I hate it! I try and I try and I fail. Whats the use? I have a daughter who would rather pee and poo in her pants then in the toilet, a son who cannot remember to bring home his lunchbox or his homework and last night went to bed right after dinner because he came home forgetting to bring his homework. I have a husband who expects a spotless house and keeps throwing in my face everything has a place...and then we have me who right now feels like the biggest failure in the world. I thought ok, I am losing my job, no big deal, now I can be like the perfect wife and mom when in actuality not. My heart is hurting and I can't seem to keep control of the kids and keep up the house and still have time for myself to think and to heal. I get on Facebook to see what everyone else is up to since basically I have no life and I get yelled at for that saying its "wasting my time" . I dont even have a space of my own in this house. Dont get me wrong I love my husband and I know he loves me and I want to be the best wife and mom I can be but my husband needs to realize I am not perfect. My mother is a hoarder and I have come a long way from that but I am still growing. He is not perfect either-- you can be as organized as you want to be, but you have to enjoy life and life gets messy but it can always be cleaned up.

I am sitting here smelling my Scentsy burner. I am melting Rio Beach and Citrus Sun Tea and those scents remind me so much of out trip to Florida and when things get hectic I put my mind back there. The white sand beaches, palm trees, emerald water, the smell of suntan oil, and the sun. It was so relaxing down there, my husband enjoyed himself and relaxed and let himself live a little, the kids loved playing in the salt water. No one was rushing around..it was just peaceful. When things get hectic and crazy thats where my mind drifts off to..the beach....

This past month has been tough for me. I miss my job, my co-workers and now I am home all day. I find myself a couple of times a day thinking about what all are they doing and how many soldiers are they seeing and I find myself asking God alot--why did my job have to end and why couldnt I have gotten the GS Job-- this really frustrates me. I love Atterbury, the people, everything and I miss it alot. I am sure God has a reason and I am sure someday I will find out but until then I am going to keep trying to embrace this full-time wife and mom thing and do it to the best of my ability and look for the small blessings God bestows upon me each and everyday...

Okay I did it and its not even September yet! I overslept this morning. My alarm I thought was set to go off at 620 like normal but I set the wrong alarm, I set my husband's alarm which went off at 700 which doesnt work when you need to have Matt in the school between 710-720...uggh...we had to rush like mad to get him dressed, his lunch packed and him out the door in like 6 minutes...thank you for no traffic in the subdivision as we pulled into the drive at school at 715 and he made it on time.

Life these days is rush, rush, even with the most organized schedule we are still rushing. Even this morning after I got back from taking Matt I needed to get my husband and Ali up and dressed and fed and dogs out and cage cleaned and cat litterbox scooped out, I still havent gotten a minute to eat breakfast and I am forcing myself right now to share my heart for 5 minutes when I know there is so many other things I need to or could be doing.

A friend put on her facebook Matthew 11:28 as her status this morning... "

Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. (KJV)

God wants us to come to Him, to lay it all at his feet. He doesnt want us to worry in Mark He tells us that He will do the worrying for us, that He knows everything even the number of hairs on our heads. I dont know about you but that comforts me. No matter what I am going through I have the Lord in my corner and I can go about my day even as busy as it gets knowing there is someone there on my side that loves me and is worrying for me.

My children are my life. I love them with all my heart. All of the things I have been through I have gotten through with them. Working gave me a sense of pride, a sense that I was doing something, it was so cool when Mom could buy that video game or that pair of cool jeans and now I have to tell them it isnt my decision anymore. It totally breaks my heart.

Going to Women of Faith that weekend I decided I needed a change in my life. God has placed me home with my kids I just need to accept it, accepting it and being happy about it was going to take some work and some time. It has been almost a month now and I am adjusting. I dont like not having like a set schedule anymore so I am working on Flylady and things like that so I can be more organized and enjoy this better. And I dont know where I would be without my friends. Penny, Melissa, Gena, Janie, Patricia, Jen, thanks so much for listening to me and just being there for me. I dont know what I would have done without all of you.

I started this book I bought at the Women of Faith conference. It is written by Nicole Johnson and it is called "Fresh Brewed Life--A stirring invitation to wake up your soul" I thought oh wow this is so cool, just what I need and I will have plenty of time to read this and journal and take notes and well what was I thinking ..I am chasing around a 2 yr old....who doesnt like naps, and dropping off and picking up an 8 yr old and the house and the laundry and cooking and cleaning and I have begun to realize even being home there just isnt enough hours in a day.. either that or Satan is trying to keep me busy so I dont have time to have quiet time with the Lord. Uggh..any ways the other day I made myself sit down and start on Chapter 1.

I opened the book and the 1st thing I read was Psalm 57:8 -- "Awake, my soul!" and then it goes on to John 10:10 "I have come that they may have life and have it to the full" I love that verse because the Lord gives us life and having Him in our life it is an abundant life. Anyways in chapter one she starts off with talking about coffee and when someone asks you to go have coffee with them its not to have just a cup of coffee but to fellowship, to connect. I love going to have coffee with someone because this way I can connect and chat about things and just enjoy the other person's company. I think Helen Keller put it best when she said "Life is either a daring adventure or nothing."


I admit I have been through an adventure the last 10 years with the cancer, divorce, reposession, losing my home, depression, anger, frustration and through it all God has been there ..looking back now I see where God was right there when I needed Him guiding me and showing me which path to take. I didnt always take the right one but He was there when I fell. When God gave me the idea to start up my blog again, share my insights, share the way He was working in my life I admit, I was scared. Ever since I was beaten and assaulted over 14 years ago I have just stayed in the shadows...I used to be the life of the party but fear has taken that from me.

So I became a shadow, I stayed in the background, stayed out of the conflict, stayed out of the drama..for the most part, just stayed away..I think I was also like that in my relationship with Christ. I have to admit my relationship with the Lord is pretty private...I have never spoke about my faith and my prayer time is very quiet, just me and God whether it be in the car on my way to work back then or in the shower as I was getting ready in the morning, I didnt have the ability to pray in a group etc. I always wanted to be this put -together woman that drove the SUV and was the ultimate soccer mom and the ultimate Christian woman. As I was growing up I would see these women at my hometown church. These women looked all put together and they were on the various committees at church and they had husbands on fire for God and they prayed together before bed and I was like thats the kind of woman I want to be. As I got older I wanted to be married and have a big house and have the women over for prayer time and coffee and be the soccer mom and just strive at being perfect and I found out one night that there is no such thing..my world came crashing down around me. I made one wrong decision after another...I wasnt perfect, I was an embarassment. I got pregnant out of wedlock at 20, ended up a single mom till my son was 4 then I married the wrong person, wrong in so many ways from his cheating and spending money to the fact he was gone all the time and abused me when he was home.

I still had this vision of me being the perfect wife and mother but in reality I was as far away from it I could be. I got cancer and my marriage fell apart and in a last ditch effort to save my broken marriage I moved 3 hrs from my friends and family only to have my husband leave me 3 months later and leave me broken and alone. My kids and I survived. We lived in our van and hotels when I could afford one and finally we got into a place. Just me and my boys. I wanted to meet the perfect man and then one night temptation got the better of me and depression and being alone and I had a one night stand with a man I thought could bring me out of my pain, I thought wanted to be with me..oh boy was I wrong and 9 months later my Miracle little girl was born. When I was pregnant with Ali I had found a church..Chapel Rock and started divorce care and started healing...Finding out I was pregnant was my rock bottom, I didnt know what else to do or where else to turn so I turned back to God..on my knees, I was so broken, so ashamed, people talked about me, treated me like dirt. I felt like the woman at the well around people so I just stayed in my apartment. Only went out to go to work and church...divorce care was helping me heal, I found out through divorce care that I could heal, and even could love again but that I needed this time to work through my anger and be with the Lord and above all heal my broken heart. In Feb 2009 Alison was born, I had been alone since that one night stand..I was getting involved in Chapel Rock and attending Sunday School and Divorce Care, I was actually getting out of the house a little more too and 4 weeks after Alison was born I found out my son had put me on a dating service online and I met a wonderful man. We started dating and I started to feel alive again. I found out he had been through some rocky roads in his life and we found the more time we spent together the more we "clicked". This man genuinely loved me and wanted to be with me. Never had any man loved me like he did. I could talk with him about anything and he was always there for me. On Feb 14, 2011 we became husband and wife. I never thought I would find someone who didnt care that I had been beaten and raped, who didnt care that I had 3 kids and 3 different dads, I met a man who wanted me for me. I started to climb out of that "shell", started to peel away the layers on both him and me. Its been an awesome experience. I finally have someone who loves football as much as I do, someone who wants to hold me at night...its such an awesome thing.

I dont look back anymore, I dont wish I was one of those perfect "Christian" ladies , I am who I am..I am a wife and mother, friend, sister, neighbor, daughter who loves the Lord and prays that my story will touch a woman in need someday and maybe be a beacon of light to them that God is with you always, even when you dont think He is.

If we sit there and worry about what happened to us in the past we will never be able to peel off those layers and move forward in our lives. One of my favorite worship songs sums it all up for me...I am coming to the Heart of Worship and its all about You.... God has taken every thing I have been through in my life and used it for my good. I think now that I would have never met my husband had I not moved down here and he moved here after Katrina. There are times I wish i would have met my husband sooner but it wouldnt have been in God's timing..we both had to go through the fire to meet.

I have so much more in my life to experience and I am never going to be able to live an abundant life if I am hanging onto the past and wallowing in all the bad...

I havent wrote on this in a long time. Alot of changes have been happening in my life. Matthew is now a 3rd grader and I am the mom of a teenager (yikes) Dustin just started 8th grade and is in football. Ali is now 2 1/2 and we are working on potty training and all I can say at this point is that we hope she will be trained by kindergarten..lol... I am also now a stay at home mom. My job ended on July 29th. I loved my job with all my heart and I miss it, I never thought I would be a stay at home mom, I have always worked and I loved it and I never thought I would lose the job of my dreams, the job I loved. In a way I feel kind of empty.

Aug 19-20th was Woman of Faith in Indy. I went and my mom and sisters and the women from their church came down and it was an awesome time of rejuvenation, getting back to my roots in Christ. I have been down here in Indy for 4 years now and still have not found a church that is my hometown church or one I can call my own, I have been to a couple but moving around Indy means they are too far away to go to on a regular basis, so for the moment I havent really found a church so going to Women of Faith was a way to re-energize me and maybe even start the healing from losing my job. I loved the worship, the messages but it was Friday evening when they introduced each of the speakers that were going to speak on Saturday each one came up for like a 2 minute blurb to kind of get you fired up. Luci Swindoll took the stage and I dont remember alot of what she said, but the one thing I remember was her bringing up about enjoying where we are at this moment in our lives and making the best of it..I dont know why but those words hit me and hit me hard, I wasnt enjoying being home with the kids, I felt cheated and betrayed and felt a huge void in my life with losing my job and taking it out on my kids, my husband..my friends didnt even know how bad I was hurting because I would just paste on a smile or answer a text with a smiley, they didnt know that inside I was dying and I didnt know how to tell anyone. Things with my husband and I got very tense since I lost my job because I didnt care, didnt try to be all that I could be as a stay at home mom, I didnt care, and the one person I needed to talk to-- God , I felt like He didnt care anymore because I truly loved my job and gave it my all everyday and to take it away devastated me and rocked my faith to the core, I began doubting alot of things especially my faith. No one knew how devastated I was, I didnt let on.. I dont think I knew how devastated I was till I got to Women of Faith and the Fieldhouse and saw all those women there, all those perfect women, the mothers and sisters and grandmothers and aunts and friends whose lives were perfect but as the speakers got up there one by one I noticed that they didnt have perfect lives either but here they were sharing their triumphs and tragedies using their tribulations to speak to us. I sat there all weekend listening intently. And then it hit me, I am a very blessed woman, I have an awesome husband, 3 totally terrific kids, a home I love, friends, family, I am a blessed woman..yeah sure I lost my job but it is going to be ok...and I began to cry...I felt so awful, i had taken so much of my anger and my frustration out on my husband and my kids and hid so much..After the concert I got home and I sat down with my husband and I kissed him, hard on the lips and he was like I missed you too and I was like no thats for loving me and supporting me when you should have just walked away, I am sorry for my attitude and everything the last couple weeks and I need to accept that I have lost my job and I am now home with the kids and you deserve to come home to a clean house and dinner on the table and I need to be the best stay at home wife and mom I can be. It was so cool, because I could watch his heart soften as I said those words. And I could feel my heart soften as I told him what God had finally told me. My husband isnt big on the faith thing but he understands that sometimes he can tell me something till he is blue in the face and I wont get it but sometimes it takes someone higher than him to get it to me just right.