I am not in a blogging mood.

It has been a rainy depressing day, one of those days when you want to lay on the couch and eat junk and not move. Even though you know you need to do something you really just cant get motivated. It's the first week of the summer vacation and we are facing yet another delima. Do we stay in North Carolina or do we go back south. Kenny has yet to find work of any substance to support a family of our size. And we have, basically, ran out of options. About all we have left is to move in with my Dad. I don't mean that how it sounds, but we are settled, the kids love the school, we love our house and God I wanna shoot my myself every time I think about moving!! Dad lives in central Florida,  and I do sooo miss the coast, I am a Florida girl by birth, but I have had such healing in the hollows of these mountains, as have the kids.  It is such a tiring and draining way to live not knowing where you will live from month to month, you can't plan or look to the future or even simple things like planting flowers, which, I love to do, you can't , because at any moment we may have to leave. It is just a horrible way to live. People have suggested Kenny getting re-trained, or going back to school, but we are almost 50 years old and we still feel, even through all the loss and devastation, God has a destiny for our lives and to begin another path seems futile, but then I look at our kids and I think our obligation is also to them and also to my own sanity. But here I go again, and of course Kenny, had to tell, me, I am sticking out my tongue out at him!!! And putting my hands over my ears and humming!!!  "Be sure not to repeat yourself, or use the same phrases",  blah blah BLAH,  I know what is right and true, I have been taught those principles my entire life, but applying them daily and not getting discouraged is another story, it is very difficult to stay encouraged when day after day and week after week you see nothing change, you actually see things get worse. Kenny and I were walking the lake and talking about our year and a half apart, and how difficult it was, but how necessary and how, now looking back, we saw God's hand in every one of our lives working through things that needed to be fixed or accomplished, so I  think we could  go on to the next stage in our families life. It seems clarification only comes AFTER A JOURNEY BEGINS. But what a scary place to be. As we were going through each one of us and how God has done remarkable things in all our lives, I will only talk about me, for sake of time.  As we were talking, if you knew me before 2007, even my most intimate friends, I was a very loyal, trusting, faithful friend. If you get into my heart, you are there for life. I love very deeply.  But I was a very private, distant, for lack of a better word, person. That was actually a complaint of many of my friends, that I never shared enough of myself with them. Conversation was always about the other person. Growing up in a home with domestic violence you always turned the conversation away from yourself. You never want to bring attention to your home, even though I have my own home now, it was a learned behavior that you don't just magically wake up one day and its gone. Unless you have grown up in home like that you would never understand the dynamics behind this. So I had immersed myself in the things Kenny was involved with and with my kids, which I found great joy in. I also had my home, that I served people in, which was my absolute delight. But, there again, the entire evening was about our guest. So I arrive in North Carolina completely separate from Kenny, my own person, I had ran our home, which is a full time job, but I couldn't tell you what a tank of gas cost. Or I had not written a check in YEARS, I had a debit card and whatever I needed, would be transferred from our business to my card I was not responsible for paying any of the monthly bills. . What I am saying is my set of responsibilities shifted in a way that has forced total exposure on me and forced me to step up and use the skills that I had in me the whole time, I just had no need for them. I would have never imagined, in a generation of aeons, I would have been writing a blog about my day to day life. I probably would have called you a liar. Well today, my stats rolled over to 3000. I was in shock. Is this what these mountains have been for. The quiet moments, to reflect, to show Gods faithfulness, to be a witness of Who He is, because I certainly have been weak through this whole process. Has God laid this plan out for the woman who lost her husband and has raised 2 boys and been faithful to God, and yet she is 60 and she has nothing the world would consider of value,  possibly one on drugs, the other unemployed, lonely and questioning what has her life meant?  I am sure of almost nothing and, sometimes, I feel as if I am utterly lost and wandering without any form of meaning in my life, but whether this "truth-telling" has hit it's high point and is now over or whether it is just beginning to help a few of many yet to come, all I can say is what if all the great pains and stressors and tragedies of life are what gives life meaning.  What I realized is that all the grand memories I have were memories of moments, which at the time they happened, were borderline traumatic. I see so many people who sit in churches and have lost any feeling of purpose or meaning.  How is it that we find meaning?  What is meaning?  It may be simpler than it seems, but it may also be much more complex.  It has to do with the most sacred faith that we have.  We all have a core set of things we believe in and those things determine all the rest of how we see life.  If we have become convinced that the value of life is in prestige, then we will refocus our children's lives on the best of education, on the best of clothes, on the best of communities, and that is, exactly what we have done.  When we grow older and realize, like the largest percentage of us will, that we have not only fallen short, but we have absolutely failed.  What then?  However, if God really does value human beings more than all other of His creation, to the extent He would become directly involved in our experience, then we All have been given a great gift to give.  Our sorrows give us the value which binds us to fellow humans, it makes us able to understand their hurt, to hold them dear in our hearts, even to the point we will sacrifice ourselves for them.  We aren't all Lost, we aren't all abandoned, we aren't all forsakened, we Are All being given the experience which will define us!  God is not lost, and neither are We!