2021 was supposed to be my year.
I had it all laid out, goals planned, and a perfect vision in my mind of what I wanted the year going forward to look like.
When I tell y’all that not a damn thing played out the way that it was supposed to, I flipping mean it.
I learned early on that the whole “In God’s Time” mantra that I was religiously trying to live by meant absolutely NOTHING if there wasn’t movement or intention behind it.
Now that isn’t me saying that it doesn’t work or that its straight bologna, I’m not saying that at all.
What I am saying is that the BIGGEST lesson of 2021 came when spirit said, “Things are coming that are going to flip your entire life right upside down and I am going to need you to just TRUST me that what is to come is for the greater good and to put you in alignment with your higher self Rebecca.”
I vividly remember laughing and replying, “Got it Lord! After the past couple of years and all I have already endured, I think I can handle whatever you throw at me.”
And, with that I walked out of the hallway I was in and through the door to my next leg of my journey.
Absolutely CERTAIN that pushing forward with our launch on Amazon, Wal-Mart Market Place and Faire was where our newest journey for After All This Time was headed.
Then it happened, spirit said, “Wait.”
To say that I was unimpressed is literally an understatement, I literally had it all laid out, planned out and ready to go on command. How could spirit be telling me yet again in my life to just be patient? Hadn’t I already been patient enough over the course of this crazy journey????
As mad and hurt as I was that I was being told to wait, it was for good reason.
I could have never prepared myself or even seen what was coming, in fact it all blindsided me so fast that it knocked the wind out of my sails and put me at an absolute stand still.
Now all of this came on the heels of the most incredible start to the year.
My book, Beckie’s Best Kept Secret launched in February, I signed papers to purchase a building to open a second storefront at the farm, and ultimately was still rolling out plans for our upcoming season when everything I knew caused me to uproot and make an entirely new plan all across the board.
Just as our season was beginning on Portage for the year my little family and our life was forced to embrace new things, a lot of change, some extremely hard, emotional, and tough choices that changed the course of our existence forever.
One moment was all it took to change everything forever, and since that moment I have put my entire life, focus, and perspective on bettering not only myself, but my family’s life, my business, and the future of all of the above.
You can’t get better if you continually stay in a place or surround yourself with people who ultimately do not want better for you, even if you want those things for yourself.
Growth is hard. Growth is painful. Growth hurts.
What hurts even more is rearranging your front row entirely all over again after you never expected to have to do such a thing again in this lifetime.
The reality is sometimes in order to get to where God intends for you to go, you HAVE to do such things when he tells you to. Because if you don’t, friends he is going to do it for you in ways you never saw coming.
What happened after all of this was me reflecting on how I had not only lived my life, but followed through with what I was trying so hard to accomplish in the first place.
I was so focused on the Hustle, making goals that benefited everyone else, worrying about people pleasing, and setting everyone else up that I had lost sight of what it was that God intended for me in the first place.
Believe me when I tell you that every single one of us has a purpose, and that purpose is not to be miserable, complain about everything, or to just work and die without enjoying life.
Our purpose is our story, and how doing the work internally to heal generational trauma, getting our Chakras in line and our emotions in check so that we can live in ACTUAL peace with ourselves.
Roll your eyes if you want to, it is literally true. Every word of it.
If you are anything like me you may have spent WAY too many nights scrolling through social media trying to keep up with the next best thing.
So. Much. Time. Wasted.
I got SO wrapped up in the Hustle and chasing the newest, the best, the biggest, the brightest, the most amazing thing, that I lost focus of what was important and because of that, God cut me down at the knees to make sure I KNEW where my focus needed to stay.
On the glory of my story.
I knew that I needed to re-evaluate my position and I started researching “THE HUSTLE” that so many women felt the need to chase after.
What I found was an unpopular opinion from the likes of Malinda Fuller, and when I tell you that you NEED to invest in this book (Obedience over Hustle) if you are overwhelmed with anxiety and the thought of just trying to keep up, I MEAN IT!
It will change your life, and that is no joke.
Crazy part is, every part of what she had wrote was true and resonated with me straight to my core to the point that it caused me to shift perspective and ultimately changed the way that I lived my entire life.
I went into hermit mode and backed away from social media and posting all the time. I rearranged my life to try to mirror the goals I was chasing after, but added in the INTENTION that I needed to accomplish them.
Intention.
We try hard to remained focused with intention on things, but often get side tracked with comparing ourselves to others, even though we know better.
The even harder part is most people have dreams and goals, and they really want to chase after them, but only scroll feeds on social media without setting the intention of getting started in the right direction because they are SCARED.
Look, nothing about any of it is easy, if it were, everyone, and I mean everyone would be doing it, but the truth behind it all, even if it isn’t easy, is that it is possible.
What I did isn’t going to work for everyone, but use what I did and change it to suit your needs.
I started by decluttering EVERYTHING.
Clothes, shoes, personal belongings, if it no longer served me purpose, it needed to go, and that also included folks in my front row that were holding me back from becoming the absolute best version of myself.
Holding on to things that weigh you down or keep you stagnant and stuck will never help you to move forward. Trust me on this.
I started meditating every single day and centering myself so that I could internally let go of all that no longer served me.
I literally backed away from social media and focused on growing myself and my brand.
That isn’t to say I wasn’t on it, watching, researching, or taking notes. It is me saying that if it didn’t serve me, I didn’t focus on it.
Sticking with socials, while I didn’t delete anyone, I did unfollow A LOT of them.
The negativity, the passive aggressive behaviors, and clap backs from people looking for reactions they were never going to get weren’t serving me so I removed them from my life while I focused on what was important. ME.
I advise everyone and anyone to do the same. I promise you that your life will do a complete 360 degree turn and you will be better for it.
While social media is a great tool when used correctly, you can’t move forward with your life and your own goals if you are watching everyone else accomplish theirs instead.
I said what I said, and I will say it 100 times over if necessary to get my point across.
Just take a break and step away for awhile.
I mean that.
Go into hermit mode and focus on yourself and what is really important and watch how drastically things change when you do.
Sis’ you aren’t missing a damn thing by walking away from socials for a minute, that much I can promise you.
I know, because I know, and when I came back to it, everyone was still doing the same things they always do, you won’t miss much, I promise.
Focus on not only your mental health, but also your physical and emotional health.
I started journaling DAILY.
Multiple times a day in fact. It is the first thing I do in the morning after I get my coffee, the thing I do halfway through my day, and the last thing that I do at night before I go to bed.
I started journaling out all of my feelings, my goals, my dreams, my intentions, and I cannot even tell you how amazing that feels to no longer carry around the weight of those words every day.
Journaling is freeing, everyone should try it and it is a 10/10 from me.
I hear A LOT, “I don’t know what to write.”
That’s ok, write in your journal to YOURSELF, write letters to YOURSELF that next year you can look back on and be thankful for how much you endured and lived through.
It’s your journal and nothing about it has to be perfect, believe me, but just START somewhere.
Write, draw, make lists of goals and dreams. It doesn’t matter where you start, just START.
Be intentional no matter what you choose to do.
Switch coffee for tea.
Stop eating meat and cheese.
Don’t eat processed foods.
Exercise, take a walk, connect with nature, seek adventure.
Start a new hobby, start a new business, or pursue old things that you once loved doing as a child, and embrace those things about yourself.
Write a book, or read a book.
Drink more water, and this one is an important one.
Go to church or stop if that is what serves you better.
Whatever it is or no matter how you choose to do the things you do, do those things with intention and know that the end goal is to better your own self, mind, body and soul.
You will Thank yourself later on for having done these things, I promise you.
You will NEVER catch me chasing the Hustle ever again in this lifetime. Mostly because hustling as hard as I was almost killed me mentally & emotionally, and in turn my health and my dreams suffered, and friends that is NOT a place I ever want to be in ever again.
What I can tell you going into 2022 is that I am more intentional than ever before because of all of the major life changes I made for myself, my family and my business.
I’m at peace internally with everything I experienced in 2021, even though it meant flipping my entire life upside down yet again.
It showed me how to come at things from a complete place of love so that I can truly become the absolute BEST version of myself in every way possible.
The changes showed me that while life in that moment may have been overwhelming, chaotic, and scary for a little while, it was NOT the end of all ends.
In fact it was actually just the beginning.
I trusted God and myself to make it through another period of absolute craziness, and friends, neither of us failed.
By the time we closed the boutique in the fall, we had one of the most absolutely incredible seasons to date, we purchased every machine we needed for the 2022 season.
Currently my team and I working REALLY hard to set ourselves up for the Spring 2022 season, and we are going in knowing that no matter where this journey takes us, it is going to be AMAZING. Everything that we all had to endure in 2021 was not for nothing.
Rolling into September with the Wallen mail, and then into November as our brand and the glory of God and our story got featured in/on news outlets across the country proves that moving with intention & God’s direction will take you precisely where you are meant to be.
Intention.
This year my intention is to plan out my socials for months at a time so that I can walk away from them and let them run on auto pilot so I can focus my time on writing, creating, and ENJOYING chasing my dreams again.
This year my intention is to find my voice and never lose it ever again or fear that it isn’t important, because it IS.
This year my intention is to grow my product line and business to a 6-figure business and prove that through hard work, dedication and INTENTION it can, will and does happen if you continue to believe in yourself and your dreams. None of which should be very difficult considering that our launches on Amazon, Wal-Mart Market Place, Faire and Hobby Lobby will be rolling out in waves throughout the entire year.
This year my intention is to help others also realize their potential in ways that they may never thought were possible before.
This year my intention is to grow my following so that I can continue to spread the glory of my story and WHY that story is as important as it has ever been.
Y’all, we all get knocked down from time to time.
Things happen that make us question everything we ever thought we knew about life, but it doesn’t mean that it has to knock the wind out of your sails forever, it means that you change course.
If God has you in a period of waiting, questioning or standing still, it means he wants you to look internally and re-center so that you can realize your own potential and the magic that you have inside yourself.
You LITERALLY have the power to change your entire life just by crawling deep inside your own heart, hugging and embracing your inner child in ways you may not have done before.
Whatever you do going forward friends, do it all, every bit of it with INTENTION.
Stop worrying so much about what everyone else thinks.
Friends, family, colleagues, people in your neighborhood, associates, STOP.
They aren’t you, they are not LIVING your life. You are, and I am here to tell you, no one can make those changes needed to get to where you are meant to go but you.
If your life continues down the same path year after year, it might be time to sit down and make some INTENTIONAL decisions to make INTENTIONAL changes in your own life.
Believe me when I tell you, you WON’T regret investing in yourself. It will be the greatest investment you ever made that much I can guaran-damn-tee!
Until next time.
Jesus & I Love You.
* Disclosure: This is a professional review blog which gets compensated for the products reviewed by the companies who produce them. All of the products are tested thoroughly and high grades are received only by the best ones. I am an independent blogger and the reviews are done based on my own opinions. There are #paidpromotions within the links connected to this blog.
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So you wrote a book.
You wrote a book and then published said book and have never really marketed that book.
You did however, send that book down to what has now become the biggest country music star in the history of histories and he in turn sent back fan mail and an acknowledgement of his own.
I don’t have many words when it comes to how that whole thing came about.
Honestly if y’all got a chance to read the letter that I sent down with my book, thinking NO ONE would ever read it and my box would end up in a pile somewhere in a garage that he MIGHT see when he was 82 and trying to relive his career through fan mail, well, you would be as embarrassed as I am that he even got to read it.
Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t horrible, but who says, “My biggest dream is to go to the Sneedville, Tennessee sign and get a picture with my book!”
Yeah. That happened y’all.
Insert face palm because its so ridiculously embarrassing that I am still red in the cheeks over it, and just rolled my eyes wondering what his sister must have thought since the box that I ended up receiving was a recycled Amazon Prime box from her.
Alicia was working in the boutique the day that it arrived via UPS, and when I tell you the excitement in her voice was up 1000 notches when she FaceTimed me, that’s an understatement.
I literally said, “Well maybe they just mailed everything back thinking I am some kind of weirdo, I mean honestly who sends a care package to Morgan Wallen and gets one in return?”
“It isn’t heavy enough to have your book inside,” she replied.
“Well go ahead and open it,” I told her.
What happened next is no joke, and I am not even sure how many “HOLY SH*T’s!” Alicia said before showing me a camo hat with a leather patch on it before she said, “Whoa, he signed it. It’s a SIGNED hat from MORGAN FREAKING WALLEN Beck.”
As I literally relive that moment and all the feelings that came with it when it happened, I am yet again speechless even months later as I am just sitting down to write about it.
I didn’t get the card included until after Alicia and I were done FaceTiming, but when I tell you that holding it in my hands and reading what he wrote took the breath right out of me, I mean it.
Morgan’s music got me through some of the hardest moments of the previous couple of years. To be honest I didn’t even really know who he was in any capacity until my friend Travis posted about him on social media.
I knew if Travis loved him and supported him as a country singer, he must be worth listening to.
If you know, you know, and if you don’t let me help you understand by painting a picture the best way I know how.
You feel that first cord right to your soul, there is just something about it that immediately grabs hold of you and won’t let go.
Never mind the words that come after or the fact that he sings about my favorite flower in this whole world, Magnolias.
When I say I was hooked on this song, I was hooked on this song.
Then it happened, I saw the video for this song for the very first time and something changed inside of me.
If you haven’t seen the music video for this song, its about a veteran coming home from war, and as an ex-Army wife I can honestly tell you this one hit closer to home than I will ever care to admit.
You have to live through those moments to truly understand what I mean, and we all know of someone who never quite made it back from the war zone even though their boots made it back to U.S. soil.
I know more than my fair share of them, and damnit some gave all so that we could have our freedoms that most of y’all take so carelessly for granted.
There is an acknowledgement at the end of my book to Morgan Wallen. It goes a little something like this:
Morgan Wallen - For helping your girl through some really rough times. Thanks for sharing your endless talents with the world. From Brimley, MI to Sneedville, TN and every road in between, I am forever grateful that God gave us you! If you ever need a blue-eyed babe to be a lead in your video, hit your girl up!
Now, you might have noticed that I wrote it to him as if we were best friends and he would see said Acknowledgement. Y’all, I had NO idea that man would ever have a copy of my book in his hands, let alone send me mail back in return telling me that he was honored to be mentioned in said book, like WHAT?! Excuse me?!
I made a post on social media back in February about his shenanigans, and you can read that now:
Dear Morgan Wallen,
I don’t do Cancel Culture, so I’m not going to quit on you during what is clearly one of the messiest years of your entire life.
What you see here is an Acknowledgment to you in my book that’s titled Beckie’s Best Kept Secret, which oddly enough is about my fall from Grace and how I fought to find my way back.
7 days to our Pre-Order Launch date (which just so happens to also be my daughter’s birthday) you made a colossal mistake that had some pretty significant consequences.
I ALMOST pushed my publishing date out to remove your Acknowledgment and decided after a lot of prayer and consideration to leave it.
I may not be the blue-eyed woman you have been chasing in your songs, but I am the blue-eyed woman God called to stand out in the world and tell you ENOUGH is ENOUGH!
Look, I know you’re hurting, damnit your music is incredible and full of so much relatable hurt that I wouldn’t be able to quit you even if I tried!
You broke A LOT of hearts this past week, BUT I’m here to tell you that you are still VERY, VERY loved, and that no matter what YOU ARE ENOUGH.
We are all sent to help walk one another home Morgan, so this is me telling you that I’ve been in your shoes & I’m also putting it out there that you aren’t ALONE!
Being a human with free will gets us in trouble a lot more than we would like, and I kind of know a thing or two about that.
I got 101 acres up in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and if it comes down to it, you will always have some place to play because we don’t do cancel culture here on the farm.
What we do here is love like Jesus does, and show a whole lot of Grace as we learn to forgive ourselves and grow through what we go through.
I plan to turn this farm into a refuge for the broken who feel like they have no where else to go. I want to create something that is inclusive of all those who feel unloved, broken, lost and looking for somewhere to turn their life around.
I can’t promise much going forward, but I can promise that if you hit rock bottom, which I think you have and your looking for a place to meet God in, this book that I left your name in might have a few answers on that.
The rest of us broken, mistake ridden, looked over, passed by folks will be waiting in the fields when your ready to play.
Child, if you ever needed a sign, I’m gonna guess this was it.
Jesus & I Love You! ❤️
Rebecca Dawn Fegan
Creator of After All This Time
Author of Beckie’s Best Kept Secret
Do I know if he ever saw that post, nope, sure don’t, but every damn word of it is still as true today as it was the day that I wrote it.
Even if the circumstances may have changed since I posted that in February, it doesn’t change the intention behind the post itself.
Y’all I don’t even know if he read my book, and if he did I hope like hell he doesn’t think I am some kind of weirdo for sending it to him.
Does my marketing team want me to use his words on the back of our revised edition, yeah, but I am still praying really hard on this one.
I want the purpose behind the story to remain the main focus always, and I never want God’s Grace or glory to slip through the cracks because an army of Wallenaire’s heard he said what he said, or rather that he wrote what he wrote.
Which would be the reason that I have taken MONTHS to even write about him sending mail back in the first place.
When I first posted about all of it on my social media, I had people coming out of the woodwork and those I didn’t even know inboxing me for his address and it was just exhausting that no one even asked what the book was even about. All they cared about was getting to Morgan, and I knew in my heart that wasn’t what God had intended at all.
I worked hard to get to this point, on my own, and I didn’t send it to him with the intentions of him being “HONORED” to be in the back of my book, to be honest I never thought he would even see it.
I sent it because God prompted me to, and I also want to take a moment explain this.
When all the shit hit the fan in the media back in February, I just couldn’t bring myself to send it to him right after the launch. It didn’t feel right, and honestly God kept prompting me to send it every time I would open my laptop. I did what I always do when I try to do things my way, I kept bucking back at him like a wild horse.
In July of this year I could no longer deny that it was him pushing to get it sent, I boxed up a bunch of stuff while standing in the boutique talking to God, prayed over the entire box as I packaged it all up and sent it on its way thinking that was the end of it.
It arrived in Tennessee the same day he stepped back on stage with Luke Bryan and Jason Aldean and while that may mean nothing at all to anyone else, I could feel God smiling down on both of us, and that was enough for me.
I never expected to hear anything else, but I sure prayed damn hard that whatever came out of Morgan from that point forward would not only prove that he could change the world, he could change cancel culture FOREVER, and he did.
What transpired in the months to follow is nothing short of amazing. Sold out venues, him and his best friends literally dominating the industry, collaborations that country music NEEDED to see happen, and a man humbled to his core by a fan base that the likes of country music and its associates have never seen before.
Have I been to a concert? Nope, they never play close to home and unless its within a couple hours of me or I happen to be in whatever state he is playing in, I probably won’t either.
Have I accomplished my “BIGGEST DREAM” and made it to the Sneedville, TN sign to have my picture taken with my book and the sign? No, and can we pause for a moment?
How absolutely embarrassing! I mean that literally, who says that. Good. Lord.
No, NO I have not made it to the Sneedville, TN sign and while it isn’t my BIGGEST dream, I just cannot even with myself, it is however something that I will accomplish one day in this lifetime.
I did, however, make it to The Grand Canyon on Valentine’s Day right after the launch!
Honestly my biggest dream at this point is that God continues to use Morgan and his platform to spread the glory of his story in ways that only someone with that platform can.
I pray he continues to stay humble, kind, and follows through with what is in his heart always.
While it was never my intention for him to think about Beckie’s Best Kept Secret any time he sings, “More Than My Hometown,” I will certainly be humbled if he remembers from time to time that he is in the back of it.
I will meet him one day, when God is ready I guess.
Until then I will be doing the same thing that I have always done, spreading the glory of God’s grace in my own life and how picking up a pen to rewrite my own story made all the difference in the world.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I am just a small town woman from the middle of somewhere with big dreams and God on my side, and if I have learned anything throughout the journey with After All This Time, you cannot stop God’s Will.
I pray y’all continue to follow God’s direction with Love and Light in your hearts, and don’t you ever stop dreaming or chasing those dreams.
I am living proof of what can happen if you just allow God to do the work through you.
Until next time.
Jesus & I Love You.
* Disclosure: This is a professional review blog which gets compensated for the products reviewed by the companies who produce them. All of the products are tested thoroughly and high grades are received only by the best ones. I am an independent blogger and the reviews are done based on my own opinions. There are #paidpromotions within the links connected to this blog.
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I suppose that is easier to say than it is to actually do sometimes. The calling part I mean.
We live in a world where technology has taken over our entire lives and even with the ability to call someone right at our fingertips we text, Snap or Zoom instead.
I saw the obituary or condolences for your loss cross my feed and instead of calling, I paused my scroll, said a small prayer for you and your family, and pushed on the “care button” instead.
But, I meant to call you.
I really did.
At least I had good intentions of doing so, that much I can promise you.
It’s just, well, I also lost someone recently and my own heart is still healing.
I am still working through my own grief and the loss of the ONLY other person who was on this planet and knew every last secret about me.
Losing her sent me on a roller coaster of emotions that I still can’t even put a name to.
Some days the grief hits me like a freight train going 120 miles an hour.
Stops me dead in my tracks and knocks the wind clean out of me.
Other days I’m actually myself for the first time in weeks and without warning it creeps in and surprises me in the craziest of ways.
A song that reminds me of her, or the smell of No Bake cookies, which actually makes me pause and smile because I just had a No Bake that was Gluten Free from Sugar Daddy Bakery down the street from the boutique.
It’s like she was there right beside me smiling when we were cashing out knowing I would make the connection later on.
It’s also not by chance that she appears in some way the very same day I sit down at a computer to write for the first time since the book launch.
It’s the little moments that get me through most days now….
Regardless, I meant to call you….
I tried hard to think of what I would say to you if I actually pushed the red button on my phone.
Would I tell you that I am praying for you? No, because how cliche and even worse it feels like such an empty thing that everyone seems to say at the death of another.
Don’t get me wrong, I know that people probably do pray, but let’s be honest shall we, out of the 1,000 people that comment that very thing, how many actually stopped what they were doing and ACTUALLY prayed for you and your current situation.
So no, I don’t want to just tell you that I am praying for you.
What I wanted to say, and why I wanted to call you is to let you know that I would be praying WITH you.
And yet, I still didn’t call.
I hope you know in your heart that me not calling isn’t me not acknowledging your loss or grief, I just don’t have the ability to lie to you and tell you it will get easier.
The truth is, grief sucks, and if you let it, it will consume every fiber of your being before you even realize what is happening.
It will be the most invasive thing you have ever encountered.
It will show up unannounced, uninvited, and with no regard for your daily schedule or life.
It will hit at the most inopportune of times.
It doesn’t care if you are at a concert, a kid’s ball game, a family function, or almost asleep tucked in your bed.
It doesn’t care your place in the community, how many followers you have, what your status is or how you take your coffee.
It swallows you whole and sends this blanket over top of your life that would crush you under the weight of it all if you would just take one more deep breath in.
Grief is definitely the most evil of all the villains we endure in our lifetimes, but no one tells us that growing up.
No one takes the time to prepare us for what is to come, because no one actually knows what to do with or how to properly handle grief.
We all know that we don’t want to keep it.
We know it isn’t healthy, and we also know we can’t just close the door on it and that will be the end of it.
It ALWAYS comes back.
Apparently, it missed the memo that stalking is illegal in all 50 states.
Anyway, I meant to call you.
In fact, I truly wanted to call you, but to be honest I don’t have the right words to say or even how to say them.
I want to hug you, but maybe you aren’t ready for that just yet.
I want you to know that I am here for you.
I even typed-out and entire message to you, it didn’t seem like the right words so, I deleted it instead.
Multiple times to be perfectly honest with you.
I wish I knew the words to take away the hurt.
The right words that will hopefully plug the hole in your heart that was just ripped wide open.
The same heart that is now shooting all of your feelings and emotions out into the wind before you even have a chance to catch them or your breath from the blow that just blindsided you out of nowhere.
But, I don’t have the right words to fix your current situation, and for that I am so sorry.
Listen, I meant to call you.
Please don’t take my lack of reaching out to mean that I don’t love you, or that I don’t care what you and your family are going through. Because I do. In fact, I care more than you will probably ever realize.
I care because while I may not know precisely what you are feeling, I have a very good idea.
I care because I know there are moments when the grief will hit you at the most random of times and you will have to fight to pull yourself back together, all to put on a face that the rest of the world sees as brave.
I see you. I promise!
I care because I know there are no words that will fix the hole in your heart, and I care because I have been in your shoes the moments after when nothing anyone says or does will fix, numb, or take away the pain you’re feeling.
I care because I live through the moments of insanely heavy grief that want so badly for me to hold on and not move forward.
The weight of it all almost crushed me to the point that I thought my rib cage would shatter into pieces, but it didn’t, and yet somehow, I survived.
I survived it all, and I wanted to tell you that so badly, I meant to call you actually.
I wanted you to hear those words and know in your heart that it will all be ok.
At this very moment, I know it probably doesn’t feel that way.
I promise you that one day it will, just please don’t give up hope in that one day coming.
I want to tell you that when you are ready, therapy is a seriously great thing to look into.
In that same breath, I want to also prepare you for all that therapy will bring.
It is going to force you to open up ALL your wounds in order to fully and properly heal.
It won’t be easy, and some days it is going to hurt like hell to work through it all.
It’s ok. Do it anyway.
I want to tell you that there will be days where you won’t want to do anything at all, and even the smallest of tasks will become the hardest of things for you to accomplish.
Try to do them anyway.
I meant to call you.
I wanted to, and I still want to.
I want to call you and tell you to come here.
Come here, lay in bed with me and watch the ceiling fan go in circles while we try to figure out what made them so special that they got to go first, or what we both need to repent for in order for us to also get an invitation to go home.
I truly meant to call you, I promise you I did.
I meant to call you to tell you all of the things, but I just haven’t brought myself to do it just yet.
My own grief and broken heart is currently in such a tender place that I worry if I take on any more weight it will simply shatter into millions of pieces.
So, I don’t call you, and it’s because I can’t just yet.
One day I will feel normal again.
One day going out to breakfast at her favorite place just so I can feel her presence won’t make my heart ache anymore, but today is not that day.
One day I will be able to tell stories again without tears streaming down my cheeks or sobs escaping my body when someone asks me how I handled it all and am still standing, but again those days are few and far between.
One day I won’t miss all the functions I am invited to because I can finally openly speak about her when someone asks how I am doing with it all. I just don’t see that happening anytime soon, but you must know that I truly am trying.
Trying in the best way that I know how to cope.
Raw, straight to the point, dealing with it as it comes in waves to the absolute best of my ability, trying.
Look, I know right now you don’t want to hear that it will all be ok, that I am praying for you, and that if you need anything, anything at all please don’t hesitate to call.
I know this because I needed ALL THE THINGS in all the moments, and I hesitated to call because I didn’t want to burden someone else with my grief.
I know these things because you and I both know we can’t just pray away the pain, heartache, grief, guilt, any of it, not right away anyway.
I know because its super, duper hard to hold on during the days when it feels like your whole entire world is crashing down around you.
I know because on those days all you want to do is lay in bed in the peace and quiet.
Lay there while your tired soul is working so hard at healing itself, but is also hurting all in the same breath.
I know, and because I know, I meant to call you.
I make no promises, and I won’t sugar coat it and tell you that it gets easier with each passing day.
That isn’t how grief works.
Sometimes it brings depression, loneliness, heartache and a thousand other emotions I don’t quite have the time to name out individually.
Just know that I know.
I can’t tell you when it subsides, how it dissipates, or if it fully ever does.
Be patient with me as I am still navigating through all of these very things.
What I can tell you is that one day you will wake up and it just doesn’t hurt so much anymore.
I’m not saying it fully goes away, I’m saying it just doesn’t hurt as much as it once did.
Let those days, the ones where it hurts a little less, be the ones that lead you like a beacon through the coldest and darkest of moments.
I say it like that because some days what your experiencing will make you feel like you are completely alone in this world, and because I know this, I meant to call you.
I meant to call you to tell you that you are not alone in all you’re enduring, but I just haven’t yet.
Believe me when I tell you that I want to, I am just not quite there yet.
Know that I truly am praying for you, and I am doing so knowing that what you are also enduring is similar to all that I have already been through.
I’ll never pretend to know precisely how your feeling, but just know that you have more people in this world who can relate to you than you will probably ever know.
I meant to call you, and one day I will get around to doing just that.
I pray and hope that you heal from the things that you can’t and won’t talk about right away.
Take the time to process.
Take the time to heal.
Take the time to breathe.
Take the time to just BE for a moment as you work to navigate your way forward.
Most of all, take time to know and believe in your heart that it is ok, to NOT be ok.
Don’t ever let ANYONE tell you how to heal.
Take time to live in those not ok moments, just don’t set up shop or live there.
Please just know that if and when you begin to heal yourself and you ever mean to call me back and can’t, I won’t take it personal or to heart when I don’t always hear from you.
So, I wanted you to know that I saw/heard about your loss and I love you more than you will ever know.
I meant to call you, but I can’t just yet, but one day soon I will, I promise you.
Jesus & I Love You!
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This Sweet Beauty is Dolly!
Followed by this quiet girl name Kaise!
Then this exceptional sweet girl, who defied all odds to survive named Grace!
Now let's head back to the Chicken Coop Chronicles!
Now everything from the inside, outside, ceiling and even the door got an overhaul.
Choosing a color for Cackleberry Castle's Main Door proved to be more of a challenge than we anticipated, but we did end up settling on this beautiful Gloss Dark Blue.
The roosting sections themselves will be made out of Popular or Aspen Trees with eyelets and chains in different parts of the coop.
Pictures of those will come later on when we get them all installed and get the run in.
I had a hard time finding baskets and hangers in the colors I wanted so I ended up buying them anyway and painting them the colors that I did want!
Doing it this way made pulling all the elements together easier when it was time!
So our end result from the overhaul of Cackleberry Castle came when we decided to put in the walkway, add the Cypress Mulch, a hanging plant, and some other beautiful decorative touches that included an American Flag!
Of course Momma saw the pictures when we were finished, laughed and said, "That's not a Chicken Coop, that's a She Shed!"
To which I responded, "Momma it is NOT a She Shed! It is MOST definitely a chicken coop, just a Rebecca styled chicken coop is all! To be honest Momma there is Absolutely Nothing Wrong With Being a Little Boujee In the Barn!"
Click On The Picture To Order The Tank!
A Huge Thank You goes out to My Dad, My Momma (Y'all know her as Gram Jam), My Littles - Jordan & Morgan and also to Kayla.
Without y'all Cackleberry Castle would still just be a dream on a Pinterest Board. Y'all put up with my crazy & sometimes quirky ideas, but let me run with them just the same!
I can't Thank You enough for trusting in me and the process even though I know that sometimes y'all just don't understand what goes on in this beautiful mind of mine!
I have learned over the course of this overhaul that even if it wasn't quite what I had planned in the beginning, it truly ended up being the most perfect option for our family & farm. God ALWAYS KNOWS! <3
I invite y'all to stay tuned for more adventures from the Chicken Chronicles and if you aren't already signed up to get our newsletter to make sure that you do so you won't miss a single update!
I hope y'all have an incredible day and send us your incredible Hen House projects as well!
We will feature our favorites on our stories on Instagram & one of y'all will win a FREE Boujee In The Barn Tank & Coffee Mug just for submitting your photos!
Send those photos over to: rebeccafegan@afterallthistime.org
Much Love & Many Blessings Y'all!
~ Rebecca
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Growing up on a farm we spent A LOT of time outdoors, in the gardens, catching fireflies and not caring so much about the outside world off the farm.
Personally I have been quarantined to the farm since the boutique closed at the end of October 2019.
Not because I had to be, but because I wanted to be.
A 60 x 40 workshop was my oasis, and inside it not a care was to be had.
I designed, created, packed and shipped orders with a ton of love and a lot of Billie Holiday playing in the background.
January, February and then March came and as I was gearing up to buy product and supplies for the upcoming season in our boutique on Portage Street, LIFE STOPPED.
We are definitely living in uncertain times, but the reality of it all is that God has got this.
In the meantime the rest of it is up to us, and I am not talking about the TRYING TO FIGURE it out part.
What I am talking about are the things we do have control over.
Making dinner and eating together at the kitchen table.
Spending time with our Littles, something that those who are isolated without are wishing they had.
Settling for the slow down and watching things like deer come out of the woods to eat in the fields, or just noticing the smell of the air without all the pollution in it.
Sending Thank You’s to teachers, because we now know as parents what they are all faced with on a daily basis.
Reading a book that has been stuck on the shelf or bedside table and until now was collecting dust.
Or finally sitting down and taking the time to start writing that life story you always talk about writing.
Making a list of past contacts, reaching out to them, and diving into their lives and the things you missed over the years.
Living in the moment.
We got FORCED to take a slow down, and the reality is that it won’t always be this way.
Life as we know it will go back to whatever normal we deem necessary after this is all over.
We will go from staying home, resting, and surviving into a world that is unfamiliar to us all.
There is A LOT of beauty in all of the uncertainty.
So many closed businesses are revamping their entire buildings and working hard for the moment that they can open their doors.
As a small business owner myself I know what an event it will be to open the doors to the boutique when I am able.
For now I will keep creating, designing, making and looking forward to the day when I can push that key into my lock for opening day!
I have remained extremely humble through the entire journey of After All This Time, and doing so has taught me more about the business and myself than I ever dreamed possible.
I have learned OVER and OVER again that God’s plans are ALWAYS better than my own and that even when I think I have it together and figured out, I don’t.
I’m hopeful for the days to come.
Something A LOT of people in my Facebook feed have given up on.
Hope.
Without Hope and Faith we truly have nothing.
As of late I am relying on both more than ever before.
I scroll through my social media accounts and shake my head at the anger in the politics, the finger pointing, and the blame.
I learned A LONG time ago that when things happen that are out of my control, it isn’t my job to figure out how to fix it.
That is what our leaders and professionals are for.
Being forced into a slow down didn’t change my life so much.
Maybe that is why I am not living with the same fears that everyone else is.
What I know is that one day this will all come to an end.
One day we will all go back to the life we knew and some of you will have to atone for the way you acted on the internet or in public in general.
EVENTUALLY the doors will all open and life will resume.
Until then, for the love of mankind, TRUST, have FAITH, and retain that HOPE you had in your heart for life when you were 15 years old.
Look for the helpers, if you can’t find one (which is extremely hard these days) you should look into becoming one.
Above all else, ENJOY these moments.
One day you will look back at all of this and realize just how crucial these moments were in shaping not only yourself, but your children as well.
Their future and our own depend on how we continue to react to what is happening around us.
I will keep creating, designing, and making as I always have, do my best to keep the same peace that has always remained at the farm, and above all else continue to be hopeful.
Today, Tomorrow, and Always I am praying for y’all.
Philippians 4:13 ~ I can do ALL things through Christ who strengthens me.
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It was the year that everyone decided that going viral and getting likes on social media was more important than common decency and basic human kindness.
It was the year that people turned a cheek on those in need, and yet had no problems complaining on Facebook about their own problems as if they were so much worse than the person that they couldn’t extend a hand to help.
It was the year that women bought more self-help books in the hopes of finding their own selves in someone else’s story, all the while forgetting how important their own stories are.
It will FOREVER be known as the last year in a decade that SO many are happy to see go, and I for one have a hard time understanding why.
2019 is and always will be the year that forced so many outside of their comfort zones and left those unwilling to spot the need for change more bitter and angry than ever before.
Unlike any year prior 2019 was the year that changed SO many and left little to be desired after that change.
Sadly, it is the year that so many will stand to close a chapter on and in turn be the year that they blame for their heartaches and pain.
The reality is that 2019 was a year that started the same as any other.
It was “EVERYONE’S” Year on January 1st, 2019.
Believe me – My entire social media feeds were FULL of EVERYONE posting about 2019 being THEIR YEAR.
The year of Health, Wealth, Abundance, and Change, and what a glorious year it started off to be.
My own feed was full of those going to the gym, making changes, making sacrifices, and ready to POWER through the year.
Slowly people started dropping like flies, falling off their wagon of choice, and more & more as the days and weeks drug on it was inevitable that more would fall even still.
Few remained on course, and even fewer were intentional with their goals and dreams.
The reality is that 2019 started off strong, your best friend on your journey to self-awareness and BIG changes.
So, what happened? What changed? How did this year just days away from 2020 turn on you & end so wrong?
Well if you are ready, I am about to spit some truths at you.
You see 2019 wasn’t the year that everything went wrong because it was the most awful year in existence.
2019 went wrong because you didn’t hold your own self accountable for your actions, your choices, your movements, etc.
The reality of it all is that you started 2019 with the best of intentions. I am sure you and so many others did, but somewhere along the line you stopped choosing YOU.
That is without a doubt the entire reason 2019 went so wrong for so many of you.
You stopped choosing you!
Your goals got harder the further you got into 2019, and in turn you stopped working so hard to pursue them.
Y’all, I hear you and your excuses, “Life got hard.” “I got kids.” “I work a lot.” “I am tired.” “I don’t have time.”
The reality remains – You stopped choosing you, and you forgot who YOU were in the process.
You made excuses. When it sunk in how easy it was to make those excuses you started making even MORE excuses, and eventually you buried your own self in them.
Ultimately sabotaging who and what you would have become if you had just 1) Chosen You and 2) pushed through the HARD stuff that NO ONE POSTS ON SOCIAL MEDIA OR WRITES ABOUT IN A BOOK.
Of course things are going to happen to throw you off course of where you are supposed to be, the devil wouldn’t work SO hard against you if he didn’t believe what you were doing would help others get to where they needed to be.
I promise you when I tell you that one foot in front of the other, one step at a time, one moment at a time, one breath at a time is ENOUGH.
It’s a simple concept.
So how can something SO simple be the ANSWER to where your 2019 year took a turn for the worst???
The answer is simple, you had a CHOICE.
You STILL have a choice, YOU ALWAYS have a choice, and it is time to start making that choice YOU!!!!
Stop worrying about your selfie on Facebook getting so many likes, or your story on Instagram being shared by some big influencer.
Stop comparing your life and your story to so many others on the internet and social media, THEIR STORY IS NOT YOUR STORY!
In a world where social media RULES our daily lives, its so easy to want to compare ourselves to what we are seeing in front of us on a screen.
I want to make a couple FACTS extremely real for y’all.
2019 was the year that EVERYONE around me somehow FORGOT who they were!
The year that everyone struggled, a lot complained, and yet NO ONE did anything about it to better themselves or their situations.
Posting a meme or a vague status on social media is NOT changing your situations folks……again CHOOSE YOU first and watch the pendulum swing in the opposite direction.
No matter how hard I have tried to inform people that they aren’t alone, everyone is struggling and that it will be ok, people still don’t seem to get it.
2019 is not the year that turned its back on y’all. Y’all turned your back on 2019 when you stopped choosing you.
As we close out the year in the days to come, I want to leave y’all with a few things:
December 31st, 2019 – Say Good-Bye to the excuses, rid yourself of the hurt, pain and heartache you gathered up this year by accepting the RESPONSIBILITY that you are the sole reason that you are where you are in that very moment. As the year ends – LEAVE IT THERE.
January 1st, 2020 – Remember that NO MATTER what choices you have made to start your year off a success, CHOOSE YOU every single day, ALWAYS. It is the ONLY way that you will remain a success when we get to this point again next year. At the end of 2020, I want to sit down and be able to write out how many of my friends and family not only CHOSE themselves, but also FOUND themselves in the process. Make 2020 the year that you remember WHO you are and step foot into a new year, not as a new person, but as a better version of the person you have ALWAYS been.
Care more about yourselves & your families and LESS about social media.
Care more about your communities, shopping small, helping others, and getting back to the bare basics of the grassroots life y’all talk so much about!
Care less about going VIRAL, the LIKES & LOVES, and your social media presence, and watch your ACTUAL life start taking shape in front of your very eyes.
BE INTENTIONAL with yourself, your time, your focus and your goals and dreams for yourself.
BE PRESENT.
PUT DOWN YOUR PHONES.
MAKE MORE TIME FOR YOURSELVES & YOUR LOVED ONES THAT DOESN’T INVOLVE POSTING PICTURES ABOUT YOUR ADVENTURES ON SOCIALS EVERY CHANCE YOU GET.
Y’all….REMEMBER who you were when you were 14/15!
I mean it, close your eyes and REMEMBER who you were back then……
Remember the heart you had for yourself, your life, your dreams and your FUTURE.
Y’all FORGOT who you were in 2019, and I am hoping I can shed some light on CHANGING that as we close out the year.
As someone who stands in A LOT of your front rows cheering for you until my ribcage hurts, I hope you start seeing what the rest of us see in you.
I hope you remember who the hell you are & what you are more than capable of before it is too late to change it.
Just because you forgot who you were for a minute or an entire year, whatever the case may be, doesn’t mean it is to late to change that.
When I say that I am personally coming for 2020 with a vengeance and a raging fire in my soul – I MEAN THAT WITH EVERY FIBER OF MY BEING!
I hope I can say the same for y’all, but until you DIG DEEP and REMEMBER who you are, well you can’t truly start the new year off right until you do!
It is time to accept responsibility for your TRUTHS and the TRUTH is y’all forgot who you were and blamed the YEAR 2019 for all your problems.
STOP IT.
Choose YOU while you still have time.
The countdown is on y’all…..
Mug Can Be Purchased Here:
https://www.afterallthistime.org/collections/drinkware/products/please-cancel-my-subscription-mug
]]>I want to tell you that since I have posted a blog last that I have just been sitting around doing nothing but writing.
The reality is I have been so busy since February that I have been doing nothing other than building my dreams on solid ground.
Someone asked me recently why I stopped writing and posting blogs.
I guess you don’t realize how much time passes in between one to the next until you sit down and start looking at dates.
Crazy to me that I literally have not posted a blog since February, crazier yet the topic it was on.
The last blog I posted was about a part of my life I have long since let go of, but not posting another since clearly made it look quite the opposite.
The truth is I got wrapped up in chasing dreams, wholesaling product, creating more brands, and opening the boutique that writing kind of got pushed to the back burner.
All of which seemed to go as smoothly as one would hope.
If I had to compare said smoothness, I would compare it to roller-skating on a cobblestone walkway.
Regardless of how it transpired, I forged on and continued the mission that God set in front of me.
Somedays by nothing more than sheer faith and prayer.
Most days included several tears, the will to WANT to be defiant and just do my OWN thing, and A LOT of sleepless nights talking AT him instead of to him.
It took making the 3600+ mile round trip to Salt Lake City, Utah back in August to finally get myself in check with the Lord.
He spoke, and I listened.
A LOT.
There isn’t much else to do on a journey that size other than to be still and listen.
Now I won’t pretend that there weren’t several jam sessions with Air Guitars and Drum Solos, mostly because y’all know better than that.
There were several of both, lots of quiet moments, stopping to take in the beauty that he made, and more moments of self-reflection than I could keep track of.
My biggest fault is feeling like I am not doing enough, or that things are not happening fast enough.
Which ALWAYS falls back to Momma’s famous saying, “In God’s Time Rebecca, In God’s Time and not a moment sooner.”
Truth be told I am not the most patient individual in the world, and sometimes that causes me more heartache than necessary.
Learning to TRUST the process is something that I struggle with on the daily, now y’all know my BIGGEST fault if you didn’t already.
Now back to my journey to and from Salt Lake City, Utah.
If you had told me while I was packing to leave that I would find even MORE of myself on that journey I would have rolled my eyes at you and just chuckled.
There is something to be said about traveling that amount of distance by yourself.
You do one of two things, FACE what you need to deal with or come out of it more upset, loathing yourself and the things you have long ago buried away.
I did the latter.
I accepted that all the things I had been carrying with me from February until that moment needed to be placed at the foot of the cross.
I also accepted that whatever was to happen with those things was to happen.
God’s will is A LOT stronger than our own, whether we choose to embrace that fact or not.
His will, will ALWAYS be done.
I still remember a time when I prayed for all the things I have now.
The designs, the ability to have my own business and be my own boss, the ability to inspire others, every last ounce of it.
Looking back now, even in the hardest of moments, I am glad that I stuck with TRUSTING that God’s Will would be done instead of going my own way.
Sometimes it takes 3600+ miles of black on black and alone time to accept that MY WAY of doing things wasn’t or isn’t the greatest.
He pointed me back to the days when I was in a puddle on my bathroom floor after my divorce angry at life, angry at my situation, confused, broken, and STILL looking for answers I would NEVER get.
It is a time that I openly talk about, but isn’t something that I like to revisit if I can help it.
He took me ALL the way back to those moments and asked me what I took from them.
It would be another 300 miles West before I would figure it out completely.
I took ME.
No great success story starts at the top.
Most times to have to hit ROCK BOTTOM and accept that fact before you can move forward.
I had hit the bottom of rock bottom back then.
Alone, crying in the middle of the night, and angry at the world & God.
I don’t mean crying like a few tears streaming down my face.
I mean crying like full body sobs that made my ribs ache, my eyes and throat raw from the constant fact that my body just could not produce any more tears or saliva to keep my them lubricated. Snot flying, fist on the ground pounding, BEGGING for relief.
Begging for answers.
Begging for my brain to JUST forget what my ex-husband had done to me, and for my heart to accept that I continued to allow it to happen.
ALONE in the sense that the longer I stayed in that puddle on the floor the quieter it got other than myself wailing out like a banshee.
I was a hot mess, and even that was an understatement.
It was NOT one of my finer moments.
I was drunk on misery and looking for someone to blame because I couldn’t accept the fact that I WAS ALSO part of the problem back then.
Believe me, I have come a LONG way since then.
Looking back at those moments & that woman, I wonder who she even was.
When had I lost myself in my duties as a mom, my relationship as a wife, and how I could have forgotten who I truly was or wanted to be.
I remember vowing after that night that I NEVER wanted to feel like that ever again.
I shut out everyone. Family included.
Lived for my Littles and when that alone wasn’t enough I ACTUALLY started praying.
Along the way came Corrine Road and all that has transpired from it since.
God needed to remind me of the Warrior that he made me into on the way to Salt Lake City, Utah.
He chose to show me the darkest, deepest, worst parts of my existence to PROVE to me that his grace and love ALWAYS prevailed.
Who I was vs. who I would become is nothing short of a miracle.
All of which happened in his time and not a moment sooner.
Between God’s Grace and learning to forgive my own self for the things that had happened in my life, I was able to tap into the potential that God gave to me to fulfill his will for my life.
Now I won’t ever stand in front of you and pretend that because I wear a cross around my neck I am a better Christian than you.
I fail at this whole being a good Christian thing DAILY, I am “openly broken” and won’t ever forget that.
I make mistakes, bad choices, and repent for my sins.
EVERY. SINGLE. DAY.
I won’t stand on a soapbox and preach to any of you about your choices or your lifestyle, but I will ALWAYS invite you to sit at my table or next to me on a pew in church so that we can pray together & for one another.
No, I don’t always get it right, and LIVING through some of the stories in the Bible vs. studying them makes you truly appreciate the amount of Grace God really does give us as Christians.
What I can tell you is this:
Waiting to figure out when it is too late isn’t anything I want my friends or family to experience.
This blog is a result of me finding even more of myself and my relationship with the Lord than ever before on a 3600+ mile journey.
If you are reading this, well it means you have also most likely followed this journey when it started a year ago.
You hear me talk all the time about his Glory & Grace.
I am NOT just saying it to say it y’all, I truly mean it.
You watch him work through me daily, and if you have been following this journey you have watched him do so for over a year now.
God is GREAT ALWAYS.
No matter what you choose to believe.
I hope you always remember how ridiculously amazing you are & that God created you for a specific purpose.
If you TRUST him, he will show you the way.
Just remember he NEVER brings you to it if he doesn’t intend to bring you through it.
The past 6 years of my life have been something that would emotionally, physically, and mentally drain most people.
He created me with the gift of writing, to share these stories, to continue to SHOW anyone that follows my journey that HE IS CONTINUALLY WORKING through me.
He deserves ALL the Glory, and there isn’t a moment I will ever FORGET that.
There was a time it wasn’t always like this, and anyone who has known me my whole life knows this.
God decided it was time to shine a light in the darkest parts of my life to shift my direction, and he has never once failed me since.
Back in college, I studied Photo Journalism, and on my way to Salt Lake City, he reminded me what quiet moments in forgotten places in different cities look like.
That my love of photography and all things old still remained, but my more recent days resulted in me being in front of the camera rather than behind it.
It had been such a LONG time since I had tapped into that portion of my life, and he keeps reminding me of every single gift that he has given to me.
Both big and small.
I recently told a friend who finally realized how amazing God works when you just trust him to take the wheel about remembering to praise God in the hallway.
We spend our whole lives chasing moments that we could very well be CREATING ourselves if we just SLOWED down, trusted that when God closes one door he WILL open another.
He never CLOSES one door and expects for us to be left out in the cold.
As humans, we make the mistake of wanting to RUSH the process, pick the lock and bust through the door like a bull in a china shop in the hopes that whatever we have planned for our lives is better than what he has planned.
Trust me when I tell you this, it isn’t.
I want to tell you it will all be OK.
Even in the darkest moments.
The rough patches.
The moments when you are rearranging your Front Row & removing people you thought would be there FOREVER.
I want to give you hope.
Inspire you to KNOW that life WILL work itself out.
That you will survive.
All I truly know is I'm living, breathing proof of this.
It's crazy to think that our hearts are the only thing on this planet that can be shattered into a million pieces, crushed beyond recognition, handed back to us a mess or picked up off the ground and yet it still continues to beat on.
Life. Goes. On.
Even when your own has stopped dead, and the silence is deafening as you try to work through what's happening around you.
There are going to be moments when you want to die.
Moments when the pain hurts SO MUCH you wish you were.
PUSH THROUGH ANYWAY.
I stand more moments in my boutique rubbing my "I Am Enough" bracelet while looking out the window praying for a sign from God than anything.
In the end its all about doing things in his time.
Trust him.....and he will not forsake you.
Love like Jesus does, even when people are calling you to do something different.
Know in your heart that you were created with a purpose, not just to LIVE and BREATH then die.
I never started this journey with the hopes that I would be where I am.
I started this journey as a way to tell my story, to show people that God truly does work in the most wondrous ways, and that ANYONE can find their way back to a church pew & him.
I am going to fail daily, for the rest of my entire life at being a “good” Christian.
I am going to screw it up, mess it up, and make mistakes I wish I could take back.
What I won’t do is give up.
Stop trying.
As I sit in this 800 sq ft space that I built from the ground up based on a story, my life story, I am reminded why I can NEVER stop pursuing this mission of mine.
People scrutinize others daily for their choices, their lifestyles, their way of life.
I want anyone and everyone reading this to KNOW and BELIEVE in your heart that NO MATTER what the outside world says, does or believes, there is ALWAYS a spot at my table for you!
I have been in your shoes.
I have been where you are!
I have been YOU!
I see you, I know you, I have lived what you are going through, and I will not EVER turn away someone who wants to “Bring it all to the Table” and learn that no matter what Jesus loves you!
I set out originally to tell my life story.
Along the way, God worked through me to give me things I could have NEVER in a million years dreamed of on my own.
This entire process was never about making a million dollars or being recognized, but it tends to happen doesn’t it……
It has always been about praising him for the things he has done in my life, and now it’s about continuing to do that while blazing a path for anyone who doesn’t believe chasing dreams is possible.
I am a single Momma Bear from little old Brimley, MI who started a blog based on my life story, which turned into a product line that ships ALL over this entire world…..
Tell me again it isn’t possible.
My faith is the strongest thing I have – more precious than gold.
Some days, other than my Littles it is all I have.
Most days, actually A LOT of days I am more or less a mess…
It took me a LONG time to realize that even still – Jesus LOVES me anyway.
Broken Hot Mess Express and all.
The absolute best part folks, he loves you too!
Trust him and let him do the work in your life and he won’t ever forsake you.
Stop worrying so much about what everyone else thinks, feels, and says.
When judgment day does finally come, I promise you none of it, not a single ounce of what anyone says or feels about you is even going to matter.
Start focusing on you and what you want out of life & your eternity because like it or not it is coming for all of us eventually.
Now if you will excuse me I need to get back to doing God’s work, but I will leave you with this:
A year ago, I launched my blog, which was about me telling my LIFE story.
Along the way it turned into ALL THE THINGS, and here we are.
On July 6th of this year, I opened the doors to my very own boutique that carries the likes of my own trademarked products, unique exclusive gifts you can’t find anywhere else, and the dream that this area needed something bigger and better.
Something society told me as a single mother I would NEVER do.
Remember that when and if you speak my name, I WAS NEVER SUPPOSED TO BE ABLE TO DO THESE THINGS!
I can't imagine where I would be if I had listened to everyone that told me it was just too crazy to even happen!
Stop worrying SO much about what everyone else says and does and start taking control of your own life!
We are all broken friends, but the beauty is - Jesus LOVES US ANYWAY!
"Call unto me and I will answer thee, and show thee great & mighty things which thou knowest not." - Jeremiah 33:3
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Recently I attended an event that allowed ALL of my Littles to be in attendance.
It isn’t often with our schedules that without some SERIOUS pre-planning my College Aged daughter gets to grace us with her beautiful presence.
So you can imagine my excitement and just how much my heart began to flow the minute all of our skates took to the ice on Open Skate that afternoon.
It didn’t take me long to realize that my 18 year old gorgeous souled Little Girl wasn’t so little anymore.
I half smiled as I skated around that rink with her little 5 year old brother who was about as graceful on skates as a brand new fawn on its new legs.
He and I rounded the end of the rink to find my Meeshka’ in the same boat as her little brother.
I immediately laughed out loud at the sight of her trying to skate in FIGURE SKATES.
It wasn’t her thing, I knew it, but convincing her of that didn’t quite happen until the toe pick caught for the 100th time and made her mad enough to leave the ice to get Hockey Skates.
It was also in that moment that Morgan wanted to take a break.
So I skated him over to the benches where many a hockey player had sat for games, made sure he was ok with me skating for a minute by myself, closed the door & pushed off.
I got lost in the music and my own memories as my blades gracefully pushed across that ice.
I was instantly taken back to a time LONG before that moment that made me smile ear to ear.
It was 14 years prior.
A different time.
A different rink.
The circumstances were the same – It was open skate day & other than pond skating in my winter boots, which honestly doesn’t even compare, I had never set foot on ice in a pair of skates.
I was determined though, I had a Baby Girl that was the ripe age of 4 ½ and 16 days old.
Yes, 4 ½ and 16 days old.
It was HER thing back then, she counted days after her birthday until she was tired of counting and started learning words from the Dictionary instead.
Regardless, I was determined, so I laced up my hockey skates and ventured on the ice.
To say that I went down the second my second skate hit the ice would be an understatement.
I wasn’t just mortified that I had fallen, I was HURTING everywhere, and to make matters worse, well I couldn’t get UP!
Not because I didn’t want to or because anything was broken, but because I DIDN’T know how to without making matters worse.
Out of no where slides in this tiny little Peanut with her hockey jersey on, hair coming out of her helmet, as she skids across in front of me and says, “Mommy are you ok? That kind of looked like it hurt.”
“Yeah Meesh I am ok. Just trying to figure out how to get up,” I said back to her.
She replied with, “You just HAVE to do it Mommy. You just have to push off the ice, get on your knees, and GET UP! It’s easy, watch me,” she replied with a BIG smile behind the cage on her hockey helmet.
She wasn’t kidding either. She pushed off the ice, rolled up onto her knees and in an instant was on her feet on skates.
I want to tell you that I was that graceful, I wasn’t.
It took a few goes, and a couple passerby’s stopping to help, but I eventually got up right.
Skating after that wasn’t graceful. I won’t even pretend that it was.
I was scooting around the ice with short little strokes of my skates that made it down right comical to anyone watching me.
I could not skate.
I didn’t know the first thing about it, but that didn’t stop my little girl from skating back around to me to try to tell me how.
She skated past me and then turned sideways to show me she could stop while pushing a spray of ice with her.
She giggled while she yelled out, “You don’t have to be perfect Mommy, you just have to TRY!”
It didn’t take long for me to gather myself and my pride.
I didn’t just owe this to her to try, I owed it to MYSELF!
I finally LET GO of the wall and pushed off.
I looked like a crazy person no doubt.
“Scoot, Scoot, Oh! Slow! Slow! Don’t fall Beckie,” I said quietly to myself.
My little lady bug skated up next to me and said, “Noooooo Mommy, not like that, like THIS! Left, Right, Slide, Glide,” and she pushed off and across the rink away from me.
“Ok,” I said to myself, “You can do this. Left, Right, Slide, Glide.”
It didn’t come fast, but suddenly I was SKATING.
I giggled out loud and said to myself, “Seeee….you got this girl!”
I skated around that rink and other people repeating, “Left, Right, Slide, Glide,” for the next couple of hours.
It wasn’t graceful.
There wasn’t ANYTHING remotely glamorous about it.
I would love to tell you that skating that day went off without any more falls or aches and pains.
The reality is that it DID NOT.
I fell probably 35 times that day, and I learned to fall gracefully thanks to the likes of my 4 ½ and 16 days old Little Princess.
I watched all walks of life that day scoot around that rink, and I was PROUD for TRUSTING in myself enough to TRY something new.
Fast forward to present day as my not so Little Princess found her way back to the ice.
It wasn’t as graceful as it had been 14 years earlier, but she DEFINITELY felt better on those hockey skates than she did Figure Skates.
I was still skating around the other end of the rink when I saw her go down.
Instantly my Momma’ Bear instincts kick in as I pushed off towards her.
The fall had knocked the wind out of her.
It was hard not to reach out and embrace her.
Instead, I just asked, “You ok kiddo’?”
She looked at me and said, “Yeah it just knocked the wind out of me.”
I wondered if she was going to give up, but as her boyfriend skated away she grabbed a cheater pusher and followed suit.
I smiled ear to ear and turned to check on Morgan.
His legs were still tired so he wanted to rest, but he wanted to be a PART of what was happening.
So the young man that I like to call my future Son-In-Law remedied the situation and found Morgan a chair so he could be involved in all things skating.
I scurried off to grab the chair so Morgan could BE involved.....
The laughs, the giggles, the smiles.
It was worth every second, and it made me wonder how different the circumstances would be if I had given up TRYING so long ago.
How different that day would have been if my Meeshka' hadn't just TRUSTED in herself to KNOW she could do it.....
We do that to ourselves.
We underestimate our own potential, our own greatness.
Instead, we need to TRUST the process & remember that we don’t have to be PERFECT!
I often think that is 99.9% of the problem.
We think that we have to be like EVERYONE else.
That our journeys are all the same, when in reality they truly aren’t.
They aren’t meant to be.
It is how we choose to handle the situations that cross our paths that make us who we are and our journey’s unique.
I could have chosen to give up on skating, or on myself that day so long ago.
Looking back I am SO glad that I loved being a Mommy MORE than I loved failure.
I would have MISSED those moments at open skate with ALL of my Littles.
Chances are that I would have by-passed the event when it crossed my feed on Facebook, and told myself, “Ah, you can’t skate anyway no point in attending.”
It took all of 7 words to turn my world around back then.
“You don’t have to be perfect Mommy.”
So that is my advice to you today, remember that, embrace that.
You don’t have to be perfect.
You just have to TRY.
Looking back over the course of the past 14 years, I wish I had remembered my Little Princesses advice back then.
Trusted in me MORE.
Trusted in the PROCESS even more than that.
However, we often LEARN along the way, and most times hindsight is 20/20.
If you take ANYTHING away from this, my only wish is that you stay true to YOU, and remember that nothing is perfect.
Think about it like this:
When you are driving West towards a sunset surrounded by clouds, the SUN doesn’t STOP BEING itself…..It just SHINES brightly through
WHATEVER is surrounding it giving off its light and love to all lucky enough to view it.
It is most DEFINITELY not perfect, but it is SO, SO beautiful…..
If the sun can be beautiful in the most awful of circumstances even when it isn’t perfect or ideal….
Well, then why do you have to try so hard to be perfect?
Just throwing that at out there.....
Much Loves & Many Blessings Y'all.
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Dear 2017,
I want to start by saying that even though you started out as the year that was going to be MY year, you didn’t quite add up a couple months in.
I’m not mad about it though.
Quite honestly, I owe you EVERYTHING for becoming the year that turned out to be NOTHING like I had envisioned it would be.
Now you started out promising, you really, truly did.
A couple months in you wrecked havoc on my life and left me gasping for air from the blows that blindsided me from all angles.
I was left picking up the pieces after a handful of empty left-hand promises fell like leaves to the ground.
You never gave up on me though & for that I Thank You.
You stood idly by while I found my footing again and while I wiped off my scraped knees from falling so hard.
The days moved forward, the nights didn’t stay so long, and as the smoke cleared from the wildfire that stormed across my life, you gave me hope.
As I scanned the damage around me you shined your light so intently it was hard NOT to notice.
I followed as you shouted, “This is YOUR year, this is your time, FOLLOW ME.”
So, I didn’t just come running out of the gates, I came blazing.
With my trail set ablaze, I hurdled the damage in your wake and pushed forward with NO regrets.
I won’t lie and say that I didn’t look back because the good lord knows I sometimes needed those brief moments to reflect on where I had been.
I made the decision in those moments looking over my shoulder as I blazed across my trail that I WAS NEVER going back, and I would NEVER feel those things EVER AGAIN.
YOU SHOWED ME HOW TO MOVE FORWARD WITHOUT ALLOWING SUCH THINGS TO CONSUME WHO I COULD BECOME.
Thank You truly doesn’t seem like the right thing to say.
I am not honestly sure there are ENOUGH words to put together the sheer amount of gratitude that I owe to you for turning out to be the year that taught me more about myself than any year prior.
You were the year that showed me that love knows no bounds & that distance, no matter how far is never TOO far when you wholeheartedly love someone.
You were the year that reminded me that EVERYTHING can change in a SINGLE, SOLITARY MOMENT.
You were the year that showed me what I was made of, testing ALL the boundaries I had set for myself and making me break them!
You have been the year that showed me that I have a strength like I have NEVER known and that NO ONE can hurt me with words or make me feel insecure about myself or my journey EVER AGAIN.
You are the year that helped me shed all my old insecurities and taught me to be brave in the wake of all that I have endured.
You have been the year that has shown me that MY STORY is also SOMEONE else’s story and that by sharing it others realize they are NOT alone.
You are the year that told me to “GO FOR IT! CHASE THOSE DREAMS AND DO NOT STOP!”
(Click Here for the Tell All Interview)
So I dove into them & gave EVERY ounce of energy towards them, no matter HOW much people talked or belittled what I was doing!
You have shown me that NOT EVERYONE has good intentions, that even family will turn on one another, but in the end to PRAY like crazy and hand it ALL over to God.
YOU ARE THE YEAR THAT GAVE ME NOT ONLY MY GREATEST TESTS OF FAITH BUT RETURNED THEM 10 FOLD WHEN I REALLY, TRULY BELIEVED.
What I know is that you started off amazing, turned the tables on me a few months in, and gave me the fight of my life when I was ready to step into the ring.
We have had some bumps & bruises since that St. Patrick’s Day morning, BUT I can honestly say that I am closing out this year in a MUCH better place than I started it.
I am the BEST version of myself that I have EVER been.
I dream bigger, smile wider, talk with more passion, and live FREELY from the judgment of others.
I TRULY BELIEVE in MYSELF & MY DREAMS and KNOW WITHOUT A SHADOW OF A DOUBT that I can ACHIEVE ANYTHING I PUT MY MIND TOO.
You showed me that shedding tears was not just alright, but it was necessary to the process & the journey.
You gave me the ability to not just BELIEVE in myself, but to believe in my dreams as well, no matter HOW exhausting both might be.
You taught me that sometimes letting go hurts a hell of a lot less than if I had just HELD ON for dear life.
You taught me that cutting people out of my life who threaten my peace or my vision for the future wasn’t just necessary, but it was completely futile to even allow them there in the first place.
You have shown me that being single is perfectly fine, and as I watch people around me selfishly SETTLE left & right for less than what they deserve, I THANK YOU for teaching me just that.
You gave me more blessings than I can even begin to count, and I won’t ever be able to say enough amazing things about the year my family and I have had.
You showed me how GIVING is so much BETTER than receiving, and the benefits that others receive from me doing so.
(Click Here To Join The Movement for St. Jude's)
You brought me closer to the people I needed to be near to understand the importance of TRUST, and in turn, showed me BOLD FACED the ones that had ulterior motives and WHY their time in my life needed to come to an end.
You gave me the ability to look past the people who “TALK” as their purpose serves none in my life or my journey.
You have shown me that people are jealous, have AWFUL things to say, and to side-step around them and run harder and faster towards my dreams and my goals.
You ARE the year that changed everything, gave me everything, and taught me more than I could have ever imagined about myself & my place in this life.
You took away things I didn’t think I could live without, and yet here I am living just fine without them.
Thank You for showing me that having an incredible gift is worth sharing, and that by doing so I've inspired others to also chase their dreams!
(Click Here To See Where It All Began)
Now I know a lot of people are a tad mad at you.
Some are ready to sweep you under the rug, others can’t get rid of you fast enough, and then there is a handful that are like me.
We are the ones that can’t Thank You enough, and relish in the bittersweet moments as you are coming to an end.
I smile as I look forward to 2018, and wonder about all the possibilities that will come.
I can honestly say without a doubt that the year 2017 will be a year I look back on for various reflection with nothing but a smile on my face.
Even though SO many moments were thrown at me to try to knock me off course or to try and jade me into quitting, I NEVER gave up.
Thank You 2017.
You. Were. The. Best. Year. Of. My. Entire. Life, and I will miss you so.
I am proud of you 2017. I am as proud of you as I am myself.
What an exceptionally record year you turned out to be!
THANK YOU FOR BEING THE YEAR THAT I LOVED SO & IN TURN IT TRULY LOVED ME RIGHT BACK!
Much Love & The Most Exceptional Amount of Blessings,
Rebecca
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I took a breath in as my alarm screeched for the second time.
No more snoozing. Time to get up.
I wiped the sleep from my eyes as I looked up and saw the “Come Bother Me” sign above my bed.
“You’re quite the romantic ya’ know,” I said to myself as I rolled my eyes.
I smiled to myself as I stretched the sleep out of my bones.
“Ugh, not too bad for 36 Sister Girl,” I thought to myself, “Wait, that isn’t right.”
I looked down at my phone.
December 3, 2017 - 7:17 am.
37 actually.
“Happy Birthday Ol’ Girl,” I say to myself out loud with a smile.
I spent the next several moments thanking God for the fact that I was not only awake but living and breathing. A gift that not so many others
have been given in recent weeks and months.
In my moments of quiet reflection, I am reminded that my work is just beginning, that it is TIME, and to have FAITH in the next few months as things start to move rather quickly around here.
Then my mind flashes back to a year ago, and immediately I begin to count my many, many blessings.
I know precisely where I was and what I was doing, who I was with, and I can look back now knowing that the winds of change were starting to blow for me even if I didn’t know it then.
All around me at 36 years old were the signs, not only about my business, but about the journey I was going to embark on as well.
It is surreal to look back today and see the place I was in, not that I was in a bad place, but I certainly wasn’t in the place I am now.
One Year.
It seems like such a long time when you say it out loud.
365 days.
It seems like SO many, but in reality, they are so few. They go by SO fast, and before you know it - an entire year has gone by.
Today I decided to sit down and write on that one single fact.
An entire year has gone by.
I woke up one morning in the past year and decided that:
1) I was tired of feeling the way that I was feeling and I just didn’t want to go through life like that anymore. So I changed what I was doing and I haven’t looked back. Believe me when I tell you that it has served me well.
2) I decided that life was too darn short to not chase after my dreams, so I threw caution to the wind, broke down every wall that was in my way, jumped over every single hurdle that got thrown at me, and started on the journey to pursue my BIGGEST dream.
3) I have learned along this journey of pursuing my dreams that people are going to think your crazy, they are going to hate you, they are going to wish ill on your dreams and your venture, or spew pure hatred about what your doing out of jealousy; in the end my Momma’ said it best, “Rebecca, NO great journey starts at the top, and ALL the best and biggest dreamers are a little crazy. Don’t ever STOP being you just because someone else doesn’t understand your vision.”
If she had told me such things when I was 16/17 I would have shrugged them off and most likely put what I was doing on the back burner.
Chances are I would have given up on pursuing my dreams to SETTLE for what everyone else felt was “NORMAL.”
Luckily for me, I’ve learned a few things about myself in the past 5 years.
I’m Strong. I have grit. I have passion. Vision. Hope. Faith. The ability to RISE above any and ALL things thrown in my direction, AGAIN & AGAIN. The Lord MADE me, my LIFE, MY STORY in his VISION so that he could USE them as a tool to not only INSPIRE others but to TEACH along the way. No matter WHAT that looks like to the outside world looking in.
After All This Time……37 whole years, in fact, our journey together is stronger than ever and the things that are about to happen & the places we are about to embark upon are truly incredible….
So as I enjoy my day of birth I say this to you:
“If you don’t like who you are, how you are feeling, and what you are doing with your life; CHANGE IT.”
You aren’t STUCK. Believe you can be better & YOU will be.
If you have negative people in your life holding you back & cutting off your supply and ability to move forward – CUT THEM LOOSE.
Yes – I understand more than anyone how scary it is to let someone you love go, but when God is telling you, “It just isn’t the right time.” TRUST HIM.
I PROMISE you he is setting you and your life up to go to places you have ONLY dreamed of, you just have to TRUST in that.
I AM LIVING, BREATHING PROOF THAT TRUSTING IN THE PROCESS WILL TAKE YOU TO HEIGHTS YOU COULD HAVE ONLY EVER DREAMED OF….AND WE ARE HONESTLY JUST GETTING STARTED…..
MUCH LOVE & MANY BLESSINGS TO EACH OF YOU!
REBECCA
Isiaih 60:22 - When the time is right, I, the Lord, will make it happen.
]]>As Randi and I sat discussing the business during our lunch date yesterday she asked me about this month's blog.
I could smile knowing that there are currently 3 in the que waiting to be released, but since I was INSANELY busy with more products launching, wholesale orders, and some ridiculously AMAZING sales for y'all; well I just couldn't narrow down which way I wanted to go this month.
So with that being said I've decided to take a MUCH needed break from the blog for this month. It doesn't mean that I am not writing, because on top of everything else that happens back here in the creation station that is ALSO one of those things that gets accomplished on the daily.
I am excited to announce that After All This time will be adding 5 more products to our storefront in the next few weeks!! Therefore I need to keep my focus directed on the final stages of the design to production phases. We truly think you will LOVE what we are bringing to the table! :)
With several MORE designs in the works and more options than ever before we are excited to bring you even MORE AMAZING Yooper Gear!
The MUCH anticipated Made With Love From the Great Lakes State will be following suit near the end of the year & into the beginning of 2018.
It is truly INCREDIBLE just how much my team and I have managed to accomplish in just a few short months! There is absolutely NO way that I could do ANY of this without them!! Thank You to my entire team, my family and friends for hanging in there on this crazy ride & to y'all for the endless love & support for our designs and products!
Stay tuned Ladies & Gents.....After All This Time is just gearing up....SO MANY EXCITING things are coming!!!!!
Much Love & Many Blessings Y'all!
~Rebecca~
Sweetie can you hear me,” said a voice from outside.
I blinked as I tried to sit up. I was restricted. I couldn’t move. I was pinned. I kept blinking to try and focus, but something was clouding my vision.
I reached up to wipe my eyes as they finally focused. I pulled my hand away to find it covered in blood.
I started to scream.
“My name is Ray. It is going to be ok. Can you tell me your name,” said the voice loudly over my screams.
I stopped screaming and started to cry hysterically.
“My Momma’ and Dad are going to be so mad at me,” I choked out in between sobs.
“Honey, I don’t think that is going to matter. Are you hurting anywhere,” he asked.
“Everything hurts!” I cried out, “I’m stuck and I can’t move, my legs are pinned.”
“It will be ok Sweetie. Help is on the way,” he said.
I turned my body enough to see through the crushed window of my driver side door to see Jason Laponsie standing at the top of the ditch.
“JASON,” I screamed at the top of my lungs.
He jumped at the sound of his voice.
“GET TO WAL-MART AND TELL MY MOMMA’,” I screamed.
Just like that he took off running, and just like that I started crying again. Everything was hurting. My head was pounding, and I was getting tired.
All I wanted to do was sleep, I was SO tired!
Ray must have known something was going on because he started talking to me more. Started asking more questions.
“Do you know what happened Sweetie,” he asked.
“That van pulling a trailer crossed the centerline and pushed me off the road. I didn’t have anywhere to go. It all happened so fast,” I said, “I hit the dirt when I left the road and my tires dug in. I rolled 4, no 5 times maybe? I’m not real sure I’m sorry.”
“It’s ok. How old are you,” he asked.
“I’m 16. My name is Beckie, well Rebecca actually. Fegan, I’m from Brimley. This shirt I got on is my brother’s he is going to be real mad when he finds out. I ripped it on the sleeve. It caught the thing that reclines the seat when I was rolling and I started to yank on it because it got stuck. It reclined the seat as the ceiling came down at the same time the last time I rolled over. You think they will be able to get me outta’ here,” I asked.
It was real quiet outside the car and suddenly I felt very alone. I wondered then if I had been talking to myself the entire time. I couldn’t see much, and I was pinned from moving anywhere. I tilted my body enough to see Ray turn around and crouch down beside the car. He looked like he had tears in his eyes, but I couldn’t be sure since my own were blurred with dirt, blood, and whatever else was in the wreckage.
I lifted my hand out the small hole in the window just enough that Ray could hold onto it. “Please don’t let go,” I begged, “I really just want my Momma'.’”
“I won’t let go until the ambulance arrives Rebecca. I promise,” he said. In the distance, you could hear the wail of the sirens announcing that they were coming. “It won’t be long now sweetie, just hang in there. You just gotta’ hang in there.”
It was the last thing I heard before I lost consciousness.
I came to when the EMT’s arrived.
“REBECCA! CAN YOU HEAR ME? I NEED YOU TO LISTEN TO ME. I NEED YOU TO HELP US. CAN YOU HEAR ME REBECCA? I NEED YOU TO ANSWER ME IF YOU CAN HEAR ME?”
“I can hear you,” I choked out in a small voice.
“GOOD, I NEED YOU TO TRY AND BACK AWAY FROM THE DOOR AS MUCH AS YOU CAN OK? WE HAVE TO USE SOME TOOLS TO GET YOU OUT OF YOUR CAR AND I AM GOING TO NEED FOR YOU TO BACK AWAY FROM HERE AS FAR AS YOU CAN AND NOT MOVE. DO YOU UNDERSTAND,” someone screamed from the outside.
“Yes. I understand, but I’m pinned. The steering wheel is on my knees and the ceiling is almost touching my face. I hit my head REALLY hard off the side of the car when I rolled. I think I rolled 4 or 5 times. I am not really sure. I can’t move very much.”
“IT IS OK REBECCA, MOVE AS MUCH AS YOU CAN, BUT STAY VERY, VERY STILL. WE ARE GOING TO BE RUNNING SAWS AND IT IS GOING TO GET REALLY LOUD DON’T MOVE. OK? PROMISE ME YOU WON’T MOVE. I PROMISE YOU WE WON’T HURT YOU. DO YOU TRUST ME TO GET YOU OUT OF THERE?”
“Yes. Can you please just get me out of here? I’m cold, and I am very tired. I would like to sleep,” I said.
“I CAN’T LET YOU DO THAT REBECCA. I NEED YOU TO STAY AWAKE FOR ME. CAN YOU DO THAT FOR ME REBECCA?”
“I can try,” I choked out.
“WE ARE GOING TO GET STARTED NOW. ARE YOU READY?”
“I think so,” I said in a tiny voice.
The saws started up and started cutting metal just above my head and I screamed out. I remember pulling back into the seat as far as it would let me and looking out the crack in the window to see EMT’s and firefighters all around my car.
The saw cut harder and louder and I cried harder. Then I started to scream and I just couldn’t get myself to stop. Instantly they knew something was wrong, and the motor on the saw went dead.
I was still crying hysterically when one of the EMT’s leaned down into the small space that used to be the window and reached in to grab my hand.
“Rebecca, you’re pinned in there pretty good. I know it is scary, and I know that not being able to see what is happening around you is terrifying. What if we use a different tool to get you out of there? Do you think that we could try that? Would that be alright,” he asked.
I looked at him and said, “My head hurts and I’m really tired. So as long as you can make it so I can just get out of here, I think that would be alright.”
He told me to look away and that he would call my name when it was time to open my eyes again, BUT not to go to sleep.
So I did what he told me, and closed my eyes and waited.
I would find out later on from my Momma’ that THAT tool that they used to get me out of my car that day was the Jaws of Life.
Things happened real fast after they were able to peel away the car like a tin can.
I got put in a neck brace and loaded onto a stretcher before getting hauled away in the ambulance. They cut my shirt off of me, asked me all the same questions Ray had asked me, and even though all I wanted to do was sleep they kept poking and prodding at me to make sure I couldn’t.
We arrived at the hospital to find Momma’ and Dad already on site, I would find out later on that they were there almost 2 hours before I was.
Momma’ has often said it was the longest two hours of her entire life. Not knowing whether I was alive or dead, all they would tell her and Dad was that there were complications and that The Jaws of Life were involved in the extraction process.
At the hospital, I would learn that I was a survivor, one of the lucky ones, blessed if you will.
No broken bones, and minimal injuries. One of which one was a head injury that caused what they called at the time, “Minor Swelling on the brain.”
The doctor assured my parents it would go down and not cause too many complications long term, AND then I got 226 stitches.
Now don’t get me wrong when I tell you the first 200 stitches weren’t too bad. In hindsight they really weren’t, they numbed me for most of them, or I was numb enough I couldn’t feel them. Either way, the first 200 didn’t hurt quite as bad as the last 26.
Now it had been VERY few times in my life that I had seen my Dad get emotional. THAT day was one of the few. They hadn’t told me until RIGHT at that moment that the LAST 26 stitches I was about to get were going to stitch my right ear back on.
A shard of glass had cut it clean off except for one piece and it was left hanging. The only thing that saved it was that my hair was long and was tucked up in it so it didn’t move. Since everything else hurt so bad at the time I must have MISSED that my ear was just chilling out about ready to fall off.
Now at 16 years old, after what was possibly the WORST day of my life, I get this BOMB dropped on me. However, the doctor assured me that he was one of the BEST in the city and that no one would even be able to tell by the time that he was done.
There was a catch though.
He couldn’t numb cartilage. So I was going to feel EVERY single stitch, and there was going to be A LOT if it was going to go back on correctly. He gave me the choice to proceed or to cut the rest of it off right then and there and live the rest of my life without part of my ear.
Momma’ cried out, “Absolutely not! You FIX my Baby RIGHT now!”
I looked from her to the doctor and agreed. Right then my Dad stepped around my Momma’ and reached out for my hand. I took a deep breath as the doctor counted down, looked up at my Dad who gritted his teeth together and said through them, “Squeeze as hard as you have to Becky Dawn” as the doctor stuck the needle through the cartilage in my ear.
I didn’t just cry out in pain, I SCREAMED out in pain. The kind that shakes your entire body all the way right down to your spine and back again. I squeezed onto my Dad until I was sure I would break him. As the doctor continued I could feel my own tiny frame shake under each swoop of the needle, I looked up at my Dad to see his eyes well up with tears.
Behind him Momma’ was crying, her heart was aching, I could feel it from where I was laying. The tears kept coming as the doctor finished and I let out a sigh as he said, “All finished kiddo’, you did awesome.”
He finished tying up and was removing his gloves when he looked up at Dad. “That is one tough kid you got there. I have had grown men cash in long before we are able to finish. She’s got some grit that one. Hopefully, it will take like it should and will heal up nicely. Only time will tell, but I think we caught it in time.”
You see, apparently, we were going out on a limb by even sewing it back on, they weren’t sure if it was already dead or not.
Great! Precisely what EVERY 16-year-old girl wants to hear, “Hey you are still beautiful and all just make sure you keep your one ear covered because it was severed off in the car accident.”
Luckily it didn’t happen that way & as God would have it the doctor sewed it up pretty well and the part that was cut off healed up nicely. Even if you are standing next to me you can barely tell!
After we left the hospital I asked Momma’ and Dad if I could see my car. I will never know to this day what made me want to see it that afternoon but seeing the vehicle that literally saved your life crushed to bits isn’t anything I recommend to anyone.
Dad and the man from the yard were standing talking. I remember overhearing him say, “She is one lucky little lady. We honestly didn’t think ANYONE survived that wreckage.” Witnesses to the accident told the tow truck driver that I had rolled end over end 3 times, and side over side 3 times. 6 rolls in total barely missing an electric pole and wrapping my car in barb wire fencing and fence posts. It was WHY they had such a hard time getting me out of it. I looked back over my shoulder at him and gave him a small smile before continuing over to my car.
There wasn’t much left. Honestly didn’t even look like my car anymore. No windows just crumpled metal and broken plastic everywhere. The door was cut off and sitting next to my car. I immediately started shaking remembering the saws cutting the metal above my head.
Momma’ must have known I was shaken because she came and wrapped her arm around me and with tears in her eyes said, “Lets get on home and get you laid down to rest huh,” She had ended it in a question, but I knew that she was full on directing me to get my hind-end back to the pick-up and head for home.
It was a quiet ride back to the farm. No one said much of anything.
I think after seeing the wreckage Momma’ and Dad were just glad that I was alive.
Wasn’t much that could be done after that anyway, so we got home and settled in. Momma’ pulled out the pull-out couch in the living room and she and Dad took shifts watching me and giving me medicine.
I had lots of visitors in the following days, but it was the days following the accident that things took a turn for the worst.
You see I woke up one morning after the accident and things were a little fuzzy.
Visitors would come. I would recognize their faces. Momma’ would talk with them and I would read the cards and see their names, but I didn’t know them.
It stayed that way for quite a while actually. Even after I went back to school, walking the halls of Brimley High School took some maneuvering.
People sort of flocked to me after the accident and the ones that were in classes with me walked with me to class.
Teachers let me sit where ever I wanted since I was busted all to bits and since I couldn’t remember much of anything anyway it made it a heck of a lot easier on me.
That year couldn’t have ended soon enough.
It was by far the most frustrating for me in my High School career.
I walked the halls with all the kids I had grown up with my entire life and every single one of them were now complete strangers to me.
I couldn’t remember any of them, their names, or their stories. Their places in my life, or why they were important to me.
I finished out that school year with nothing but relief that the summer had come and I didn’t really have to try to figure it out anymore until Fall came back around.
Momma’ would ask me every morning if things were getting clearer. For a while, I would tell her no and I think the heartache on her face is the reason I stopped even giving her an answer. I would just tell her to, “Leave me alone Momma’, I’m fine.”
The reality was that I wasn’t fine.
I honestly didn’t even know who I really was, or what was going on in my life. It took going back through my journal to LEARN who I was, and that wasn’t anything I was prepared for.
Not only did I not know or remember who I was, now I was reliving losing my best friends, my sister moving, my 1st boyfriend & all his awesome mistakes, and every single feeling I had felt from the time I had started my journal to the time I finished reading it.
It took grabbing a yearbook to put faces to names and finally triggering memories by doing so. It wasn’t long after Momma’ must have just realized that I wasn’t talking a lot, or that I stopped taking calls, whatever the case was she sure started talking A LOT more.
She would tell stories…..a ton of them…
A lot of times I would say, “I remember that!” and she would skip on to another year. She eventually narrowed down that I lost 3 to 4 years before my car accident happened worth of memories. Which at the time wasn’t such a bad thing considering the crazy amount of hurt that came along with those memories.
I wish I could describe to you what it feels like to be stuck. To be lost. To feel completely ALONE. To stand in front of someone who is talking to you with such love and admiration and NOT have a clue who they are, but I can’t.
I don’t have the words. I won’t ever have the words.
It is something I don’t EVER wish on anyone, because when it finally does come back, it does so with a vengeance! Reliving & Relearning who you are isn’t anything ANYONE should have to live through!
It has been 20 years, but there are some days it still feels as if it were only yesterday.
The following Summer after my car accident I would become pregnant with Mickayla, but that is an entirely different subject for another time.
Shortly after her arrival since my Momma' wouldn’t do it for me at 16 I got my very first tattoo.
A lot of you ask me how many I have. I honestly don’t remember anymore.
I lost count awhile back, and I really am ok with that.
You see I started telling my story one tattoo at a time on my skin. My story. That way if there ever came a moment, a time, when I was to wake with any uncertainty, I WOULD KNOW.
I didn’t get them for anyone but myself. I got them as reminders. JUST. IN. CASE.
From my butterflies to the flowers representing my grandmothers, to the one on the nape of my neck that I got with my cousin Lacey, to my Sagittarius symbol on my hand, to my Uberlebender on my other.
They tell my story, vividly, and in a way that even if the rest of the world has forgotten, I. WOULD. NOT.
I STILL remember things to this very day when I see people.
Seeing someone I haven’t seen in a really long time triggers memories I forgot I even had.
My memory is sharp as a tack nowadays, but it wasn’t always this way, and I won’t soon forget what it was like to walk through almost a year of my life uncertain if I even belonged.
Scary how one car ride to my work study changed my entire life forever.
It only takes a split second.
It was a drunk driver. He was driving a large van hauling a trailer with snowmobiles and he crossed the centerline coming around the curve on Baker Side Road that morning.
He was late, he was going too fast, and he had been drinking.
He almost took my life from me that morning, but God had other plans.
I still process A LOT these days. More so than I used to. Especially now since I have a child back in the halls of BHS.
So, if you see me with my brow furrowed chances are I’m reflecting on a memory that made its way back to me from the memory bank.
Don’t be alarmed though, I forgive A LOT faster these days than I did back then.
After all, life is too short to stay mad at the things that you just can’t control.
So today my message is clearly this: You are going to get to where you are going when you are meant to get there. You just truly need to believe in yourself and in the process, because trying to do things your own way is only going to end up a mess in the long run.
We may not know the plans that the Good Lord has for us, but if we TRUST that he has GOT this. He will lead us to where we are supposed to be headed.
I can’t promise you much, but I can certainly promise you that.
Now in more recent events, I went on to finish my Firefighter I & II.
To say that the events in my entire life leading up to me taking the class were the influence behind taking it in the first place is an understatement.
I learned quickly that first winter after finishing the class just HOW fast things can change when I got the phone call from my Baby Girl that she had been in an accident.
I left my own house faster than I could even put on clothes. I was still dressing as I was driving down the road, and cursing myself for not being better prepared.
As if by some premonition as a mother I was just supposed to sit around and wait at the ready just in case SOMETHING might happen.
It was windier than I had seen it in a long time, and the roads were icy. I was going to get to her, it was only a couple of miles, but at that moment it felt like hundreds. I felt like I was moving at a snail’s pace, and I just couldn’t get to her fast enough.
All I could do at that point was PRAY!
All of the sudden the tones went off on my pager & the alert went off on my phone.
Someone had called it in. Things just went from bad to worse, and as I rounded the corner into Brimley I had to make a CHOICE.
Be a MOM OR be a FIREFIGHTER.
All I could do was pray some more as I topped the hill by the train, and as I looked and saw the doors to the fire hall open and guys running to bunker up, I knew they were about to roll out. I put the hammer down and headed towards my Biggest Little.
I said another silent prayer as my truck skidded to the left going through Brimley on the icy roads as I pulled it back.
“Judas, this weather sucks,” I said aloud as if someone could hear me.
I made a quick call to my Momma’ to make sure she knew that our Baby Girl was in trouble.
They were out of town at the time and I certainly didn’t want them to hear it from someone else. She, in turn, called my brother Jason who started his long trip from 20 Mile towards Brimley.
It didn’t take much when I rounded the corner onto 28. Cars were stopped and ½ our department was already on site with her. As my truck crawled to a stop arms started flying in the air before I could get out of my truck.
I slammed my door against the wind and yelled, “I’m here as her Momma’, NOT a firefighter, let me see her!”
The guys on the department helped me get to the tow truck against the beating of the wind to find my Baby Girl in the center of the seat hysterical, frozen, and extremely shaken up.
I hugged her and loved on her as she cried and assured her that material things can be replaced and that HER LIFE was more valuable than a car.
We learned from a passerby that the wind literally picked Mickayla’s car up as she was driving to breakfast and pushed her into the slush in the middle of the road which in turn caused her to lose control, slam into a snowbank and flip her car.
I looked up into the truck at my oldest child and remembered my own experiences. I quietly Thanked the Good Lord for keeping her safe and out of harm's way.
Had it been Spring or Summer the variables would have been different and her car would have shot right down into the ravine that was near where her car landed.
She was just headed to breakfast. The most normal thing in the world.
I was just headed to work study the morning of my car accident. Most normal thing in my life.
IN A SINGLE INSTANT EVERYTHING CHANGED.
LIFE. CHANGED.
I can look back on my own circumstances and know that at the time that I was praying for peace from the pain and heartache that I was feeling; it came in a very different way.
Though I will never know the REAL reasons behind why I lost parts of my memory or my life for a while, the fact still remains that I did.
Whole parts of my entire life GONE just like that one morning when I woke up, and all it took was one solitary second for it all to change.
I could have walked around numb and lost. I chose not to.
It wasn’t like everything was lost, the school year following the car accident before God gave me Mickayla I went out to Rudyard for a year. I got lost in their world and was perfectly fine with all of that until my memory finally did return. Kind of funny how it all works out I guess.
The one person who has been a constant my ENTIRE life is also one of my best friends, my cousin Lacey. She gave me back parts of my life back then that I needed to piece everything together in order to bridge the gap entirely.
So in a way she saved me, helped bring me back, and ultimately helped give me my memory and my LIFE back.
I won’t ever forget the moment that my memory finally did come back to me:
I was standing on a dock in the Sault right before a thunderstorm came in. A crack of lightning struck somewhere on the other side of the International Bridge to my left, and seconds later thunder boomed to my right down near the Sugar Island Ferry.
It is a moment frozen in time and in my memory that I won’t EVER forget.
Most likely the VERY reason that to this day when a storm rages across our county I’m the first to run and pull up a seat to watch it.
In a way I feel like it was kind of how the storm inside my own body raged on.
Fighting against itself until EVENTUALLY it washed clean and was able to break free so that I could finally return back to the land of the living.
I don’t doubt the Good Lord’s intentions so much anymore.
I mean I used to A LOT growing up, and now as I sit and reflect on different parts of my life, I am AMAZED at the moments that he did show me he was there.
The ones where I was asking for a sign, begging for peace, and literally screaming for answers and had I just SAT down and listened; I would have KNOWN and SEEN that he was there ALL along.
Just as Momma’ always promised he would be.
Now I would like to take the opportunity to apologize to anyone I went to school with. I REALLY wasn’t kidding when I said that my sister and I had been through more stuff from the ages of 9-18 than most people have been through in a lifetime.
A lot of us are closer now than we ever were in High School.
I talk to people a lot more, and oddly enough nothing has changed. I am STILL awkward and strange if more than one person is around and the center of attention is put on me.
I can’t help it; it’s part of my amazing charm! I honestly never thought I would be 36 before I kind of got my life altogether.
On the flip side of that entire coin I also didn’t think I would be laying out my entire life story for everyone on the internet to openly absorb, and yet here we are.
To the ones that hung in there; Thanks!
To the rest of you; I don’t hate on ya’. I still have nothing but love for you!
To all of you I want to ask you this:
What if you woke up one morning and the last 4 years of your entire life was gone? Could you knowingly walk around people quietly trying to find yourself?? All the while stay trapped inside a body you don’t recognize in the hopes that ONE day something will make sense?
WHAT WOULD YOU DO?
It is honestly something I wish on NO ONE. EVER.
All my Momma’ would tell me during those times is the one thing she has repeated over and over through the years – “In God’s Time Rebecca, In God’s Time.”
You see NO MATTER what Momma’ believed. ALWAYS.
It is a trait that I am learning to acquire in my older years. Patience.
It has never, ever been my strong suit, but I am learning more and more to be patient and TRUST the process.
So after all this time that is my lesson to each of you today. No matter what you are battling, no matter what is happening, have faith, have patience, and TRUST the process.
If I can go through an entire year of my life completely blind and still survive; SO CAN YOU!
YOU GOT THIS! I PROMISE!
~Ecclesiastes 7:8 – The end of something is better than its beginning. Patience is better than pride.~
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Dear Perfectly Put-Together Momma',
I wanted to take a moment to fill you in on a few things. Even though I know that you may NEVER see this beautifully written letter to you, I wanted to make sure it was out there just in case some day you are scrolling through Facebook and it crosses your feed you KNOW just how I feel about you.
Now I realize that our brief encounter lasted all of probably 20 seconds, and you are probably thinking that I am about to judge you the way that you judged me as you peered over your Prada glasses at me and into my cart. (Nice choice of eyewear, by the way, they really bring out your brown eyes.) However, that isn’t my style and since I won’t judge you for being perfectly put-together while shopping I did want to take a minute to explain why I was not.
It is simple.
I am NEVER put-together. Ever.
Yep, you saw me in sweatpants, a tank top, with wet hair like I had just come from the gym. Believe me, I hadn’t. I was, however, running a marathon through Wal-Mart like an episode of Super Market Sweep because I LITERALLY had 22.5 minutes, yes PRECISELY that time frame to SHOP, pick up prescriptions, check out, get home, unpack it all, change, get ready, make sure my Middle Little had ALL his football gear and BE in another town for Noon for his football game.
You guessed it, I am a single Momma’ Bear.
No, I didn’t ask for this role, but as luck would have it this is how the cards were dealt and I’ve embraced my duties with not only grace but a certain amount of style as well. Hence the Tank Top and Sweatpants, I like to blame that on the “Dad” side of my “put together” days.
I couldn’t help but notice that you scanned my cart as we passed one another in the aisle. If I had the time I might have done the same to yours, but since I didn’t well what you were buying will forever be a mystery to me. If you hadn’t guessed I have two boys, hence all the amazing snacks in my cart.
Believe me, those Oreo’s aren’t for me. They were a special request from my 5-year-old the minute that Halloween stuff started rolling out on the shelves. Personally, I am not an Oreo person, more of a windmill cookie lady myself.
Regardless, my cart full of awesome Single Mom Stuff probably didn’t compare to your family size cart full of coolness and guess what; THAT IS OK! We parent different, and not a single one of us is the same. Not even a little bit…
Yeah, I sometimes run into Wal-Mart like the world is on fire and shop like my life depends on it, because as a single mother, well sometimes it does. Every single moment counts in my world. Even the smallest of them.
Some days I have it together, most days I don’t.
W hat I can tell you is this: I have 3 Littles. An 18-year-old daughter who is learning to spread her wings and fly. Watching her leave the nest, and CONTINUALLY grow into the woman that God has intended for her to become is scary, BUT I trust the process. Then I have two little men and never once have they EVER left my house without knowing that they were LOVED, APPRECIATED, and THAT WHEN THEY GROW UP JUST LIKE THEIR BIG SISTER HAS THAT THEY CAN BE ANYTHING THAT THEY WANT TO BE IN THIS WHOLE ENTIRE WORLD AS LONG AS THEY BELIEVE AND WORK HARD!
I may not have it all together ALL the time, but I do have it together ENOUGH of the time & that is OK with me! My hair might be a mess, there is most likely SOMETHING on my shirt, LORD knows I’m going to trip over my own feet at least twice during the day because it is just what I do, BUT I’m good with all of that. I've learned to embrace the hot mess that the Good Lord has made me! :)
However, I just wanted to take a moment to appreciate YOU and to let YOU know, that I’m PROUD of YOU. You got it all together and were perfectly put together before you left your house. Do I wish I was you? Nah. I am pretty content with my crazy, chaotic, sometimes upside down life. I honestly wouldn’t have it any other way!
It wouldn’t be a day in our lives if someone didn’t spill something as we were headed out the door, the cat didn’t escape out the front door as we were trying to leave, or if someone didn’t forget their glasses on the bathroom sink and remembered AS we were pulling into the school.
It is just kind of who we are around here.
I know it sounds chaotic, probably because some days it just might be. It is just the joys of Single Parenting children. You make do with what you have, hope for the best, and ride out the storm on a surfboard for the rest of it. If you don’t laugh you will cry.
Speaking of, that roll of cookie dough you saw in my cart was to replace the one I ate the other morning while I sat cross-legged in my bathroom. Yeah, I had to take a 10-minute breather and recenter myself after my 5-year old told me I was the “Worst Mother Ever and he was moving to a new house” all because he didn’t like THAT blue “Ambercrombie” shirt he wanted the OTHER blue one.
Believe me, when I tell you the child is FAR from spoiled, he just had a REALLY bad case of the MONDAY'S going on! (Insert Eye Roll)
So I had 10 minutes to myself in the bathroom with tears, cookie dough, a spoon and a coming to Jesus before school started.
Hey, believe me, Sister Girl – It happens.
So Kudos to you for having it all together – I JUST WANTED TO LET YOU KNOW THAT I NOTICED YOU LOOKING ALL FABULOUS!
In a world where the rest of the population is running around judging one another and being hateful, I thought I would be the one in a million to do the opposite!
You are looking good Sister Girl – You are looking Good, and SOMEONE noticed!
Oh! The smile I gave you as we passed by, well that was genuine! I hoped it brightened your day as much as it did mine to share it with you!
Much Love to you Well Put-Together Momma’! Much Love!
From a Momma’ that will most likely NEVER EVA' have it all togetha’!
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“MOM! MOOOOOOM!” yelled Jordan from the kitchen.
I was bent over the sink washing my face, I glanced down as 6:50 am flashed back at me from my watch.
“MOM! MOM! CAN YOU EVEN HEAR ME? YOU NEED TO GET IN HERE! THIS IS JUST RIDICULOUS! I CAN’T EVEN RIGHT NOW!” echoed down the hallway to the bathroom.
I look at myself in the mirror and say, “Alright God, give me strength, its Wednesday, but apparently we are having a case of the Mondays around here!”
I let out a sigh as I left the bathroom and headed down the hallway.
Jordan met me at the end of the hallway with a dishtowel and started talking a mile a minute.
“You are NOT going to believe what Morgan just did,” as he points under the kitchen table.
I glanced around him to find cereal and milk ALL over the table, the chair, the floor, the rug, and anything that was in its path as it apparently Swan Dived off of the kitchen table.
I take a deep breath in and get down to business. I asked Jordan to get me some paper towel and the anti-bacterial wipes.
He is still going on in the background. “I just can’t even. Do you know what I still have to do before I get on the bus Mom?”
Mind you he is saying this to me as I am crawling around under the table IN my nightgown picking up cereal and not a second closer to getting ready for work myself.
I smile as a tiny little body wrapped in a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Blanket slowly crouches down under the table.
The only thing you can see poking out from the blanket is his face as Morgan whispers, “I don’t know what all the ruckus is about, it’s just spilled milk Mom.”
I smile and wink at him as Jordan is still roaming about in the kitchen gathering his track gear, lunch, back pack for school, and STILL carrying on.
When he said, “There is just NO reason for this shenanagins, I just don’t have TIME for this Mom!”
There it was, that phrase again. I couldn’t even count the amount of times I had heard it in the past several weeks. I shot up so fast I ALMOST hit my head on the bottom side of the table!
I backed myself out from under the table, turned to Jordan and said, “Son it is just spilled milk, and there is no reason to be crying over a little bit of spilled milk! You can’t let a tiny accident set the precedent for your entire day! All it is going to do is ruin how you feel for the rest of the day! It is OK! Look it is only 7:04 am, it is cleaned up, you will most certainly make the bus, and I will most certainly make it to work. Its fine! Deep breath, we got this!”
I hugged him, he took a deep breath, and in an instant all the anxiety from what had just happened was gone from both of my boys faces.
Accidents happen, but letting them leave this house and feel like they needed to take it with them for the rest of the day was NOT something that I was about to allow.
The whole ordeal got me thinking though. Mostly what Jordan said about “TIME”, it wasn’t the first time that word had come up lately, though the last time it was used it was in a VERY different context.
Time.
Sometimes you hear it used in the context, “Remember the time?”
Most times though, it is usually used in one of the following ways, There is never enough time. I don’t have time for this. It just isn’t the right time. I wish there was more time. I just ran out of time. I wish I could go back in time.
Rarely do we ever hear I had more than ENOUGH time, and this leads us to today’s blog; which is just as much about time as it is ANYTHING else.
Why we should never waste a single solitary moment, and we should always be ever so gracious for the ones that we did get to experience when we had the chance to.
My family held strong to our faith in the months following the fire. We started picking up what pieces we could find in the rubble that were somewhat recognizable and once we were done sifting through the rest, it got filled in and pushed over so that a new beginning could start on the very same land where tragedy had struck the year before.
Momma’ continued to heal, Jason and I continued on with school, Dad went back to work and life started to have a somewhat normal feel to it again. Dad decided that once the fire happened he didn’t want to be so far from home anymore. Being on the road and away from us was to much for him to bare, so he talked with his bosses and changed his route so that he could be home every night.
It was quite an adjustment for all of us, for anyone that wasn’t close to our family, most people didn’t even know Jason and I had a Dad. There weren’t many sporting events that he was able to make when Parents Night rolled around, and even though he was always announced as our Dad, and Momma’ as our Momma’, it was usually only her accepting the flowers and hugs in front of the crowds of people in the Brimley gymnasiums.
Life changing took some adjusting for Dad too. He was used to being up all night and being on the road. Sleep wasn’t something that came easy now that he was home every night. It was a hard habit to break after all those years. Jason and I had to honestly learn what it was like to have another person living in the house again full time. I was a teenager at this point, so shrugging my shoulders came as a more natural response to what was happening in my life and in my house than anything.
Looking back it still does, and I can still remember the anxiety of what it was like to try and learn an entirely different routine after almost 14 years of doing it a certain way. I was, and still am a creature of habit, giving up routine wasn’t something that was easy for me. We eventually learned to adjust, and in time our schedules all streamlined one another’s.
We went from having Dad on the road, to having Dad home, Mom home, and dinner as a family every night as long as there wasn’t an away game or a practice hadn’t run late. There were very few nights that we all didn’t watch the news together, and then whatever TV programming came on shortly after. Looking back, those are the memories I cherish with my parents the most. Just BEING with them when I could have been anywhere else in the world.
Weekends were usually always spent on the farm. Dad made busy work one way or another, and Momma’ once she was feeling well enough didn’t miss the opportunity to be by his side. I can smile now that I look back because I can only imagine how much she must have missed him all those times he was gone on the road working. How much she must have literally just cherished those small moments, even if it was just sorting nails, sitting in the garage next to the man that she adored.
Sundays were dedicated to church. It had not always been that way. Even though Papaw was who he was, Momma’ had fallen from Grace as we sometimes do and just had not found her place in a church up here.
Pastor Kelly Carlson and his wife Joy and their sweet family changed all that.
Momma’ had heard about him and decided it was time to get our hind-ends into that church to see what all the fuss was about. It only took one sermon, and we didn’t miss a Sunday after that. Shortly after we were signed up for Awana, then started going to Wednesday services, and then the early morning and evening Sunday services.
It was at a church function where I met Diana and her family. It was hard not to notice someone like her. Not only was she beautiful, her laugh was infectious, and you just FELT so completely grateful to be in her presence. She was a beautiful soul, good to the core, and I just don’t believe God thought to program her any other way.
She approached our table at a church brunch to give me a friendship bracelet she had made when she had heard the story of our house burning.
Even though an entire community had come together the year prior to assure our family had everything we could ever need, it would soon become the item I cherished the absolute most.
We were fast friends after that. Even though we went to different schools, we would write letters back and forth to one another all week long to give to the other at the next church night. Diana was truly my best friend on this planet.
It had only been 5 years since I had lost Grandpa Harm, so getting close to anyone was really a struggle for me. Somehow Diana managed to not only get close, but STAY close as time went on. There wasn’t a church function we ever missed, and most weekends were spent with her and her family at their home in Kincheloe.
For the first time in a lot of years life was good for me.
Time passed and we started growing up. Her and her family didn’t come to church as often as they once used to, and things just started to change. Her and I remained close, but back in the day of no Facebook and No Cell Phones it wasn’t an easy feat.
We would see one another as much as possible, write when we couldn’t, and even though life moved forward for both of us; well we were still the very best of friends.
God knew what was coming; so in the meantime he knew that I was going to need someone that would strong enough to hold on to me when I started slipping away. So one morning in the Brimley High School bathroom I met the sassified 13 year old version of the young woman I now call my sister – Misty Dawn Hanchera.
Now back then if you were lucky enough to know us both; well you should certainly remember that getting close to my sister was sort of like hugging a cactus. Rough around the edges, tough as nails, and if you rubbed her the wrong way she was gonna’ bite you back.
She ain’t so hard these days, my brother-in-law somehow softened her rough edges, and also convinced her to stop biting on people. How he managed it I won’t ever know; and I guarantee he won’t ever tell. Those two have a sense of magic about them when they are together; the kind that gives me hope & keeps me believing that someday God will finish preparing the man I am supposed to be with.
Until then I will keep watching the two of them, and people like my Momma’ and Dad and know that IT DOES EXIST; it is just going to take some time to narrow it down.
When I met my sister for the first time it wasn’t all fancy, I mean after all we were in a bathroom. I had just finished washing my hands when she exited her stall. She hadn’t realized anyone was in there and when she looked at me and realized I was there she immediately said, “I ain’t crying over no boy if that is what you think.”
I remember standing there scared to death; she was known as an “Ass Kicker” back in the day. You just didn’t cross her and you certainly didn’t just TALK to her. If I hadn’t already gone to the bathroom I might have when she started talking to me.
I just looked at her wide eyed and stood there frozen before I said, “I never thought that.”
She was wetting a paper towel and trying to pull herself back together. I was admiring how long her hair was when she asked, “ Hey your Grandma is the secretary of the school right? You are Beckie.” I shook my head yes at her while she carried on, “Yeah people talk. Almost TOOO much around here. I’m Misty. Kind of new here, kind of not.”
That was it. She became my best friend right then and there. We never missed lunch together or any chance to hang out. Even though she was a year younger than me we found time to ALWAYS be together. We were connected at the hip, spent countless HOURS on the phone gossiping about boys, and ultimately planned our entire lives out; right down to the babies we would have & how our weddings would be.
If we had known then…..
She started spending entire weekends with us and that meant she got to come to church with us. Misty wasn’t the type to just let ANYONE in or close to her, but Diana had that way about her and in the end we all became very close. None of us could have ever predicted how our futures would play out the last day we all attended church together.
One morning Misty came to school with bruises on her body, and that very fact would change all of our lives as we knew it.
It was in the very same bathroom where we had first met that I found her on the floor in the handicapped stall more fragile than I had ever seen anyone in my entire life.
It is an image that to this day I still can’t erase from my memory.
When she hadn’t met me at my locker that morning before class, I went looking for her. Before we had hung up from our conversation the night before I KNEW she was supposed to be in school. I wasn’t prepared for what I was about to find, and no amount of time passed will ever soften the blow of finding my very best friend covered from the neck down in deep purple bruises.
I didn’t care that she was on the floor, I hit my knees on that tile floor to embrace her and tears instantly filled my eyes as she winced out in pain when I squeezed her. I told her to stay put, that I was going to the office to call Momma’.
She cried out for me not to, and told me she didn’t want anyone to know. I promised her it would be OK and that Momma’ and Dad would keep her safe. When I asked her who had done it she just looked up at me from the floor and whispered, “Dawn.”
“Momma’ will make it ok, stay put. I will be back soon I promise,” I said to her as I dashed down the hallway towards the office. Our friends were yelling out to me as I passed, and I said quick hellos and carried on to my destination.
When I hit the office Grandma Barb looked up from her desk, “You are going to be late for class Missy!” she said as I closed the door behind me.
The door to the the Principal’s office was closed, and I peeked around the corner to see if the copy room and Mrs. Claridy’s doors were open before I said, “I need to call Momma’ right now Grandma.”
She raised her eyebrows and looked at me over the top of the rim of her glasses before she said, “Well I am sure she is at work, but it is about time for your Dad to be home,” as she turned the phone around to face me and pushed the button for the outgoing line.
It rang twice before Dad answered, I pulled the phone around the corner and was whispering into the receiver when he finally said, “I can’t hear you. What did you just say?” I looked around the corner to see Grandma leaning across the desk. She was going to find out anyway, so I better just tell her before she heard it from someone else.
The bell started ringing signaling the start of school as I was just finishing telling Dad about Misty. He was quiet for a minute before he said, “Get your things together, tell your Grandmother to sign both of you girls out, and to get your homework for today. I am on my way.”
Now we need to pause so that you understand a few things before we proceed.
My parents, OUR parents LOVE Misty like their own. Her own mother; Dawn, didn’t take good care of her & therefore my Sister was fending for herself and her baby sister at a VERY YOUNG age. I won’t ever forget the look on our Momma’s face when Misty would tell stories at our dinner table.
She didn’t know it back then, or maybe she did, either way some of the things she would tell us, a child should NEVER have to experience. I remember Momma’ and Dad looking across the room at one another and you could literally see both of their hearts breaking for both of those girls as Misty would talk about the drinking, the drugs, and the abuse she encountered from not only Dawn but the multiple men that frequented their home.
It was why she spent SO much time with us during that period of our lives.
One night when we were snuggled up on the pull-out couch watching “An American Tale” Misty exclaimed, “This is pretty cool. Think Momma’ will make us some popcorn?”
Momma’ smiled and went to the kitchen to make popcorn and Misty turned to me and said, “It’s been a REALLY long time since I have felt SAFE on a Friday night.” I even now can close my eyes and see Momma’ in the kitchen stop dead in her tracks as she was trying to keep herself from falling apart.
She finished making the popcorn, brought it over to us, hugged us both and as she kissed both of our foreheads said, “You don’t have anything to worry about here, now you two girls don’t stay up to late ya’ hear?” We both shook our heads yes and Momma’ turned to leave the room, but not before looking back with tears in her eyes as she said, “I love you both more than you will ever know.”
Back then I don’t think we quite got it…..today Misty and I are BOTH Momma’s and I know without a doubt that we finally understand. Today I KNOW that if one of my Littles EVER called me with a 911 for one of their friends, that I would be the FIRST to be on site to make sure that they got whatever help they needed.
Now we can jump back into the rest of our story.
Dad picked us up and when we got home Momma’ was pulling in the drive. She didn’t waste no time bringing us back to our bathroom to inspect the damage that Misty had endured.
With tears streaming down all of our faces Momma’ said, “Enough is enough, this will NEVER happen again. Do you understand me Sweet Girl? You are more precious than rubies baby girl and you do NOT deserve this.”
Misty and I went to lay down in our room as Momma’ and Dad hammered out what was to come in the kitchen. Misty and I didn’t stay in the kitchen, but Momma’ WAS MAD. You see she never raised her voice, didn’t hardly swear, and if she did EITHER of those things there was going to be HELL to pay for whoever made her that way.
Things happened fast after that.
End result, Dawn didn’t hesitate to sign over Misty to my Momma’ and Dad, but she wouldn’t give up Misty’s younger Sister. On their way out the door Dawn said some hateful things to my Momma’ about Misty and Momma’ turned to her and said, “That child may not have grown inside my womb, but she IS MY DAUGHTER. I will ALWAYS be grateful to YOU for helping create her, and I only HOPE that God shows you the light before it is TO LATE and you miss out on her entirely.”
God had a plan.
Misty lived with us until he knew it was time for her to spread her wings elsewhere, but until that time we were connected at the hip. She was IN our world and in a short time became our ENTIRE world!
Life. Was. Good.
Until it wasn’t…….
It was the last day of school that year, a day when EVERYONE is excited to be off of school for the year….and I was excited at first for the year to be over.
The bus ride home meant a water fight and screams of delight as we did so. It meant hugging our friends and dreaming about what Summer would bring. Not a SINGLE one of us except the bus driver vacated that bus without being soaked to the bones. We laughed, we hugged, we experienced our LAST day of school and enjoyed sending it out in TRUE Brimley Bay fashion.
I arrived home to find a message from Joy Carlson on our answering machine. She was asking Momma’ to call her right away that something that happened and she REALLY needed to talk to Momma’. It would be another hour before Momma’ would be home from work. So I went about my business and did dishes, got dinner ready, folded laundry, and waited for Momma’.
When she arrived home the phone was ringing. Joy Carlson was at the other end when I picked up asking for Momma’. I handed Momma’ the phone and as she stood talking with her I could feel her mood change.
Dad came in from the barn, he knew the minute he rounded the corner just from Momma’s voice that something wasn’t right. He looked from me to her, and back again. As Momma’ thanked Joy and hung up the phone she took a sharp breath in.
With tears in her eyes she looked at Dad, “There has been an accident Larry, a BAD ONE.”
Her shoulders dropped as she turned to me.
I knew immediately that my life was about to change; I REMEMBERED that LOOK about her. Momma’ was about to tell me someone had just died.
I braced myself against the island in the kitchen as she started talking, but no amount of preparing was going to prepare me for what she was about to tell me.
“Rebecca, there was an accident today. Jon was driving the car home from school and they cut across the Kallio Road towards Kincheloe. They were going to fast and he lost control of the car. When they left the road they ended up in the Beaver Pond. They tried Rebecca, they did everything they could.”
Tears were streaming down her face as she continued; “Diana, she choked out, Diana was the first to go. They were able to revive Becky but she was put on life support at the hospital. Her parents chose to shut off the machines when they found out there was no longer brain activity.”
I was instantly numb.
I looked from her to my Dad and back again. A sob instantly left my lips and my Dad said, “You shouldn’t have gotten attached.”
Its been over 20 years and I will NEVER forget pushing past him, running through the back door to the deck and hitting my knees at the stairs as a scream left my body that could be heard for miles. To this day I won’t EVER be able to imitate it, but it was scary as hell & still sends shivers down my spine when I think about it.
Momma’ came outside and kneeled down to hug me as I screamed, “WHY?! Why would God do this Momma’?!” in between sobs. She just hugged me tighter and and whispered, “I love you Rebecca Dawn. I love you SO SO SO VERY much,” as she tucked my hair behind my ears, rocked me back and forth like I was a baby as I cried the hardest I had cried in 6 years since I had lost Grandpa Harm.
The days to follow were awful.
Momma’ took to laying with me as I cried myself to sleep every night until Misty returned from visiting her Grandma & Grandpa. Then Misty and I would cry our own selves to sleep listening to Tim McGraw’s “Don’t Take the Girl.”
Both Becky and Diana were GONE.
Their deaths shook most of Chippewa County to the CORE.
The first responders who weren’t prepared for that type of accident NEVER got over not being able to save them. I KNOW THIS BECAUSE Pat was my instructor for my fire class. Imagine sitting there as he SPOKE openly about two of my best friends dying and not being able to save them, while I tried to hold myself together.
Teachers, Friends, Loved Ones, Churches, entire communities were affected by BOTH of their short lives on this earth. It was OBVIOUS come funeral day that in the short time God gave them to us they MADE AN IMPACT, they BOTH made A DIFFERENCE.
It was standing room only at the funeral, so much so that people poured into the balcony, the basement, and some were even left outside.
To this day I can close my eyes and hear the choir singing, “My Girl” as I studied the flowers on my dress between tears and sobs. I watched tears bounce off my folded hands in my lap and immediately remembered the last time I was in a church where folded hands came into play and a loud sob left my tiny frame.
Momma’ leaned in and said, “God had a plan for them Rebecca, they are with the angels now.” It didn’t make it any easier. I didn’t want to hear it. I didn’t even want to believe this was happening, BUT it was.
I knew it was true the minute that Misty leaned her head on my shoulder and reached out for my hand so she could hold me.
She picked her head up just enough to look at me and mouth, “I love you sister!” I just shook my head Yes as tears kept coming and the choir kept singing.
Our Lives were NEVER going to be the same.
Our beautiful Goldilocks had gotten her wings……and it was something that we just weren’t prepared for.
Even now it still shakes me loose.
Misty and I spent a lot of time huddled up in our room after that. We started taking ALL kinds of photos and documenting EVERYTHING. We literally started preparing for the absolute worst, but the reality was we had just lived through it so we knew it was entirely possible.
One morning over pancakes Misty said, “Beck we should get saved. Well I mean we are already saved but maybe we should get baptized ya’ know…..just in case.”
I looked up at Momma’ who had stopped moving entirely at the stove and said, “I think you are right….lets talk to Pastor Carlson and make that happen.”
It wasn’t long after and our names were on the Church Program to be baptized. Diana’s Momma’ was in attendance as Misty and I made our way to the front of the church as Pastor Carlson addressed the church.
I was nervous standing there…..
Watching my baby sister get baptized as she gave her life over to the Lord, I whispered a silent prayer that Diana and Becky were watching…..
Then it was my turn.
I made my way SLOWLY down those steps. I thought of Papaw, of Grandpa (Opa’) Harm, and of Diana and Becky.
About how I had changed my name from Becky with a “y” to Beckie with an “ie” just so we were different.
About how the last time Diana and I were together she asked me if I believed there was a Heaven, and we made a PROMISE that we would MEET up there one day should anything EVER happen to the other…..
As I turned back to see my sister wrapped in a towel smiling at me and shaking her head yes as if to sign to me that it was OK!
I heard God whisper, “Come to me child it is time.” I looked up at Pastor Carlson as he recited scripture, and then at my sister as I heard Diana say, “Hold on tight to her, she was sent to save you Beck. DON’T LET GO no matter WHAT happens! I will see you when you get here!” as Pastor Carlson dunked me in the water.
It was seconds, but it felt like hours as memories flashed through my head of Papaw and our many conversations about coming to God, of Diana running and her golden hair bouncing in the wind as we played, and finally of my sister as I broke through the water and took a deep breath in.
She was waiting for me at the top of the stairs as my life was set to begin.
I had been washed clean and our journey was finally about to start.
We hugged as we stood there soaking wet and cried happy tears for the amazing thing that had just happened to both of our lives.
We KNEW without a doubt in that MOMENT that NO MATTER what happened to us both; we were going to spend an ETERNITY together!
When we turned to face the church and found Momma’ sitting there with tears streaming down her face, WE KNEW LIFE WAS GOOD AGAIN.
Being baptized didn’t ease the blow of losing Diana and Becky, the church could feel the loss, and ultimately their pew stayed empty for a LONG time.
Diana’s Momma’ came sporadically and then not at all when it became to much to bare….
Funny looking back how SO much changed in just one school year, then one summer, and ultimately our lives…..
The following year going back to BHS was horrific. I hated it…..
Standing in the halls listening to everyone talk about their summer and all that happened sickened me.
Didn’t they know two girls lost their lives?
How could life just continue like nothing happened…..Why weren’t people mourning?
It was literally 2 ¾ months ago….how could they forget already???
People who were once my friends now annoyed me entirely. All they cared about was their hair and boys, and in those moments I wanted to punch them in the throat and stuff them in a locker.
I didn’t mind you, but the Good Lord knows I became one angry individual that following school year.
I was annoyed about the simple things people took for granted.
I was pissed over the DUMB drama over half of my class was creating and continued to create.
All I wanted was for everyone to just SHUT UP.
That didn’t happen mind you….only one person really ever got me to talk and that was Bryan Newland.
Over the years he never really gave up making sure to JUST BE THERE, and even now I bet he doesn’t know how grateful I was for that.
I changed OVER NIGHT.
People didn’t get it, and a lot of them couldn’t figure out what even happened.
At that point in my life I certainly wasn’t letting ANYONE in…..and nothing was EVER getting out.
No one gets in, and NOTHING gets out……it was my way of protecting myself after everything I had endured in my short 14+ years on this planet.
Looking back I know how HARD it was to love me back then, but a select few hung in there and held on so tight they made sure that I had NO choice but to move forward.
Losing Diana and Becky was a blow like no other…..
I can’t even describe it to you even now……just know that it leaves HOLES inside your soul that just can’t be filled…..
I’m learning….and I say that because I am STILL learning to this day to TRUST that even though sitting here with tears coming down my cheeks and sobs escaping my body just like they did the DAY it happened that GOD had a plan ALL along……
There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t miss her or Becky.
Or a day that goes by when I don’t wonder all the times I text my sister or Amanda, or Randi or Sami or Snap Chat Lacey that Diana would have LOVED and LAUGHED about the ridiculousness that happens in all of our lives….
I wonder what she would have looked like “Grown Up”
I wonder what her first love would have looked like, and what kind of wedding dress she would have chosen….
You see God took her home before she ever had a Prom or REAL first date….All the things that beautiful soul would experience were stripped away from her…and to say that I stayed angry for a long time after that would be an understatement….
However…he always gives us what we need….and he knew I would need my sister….
MORE THAN EVER….
Even if I was hateful that girl STILL LOVED me…..
When I shut down, she wiggled in.
When I closed doors, she kicked them open.
When I wanted to give up; she reached down and pulled me up.
When I had TOO much; she took what burdens the Lord didn’t so that I could rest easy.
She truly did save me from myself MORE times than I can count.
God gave her to me because he KNEW I was going to need someone STRONG; with grit, who wasn’t AFRAID to fight….who wasn’t afraid to HOLD ON even in the moments when it was ROUGH & TOUGH. So he sent me my sister…..
God Gave Me YOU Misty Dawn…..you will NEVER know just how grateful I am for that VERY fact…..
I can’t walk through the halls of BHS without getting nostalgic as I pass the bathroom where I first met her….
I’m often quiet at events involving my children because my time inside those halls was VERY different from everyone that surrounded me.
Even if they have ALL forgotten; The voices of ghosts long since passed STILL remind me every time I enter those halls.
I am no longer angry….
No longer Sad….
What I do wish is I hadn’t wasted so much time being angry over things I had no control over back then.
That I had embraced God’s Plan, Trusted in him and held tight to my sister before she ever felt like she needed to leave us to explore life……
Then again…I wouldn’t have my nieces, my nephew, and a brother-in-law who I adore….so not all is lost..
God gave her back to us when he knew her presence was necessary! Luckily this time she hasn’t left since….
If we had known then what we know now…..
My advice to all of you:
Life. Is. SO. Short.
My sister and I and every single person that was close to Diana and Becky can tell you of such things…..
Do. Not. Waste. A. Single. Moment.
Chase after your dreams & remember that it is NEVER to late to start over!
We get ONE shot. One…..and I will be damned if I leave this earth without leaving an impression on SOMEONE!
Even if it is only my Littles….so be it….
BE THE CHANGE YOU WISH TO SEE IN THE WORLD.
No matter HOW MUCH time you have left on this beautiful earth; Make the ABSOLUTE BEST of it!
I won’t ever wish that I could go back because I KNOW I will see both girls again someday. The sting of losing them is STILL just as raw today, BUT I FINALLY understand that God’s purpose had SO much MORE to do with TRUSTING in him than it did me making my OWN plan….
That has NEVER worked out so well for me. (Insert an eye roll please)
What I can tell you; don’t waste what time is given to you.
You don’t ever want to look back and say; “I wish I had used the time that was given to me in a better way.”
So just as the beginning of this blog stated; “I just don’t have TIME for this.”
Sit back for a moment and think about that statement. If you have ever NOT had enough time, or you felt like the timing just wasn’t right, maybe it wasn’t ABOUT YOU at all.
Maybe it was about what GOD had planned for your life at that time period. Maybe he planned to take away certain things so that more important, BETTER things could make their way to you in the TIME that HE CHOSE for you.
You see….I have learned OVER and OVER again the HARD way that HIS TIMING…..HIS PLAN….and HIS way is ALWAYS going to prevail NO MATTER HOW HARD I fight against it….
As my mother ALWAYS says; “In God’s Time Rebecca, In God’s Time.”
Trust Him; and he will NOT forsake you.
Psalm 27:14 “Wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord!”
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I want to take a minute to talk to you about one of my FAVORITE places in the whole entire world. If you are lucky enough to know and frequent this hidden away gem, this blog won’t come as a surprise to you.
For those of you that haven’t had the opportunity to make the trip to discover this amazing, sometimes undiscovered jewel, well you will now be planning your next adventure West to include a stop at the formerly named Little Falls Inn/Red Flannel Saloon which is now The Inn Gastropub & Smokehouse.
Proprietor & Head Chef, Josh Winkler wears almost as many hats, if not more than I do on a daily basis. It is evident when you cross the threshold into what he has often deemed as his “Labor of Love,” that it is JUST THAT! Whether you find him in the kitchen making his beautiful creations or you catch him behind the bar serving drinks; you are SURE to instantly adore his ability to make you feel RIGHT at home!
Whether you make the trip to Paradise for the natural charm that Josh managed to leave intact from the days when his Grandparents owned the bar, the delicious food Josh creates that manages to send an explosion across your palate like no other, or you're just there for the small town AMAZING atmosphere he and his staff create daily; you are certain to find SOMETHING that will have you becoming a frequent customer for years to come.
I personally haven’t found a single thing on Josh’s creatively designed menu that doesn’t send me into a delicious food coma. Even as I sit at the water’s edge writing this I am dreaming of his delicious creations and homemade ketchup. If you walk out of his place hungry; well that is your own fault because there is something for even the PICKIEST of eaters on his carefully crafted menu.
When his Mom decided to make the phone call to inform him that his Grandparents were ready to retire; she had a very different future in mind for Josh. When he finally made his way back to Paradise, after traveling to Florida and then to Petoskey as he mastered his trade, it was instantly apparent what his future would hold.
Josh’s love of food & belief that the ingredients should be at the peak of freshness makes your dining experience with him and his staff unlike ANY other in the Upper Peninsula. He has expanded both his spirits and locally crafted beer selection to help pairing a much needed adult beverage with your dining experience easier than ever.
Speaking of adult beverages, if you decide that the trip out there is worth a stay overnight; Josh’s parents own the gorgeous Magnuson Grand Hotel Lakefront only a Hop, Skip, and a Jump behind Josh’s place. It is not uncommon to find his mother smiling as she greets visitors from behind the front desk in the lobby.
It is certainly a family affair!
Make NO mistake about their friendly smiles, beautifully decorated businesses and ridiculously superb attention to detail(s). Their #1 priority is making sure their customers not only enjoy their stay while they are there, but that they WANT to come back again & again for years to come.
Recently we made the trip out to see a band that Josh was giving RAVE reviews about on his Facebook Page. Folks, we were NOT disappointed with what we encountered when we arrived. Josh's ability to bring amazing talent to the Yoop came as NO surprise to us!
The Gasoline Gypsies from Port Huron, MI were in FULL swing when we snuck in to try to find a seat in what was an undeniably packed house. See the video below to INSTANTLY fall in love with their amazing Rock & Roll meets Bluegrass vibe.
The 4 man band has an AMAZING, all original set that will leave you dancing in your seat. If you’re not dancing in your seat; it will leave you picking your jaw up off the floor as you watch Caleb play sweet guitar rifts in such a way that you KNOW without a doubt that God gifted him with that ability by his own hand.
The fact that Caleb plays guitar in my signature teal color certainly didn’t hurt either.
To say that the beautiful drive out there is worth it is an understatement, and if you haven’t experienced all that Josh and his family have to offer tucked away off the main stretch as you travel through Paradise; well you are truly missing out.
If you are already planning your next trip to include a stop at Josh’s place; make sure you get there in enough time to enjoy dinner before the kitchen shuts down and the night life starts.
I GUARANTEE YOU WILL NOT BE DISAPPOINTED!
You all know me; I don’t leave much to the imagination when it comes to describing anything. However, that is part of Josh’s charm with not only his signature menu but also his weekly specials.
He leaves EVERYTHING to the imagination, leaves you literally craving more, and makes sure to dream up such amazing creations that you leave NOTHING left on your plate!
(Blackened Hot-Smoked Lake Trout with Cheesy Grits, Ruby Greens, Julienne of Quick-Pickled Zucchini and Red Onion, Fresh Dill.)
So saddle up Loves & point yourself and your next adventure West towards Paradise. It won’t hurt to tell anyone who asks that you are on your way to “Get Some!” as it is Josh’s well known saying around those parts.
Just do me a favor when you arrive, be patient as he is literally one of the most sought after people in the Paradise area. Which also means he stays CRAZY BUSY! So be sure to sit back and enjoy all that Josh and his Staff have to offer, it truly is a one of a kind experience you won't find ANYWHERE ELSE!
If you do get the chance to track him down, tell him I sent you! I promise you will leave there with a full belly & with a NEW life long friend!
Have an AMAZING day Loves!
Much Love & Many Blessings,
Rebecca
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“I guess it really all started with my Opa and my Oma,” He said.
I sat straight up in my chair. It was a good thing that I was in mid-chew and not mid-swallow when he said that or I might have choked on my food. I could not believe what I was hearing. It had been such a LONG time since I had heard ANYONE say Opa.
He continued talking about his family as I sat down my fork. I smiled across the table at him wondering if he noticed my entire mood had changed. He was still chattering about his brothers & sisters and his childhood home before I could get my shoulders to relax and my heartbeat to return to a normal pace.
“Slaap goed Opa” (Sleep Well Grandpa) I said to myself under my breath remembering vividly the last time I had said those words. It was February 1990, and my very first experience in learning to let someone you love go. Not something I wanted to be reliving at that moment, so instead I choked back tears and candidly asked, “So your family is Dutch?”
He started off on another subject about how his family got its roots, and I sat back in my chair and saved my Opa story for a day like today. He never asked how I made the connection, and I never let on until much later that my own family had Dutch roots of our own.
I never told him at all actually, it would be my Momma' that would bring up our Dutch roots as we sat visiting with her and my Dad in their living room one night. As she spoke I cracked a small smile and looked away from her to blink back tears. I think she knew in that moment that it was one discussion we had never had.
If you have been following my blogs since the beginning you might remember me mentioning my Momma’ coming to the U.P. to work on a farm with one of her friends. That friend’s name was Lena, who just so happened to have a brother named Calvin, and wouldn’t you know it; he just happened to be best friends with my Dad. All of them are still close to this day, but back then the one thing they ALL had in common was a feisty old Dutchman named Harm Veldt.
Now back in those days the old farm used to reside over on S Piche Road, which isn’t too far from where my Dad and his brothers grew up. So it really is no wonder my Momma’ and Dad ended up buying the corner lot on M-28 and Piche Side Road so many years ago. Of course, they have long since sold that piece of property to buy the farm they own now, but my brother and I have handprints on a sidewalk at the old property capturing a moment in time and encasing it forever for anyone that ever steps foot on there now.
Now my Grandpa Harm wasn’t my real Grandpa, but we spent so much time together over the years until he passed away that he quickly earned that title. I never knew him as anything else. Frankly, I never called him anything else. He was Grandpa Harm, and I was his little girl. We were the VERY BEST of friends. When we were together we were connected at the hip, and there was no separating us.
Any chance I was given as a little girl, summers were spent on the old farm on 46th Street in Lawrence, MI. To say that I spent more time in Lawrence, Paw Paw, Lawton, Decatur, and Shipshewana growing up as a little girl in the summers would be an understatement. I spent more time traveling the country back roads in the front seat of that Ol’ Hunter Green Ford just Grandpa, Spike and me than I did anything else.
It was a very different time back then. A time when old farmers saw things through from start to finish, sharpened tools & knives on an old grinding wheel powered by a foot pedal, and Aunt Lena even did laundry in an old washer like the one pictured below. We were never allowed near it or in the entryway when it was running for fear that one of our arms or ponytails would get stuck it in it if we did happen to get too close to it.
Grandpa was always the first one up, and could always be found at HIS place at the table having breakfast listening to the radio. More often than not I always caught him sneaking Spike, his old Australian Blue Heeler, table scraps when he wasn’t supposed to be. He would wink across the table, put a finger to his mouth symbolizing the “sshhhh” that wasn’t audible. I would always smile and wink back. Knowing full well if Aunt Lena caught him, he was going to be in serious trouble!
He would always ask me in the mornings, “Heb je goed geslapen?” (Did you sleep well child?)
To which I would always reply with a BIG smile on my face, “Ik deed Opa!” (I did Grandpa.)
I was excited when he started teaching me his “secret language.” As a little girl, I used to think that it was the neatest thing. There were only certain times that my Grandpa Harm ever spoke Dutch, when he was angry in the garage or barn, at the auctions with the other older Dutchman and Amish, which I would learn later in life was actually Pennsylvania Dutch (A Cross between Dutch & German), and when he was with me.
He used to tell me he could speak it all day long, but it would fall on deaf ears. That only the cattle and the sheep would hear him, and they didn’t much care which language he spoke as long as he still fed them. So when he whacked his thumb with a hammer and started spouting off words in Dutch one day in the garage I imagine it was hard for him to stay mad when I asked him, “Grandpa, what’s that mean?”
He looked back over his shoulder, stuck his thumb in his mouth, mumbled something that I still to this day couldn’t recognize if I tried, and then stopped what he was doing. When he turned around he said, “You really want to know don’t you Becca' Dawn?”
“Yep, I sure do,” I said with a smile on my face.
He smiled back at me and said, “Well it's Dutch.”
“Oh,” I said.
At that point, Grandpa busted out in laughter, and I just sat there wide eyed looking at him confused as ever. He walked over and patted the top of my head and said, “It is a different language Becca' Dawn!” I sat for a moment and then asked, “Like a secret language?” He looked at me, smiled and said, “Well yes, and no. Secret if you don’t understand it, but easy once you do! I will teach you!”
I was old enough to start remembering, and on our drives to the store to get Turtle Ice Cream or the 60-mile drive to Shipshewana he would ask me words and make sure I knew the correct translations. Sometimes I would get them right away, other times not so much, but he did not let me quit, and each Summer I learned more and more words and added more to my vocabulary by the time I would return home to start school at the end of August.
My most favorite lesson came the summer that I was 7. Grandpa Harm couldn’t walk a lot, he had lost a foot and part of his other leg and had to walk with a cane. It didn't stop him any, but he certainly wasn’t winning any marathons. He would get to where he was going, but he wasn’t ever in much of a rush to get there.
As we slowly wandered around the flea market waiting for the Auction to start Grandpa and I came upon an Agate Dealer. He had never had a stand at the market before, and I was immediately drawn to all of the beautiful things laid out on the tables in front of me. Being all of 7 years old I was JUST a bit bigger than the tables so I could literally see EVERYTHING at eye level. Grandpa must have noticed my eyes light up when I got to the “TEAL” one because he immediately said, “Becca’ Dawn, do you see that sign?” I turned and looked at him, and then back at the sign. I then sounded out “PLEASE DON’T TOUCH.”
I looked up at Grandpa, as he asked the man if he could look at the “TEAL” one. The man told him yes! I was immediately EXCITED! As Grandpa held it in his hand he said, “I want you to look really close at it and tell me what you see.” I looked at the beautiful rock in his hand and was shocked at how shiny and beautiful it was close up. I looked up at him and said, “I see a beautiful rock with many different colors, and it is very shiny.” He smiled and then closed his hand around the agate.
He lowered his hand in front of me and opened his hand back up to me at eye level, and this time the back side of the agate was showing, the NOT so pretty side. Again he said to me, “Tell me what you see.” I wrinkled my nose and said, “The backside of a very pretty rock, and it isn’t very pretty at all.” He laughed and flipped the rock back around with his thumb and said, “As you grow Becca’ Dawn you are going to learn that PEOPLE are very much like this rock you see here. They will show you the PRETTY side, the SHINY side, and they will keep the BACK SIDE, the NOT SO PRETTY SIDE, the SIDE they don’t want to show the rest of the world HIDDEN. Be careful who you let in your circle, the shiny, pretties, aren’t always the most real people. Do you understand?”
I shrugged my shoulders, “Sorta’, I think so.”
He smiled and said, “Well we will buy this “PRETTY ROCK” so that it can serve as a daily reminder of what I just told you. Then he winked at me and paid the man behind the table. The man behind the table gave us a black velvet drawstring bag to put it in. You had best believe I carried that beautiful rock with me EVERYWHERE for the rest of the Summer until I returned home and then it sat on the mantle above my bed by my alarm clock every single day until our house burned.
The following Summer was the first time I got to wander off on my own, he didn’t like it much, but he let me go anyhow. When I say wander what I really mean is Grandpa could see me across all the auction pens, and I was within ear shot of a two finger whistle if need be. None the less I felt important and wandered around looking at the live stock like I had big business to attend to.
I came upon the pig pen and found a young boy a little older than me standing up on the gate. “You aren’t supposed to be up there!” I said, He turned around and looked down at me and said, “You aren’t supposed to be wearing pants, but you are.” I looked up at him, down at my overalls, shoved my hands in my pockets and dug the toe of my barn boot into the pile of dirt by the gate. “Well, why are you wearing that hat and suspenders?” I asked. He looked back at me and said, “Not sure. Just what they gave me I suppose.”
I kicked the pile of dirt with the toe of my barn boot. “I’m Becky.” I said. He looked down at me, smiled and said, “You have a proper name?” “Well, I am too young to be married,” I exclaimed. “No, I mean what does your Mother call you?” “Oh, well she calls me Becky Dawn,” I said. “That won’t do,” He said shaking his head and giggling. “Well, my Grandpa calls me Becca’ Dawn,” I said. “How come he calls you that?” he asked, “Well I suppose its cause my name is Rebecca,” I said, “YES – YOU HAVE A PROPER NAME!” he yelled back, “Well yeah I guess so!!” I said with a giggle, “My name is Eli.” He said, “Just Eli.” I smiled as he jumped down from the gate and we took off in a VERY serious game of tag! As he ran off past the pens I yelled out to him, “Well it is nice to meet you, JUST Eli!”
Now as long as we behaved, didn’t make a fuss, stayed out of the way and didn’t draw attention to ourselves we were allowed to play. Sometimes Eli would bring his sister Mary. At first, Mary was really quiet, but once she warmed up we were fast friends. They also had an older sister Elizabeth who would always braid my hair. Her doing so would start the adventure of Grandpa Harm using a rope in the barn to teach me how to braid myself.
I would spend HOURS braiding and unbraiding that rope, to the point that I would get blisters. To which he would say, “Nothing comes without sacrifice Becca’ Dawn. Sometimes you have to push through the pain to get to the things you want in life.”
I must have looked funny with my brow furrowed so much as a kid trying to understand the GRAND lesson in all his quotes. I chuckle even now thinking about how much he taught me in the short 9 years that God graced my life with his presence.
He is the reason that I love salted black licorice, windmills, stroopwafels, and just as almost every Summer morning with him started with Pickwick Tea; as does my Summer mornings even now. The reason that my favorite soup is Erwtensoep (Pea Soup), the very reason I love all things about Peacocks – I wish EVERYONE could have met Roscoe the Salty Old Peacock he had at the farm, the reason that I had my very first pearl handled pocket knife, and why I even started collecting stamps. He gave me a stamp like the one pictured below and it was the very first in a LONG line of stamps collected over the years.
Every Summer was full of magic! Until I was 9 years old every single Summer was spent learning lessons that would live with me forever. Even if I didn’t know it then, he was diligently teaching me things he KNEW would one day serve me purpose.
Recently I did a locate on an Amish Farm. I was locating a fiber line when a small child came out and in broken English said, “Hello, what are you doing in the field?” I smiled and said, “Well I am locating your telecommunications lines.” He cocked his head to one side and just looked at me. I thought for a second about what I had just said. “Oh, it is a phone line. There is a phone line running through your field. Are your parents here?” I asked. “Jah!” he said and took off running towards the house.
I continued locating and after awhile I turned to see a small crowd of people approaching me. I smiled as I counted 7 small children approaching with 2 older men, and 2 teenage boys in tow behind them. The small boy hadn’t just called his Dad, he had called in the entire family. “Hello!” I said with a wave and a smile.
The older of the two men waved at me, as he made his way through the children followed by the other gentleman. As they approached me I could see two girls whispering to one another as they pointed at my pants. I chuckled silently to myself and thought of Eli and my encounter with him so very long ago. As the Dad got closer he said, “I hear there is something here.” I turned and pointed at the paint and flags on the ground. “Yes Sir, there is a telecommu, Uh, a telephone line, a fiber line actually running through this field. Right where you are pounding in fence posts actually.” I said.
He looked at me, then looked around me, then looked at the other man standing next to him put his hand on his chin and said, “Glaubst du, wir haben es geschlagen?” (do you think we hit it?)
I held up my hand, shook my head and said, “Nein!”
It took all of us a second to realize what had just happened, and I was instantly red in the cheeks as all the children started pointing fingers and chattering among themselves. The older of the two men held up his hand and in an instant there was silence.
In broken English, he said, “You understand our language?” I looked at him and made the small symbol with my two fingers and held it up. I set my equipment down, turned to him and said, “It has been a REALLY long time since I have heard anyone speak Pennsylvania Dutch. My Grandpa was Dutch but spoke both German and Dutch, so I learned what I do know from him. I am surprised I even understood what you were saying after all this time.”
“May I see your brand?” He asked, “I’m sorry, my brand? I am not sure I understand?” I replied, “May I?” he asked, as he pointed towards my hand.
“My brand,” I said, “My tattoo,” I whispered realizing he must have seen the German writing on my left hand. I turned my hand towards him so he could see it. “What does that say?” he asked, “Uberlebender,” I replied, “it means Survivor in German.”
He stood looking at me, then to the other gentleman, and finally to the children before speaking in a voice that was barely audible to the other gentleman. All at once two children broke free from the group and ran towards the house. I reached down to gather my equipment to continue my locate as the two children came running back to the group.
They handed a package to the older gentleman who then turned to me and said, “This is from our family. We want you to have it, all of it comes right from this farm. I hope you and your family enjoy them.” I thanked all of them, finished my locate and returned to my truck. Inside the package were eggs, loaves of bread, and some homemade jam/jelly. I smiled at their generosity and was quickly taken back to a time when life was a tad simpler.
The summer before Grandpa Harm passed away, our very last visit to the Shipshewana Flea Market/Auction. Looking back I won’t ever know if Gramps knew it would be our last or not, but when we stopped and he put the truck in park he said, “Becca’ Dawn, let's make today about seeing all the things you always wanted to but we never got to this Summer ok?” I smiled and said, “Well sure! I think I am ok with that!”
We saw all the things I wanted to see. The booth with the wooden snakes, The booth with the foam ice cream shooters, the booth with 1,000 pencils, the booth with all the pocket knives and that was the VERY first summer I went home with my very OWN knife! We smelled all the food, laughed hysterically at each other’s jokes, and did nothing but live in THOSE moments. It was almost dark by the time we were rounding up to leave, and I knew that in the days to follow I would soon be headed North towards home as Summer was coming to an end.
It never occurred to me that Summer when I left the farm that it would be my last moments with Grandpa Harm. I was a KID, you don’t think about such things….but when the phone rang on that night in February during the Grammy Awards, I could never even begin to fathom the heartache that I could feel at 9 years old.
“Rebecca. Rebecca Dawn did you hear what I just said?” Momma' asked; I remember looking across the room to see my brother standing there with tears streaming down his face. I looked straight ahead at her, she was kneeling before me now with her hands on my face. If Jason was crying it meant it was REAL, that this was really happening.
She had just told me that my BEST FRIEND had died and that he was whole again as he danced with the angels in heaven. I didn’t even know I was crying until she reached up to wipe my tears. I also hadn’t realized my Dad standing in the doorway until he spoke; “He is no longer in any pain.” I still remember not even believing him as the words left his mouth, I didn’t want to believe it was real, that it was really happening.
Behind Momma’ on the TV someone was accepting an award, people were clapping and cheering & all I remember thinking was, “How can anyone even be happy right now?” My heart was breaking at 9 years old and I just couldn’t understand why the world was still moving, still happening, still just GOING on like nothing happened.
It took YEARS for me to comprehend the hit I took that evening, and even when I was old enough to finally understand, I still wasn’t fully prepared for it. When you stand in a church surrounded by everyone that you love, next to EVERY SINGLE STRONG man that you EXPECT to hold you up and you watch as they break down and cry in front of you; you realize how cruel and scary the world REALLY is in those moments.
9 years old - I sat watching as my Dad, all my Uncles, and every single man in my life other than my Papaw who was up at the pulpit giving the eulogy for Grandpa Harm, lose control and fall apart. It was the only time my Papaw had stood in front of a church and I hated all the words coming out of his mouth. I was sickened by his words as he spoke of eternal life, God’s Love, and I wanted it to stop! If he stopped talking, it meant it couldn’t be happening!!!
There was NO way I was surrounded by every man that I knew and loved in such a fragile state. I wanted my Grandpa Harm back. I wanted my Opa. I wanted to share strawberries straight from the patch, and do chores with him in the barn. I wanted to hold his hand and sing to him while he pricked his other finger to draw blood for his blood sugar because he said it made him less scared when I did.
I wanted to share morning tea, and listen to the weather on the radio. I wanted to work in the garage and sort nuts and bolts into coffee cans. I wanted him to WAKE UP, WHY WOULDN’T HE JUST WAKE UP?! People all around me were crying, and then everyone started singing. This couldn’t be happening, I did not want to believe it was real. So before my Momma’ could stop me I left her side as they all continued to sing and bolted straight for the front of that church.
It closed in on me as I got closer to that casket. 9 years old and I thought I could take on the world. I was JUST tall enough thanks to the “Kiddie Heels” Momma’ had made me wear with that STUPID dress. I wanted to wear barn boots and overalls, but she was NOT having any of it!
Then suddenly before I knew it; I was face to face with Grandpa Harm, My Opa.
He looked like he was sleeping, but at least they had chosen “GOOD” overhauls and a good work shirt to put him in. His red beard was combed to perfection, as was his hair. I looked down at his hands, they had them crossed, he would have never settled on that. Just didn’t even suit him or his nature. His hands were clean; his nails were clean. They looked like they had never worked a day in the barn or the garage.
I had just finally gathered up the courage to reach out and touch him when Papaw appeared at my side. I looked up at him and he nodded down at me as my hand touched Grandpa Harm’s. I pulled back almost immediately when I felt how cold his hand was. It sends a shiver down my spine even now, just as it did back then to even think about it.
I settled for touching the edge of the casket as I spoke my final words to him. “Slaap goed Opa.” (Sleep Well Grandpa) I said as I looked up and saw my brother and I’s photo along with our cousins in the lid of the casket. I choked out, “I love you!” as Papaw leaned down and said, “He is with the Lord now, may his soul rest in peace. Let’s find our way back to your Momma’ & Daddy,” as the music was just about to end.
I turned on my heel and returned to the pew where my Momma’ was and sat in between her and my Dad. I sat there numb and confused. 9 years old, full of questions no one seemed to have any answers to, and even though we were sitting in a church I was ANGRY! I was angry at God, and I would STAY angry at God for taking my very best friend for a VERY long time after that.
Something about losing your best friend when you are 9 years old teaches you lessons about life that you are never truly ever able to really come back from. The innocence that other kids my age still held on to or clung to was dead to me now. Life was cruel and I KNEW it. I was living it, and I had experienced it first hand as it smacked me in the face and then continued to smack me down over the years when I least expected it.
I was 9 years old when my entire world shattered around me. 9 years old when I finally lost My Favorite Dutchman. Over the years it was something I couldn’t even think about without getting upset. As time went on and the hurt numbed over; it became something I could “handle,” but still NOTHING I could speak openly about.
I never dreamed in all my life that I would be 35 years old when God would decide that in order to TRULY process the loss of my very best friend; he would send me another Dutchman that would ultimately change the woman I was yet to become. God made sure that this Dutchman would hold my hand, soften my heart and put me on a path that would bring me closer than ever to him.
Losing Grandpa (Opa) Harm taught me at a young age that to live life; you’re going to have to deal with loss. Even now I’m struggling with that very thing as I sit and type out yet ANOTHER piece of my life for the world to see. I don’t think the pain and heartache that we feel from the moments that shape us into the people we become along the way EVER REALLY goes away. We process, we deal, and we hope like crazy that along the way at SOME point it just STOPS hurting. Sometimes….well sometimes some of us aren’t that lucky.
I hurt for a LONG time after I lost him, and looking back I know that had I given in and just LET GOD do his thing I would be in a very DIFFERENT place. I also know in the same breath that doing so would have set me on a completely different path in this life. One that the good Lord knew I wasn’t fully prepared for, and honestly I can THANK him now for allowing me to stay so lost for so long.
I wish every single day that My Favorite Dutchman was still here. I wonder what he would be like now, how much he would have adored my own Littles, and what kind of adventures they would have gone on together. Thinking of the lessons he would have taught them first-hand makes my heart skip a beat. Instead, I smile & thank the good Lord that he let me have my Opa even if it was only for 9 short years. I have memories….and lots of them. The advice he taught me I hand down to my Littles as often as I can or they will let me.
I THANK the good Lord every single day that he gave me one other Dutchman in my life that showed me that sometimes if you just TRUST that it will all work out; well sometimes that just happens. (It was something that Grandpa Harm also used to say often.)
God has a funny way of always knowing what we need, and when we need it. For that I am most certainly grateful; I am precisely where I need to be because of that very statement. If I had known then what I know now; how different things would be.
“In God’s Time Rebecca, In God’s Time.” ~ Jamie Lewis-Fegan (Momma')
**I originally finished this blog to send over to be edited awhile back. Re-reading through it was not easy, but necessary so that I can add this part before I release it to all of you. Back when I was younger I was angry with God, and never understood the purpose behind any of what he did. As the years rolled on I learned my Faith would be tested in more ways than I could ever dream possible. God wasn’t something I cared to even speak about so openly; let alone LET him inside my life & let him love me.
TODAY – Today is completely different. Today I can sit in front of a computer and type out the words:
My name is Rebecca, I have 3 beautiful children gifted to me by God himself; fathered by 3 different men, two failed marriages, I make mistakes daily; I am tattooed; sassy; I fail the good Lord more than I care to admit. I am nowhere NEAR perfect, but that SAME God that I hated and stayed SO angry at for SO long; HE LOVES ME & HIS GRACE IS ENDLESS. IF THAT SAME GOD CAN FORGIVE & LOVE ME FOR ALL THAT I HAVE DONE WRONG IN MY LIFE; HE CAN DO THE SAME FOR ANYONE!
I never believed that it was possible, and it took losing my Favorite Dutchman & along the way being gifted another to truly learn what God’s Grace could really do for my life. In the end, I have no doubts that both God and Opa Harm had their hands on the wheel for this one. My Momma' used to tell me growing up - If a Man isn't running with you, blazing a trail towards the Good Lord; well honey he ain't for you." I never knew how true those words really were until just recently.
Today – as I sit getting ready to release this blog; I will also be finishing pulling together the vows that I will be speaking out loud as I marry a young couple this coming weekend. You read that correctly. For those of you that didn’t know; my ordination is complete and I am officially an Ordained Minister.
NOW GO AHEAD AND TELL ME TO MY FACE THAT GOD’S GRACE ISN’T ENDLESS; BECAUSE NO ONE WILL EVER CONVINCE ME OTHERWISE AFTER THE HELL ON EARTH I HAVE HAD TO WALK THROUGH TO GET TO WHERE I AM AT THIS VERY MOMENT.
I can both chuckle and smile at the same time knowing that my Papaw Jimmy must be proud. THIS grandbaby of his FINALLY made it to the point where speaking openly about God, his grace and his endless love is a daily occurrence. I wish both Papaw and Opa Harm were here to see the woman that I have grown into, but I KNOW that they are up there punching one another on the shoulder and saying, “Wouldya’ look at that; I told you she would get there!”
So looking back – After All This Time – I can honestly smile knowing it took a lot longer than everyone had hoped for me to get to where I needed to be. In the end though; God LITERALLY showed me from one favorite Dutchman to another that I am right where I need to be.
In 1990 he took My 1st Favorite Dutchman home, and this year when he was ready for me to get to where I was headed; he told the other one that it was time to, "Let Go." He certainly does work in the most mysterious of ways, then again how would we EVER learn to just TRUST the process.
That my friends, truly is the most beautiful lesson that AFTER ALL THIS TIME I ended up learning from My Two Favorite Dutchmen. Trust the process, God has got YOU and he KNOWS your purpose.
Romans 8:28 ~ And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to His purpose. ~
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WE ARE JUST A FEW SHORT DAYS AWAY FROM THE OVER HAUL BEING COMPLETED!
HARD TO BELIEVE THAT IN 4 1/2 SHORT MONTHS WE HAVE GROWN INTO ALL THAT AFTER ALL THIS TIME IS AND TO WHAT IS YET TO COME!
WE OWE IT ALL TO ALL OF YOU!!!! BE SURE TO WATCH THE VIDEO BELOW TO SEE THE NEW AREAS BEING ADDED TO THE WEBSITE! ;)
WE JUST GOT CONFIRMATION THAT WE WILL BE COLLABORATING WITH ONE OF THE MOST BRILLIANT MINDS IN OUR LOCAL MUSIC WORLD;
RIVER JOY JENKINS
IF YOU HAVEN'T BEEN INTRODUCED TO RIVER; VISIT THE VIDEO BELOW!
HER AND HER TWIN BROTHER SAM ARE TWO OF THE MOST TALENTED LOCAL MUSICIANS I HAVE EVER HAD THE PLEASURE OF SINGING WITH!!! SO YOU CAN IMAGINE HOW SUPER STOKED WE ARE THAT SHE HAS CHOSEN TO COLLABORATE WITH US!
BE SURE TO LIKE, FOLLOW, AND SUBSCRIBE TO ALL OF HER SOCIAL MEDIA LINKS AS WELL SO YOU DON'T MISS ANY OF HER AMAZING VIDEOS!
SHE WILL BE HELPING WITH THE "UNMENTIONED" ADDITION IN THE VIDEO THAT WILL BE ADDED TO THE WEBSITE CALLED:
"SESSIONS WITH MOMMA'!"
WHICH WILL FEATURE MOMMA' AND ME SINGING OUR FAVORITE HYMNS OR SONGS!
WE ARE SUPER EXCITED TO ADD THIS ELEMENT TO THE WEBSITE IN THE UPCOMING WEEKS!
ANOTHER ELEMENT THAT WILL BE ADDED IS THE ADDITION OF "REAL TALK WITH REBECCA!"
ANOTHER EXCITING ADDITION THAT WILL BE ADDED WITH ME DISCUSSING
"REAL TALK ISSUES"
THAT YOU ALL HAVE BEEN MESSAGING ME ABOUT!
STAY TUNED FOR BOTH ADDITIONS TO BE ADDED TO THE WEBSITE SHORTLY!
AS ALWAYS THE NEWEST BLOG WILL BE RELEASING AT THE END OF THIS MONTH!
IT IS ONLY A FEW SHORT DAYS AWAY LADIES & GENTS!
JUST A COUPLE MORE DAYS UNTIL "MY FAVORITE DUTCHMAN" GOES LIVE!
]]>Please enjoy some of our favorite shots as we continue to edit footage for the Website Overhaul coming up later this month!
As promised here is the Behind The Scenes Footage from the Photo Shoot!
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My early 20’s were spent working in an “Assisted Living” home, which was just a fancy name for Nursing Home. I wish I could say that I came by the job honestly, but that isn’t quite how it happened. You see it was the result of my Dad helping friends move a house trailer. If you were around back then, well you remember what a sight it was to see a trailer house creeping down the main stretch strapped on the front of a hay wagon. As if that wasn’t enough of a sight, don’t forget to throw in the long haired hippy driving the pink Cadillac convertible blaring “Black Betty” while he drank an Old Milwaukee & played air guitar like it was an Olympic Sport.
It was just a typical Saturday morning around these parts. Nothing much to see here in small town U.S.A.
Regardless, once the task was finished and Dad had made it back to the homestead with friends in tow, the chatter began about the AMAZINGNESS that had just occurred! Since Dad had quit drinking YEARS ago he just stood and chuckled with his hands in his pockets while the others toasted their success with Peppermint Schnapps & shouts of a job well done. Looking across the yard at them you could tell, in that moment, life was good.
Dad called me over to have me tell him again, “WHAT IT WAS I HAD.” So I explained my condition and then John asked if I were interested in being the Medication Administrator where he worked. He informed me it would be full time, but no benefits. When he told me the pay, it was more than the other two jobs I was already working, and it was certainly hard to pass up. I told him I needed about a week to let my other jobs know, and I would call him when I was ready to come in if that was alright. He agreed and told me he was sorry about what was going on but we would work my schedule around treatment. I smiled and told him, “Thank You.” Then looked over at my Dad, who then nodded at me, which meant it was time for me to head for the house. So I said my Good-Bye’s, Nice to See You All’s, and headed in towards Momma’. I told her what had happened outside and she said, “Well God must have known it was just time for a change, and if they are willing to work around everything that is going on, well then that is even better. Time will tell if it is a good fit.”
The next week came and went faster than I could say the days out loud. Sunday afternoon I called the number John had given me and a woman answered. I told her who I was, she told me that she was looking forward to meeting me. She advised me to wear nursing scrubs and arrive for 9 am med count, but to come a little early since it was going to be a learning process. I thanked her and hung up the phone. “Nursing Scrubs?!? I didn’t own nursing scrubs. It was Sunday afternoon where was I going to find nursing scrubs?!” I thought to myself as I picked the phone up off the wall to call my Mom. She answered on the second ring as I rambled out sentences faster than she could reply. “Rebecca!” she said, “I mean it is Sunday, I don’t even think anything is open Mom,” I said. “Rebecca Dawn,” she said more loudly this time. “What am I even going to do? I am not even prepared,” I exclaimed, “REBECCA!” she yelled, “I am going to look ridiculous walking in there in street clothes Mom,” I said with panic in my voice. “REBECCA DAWN,” She yelled though the phone. “WHAT?!?!?” I yelled back. “They sell scrubs at Wal-Mart in the section near the pajamas by the fitting rooms,” She said. We sat in silence for a few seconds before I said, “Oh. Well, I better get up there and get some then. Thank You! I love you!” “I love you too! GOOD BYE!” she said as she hung up.
Crisis #1 had been averted, and I could still go to work in the AM.
I arrived the next morning to find that the other girl had called in sick, so it was me and my direct Supervisor and she was dealing with an extremely behavioral client so I was literally thrown into the med cart and told to, “GET AT IT! & FIGURE IT OUT AS YOU GO!” The residents knew the routine and those that could found their way down to the office. They were used to a rapid-fire exchange of paper cup with pills followed by water to wash them down and move on to the next person. I was NOT there yet.
I didn’t even know their names let alone their medications. I wasn’t just struggling, I was drowning and these old folks were getting crankier by the second! Luckily Bridgette came back to my rescue and within 30 seconds had keys flying into locks, drawers sliding open, and pills dropping into cups like some well-oiled machine. Within 10 minutes she had every single resident that had been in the hallway done and accounted for. Once she finished cleaning up she grabbed the cart and said, “Follow me!” “We walk and talk A LOT around here!” She said, “Someone always needs something, so you make sure you are NEVER far away from this cart unless I am here or another Med Admin is on duty. It does get easier, but you have to WANT for it to work. You will get your own system down. What works for me doesn’t work for everyone, and I can’t STAND the way some of the other girls do their meds, BUT it works for them. You have to practice when there is down time, LEARN where the meds are. THESE people are like children and THEY don’t WAIT well. READ THE BOOKS, FRONT TO BACK, AND LEARN ALL THE POLICIES! First and foremost get familiar with charts, faces, names, and learn which residents are DNR’s. Which 98% of them are, after all, they are all OLD. LEARN them – If John gets a phone call for an ambulance run in the middle of the night and the resident is a DNR you are going to wish you had remembered before you called! ALSO – John is my husband which means I also get the phone call. Catch my drift – LEARN THE DNR’S. GOT IT?!”
“Umm…got it, but what is a DNR? Like Department of Natural Resources?” I asked, She laughed as she shoved the cart around the corner, “No, it stands for Do NOT Resuscitate. As in DO NOT SAVE their lives. No CPR, No Paddles, No nothing. DNR. Got it?” “Got it!” I said. We spent the next 20 minutes passing out meds to bed ridden residents and those that just would rather have visitors to their room than come down to the office. As we passed rooms she would point out who knew all the gossip, who was in love, who wasn’t, who was cheating at Bingo, who was hiding food in their napkins and sneaking it into their rooms, and who was the quiet one of the bunch.
We had almost made it back to the office when she stopped in front of a room and pushed open the door and announced, “This one here is our PROBLEM CHILD. Don’t get close to him, he spits and sometimes he has been known to bite the staff. The further you stay away from him, the better.” My eyes widened as I peered around the doorjamb at a man sitting on the bed. His white hair was standing straight up, his shirt was buttoned wrong, his face was dirty with what looked like last night’s dinner, he had 5-day old scruff from not shaving, one side of his shirt tucked in his pants, one sock on, and his slippers were on the wrong feet. I remember thinking I had a 1 ½-year old daughter who could dress better.
I hadn’t noticed that Bridgette had stopped walking to let a wheelchair cross in front of her and I ran right into the back of her as the man on the bed let out an awful hiss in my direction. She wasn’t kidding, the further I stayed away, the better.
I spent the rest of the day reading through books, policies, procedures, learning drawers, meds, residents and their stories. All but 4 had DNR’s, which actually made it easier to remember. I memorized the ones that didn’t have them and their pictures. At dinner time I made sure to put names with faces and match them in case they had changed since their photos were taken. After dinner meds were completed and everyone was back in their rooms we did rounds again. My 1st day on the job and a resident passed away in her sleep during nap after dinner. So I learned how to complete that paperwork should the need ever arise again, which I was told it most likely would.
Three weeks had come and gone by pretty quickly. I was settling into my position rather well and had even picked up the pace and settled into my own routine which was working beautifully. I was saving treatment days for my days off so that I wasn’t burning work time. John had settled on letting me work 4 – 10’s so that I would have 3 days off to re-coop before coming back to work.
I was walking the halls checking on residents when the smell of urine overtook me and I was instantly ill. I darted into a room and grabbed the garbage can at my feet and immediately emptied the contents of my stomach into it. I was still dry heaving when I heard a voice from across the room say, “Rough Night Little One?” I looked up from the garbage can to see, “The PROBLEM CHILD” sitting on his bed. “Actually no.” I replied “Well are you pregnant?” he asked, “I highly doubt that.” I said with a chuckle, “I am really sorry, I will get this cleaned up. I have been having a rough year!”
He stood up from the bed, his voice lowered as he said, “You’re the one they keep talking about. I can hear them down the hall at night talking about how sick you are. You get treatment on your days off, and you also have a small daughter. A year and ½ old is what I heard anyway.”
I hugged the garbage can a little tighter as he got closer. He stopped at the sink, wet a washcloth, and rung it out before continuing over to me. “It is clean, I haven’t used it.” He said as he pointed towards his face and hair.
I reached out and took it from his hand, “Thank you.” I said, “What is your story anyway?” He reached up and made a swirling motion near his head and said, “Apparently things aren’t right in my head.” He rolled his eyes and continued, “Nothing as drastic as this though. You have it WAY worse than me friend. My name is Michael.” I looked back at him, “Rebecca,” I said.
He reached into his dresser drawer and pulled out a package. He smiled as he crossed slowly back over the room. “It isn’t much, but it always helped me with the taste.” I looked down to see a package of Fisherman’s Friend in his palm. I reached out and took the package from him, carefully scooped one out, and popped it in my mouth. There was no denying their potency! He certainly wasn’t kidding, they definitely did the trick in getting rid of the taste in your mouth. Kind of a twofer if you will.
I pulled the bag from his garbage can and put a new one in. Once I finished cleaning up my mess I turned to look at Michael. He was just as much of a mess right that moment as he was the first time I saw him. So I asked him, “Do you think we might clean YOU up a little?” He looked over at me, smoothed his sweater, looked down at his slippers and said, “I can’t see why not.” So I got into his drawers and pulled out clean clothes and set them on the bed for him. When I was finished I said, “I will stand outside the door, you just open it up when you are ready for me to come back in and help you ok?” He nodded and I closed the door behind me. He was in there for a good 10-15 minutes before the door handle jiggled and he opened the door.
Standing before me was a pretty well put together older gentleman who needed nothing more than a shave. His clothes were clean, his face was washed, his hair was combed, and he actually had a smile on his face. “I clean up pretty good don’t I, Rebecca?” he asked with a smile on his face. “That you certainly do Michael,” I replied with a smile as big as his. We were fast friends Michael and I. From that day forward I made sure he bathed, dressed in clean clothes and took care of himself. In return, he made sure to have a place for me to go if I needed to “get rid of my lunch” or just breath through it.
In the two years that I was at the Manor even though we were never supposed to have favorites, he certainly became mine. Once Thanksgiving came and went I stopped to see John in his office to ask if I could have a contact number for Michael’s family. No one had come to visit him the entire time I had been working there, and I wanted to call and update them on how well he had been doing.
John informed me that there wasn’t a contact number listed for Michael’s family and that sometimes that happens. He told me to just wait it out and that maybe by Christmas time someone would come. I knew there HAD to be a family somewhere since once a week for an entire year Michael had me write a letter to someone that meant something to him. Every Sunday after lunch I would go down after med distribution and sit while he told me what to write. The letters always began the same way; My Dearest Michelle – So there was SOMEONE out there that knew and loved this man. WHY weren’t they coming to see him?
Once we finished with the letter, he would pull a slip of paper out of his wallet and ask me to dial the number for him. I would wait until the first ring before slipping out of the room to let him have some privacy. When he was finished with his phone call he would come down the hall to tell me it was a good one, and that he would see me later.
I only asked him once who he was calling. He winked at me and told me it was his bookie. I rolled my eyes as I walked out the door and told him to bet double on black. That was the same day he asked me if it would be ok if Mickayla and I came back after work and watched a movie in his room with him. I told him that was a splendid idea and that we would for SURE be there!
After work, I gathered up Mickayla and told her to pick a movie. She immediately asked if we were going to have, “otcorn?” I smiled, “That is a great idea! Let’s bring some popcorn!” So we gathered up our goodies and headed back towards the Manor. Turns out she had picked - A Land Before Time – (Ducky) Ucky was her favorite.
(*All Photos and Movie Rights mentioning The Land Before Time & any characters belong to Universal Studios Animated Films*)
When we walked in Michael said, “Hello Sweet Girl! How are you?” To which Mickayla replied, “Me Meeshka, I’m big girl now. I have otcorn & Ucky!” she said with a big smile on her face as she held up the movie for him to see. “Me Meeshka?” said Micheal, Mickayla set all her goodies on the floor and pointed to her belly and said, “No Willy (Silly) MEEEEEEEE Meeshka! ME Willy!” Then the both busted out in laughter! “Well You Meeshka Willy, I am Mr. Mike. Nice to Meet You!” said Michael. Mickayla looked at me, pointed at him and said, “He Mr. Mike Momma’!” I smiled and said, “Yes, that is Mr. Mike Meeshka.” I smiled at “Mr. Mike” and popped the movie in knowing that he would be called NOTHING else from that day forth.
It wasn’t far into the movie when Mr. Mike started laughing to himself. I looked over at him and asked, “What is so funny over there?” He looked at me and replied, “Little Foot.” I smiled and said, “Yeah, it’s a dinosaur in the movie?” To which he replies, “OOOHHH no it’s not, that is what I am calling you from now on! LITTLE FOOT!” as he pointed towards my feet. I rolled my eyes at him and said, “Well that is fair since you are now “Mr. Mike!” We both let out a chuckle and a tiny little princess turns, puts her finger to her lips and says, “Shhh, I watching this!”
Mickayla became a pretty frequent visitor around the Manor after that. She was so little, so cute, and spoke so well that the residents LOVED having her around. Other than Movie time with Mr. Mike, her favorite event was Bingo. Even when the child wouldn’t win, she WOULD win. The residents would give her everything from socks to teddy bears, candy, figurines, denture cream, Vick's vap-o-rub and once she even won travel mouthwash. My favorite prize she ever won was a Penguin that said, I LOVE YOU with a heart on its belly.
She presented it to Mr. Mike the very next time we had a movie night. She was SO proud to be giving him a gift that meant so much to her. In turn, it meant equally as much to him and sat on his nightstand where he could see it clearly from his bed. One morning as he was getting ready and he had finished with his shave he said, “Little Foot, if anything ever happens to me promise you will take that home with you ok?” He nodded over to the penguin on his nightstand. I looked over at it, smiled and said, “Well nothing is going to happen to you Mr. Mike so it can stay right there for now!”
I went about my day and just before I was slated to leave one of the other med admin’s called in. Bridgette was sick and there wasn’t anyone else to cover so I said I would cover the shift. It meant being on with the new aide Ashley. She was pregnant and did everything REALLY slow. So it meant I would also have to pick up the pace and help the other aides as well. Dinner came and went and I was doing the after dinner med rounds when I came to Mr. Mike’s room. His light was off and he was already in bed. I stopped my cart, knocked and pushed open his door and walked in. “Mr. Mike, it's early, are you feeling ok?” I asked as I walked in and turned on the light. He was in bed and appeared to be sleeping.
I walked over to his bed and touched his hand, “Mr. Mike?” I said, looking down at his chest realizing he wasn’t breathing. I immediately felt for a pulse, Was it there? Was that it? It's Weak, but I think he has one. I started screaming, “HELP! I NEED HELP NOW!” as I ripped open the shirt of his favorite pajamas to start CPR.
I was moving pillows and scrambling for footing when Ashley came into the room. “Call 911 now!” I said, She just stood there looking at me and then said, “He’s a DNR Rebecca, we aren’t supposed to call for DNR’s.” “DAMNIT ASHLEY JUST CALL THEM NOW!” I screamed, it must have scared her because she jumped and scurried from the room as I started chest compressions on Mr. Mike.
I hadn’t noticed until tears started hitting my hands and I was saying out loud, “You can’t do this Mr. Mike, we need to find Michelle. You can’t leave here yet! You can’t do this! You need to come back!” that other resident’s had started to gather in the hallway.
I was still performing CPR on him when I heard the sirens approaching, it meant that help would be here soon. My tiny 86 pound body was getting TIRED and I wasn’t sure how much longer I could hold on doing this. As the paramedics entered the room Mr. Mike took a HUGE breath in, immediately I let out a sob and collapsed to the floor.
One of the paramedics and I had gone to college together, he helped me back up and said, “It's ok Beckie, we got him now. He will be ok. Let us handle this. You did good Beckie! You did good!” I looked at him with tears streaming down my face and said, “He’s a DNR. I wasn’t supposed to save him.” His eyes widened as he looked from me to Mr. Mike and he said, “Well, life happens Beck, plead the 5th in court if and when they ask. Tell them you forgot. I will keep you posted, but I got to go.”
The moments after were hectic, residents chattering, whispering to one another and pointing fingers, aides wide-eyed as the phones started blowing up with phone calls from John. I finished cleaning up Mr. Mike's room, and I was pushing the med cart back to the office in just enough time to see John’s car fly into the front parking lot and screech to a halt.
He stormed in past the med office, and down the hall to his office without even looking in. Bridgette, who was supposed to be sick strolled into the med office and stuck a pink painted nail in my face as she said, “You ARE IN SOOOOOOOO MUCH TROUBLE LITTLE GIRL, YOU HAVE NO IDEA!” Immediately my blood was boiling, not even my parents talked to me that way. I was just getting ready to say something back to her when John yelled down the hall, “REBECCA IN MY OFFICE NOW!”
I looked at Bridgette and the other aides standing in the office, yanked the med office door open so hard it slammed against the wall shaking the entire office. I walked out into the hallway, looked down at Ron’s office, back at the med office, directly at Bridgette and KICKED the front door of the Manor open as hard as I could as I walked out.
I was half way across the front parking lot to my car when John made it out the front door. “WHAT THE HELL WERE YOU THINKING?” he yelled at me “I PLEAD THE 5TH!” I yelled back. “You can’t plead the 5th Rebecca, we aren’t in court! Talk to me, what the hell happened in there?” he asked, “I did what I had to John, that is what happened,” I replied. “Rebecca, he has a DNR, his family could sue the manor, or you, or who knows what,” He said.
I stopped dead in my tracks and turned around to face him, “WHAT FAMILY JOHN? YOU MEAN THE FAMILY THAT NEVER COMES TO SEE HIM? HUH? THAT FAMILY?! ALMOST 2 YEARS JOHN! THAT IS HOW LONG I HAVE BEEN HERE AND NOT ONCE HAVE I EVER SEEN A FAMILY MEMBER OF HIS WALK INTO THIS PLACE TO SEE HIM! HE DOESN’T GET MAIL OR INCOMING PHONE CALLS, AND HE HAS CERTAINLY NEVER HAD A VISITOR! YOU KNOW WHAT HE HAS JOHN? ME, ME AND MICKAYLA, AND A BOX FULL OF LETTERS IN HIS CLOSET ADDRESSED TO SOMEONE NAMED MICHELLE! SOMEONE OUT THERE LOVES THAT MAN AND NO ONE DESERVES TO DIE ALONE JOHN! NO ONE!” I screamed at him “I won’t give up finding his family John and if you won’t help me I will do it myself,” I finished in a whisper.
“You are way to close this Beckie,” He said. “Do you understand how many policies, procedures and frankly laws you have broken? Technically I am supposed to report you, you do understand that right?” “John, you do whatever it is you have to do. I made my choice, and I will live with it. I will NOT let that man die ALONE. No one deserves that John, and maybe you aren’t close enough to see that. One day you are going to look back and I hope you can LIVE WITH THE CHOICES you made running this place,” I said shaking my head. “GO HOME & get some rest, Beckie. We will discuss this more when clear heads can prevail,” He said.
I turned to go to my car only to find every resident and every staff member standing in the lobby watching the whole entire argument between John and I transpire. I was mentally, physically and emotionally exhausted, and all I wanted to do was go home and sleep. The next morning I woke to find a message on my answering machine from John. He stated that Mr. Mike was stable and doing well. That if his condition continued he would be released by the following afternoon back to the Manor. He advised me to enjoy my time off, clear my head, and come back and see Mr. Mike when I was well rested. I was supposed to leave for Grand Rapids that morning for treatment, I chose not to go.
Upon returning to the Manor I went immediately to see Mr. Mike. He was in bed resting. He smiled when I entered his room. His voice was quiet as he spoke to me. “Little Foot you could have got in some serious trouble!” he said, “I know Mr. Mike, but I just didn’t think it was time just yet,” I said choking back tears. “You do know that God is going to take me home when he is ready don’t you Little Foot?” he asked “I know Mr. Mike. Believe me, I know,” I said.
In between work, Mickayla, and my free time I spent most of it at Mr. Mike’s side. We talked a lot about heaven, and in his final 3 weeks, he had me read scripture to him just as he had every Sunday after we wrote Michelle. Even in his final letters to her he never once spoke of leaving this earth, just his love & admiration for her. How she would ALWAYS have a piece of his heart and how eternally grateful he was for her being gifted into his life.
The week before Mr. Mike went into the “Deep Sleep” Mickayla made her last visit to see him. It was the most active I had seen him in over a month. He smiled, laughed, and they watched Blues Clues together. Before she left she held out her arms and said, “Up Momma’, I want UP to see Mr. Mike.” I picked her up and sat her on the bed and she started singing to Mr. Mike, “You are my sunshine, my only sunshine.” He smiled ear to ear and said, “Ahhh…My Meeshka, how joyous it was to have known and loved you.” “I wuv you toooo Mr. Mike,” she replied with a giggle.
It was the last time Mickayla would see him alive.
Two days later as I sat reading to him, he reached his hand out to me, took my hand and said, “I’m tired Little Foot. So very, very tired.” “I know Mr. Mike and you don’t have to keep fighting anymore. It's ok to sleep now,” I replied. “Rebecca, I love you more than blueberry pancakes,” He said. “I love you more than cherry cheesecake Mr. Mike,” I replied choking back a sob. He squeezed my hand and closed his eyes and went to sleep.
He never woke again after that day.
I sat with him for another 4 days, and on the 4th day, I was shaken awake to find my family doctor, Dr. Graham on a knee in front of me.
“Rebecca, you haven’t been to treatment in over a month. The Chief called me to find out why you haven’t been back down to Grand Rapids to finish your treatment,” He said. I looked over at Mr. Mike sleeping, his chest was still moving up and down. I looked over Dr. Graham’s shoulder to see John standing in the doorway as the Doc continued, “Beck, your Mom was in my office the other day, and she is SCARED to death she is going to lose you. That you are slipping away, and her baby is dying. You are SO close to beating this, you can’t just GIVE UP. You have to finish this. You can’t just walk away.”
He stood up in front of me and pointed to Mr. Mike in bed, “He lived a life, and a full one. You are much too young to stop living because you are fighting for someone who’s time is clearly coming to an end. You have a baby girl that needs you, a mother that won’t stop worrying about you and an entire staff waiting in Grand Rapids for you. We have ALL been on this journey with you from the start kiddo’ and I want to see you finish it, I want to be there to see you BEAT this. YOU NEED TO GO TO TREATMENT, YOU NEED TO FINISH CHEMO REBECCA.”
I took a deep breath in, looked at Mr. Mike, then to John and said, “If he promises to call his family I will go.” John looked at me and replied, “They are already en route from New York. They will be here by early morning tomorrow morning. They are coming in on the red eye and driving up from Detroit.” I looked from Mr. Mike to John, to Dr. Graham and said, “Fine I will go. When do I leave?” Dr. Graham said, “You leave NOW, your ride is outside.” I looked at both of them standing there, and down at Mr. Mike. “Give me a minute,” I asked.
They both left the room as I gathered up my things. I took Mr. Mike’s hand as I said, “Well I guess I have to go be responsible Mr. Mike. I finally got John to get your family here. I just wish it didn’t have to be this way. Please just hang in there a little while longer, they will be here soon. I know your tired Mr. Mike, but PLEASE just hang in there until they get here. Don’t give up until they are here. Meeshka and I love you today and for always. Don’t forget us when you earn your wings ok? I love you more than you could ever know!” I choked out as I hugged him and walked out of his room.
I never saw him alive again.
I was loading up to leave and asked John to PLEASE call me should something happen. He promised he would, and I watched in the mirror as the Manor disappeared. With tears streaming down my face I settled in for our long ride to Grand Rapids. I asked God to watch over Mr. Mike and to keep him safe until his family could arrive. God knew that I was also tired, and I drifted off to sleep shortly after.
I woke for a short time as we refilled for gas but then drifted back to sleep until we arrived in Grand Rapids at the hospital. Dillon was waiting for me when I arrived with a wheelchair and whisked me straight up to our floor. I had paperwork to fill out before we could get started, and because I had skipped treatments, well it meant more blood work to be done.
So we waited. I filled Dillon in on what had been happening, and he filled me in on life in his end of the world. We were in full on belly laughter when a nurse came in and said, “Rebecca it is time to go. Are you ready?” I remember looking at her, then at D and saying, “Yeah, I’ve never been more ready in all of my life.”
It was just after 9:30 in the morning when we got into my treatment room. Just as we always did, Dillon and I held hands and prayed as the nurses prepared everything. We had just finished praying when Amber my nurse came in and said, “I am so sorry, I have a family emergency and have to take a phone call. I can get another nurse if you don’t want to wait.” I looked at her and smiled, “It's ok, I will wait,” I said. She had been my nurse right from the beginning, and I didn’t want anyone else.
A short time later she returned to inform us her daughter had fallen at school and needed a band-aid. Nothing major, but the school HAD to call. She asked if I was ready to start, with a small smile I said, “Yes.” I turned to watch Dillon as she did what she needed to do, he was making shadow puppets to make me laugh. It was working, he was certainly distracting me.
I closed my eyes, took a breath in, and held it.
THIS WAS IT, if everything went well I would NEVER have to come back here again. Amber had started the IV, I could feel the coldness of the solution as it entered my arm. I let a breath out and opened my eyes to find Dillon standing in front of me. He was smiling as he said, “This is it Kid, last one. Just one more and it is all over. We got this!” I smiled and said, “Yes, yes we do. I’m tired D, very tired.” “Sleep Kid, we don’t have anything but time now. Get some rest,” He replied.
So I closed my eyes and listened to the hum of the machines in the background as I drifted off to sleep. I don't know how long it was before I heard it, “Little Foot, I made it! I’m home! I just wanted you to know that I made it home! Little Foot can you hear me? I made it home!” said Mr. Mike, seconds later I could feel a hand on my shoulder and Dillon’s voice saying, “Kid you gotta’ wake up there is someone calling for you.”
I wiped the sleep from my eyes as I reached up and took the phone. “Hello.” I said sleepily “Rebecca, it's John. I just called because, well you asked me to call if something happened. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. Mr. Mike passed in his sleep this morning Beckie,” He said. I sat up in my bed but was immediately restricted by my IV tubes from going any further. I looked over at Dillon as I said, “What time, when did it happen? Please tell me his family made it John? They made it didn’t they?” I asked. “Yes they arrived very early this morning, and they were here with him as he took his last breath. It happened at 10:07 am. I’m real sorry Beckie. I know how much he meant to you. Listen his family plans to stay in the area until you return. They would like to meet you when you are feeling up to it,” He said.
I took a sharp breath in and said, “Ok I will call you when I am home. Thank you for letting me know. I will talk to you soon.” I turned to Dillon and informed him of what had happened. He immediately got up from his chair and rushed out of the room. He returned with Amber who was holding my chart and trying to explain herself.
“I’m so sorry, I know we were late this morning. It is not like me to not be on time and ready,” She said. “No, that isn’t it at all, I just want to know the precise time you charted her starting treatment this morning,” said Dillon. “Umm…it looks like we got started this morning around 10:07 am,” replied Amber looking back and forth at us with a confused look on her face.
Dillon and I just looked at one another in complete disbelief, and he immediately sat down in his chair. “Whoa Kid! That can’t even be by chance. Your last treatment to save your life starts at the very moment he was taking his last breath?” he said looking at me. “Yeah, isn’t that something,” I responded as I sat back against the pillows on my bed and looked out the window.
It was a long ride home knowing what was waiting for me when I arrived. I wasn’t sure what his family was going to say to me, and frankly, I was a tad terrified. I could have waited another day or so, but I REALLY wanted to know WHY no one had come to see Mr. Mike. So I called John to let him know I had arrived home and could be there within the hour. Then I showered, got dressed and made my way towards the Manor.
When I arrived John met me outside his office and said, “Listen, before we go in there I want you to understand that you are going to hear some things that are going to upset you. Try to remain calm and understand that all of this was in motion before you EVER worked here. LISTEN before you get upset OK?” I looked up at him confused and said, “Sure, ok.” as we walked into his office.
A woman was sitting in a chair in front of his desk waiting. She stood as we entered the room. “Little Foot.” she whispered, I turned to look at John as she stretched a hand towards me and said, “Hi, it is so nice to finally meet you. I have heard SO much about you. I’m Michelle, Michael’s daughter.” My jaw hit the floor. I looked at John. I instantly felt woozy. I struggled to find a seat as I reached out to shake her hand. I said, “You will have to excuse me, I am a little confused and still reeling from everything. It is nice to meet you.”
She smiled and said, “I have heard so much about you Rebecca. I feel like I already know you. My father cared for you and your daughter deeply. Thank You for being there for him all this time. It was hard letting him make the decision to come here. We respected his wishes as much as we possibly could, but I found it ludicrous that he chose to cut ties with the family. Even more irresponsible when he signed over Power of Attorney of all his medical choices to John & the home.”
I turned to look at John and knew immediately that he knew what I was thinking. It was the ONLY reason I wasn’t in trouble for the DNR incident. He looked down at the file on his desk as Michelle continued, “I love my father VERY much, but his tendencies could be a tad irrational at times. After my mother was killed by a drunk driver he never really was the same. My mother Rosemary couldn’t have children of her own, I was adopted as a baby, and as a result, I am an only child to them both. He fought really hard the 1st time when my mother was alive, it was like he had something worth fighting for. When we found out it had aggressively returned 3 years ago he made the decision to come here and cut ties with the family. He immediately gave up, refused treatment, and told us that he was coming here to live out his final days in seclusion. It was the most ridiculous thing I had ever heard, but since he was of sound mind and body at the time there really was no stopping him. We had vacationed here when I was a child, it was one of my mother's favorite vacation spots. I presume it is the very reason he chose it. However, it wasn’t near any hospital where he could get treatment should he change his mind. I thought he would, I really thought he would wake up one morning and just decide that life was worth living! I honestly thought he would put up a fight and COME HOME. It never happened. So I just want to Thank You for being so kind to him the entire time he was here. He wasn’t an easy man to get along with from what I understand,” She said.
I looked at her and asked, “I guess I am confused about how your father was supposed to fight anything? He had Alzheimer’s, so why would he get treatment? There isn’t a cure for that." Michelle sat straight up in her chair, looked at me, and said, “Darling who told you that? No, no, no, my father was of sound mind and probably right to his last breath. You are sorely mistaken, dear. My father died of Prostate Cancer.” “That’s not possible,” I whispered as I looked across the desk at John. The expression on his face told the truth as tears started streaming down my face. “That’s not possible,” I said again only louder. “I assure you it is Rebecca. My father came here to die. He cut all ties of communication with his family, and only called the Lake House once a week to leave a detailed message on the answering machine. None of us were EVER to answer or he would hang up. It got to the point that we would all have family dinner each week just so that we could all be there to hear his voice and his update,” She replied with a smile on her face.
“His bookie,” I said as I looked at her. She laughed, “Yes, that sounds like my father, and yet he never gambled a day in his life. He was most certainly calling the Lake House.” I took a deep breath in trying to process everything I had just heard. I was overwhelmed. None of it made any sense, and I was too nauseous to be angry at the moment.
“I wanted to tell you Thank You in person, I owed that to you. You took excellent care of my father once you got here. When we cleaned out his room I found a box of letters written to me. John informed me that you had been writing them for my father since you started here. Thank You. It means the world to me to have something to take away from this. A sense of peace maybe; I suppose I am not really sure. I have kept all the tapes from the answering machine. I would change it out weekly with a new one so we would always have them. I thought then it would be the only memory I would have of him. So thank you for the letters, I look forward to reading them and sharing them with my family. I have to get going. My family and I need to get on the road if we are going to make our flight home,” Michelle said.
John stood from behind his desk, which in turn prompted me to stand. Michelle reached out and embraced me, and I hugged her back. When we released I immediately sat back down and she and John shook hands and he walked her out. I sat looking at my hands folded in my lap trying to make sense of what had just happened when John returned and sat down in front of me at his desk. I looked up at him waiting for him to say something. Instead, he slid a file across the desk at me. I looked down at it and then back at John as tears started to stream down my face. “Did you know?” I asked. “Beckie, I wanted to tell you. Believe me, I did, but I could not. Everything you need to know is in that file. Take as much time as you need, I will be down with the residents when you are finished. Just let me know when you are done okay?” he replied. I shook my head yes at him as he stood to leave the room.
I reached up to open the file and immediately a sob released from me. Everything I thought I knew for the past two years was, in fact, a lie, and the cold hard truth was within the file folder in front of me. I wasn’t entirely sure I was prepared for what I was about to find. I took a sharp breath in, closed my eyes, and opened the folder. Staring back at me was an envelope. Written in John’s handwriting on the front was, My Dearest Little Foot, I ran my fingers over the letters on the front of the envelope as I pulled it from the file. I replaced the folder on the desk as I sat the envelope in my lap. I said a prayer as I opened it.
It was dated two months prior.
My Dearest Little Foot,
There are a 1000 things I wanted to say, and even more times than that when I wanted to tell you the truth. At the end of the day, the fact remains that if I had you would have fought me tooth and nail to get treatment. I truly believe you missed your calling as a lawyer Little Foot, (even as I say this John is shaking his head YES!) since you can argue your point about something you are passionate about until a person has no choice BUT to believe in it! I hope you know that I never hid anything from you to hurt you or to try and betray you. I made a choice to come here and live out my final days ALONE. I never expected God to send me someone that would make me not only question my faith but bring me closer to him before it was all said and done. People like you are very rare Little Foot. Not everyone will be as lucky or blessed to be able to know you like I do. You weren’t made to appeal to every type of person on this planet Little Foot, only to the ones that will NEED you and those that can relate to you. Remember that as the years pass you by. You have a passion for life that reminds me so much of my Rosemary, NEVER EVER lose that part of yourself.
I want to tell you the same thing I would tell my Michelle growing up. God loves you more than I ever could have. More than ANYONE can. Never forget that when and if you decide to start dating again. One day you will find someone that adores you. Hopefully, you also adore him back equally as much. Love, REAL, love comes along once in a lifetime Little Foot, and it isn’t hard to know what you are looking for if you just GIVE IT A CHANCE. PRAY for your partner now. God is busy creating him so that when the time is right, he can reveal him. When he does show himself, approach love the same way you do with cooking, with reckless abandon.
Love him through the good times, embrace him during the bad ones, write him often during the moments when you can’t be together, cherish ALL the memories you make and most of all NEVER GIVE UP. TRUE LOVE is felt, right to your soul, it isn’t something that just goes away. Even after the person isn’t by your side anymore, your SOUL will still continue to search for them. Don’t ever give up on finding that. Always BELIEVE that it is possible. Never go out looking for it, let it come and find you. Trust that the Big Man upstairs has it figured out and will make it possible when it is meant to be. That is how I ended up finding my Rosemary, God revealed her to me when I was ready to appreciate her being in my life.
TRUST that you are doing a good job Little Foot. You are a young mom, but you are a GOOD mom. You are going to make mistakes, but don’t you dare EVER stop fighting for My Meeshka or any children you may have in the future. They are a rare gift no matter how they may come to you, God’s Will is ALWAYS going to find a way. Never forget that.
You both brought so much joy to my life! I hope that you know, trust, and believe that your presence in my life had a purpose. I spent the last few years of my life truly LIVING even though I came here with full intentions of dying alone. You filled my cup Little Foot, and then you opened up your life and let me know Mickayla. My cup then overflowed, and for that, I will be eternally grateful.
If you are reading this it means that I am with my Rosemary again, have no doubts about where I went when I left this earth Little Foot. Keep your relationship with the Lord a strong one Little Foot, I want to see you again someday!
Should you fall from Grace as we sometimes do, I know you will find your way back!
Until we meet again Little Foot, live life to the ABSOLUTE fullest and not an ounce less!
I love you more than blueberry pancakes,
Mr. Mike
I folded the letter back up and stuck it in the envelope it had come from. He knew 2 months prior his time was nearing, and he took the time to make sure to have John write to me. That meant something, not an opportunity that everyone in this life was given.
I pushed the folder back across the desk, I had everything I needed. I wrote my letter of resignation, and placed it on the top of the folder before I walked out of John’s office. I knew after that moment that my time at the Manor had come to an end. I walked out of there that day without a single regret for anything I had done while employed there. I still feel that way to this very day. Losing Mr. Mike showed me that sometimes everything we see is not, in fact, the truth. The people that we know, the ones that we trust, who we think they are, sometimes we just REALLY don’t know them.
We KNOW what sides of people they choose to show the world. We rarely know the ENTIRE truth about who a person really is. We hide parts of ourselves for fear of how others are going to feel. We dilute certain things for people so we don’t hurt their feelings or bruise their egos.
I walked out of there that day but not before making a deal with myself that I would NEVER change a single thing about who I was. Over the years I have grown, life has happened along the way and ultimately this is one of those MAJOR events that literally shaped me into the woman I am today.
It is something that I rarely, if ever talked about, and therefore it was a part of me that few knew anything about. A part of me hidden from the world. A part of me that I chose to keep quiet about for fear that if I spoke about it, the memories that were there would just disappear. When you finally open yourself up to tell certain parts of your life, it gives you a sense of vulnerability. One that you aren’t sure how to deal with, and it takes time to process that sometimes you aren’t the ONLY one that has gone through an event like this.
At first, it was HARD to sit down and write this, most nights I would just cry and walk away. It wasn’t a place or memory I was happy revisiting. In the end, I found peace in finally telling my story, the WHOLE story about it. I could BREATH for the first time in a lot of years. I didn’t feel like I was carrying a burden no one knew anything about. Sometimes letting go of the very thing that makes your soul weary is the most refreshing thing you can do for yourself.
That is my wish for each of you, that you find peace in letting the parts of your life that you continue to carry with you go. The ones that slow you down and make you feel like you are dragging your feet. The ones that you have buried DEEP and never expected to show to anyone.
They helped define and shape you into who you are. Like my brilliant cousin Lacey once told me, it is ok to visit those times and places, just don’t ever get stuck and stay there. Use them as a reminder of just how far you have come and why you should never, ever go back.
Mr. Mike will ALWAYS be the reason that sometimes you catch me randomly wearing a white V-Neck T-shirt, sometimes I need to slip into one just to shift myself back to center or to a time not so long ago when life was less complicated. The reason that I am NEVER without Fisherman’s Friend on my person, purse, or vehicle to this day. Why I still can’t bear to sit through a helping of Cherry Cheesecake without getting choked up, and why I rarely sit through The Land Before Time without slipping away to fold laundry or find something to busy my mind.
I can’t hear the phrase “Little Foot” without getting a lump in my throat, or sit at my Momma’s Kitchen Table when she makes blueberry pancakes without hearing Mr. Mike’s laughter in the distance. I would love to tell you that “Time Heals All Wounds” but that just isn’t the case. It numbs the pain, dulls the ache, and often leaves you with a sense of longing.
Looking back now I can honestly tell you that had I REALLY looked outside the box I would have seen the signs that were right in front of me. Hindsight is often 20/20 in situations such as mine. God knew what he was doing, as he ALWAYS does! I have NO doubts that Mr. Mike will be waiting for me when I finally arrive at Heaven’s Gate, and THAT is something I can look forward to!
We all struggle, we all fight, and most of all we all suffer in one way or another. You NEVER REALLY know what a person is going through or what they have experienced or gone through in their life to get to where they are at the very moment they finally cross your path. LOVE AND EMBRACE each person instead of judging them and you will see just how quickly life changes.
I loved and embraced the “Problem Child” of the Manor, and with little to no certainty that I would even survive the treatments that I was going through at the time, I LOVED THE LIFE that I had in front of me, and IT LOVED ME RIGHT BACK.
That is my advice for all of you….be GRATEFUL for the life you have been given. COUNT what blessings you do have, and LOVE & EMBRACE every single person that you encounter.
NO MATTER WHAT THEIR STORY IS OR HOW THEIR JOURNEY HAPPENED TO CROSS YOUR PATH!
Love one another as I have loved you. – John 13:34
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Since I posted the video a few nights ago some of you have reached out to me asking for prayers, for strength, for guidance, and some for answers that I just can’t quite give to you. Not because I don’t want to, but because I can’t. I don’t have them, so even if I wanted to help all I can really do is pray and advise you to do the same.
I have two blogs I have been working on that I have been struggling to finish for over a month now. The stories are about two of my most favorite people who ever graced my life. Both of which were taken from me at a young age. So I am struggling with them as the emotions that comes from writing them come out of me like a flood gate has been opened.
Eventually I will finish them, the voice of reason, my Mother always seems to resonate during my struggle with them – “In God’s time Rebecca…..” so I go to them, I read them, then I cry or hurt, and have to stop, pray and ask that God takes what I am feeling so that I can handle finishing reading what is in front of me.
Often enough it softens the blow and I am able to continue. Each time has gotten a fraction of a bit easier, but none the less the emotions are still pretty raw in those two areas. Plus it is also parts of my life that very few even know anything about. If you weren’t around during those times to see the aftermath endured, you can’t possibly know much about it.
However, I am getting there…..Slowly….but each time I touch on either moment in my life I find strength I didn’t even know I had. One of them has been gone 27 years, and the other 22 years. Looking at those numbers sends a shiver down my spine, it is hard to believe they have both been gone so long. Some days it feels like only yesterday…..
Eventually I will finish those two portions of my life, my point in all of this is to show each of you that I also struggle on the other side of this just as much as all of you. Writing comes naturally to me, writing about my raw emotions and feelings is not something I am accustomed to so it has taken some adjusting on my part.
In the mean time I have started receiving "Fan Mail" from those of you that have been avidly following my blog. With her permission I asked to be allowed to include the letter that was written to me in my blog, and she agreed as long as I didn’t sign the letter showing her entire name.
I want to share it with you now:
Dear Rebecca,
I want you to know that I am not actually even a friend of yours. I don’t honestly even know if we have ever met in real life, or if you would even recognize me if I passed you on the sidewalk. I stumbled upon your blog because a friend of mine shared your “A Dyke with a Servant’s Heart” blog in a Mom Group I am in. I will be honest, when I saw the title I rolled my eyes and wondered what kind of crazy you might be drinking with your morning coffee.
Then I fell in love. Not with you, don’t take that the wrong way. I mean I did, but I didn’t. I fell in love with your story. You! Immediately after finishing your blog I wanted to read more about you, I felt compelled to know more. I was excited to find that there were even MORE blogs about you out there and I chose to BINGE read them! Yep, I totally Fan Girl’d you something fierce.
I read until there was no more to read. I laughed, I cried, I wept, I sobbed, I giggled, I prayed, and sometimes I would just hold my chest as I read because my heart was literally aching for you. The strength you have is incredible Rebecca. The ability to persevere is truly amazing. I am not sure we have ever truly even met in real life, but even still I feel like I know you.
I relate to you, to your stories, your feelings, your thoughts, it is AWESOME and refreshing to find someone that is not only humble, but honest in how she portrays herself and her story. Thank You for that.
I’ve followed you ever since that day, and I just want you to know how blessed I feel that God put us in one another’s lives. Your strength and ability to hold strong have inspired me over and over again. You truly are an amazing woman. THANK YOU FOR SHARING your story with the rest of us, you have truly touched my life in more ways than I can even begin to count.
I truly hope to one day meet you in REAL life!
Your friend in Christ,
A****************
Now I had to take a minute and compose myself when I finished reading her letter. God must have just known I NEEDED to hear her words that morning. It was one of THOSE mornings.
The kind that sneak up on you when you least expect them. The ones where every single thing we do seems like a struggle. Yeah, I was there, and then I get an alert with this message.
At first I just disregarded it and didn’t do much in the way of trying to read it, but the alert went off sometime shortly again. I remember letting out a loud sigh and saying, “Okay God, I hear you, loud and clear.” Then I read her message.
I was in tears two paragraphs in and asking God to give me the strength to make it through to the end through tear stained cheeks. You see – I struggle too. Just like everyone else. The internet is sometimes deceiving because it leads us to believe what we can see with our eyes, but not necessarily hear with our own ears.
You pull perceptions from my writings and believe that I am strong and able to handle even the roughest of days with poise and class. Well let us be honest shall we – that my friends would be a bold faced lie.
I won’t ever stand in front of any of you and PRETEND to know precisely what your feeling or going through, but I can stand in front of you, look you in the eye and promise you that I do relate in more ways than you can probably even begin to understand.
I may not have been in the same exact situation, or walked the same line as some of you, but I have endured MANY of my own struggles, failures, self-doubt moments, and days where I have felt utterly defeated.
I have stood in my bedroom after my Littles have gone to sleep looking in the mirror at my reflection and not even recognizing the woman standing before me. Scared to look myself in the eye for fear that I would have to admit to myself that I did NOT protect my inner little girl and I had failed her in every way shape and form. I didn’t want to tell that part of myself that I had FAILED, and not just badly, miserably!
I have woken up in the morning to find my heart shattered in a million pieces on the bedroom floor, and rather than deal with it, I stepped over it and would leave it for another time when I could better prepare myself to handle the damage that would come from having to pick them all back up. Scared to death that if I moved or breathed the wrong way what pieces were salvagable might just slip away.
I have had to re-program my body to sleep alone instead of next to someone, and then my head to shut that SAME person out so that I can live somewhat of a productive life. It is not to say that it hasn’t or doesn’t creep up when I least expect it, because believe me it most certainly does some times.
I’ve stood at my kitchen sink when the emotions have overwhelmed me so fast it felt like someone punched me in the stomach and knocked the wind out of me. I’ve sat on my deck more nights than I can count fighting for air in between sobs that ALMOST consumed me. I’ve cried more mornings & more nights in the shower than I will ever care to admit, but at the end of the day it was ALL part of it.
So no.
No, I wasn’t always strong, or courageous, or felt like I had it together.
Some days it felt like I was barely holding it together at all….but I made it. Even in the moments when I thought I wasn’t ever going to come back from what I was experiencing or facing, I PUSHED THROUGH.
You see we hold on because we are either told we should, we feel like we should, or we are made to believe there is some reason not to let go. In the end who are we really hurting for?
Let me explain.
Recently my daughter said the most amazing thing to me, and it took it coming from her for me to FINALLY get it. For me to FINALLY grasp it in all its entirety. She said, “They call it a break up for a reason Mom, ITS BROKEN. That means there is NO fixing it!”
At first I was upset that she would even say something like that to me, and then the more I thought about it, the more I realized she was right.
Once the blinders came off, and I backed myself away from where I had been patiently standing it all made perfect sense.
Now in the same breath, Kyle Cease – who is hilarious, wonderful, and literally makes you GET IT TOGETHER and get over yourself – once said, “He/She didn’t break your heart – They BROKE your expectations.”
Yes, you read that correctly. Now I will repeat that for you.
“HE/SHE DIDN’T BREAK YOUR HEART – THEY BROKE YOUR EXPECTATIONS!”
Yes Sir! Praise Jesus! All of the sudden there was a man in this world that I could relate to that understood the VERY thing that I was going through! Holy Hannah – It was about time!
So between Mickayla and Kyle Cease the image of what was, what was to be, and what would never be again became CRYSTAL CLEAR. I made a CHOICE – and I continue making the same choices each morning when I open my eyes.
I could have walked away from the place I was in full of anger, resentment, hurt, all while pointing fingers and blame. I just didn’t want to live there anymore. I had worked SO hard to get to where I was at, and going BACKWARDS wasn’t an option.
So yes you read A LOT about my decisions to hand a lot of what I am feeling over to God, and about letting go. Don’t ever think for a single second that it didn’t take some refining on my end. TRUST is a VERY fragile thing, and after being told a 100 left hand promises that all shattered in a single moment – Trusting in ANYTHING wasn’t something I was the absolute best at.
However, I had to TRUST that God had my back, and that both of his hands were on the wheel. That my destination was pointed to wherever I was going because HE WAS leading the way. At the end of the day if he is the ONLY man in my entire life that I EVER trusted that hasn’t let me down, I was going to be ok with that.
Now I want to touch base on a few things before we move on, especially since a ton of you have recently reached out to me to let me know your experiencing things you just aren't certain you can break free from.
YOU are in control of your entire situation. IF someone is leading you on, telling you bits and fractions of things that don’t make sense to string you along so that you stay committed to them in the hopes that you will still be around when they are done playing their games – MOVE ON.
Certain people run around plastering the phrase “We met for a reason, you are either a lesson or a blessing. You choose which one suits you best.” I’ve seen it more in the past few weeks cross my news feed than I care to admit. STOP IT.
Especially those of you that are newly broken up and posting it submissively towards your Ex. You may think you are fooling everyone, but you are only fooling yourself. So please know your worth, and just do NOT post ANYTHING when your in an emotional battle between your head and your heart.
Unless of course it is a cookie recipe, cookies or pie are your only safe bets after a break up.
If it is a really messy break up – Maybe a shot recipe or two, but none of the submissive meme’s please.
It is just….just NO. Please just don’t.
My point in all of this is that just because you do NOT see the struggle behind the scenes doesn’t mean that it isn’t there. Each day it gets better, with each passing moment I get stronger, and the more time that goes on I find the importance in truly loving ME first.
Many of you asked what I’ve been doing and the answer is simple, I LOVE ME.
Really, truly, whole-heartedly LOVE ME. It is one hell of a place to be in, and I certainly recommend it to EVERYONE.
FALL IN LOVE WITH YOURSELF!
Even the worst version of who you are, and then strive to BE BETTER! DO BETTER! BECOME BETTER!
Then watch what happens…..YOU. BECOME. UNSTOPPABLE.
Now I will tell you why I’m different.
The answer is simple really, I let go, and I STILL BELIEVE.
Even though the craziest of moments and experiences crossed my path, I STILL BELIEVE in that one true blue made for me by God’s own hand person. I have no way of knowing if it will even be in this lifetime that I get to experience that absolutely extraordinary type Love, but it certainly doesn't stop me from believing!
What I can tell you is I have not a single regret, not a one. I gave the VERY BEST parts of me to people that most certainly never deserved them, but I won’t ever stand on judgement day and say I sold ANYONE short on the love that I gave to them. My heart overflows at that very fact alone.
So I am still a dreamer, and I will ALWAYS blow wishes even when all someone else sees is weeds.
I will NEVER walk the straight line to anything in my life, and personally I’m ok with that. Somedays, and ONLY somedays, I am going to have to choose boat shoes over cowboy boots no matter HOW much it pains me to do it!
And if I can’t make the choice of either – well I can always slip my feet into this old pair of shoes and wander along my path until I get to where I need to be.
So I promise to never stand in front of you and pretend to KNOW what you are feeling or act like I KNOW what you are going through, but in the same breath please don’t stand in front of me and act like I can’t possibly relate to you because you view my situation based off of what your reading.
We only live ONE time folks….ONE.
There are NO second chances, so I will take every moment, both the good and the bad and embrace them for what they are – Life’s Lesson’s.
& then we pick up what pieces we need to help us as we move forward and WE DO THAT. We trust that God has the wheel, knows the way, and we move forward.
I do what I do because I have a beautiful young lady & two young little men who deserve to know how they SHOULD treat others & in turn how they should be treated!! Since the men to date have not shown themselves worthy enough to set an example, it is my job to show them all that you can overcome even the worst of moments, find strength in the roughest of times, and push through even the grittiest of things thrown at you!
So today I advise each of you to set the past at the foot of your horizon, step over the threshold to your future, and move forward.
Life is patiently waiting…..for you....GO EXPLORE!
Much love and many blessings to each of you! <3
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Proverbs 3:5 Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.
Today someone asked me what my greatest accomplishment was. Without hesitation I answered, “My 3 Littles. Each of them is unique in their own way. Each one of them adds a different element of character to our little family which in turn makes us a pretty special little bunch.”
He smiled and replied, “Without question they would be your greatest accomplishment. However, I mean personally, aside from the children. What do you feel is your greatest accomplishment personally?”
I thought for a moment and then replied, “Finishing Firefighter I & II, and obtaining my HazMat Certification all while working Full Time. I had to take the classes at night after work, but I managed to get both certifications. Plus I am a single mom, so it was a pretty big deal for me when I finally completed my practical’s.”
Most of us don’t think about what our greatest accomplishment really, truly is.
Today was the first time I had ever really been asked that question, so as I headed my journey out west today it got me thinking.
I started looking back over the course of my life and started to pull different things from different times that I felt were “GREAT” accomplishments.
None of them really just struck me as GREAT. They were OK…and some were alright.
Most were just normal though, things that I had set goals for and hit.
So I moved on to the next thing and set the bar higher for myself.
I had punched the address from my ticket into my GPS so I hadn’t been paying attention to where I was headed. It wasn’t until I was actually getting set to turn onto the road to pull into my destination that I even realized where I was.
I remembered the last time I was here for a locate. It was 2 seasons ago. I took a deep breath in as I put my truck in park. I exhaled deeply, and said a silent prayer as I exited my truck.
As my second cone hit the ground at the front of my truck I looked upward to the High-Rise Power Lines.
I already knew what needed to be marked here without looking at the prints, but I looked anyway because just standing there put a chill across my skin.
So much had changed since the last time I stood in this very spot.
I marked out the phone line in conflict with the dig location.
I was standing at the bottom of the pole putting the last paint mark on the ground for the static fiber when I stopped dead in my tracks.
I closed my eyes and I could hear the hum from the substation behind me.
I laughed out loud as I opened my eyes and looked up at the static fiber. I shook my head as I remembered the “Not So Funny” Joke someone played on me once when they told me they had hit the very same static fiber I was looking at.
Seemed like ages ago now.
I exhaled deeply and closed my eyes.
“There has to be a purpose for all of this God. You didn’t bring me ALL the way out here just to mark static fiber. You have to help me see the hidden meaning here. Cause’ right now, I am not seeing it.”
Even though the substation was adjacent to US-2 and traffic was racing by, it was silent where I was standing.
That was until I heard a voice say, “Rebecca?”
I looked up at the sky and said, “Yep, I heard you that time. Sounds like you are right behind me!”
Apparently I was pretty lost in my surroundings because when a hand reached out and touched my shoulder and said, “Rebecca?”
I jumped about 20 ft in the air and screamed, “JUDAS!” as I threw my equipment.
I turned to see the contractor I was marking for standing behind me.
“Goodness Todd you scared the daylights out of me!” I said
He bent down to help pick up my equipment as he asked, “Are you okay? I have been calling your name from across the road for at least 5 minutes? You look like you’ve seen a ghost Rebecca?”
I looked at him and said, “Well you did just scare 10 years out of me Todd! That might have something to do with it. Goodness. If I could get my heart to slow down we might just be alright. Holy. You always go around scaring locators in the middle of no where?”
He looked back over his shoulder at me and said, “You always go around shutting the world off next to high-rise power lines & substations?”
I raised my eyebrows at him and said, “I will have you know I was having a VERY important and in depth conversation with God. Thank You very much.”
He smiled, “Well did he tell you anything amazing?”
I smiled back, “Well he was about to until you showed up and scared everything in a 5 mile radius away!”
I loaded all my equipment back into my truck as we went over the scope of the ticket and the work he was doing. I was turning to leave when he stopped me.
“Rebecca, can I ask you something?” he said
“Yeah, sure. What’s up?” I replied
“In all the time that I have known you, you always wore a bracelet with GPS coordinates on it. On one of our jobs together awhile back I wrote them down. I mean I guess I could have just asked you about it, but I didn’t know you well enough then. Anyway, I punched them in and it came up here. I mean the coordinates, they are for this location.” He said
I took sharp breath in, my entire body stiffened straight and I just turned to look at him.
“Rebecca,” he rattled off before I could even stop him, “How long have we known one another?”
“I don’t know, its my 3rd season, so 2 years or so?” I said as I shrugged my shoulders
“Do you know what I know about you? Honestly?” he looked at me and his voice softened, “You are from Brimley, you have 3 children you call Littles, who you can tell are the light of your entire world, and THIS spot. THIS spot right where we are standing is important to you, but I have no idea why. Do you EVER let anyone in? Even just a little?” he asked
I just stood there looking at him and cracked a small smile.
“You notice an awful lot for someone who doesn’t spend a whole lot of time around me Todd. Honestly I think you probably paid closer attention to what was going on with my life than the person that bracelet was meant for.” I responded.
“I don’t mean to pry, I just, well I noticed you don’t wear it anymore. You have one that says Believe now. I guess, I just, well I wondered what happened is all?” he asked as he shoved his hands in his pockets.
I stood there biting my lip to hold back the tears. I had been SO good about pushing it to the waste side, not thinking about it, not dealing with it, at least until today.
I looked down at the ground and then back up at Todd and let out a barely audible whisper, “I let go.”
“Excuse me?” he asked as he leaned towards me
“I let go.” I said, louder this time
"Oh. I'm sorry." he said
He kept talking as I looked back towards the power lines, and that is when it hit me.
“Todd, You are a GENIUS!” I said
“I am?” he asked looking confused
“Yes!” I smiled, “Yes, you are! Oh my goodness, yes! Thank You! Look everything is marked out, just don’t hit anything important!”
He chuckled, “I PROMISE I won’t hit the static fiber Rebecca!”
I rolled my eyes, “WHATEVER you do, DO NOT CALL ME AND PRETEND YOU HIT IT OK?”
He looked at me, shrugged his shoulders and said, “Who does such things? That isn’t a funny thing to joke about at all!”
I pointed at him, “Ha! This is why you are my #1 favorite contractor Todd! Literally! Ok, I have to go! I will talk to you soon!”
He stood there shaking his head, smiling and most certainly was trying to figure out what just happened!
I waved as I drove away, and smiled as it slowly came together.
Let me explain.
My greatest accomplishment, I let go.
Just like so many of you reading this, I felt the need to be in control.
Of big things, small things, important things, non-important things, of ALL the things, but the reality is I needed to just let go.
You see I needed to trust God and his plan, and sometimes that is SO much easier to say than it is to do.
So many things fell in place with my life when I just trusted that God would work them out if I just LET GO and let him do the work.
I met one of the greatest people to ever grace my life in the middle of no where when I least expected it.
So it was only fitting that God brought me back to that very place to teach me the value in the very lesson I was seeking answers for.
I let go. Even when every fiber of my being was telling me not to, I let go. I trusted that GOD’s plan was SO much better and bigger than my own, and I LET GO.
You see I asked him for a sign, and he gave it to me. I mean I had to have the HARD questions be asked, and I in turn had to answer them. I answered my OWN question when I asked him to give me sign to see the bigger purpose in the lesson he was trying to show me.
We are so programmed to want to be in control ALL the time.
From the time we wake up, we have deadlines, the moments we can shower, how many minutes to eat breakfast, make lunches, get dressed, get the kids off to school or daycare, deadlines or appointments at work, ect.
Sometimes we get LOST in those moments and forget to count them as blessings because they become so routine in our lives.
SOMETIMES we need to STOP – LET GO – and just KNOW that OUR greatest accomplishment is to LET GO and LET GOD.
So I can honestly look at my “Greatest Accomplishment” as what it truly is. The reality that as long as I am living and breathing, I will need to continue to just LET GO and LET GOD handle it.
I know it is easier said than done, sometimes when we are going through the roughest of moments, or the hardest of times, it may seem like he isn’t there.
I promise that he is indeed right where he needs to be.
I also realize that MOST people say HANG IN THERE, JUST HOLD ON EVERYTHING WILL BE JUST FINE…..
I am telling you to do the opposite, LET GO – Lay all of your burdens at the foot of the cross and let God take control.
All the hurt, all the anger, all the judgement, the pain, the heartache, the loss, all of it, LET IT GO - We were never meant to carry such burdens with us through our journey’s in this life. It is about knowing and understanding that NOT everything is going to go as planned!!
That sometimes even when we have a HUGE list of things to accomplish such as laundry, dishes, filing bills, painting the deck, or finishing a blog; God has other plans for us to SLOW DOWN, to NAP, to embrace the moment, to ENJOY what moments we do have because one day they just won't BE there when you turn around!
It is about knowing that NOT every family photo is going to turn out perfect, BUT the moments that do get captured are going to be PERFECT! That embracing that fact will one day give us photos to look back on and laugh about the MOMENTS we did TRY to make them perfect, and LOOK what happened!
Or about knowing that WHEN you REALLY open your heart to PRAY for SOMEONE, ANYONE to come to the aide of the person that helped create your daughter, you KNOW that you are TRUSTING that GOD WILL send the MOST PERFECT soul imaginable to be her "Bonus Mom." A beautiful lady who I adore more than ANYTHING for ALL she has done over the years for Mickayla & I! It was ALL part of GOD'S PLAN.
Including trusting in him enough to know that the day would come when Mickayla's Father and I could sit SIDE BY SIDE at our Baby Girl's High School Graduation and LET IT ALL GO.
A feat that not so long ago we weren't so sure we would be able to handle on our own, and that is because WE COULD NOT! We needed to LET GO and LET GOD take control.
I can't even begin to tell you how much my heart overflowed as we sat there elbowing one another to make sure the other was watching and wasn't missing a single moment. We knew we made it when we looked at one another and said, "Thanks!"
No folks, it isn't always easy, and I am the first one who will admit that it hasn't been. Some days STILL hit me so hard they knock the wind out of me. Certain songs, smells, and memories still catch me off guard. Chances are they probably always will, but no matter what I truly believe that it is all part of God's plan.
So I can't and won't promise that it is ALWAYS going to be a bowl of cherries.....
However, there is BEAUTY in all of it. Mostly because that is where your healing can finally BEGIN.
Once you LET GO - It no longer is your burden to carry and that is when your healing from it all can really, truly begin.
So I encourage you more now than ever to give letting go a chance.
It truly has been my "Greatest Accomplishment."
Proverbs 4:25-27 Let your eyes look straight ahead; fix your gaze directly before you. Give careful thought to the paths for your feet and be steadfast in all your ways. Do not turn to the right or the left; keep your foot from evil.
The bracelet shown in this blog was Hand Made and Purchased from the link listed below:
https://www.etsy.com/shop/mybeadedbutterfly
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“You can make a lifetime of memories in a matter of seconds Rebecca. Take pictures. LOTS of pictures. The moments go by SO fast, and before you know it they are GONE. Once they are gone you can’t get them back. Sometimes all you have to look back on is the photos, the memories, those few select moments that you captured in time. The rest of the moments and memories eventually slip away with time, but the ones that you do manage to capture in photos you will be able to remember forever. TAKE LOTS OF PICTURES.”
My mother said those very words to me when I was 18 years old. I was a NEW Momma’ Bear to Mickayla and still learning every single day what parenting was even about. My biggest Little and I have come pretty far since those days. It is almost surreal to look back on who and where her and I were vs. where we stand at this very moment.
This weekend as I stood looking at a young woman get ready for prom I was overcome with emotions. It was hard to believe that this would be her VERY last High School Prom. The very last time I watched as she carefully did her make-up, hair, nails, the whole entire thing. It went by SO fast….
The day before I was standing on the side of the road in Trout Lake working, having a pretty amazing conversation with God about just how far her and I have come. Thanking him for the never ending blessings he has given to her brothers, her and I.
When I asked him if I was sending her out into the world with ENOUGH, did I DO ENOUGH, did I give ENOUGH, did I love ENOUGH, was my advice ENOUGH, he whispered back, “It was always enough.”
So I asked, “Then why do I feel like I am missing something? Like there is something else, something that completes the circle. What am I missing Lord? You have to give me a sign, because I just feel like I am missing something here!”
I turned to put my equipment back into my work truck and my ring caught the corner of the tailgate. As I looked down to see if it had hurt the ring or my finger a voice said, “It is time Rebecca.”
I looked up at the sky and said, “Really? It is that obvious?!” I shook my head, said, “Ok. I can do that.” and headed for home.
4 years ago after I filed for divorce I ordered the ring pictured below after turning in my wedding set not knowing what I would receive back in return. When I spoke to the lady on the phone she asked if I had any special requests other than a NEW ring.
I told her NOT to use any stones from my wedding set, to make my new ring more beautiful than the previous one, and to design it in such a way that NO wedding band could EVER be worn with it.
I wanted it to be special. So special in fact that it was never to be taken off or replaced with any other ring until MUCH later in life. Only a holy act of God was going to get it off of my finger, because it certainly wasn't going to be a man!
It was weeks before I received it back, and when I opened that little blue box it exceeded ALL of my expectations! I had never seen a ring more beautiful in my entire life, and I immediately named it my “New Beginning” Ring.
It would serve as a CONSTANT reminder of where I had been, what I had been through, what I had managed to survive, and just how far I had actually come.
Anyone who knows me or followed my story during that portion of my life knows the importance of that very piece of jewelry and the place it served in my life during that time.
This weekend I passed that very ring onto my only daughter.
Saturday was the very last prom that she would attend, and even though graduation is still a week away I wanted her to have it to complete her outfit, and so that her LAST Prom is now an "official" reminder of a new beginning for her.
I could not have been prouder of that beautiful little lady when she opened that box and said, “Mom isn’t this your ring?”
“Yes, Yes Sweetheart it is my ring. However Mickayla, it is now YOUR ring. Happy Early Graduation Baby Girl!” I said
“Why are you giving this to me Mom?” she asked
“Well Pumpkin, you are standing on the threshold of your OWN “New Beginning” and it is only fitting that it gets passed to you. As my only daughter it rightfully belongs to you, and I really want for you to have it. Take good care of it always Meesh, it has served its purpose in my life, and I hope that it does the same for you.” I said
“THANK YOU SO MUCH MOM!” she said
You see when I brought that ring home 4 years ago the very same look you see in the picture above was also on Mickayla’s face. I knew that one day I would pass it down to her so that she would always have a piece of me with her where ever she may go on her journey. I had hoped to give it to her on her wedding day, but God is funny like that. He always has different plans for us even when we think we know what is best.
I have worn that ring every single day for the last 4 years and honestly never really gone anywhere without it. On the day that it arrived 4 years ago if you had told me that I would one day slip that ring off my finger, clean it ever so carefully, put it back in the box, wrap it, and then write out a letter to my daughter just 4 short years later, I would have never believed it. I never thought I would give it up so easily, but the reality is it was easier than one would think.
Watching Mickayla slip it on her finger, seeing that it fit her perfectly, watching how elegant it looked upon her long fingers, I knew in a heartbeat it was actually MADE for her. It now symbolizes a “New Beginning” for us both, and even now with tears in my eyes I could not be prouder of either of us.
Next week I will watch as my Baby Girl walks the stage to accept her High School Diploma. What was once my tiny 6 lb 3 ¼ oz. tiny force of nature is now a Full Grown Woman on a mission to conquer and explore the world. She has taught me some of my greatest lessons in life, the biggest being what TRUE LOVE really actually is.
You can make a lifetime of memories in a matter of seconds….
How so very true that statement is.
As my Baby Girl stands on the horizon of a whole new world, I am about to learn what life is like with her hours away at college. Her and I managed BIG things in this life together! This journey hasn’t always been the easiest or the smoothest, but I wouldn’t trade it for anything in the entire world!
I never dreamed in a million years as a single mom I would be purchasing her a car to go out and explore the world with, but last week we did it!
To which I have to add this; Do not ever stop believing in yourself, your dreams, your journey, your destination. NO MATTER WHAT. Life is made to be experienced, so get out there and LIVE.
We only get to do this ONE TIME around, and if you can’t live your life and TRULY be happy, maybe it is time for you to look into starting your own “New Beginning.”
You only stay stuck if you choose to, and believe me LIFE STARTS RIGHT OUTSIDE YOUR COMFORT ZONE!
SO GET OUT THERE AND START REALLY LIVING!!!!
Much Love To Each Of You!
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"Dear Rebecca,
We have received your letter and Mr. ****** would LOVE to participate in your “Chop My Locks Incentive” He is currently out of town until next week, but would like for you to call the office and set up a time to meet with him next week to pick up a check. We are both humbled and excited to be chosen to be a part of this Rebecca. Thank You SO much for choosing our business as one to be included in such an AMAZING event.”
To COMPLETELY understand everything in ALL its entirety, just as we usually do, WE HAVE to go back. This time we have to go WAY back. Specifically to the days that are NOW known as The Artic Outbreak Days when Google’d.
To others, like my family and I, it is known as a time that changed, shaped, molded, and paved the entire way for each of us as we know it today. It is a time that we don’t like to dwell on, one that is never far from our minds, and yet something we will all NEVER ever forget.
January 20th, 1994 – It was -36 below with a windchill of -60; and for those of you reading this that remember that very year, the BITTER cold from that night still aches in all of our bones. Some of you reading this remember that very date like it was yesterday, likely because you were First Responders on scene to what was left of our family home in the middle of the night, that night.
For the rest of you that weren’t there, I will paint you a picture – I would have been 13 at the time. So once my homework was done, Good Ol’ 99.5 would have been turned on. I remember specifically jammin’ out to Mariah Carey’s “Hero” since it had just topped the charts around Christmas time the year before. You can ask my Momma,’ she spent MANY nights ANNOYED listening to me hit high notes that probably sounded more like a goat bellering than it did sweet serenading coming from that front bedroom of the old farmhouse.
Back then we didn’t have fancy Iphones so I was listening to my good Ol’ Peach Boombox I had gotten for Christmas just a month earlier.
Momma’ hollered at Jason and I that it was almost bed time and to get washed up. I was sad because my GRAND performance was ending, it meant my arena of thousands would soon be vacating! None the less I got ready for bed, and drifted off to sleep not long after crawling under my covers.
I can’t tell you how long I had been asleep when I woke to Momma’ screaming for Jason. It wasn’t the kind of yelling you hear when she was calling you for breakfast or to get ready for school. Something was wrong. I sat straight up in my bed. I could hear Zeus, our German Shepard, barking like crazy. Something was DEFINITELY wrong!
I jumped from my bed and ran to the hallway just as Jason made it to the bottom of the stairs. Momma’ said, “The house is on fire, Jason get to the Ojala’s and get help, the phone won’t work.” Jason was holding his English book because he had been studying before he fell asleep, he never had time to set it down in the chaos.
Momma’ grabbed onto to me and we followed Jason into the front room, as Jason opened the screen door and ran out the oxygen caused the room to engulf in flames. I screamed as flames shot over our heads, “MOMMA!” She turned her body to shield mine in just enough time for the flames to pass over top of us both. Seconds later she screamed, “RUN JASON! RUN AS FAST AS YOU CAN!”
Our ONLY way out of that house was now engulfed in flames.
Momma’ grabbed my wrist and pulled me through the kitchen. She got down low and said, “Whatever you do Becky Dawn, don’t you DARE let go of me! DO YOU UNDERSTAND?” I said, “Yes Momma.” She pulled me into the hallway, past the bathroom, past my bedroom, into the living room. She turned and put her hand on my shoulders and said, “I HAVE to open this door, it is our ONLY way out of here. Stand here and DO NOT MOVE REBECCA!”
(Now if you remember our old farmhouse you know that, that old front door on the house was NEVER opened and that it was LOCKED with an old skeleton key on the inside, and that the old screen door on the outside was locked with a padlock on the outside. On a normal day, no one was getting in, and no one was certainly ever getting out! For those of you that aren't aware Jason went out the door shown by the van, and the door in the story above is at the front of the house. It had to remain locked at all times or our dog Zeus would get out and chase after the neighbors dog.)
She was fiddling with the door when I remembered that I had a game the next day. My cheerleading uniform was laid out in my room, and it was JUST right inside that door. I could GET it and get back before she knew I was gone. I turned to go inside my room and it was at that instant that I realized how black it was in the house, and I could hear the ROAR of the fire, the crackle of things burning, smell the smoke, and just as I reached the basket with my cheerleading uniform I realized I couldn’t breath anymore. I started to panic just as a hand grabbed me by the back of the head, even in the darkness Momma’ had found me.
She drug me out of the room and BACK into the living room. She was screaming at this point, “GOD YOU HAVE TO HELP ME! I CAN’T DO THIS ALONE! I NEED YOU! PLEASE! I NEED YOU NOW MORE THAN EVER! OPEN THIS DOOR!” Suddenly my Momma’ grabbed ahold of that old farmhouse door that was locked with a skeleton key and yanked it off the hinges and sent it flying across the living room like a piece of cardboard. Then I watched her kick the screen door, and shoulder check the thing right off the hinges. She pulled me close as we exited out the door. I turned back in time to see the flames chase us right out of the house.
Zeus was still barking, I screamed his name, “Zeus! Momma’, Zeus! We can’t leave him!” Momma’ ran to the door and called him, Zeus came and when Momma’ grabbed him by the collar to pull him out he nipped her hand and sank back into the burning house. He was trained to protect his home, and like a Captain going down with its ship, he was NOT leaving! We didn't have time to stand there and argue, the flames were getting bigger and hotter, and the wind chill was going to freeze us to death if we stood there any longer.
By this time cars started stopping along the roadway, neighbors started showing up, volunteer firefighters started arriving, and you could hear the ambulance coming in the distance. It wasn’t until then that I even noticed my Momma’ had done ALL of this without ever putting shoes on her feet.
The coldest day of the entire year and she was wearing next to nothing.
There are no words for what came next.
The State Police had to track down my Dad on the road to let him know our house had caught fire. He had no idea what he was coming home to. It was the very first time in all of my life I had seen my Dad cry, and the moment I realized without a doubt just how much he truly LOVED my Momma’, brother and I. Listening to him describe breaking the treeline on M-28 headed for the homestead only to find two chimneys standing is enough to put a lump in my throat even to this day.
The hospital mistreated my Mother and she almost lost both of her feet due to the frost-bite she ended up getting from that night. She would endure MONTHS of physical therapy, having to keep her feet wrapped, learning to walk again, and the pain….goodness the pain. She had a home nurse that many of you knew personally named Bonnie. Bonnie would come and change her bandages and they formed such an amazing friendship out of what was such a tragic event. Watching the two of them together always gave me hope because if they could find light in even the darkest of places, it meant there was hope for EVERYONE.
We stayed with my Grandparents in the very beginning, and when we first went back to the house to survey the damage it was horrifying. There was NOTHING left. TWO chimneys and a pile of rubble. Our family had literally the clothes on our backs, and one another. At that precise moment standing there watching my Dad sift through the rubble, it was all we needed. It didn’t make it any easier, but we were ALL ALIVE, and ALL accounted for and that was worth EVERYTHING.
It didn’t take long for our tiny community to come together and start silently rounding up supplies. In the days after the fire, Grandpa and Grandma took us shopping for clothes for school so that we didn’t have to worry about missing any more than we needed to. Suddenly cars, trucks, and trailers started arriving pretty constantly with donations that filled my Grandparents Utility Room.
Everything from Pots & Pans, Clothes, Tables, Chairs, Couches, Silverware, ANYTHING you could POSSIBLY dream of for a house was suddenly sitting in their Utility Room and spilling into their entryway. The donations came, and KEPT coming. My cheerleading squad took up a donation of their own and at one practice handed me an envelope full of money to buy new things for my room, clothes, or whatever I might want or need to replace.
Local churches brought lunch, dinners, pies, cookies, and baked goods like you would not believe. Families dropped off Gift Cards, Money, Boxes full of brand new things to get a home started, and things just kept coming for weeks on end. It was unlike anything I had ever seen before in my entire life.
No one asked, we didn’t have Facebook then, so it was not like someone could put it on Social Media for all the world to see and ask for help.
There was no texting then, heck we still had land lines back then, so it was word of mouth type stuff back in those days.
Our entire family got to where we are today because of the love, kindness and generosity of countless others in this community. I would not be where I am today without that continued love and support. I made a VOW to myself, to God, to my family, and to my community that no matter what I would ALWAYS give back with a grateful and gracious heart when given the opportunity to. EVERY. SINGLE. CHANCE. I. WAS. GIVEN.
At 13 everything I owned, including our family pets, were gone in an instant and all that I had left was my family. I learned at a VERY young age what was important to me, and it was not materialistic things. When you come that close to losing your life, you don’t soon forget the importance of such a thing. You honestly never forget, it humbles you to the core. Not many people in this life are given second chances like we were that night.
Which brings us back to the letter at the beginning of this blog:
A few years back someone near and dear to me found out she had cancer. I had recently come out of a VERY messy divorce, and as much as I wanted to help her financially I knew that I wasn’t going to be able to do that without a miracle. So I got creative. I started thinking, and I came up with an idea to have local businesses donate money towards the “Chop My Locks Incentive.” At the time I had NO IDEA if it would even be successful, let alone if it would even work.
I was selective with my choices, starting mailing letters, said a few prayers and waited.
Suddenly businesses started calling me back! They were EXCITED to donate towards the cause, and even thought it was a FUN idea that I was willing to “SELL MY HAIR” to raise money for my dear friend battling cancer. I was so excited! I couldn’t believe it was working! Almost every business was on board! 9 out of 10 businesses and I had one more to go!!!
So I set up a time to meet with the owner of the last business, when I walked into his office he explained to me that his mother, and his wife had both had cancer. That he was not only PROUD of what I was doing, he was excited to be a part of it, and was happy that I had contacted him to be involved. He asked how much I had already raised, I told him the donations were up to a $1,000 and I was over the moon about that already!
It had far exceeded any expectations I had ever had for the entire thing.
We continued to chat and when I went to leave his office he handed me a check and shook my hand and said, “You do great things for people Rebecca, I hope you realize how much people really appreciate all you do. You are the CHANGE that people should wish to seek in this world. Thank You for that.” I just stood there a tad shocked, still shaking his hand, smiling, and literally muttered, “Great.”
Yes, I know, I am still just as awkward to this day!
Anyhow, it wasn’t until I got to the bank later on to cash all the checks that I even realized that he had MATCHED the REST of the donations. He had written a check for $1,000! It meant that my entire donation would total $2,000! I couldn’t believe it…..Sometimes looking back I STILL can’t, but nothing felt GREATER than dropping off that envelope of cash that day, or mailing out Thank You cards with a picture of my newly chopped locks to all the businesses for their generous donations.
Recently I won an award. Not just ANY award, THEE award. The one that EVERY SINGLE person should hope to strive towards winning in their lifetime. Never in my lifetime would I have EVER thought such a thing could even happen to me. The person that helped make that possible was my son, my middle little. It shows me that as a parent I am doing something right. That my efforts as a volunteer, a person, as a HUMAN shine through brightly enough that my own children take notice and that means something. Actually that means EVERYTHING.
I’ve never once ever pulled on bunker gear, held a fundraiser, volunteered my time, money or efforts with the intention of someone saying, “LOOK at HER!” “Give that woman a hand!” “She deserves an award!” Anyone that does such things isn’t doing any of those things for the right reasons to begin with. Having a servant’s heart means to not only put other’s needs ahead of our own, but to serve with the right motivation.
Long ago I made the vow to serve the people around me any way that I could. I can proudly say that I do that any chance that I am given. As I look back through the lists of donations, letters from businesses, pictures from events, I can smile knowing that one day God and I will have an AMAZING conversation about those very moments.
I won’t ever stand before him and talk about the moments missed, the times I wished I had, or the things I had hoped to have done differently. I AM going to stand in front of him and speak OPENLY about the TIME that he gave to me and how I used EVERY moment PRECISELY how he intended for me to use it.
When I “Chopped My Locks” people said some hateful things. “I liked you better with long hair.” “She looks like a Dkye!” “You did this to draw attention to yourself.” “Grow up and get a normal haircut!” “How could you do that to yourself?” “ACT YOUR AGE!” Some thought it had something to do with the "divorce" and then others claimed I was having a "Mid-Life Crisis". Whatever the case was that each of them came up with, no one bothered to ask WHY I had cut my hair, but that certainly didn't stop them from talking about it. It was definitely the topic of discussion for QUITE awhile.
I smile now as I look back and think about the comments and I can even giggle looking at the pictures of me with my spiked hair. Long, short, in between, it doesn’t matter, it is JUST hair. It is much longer now. I can actually get it all into a pony tail again, but should there come a day when someone I love needed their financial burdens subsided I wouldn’t hesitate to run the “Chop My Locks Incentive” all over again.
I suppose my point is a very simple one folks. If you don’t know, don’t judge. If you don’t understand, ask questions. If you can’t say anything nice at all, keep it to yourself. There is enough evil and heartache in the world without one more person contributing to it. Instead try and shift your focus for once. Just for once maybe try the positive outlook. The non-judgmental one. The one where the light and love of the Lord shines through to make you into the person you are meant to be, not the person you pretend to be to the rest of the world.
My point is that it is all about shifting your focus, doing things with a gracious heart, and expecting nothing in return. As the boys and I packed up cribs, clothes, toddler beds, and other things to take to the Diane Peppler Shelter later this coming week, Morgan asked me, "Mom, what kind of babies will sleep in these beds now?" I smiled and said, "The ones that God intends to have sleep in them Morgan." "It is such a nice thing we are doing for those babies Mom." he said.
Now if my 5 year old can understand the point and purpose of giving without the expectation of ever receiving anything in return, I truly hope and pray that more people learn the value in that very thing! I will never stop teaching my Littles the VALUE in that very lesson, and I can only hope that they take the most from that very lesson with them throughout their lives.
From delivering Care Packages on Christmas Day to The Hospice House to delivering cribs, clothes, and other goods to woman and children in need, no matter the deed, big or small I pray they learn the MOST valuable lesson in it all. That it is ALWAYS feels better to give than it does to receive. Helping others with the purest of intentions will ALWAYS fill your heart in ways that ONLY such a gracious deed can.
So no matter what anyone says, does, or even how they feel about me or my hair or haircut, I just want to say this:
At the end of the day I will proudly own the label - The Dyke with the Servants Heart, and I will continue to pray for those that say such things. It is unfortunate that people even judge before asking questions, or that they feel the need to judge others in general. The world would be such a better place if people were more mindful of their own lives instead of worrying about others.
I hope each of you have an absolutely amazing week!
Much Love To Each Of You!
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Dear Momma’,
You were right. About everything.
Today as I was in the process of struggling to finish two different blogs I was working on, and getting frustrated that neither of them were coming to a close I heard your voice inside my head say, “In God’s Time Rebecca.”
Just as it has so many times throughout the journey of my life your voice guided me today, as it always tends to do in the moments when I need it the most. Even the ones that I don’t have to physically have you in front of me or have you on the phone to walk me through.
So I closed the two blogs I was working on and sat down to write this one to you instead. God always has a plan in place, and I suppose he knew that today would be a good day to break down a few things I have been meaning to talk to you about.
God sure knew what he was doing when he picked you to be my Momma’. I honestly believe he chose you knowing that you would be strong enough to handle the sass, patient enough to handle the hard times, compassionate enough to walk me through the most difficult of times, and caring enough to see both sides of every situation. He made sure you would be full of your own experiences, advice and knowledge so that you had more than enough answers when it came time to share them, and that even if you didn’t have the answers you would ALWAYS know where to look.
Raising me could not have always been easy. The good lord knows he certainly made me special in my own way. A dreamer, a fly-by the seat of my pants, do my own thing, dance to the beat of my own drum type child. Looking back I can honestly say there were a lot of raised eyebrows, heads left shaking, and people left wondering more so than anything else.
That never stopped you though, you embraced all that was ME. Every part that was, is and ever will make up the existence of Rebecca Dawn Fegan. You loved every thread, every fiber, and continue to do so day in and day out no matter what life throws in our direction.
When I was 8, you told me that I could do whatever my heart desired, to always follow my dreams, and to never settle until they were fulfilled.
– You were right.
When I was 9, you told me that Heaven existed, and that saying Good-Bye didn’t mean forever there. That letting go for now would be OK, because I would see him again. – You are right, and I truly believe that with all of my heart!
When I was 10, you told me that I was beautiful enough that I didn’t need to wear make-up, that it only causes break-outs, bad skin, that it is an expensive habit, and that I honestly didn’t need it. – You were right. Thank You for that, to this day I don’t wear make-up and I can’t Thank You enough!
When I was 11, you told me that ONE day I would have children of my own that would not value the beautiful things I owned and they would most certainly break them. – You were right.
When I was 12, you told me that ONE day I would have children of my own that thought that they knew EVERYTHING, to be prepared because it was going to be a CRAZY ride! – You were right.
When I was 13, you told me, "It is just STUFF, it can be replaced! Always remember a strangers kindness, and never forget to be KIND ALWAYS. Kindness and having a servants heart will take you further in life than anything else." - You were right.
When I was 14 and the last day of school became a day I would never forget for the rest of my life, you held me and said, “It’s OK, let me hold you.” until I cried myself to sleep. You sat by my side with your arm around me as the choir sang “My Girl” and I silently watched tears bounce off my folded hands in my lap. You leaned in and said, “I love you always Rebecca Dawn. Always and Forever, no matter what. God needed angels and he only chooses the very best! She is safe with the Lord now.” Even if I didn’t want to believe it then, I truly in my heart believe it now. – You were right.
When I was 15 you told me ALL boys suck, that heartbreak is only temporary, and that REAL love would one day come along and REALLY know what it had, that BOYS take longer to mature and that someday it would all make sense. – You were SO right!
When I was 16 and had been in my car accident and couldn’t remember, you held my hand and whispered, “It will be OK, In God’s time Rebecca.” I would smile when people would stop, and even though I could recognize their faces, they were strangers to me, you would smile, tell me their name and everyone would visit as if it was normal. When I told you I was “fuzzy” you hugged me and said, “It will come back, God will make sure, In His Time Rebecca.” – YOU WERE RIGHT.
When I was 17 and a Pizza Hut commercial made me throw up – YOU KNEW. Immediately YOU KNEW. Off to the doctor we went, and one phone call later – YOU WERE RIGHT.
When I was 18 and scared to death you told me, “The pain of childbirth is excruciating, but NOTHING will compare to holding your sweet baby for the very first time. You will be alright Rebecca. I will be right beside you. WE WILL MAKE IT THROUGH THIS!” – You were right!
When I was 19 you calmly reminded me to take ENDLESS photos because the MOMENTS go by SO fast, and once they are gone you can't get them back. - You were right.
A Million different statements all made out of nothing but LOVE, and no matter the context, YOU WERE RIGHT.
My absolute favorite was and always will be, “You will NEVER understand ANY OF THIS until you have a child of your own Rebecca Dawn!” – You were right!
Goodness were you ever right......
Before I had children I was the absolute, most amazing, downright perfect parent there ever was or ever would be! I knew ALL the answers, and I had everything planned out accordingly! What I would and wouldn’t do, how I would do it and WHY I was going to do things SO differently than my Momma’ and Dad did!
Ha.
Goodness. If I could have soaked up all that wisdom floating around back then and used it to my advantage from the start! Wooooweee….Where would I be?
“God never gives us what we want, he gives us what we NEED!”
Another favorite quote of mine that you always use. One I have learned to embrace and hold close to my heart more and more over the past year or so. I love you more than words can ever really describe Momma’.
If I grow up to be even an 1/18 of the woman that you are I will count my lucky stars that the Good Lord thought that much of me to let me mirror the woman I love and admire so much. I have no idea where I would be today if all those years ago when I was pushing while you were pulling, you had just LET GO.
Instead you held on tighter, loved harder, and prayed like never before.
You hung on knowing that God would bring me back. – YOU WERE RIGHT.
Thank You for that.
For everything actually.
For all the moments I forgot to say Thank You, for all the moments you might not have felt appreciated, for all the moments you let me walk away and GROW, even when you didn’t want to. For the endless love, devotion, and admiration you have for all of us.
YOU ARE AN AMAZING MOTHER. AN AMAZING WOMAN. AN AMAZING BEST FRIEND.
I don’t need 1 day to tell you how special you are Momma’. You are special and amazing every single day. Thank You for everything that you do for me, for my Littles, for Dad, for my Brother and Sister, for everyone…..
You are truly the most incredible woman that I know, and some day I hope I get to grow up to be just like you!
I love you always and forever!
Your #1 Fan,
Rebecca Dawn
P.S. - Remember that time you told me that one day I would THANK YOU for all your advice, nagging, and countless hours of pointing out the obvious? - YOU WERE RIGHT. ;)
]]>Anyone who said that writing a book is easy, has never sat down and actually done it.
It involves SO much more than just sitting down at a computer and writing down your thoughts, hopes, dreams, and aspirations for the future.
It is HARD work.
It takes patience, and A LOT of it.
It also takes balance. Balance between life, children, work, and time. It means giving up what extra time you did have to give it to something else that has now become your passion and main focus.
Your goals become different, your outlook on life becomes different, and once you realize you have a purpose, your destination and journey towards that becomes different as well.
I have to take the time now to Thank my Littles, my Friends, and my Family in more ways than one. There are more times than I can even begin to count over the months that they put up with my secluded behavior as I continued to pursue this portion of my dreams. As my actual “work” season picks back up and the hours become longer there, I will find myself writing more in the evening hours and on the weekends when we are supposed to be getting together. So I apologize now for the moments I’m sure to miss as I blaze down yet another trail in pursuit of another one of my biggest dreams.
There is something to be said about telling your Best Friend and your Sister that you just threw caution to the wind, stripped your life down, have decided to write not just one, but two books about the two major events in your life that literally shaped you into who you are today. That in due time once those books are published, you plan to become a motivational speaker to auditoriums full of women because you feel like this is REALLY where your true calling is only to have them turn around and say, “I’m SO proud of you, I would expect nothing less!"
It is a scary thing when you decide you want to put thoughts on paper or a computer screen for the entire world to see. It means that they are now out there for an entire world to read. What is scarier though is keeping them inside, never sharing my story, and not helping ANYONE. I don’t believe that God intended for my story to stay a quiet one, he intends for it to reach far and wide and to help as many as it possibly can along the way.
I won’t ever know if that means it reaches just 1 person or 1,000’s, but that part of it doesn’t much matter quite yet. What matters is sifting through the good and the bad, the ugly, and the not so pretty parts and putting them together in a way that they become relatable to whoever it is that my story is eventually supposed to help or reach.
I can’t promise that it is going to be the most epic of stories of all time, but what I can promise is that it is going to be MY story. My story, in MY own words, and THAT is what really matters to me. A true representation of what life was like from point A to point B and just what it took to get to said points.
I know some of you are reading this and wondering how you are going to end up placing yourselves in my story. Well, if, and yes I said, IF, and when that time comes, I will approach you with whatever chapter you are to be a part of so that you can read what role you played in my life to get me to that point. Of course there will be release forms, and legalities and such, but we will deal with such things when and if we need to….
For now your prayers can go one of two ways I suppose.
Pray that you made enough of an impact that you get written into the story that tells that portion of the journey of my life, or you pray that you weren’t the one that screwed it up so bad you get used as the example in said story.
Either way its set to be a pretty amazing read.
Jordan said to me the other day, “Mom, I just can’t.”
I stopped what I was doing, walked across the kitchen, and pointed my Mom finger in his direction and said, “Don’t you DARE EVER tell me that you CAN’T do something SON! I was 35 years old with 3 Babies as a Single Momma’ when I went after what I wanted! I worked full time & STILL went to classes two nights a week to get my Firefighting Certificates that hang on the wall in that office over there! Can’t is NOT a word IN OUR vocabulary SON, because if I CAN DO IT. ANYONE CAN! I didn't get to GIVE UP because I COULDN'T OR CAN'T, and that isn't saying that there wasn't moments that I didn't want to Jordan, BUT I DID IT ANYWAY! You DON'T GIVE UP and YOU DON'T QUIT EVER!”
I won't EVER stop telling my Littles that they CAN go after what they want, and that they CAN pursue whatever their Little Hearts do DESIRE! DREAM AS BIG as you want to Little ones, and DO NOT EVER STOP having big dreams NO MATTER HOW OLD YOU GET!!! In turn I have to continue to practice what I preach, and so I can't stop pursuing my dreams either!
You just have to BELIEVE IN YOUR DREAMS & IN YOURSELF, and for the very first time in my entire life I believe whole-heartedly that this path I’m on is taking me to the greatest of places. That the end result that will come from all this will be greater than anything I really could have ever hoped or dreamed possible.
The destination is still unknown, but isn't that the beauty in all of this anyway?
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“Rebecca?” she said.
“Yes Momma’?” I answered.
“I rescued these for you, I thought you might want them.” she replied with tears in her eyes
A week prior I had struggled to throw them in the trash since he had bought me a new pair to replace these ones. I think she knew how hard it had been for me to let them go. She even said at the moment I was doing it, “You can’t throw those out! Those are older than all the kids Becky Dawn!”
“They are JUST OLD shoes Momma’!” I replied at the time.
Little did I know.
She handed them to me and suddenly for whatever reason I felt whole again. They were just an old pair of shoes, but there was certainly something special about them. It was the second time he had left my life with little to no other explanation than his “head was a mess.” So here I was suspended in time, waiting, holding on to prayer & an old pair of shoes.
She turned before she walked away and said, “Sometimes God closes one door behind you because you can’t open the one in front of you without letting go of what is behind you first. Sometimes Rebecca what is in front of you is WAY better than what you are leaving behind. I know they are “JUST OLD SHOES”, but ONE day you will understand WHY they are so important! WHY you can’t just throw them out with the trash, and someday you will THANK ME for keeping them! I promise you that much!”
I cracked a smile, which was hard considering the circumstances. “Momma’, Thank You for raising us to never judge, to love like we do, and for never letting go even when it gets really hard sometimes.”
She smiled back, even though her eyes told a different story, I knew that watching me hurt was hurting her equally as much if not worse. Even still she said, “I’m your Momma’, it is my job to be your parent, but my God Given Right to LOVE you all the way I do. I may not have done it perfect, but I always did the very best that I could.”
Now that woman, My Mother, she is a Saint. I’m sure she has two brothers and a sister that might argue different, but truth be told, she really is an angel sent to earth. There isn’t a soul that hasn’t met my mother that wouldn’t say the same. I have never met another soul on this planet that gives more of themselves to others than my Mother! She is truly an inspiration, and someone that I admire greatly.
For whatever reason, she often questioned herself when it came to parenting over the years. Many, many times she felt she failed my brother, sister and I, when in reality she gave more than she even had in her Love Tank to us to make it work, to get it right, to keep it going, to keep us together, and above all else, keep us a FAMILY.
She was certainly her own worst critic, because she did an AMAZING job with all of us. Grandchildren included. She still does. I’m 36 years old and my Mother STILL parents me and I wouldn’t have it any other way! It has NOT always been easy. I have bucked the system MORE than I have behaved, and even still she loves me more in the end than she did when we started.
She continually teaches me about life, love, hope, faith, prayer, God, my dreams, my children, my goals, my job, gardening, baking, cooking, spot cleaning, sewing, crafting, you name it, she has the answer, and she is a continuous wealth of knowledge! One I honestly wish I could sit down and just dictate until she was out of words. I refuse to even think of the day that I may not be able to call her or text her to ask her for something!
“Mom – You did just fine!” I said
“Maybe so, but some days I do certainly wish I had all the answers for you and your brother & sister.” She replied, “Lord knows I certainly don’t, so I just continue to pray and hope that he helps give me what I need to help all of you make it through.”
I set the shoes on my bed, and walked over to hug her. It was one that brought tears to my eyes, the KIND of hug that you just NEED from your Momma’. She held on for just a few seconds longer, and when our embrace broke I could see tears in her eyes too.
“I don’t have all the answers Rebecca, but I do have an old pair of shoes to give you.” She nodded towards the bed. “At the end of the day if all you walked away with is an old pair of shoes, a handful of memories and you are no worse for the wear, you did O-K Kiddo’! YOU ARE GOING TO BE O-K!”
We hugged again and she went back upstairs.
I remember sitting next to my old pair of shoes for a REALLY long time and just looking at them. I didn’t get it then, and that was over a year ago. It took me until today on a dirt road in Cheboygan to fully understand the “true meaning” behind that Old Pair of Shoes in my back seat of my work truck.
My Mother won’t ever just come out and tell us the lessons behind something. It wouldn’t be a lesson learned if she just told us the “GREATER” meaning behind what she is thinking or feeling. We must LEARN it, SEE it, FEEL it, or EXPERIENCE it for ourselves. Then when one of us text, call, or like me, blog about it, she can sit there and crack a smile knowing that a job was “Well Done!” no matter how long it took!
So today as I was working it finally hit me. I was closing the doors on my work truck and glanced down and saw my Old Pair of Shoes and I instantly smiled. My Mother was such a trickster! A sentimental one too! Then I laughed out loud, let me explain.
These shoes are going on 20 years old, maybe older, they have been through multiple boyfriends, two husbands, the birth of all 3 of my beautiful children, multiple softball tournaments, shopping trips, been my gardening shoes, gone through multiple basketball tournaments, cheerleading events, 4 wheeling adventures, boating trips, proms, parties, farm kid shenanagins, fairs, tractor pulls, YOU NAME IT THESE DIRTY, RATTY, OLD PAIR OF SHOES have done it and been there for it.
They have been looked down on, talked bad about, chewed up, spit out, and they are still TOUGH AS NAILS and Keep PUSHING FORWARD. Yeah, they have a few scars, a few bumps and bruises, and ultimately are NOT the prettiest things on this planet, but at the end of the day it isn’t about the OLD PAIR OF SHOES – IT IS ABOUT THEIR STORY.
My Mother saved these shoes because ultimately, we are kind of one and the same the old pair of shoes and me. Not that we are OLD – that we have a STORY & that it is our STORY that REALLY matters. You don’t have to have the BEST or BE the BEST to make that story great.
So even though today was probably the millionth time I slipped into my old pair of shoes after work today, it still felt like the very first time. I put one foot in front of the other and moved one more step forward away from my past and my closed door. I smile even now knowing that My Mother will be content reading this knowing that I FINALLY made the connection.
As I packed away the other pair that he bought me to replace the ones I was wearing Morgan says, “Mom, I kind of liked your old ones better anyway.” I cracked the biggest smile on my face as I put the bin back in my closet and replied, “Me too Kiddo’! ME TOO!”
So even though I might only have an OLD PAIR OF SHOES & JUST A HANDFUL OF MEMORIES left at the end of the day.....my heart is whole, overflowing actually, and I am good with that. Like Nick once said to me, "They are One Directional Shoes!" So that means I let go of the closed door behind me, and reach for the closed one in front of me.
So to my Momma' - Thank You for saving my OLD PAIR OF SHOES! As My OLD PAIR OF SHOES and I open a brand new door and move forward, I honestly can't Thank You enough. If you had asked me a year ago if I would be walking through said door wearing my OLD SHOES, I don't think I would have answered quite the same. Today, as I sit and reflect on the last year I can honestly tell you that the one thing I am proud to bring through my door is my OLD PAIR OF SHOES. Thank You for knowing me well enough to know that 1) I would NEED them and 2) I would eventually figure it out! Love you to the moon and back! <3
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“You have to just give me a chance Rebecca!” he said.
I shrugged my shoulders, “I don’t…”
He cut me off, “You don’t date, I know. I’m well versed in the Do’s and Do Not’s in Rebecca’s World.”
“That isn’t fair!” I say.
He shrugs and says, “Okay maybe not, but let’s try something else. Who is your favorite singer?”
“Billie Holiday” I respond with a smile on my face.
“I LOVE HIM!” he exclaims.
I immediately put a finger to my lips, but a “Hmmmm….” escapes from behind it despite my efforts to keep quiet.
“What?!” he asks
I just shake my head and smile. Knowing full well he must think I meant Buddy Holly, but it isn’t my job to correct him.
He excuses himself to the bathroom.
I let out a sigh as he turned the corner to the bathroom, “I’m much too old for this!” I think to myself.
A voice behind me says, “She is a close second to Etta James.”
I turn to find a man sitting at the bar alone. “Excuse me?”
“Rebecca, right? I’m Mike” he says, “Don’t be so hard on him, he likes you.”
“Yeah. Don’t they all?” I say, as I peel the label on my bottle.
He lets out a low whistle, “You know I had heard the stories, but I would have never believed it if I hadn’t seen it for myself with my own
two eyes. That Ex of yours wounded you something fierce.”
I just looked at him. The stare I was giving him could have certainly cut glass if I had tried hard enough. I exhale sharply.
“Sweetheart, one day you won’t be so angry anymore, one day those wounds will heal, and I can only imagine just how damn beautiful you will truly be when that light returns to your eyes.”
I raise an eyebrow, “I’m sorry, but do I know you?”
“No, darling, no you don’t, but I certainly know all about you. Not much happens around here without people taking notice. Enjoy your evening.” He nods towards the other side of my table as the “guy who was paying for my meal” returned.
I was left confused, with a head full of thoughts, and completely elsewhere from that point in the evening on. It was at that point in my life I decided, Rebecca Dawn Fegan DOES NOT DATE. Nope. Just Wasn’t in the Cards for Me! I couldn't do it, and I wasn't even going to TRY!
NOW – Sister Girl, that didn't stop my Bestie from trying! God Love Her! – Amanda tried to get me to join this app one time! GOODNESS! What a freaking disaster that was. Swipe Left, Swipe Right, Pfftt! I was always backwards, discarding the ones I liked and keeping the ones I didn’t want. All I kept thinking was, “Good Lord I don’t need an app on my phone to teach me how to make my dating life a disaster! I can do that well enough on my own!” So just like the goofy men using the app, the app also needed to go!
So anyway, Amanda learned that not only do I not date in REAL life, I don’t app date, messenger date, text date, double date, or date period….it was just easier for me. It worked. It worked well actually. It still works beautifully to this day! So she doesn’t push it, and I don’t bring it up. Her biggest goal in life is to make sure I end up blissfully happy, and if it were up to her she would make it her full time career to see that happen! Luckily my dating life, or lack there of rather doesn't come with some trendy salary, 401k plan, and full benefits or I would be in some serious trouble! So I choose the latter - NON-DATING.
It. Just. Works!
(******Excerpt above taken from The Journey To Day 180 - Written by Rebecca D. Fegan******)
So anyway…back to the reason for this story - The White Wooden Rocking Chair.
Ever since I was a little girl I have always wanted a White Wooden Rocking Chair for my deck. One that I could sit in as the sun went down over the trees and rock in while I watched the sun set over the horizon. Even as I type I can picture Billie Holiday playing in the background while I slowly rock and just soak in God’s grand design.
So, today was the day, I decided I was going to the store to get one, and I was going to bring it home and rock to my hearts content in it.
Much to my dismay – Every. Single. Place. Was. SOLD. OUT.
Not a store in town had a White Wooden Rocking Chair. Not a one.
So, as I was turning to leave the last store that I was in, the saleswoman says, “We do have this chair though, I mean it doesn’t rock, but it is on sale.”
As I turned around to look at it I let out a loud sigh. I couldn’t believe it. (See the picture below)
“Oh, you don’t like it!” she said
“No, quite the opposite actually, it is perfect. I will take it.” I said
“I think we have two, let me scan it and check.” She says
She turns to me after she scans it and says, “Actually we only have that lone chair, do you still want it?”
“Of course.” I said with a smile on my face
Now for those of you that get the reference, kudos to you for following Nicholas Sparks so closely. For those of you that don’t get the reference, you need to watch “The Choice” to completely understand the “Lone Chair” reference.
So, I have yet to find my White Wooden Rocking Chair, I think God just intended for me to find my “Lone Chair” first. I smiled as I drove away with it in the bed of my truck, chuckled as I assembled it, and said a silent prayer as I traced my fingers around the arms when I sat in it for the very first time.
Yes, it might be my “Lone Chair”, but that is because I choose for it to be. I am perfectly content wrapped in a blanket, writing, reading, or enjoying a beer or a glass of wine as I listen to Billie Holiday or Etta James as I put a close on my day. Even today as Miranda Lambert's "Tin Man" was playing on the radio as I sat in it and watched the rain storm, I smiled at just HOW much I LOVED my OWN COMPANY.
I single-handedly built my own “Oasis” on my tiny little corner of the world, and it is going to take someone insanely special to be invited into that.
Yeah. For now, and probably for quite a while, I can be found many a night in this “Lone Chair” and that is perfectly fine with me.
As for the White Wooden Rocking Chair….well that is to be continued. I have a feeling I will stumble upon it when I am supposed to, and chances are it will happen around the same time that my pergola appears in my back yard with my farmhouse table that seats 16! Hey, a girl dream, right?
Until next time Loves.
*The Blanket that can be seen in the photos comes from a Michigan Based Business out of Sparta called The Bitten Mitten! I HIGHLY encourage you to check out the website and to also like and follow the page on Facebook! I shared some of her goodies a few months back on some of my Thirty-One Pages & on my Personal Facebook Page! I am SUPER excited to bring her newest release "The Michigan Quilt" to my blog. She sells out quickly, but also restocks just as quickly as she sells out! Check out her website Ladies & Gents! I promise that you will not be disappointed!
http://www.thebittenmitten.com
https://www.facebook.com/thebittenmittenteether/?ref=br_rs
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What happens when you come to a point in your journey when the Lord says, “Take a look around you my child. Be Thankful for the Blessings you have received this far, but it is time to continue on your journey alone. What I have planned for you is so much greater than what you are leaving behind. Fear not, trust me, and I will not forsake you.”
No one ever said when you hit that point that your heart and your mind don’t begin to battle, because the reality is they actually begin the battle of a lifetime. Sometimes your mind already knows what your heart refuses to admit. That what has come to pass is necessary in your journey, and just as the seasons change, so do we as well. Not just physically, but emotionally and spiritually as needed. It is a necessary part of our growth process as we learn who we are and our places in this life.
We don’t ever get to where we are going by staying inside our comfort zones. God knows when we need the changes most, and when to push us outside of our comfort zones so that we can ultimately learn that to TRUST in his process will bring the GREATEST of rewards. We sometimes lose sight of that along the way. We often lose sight of ourselves, and more often than not can’t see the breakthrough that is waiting patiently for us just ahead. In a sense we end up blocking our own blessings because we stand firm in the belief that “We Know Best.”
The reality is that God knows better than any of us, even when we refuse to admit it, or chose to ignore the fact that he is very much a part of our everyday lives, he is at the forefront of all that we are to become. Each step is laid out long before we ever know it is coming. We just have to learn that sometimes you have to trust him enough to let go and know that it will all work out how it is supposed to.
Trusting in the process is sometimes more trying than we care to admit.
Yes, it would be easier to return to a life that was safe, solid, secure, and comforting. One that at one time ultimately made sense. Even though that life was not only blocking the REAL blessings that were waiting patiently for you to have your breakthrough, sometimes it is just time to TRUST God and Follow your own path.
Will it be easy?
No. God never promised easy. He only promised that if you trusted in him, he would not forsake you and your journey would not be in vain.
I adore Joey and Rory Feek more than any two “celebrity type” people I have never met. Their story, their journey, their love for one another, for God, for family, for life in general is something to not only be treasured, but admired for the wholesome beautiful gift that it truly is. If their story has taught us anything, its that if you want what God wants, the end reward is more beautiful than anything any of us could have truly pictured or imagined. His Grace is endless. His Grace is Enough. His Love Unwavering.
I refused to believed in a lot of things after my second divorce. I was badly wounded after leaving the battleground when the smoke cleared. It took days, then months, which turned into years for me to let the scar tissue finally heal over and the light start to creep back into the darkness that had cast a shadow over a lot of my life. I lived solely for the purpose of 3 hearts beating, and there were even days when I felt like I was failing them miserably. Time would move on, and then it wouldn’t, but the fact remained that the world never stopped spinning.
Even still – Something was missing.
Everyone else around me was moving forward, and I was just suspended in time. Waiting. Then I wasn’t sure what it was that I was waiting for. My Momma’ told me that when God was ready, in his timing he would reveal to me why it was so imperative to just trust in him and wait. So I did. Everyone who knows me, well they know waiting has NEVER been my strong suit.
Eventually Spring turned to Summer, which then gave way to Fall, and soon Winter would break. There I was on a random Thursday, in the middle of no-where, looking for absolutely no one, and God goes and puts this gentle soul of a man right smack dab in front of me. That was a year and a half ago, and looking back I can smile knowing that God brought us together knowing we would need one another for very different reasons.
In the months that would come he would learn to rely on my strength, and as the months would pass he would slowly crack open parts of me that only the good Lord could possibly know needed tending to. To say he and the Good Lord softened me right to my soul enough to change my entire outlook on life would be an understatement. To say that he brought me the closest I have ever been to the Lord at a time in my life when no one else would even dare try to get close to me at all; well that would make some chuckle quietly, it isn't a job that was for the weak at heart that is for sure.
God is good like that, he knows our plans long before we do. He can see the bigger picture even when we can’t. He knows the heartache we will feel before we feel it, and what we will choose to do with it when it finally does present itself. He also knows what will happen when we finally wake up one morning and say, “Ok Lord, I’m done. I’m tired of feeling this way. It is time to get it right. You tell my Papaw that I’m gonna’ be alright, and that I am gonna’ see him again. You tell my Grandpa Harm I want blueberry pancakes when I get there. You tell Diana that I miss her and love her, but I am going to get there because we have SO much to talk about! I finally got this LORD. I’m not ashamed anymore because YOU LOVE ME & THAT IS ENOUGH!”
It took a LONG time to get back there. A REALLY LONG TIME. At the time I was 35, 2 divorces under my belt, 3 children by 3 different Dad’s, and I was “Society’s Picture of a Low Life” and my own Father made sure to tell me so as I was packing up to move my Littles and I’s things out of his house. When you get to that moment when your own family members are pitted against you, you start clinging to the ONLY one thing that matters the MOST. At that moment it was my Faith and God. As my Dad was screaming in front of me all I could hear was silence and a voice saying, "Be Still Rebecca, this will also pass." So I was, and since that moment I vowed to NEVER let ANYONE use those things against me EVER again.
No one will EVER make me feel ashamed for the things I have gone through, the journey I have walked or the moments I have endured to get to this very moment. What I needed was my Faith restored in the Lord, GLM brought me back to him, once you get to that point, no one can stand between you and God's Grace or Mercy. His grace is enough, and his mercy everlasting. I had asked for forgiveness for the sins I had committed and my slate was washed clean, I didn't live in the past anymore....and nothing was stopping me from moving forward now.
Believe me, you make the CHOICE to stay stuck or move FORWARD from those things. I made the CHOICE to move forward, I grabbed on to God’s mercy in those moments and I didn’t let go. I held on for dear life, and I was undivided in my belief of his plan for ME. My Dad and I are still on shaky ground, but we move steps in the right direction every single day. I pray daily for us both because I know that we both fall short of God's Plans no matter how hard we try to get it right. We are both stubborn and believe our own way is better, but it is something I work on and strive towards handing over to the Good Lord daily. I forgave because it isn't my burden to carry, and I moved on because I don't live in those past places anymore. The experiences we endure become a part of who we are, but moving on from them is always going to be an essential part of the growing process .
I didn’t do it alone. I was literally terrified. I was standing at a crossroads in my life and nothing was certain. The ground beneath me was shaky at best and I had nothing but Faith and Hope that the rest of it would all work out. That was where GLM came into play. His faith was SO strong that you couldn’t help but believe. It had always been that way the entire time I had been graced with his presence in my life. “BELIEVE REBECCA. YOU HAVE TO BELIEVE, AND WHEN YOU WANT TO STOP BELIEVING; PRAY!” SO I DID, and I haven’t stopped.
So here we are today, and it all led up to this, and there will never be a single doubt in my entire mind why GLM was put on my path on a random Thursday in the middle of no-where when I wasn’t even looking for him. He gave me light. Light that I wouldn’t otherwise have had in places that needed it the most. Now I am completely devoted to the Lord in a way that I wasn’t ever in my life before, and I am not ashamed to say that.
As a little girl growing up, when people would find out my Papaw was a Pastor I would always get a raised eyebrow. It was something I learned to be SUPER proud of because of how my Momma's voice sounded when she spoke of him. You could hear the pride in her voice when she would tell someone or introduce Papaw as a Pastor. It wasn't an uncommon thing for her family down South, they were rather accustomed to him and multiple other members of the family being men of the Lord. Members of Momma's family getting together after church to sing and play piano was maybe 2 people short of a full revival most nights. It was the most beautiful thing you could ever experience if you were lucky enough to be a part of it, but we will leave that whole discussion for an entirely other blog.
However, in the most Northern parts of Michigan where my Dad and his brothers happened to grow up, well that was a different story.
How on earth could a Fegan child’s granddaddy preach in a church? Did you know what your Dad and his brothers used to do around these parts? I was doomed before I was ever even thought of because the Fegan Boys were BOYS growing up. Let me just pause and insert an Eye Roll right quick. Well frankly I am also part Lewis child, and it isn’t my fault my Dad and his brothers raised hell as kids. It certainly didn't set some sort of precedent for my brother and I growing up, but it sure didn't stop people from comparing behaviors at the school or in public when they found out our last name.
Papaw used to tell me that my brother and I were really the lucky ones. That my brother and I had roots in the very tip of the North and also in the deep parts of the South so we were never really ever going to be without a place to call home should we choose to roam. Of course neither of us have left the U.P. - I think for us it will just always be home and where our hearts remain no matter how far we do get from here.
My Dad had to have believed in God, either that or God knew that my Dad wouldn’t survive this life without my Momma’. Listening to some of the stories from back when he was growing up, she very well might have been his saving grace and the answer to his prayers. Lucky for my brother and I they did meet before my Dad met an untimely dragster racing type death by car, motorcycle or snowmobile.
Whichever the case may be, God’s grand design brought the two of them together and whether they call me a curse or a blessing, I ended up here. As parents, you never really have plans for your kids other than to create a life for them and to want better for them than you had for yourself. Sometimes life happens, things get in the way, and you get to tell your parents that God's Plan just put you on a detour and even though you aren't quite sure where you are headed at the moment, you are content with where you are going. I honestly believe that is what they hope for, for me and my Littles. A Life where it isn't so rough, where times aren't so hard, the struggles aren't as many, and the hurt doesn't stay as long as it once used to.
I can honestly say that we are there. Each one of us. Each heart is content & over-flowing. Each smile genuine & wholesome. Each of us more thankful than the next as we count our endless blessings each and every single day. It wasn't always this way, and we didn't always talk so openly about the struggles and the hard times. I think that we thought if we just didn't acknowledge them, they would go away. Eventually they did, and the hard times passed, but not before each of us would learn a lesson that would ultimately change our lives forever. A lesson in life that none of us would ever forget, but would learn to be forever grateful for.
I want to tell my ENTIRE story – I also believe that, that is what God wants too.
I also believe that he has finally led me to this crossroad in my life so that GLM and I could part ways. God brought us together and helped the two of us use one another to bring the other closer to him. In the end the journey now becomes one that the two of us need to walk alone. It is time for me to grow as a person, to write my story, and perhaps fulfill what will be my most important legacy. God knew that in order for that to happen, something was going to have to give, and I was going to have to trust him and LET GO even when every fiber of my being was telling me otherwise.
I want what God wants.
Like my Momma' said, "Letting go doesn't mean your paths won't necessarily cross again someday. Everything happens in Gods time. No one can just stop moving forward, we don't know Gods Plan." She always does give the best advice, and more often than not she is usually right. It won't be the first time in my life I have loved someone enough to let them go, and it probably won't be the last time in my life that it happens either.
I know the decision is the right one because there is no anger, no bitterness, no heartache. Only Love. Love and Hope. That where ever he may end up on his path in this life he knows that he was and is truly loved, and at the end of the day he always knows he is "ENOUGH."
That is the very best that any of us can really truly hope for. That and that each of us can TRULY learn to love and want what God wants for our lives. Life never stops. Time doesn't stop moving, and as long as we are living and breathing no one should just STOP living. We are gifted only SO much time, never waste a single moment of it folks.
So with one chapter closing and another beginning, we truly learn a lesson about the fact that sometimes, well sometimes it just hurts less to let go than it does to hang on.....
]]>Proverbs 31:25 ~ She is clothed with strength and dignity, and she laughs without fear of the future.
I think if we really want to know where it all began we have to go WAY back and look to where it really all started. My Momma' is from the very deep southern parts of Arkansas and by the grace of God she met my Dad who happens to be from the most Northern tip of Michigan. Literally a 15 minute drive from the Canadian Border & some of the most beautiful back country you have ever laid eyes upon. She came here in tow with a friend one summer to work on a farm and found herself head over heels in love with the likes of the man I know as my Dad.
However, this story, MY story, began even farther back than the likes of those two love birds. It actually really started with these two: Jimmy and Juanita, also known as, My Papaw and Granny, To anyone that was lucky enough to know them, the greatest love story ever told. The kind of love you search your entire life for. The soulmate kind. The Once In A Life Time kind you see in the movies type love. The kind that stops you in your tracks, takes your breath away and when your eyes meet for the first time makes you literally say aloud, "There you are, I've been waiting my whole life to find you." That kind of love.
As a little girl growing up we didn't get to see them as much as I would have liked. Momma’ chose to live in the Northern part of Michigan with my Dad and to be near his family. My Momma' told me that I was about 4 when Granny had her seizure that caused her accident that put her in a coma. Shortly after they moved her into a nursing home where she stayed until her death. I remember very little about her other than she would sing a lot in the kitchen when we were there. Her voice would carry throughout the house, it was beautiful, inviting, and I remember wanting to be closer to it. I do remember sneaking down the hallway to the telephone table, climbing up and sitting so I could watch her in the kitchen from across the hallway.
She did manage to find me sitting there giggling while she sang once, she crossed the kitchen with a smile on her face, picked me up and took me in with her. She never did stop singing, “I will cling to the Old Rugged Cross, and exchange it some day for a crown.” (I would learn later in life that it was her favorite hymn.) She was cutting up peaches and sat me on the counter next to where she was working. I remember my Momma' coming in and snatching me up not long after.
Years later she would tell me how they were never allowed on the counter as children, let alone in the kitchen when Granny was cooking. It was just forbidden. No Children in the kitchen, but how her Mother had softened with age when the grandbabies had arrived. "How the times changed when you kids came along.", Momma' would say. That I was lucky for those moments I did have with my Granny, even if they were very few. Momma often said I should cherish the memories that I do have before the sickness took her. Sometimes that is easier said than done, I had very few memories of my Granny and some days I was worried I was losing even the ones I did have!
The years would come and go, as they went I would watch my parents together and there was no doubt that they loved one another. I just couldn't help but feeling like there was something more. I had always been the dreamer in our family. The one who felt like my wheels were spinning faster than they could carry me. I just KNEW there was something more out there. I couldn't grasp it, I couldn't find it, but I knew even as a little girl it existed and I was going to make it my life's mission to find it. It wouldn't be long until God would show me the first true sign that he did truly exist.
After my Granny went into the nursing home and we would go down to visit, sometimes our parents would take us with them. It wasn't something my Momma' ever talked openly about, nor my Dad. I don't think it was a subject that either of them knew how to approach without fighting with one another. My Momma' would often leave there in tears, or she wouldn't say much of anything, there was never an in between. Even though my brother and I would look at one another across the van and expect the other to know the answer, we never quite did. Papaw always just told us to pray. No matter what, we needed to pray, that God would pull us through it. So I did just that, each and every time we went there.
Going there meant that My Momma' got to see her Mother, but I started to grow disdain in my heart for even having to go. Mostly for the despair my mother would feel by the time we would turn to leave. Even as a young girl I could feel her hurt, see her guilt, hear the despair in her voice when she spoke. When you are THAT young, you “don’t know nothin’!” so you keep your mouth shut, respect your elders, mind your manners, and like my Dad would say, “Just sit back there and you be quiet.”
He meant well. Don’t take that out of context. In his own way I am sure he felt like that by us being quiet we were helping my Momma' by giving her what space he thought she needed. Like us I don’t think he quite knew what to say, and rather than say the wrong thing, he said nothing at all. After all these years, looking back, I don’t necessarily think that was what my Momma' was looking for at the time. Like I said, I was young and I didn't know much of "nothin!" so even if I had wanted to help I don't think that I could have. I prayed A LOT during those times. I wasn't sure what else to even do. In hind sight we all could have done things differently, but at the time the Lord had different plans.
I only ever got to go one time with Papaw alone to see Granny. Momma' was off doing something and he asked if I wanted to tag along. Even as young as I was I knew riding along with him was better than sitting at the house in the middle of the afternoon, so I gladly said yes. Papaw was a preacher, well a Reverend rather, and one of the best to ever grace this Earth if I do say so myself. There really wasn't anything more special than watching that man give a sermon about the good Lord in front of an entire congregation.
You honestly felt like he was speaking directly TO YOU no matter what message it was that he had chosen for that day. He really was something, and there hasn't been another like him since. Not one that could speak to my heart and soul in such a way. I can’t be certain if the Lord did that because he was my Papaw, or because he was THAT good of a preacher man. Either way, I’ve never met a man that could speak to my heart and soul about the good Lord the way that my Papaw Jimmy Lewis could.
Anyhow, he lived a pretty simple life my Papaw, he never needed much to survive. He used to tell me that as long as he had a few coins in his pocket, a bullet in his gun, and the Good Lord on his side he would never go hungry and he would never go without. He loved his family, he loved his church, he loved the Lord, and he loved the idea of eternal life after death in heaven with the Lord more than anything.
On this particular day God was going to show me what TRUE LOVE looked like. The one thing that I had been LOOKING for my entire childhood life and was JUST certain was out there, but couldn’t quite find. The part of me that I always felt like was missing from me even as a child. The good Lord knew that the one and only person that could show me what I needed to see was the man that I already admired so much because of his love for him.
When we got to the nursing home he grabbed his bible and checked his shirt and pants to make sure they were suitable. I smiled nervously at him; this was the part where the deep breaths usually started, followed by fighting back tears, and instead he winked back at me. I remember thinking how he looked like a giant standing there next to the car as he grabbed his Bible off the roof of the car and asked me if I was ready to go inside.
He must of known something was amiss because I just stood there staring at him with my head cockeyed waiting for the outburst that didn’t come. This was a strange turn of events for me, and even though I was a tad scared about what wasn't happening yet, I was certainly intrigued at what could come from this. When he pulled his handkerchief from his pocket I breathed a sigh of relief that it was finally happening, and yet all he did was wipe his nose. He smiled at me, “Pollen.,” he said, as we started to walk inside. I cracked a small smile at him, still uncertain at what was even happening, and all I knew is that it was making me more nervous with every second that passed.
The nurses all knew him by name. Hearing them call him "Mr. Lewis and Hey Jimmy!" made me giggle out loud. He smiled down at me and asked me if I knew the way. I told him I did, he told me to lead the way. When we got to Granny's room I went to sit in the chair outside the room and he asked me, "Child, what do you think you are doing?" To which I replied, "We always sit out here when we come. Sometimes we color, or read, but mostly we are told to just sit quietly while they go inside to visit." He asked me, "Have you ever been inside?" I told him I had a couple times and shrugged my shoulders. He looked at me with a smile and said, "Come on!," while he motioned me through the door.
It was just as I had remembered it was; when we were there the last time I mean. Momma' would call us in at the end of their visit and ask us if we wanted to talk to Granny. I had held her hand and tried to find words to say to a woman I couldn’t remember, that I didn’t know, and that I wasn’t even sure could hear me. Back then I never knew how much those moments would come to hinder my adult life when it came to having social anxiety. How unapproachable I would become as an adult because I would instantly shut myself down when forced into any type of situation when someone wanted INSIDE my bubble.
Papaw pulled a chair up for me to sit right next to the bed, and then he told my Granny, "Juanita I brought Rebecca with me today. She tells me she has been here a couple times before but something tells me she has NEVER really been inside and talked to you." As he raised his eyebrows in my direction, I knew that he was reading me like an open book. He was absolutely right. The only thing I had ever honestly said to her when I was standing there was, “I love you.” and “I’m Sorry.”
Until that moment, I had never had a reason to feel bad about it, I never felt there was anything wrong with how I had spoken to her previous to those moments. At the time 5 words were all I could muster, and they were enough for me. Even those 5 words were a struggle. Looking back now, I had failed miserably and I hadn't even known it, but God was about to show me that when you TRUST him it will change you FOREVER.
The way my Papaw spoke to my Granny was beautiful, so open ended. It was as if she was awake and staring right at him ready to converse back, and it literally caught me off guard. He wasn't upset, or weeping. The love in his voice when he spoke her name and told her of the Ladies at church that asked about her. Of their casseroles at the luncheon, and how Mrs. So & So was STILL making the SAME one because she knew how much Juanita loved it. How one of the ladies from the choir was STILL overcompensating for her not being there after all this time and singing just as loudly as ever. How the church was growing, and a younger crowd was coming with their Grandparents. How they had found and taken care of the bees nest again this year out near the back of the church.
How the Sunday school teacher had asked him for some extra funds as some of the boys decided to eat the paste, and she needed to replace it.
(I sat there with my nose crinkled up because I knew precisely which boys had eaten said paste, it was the same boys that poked the bees nest with a stick and got them riled up in the first place. They weren't nice boys, at least I didn't think so, they were mean to me. They would run through the cemetery next to the church over the graves and pretend they were pirates while they hit the headstones with sticks.
I liked to stand next to Papaw at the end of Church Service outside when he would shake hands with all of the people in the congregation. It took some maneuvering to get from the very front pew of the church out through all the people to the back by his side, but dang it if I wasn't proud as a peacock standing next to that man when I would get there. Momma' always like to sit right up front when we would visit, so when church would end, and the singing was over, I think she sensed it as much as as she knew I just loved being by him. She would smile down at me, nod towards the door, and say, "Go on!" and GO ON I usually did.
The doors would open wide and everyone would come out and shake hands, hug, visit and just live in the moments right after the service. Papaw would talk to EACH and EVERY person in the line, and even though they knew who I was he would always motion over to me and introduce me anyway. As a little girl that was SUCH a BIG deal to me. "You look just like your Momma'." "Your Sweet as a Georgia Peach. " "I just love your dress." Even the older men in the church would give me butterscotch candies or show me their pocket watches, and tell me a small story that went along with how they ended up with it.
It was always such a beautiful time, but those awful boys would sneak up behind us and yank on my braids. Every. Single. Time.
Once my Uncle Donnie caught them, and made them sit over near the fence. They weren't allowed to move until it was time to go. I remember looking over at them and they stuck their tongues out at me. Wicked little boys they were. Jealous over a little girl. A Pastor's Granddaughter no less. It was a tad ridiculous. I would learn as a teenager from my mother that those boys belonged to a single mother in the church, and that Papaw was kind of the only real male role model they had. They didn't really mean to be mean to me, they just didn't know any better. I remember telling her that if I wanted to be teased like that; I would just stick close to the likes of my own brother. Kind of like I did when he embarrassed me SO bad in church that I never sang in front of a congregation ever again!)
Then he stopped and chuckled as if the two of them were stuck somewhere in time laughing together over an inside joke. There was no sadness, no bitterness. He wasn't even angry. Then he started talking about the weather, the temperature, that he was wearing short sleeves in the church because it was so hot.
I sat in complete disbelief at what was happening in front of me. I literally fell in love with what was happening before my eyes. When he opened to read from the bible I knew for the first time in my life that I had a purpose. I had listened to him more times than I could count stand in front of an entire congregation and read the word of God, but this was different. This was something else entirely.
This was a different side of him I had never seen before. He spoke with such conviction, such passion for what he was saying. You could have heard a pin drop in that room if it weren't for him reciting scripture. It was the most intently I had ever listened to anything in my entire life, and when he was done he looked up at my Granny and Thanked her for listening.
He continued to talk with her and then asked me if he could be alone with her for just awhile. I shook my head yes, but this time before I left her room I asked if I could tell her Good-Bye. It was the very first time I wanted to, and looking back now I think parts of me made peace with certain parts of my life that day.
He looked me at and nodded, and when I reached by her bedside it was the first time I really noticed how peaceful she looked lying there. Being there with him that day showed me many things, and the greatest of them was Love. What I had witnessed between them that day was rare, and it wasn’t something I was ever lucky enough to ever see again. My Papaw loved my Granny, she was his soulmate and as long as she was living and breathing on this planet he belonged to her. That. Is. Love. Not only did he love and adore her, he did so with the Lord and the Bible and when he added the two together it was the most phenomenal thing I have ever witnessed in my entire life.
I never knew how long we were really there, it wasn't until we stopped at the store on the highway on the way home and he let me get some penny candy that he told me that what I had heard was him practicing his upcoming sermon. I told him that it was beautiful. He asked me if I had been saved and allowed Jesus into my heart. I told him I wasn't sure I was ready, and that I didn't think Jesus would want to live some place so small.
I remember him chuckling as we got back in the car as he said, "Child, Jesus gave all so that we could be here today. You don't have to have a lot for it to matter. It isn't about the space, it is about giving that space to him that matters." It would be MANY years later, LONG after he was gone before I would finally come to realize how true those words really were.
I asked him once if he knew if Granny was saved. He smiled at me, got real quiet, and then said, “I live every single day knowing that no matter what the good Lord has planned for her and I, we will spend eternity with him. The only thing she loved more than me were her babies, the only thing more than that were her grandbabies, and the only thing she loved more than all of you was the Lord. I have no doubts your Granny was saved Child, and that she would want that for you as well. Just as I do.”
I had the smallest taste of what real and wholesome love was truly like as a child. I would spend many a day as a young teen and into my adult years chasing after what I thought that would be. Many a heartache would come to pass, and many blessings would then in turn be blocked from my own doing. God tried to teach me a valuable lesson that day, that I didn't learn the value from until MUCH later in life.
He is amazing in that way. Showing us the value in the moments, lessons, and plans that come and go as he sees fit. He doesn't give us what we WANT, in turn he gives us what we NEED. We could learn a valuable lesson in just having patience and trusting that his plans for us will always prevail. The rest will reveal itself as he sees fit, and they will do so in his time.
So even though my walk with the Lord would be a difficult one for me to understand in the years to come, he never left my side. In the blogs to come you will learn how I blocked my own blessings, pointed the blame in every direction but my own, and was unable to see the bigger picture as I was trapped behind the shadow that the devil had cast upon my life. It would take some time for me to surface, and for my true calling to come to light.
Now that we know where it all began, we can start the process back….
Jeremiah 29:11 ~ For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.
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So you ditched Facebook?
Well not entirely.
I did and I didn’t.
You never really realize how much personal information is actually out there until SOMEONE you don’t know happens to stumble upon you and starts roaming around parts of your life that you never even realized existed on the internet. Once that happens and it gets pointed out to you, you tend to take a REALLY long look at those parts of your life. Then you have to make the decision if you REALLY want for that stuff to stay out there for the world to see. OR if you want to take those parts of your life and put them in an archive somewhere so that you can revisit them if and when you need to. I chose the latter.
My Dad has ALWAYS hated Facebook. So much so that he has called it “Ass Face” for as long as I can remember. He swears up, down, sideways and back that it is nothing but evil in the fullest sense of the word. We are also talking about a man that refuses to text as well. He is a back to basics kind of man, simple is good for him. It works, and you don’t mess with something that works. Facebook, is complicated, its evil, and it has the potential to ruin lives, that doesn’t work for him.
He still sometimes mocks or teases us to this day about taking photos or videos. Every once in a while you will get the mocking tone that goes along with the statement, “Better be sure to upload that to Ass Face for all the world to see.” We all usually roll our eyes or walk away, but at the end of the day he was right and he knew it. We weren’t taking 17 different versions of the SAME posed photo for our own saved album.
You never realize how much it takes over your life until you are sitting at your parents trying to visit with your Momma’ and she is scrolling through her Facebook feed laughing at a joke after you just told her that your childhood friend’s father passed away. It became a complete distraction, and no one even really remembers it happening. It just kind of became the norm when Smart Phones arrived, and we let the world of Ass Face in turn take over our lives.
I used it for the longest time as a creative outlet after my second divorce. I spent A LOT of alone time at night scrolling through prayer groups, praying woman groups, and divorce forums. I found a lot of strength in reading inspirational quotes & writings, and it could totally be seen when taking that walk back through those years of my life in the posts that graced my wall during that time.
GLM and I talked for a long time about me deleting my Facebook, and I had excuses as to why I couldn’t in the beginning. I have to many pictures I wouldn’t want lost. What about my business? What about my friends? The school? Coaches? Out of State Family? How would people know to contact me? What would I do about Facebook parties? How could he not see that it would impact my entire life, my business? It would literally rile me up to the point that I would have anxiety about it and almost be in tears before the conversation was over.
Well he was having none of it. Want to know what he had to say about that?
“Rebecca, you can make all the excuses you want to, your life was just fine before Facebook was ever invented. People ran SUCCESSFUL businesses just fine before then, they kept and saved photos just fine before they knew what it even was. They read books instead of meme’s, and Bibles instead of forums. They went to ACTUAL prayer groups & churches. They held ACTUAL parties in their homes Rebecca. You know what else they did before Facebook? They didn’t sit on their phones and read everyone else’s status’s to one another in a room. They lived life JUST fine. You don’t NEED Facebook just to run a business, keep photos, or have memories. That stuff will continue all on its own. I promise. Now you can do what you want, but I agree with your Dad on this one, Facebook is just more trouble than it is worth most days.”
I couldn’t even disagree with him. I mean I wanted to, but the point was mute. He hit the nail dead on the head and there wasn’t any arguing with him. So right that minute I made a deal with myself. No more posting important stuff on Facebook and we would see how many people even noticed it was gone.
Guess what happened folks? None of you even noticed…..
I mean the ones closest to us knew what was going on with our lives. We had multiple birthdays, anniversaries, athletic banquets, dr.'s appointments, concerts, proms, homecomings, new houses, promotions, A TON OF ATHLETIC GAMES FOR MULTIPLE SPORTS, family dinners, multiple children on honor rolls, vacations, dentist appointments, multiple surgeries, fundraisers, family days at schools, multiple volunteer times, endless hours of training's, donations, family chaos, car accidents, and the normal bumps and bruises along the way and not a single one of you that isn’t in my inner circle had a CLUE what was going on with my life!
You know what? I WAS FINE with that! It didn’t even hurt my feelings one single bit. The world kept spinning, life moved on, and NO ONE CARED WHAT COLOR KitchenAid I got for Christmas even if it was the most perfect gift ever because it was my absolute favorite color!
Want to know WHY no one cared?
Cause’ it didn’t go on Facebook for the 355 - likes, the 245 - loves, the 111 - I can’t believe how perfect it is, the 125 - he’s a keeper, and the 11- I hope you keep him for the rest of your life & the 2 – He was SO meant for you.
None of it mattered to me anymore because OUTSIDE of the Facebook world I was still living my life just fine and we were all doing JUST great. No it wasn’t perfect, and I wasn’t roaming around pretending that it was. Our family was barely hanging on by threads and prayers, but life was STILL moving forward while everyone was consumed with what was happening on Facebook. While no one paid no mind to what was happening out here, I paid no mind to what was happening in "there."
So I started my 10 year journey backwards through posts, pictures, tags, and memories. I don’t care how strong of a person you are, or what cloth you think you are cut from – sometimes certain things cut deep no matter how much time has passed. I won’t tell you the journey back through the last 10 years of my life was an easy one, or that cutting out certain pieces while saving and deleting others is something that I recommend for everyone.
What I will tell you is this: For me it was a necessary process in my constant and ever-evolving journey in this life. I spent countless hours going through photos, saving most, deleting others, and untagging myself from those that no longer served a purpose in my life. It doesn’t mean that I don’t value that time in my life, or that I have forgotten. It won’t mean that you can just erase those things or that they just disappear because my name isn’t attached to them anymore.
It means it was a part of my life that helped get me to this point, and those moments ultimately helped shaped me into becoming the woman that I am today. One certain memory, photo, or post didn’t define who I would become on this journey, and I think that is where people get lost a little bit when they do finally stumble upon someone in Facebookland. They get stuck or caught up on something they see without knowing the whole truth of what it is they are looking at. They make judgement without asking questions first, and in turn it makes it much more difficult for themselves in the long run.
Make no mistake about the reasons if and why I deleted my personal Facebook page, I did it for ME.
I kept memories from those times along the way that mattered and shed the ones that no longer did me service. No longer gave me a sense of peace. Eliminating 10 years of your life takes TIME and PATIENCE, and there were times when I hit certain years, certain memories when it got PRETTY GRITTY and I wanted to quit.
Some moments I even did. I won’t even try to lie about it. Certain memories opened some pretty deep wounds that weren’t quite healed over yet, and in turn it left some pretty raw emotions to be handled. So I walked away and didn’t return until I was certain my heart and mind were in a place that I knew God had prepared them to revisit those times without getting stuck there.
That leads us to here, to right now. This is my time, and this is my story. Facebook no longer defines the woman I am, the posts and pictures no longer get to allow judgement from others as they no longer exist, and what you have now is my ability to not only tell my story MY way, but to make sure that the story being told is literally in MY OWN WORDS this time.
No one ever said that it was going to be easy. If anyone had told me that at 36 years old I was going to one day sit down, strip my entire life completely back to basics so that I could hit Ground 0 to finally tell my entire story, well lets just be serious for a moment shall we?
And yet here we are.
afterallthistime.org is MY domain, bought and purchased, and it belongs to me and so do all the stories I now publish to its blog pages.
In the background there are two separate books in the works, one that will follow the last 18 years of Mickayla and I’s lives and the journey that her and I have taken while my parents have helped me raise her. Without them I wouldn’t be where I am, they have given up their own dreams for their own lives countless times without question to help “parent” over and over again. Single-Parenting isn't an easy job, I fail daily at it, but I won't ever give up. Without my parents, OUR parents and their endless wave of love and devotion none of us would be where we are today. We are all blessed beyond measure to have the amount of love and structure that we do as a family, even if the rest of the world doesn’t understand what they see from the outside looking in.
The other book is my reflection on both sides of the Journey to Day 180. Walking backwards through the pain and heartache of that time and now being in a completely different place gave me an entirely outside perspective on how life was back then. What we could have done differently after, and what I was missing all those moments when I was searching for peace and couldn’t quite find it. My hope is that by the time that the book is finished, both he and I come to the same understanding. That sometimes life just happens, and above all else, the greatest gift given to all of us at the end of the day walks, talks, in human form as the coolest little man that we will probably ever know.
With any luck and a whole lot of prayer, the writing for Mickayla and I’s book will come easy, and I can finish it by late Spring/early Summer next year. I do know that the Lord put the seed in my heart a long time ago, but I never felt compelled to act upon it more than I have over the past couple of months. Like my Momma’ always says, “Everything comes in Gods Time.” He was finally ready for me to tell my story, and he knew that I was finally in a place emotionally and mentally to tell the story that has never been told.
Writing has always been my thing, the one thing I could find comfort and peace in. GLM was the one and ONLY person, other than my Littles, that ever had an entire journal start to finish written just to him. Yes, Notebook type stuff folks, and ultimately it will be the first book that I ever finish that will never be published. My only wish is that if it ever ends up at some garage sale 25 years down the road and one of you recognize the thing that you snatch it up!
So yes in a way I ditched Facebook, and if you want to find me you will have to look for me in the pages of these blogs. CALL me on the phone, OR come find me at my house. If I am not working, I am sure that I will be playing in one of my gardens or sitting on one of my decks reading a book or scribbling thoughts on a notepad about my newest blog or book. Most of all you will find me ENJOYING life without the confines of needing to post all the details out there for the world to see.
I will still use Facebook as a vessel to shuffle along my blogs to all of you, but I won’t have the app or messenger on my phone. So please don’t get upset or take it personal when you can’t find me so quickly anymore. Between work, kids, and writing I don't know how often I will update my blogs, but you can subscribe to them if you choose to, the box to do so is on the main home page. Otherwise I will post them to my page when I fine tune and finish them.
I hope you all find joy in the small moments, and I wish you well above all else. Where ever this journey leads each of us, I hope that every single one of us crosses paths multiple times long before it is over. Above all else, Thank You SO much to each and every one of you reading this that has been a part of this journey for the last 10 years. It has been such an amazing ride, and I am certainly looking forward to seeing where the future takes us.
Much Love to Each of You ~ Rebecca
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