2013

This last week, I've been reflecting on what 2013 has meant for me. It was a pretty fantastic year, if I say so myself. It's still hard for me to see and accept what I have accomplished these past few years. What I realized, though, is that there was 1 constant through this year that supported my success.

Family. 

There were quite a few precious moments this year, and all those precious moments had to do with my family. I'd like to share those moments with you.

Most of you know that I graduated from CSU Fullerton this year. I walked in my ceremony last May, with my friend, Alyse, by my side, and my family in the audience, cheering me on. My mom and brother Joel were there, along with my kids: Nathaniel, Ethan, Ethan's girlfriend, Jasmin and Jennifer with her husband, Henry and my grandson, Brandon. They took pictures, I got flowers, I danced a little jig onstage as I accepted my degree…it was an indescribable experience. After the ceremony, I proudly took more pictures with my kids, but there was 1 person who made the experience complete: my mom. She had tears in her eyes and beamed a smile from ear to ear with a look on her face that seemed to say "that's my daughter!" After the graduation we had a party at home and my family stepped in to help me put it on. Mom bought the stuff, Joel made ribs, my sister Jen held my hand and prayed over our feast. My kids all helped fix food and clean up. So many of my friends (of whom I am eternally grateful for!) came to help celebrate. What a glorious day.

Fast forward a few months to November. Brandon's 5th birthday and I get to take my family to Disneyland for the day. Brandon is a great bundle of energy and I get a kick out of watching Jennifer chase him around because it reminds me of when she was little and I chased her around. Yep, I was entertained. I also enjoyed the day because along with Nathaniel and Ethan, Jasmin brought her little girl with her. Such fun to have a toddler girl in tow! The night came to an end with watching the fireworks show from Main St. I stood back and watched my family, all grown up and with little ones, as they ooooh'd and aaaah'd at the fireworks and then they smiled and squealed as it snowed on Main st. I had tears in my eyes and pride in my heart as I watched them.

This. This. This is my family. 

I can't begin to describe the joy I felt as I watched them. And thanked God for them, who they are and how they turned out.

My family. 

Ok, I'll share 1 more memory, but it's not a pretty one. It happened just last week, when I got sick and decided to go the the emergency room after work. I came home to change and told Nathaniel what was going on and he asked me if I wanted him to go with me. I told him no, but he insisted and went with me at 1am to the ER. Good thing he did because 5 minutes after we arrived, I became very ill and nauseous. Nathaniel immediately jumped in, found a trash can and held it under my chin as I vomited. He just stood there and put his hand on my back and waited. He didn't buckle, move or anything! I was very shaken up (considering I haven't barfed since I gave birth to him) and he steadied me and tried to calm me. Afterwards, he stayed with me in the examining room until I was released at 6am. (I'm fine, by the way. Just dealing with gallstones, but I'm eating healthier and losing weight along the way!)

Now, you may think that this should be as expected-he should be good at taking care of his mom-he's 25 and this is no big deal. This is a big deal to me because I realized that he is grown up! In fact, all my kids are grown up! No matter  where I go, or what I do, they will be okay. I also realized that I can depend on my kids if I need them-such a wild concept! Ok, it's not that wild, but you know what? I must have done something right in raising these kids!

This. This. This is my family. 

Thank God for 2013 and for every year.

The Ant

Well, the last few weeks of summer have been hot! Fortunately, we have big trees that shade our home,
and large windows on all sides that allow the beautiful breezes waft through the house and help with keeping the inside cool...at least a little bit.

Unfortunately, there is a constant visitor to our home that, no matter how unwelcome they are, continue to just invite themselves in.

ANTS!

I'm sure most of you can relate to the problem of ants invading your home.

Just recently I came across two ants as I was waiting for my toast. I just smashed them with my finger and immediately thought of Loki and Nick Fury from the movie The Avengers. The whole "The ant has no quarrel with a boot" conflict. Watch it, it's awesome. So, as I thought of this scene, I imagined my finger as the "boot." This observation made me feel so...

unworthy

In the whole universe, I am an ant. I can be squashed just as easily as an ant.

As much as we, humans, think we are all powerful and can squash whatever we want, and want to believe that we are not vulnerable...we are. And why would I, someone so small and vulnerable be worthy of love, success and accomplishment?

Wow-I've got way too much thinking time on my hands...

I'll tell you why I (we) are worthy. Because God created us and He is a loving, caring God.

The bible is full of proof of our worth, which is probably why we get full of ourselves so easily, and have an easy time believing we can squash everything, but there was one verse that just stuck out for me:

Luke 12:7  "Why, even the hairs on your head are all numbered. Fear not; you are of more value than many sparrows."

Does this verse mean what I think it means? Let's ask J. Vernon McGee (or read his "Thru the Bible" commentary):

"The Lord Jesus gives them (his disciples) these words of comfort and assurance of God's care for them."

There's a little bit more to this commentary-so much that it would seem like I'm preaching a sermon if I go on, so I won't, but the point is: God Cares!

He's numbered every hair on my head! On my puny, insignificant, ant-like head! And guess what-some of you have more hair than I do and God knows every hair on your head too!

Does that make me worthy? Yeah, I think it does. I am a little speck of dust in this universe and God cares about me!

And for this I am humbly grateful to my God, who is infinitely, omnipresently larger than me!

England can wait

Well, just a short post today. I recently made a tough decision and thought this would be an easy way to share it.

I've decided to postpone my trip to the Shakespeare Institute until, hopefully, next year.

I know, I know, most of you are wondering how in the world could I pass up such a great opportunity.

Because, when it comes down to it, I'm not ready.

I'm exhausted, emotionally beat and I just am in no way motivated to go. Not yet. I'm still fighting this urge to run away and I don't want my motivation to go to England to be running away from life. If running away is my motivation, then I won't have the right thought-process for research and delving into the history of Shakespeare.

My desire to go to the Shakespeare Institute is still strong. In fact, it's heart-breaking to have to wait another year, but I just can't leave home right now.

So this year my life is kind of up in the air. My kids are all grown up, and I have more freedom this year than I've ever had. So what's next...

I'm not quite sure...

Freedom

My birthday is on July 4th. Yep, I'm a firecracker girl. I've been contemplating the meaning of Independence day. The freedom we love, the freedom we value. The freedom we may not completely understand.

Our nation has been wrought with pursuing freedom and happiness. We value our rights: our right to the freedom of speech, the freedom to express ourselves, pursue happiness, marry whomever we want...but there is one aspect of freedom that I think we forget about.

The freedom to listen, to wait and be silent.

I am still learning this lesson. I am so good at being self-righteous and proudly expressing my opinion that I've made a fool of myself, or worse, hurt beloved friends and family members. However, I am slowly learning to listen, wait, and decide if I should just be silent.

Moral and political issues plague our society and everyone has an opinion. I am not saying that we aren't entitled to our opinion-on the contrary, we can think whatever we want to think-that's how the brain works-we may be influenced, but we must eventually think for ourselves and decide what we believe.

But should we always express that belief or opinion?

I love to talk about books. I also love to share my memories of bed-time stories with my children while they were growing up. A few years ago I shared this love with a friend of mine and how proud I was that I read 6 of the Harry Potter books out loud,  cover-to-cover. My friend immediately went into her very negative opinion of Harry Potter and how she absolutely forbade these books in her home. I was so shocked by her vehemency that I just didn't say anymore. And it wasn't because she offended me with her opinion, she is entitled to that opinion, but her rant expanded enough to make me feel like I was wrong for reading those books to my children. My first impulse was to angrily fight back, to support my decision to read the books and to prove her wrong! But I took a deep breath and thought for a second and walked away. Fortunately she started talking to someone else so it was easy to walk away. This experience also gave me the opportunity to learn more about my friend, who she was and her personality. But I knew it wasn't worth it to speak up. I decided to stay silent.

Whether or not to read Harry Potter is obviously not the most serious issue we face in modern society, but I have learned that in the most serious issues, if sharing my opinion and forcing my righteousness on someone is going to make them feel foolish, or wrong, or even make them feel like they need to angrily defend themselves and be just as self-righteous as me, maybe I need to listen more, carefully wait and maybe even be silent. Every time I am faced with someone else attempting to prove my opinion is wrong, I am learning to take a breath and pray for wisdom in defending my opinion. If I go into an attack, then neither one of us are listening or accomplishing anything. If I feed into the mass hysteria of sharing my opinion then I become part of the shouting, protesting and I forget what Truth really stands for.

There is a time to stand up for the truth. There is a time to speak out against the wrong. We have the freedom to do so. But we also have the freedom to respect, love, be silent and wait for the right time and the right way to speak out.

Yeah, I know, I'm probably in dreamland here, saying we should just all get along, but hey, this is my blog and I have the freedom to write what I want.

And you have the freedom to choose to read it, or not.

I appreciate that aspect of freedom too. The freedom of expression. How many times have we seen protests against books, movies, art exhibits, etc... Of course, all that protest does is just make us read it, see it, talk more about it, make it famous. What if we just didn't? Don't like the book- don't read it. Think that artist is vulgar? Protesting the vulgarity just feeds into the sensationalism. Just don't go the the art exhibit! We have the freedom to just don't do it. Don't go.

Ok, there is a fine line, like I wrote, sometimes a stand for Truth must be made, but God gave us the brains to listen, wait and decide.

Significance

For the rest of my life, today will be a very significant day. My dad died 2 years ago today. At this very moment, 2 years ago, I was sitting on my front porch making phone calls to many loved ones and giving them the news. As I listened to the person on the other side of the phone choke tears, I said the same thing over and over again: "I know, it's ok, I understand, thank you." Afterwards, I sat in the dining room with my family, all of us with glazed looks in our eyes from no sleep for more than 24 hours.

**Now, here's a warning: I need to write this for myself, in fact, I'm finishing it 2 days late because I debated whether this is a good idea to write-some of you might find my thoughts upsetting. For that, I apologize.

If you've read my blog, you'll know the significance of my dad's passing and how the effect the last 2 years have had. As I reflect, the first year seemed easier. That could be due to being in school and well, whatever the steps of grief are. This year was much more difficult. I've spent more time thinking about specific events leading up to the day my dad went home.

One of those significant events is how he took the miraculous healing of a very dear friend of ours from church. She was deathly ill and dad believed that her friends and family (all of us) prayed her back here. We "changed" God's mind in taking her home and we kept her here. I remember debating with dad on how God answers prayer.

It's been preached before: Even if we don't "feel" it, or think He does, God always answers prayers with 1 of 3 answers: 1) Yes 2) No or 3) Wait. Obviously, with our dear friend, when everyone prayed for her while she was forced to allow a respirator breath for her, Dad believed that God answered with "Yes, she can stay here." Or it just wasn't her time. Although Dad saw the blessing in Barb's miraculous healing, he also understood what Barb was missing: the Glory of going home.

The significance is that dad understood what it meant to die. He understood what awaited him, and although he agonized what he would leave behind, he couldn't wait to go home. I saw this agony as he lay in the hospital bed while I told him my graduation plan and he had tears in his eyes when he said, "not until next year?" When he suddenly took a deathly turn, we prayed to God to heal him and let him stay. God answered our prayer with "No, it's time for him to go home." We've battled with why dad was taken so soon, so suddenly and the answer is so simple: because it was time.

This significance hit me even harder when I came across the last Mother's day card he gave me, just a few weeks before his death. This is what he wrote in the card:

One thing about my relationship with my dad: we butt heads. A lot. And he wasn't that great in the praising category. But in the past few years, his heart softened and although I was used to Mr. Critical, for him to write something like this, something that would have been very difficult for him to verbalize is extremely significant. There is so much love in this card. And so much finality. Dad also couldn't spell to save his life. This card is perfect. Perfect in every aspect. The writing, the grammar. The poetic thought. He put so much thought and love and, well, significance into this card that no matter how disappointed I am in myself, I can look at this and know what dad truly thought of me.

And I think Dad did that on purpose. Well, I like to think that. At least I hope so.

Either way, always look for the significance in the events in your life, and what God does in your life, and how God answers prayers.

Be a tree

This is a subject I've wanted to tackle for a long time and I'm not sure why I haven't written about it until now, but something happened last week that made me decide that now was the time.

We have a huge ash tree in our side yard. Sometimes I walk under it and marvel at how large it is. In fact, I've been told you can see the top of the tree if you view our neighborhood in Google earth (or whatever that is). What amazes me about this tree is how it just keeps growing. The roots have traveled under the drive way, cracked the driveway in several places, and intertwined with the roots of the pepper trees in our front yard. The branches of the ash tree span so far that it almost completely shades our side yard and always keeps the front porch nice and cool. With the help of our pepper trees in front, our front yard and curbs are always shaded.

The ash tree is quite daring. It doesn't let anything get in its way, as if it just decides it's gonna' go for it and grow where it wants. It takes a risk and tries one direction. If it doesn't work, it makes it work, or moves its branches and roots in a way that does work, but it just keeps going.

I think that's how decision making should be. Me, I've rarely had difficulty making decisions. I've been the decision maker in every aspect of my life for, well, almost my whole life. I think I get that from my dad. Someone must make a decision, so we're the ones who makes it. My dad use to say to me: "It doesn't matter what you decide to do, you just gotta' do something." and "you can choose to do whatever you want, but you have to pay the consequences too." For the first part of my adult life, I made mostly safe choices. No risks allowed.

Until I was faced with the most difficult decision I had ever made in my entire life. I decided to end my marriage. For most of my marriage I had fought to keep my little family together. Until I realized I couldn't fight anymore. Even when I decided to pack up the boys and leave-that was not a difficult decision. The most difficult decision was to not go back. I was not meant to fight the battle of abuse, alcohol and drugs and giving up didn't break my heart-it was the decision to give up. No one could make this decision for me. I prayed like crazy, sought counsel from my pastor and a few friends. Even my brother-in-law had wise words for me, but in the end, I decided I was finished.

And a new chapter of my life began. Going forth, telling my children's father my decision, filing the divorce, raising my boys, working, trying so hard to make the right choices, but also learning that taking a risk, branching out is so important for my growth and life.

Ok, now a funny story about my friend, Amy. I love Amy. I don't get to hang out with her as much as I like, but when we do hang out, something memorable is bound to happen. One of my favorite memories is spending an evening at Disneyland together and we stopped for dinner. She decided to "go out of her comfort zone" and try something new-chinese food at Disneyland! We sat down and she took one bite and grimaced. Oh I wish you could have seen her face! She couldn't take another bite! She promptly got up and went back to her favorite food (I don't even remember what that was-Mexican?) She even let me take home her chinese to my boys (who devoured it in less than 1 second!) She was not happy with her choice, but I think the point was that she tried something new and she wouldn't have known unless she decided to take a risk and try. Was it worth the risk? I think so-yes!

Now my rant: How many times have I heard "I can't decide, you decide for me." I just want to shake those people and yell "Nnnnnooooo! You can decide-just do it!" Whenever I let someone else decide our plans, it's not because I can't decide, it's because I always decide everything and I'd like to allow someone else to stretch out onto the decision branch, as it were. Take a risk! Decide! If it works, great! If not, then you know what to do next time.

So, what happened last week, you ask? Well, a huge branch from our ash tree broke off. The branch was as big as a small tree and when it fell it covered our driveway and most of the street in front of our house. Don't worry, nothing was broken-no cars, etc... and no one was hurt, well, except the tree. It is time for this tree to be trimmed. It is very top heavy and just keeps growing.

Sometimes, the decisions we make hurt. Just like a broken tree branch, or a marriage, or bad chinese food. But these decisions, these risks are necessary. How will we learn, how will we grow and how will we know if we don't decide to take the risk?

When God is not enough...

Ha! Got your attention, didn't I?

How could I write such a thing? That God isn't enough? That's blasphemy, or-well, whatever you want to call it, but how could I, someone with such a strong Christian faith, write that there are times that God isn't enough?

Because I'm still grieving. It's been almost 2 years since my dad died and I'm in more pain now than I was last year. I thought it would be easier by now. It's worse. There are times when I miss him so much that I am in physical pain. My heart feels like it has been literally broken in two. There are moments that I want to scream out, "BUT he was MY DAD!"

Now that I've got you freaking out, let me clarify something. I don't feel like this all the time. Most of the time I'm ok. I love my new job and I'm getting ready to walk in my graduation ceremony next month. So many wonderful things have been happening in my life in the last 6 months. Things that I thank God for every day!

But I can't share anything with my dad. I can't talk to him. He will not be at my graduation, does not know about my job or anything. Yes, I've written before that I do still have my family and friends, and Jesus all there for me, by my side. But I'm human. I still can't talk to my dad.

The funny thing is that it was my friend Olga who noticed what I'm going through. She's the one who said, "Paula, your dad was always the one you talked to. And you can't talk to him. So of course you're lost because you need to talk to him and you can't."

I started feeling this deep loss about two months before I finished school. I had to write a short story, so I wrote it about the day my dad died and how I dealt with the day. I described my dad as my anchor and being without him.

And since then, now that I'm not in school and have way too much free time on my hands, I have felt lost and adrift at sea. And in that moment, when I'm aching inside, in physical pain because my dad isn't there, even God is not enough to comfort me in the moment. In that moment I have to work through that pain, because when you're having a moment of deep grief, I don't think anything helps.

It's what I do after that moment that matters.

Last Sunday at church we sang a beautiful worship song: "How great is our God!" Wow! God is great AND when I am going through that moment of deep grief, He is by my side, waiting for me to reach out to Him and remind me that He is there for me when I am ready.

If you have lost someone very close to you, you know what that moment is and I think it's ok to admit that in those moments, there is absolutely nothing that can help. I think it needs to be felt and gone through and I hope and pray that it gets easier as time goes by. Oh, but how GREAT IS OUR GOD that He is there and understands what we are going through.

You know those moments when you're talking with someone and they get emotional and you can't do anything about it. You know, you just kinda' sit there because nothing you say or do will make that moment better. You just have to wait until they reach out to you and tell you they're ready for you to hug them. I think God is just sitting there waiting for me to remember that He's there for me when I'm ready to get through the moment. And God knows what to do.

Yes, God is enough. Friends and family are enough. And I come back to God, and my loved ones every time. Dad is in heaven, having a great time singing Jesus' praises and I have a life to live. I have a grad school (Shakespeare Institute) application to finish. I have a grandson that is adorable and fun. I have a job that I have a great time at whenever I'm there. I have kids that are moving on with their lives, but still need their mom (thank God). With God's help, I can be the anchor.

God is great. And when God is not enough...

He is.