Overwhelmed.

The last few months have been very overwhelming for me.  With a lot of uncontrollable factors happening in my life, I was left to depend not on myself, but for God to take control of my life.  I have learned a lot of lessons during these past few months.  One of them was patience.  I had to be patient.  Live life based on God's timing and not on mine.  I can't rush life, I can't rush the things that I want, but I have to be dependent on God and know that God is taking care of me.

I also learned about grace.  I learned that the only way to live life when people have wronged you is to be gracious to them.  Vengeance is the Lord's and I had to learn how to give everything to God and not be mad, but to be gracious to those who have wronged me.

I learned about unconditional love.  I learned how I shouldn't take my family for granted because in the most difficult of times, it is my family who is there for me.  To take care of me, to support me, and to be that stronghold that I need when I feel like I can't do anything anymore.  Without my family, I would not have gotten through these hard times.  I need my family, I love my family and I will love them forever because they will love me forever.  My family was given to me by God and we are there to help love and support each other.  I am forever grateful for my family.  Even these words do not describe how much I love my family.  I can't think of any words to describe the emotion that I feel for them.  They are incredible, unbelievable, and amazing.  I LOVE the family that God has given to me and they make me the person that I am today.

I learned that I am stronger than I think I am, but only when I am properly dependent on God.  If I am by myself, depending only on myself, I am weak, but God gives me strength when I rely on him to take care of me.

Today, specifically today, I learned that I am exhausted!  Both my boys are super sick and I am so tired from all of the stress of work and school and all the emotional stress that I have been through lately, and all the stress that it takes to care for two boys who are terribly sick with some sort of crazy pants flu they caught from the daycare.  I am tired.  I stayed at home the past 2 days and I am still so tired and exhausted.  But I do know that I get my strength from the Lord, and my family did stop by to drop off food.  

All the blessings that I used to overlook when I was a child during my "stressful" times as a teen, I have learned to embrace and love as an adult.  That's the first time I've called myself an adult, but I guess turning the ripe old age of 26 with two children, I am an adult *sigh*.  I have learned so many things in the last 25 years.  Josiah just turned 4, Mateo turned 2.  I live in a busy house, with a busy life and I am bound to encounter many issues and dramatic problems.  I think that I have finally learned how to deal with my problems.  Maybe.  Instead of trying to fix everything by myself, it is okay to ask for help.  It is okay to talk to my family and ask for advice.  It is okay to talk to God and ask for grace and love and forgiveness.  Everyone has their issues and their problems.  You're not the only person in the world with big dramatic issues.  I have learned that I need to not only put myself in perspective when life is at its worst, but I've also learned that there are people around to help you go through these problems.

For the last 2 months I have been completely overwhelmed with my own little crisis.  But I think that God and my family and friends have put me in perspective.  Helped me to realize that I am loved and that I am not the only one with crazy dramatic issues and that when life is at its worst, God is there to help me through.  Even when life is not at its worst, God is still there.

From now on, if I feel like my life is being overly dramatic and I'm overwhelmed or exhausted, I'm going to pray for those around me, and in the world who are twice more overwhelmed and exhausted and are also going through a hard time.  Love and be loved.

Waltz vs. jazz hands

I just woke up from a dream. A most enthralling dream if that is the word. In this dream I learned a valuable life lesson that, naturally, I choose to share with my social network world. I had a dream:

I was in a dance room in a line up of students. We were all supposed to be partnered up and in groups we were supposed to be auditioning or showing our teacher some sort of hyper scat jazz hands show offy move. The groups were going pretty fast and when my group came, my partner ran ahead of the line and decided to leave me and do his jazz hands audition at the head of the rest of the group. I didn't know he was my partner. All I knew was that our group was moving real fast and I had to followthem by myself doing my jazz hands show off move. The thing is, I'm not a show offy jazz hands person. I hate dancing and showing off. I passed by the teacher half heartedly.

The teacher then turned off the fast paced jazz music and called the groups back and began criticizing. Before our group was called up, I told the guy "I think you're my partner" and he said oh, and I sat beside him. As the teacher called up our group, again my partner runs to the front and leaves me. Annoyed but eager to hear his criticisms, I listened to the teacher. "You were good but your jazz hands were too show offy and you were over enthusiastic." As the teacher proceeded to judge the couple in front of me, nice, slow waltz music came on. I lost interest in the judging and told the girl in front of me that I was never really good at dancing and didn't know why they made me take this class. Probably to justify to myself the bad criticisms I was about to receive due to my lack of effort and interest in jazz hands.

As the waltz music continued to play I looked around the room and noticed two elderly couples dancing in the background to the waltz. They both were so in love and were so happy to be dancing with each other. They were kissing and being lovingly old and feeble. My heart started to cry and long for what they had.

Then I woke up. I realized immediately what the dream meant. Either you continue chasing that guy who just wants to show off in front of the class and do everything by himself to prove to everyone that he is the best so that he feels like he belongs whilst you are constantly chasing after him and him constantly trying to get away from you because you suck at dancing and are an embarrassment to him. Or you be with someone who loves you until you are old and feeble. Be with someone who will dance with you in the background not ashamed to kiss you and love you and doesn't care what anyone thinks because the woman he loves is in his arms and that's the only thing that he needs to make him happy. Not his friends, not what other people think, but that the woman he loves loves him back.

That's what I want. A love that will last until I'm old and grey. I'm not chasing the attention hog. I want to be  with someone that wants my attention and loves me for who I am.

Life in the Dip

Have you ever been on a roller coaster?  I'm sure you have.  There's this roller coaster at Wonderland called the Behemoth, I think it's the last roller coaster that I've been on.  It has this nearly 90 degree dip that makes you feel like you're plummeting to your death.  It's the longest climb to the top and the longest dip to the bottom.  That's what I feel like my life is like.  It has been a huge uphill climb, and when you're at the top you just fall, everything just falls apart.  I feel like I've worked so hard to get where I am and just when I think that I've accomplished something, I plummet.  Everything goes wrong.  What could go wrong has went wrong.  I feel like no matter how hard I work, it's not good enough.  This is the deepest and longest dive that I have ever taken in my entire life.  The biggest disappointment that I have felt and just when I think that I couldn't feel worse, the coaster is still plummeting.  It is a long dive to the bottom and I'm heading straight for it.  The ride is not over and I wish it was.

I live my life in fear.  Fear of being hurt, fear of being disappointed, fear of failing, but what I have learned is that on the Behemoth, the large and huge dip is at the beginning of the ride, and the rest of the ride has other small dips and ups and downs, but once you over come the big dive, the rest of the ride is a breeze.  I think that life is the same way.  Full of ups and downs, big ups and downs, lots of failures both from yourself and by other people, but life will pick up again.

The biggest mistake is living in that fear.  Not wanting to do anything because you feel scared that you will be disappointed or you will disappoint someone.  Not doing anything because you don't want to fail.  The worst thing you can do is live in fear so much that you just keep your life stagnant.  Stuck at the bottom and not even try to climb that uphill battle.  That's a boring ride.  You need to pick yourself up and move on.  Learn from your mistakes, learn from the past and move on.  That's how it should be.  If Josiah falls I tell him to get up, and Jojo gets up, brushes his hands and keeps walking.  Mateo on the other hand, falls and it's like the end of the world, he waits for me to pick him up and comfort him.  Mateo, just like most of us, have to learn that sometimes when you fall, no one is going to be there to pick you up, if no one is there then you have to learn to pick yourself up, brush off your hands and keep walking.  Sometimes there will be someone there and you should really take their hand to help you up, they'll help you brush up and comfort you and then help you to move on.

Life is a roller coaster ride.  Ride it all the way until the end.  Don't just settle for the stagnant bottom of the barrel ride, you have to work to make it through all the troubles and all the trials, make it out of the dip and pull yourself forward, or have someone to help you pull forward.  Sometimes dips are so low that you'll need help getting out, and people are always there to help you out.  Just make sure it is the right people.  If it's the wrong people, they're probably just going to keep you company at the bottom of the barrel, and who wants that?  It's better to climb and get up than to just sit in the dip.

I'm not a sitter.  I climb.  Right now, I need hiking shoes and a friend to help shove me out of this dip.  And I know I have that support to help me through the hard times.  Make sure that you have the right friends that will help you out of the dip and not the ones who will sit with you in the dip.

Life moves whether you sit in the dip or climb out of it.  Don't let life pass you by because you didn't want to try and climb out of your hole.

When I Cry, You Cry, We Cry Together

When I was younger, one of my cousins said that my talent or gift was the gift of compassion.  I was like "Thanks Ate Al!!!" but I had NOOOOOO idea what compassion was.  Had we had something faster than MS DOS, I probably would have looked it up on the internet........Did MS DOS have internet?

Anyways, years later, I realized what she meant.  I can literally feel other people's pain.  It's like I'm connected to them.  When I used to go to school downtown I would always see homeless people asking for money, and I used to feel so guilty for not giving them any.  But I do remember hearing from somewhere that if I give them money they're just going to buy booze or cigarettes.  I settled for vowing to buy them a sandwich or coffee once every day.  Then I realized I was too shy and ended up just feeling bad every day I went to school because I didn't give the homeless guy something.  Maybe that's why I didn't finish..................

Well, here I am now, going through my own problems and issues, and yet, I still seem to feel huge amounts of love and compassion and grace for those who have hurt me the most.  I don't feel anger or hatred, I just feel love, compassion and grace.  I don't understand why.  My sister told me it was because I know how to love because I know God's love.  She's usually right (not when it comes to driving or directions) but in these aspects she's usually right.

When going through these hard and difficult times, I think that if I didn't have people to talk to, if I didn't have people to confide in, then I wouldn't be so loving and compassionate and gracious as I am now.  But I keep thinking to myself, if I had confided in someone that was giving me bad advice, would my vulnerability realize that it was wrong advice?  What if someone told me in my vulnerability that I the correct thing to do would be to empty out my bank account and give all the money to charity.  It seems like the proper thing to do, donating to charity is a good thing, and if I had to waste all my money, it better be at a charity, right?  But where's the logic in that?  What about my kids? and rent? and groceries?  In my vulnerability during these hard times, would I still be able to discern from logic and stupidity?

I feel that it is important during these vulnerable times to hold on to the truths in your heart.  And if you lose all those truths in the process of pain and anger, hold on to one because this one truth is constant: God.  God loves you, God cares for you, God is there for you and God will take care of you.  Hold on to those truths.  If you hold on to those truths, whatever people tell you, you will be able to know whether it is Godly advice, or not so Godly advice.

In addition to holding on to these truths, confide in people that believe in these truths.  You know that they will help guide you in the right direction.  Confiding in people who don't know God, and who don't know these truths or fully understand them, will lead you in the wrong direction and you will be lost and angry and in pain longer than you should have been.  Confiding in the people who believe in these truths will help you to move on from your problems.  They will help you realize what is going wrong in your life, and they will help lead you to God.  They know compassion, they know pain, they know what you're going through.  They've been through it.  If you think you are all alone in this world and no one understands you, it's because you haven't talked to people that have held on to the proper truths in life.  You haven't spoken to people that know and love God.  How do you deal with your problems?  Talk to a godly friend, don't bottle up your anger and emotions.  You're not going to heal.  Ignoring the problem doesn't fix it.  It pushes it further down until you explode and this will happen over and over and over again until you learn how to confide in a person or people who know the truth of God's love.

When I cry, you cry, we cry together.  It was a song from my teeny days that I loved because it was so true of me to feel other people's pain when they told them to me.  If you're going to cry, cry with someone.  But make sure that someone has the ability to point you in the right direction, the direction that will help pick you up from the reason you were crying and the direction that will help you learn from mistakes.  That direction is God.  Cry with someone who will cry with you and point you towards God.