved by you that you sacrificed for me and stayed close to me and was even more concerned about my health than I was. I love you for this.

Through our many ups and downs you taught me about creative financing paying bills and shopping for groceries all wonderful life skills I use daily. I was pushed to be able to think outside the box to provide meals, make costumes, create games, and low budget fun filled birthday parties for our family. I learned how to repair holes in walls, paint the walls, fix flat tires and fix perfect pancakes because of your love for me and your desire to keep me from being helpless. You always told me I could do anything I put my mind to and you pretty much were right. I am learning this right now as your words of love and encouragement ring in my ears.

You helped me be strong and courageous through many trials in our lives. I stood through them all, next to you despite everything, we still stood together, until you were no longer there. Now I stand alone without you to support me, but I am strong enough now to stand alone. I can weather any storm now because I am deeply rooted and because of your support, standing tall and straight as an arrow. I know you prayed many prayers for me as I did for you and our love kept us strong and will keep me going into this new life I am in.

My darling, I could not let this day pass without some form of public recognition for all the great love you showed me and poured into me during our wonderful moment together. In God’s eyes it was only a moment but we will share eternity together some day. I cry as I type this, but my tears are no longer the copious tears of a weeping pathetic widow who can do nothing without her man. I stand strong and proud to have been your wife and my tears are because you told me so and I didn’t listen until now. I am the person you told me I was during those many years when I seemed to be losing my identity in the everyday life of wife and mother. You still saw the ambitious, adventurous woman you married and saw my potential long before I found it again.   

Thank you Lord for giving me the person I needed to bring me to where I am now as a woman of God. I never would have thought to do some of those things to get me to step up, but hey what do I know. I love you and am so grateful for the man you put into my life. He was my helpmate as much as I was ever his helpmate. We both brought different sets of baggage to the marriage, but eventually, we sorted through it all and at least he got rid of all of his and I am down to a makeup kit. You are awesome and truly aware of our every need and Lord if you ever see fit to bring another man into my life, what can I really do about it anyway. I will train him too wink, wink.

Steve I love you munga my sweetheart, I will never forget you. Thank you darling for all you did for my spirit, I only wish you were here so you could tell me so in person. I commemorate our 31st anniversary this night and want you to know you will never be forgotten, only cherished more each year as I am able to remember more of our conversations now that my mind is less tramatized.

AWESOME JOY

Well I came through my giant leap of faith into the next phase of my new life feeling so drunk on life and I can only describe it as AWESOME! I can see the appeal to jumping from an airplane at 14,000 feet and feeling a rush that I can only describe as AWESOME. I laughed like a drunken fool all the way down as well because the joy I felt as my new life was birthed just bubbled up from so deep inside my wounded soul that it had nowhere else to go but out into the atmosphere. I only hope some of my joy fell on some down trodden people and picked them up for a minute or two. It had to have because I was so full I thought I would explode. I know my tandem instructor probably thought I was a crazy old lady, but who cares. I had the time of my life and will gladly do it all again. Any takers??

I didn’t know adrenaline was a drug, I was euphoric for a day and felt the crash after, but I also feel such a deep settled peace within my spirit like a breakthrough has definitely occurred. For the first time in a long time, I feel my feet firmly planted on a path and I will walk with surer steps now. Of course this is all a process of me becoming the woman God is calling me to me in spite of myself and stubborn inclinations. I know God did not say Renee jump out of a plane so we can get this party started. He knew the desires of my heart and used that and my faith in Him and His love for me to get my party started. Jumping was a big sign for me because I don’t do subtle hints too well. I think I may be a direct descendent of Thomas.  So God mingled with my wonderful adventurous self and brought me back to earth safely and placed me on His path.

I won’t recommend it as a means to jumpstart your life, we all have our own desires, but it sure worked for me and made me feel more alive than I have in such a long time. I am unafraid to step out and do things because I know my timing is in God’s hands. This is why the missionaries in those dark forests can do what they do for so long. They don’t fear death; they fear not doing what God had planned for their lives. Well healthy fear is a good thing. God gives us adventurous hearts for him and the world makes us afraid to use them. We have become overcautious an overprotective of this body God has given us. It is said our body is a temple of God we must keep it pure and healthy. Well this is true enough but we must also realize how portable it is. We can take it to far away places and not be a feared of walking in those places because God loves and protects what is His. I will over use mine for His glory and His intentions and never worry about the minor details of caution. I am bold as I was born and will use it for His glory. I don’t mean to say I will be stupid about it like jump out of an airplane without a parachute and expected a mighty hand to rescue me. I will not handle snakes or scorpions unless directed to and with the caution of my wonderful God created mind. I will not be reckless with myself, I will be wise about my life but I am totally unafraid to walk forward knowing my days are in His hands and I can do nothing about the timing. In His time all is made perfect.

There is a time for everything and my mourning has run the full gamut of the seasons. I am in summer and want to bask in the SON of summer as long as I can.  This is the breakthrough I intend to live in. I have time but it is His time. So cliché to live each day as if it is your last, but so true none the less.  I will push the envelope and make each day as fun and exciting as I can for me and those I come into contact with.  Joy rules and excessive laughing while falling 120 mph dries your mouth out by the way. Next time I will smile the whole way down maybe….. stay tuned, life is getting fun again.

Jumping into my Next Life

Many years ago I joined the Navy as my adventurous spirit over took me so I could see the world and do something different. I never regretted that decision and it led me to my life. Tomorrow I am doing the same thing, doing something I have wanted to do since I was a child and never had the opportunity until now. I am going to jump out of an airplane strapped to someone of course, but I have always wanted to skydive and will use this as a springboard to my new life I guess.

I have gotten many comments about how thrilling, how stupid how suicidal how inspiring but the simple fact is, I am doing it. I thought about my attitude towards it do I have a death wish someone asked me. I figure any day is a good day to die right? My attitude is this, if I die ok where is the downside to being in Heaven and seeing loved ones. If I live where is the downside to being here seeing loved ones? So it appears to be a win win for me. If I am somehow maimed there is a reason for everything and I will deal accordingly, God is in control of me I place myself in His arms and trust He gave me my adventurous spirit for a reason and I intend to use it. I am not about to purposely try to kill myself, I have a method to this madness and love my life enough to live it fully.

So this morning I sit and hear planes overhead, people jumping from planes all over, I am filled with excitement about tomorrow’s jump and my new life ahead of me, whatever that may be. I am concerned as a mom that my son is going with me, and I am covering him in prayer. I on the other hand am not worried about me one bit.Well that is a lie, I am concerned about how my wrinkled face will flap in the breeze on camera, you see they are filming it and a girl has to look her best even at 14,000 feet. Perhaps I should bring some duct tape, I am glad my flab will be covered with coveralls at least.  My mom and dad will be there too to experience this with me and for that I am so joyous. They mourned a bit when I left for Guam so many years ago, I don’t intend to give them any more reason to mourn, but to celebrate my life with me.

In the Star Trek shows (yes I am a Star Trek geek) Klingons say “It is a good day to die” true enough, but I also ascribe to the Vulcan philosophy and plan to “Live long and prosper.” See ya on the other side people! I love my life!!!

Swapping Paint

Well woof woof, yippee and hooray. I have disproved the saying “You can’t teach and old dog new tricks”.  I have learned and am continuing to learn so much at my work that I actually got a raise. I was also told learning new things increases your brain cells so I guess I am just moving on up by leaps and bounds. It really is pretty exciting for me since most people seem to be preparing for retirement at my age when I am just starting to work. I guess I will have to live to 100 to get retirement for me, but at least I am having fun and exceeding my expectations. God is so good to me because it can’t be me learning and adapting at this pace since it is an extremely face paced environment where I work but such a joy to be there.

I think my life may be starting to get interesting again. I can’t put my finger on it but I joined a singles Bible study and funny thing, we are learning to Cajun line dance. I know funny goofy but it is nice clean fun. Of course I only went to one teaching of it and feel like a klutz, but so does everyone else so I am in good company. Why is this in my life right now? Who knows who cares but it is good safe fun with nice people so I am expanding my circle of friends finally and that is good for me.  I am fortunate to be able to visit with my newlywed son and his beautiful bride next weekend when they come visit for their “baby moon” Yeah I know silly term for “Quiet before the storm” when little Steven Beau makes his appearance in August. I had so much fun shopping for him for his shower next weekend. He will be so spoiled.

I love meeting new people and interacting in their lives even if it is for a small amount of time.  It seems I am in process of doing this at my job and outside of it as my circle expands. I am emerging from my cloistered life as wife/mother/widow and making my way out into a new life. It is nice to “swap paint” with so many new people. I know that is usually not a good term because it means you may have been in a car accident but God had shown me a long time ago a small teaching about chance meetings being like small accidents/incidents/coincidences in our daily lives. We meet for a brief period of time and as we interact we swap stories, names, smiles, and even our pain that so much goes on in such a brief time, before we know it we leave a mark. This means that whatever chance encounter we had has the potential to be a memory for either or both or us forever. We are the canvas and God is always working in our lives, creating a living breathing work of art to display in His heavenly gallery. The more paint we have I think, the more interesting the artwork. So how fun is it to have so much more paint and texture in my life.  Wanna swap paint with me?

NEXT....

Well that was quite a wave I rode and I am finally at the other side of it I think. I suppose those idiot grief books have some wisdom to them although I must say, I do not agree with their timelines at all. I don’t want to wait so many years per year I was married to get over this. I want it all behind me now and I think I am doing great at it (today at least). I am dealing in spurts, as new experiences come up, I hit them head on, then I fall flat on my bottom dazed and confused yes birds floating about my head just like in the cartoons, but at least I am still conscious. TKO is the way to go, you look like you still are in the present but really you are in another world LA LA Land where the past is present and the present is present and it is hard pry them apart. It is where you see present circumstances but with distant eyes filled with what ifs and suppositions. Suppose Steve was still here how would things be? What if he was still alive and this was all a dream? Stupid ideas, I know, but it is all part of my brain, parceling out what I can handle in small amounts I guess.

I have just passed another big series of firsts and reality checks and am moving through the Game of Life yet again. Some days I feel like I am just a player on the board but other days I feel like the one playing the game.  I recently connected with an old friend from high school whom I hadn't seen since high school until I attended the funeral of her husband a few short months after moving back home. I offered her my shoulder and it wasn't until just recently when I needed her and she needed me that we saw each other again and decided we needed to form our own support group. It was so nice talking with her and spending time with someone who shares my heart. Most people only can offer a sympathetic ear or heartfelt hug, but we speak the same spoken and unspoken language and I perfectly understand her and the pain. It is such a God event in my life because one of my closest friends became my friend after she moved back home to Selma. I never knew her before, but we became connected through a mutual friend and we became fast friends. She had lost her husband only a few short months before I met her and although I felt her pain then I could never fully connect with her pain like I can now it is almost a different language because most of it is just a silent inner knowing. I bless God for giving her to me then because there are pains we can share with each other that are hard to share with others. So now I am now able to be that person in my high school friends’ life and I now have a Slidell connection and the widow circle grows. I am so glad God knows how to play it forward He goes before us to help us before we know we need it. I am so glad to have someone local to speak to since I have had to leave Selma to come back home. He knows.

I am amazed at how interconnected we are as the body of Christ and how complicated life is but I don’t have to worry so much about the details, God seems to go before me to work those out. For so many years I fought with Him about this, but now it is just easier on me to let Him work it out. I will always be obstinate and have my bullish moments, but He always wins. I sometimes wonder if I have given up on my own life and am just flowing along in denial and then I do something stupid and realize I am still in the struggle for control. My flesh just won’t die like I want it to and that is when I mourn the most and it is when I start to focus on my misery (yes I will say self pity) again, that is when I get new revelation to get out and focus on someone else. I am there again, anyone need help??? I am so available right now.

Anyway, I am confessing to myself with all two of you as my witnesses that I really am still mourning, but I can no longer allow it to consume my identity. I am not ready for a relationship, but I am ready to move on. Yes I know you have heard it, but it is like in church when you hear a reading over and over and you only get it when revelation hits you. Then it is like brand new to you? Well this is my recent revelation I don’t care what you think of me, I don’t care what I think of me, I am moving on physically and spiritually and my emotions will just have to play catch up. Sometimes they get in my way, but really I need to move to the next level because I am so bored with this one that I am no longer learning. It is another season. NEXT….

Chocolate, Peanut Butter, Sunflowers

You know Chocolate is my first true love when I am not at my best but I will tell you my next sinful comfort food is a big hunk of chunky peanut butter on a spoon affectionately called my Peanut Butter Spoon. Both Chocolate and Peanut butter go great together we all know that, but did you know they taste pretty good with a cold beer? Ha I bet you think I have gone to the dark side, no, it just surprised me how well they went together.

Now back to the main reason for my blogging today. I have a birthday coming up, and I have nothing special planned and really don’t care whether I do something or not. I am back to being numb again. Nothing seems to taste good, feel good or look good to me. Is it depression nagging me again? You bet it is, but I will deal again as I usually do. I mean no offense to my very married family, but I am used to being in a married state whether hanging with family or not. It never bothered me until now when I am feeling so alone again. My mind is adapting to being single and all that encompasses and I’m really bored, lonely and not ready for this. I am still fighting anger. I want to rage and hit something again so really I am not good company even for myself. However in the midst of all of this blah I planted sunflowers at various places throughout our yard. I don’t remember where I planted any of them; I just want to be surprised when they sprout up. I am fighting darkness with light the most fun way I know how. Sunflowers are my favorite flowers and I am waiting for my army to grow. I hope they grow quick and tall. I chose to plant the biggest ones I know the Mammoth’s I had grown once before. I need tall flowers because they will be much bigger than any of those small shadows chasing me.

I guess it was inevitable that as I tested the new waters of keeping company that I would be reeling again. I will do what I always do to test the water, dip my toes, recoil quickly, shiver, back up, suck it lots of air to nearly hyperventilate then I jump in. There is minimal pain in the recoil, mostly fear, but jumping requires overcoming the fear of the icy water and feeling the shock again of hitting that icy water after I jump in.  There are days when I want to feel pain, yes to feel anything is good.  I am also being bombarded by all those negative thoughts again, not that I will act on any of them. I am really becoming very empathetic towards people who succumb to these awful nagging voices in my head.

I am blogging it all out on paper and in public, but by tomorrow I will probably be ok again or maybe not until the day after. The shadows of darkness and depression buzz constantly throughout my brain but I don’t really see them until I slow down.  This depression is just something I have started to learn to live with over the last 18 months. I pray it doesn’t get bigger and am praying and trusting God will keep it from me. But just so others you all may know, I know God loves me, but it still doesn’t stop those voices. The big voice within me does only if I stop entertaining them. The fascination in picking a wound to feel the pain brings my back to childhood. I picked my scabs to see if my sore was healing but picking the scab made it hurt worse. Finally you stop the picking and reach for the antibiotic cream. I never said I was a very smart kid, very curious and didn’t like surprises.

So  right now, I am waiting for my sunflowers to shoot up and grow and keeping company with my chocolate and peanut butter. I am waiting for my joy to burst forth once again and what makes me ahead of the game is that I know it will happen again. The sun always burns the clouds away because it can’t always be rainy. But with all the rain those flowers will bloom and grow tall and this will bring my joy again. Once again I repeat my mantra that which doesn’t kill me makes me strong.

Stormy Weather

There are days you just feel stupid, alone and just plain naive. I thought naming something meant what I meant it to be and not anything deeper, but it didn't happen that way. I got tangled in my own miscommunication with my gentleman friend whom I was keeping company with. Yes that is what I called it but as it goes that was not the case. Things didn't go the way I had hoped and emotions got in the way and we have now parted ways. Hopefully we will remain friends, but I am too much of a hot mess to be able to be trying to have a relationship deeper than friendship right now. Heck I missed so many signals and I hurt him pretty bad and for that reason, I need to be alone. In my search for companionship I end up alone again. Funny thing is, I thought one way and he thought another. Heck it was so easy with Steve because he knew what I was thinking before I even knew and the same goes the other way. We knew each other and it was easier.
Back to the couch for me. I enjoyed the experience of getting out, getting to know someone and experiencing more firsts in my new life. It was an old, new experience. I am finding it harder to be upbeat these days though I get so down on myself for missing things I should know or learning new tricks or meeting new people even. I go to work, keep my head down and hope for the best. I am blessed to have my job and blessed to have my family to keep me busy because I am scared to admit this but I can see how a person could get so depressed and find other pursuits to dull the pain. I say this as I drink a beer alone and blog about my life today. How cliche is that.
I say pain, well it is probably more like a bad ache now, it is not as acute as at first, I live with it. There are days like when the weather in my life turns bad where the pain flares up and throbs and aches so deeply within and I can't really pin point a place of origin. The place of origin though is my heart so why does it feel as though my whole body aches. It sneaks up on you and you just never know how hard it will throb or for how long. Once the weather passes it abates, but never really goes away. I wonder if it ever does? It is just below the surface waiting to attack when I seem to be moving on. I guess I am in a stormy weather pattern right now looking for a sunny day again.
Does anyone out there in Blogville know if pain ever goes away for good? I know it will when I die (Yes I have had the thought a time or two), but is that the only way to kill the pain? If it is I guess I will have to live with it.I wish my kids lived closer to me, you would think spending time with them all looking so much like Steve that the pain you would be harder to deal with but actually it is comforting to be around them. We created a beautiful family together and their joy lifts my spirits so much.
 Right now I feel as though I am walking in a bubble again. I started to feel somethings not normal for me, and got scared so I am processing those feelings to discern if I am OK. I won't blog them out because they are personal, but they do have to do with the big Dating word I was so frightened of. I think I almost dated and got scared. A friend flat out told me I was dating and I really couldn't handle that. It made me feel so ashamed and unfaithful. I am positive when I say I am not ready, but I am closer than I was a few months ago, so that is progress. And I have my gentleman friend to thank for being so kind and patient. I hate that my craziness may have hurt him even though I gave him fair warning, it still feels bad.
So I am spinning my wheels again, same situation, learning slowly, going in and out of waves. Learning about being alone again and trying to find the benefits of it. God is still in control even though I am now trying to take the reigns again, I found out that is not a smart idea. Drive on Lord, where we going now. Steer me free of the stormy weather and into the sunny days again.