The Craaazy Stuff of Life!!!

Good morning everyone! It's me again. You know what my sentiment is right now? I'll be honest, sometimes life just makes you tired. I mean just plain old tired of trying, tired!!!! Especially when there are goals you are trying to meet, or expectations waiting in the halls of your mind. Here I am just minding my own business, going along, simply living life, and something comes along that I think I'm okay with, and then it just hits me and I think "I can't do this anymore, I'm tired!!"! Does anyone out there feel my pain?

And then there are those days when nothing I do fits into place. Even the simplest of things, my hands can't seem to hold anything, I try to hang something on a hanger and it slips off two or three times, the coffee scalds my tongue...now it will be sore for days! I drop milk from my cereal bowl onto the PJs I just washed yesterday and they are my favorite PJs, now they'll have to go back through the washing process. Every outfit I choose to put on has something wrong with it, so I go through four before settling on one. I forget to cancel the appointment I couldn't make and get charged a fee, every red light in Newton, Rockdale, Fulton, Dekalb, Cobb and Walton counties catch me if I'm anywhere near! I get almost to where I'm going only to remember I forgot my cellphone. The way I discovered the missing cellphone was because my purse took a tumble and now everything is in the floor. As I'm thinking about that, I enter a parking lot through the wrong entrance and get beeped at, very loudly. As I'm leaving the grocery store, escaping a slow check out line and rude clerk, I remember that I didn't get the one thing I actually came to the store to get probably because my list is somewhere on the floor of the car! Then I remember I forgot all my morning meds! My daughter calls me on the way home and asks me to keep the kids that night for an emergency meeting she must attend. When I hesitate, remembering my day, she takes it as a "no" and starts panicking about who can keep them. When I try to explain why I hesitated, I am misunderstood and there are hurt feelings! When I finally get back home, one thing is checked off my to-do list! I am now the proud owner of new bed sheets that we have needed for sometime. I put them in the washer so we can use them tonight (nothing like a new set of sheets to make a bad day seem not so bad!). But when I return to the laundry room to put them in the dryer, someone has beaten me to it!! How nice! Nice until I realized that they only did it to get their clothes into the washer and they put my sheets on the wrong setting, so now my $89.00 sheets (with a coupon) have shrunk and will not fit my bed. Then as I'm going to bed, I realize I don't feel well and I have a fever. As I say "Good-night" to the Lord, I wonder what tomorrow will hold?

This is the stuff of life, this is living! On days like this I just want to stuff myself into a ball and just zone out!!! I'm sure all of us have been guilty of feeling this way. If you haven't don't tell me that will only add to my list of problems!! Anyway, who said life is suppose to go smoothly? My husband sent me an email that some of you may have received, the information contained therein is from "Steven Covey" who says that 10% of what happens to us on a daily basis it out of our control, and the other 90% is constituted of how we react to that 10%. That's when I said "Reeeaaallly???" it was hard for me to believe, but when I meditated on it I realized the truth it held. Most of my "bad" day was just a normal day with a few little mishaps, but to me, they became horrible obstacles from which I hung my emotional hat of self pity. My problems rest mainly between my two ears, and I don't mean I have a sinus infection or a headache. I have those as well, but, I mean that it is all in how we treat or handle the situations of life that determines our quality of living. So I've gained 3 pounds in one day?...I can lose it again! So my daughter got her feelings hurt?... I can apologize. So my new sheets shrunk?... We'll make more money somehow and buy some more sheets, at least we are strong enough to work. I can't relive those hours, but I can always start again. The one thing I'm learning in recovery, and yes I am recovering from many things, as we all should be, but, I have learned that you can always start over, anytime of the day! This has revolutionized my life!

I guess you can tell that today I am "encouraging myself in the Lord" (as King David said), and I'm letting you listen in. And really all I have shared with you today is to point out that we truly start recovering from trauma and abuse when we learn to let go and forgive ourselves. We all fail every now and then, we all stumble, and we also all overcome or we wouldn't be alive! You are a fighter or you would have been eliminated during the birthing process, you have made it through this life so far by not giving up. So, if you feel that your power was taken from you in a violent or abusive act on you or someone you love, just remember it's not over. You have the sustainability to take back your life. Put yourself on restart and forgive you for not being strong enough to somehow get out of that situation. Then you can start on the road to forgiving others, whether it be your abuser, or those who didn't believe or support you!

I thank my Higher Power, Jesus Christ, that I can live and breath and have my being in Him. Not my "doing", but my "being". You see, I didn't earn the right to live and thrive by anything I have done, it was simply bestowed on me and I am here because of who I have chosen to be, how I have chosen to see myself and my circumstances. I desire to live so that laughter is the best medicine and have so much joy that I couldn't take anymore if you tried to give it to me! Now that's worth living for!!! That's all for now. I hope you will go and enjoy just being who you are!!

Love,

Roma Beth

Good morning! I just love this time of year! The only problem is I want to spend as much time outside as possible, however when I do, because of allergies, I get all congested! I'm sure that's information that added to your day! But how many of you can just feel the itchy nose, watering eyes, sneezing and wheezing? Not to get all philosophical or anything, but isn't that the way of life? We find something we really love, but there's always something standing in the way of us being able to fully enjoy it? You know sort of like the thought process that there is a price tag or a consequence to being able to truly enjoy ourselves. Sort of like taxes! But I'll spare you my sentiment. You know what I do so that I can enjoy the day a little more? I take an antihistamine. Thank God for properly directed pharmaceuticals!

Following this line of thinking, I think some of us, myself included, always feel as if when a good thing is happening to us, we can expect there to be a price tag, or a consequence. You know the saying "too good to be true"? Well there are some inalienable rights that come along with being alive and I think we too often forget those, or let others intimidate us into not believing it. And yes, there are people out there who want to put fear in us for their own purposes. Guilt, fear and intimidation all come from the same negative source and when woven into our thoughts can weaken anything and everything we do. There must have been a reason for Jesus to say "I have come that you might have life and that you might live it to the fullest". There must be an innate need for humanity to resist enjoying the goodness of life.

When someone is victimized, the first thing people want to do is look for a reason. To try and figure out what the victim did to put themselves in jeopardy. Let me tell you something, there doesn't have to be a reason for any individual to suffer from someone else's desire to take what does not belong to them. As simple as this concept is, I find that it is always overlooked. The question "who is to blame?" is always the first attempt to silence the victimized, and put fear and frustration into an already terrible situation.

We experienced this in our family in dealing with my daughter's past abuse. When we began to try to "expose" the problem, even unintentionally, just because we needed help, we were told not to speak of it. Because, as they put it, "everyone can take a little of the responsibility for this". In other words, if she hadn't been put in that situation or had that person not been given access to her. I'm here to tell those of you who are dealing with being victimized, you do have a right to live life "to the fullest" and it's up to you to decide who is to blame. How? You must rise above all criticism and judgmentalism, even well meaning, and then all the crap and sediment will settle in the bottom and you will be vindicated. But the secret is to "rise above" it. I don't care how incredibly horrible your trauma might have been, if you live within the realm of the higher law of love, you will surpass the negative and unkind words of others as God's beautiful light of justice shines through you! Don't balk at me!!!! :) You might not see the person who victimized you suffer any consequences, but believe me, in overcoming evil and hatred with love you are giving place to justice. If we take up a desire to destroy we only add fuel to an already bad fire of evil and it will consume everyone around us! There is only so much space in this atmosphere, so many created molecules, and we build the Kingdom of God when we fill these spaces with Christ-like behavior. "Give no place to the devil" means that we should not increase evil's hold in this world by adding to it. I'll go into this more later.

I do believe my family is beginning to experience a sense of God's type of justice. We will walk in the gift of a beautiful life. It is my right as a child of God and I hope you understand that it is your right too to partake of the "abundant Life"or life as full as God intended it to be.

What does this have to do with this beautiful Springtime we are enjoying? Well, Spring is always a beautiful representation of the Glory of God, of His goodness towards us, of regeneration and resurrection. It is a visible sign of the good things God designed for us to enjoy on a daily basis. Open your eyes and see, God gives good things. Life, death, resurrection are all beautiful, if seen from the proper vantage point. Rise above fear and guilt, which are like the allergies keeping us from enjoying the ever present beauty around us. Use your God given remedies of meditation, love, and faith, which are the spiritual antihistamines that we can inject into our spirit man. And get outside and enjoy the day!!!

Hope to hear from you!!!

Love, Roma Beth

My Sister, My Hero, Our Death

Good morning!!! I hope I have a few readers still with me. My posts are few and far between, but when they come, I hope they are rich and help you in some aspect of your own life. Or you may come in contact with someone who needs help in an area I address from my life, please feel free to share this blog. Today I will take a break from talking about trauma, to talking about what this date commemorates for me.

Today sixteen years ago my life began to unravel in a new way. My sister, encourager, second Mom, best friend, and biggest fan died. She was my hero! This day was the death of a certain kind of innocence. It was the day that life suddenly halted for me and my family. Yes I continued to go through the motions rising to meet the expectations around us, but feelings were far from me. We had some great friends back in those days who stepped in to help us with whatever we needed, and to them I will be eternally grateful. I would name them, but they may want to stay anonymous. I now know that I should have taken more time to heal.

I had not been in contact with my parents very often in those days, our family had been torn apart with conflict. But not long after I received the call informing me of her death, my doorbell rang. I opened the door and was shocked to see my Daddy standing there as grief stricken as I had ever seen him. He was a mess with sorrow. He fell into my arms and said "Oh Beth, I am so sorry". I think he knew how big of a loss this would be for me and my kids. I won't go into it now, but Becky basically mentored me in ministry, life, love, just about everything, and she was one of the last, if not the last link I had at times to sanity. When you've been reared in a house of cards, rebuilding with reality is very difficult. But this was a reality no one could change. Becky was the hitching post to which I hitched my ever changing emotions and she always led me to Jesus.

But back to my Dad, he then asked me to help him perform the unpleasant task of telling my Mom. My Mother had already lost so much and not by her own making. As I look back I realize that her choices had been laid out for her. So we set out in his car down highway 212, tears streaming down our faces. We both realized we were at the exact same place, but we found no words to form for the occasion. All I could think was, "is this real?".

My Mom awaited us and we sat her in a chair, I got at her feet, and as we told her I saw life drain from her face. It was the look of a Mother whose emotions are slowly sinking into the abyss of grief. We talked, we prayed and cried, we asked "why?". We asked "why Becky? Why now?". She had so much to do. Or so we thought.

Then suddenly, as always, reality returned. Daddy let go of her hand and left us to go perform another funeral. Good for his ministry, hurtful to his family. He really thought he was demonstrating Christ, maybe he was. But I can't help but feel that Christ stayed in that room with us. This is just my experience, it is what it is. God is still good. All for now.

From Roma with love

My Canary is Still Singing!

Good morning, and a beautiful one it is! Here I am again, and I must say that I got much feedback from my last entry. When you talk to me, it let's me know if what I am writing is of any help to you. And I really do write this in an attempt to help someone, anyone who may be in the middle of a traumatic situation. Thanks to those of you who gave your encouragement, you'll never know how much that means to us. If I needed to write for therapy, it wouldn't be for the world to see!!! The world's seen enough of my stuff!!! And to answer many of your questions, I hope I have made it clear that the abuser was not someone in my immediate family. Since my Dad was a great leader and did so much good, I need to clarify this. And there are many other great men of God who are related to us who have been there to help us through this. So I hope whatever you are going through can be eased by knowing others have been there. And once again, I love you all.

I said I would write a continuation of my last entry, and I will. I hope it will continue to loose your inner canary, so you can sing freely!! It may not be what most of you expected, but it will be what is the most helpful. If you need to know what I refer to in the rest of this entry, just go back and read the previous one, I won't try to recap.

I left off where my family was in the middle of helping my then, 24 year old daughter overcome the memory and revelation of a horrible traumatic childhood abuse. Because we were a close knit family, this affected us all very deeply, and my two Grandchildren, who were just little babies, were also being negatively impacted. The first thing my family wanted to do was find out who had done this, but to this I say, that doesn't really matter. You may think I'm crazy, but when someone you love is in the middle of a traumatic situation, and if it is an act perpetrated against them, the focus needs to be helping your loved one. You cannot help someone else in your own anger and revenge mode. I am in no way saying that you shouldn't eventually find this out just for the protection of others and to continue to protect your family. But, for purposes of this article, I want to focus on the steps we took in order to get on a road to recovery.

We are all in some form of recovery whether you like it or not. But I wanted to see our recovery lead somewhere. If your recovery is not leading to wellness, then you are not recovering, you are just continuing to play the victim. Jesus said in John 10:10, "The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they (you) may have life and that they (you) may have it more abundantly." Since my family follows the teachings of Christ, we understood this scripture to say that to stay in a victim's role defeats our purpose for living. So, even though it was difficult to carry on, life had to go on. We knew that Sunday was coming and our family was responsible for the service. I remember how proud I was that my son was able to carry on leading worship and ministering that Sunday. But we still had to deal with our own pain and the pain my daughter was experiencing. And kudos to her husband for being so good in this. In the long run, however, no one could be healed for her, she had to receive her own healing. And as her Mother I had to receive mine. It was hard not to take this personally, I did, but I also had to stay objective so that my pain didn't give more ground for growth to the pain of my other family members.

Here are some of the steps we took as a family, and as a disclaimer, may I say that even though we try to follow these steps, there has still been fall out. We lost our church, which is still a pain in my heart. But there were other circumstances that could have contributed to this as well. And I don't think a true church can be lost. We just had to close the doors of our fellowship but those who are the "church", who took seriously the teachings of the church we led, they have moved on to bring their own life to other fellowships, this makes me glad.

But, first we prayed for the right thinking. Like I said, if your thoughts and emotions are negative towards others, you cannot be a help. And we decided to keep it as quiet as we could and only share this with very trusted people. Your intention for sharing your problems maybe pure, but others can make you miserable by their interpretation of it. Even though we tried to keep it quiet, eventually people started guessing at what had happened in our family. The guessing can hurt more than the truth. Sometimes people love to hear that those in leadership have problems because they are looking for a reason to cast doubt upon them. Sometimes, others who mean well, may share your problem with someone who doesn't understand, then there will be many other victims. Yes, of course, the knee jerk reaction is to tell everyone!! But when you let it cool down for a while, you realize, first you don't have the right to share other people's pain with anyone. It is up to them who they share it with. And if you are the one in pain, the first one you need to share with, other than your closest family, is a professional. Please talk, but talk to the right people. Believe me, this one thing will spare you so much trouble! And I'll say this, don't expect the people you do share this with to be as appalled as you are, if it is a really bad situation, sometimes they won't even believe you, therefore they can't be a support for you anyway. Telling them will become a liability. This is only the first step, don't give up on me, there's still good things to come!

Well, that's all for today. I'll continue this later, It's too pretty out today to be sitting here reading my blog, or anyone's blog!! Go out and enjoy the day and take time to hug someone you love, life can throw curves at you. Thank goodness we have a Higher Power who is alive and well and who cares!

P.S. My canary is still singing!

Until then, my love,

Roma Beth