Lesson of following the right road

“Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.” Matthew 7:13

Not realizing our intended path in life sometimes prevents us from fully living in the present moment. I believe we all have a purpose in being here and I do think it is more than just being a mom- or a parent in general. Although, I have to say that God did intend for me to be a mother. I think most of the time I really take the time I have for granted because every day seems to last forever, yet the weeks and years pass by so quickly. Sometimes we do not see the paths we are crossing or the turns we are making because we are allowing life to pass us by. If we do not take the right path then the end could not turn out as well as we hoped, instead of a ‘detour’ we will get a dead end and not have the chance to find ourselves the right path.

 I know that I only have a short while with my children and then they are going to be my age; driving me to some out of state airport after my weekend visit with them. They will be having boyfriends and girlfriends and hiding secrets from me. They will no longer want me to read them a book to bed at night and I won’t get asked if I can give them another kiss. I won’t be able to walk them to the bus stop or bring them lunch at school. I won’t get the smile on their face when they see me surprise them at school or when they had a long day. They will still love me, but not the same way they do now. In their eyes, I am perfect (most of the time) and I don’t want that to end. I enjoy being their number one person they look up to, I enjoy every moment of their love. I know It will definitely go by faster than I think.

Parents serve such a great purpose in our lives and sometimes it’s not only our biological parents that play an important role, but also step parents. They are there to provide a much different emotional support system than our parents do. I think by simply not having the biological connection it allows them to nurture us in different ways. Becoming a parent was one of the happiest moments in my life, I remember every feeling and I remember every moment with my daughter (and my son as well). I hope to be able to feel those same emotions again one day when I hopefully have the opportunity to have another child.

We need to be sure that we are making most of the moments we have in life and we need to make sure that we are being observant. God made the road to him more complicated because he wanted people to reach out and intend to follow Him. If he made it easy than everyone would do it, but it’s not. It is harder to say that you follow God because most seemed ashamed with it today. I may not have all the answers, I may not understand a lot, but I do know that if God wanted me to know everything then maybe I would not want to believe. He keeps me wanting more and asking more.

Show me your ways, Lord, teach me your paths. Guide me in your truth and teach me, for you are God my savior, and my hope is in your all day long. Remember, Lord, your great mercy and love, for they are from of old. Do not remember the sins of my youth and my rebellious ways; according to your love remember me for you, Lord, are good. Psalm 25: 4-7

A New

I feel so out of place,

Even in my own skin.

There’s no place to turn,

Nowhere to even begin.

Deep within the roots,

A crawling, burning pain.

Tingling my entire body,

Driving  me insane.

When it feels like the world,

Stands at your back.

The people you thought you knew,

Aren’t on the same track.

Realizing that you are all you have,

I find the strength within.

To push the pain away,

In order to find my own place to begin.

Lesson on Judging

“Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.” Matthew 7:1-2

We live in a world where we judge a book (or person) based on the cover that we see. It is unfortunate that we have to be skin and bones to be considered beautiful. It is unfortunate that we have to drive  nice cars and wear nice clothing in order to be considered ‘worth someone’s time,’ it is unfortunate that we must act in a certain way in order to have the opportunity for some jobs.

“Listen and understand. What goes into someone’s mouth does not defile them, but what comes out of their mouth, that is what defiles them.” Matthew 15: 10-11 The world seems to care less about what someone says, although this is the true test of who we are. It does not matter what happens around us or the things that are beyond our control, the one thing we are able to control are our tongues.

“Like a gold ring in a pig’s snout, is a beautiful woman who shows no discretion.” Proverbs 11:22 The outside beauty of someone only lasts for so long, whether it is age or time with that person that makes the attractiveness disappear the only thing left is what you have inside. 

Our characters as people are not seen as often as our outer looks, of course everyone wants to be seen as ‘beautiful.’ Beauty has been linked to better perceptions, higher chances of getting a job, and having an overall more successful life. But what if it is confidence and not beauty? There is a woman who I have always thought was beautiful and she is not the typical person you would think of- it is Beth Chapman, Dog the Bounty Hunter’s wife. The way she exudes herself makes her beautiful, it is her confidence that allows you to see inside her soul and not just inside her shirt. I would rather have a good character than a good body. I would rather know that I lived my life successfully being the person I needed to be, having the traits that were desirable, not having the body or the legs that were desirable. There are some people in this world who feel that all there is to life is to look good or to look a certain way. God does not judge us based on how we have maintained our hygiene, he bases his judgments on how we have maintained our life. Can you look back and say that you have put more focus in being a better person? I know I cannot. However, we all have the opportunity to change. No one knows the day the world will end, but when it comes it will be swift. God will not leave much time for people to make a final choice on how they will life. There will be one that goes and one that stays, hopefully it is not too late for you to change your life around. The lesson of today is:

            “Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the stream rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall because it had it’s foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mind and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.” Matthew 7: 24-27

How strong is your foundation that you have built? Is it strong enough to withstand any outside pressure or criticism? How strong are you? Are you able to withstand anything with God by your side? Think about the life you are living, think about the judgments you are making before you sit and make them, think about what you do before you do it. Do not condemn others before God has decided to judge. Everyone who does not choose the righteous path will be punished- in due time. For now, we should live our life trying to be accepting of other people and their choices, even when it can be the most difficult test of our character. 

Lesson of the Day

“The Fear of the Lord is the beginning of Wisdom, and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.” Proverbs 9: 10

Some of the smartest choices in life are the hardest ones to make. It is often harder to think before speaking than to think after speaking.

“Whoever conceals hatred with lying lips and spread slander is a fool. Sin is not ended by multiplying words, but the prudent hold their tongues.” Proverbs 10:18-19

Recently for class I had to read the Book of Proverbs, now I took a new testament class and actually enjoyed it more than I thought, I also learned a lot more. Not to say that I still do not have questions or doubts, but I know that everyone does. Reading the old testament is not something I prefer, but I did enjoy this book. I am not sure why I thought this particular verse was an important one to remember, but I know that I am not perfect. I know that I say and do things that sometimes I probably should not, however it is very hard to not want to speak my mind. Opinions are merely thoughts that probably do not need to be said most of the time. Just because we speak untruths about someone or have an enumerated amount of ‘hate’ or disgust does not mean that it is going to benefit us if we speak these words. Holding our tongue is one of the greatest learning lessons of life. We do not need to bring someone else down just because we become unhappy with who we are, we need to bolster ourselves by becoming closer to God. At times when you feel as though you are alone, sometimes becoming closer to God is what is needed and wanted, have you ever thought that God knew that you would be weak and alone in those futile moments, he intended for it, so you would ask Him for help.

“Hatred stirs up conflict, but love covers over all wrongs.” Proverbs 10:12 What happens when we hate something or someone? Does anything good ever come from that? We feel awful because we constantly remind ourselves why we have this hate and disgust which makes our attitude negative. This in turn makes those around us negative as well. It makes God unhappy with who we are because of the way we are behaving. Have we not learned anything? Hatred does nothing for no one. Obviously I am not one to speak about this, but I am trying to learn about this. I know that I have filled myself with hate because it felt like the only thing to do at the time. Love can cover anything, if we fill ourselves with love it is amazing what can come from that. One question is if we have ‘tormented’ those around us because of the hate we let fill our bodies, the negative attitude that filtered outward, is it possible for the love to return between two people? This may sound confusing, but there are times when we have been negative and people have not wanted to be around us anymore, losing the love they once had for us, is that love able to be fixed if only one party changes? I would like to think that Love for anyone can change everything. If we choose to be filled with love then I think that love would filter more so than the hate did. Like a smile being contagious I think spreading love would be contagious as well. Who doesn’t love to be loved, cuddled, hugged? We all love to feel this.

“Be sure of this: The wicked will not go unpunished, but those who are righteous will go free.” Proverbs 11:21

I have been wanting to get into a bible class somewhere because I think I have a lot I would want to discuss and talk to with people, but unfortunately I have not been able to get the opportunity to start going to one. I want to learn more about the bible and I want to learn more about following in the footsteps of someone who did no wrong. I know that I could never live the same way, but I can definitely try to model my life after Him and then hope that my children would follow in my footsteps as well. I want to be filled with love and not hate, I want to know that I am not wicked so that I may go free. I only have one life and I know the things that I need to do. So I guess the bible lesson of the day is: instead of filling your mind with negative thoughts, think of something positive and change your mind. Tell yourself where you want it to go, do not let your mind decide how you are going to feel.

You Can Be Anything You Want To Be!

I would give anything some days to be three again, but then again I am twenty-five and every once and a while I get to pretend that I am three.

I get to be a ghost hunter squirting all the ghosts, trying to capture them, with my jelly gun. I get to be a construction worker and build houses, fix screens and bikes, and hammer and weld things together. I get to be a dancer and singer and run around the house, but I don’t have to worry about someone not buying my music or dances because the one person who matters doesn’t care how bad I am at singing and dancing. I get to be a patient who is badly injured in need of a doctor who can help. I can always be a Dr.: Dr. Wabob at your service J I can fix anything that you need me to and I assure you that it will turn out okay. I can climb on the playground and swing on the swingset. I can be a scuba diver and go down the water slides and collect all the dive rings at the bottom of the pool. I  can be a chef and whip you up something good with just the bark and leaves from outside.

My son teaches me a lot about myself and all the things I really can do. I hope that I am able to open up his eyes as well when I let him imagination run wild. I watch him with pure fascination because I am amazed at what he is able to make-up and what he is able to remember. He really does make me the best person I can be.

The most important part of getting to be anything I want to be is being able to still be the mom at the end of the day. I can kiss away any boo-boos, I am the exterminator when I have to kill bugs, and I am a storyteller at bedtime. I get the best job of all. No matter where I go in life, I know that I will always be a mom.

I do not know about anything else in my life in any other aspect, but I do know that no one can take my children away from me and no one can tell me that I didn’t do a good job. Some days I feel like I could do more. “Here Logan, watch some cartoons, I need to clean, do homework, shower…” Before you know it Chloe is home and I feel that another day has washed away without me doing much with him. I always feel like I have to be the best I can be and take him on wild adventures and go spend money to have fun with him, but the moments where we get to use our imaginations together are some of the best moments that we can create.

There are days when I just want to crawl into a ball because I feel like I have not amounted to what I ever wanted, I have not completed what should have been done by this time in my age, that I have yet to make my own parents proud; BUT I have created two beautiful lives that help me retain my youth. I get to be a kid every once in a while, but I get to be a full time mom. I have an excuse to act like the ghosts are chasing after us at a playground filled with people, I get to act crazy because I broke my fake arm and my son has to fix it, I get to wear the construction goggles when we build something together just because I can, because it’s fun, because it makes them laugh. Their laugh is contagious, beautiful, and heartwarming. I do not think there could ever be a person who I love more than anything besides those two lives I created, except of course another part of me or two or three more J I am thankful to their dad for giving me two of the best gifts that God could ever give me. I am thankful for the moments I have with them. 

Listening is worth more than a lot of things

It amazes me lately how well everyone around me has been listening to me, what has happened to my listening skills? The people around me have been listening well to me and I don’t even realize that I have said things. They are listening and I am not.

In middle school we used to have these things called “Natural Helpers.” These were people who were ‘elected’ by their peers because they were considered the best listeners, people who anyone could turn to in order to talk about their problems and expect the other person to be attentive and potentially give good advice. I was one of those people for three years in a row, every year I was elected as one and I loved it. I got to leave school for activities that helped enhance my listening skills as well as other abilities in regards to being a good friend. I used to have pictures to a lot of these things, but after the fire I am not sure that I have a lot of things left. A whole entire part of my life was in a box that I had forgotten about and I will never see it again, if there was even much left after the fire. Anyways, for three years straight I was told I was one of the best listeners, what has happened to me then?

                My best friend got me a birthday present that has to be one of the best I have ever received. She gave me a necklace that has 13.1 on it to remind myself of what I have accomplished, I continually get better and better with running and for her to know that it is something I love more than anything amazes me. How did she know that this was something I would love so much? We unfortunately do not talk often enough, texts are few and far between, emails have been a couple of times, facebook is the easiest way to connect, and phone calls are almost nonexistent- this was the person that I remember talking on the phone for hours and hours when we were growing up. We talked about everything. Over the years we lost contact and somehow she still knows me. It’s sad because I feel like I do not listen enough, I feel like I do not know her like I should. If she’s my best friend shouldn’t I feel like I know everything about her? I do not listen well enough at all.

                At my daughters birthday party this past weekend she had all of her friends and we invited some people that we met while living down here in Florida. The mother I have grown pretty close with and it is nice to have someone around here to be able to talk to and to go out with if we need to or can. For my daughter’s present she got her a digital camera and scrapbook kit thing from Crayola. How did she know that I loved to scrapbook and that Chloe likes to sit down with me and do her own? I have only known her since January and she already knows me this well? I do not understand where my listening skills went to or my memory.

                I always give Brian a hard time for not remembering things, but I am beginning to wonder if I am able to remember anything at all either. I do not remember telling me things half of the time. I told my sister that I think a lot of it is that I do not have a lot of people to talk to down here, I rarely speak to anyone, so when I am given the opportunity to talk to someone, I do most of the talking and do not listen as well anymore. I get so excited to be able to have a conversation with someone other than my children or Brian. I just want to be able to talk to people about adult things and not just about my life. I feel like I don’t have a lot of friends, I have grown into a different life and they have as well, the ones that remain by my side are the true ones. I used to love listening to people, I used to love talking about problems and trying to help others get past issues that were going on in their lives. I used to love to listen, I never liked to talk that much and really I still don’t like to talk that much. I have definitely started to grow out of my shy tendency especially since having my children, I have been forced to speak to more people and be more open with things because they are making friends and wanting to do things.

                Listening is such a vital part of who we are, in order to know anything about where we are going and what we are doing, we need to listen. I never realized how important this skill was and I never realized that I had lost it. It’s sad to think that there are people out there that know me so well, that listen so well, yet I have not given them the same respect. Do they think I talk too much? Do they think I am a bad person for not listening well? All I can do is start listening now, start really listening to what everyone is saying around me. Most of the time it is in the small things that are said that you find the most truth and the most answers. I know that I can really get to know others if I truly open up my ears, because I know I have a great memory, there’s no way I would forget learning something.

                Listen- because you never know when the last chance you might have at listening to someone, it really is more important than it seems.

You will NEVER be Happy

Someone once told me: “Jamie you will NEVER be happy. No matter what you do or who you’re with- it won’t ever make you happy. You always find something wrong, you always look for faults in others. This will make you unhappy for the rest of your life.”

Unfortunately the person who said this to me is probably the last person I would listen to today, however it is also the same person who probably knew me better than anyone else. In life we allow others to get to know us, to become close to us; we put ourselves in vulnerable situations in order to make relationships. When those relationships begin to weaken, the first thing we rein in is our vulnerability. I allowed myself to be like an open book and I fell in love with someone I do not even know today. It is not because he has changed or I have changed, it’s because we have BOTH changed. Now that I have been through a divorce with him, I realize that the person I knew doesn’t really exist and I am unsure what part of the person I knew is even still there. I fell in love with someone who loved me more than their whole world, someone I thought I would always be with, until the lies started. After I found out about lie after lie I decided that I could not be with him any longer. In the months that followed there was so much that happened between the two of us, today we are able to talk face to face and on the phone without getting aggravated with one another. There is a part of me that will always think he still loves me and would be with me again and I guess at the same time I will always love him too. I could never be in love with him again because of who he is and what he has chosen to do with his life since I left, but I never really stopped loving him. I cried for days after I left him because I never knew if I was making the right decision, but I found out that I had. I finally felt okay with the choice I made and I finally felt happy about the choice I made, I knew that I was going to be ok. It is always a sad moment though when you know that the person you fell in love with when you were just a teenager is not the same person you are going to be with thirty years from that moment.

A couple months after I left he was still trying to contact me, still trying to get me to come back, but I couldn’t. He finally told me that I was never going to be happy, that I would never let anyone ever make me happy. When you hear that from an ex most people just think that they are just trying to hurt you, but I actually believed him, and I still do. I intentionally push every single person away from me because I don’t want someone to be so close to me that they know everything about me. He knew it all, there wasn’t a moment he didn’t know about, there wasn’t a time in my life that he wasn’t aware of, there wasn’t a person in my family or friends that he hadn’t met. There was only one person in my life that literally knew every aspect of who I was and he let me down. Where can you go from there? He told me that I push people away, now I will admit that my emotions are like a roller coaster and I never know where I am going to be let alone anyone else, but he always stood by my side and could normally make a bad moment good. Once I found out about everything he had done to me, I felt betrayed, hurt, heartbroken, and most of all- stupid. How could I let someone walk all over me? How could I let someone get to know me, to trust them, and then let them hurt me? How could I be so stupid? He tried to tell me that because of what I do to people i.e. push them away, I couldn’t ever let myself be happy. It seems that over time I have a tendency to push others away because the feelings that were once there aren’t anymore. I love the feeling of lust and desire and once that is gone all you are left with is the relationship that you have built- it really shows what you have created. I was still there in my marriage, unfortunately the other side was not and that was what hurt. Was I that ugly? Was I that fat? What was wrong with me for someone to do that?

Maybe I won’t ever be “happy,” but I don’t know; maybe I will. Maybe I will just fall in love with love, but maybe I won’t. I do not know what is going to happen, but I do know that what he told me is the truth to an extent- how far I’m not sure. Ask me when I’m 80 how my life turned out. It’s just funny how someone can still know everything about you, yet as time goes on I push myself to forget.