Decisions and Disappointments --Update

Well the proverbial shit has hit the fan so to speak. The bad decisions have indeed ended in bad consequences. I wish I could say I didn't see it coming but I'd be lying which only increases the disappointment  and sadness.

Sadness because my momma's heart wants to fix it but my momma's head knows I have to let the chips fall where they may and hope some lessons are learned. I'm only sorry the lessons are being learned the hard way.

Disappointed because I know it didn't have to be like this and so much potential is being wasted.

Sadness because the consequences effect all of us in some way and therefore disappoints us all.

In all of this I know that God has a plan. It definitely is not the plan I wanted or expected but in the end its not our plan that is important but His and I have to trust that He knows whats best and what the outcome will be.

Please pray for piece and for knowledge for my family....


He never promised it would be easy only that he would be there to help us through it all.










Its always hard to watch someone you love struggle to make hard decision that can and sometimes do effect their future. Its even harder to watch someone you love be disappointed because of the consequences of those decisions. Whether we like it or not, whether we plan it or not our actions have consequences both positive and negative. Its the negative ones that we so remember and have the biggest impact not just on that person but everyone that loves and cares about that person.

Lately there has been alot of decisions being made in my family. Some with good consequences some with bad and with the bad comes disappointment.

I have watched my son struggle to transition from being a boy to a man and have to make decisions that will effect his future. Decision that, as a mother, I wonder if hes doing the right thing even knowing that they are his decisions to make and his lessons to learn. I struggle with letting him make those decisions and can only hope he learns from his mistakes when he does make a bad decision.

I have watched my step-son make bad decisions to return to a life I fear in the long run will lead him down a path that hes not strong enough to return from; knowing hes making a bad decision and being helpless to do anything to stop it.

Disappointments for them when their decisions don't have the desired outcome, disappointment for me because I don't want to see them hurting or disappointed.

It makes me wonder if this is how God feels about us? He sees us making decisions that will effect the rest of our lives and is powerless to do anything about it, only hoping that we somehow learn from our mistakes, loving us no matter what those decisions are or the consequences they may have.

 Loving us in spite of ourselves, unconditionally.

Crazy Weather

I know for some of us living in the south we are not strangers to severe storms this time of year. I have lived in this area my entire life and I have never experienced weather like we have been having for the past 12-24 months.

 We have had snow in March, deadly tornadoes in December, and torrential rainfall that has caused flooding all through the south.

I personally have spent the past several days glued to any source of weather information I could find just to keep up with the locations of the storms and try to decide if they were going to effect my family. I am so very thankful that my family is safe, my parents had some damage a couple of nights ago from strong winds causing a trampoline to go flying but they slept right through it and were unaware of the damage until the next morning.

I see the devastation all over the news and my heart breaks for those people. Although I don't know what it feels like to go through a traumatic event like a tornado and having your home destroyed around you, I do know what it feels like to have lost everything you have because of mother nature and I know how hard it is to rebuild. At the time you are just thankful to be OK and to have your family with you and know that you are safe but when the dust settles and things return to a new normal you start to realize the little things that you have lost; pictures of your children growing up that can not be replaced, school art projects, baby blankets that were made by grandparents that have passed away. You play the "I used to have..." game or in our case "before the house flooded..."game.

The people effected by the recent flooding and tornadoes need our help right now to recover but please remember to keep them in your prayers when the clean up is done and the news crews have left because that is when they will need it the most.

Doomsday....The End of The World......Or Not...

Clearly Harold Whatshisface doesn't have a very good track record, hes 0/2.

What surprises and shocks me is that people not only believed him but gave him money to advertise this so called Rapture....Domesday...end of the world....what ever you want to call it.

It makes me wonder if the people who gave him money even believe in God because if they did wouldn't they have read the Bible and know that no one knows when this is going to happen? Did Harold Whatshisface make any money off of this scheme of his? Or did he honestly think that in his engineer's mind that he could come up with a mathematical equation to predict Armageddon?

I saw a news report that aired tonight that was obviously recorded a couple of days ago. The reporter asked Harold Whatshisface if he would come back to do an interview Sunday and he said "I cant come back and talk to you Sunday because I wont be here".

In a way I feel bad for the guy, I really....REALLY...hope someone can get him to do an interview tomorrow.

*Whatshisface because I can't remember his name and I'm too lazy to look it up right now.

SO THANKFUL

So many things came into place over the past few days it could only be God taking care of us.

Every spring/summer since we moved into this house sparrows have nested had raised babies in the eave of our porch, this year there are two nests but for the past few days we have noticed that some of the eggs had fallen out of one of the nests. I figured it was from the horrific weather we have been having. We live in Arkansas so if you have watched the news at all over the past several weeks you know what the weather has been like. Torrential downpours, severe storms, and flooding.

  

the front of the house

water coming off the hill and down the driveway

the driveway

If you have read any of my posts in the past couple of days you know that my children have been in the process on coming home for the summer from college. Monday Guitar man and I spent the day getting him and his stuff home from school. When we got home we did what we usually do when we are loading and unloading their stuff. We put the dogs outside so we could leave the front door open as we brought everything in, making countless trips back and forth from the car to the front door into the house.

Late Tuesday night/Wednesday morning Sax Man and Miss B decided to come home after Miss B got off work instead of waiting till later in the day. Needless to say I didn't know anything about it being told earlier in the day they wouldn't be home until sometime Wednesday so I didn't leave any lights on and locked the door. They don't have a key to the deadbolt so they had to call to wake me up and unlock the door in order to get in all the while standing in the dark at the front door.

The Cable Guy had to work late as usual Wednesday night so we were up late watching TV and just spending time together as a family. As we were getting ready for bed Sax Man decided he was going to set up his TV in his room but some of the cords had yet to be brought in and unpacked so he grabbed his keys, flipped the outside light on and went truckin' it out the door...or so he thought. For what ever reason he was looking down at the ground as he started out the door and RIGHT outside the door was a snake that lunged at him, close enough that it almost got in the house. As he jumped back and made an attempt to shut the door and took off screaming Miss B right on his heels....about this time I see what all of the commotion was as the door didn't get shut all the way I see the tail of the snake under the door and in the house, The Cable Guy yelling for someone to shut the door as hes trying to get his boots back on, I in what I'm sure would have been quite comical to anyone watching that wasn't experiencing it, in great hong kong fooey fashon kicked the door closed and proceeded to follow the kids earlier path screaming across the house and jumping on the couch! All of this happening in what seemed to be taking place in slow motion but really happening in just seconds.

The Sax Man ran to the garage while The Cable Guy was tying his boots and grabbed the shovel to hunt the offender down and take care of it properly...ya know...by chopping it up into unidentifiable pieces, which they did manage to do by the way.

In the aftermath as everyone was starting to calm down we realized that it was probably said offender who had gotten to the bird eggs which means it has been around the house for several days at least.

Only God could have orchestrated this so that no one got hurt. Keeping me and Guitar Man safe as we brought his stuff in and not letting anything in the house, keeping Sax Man and Miss B safe as they were standing in that exact spot less than 24 hours before, whatever prompted us to stay up late, and then send Sax Man outside at that very moment and warn him to look down before walking outside. We might never have known we were all in danger because it was poisonous we realized after the fact.

ONLY GOD! and again I am reminded how awesome he is, and so thankful for every blessing he bestows upon us.

Osama bin Laden and my conflicted emotions

I was hesitant to even say anything about the death of Osama bin Laden but I feel the need to put pen to paper words to blog(?).

I'm having a lot of conflicting emotions about the whole situation and the more information that comes out in the news the more aggravated...frustrated....conflicted I become.

I realize for some this may bring some kind of closure but it wont bring back their loved ones that were wrongfully taken away from them and it wont take away that pain and loss. At the same time bin Laden was an evil man but but he was still a man; a man with a wife and family. Was it necessary for them to kill him in front of his family? I heard a report that his wife was also shot but not killed. Was it necessary to bury him at sea? I understand they, whoever "they" are, don't want to make it possible for a shrine to be built to him but was there no other way?

There has been little on the news about anything other than this topic for days. This in itself has me worried, are we so naive to think that there wont be some type of retaliation?

 And what effect does this have on those that did lose loved ones on 9/11 having to relive those memories and emotions and see the pictures all over again?

Everyone is all up in arms chanting U.S.A.  U.S.A. but a life has been lost and whether he was evil or not...

Will the soldier who took that life forever be seen as a hero or a villain and how will that effect him and his family?


Remember, Beloved, God has no pleasure in the death of the wicked...   Ezekiel 18:23


‎"I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy. Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that."
--Martin Luther King, Jr

So...It Turns Out

...That I might possibly be am a bit judgmental...and I don't like it one little bit. Do you know why? Of course you don't know why because I haven't told you yet but I'll get to that in a second.


   I'm typically what some would call an over achiever when it comes to my school work, OK who am I kidding I have been called an over achiever by several of my classmates. But can you blame me? I pay a lot of money to take these classes and I feel if I'm not going to do my best then why do it ya know,and maybe its because I want to prove to my kids that I'm not dumb as a box of rocks! 




   So I'm typically the one sitting in class with all my homework done,  3 page paper written and typed when it only had to be 1 page (that really did happen, it was due today), notes printed off and ready to work. I'm also the one who looks around the class and wonders what in the heck these kids could passably be doing that was so important that they couldn't take a few minutes before class and stop by a mirror and pick up a brush...and use it. Or bother to change into something other than the clothes that they wore out last night. I sit there in my own little world and these are the things that I think about. Do their mommas know they are dressing this way? Do their daddy's know their little princess is cussin' like a sailor?


   But I digress...I'm taking a social psych class this semester. I knew when I signed up for the class that its an upper level class, to which I am not yet a member of...upper level that is. I talked to my advisers about the class, even to the dean of the department to get approval. I was told it was not problem I wouldn't have any trouble keeping up " you have good grades" they said. Well this is true I do work hard for my grades so I wasn't , and I'm still not, worried that I wouldn't be successful in the class.


   What I wasn't prepared for going into this class was the feeling of being "left out" so to speak.  Now usually it takes me a while to warm up to new people, it always has, so that was no surprise, but it really puts things in perspective when you look around the room for someone to do a group project with and almost everyone has already picked their groups because they are all "upper classmen" and have known each other for several years and have had other classes together. OK so I can deal with that I don't know these people and they don't know me so I cant expect them to know about my over acheiverness (is that a word?) so I start looking around for a group to join and the only ones left are...well...the kids that shoulda looked in the mirror before walkin out of their dorm rooms and the kids that are only taking the class because they needed to fill up an hour a day with an upper level class. Well about this time I'm realizing I'm screwed and it dawned on me that I was judging them based on their appearance without knowing anything about them just like I had been judged 2 minutes before because I'm just a sophomore.


   Don't ya love it when God points somethin out to ya by just slappin ya in the face with it!