Warning this is my emotional rant! September 29, 2008

I am on an emotional roller coaster again.  I don’t know which one is the most perdominant.  Could be anger, immense sadness, hurt, relief, betrayal, desertion, embarrassment, I don’t know what I feel other then just confused. 

I had the whole Hobbs family at church this Sunday and I absolutely despised that they all got in the car and went home to Delaware and South Carolina.  Having them around at least made me feel a bit more secure and I had no doubts that they loved me and had my back.  I can’t say that for most of the other people at church.  I know that there are a few but when you walk through the door and see that for yet another week so and so is missing again.  What the heck?!  It’s like being kicked while you are down and then left to bleed to death. 

I am so ready for the ride to stop, cause I want off!  I can’t even begin to fully communicate my feelings other then to say that they are all over the place.

I got an anonymous post card in the mail with this one statement on the back. “be still and know that I am God”.  Well, duh!  I do know and I have been still but I found no peace in the sentiment.  Is the card from one of the many recently departed people who want to find a way to encourage me or was it from someone who I don’t know well, who heard of what I was going through and thought that it might be a word that I needed to hear.  I don’t know but it left me wondering.  Maybe my anger is showing itself.  Maybe it is just the deep hurt that I feel with people that I have poured so much of my life into, who choose to forget the investment and then only focus on the offense or irritation. 

Could it be that the reason people are leaving is because they feel like they are on a sinking boat and heaven forbid they go down with the ship or even be associated with what they view as a failure.  Well let me help you, this ship is just dumping its waste and God is the one pulling the lever that gets the “crap” out! 

I think that is where I experience the relief, cause I know in the end this ride will end in victory, peace, growth, joy, and a deepened relationship with the lever puller!

Pull on God, pull on!  Just hurry it up please!

You can’t, it’s “social suicide”! September 23, 2008

Did you know that it is “social suicide” for your mother to go to a high school football game with you?  Me either.  I mean I realize that there comes a time in you life when hanging out with your parents at a school function isn’t the coolest, but “social suicide”?!  This is what my daughter told me Friday night when I told her that Nathan and I were going to go to the game.  

Let me give you a bit of history, Friday was Jordan’s birthday and she wanted to go to the game with her friends.  John was out of town and Jonathan had gone to spend the night with a friend so it was gonna be me and Nate.  I thought that taking him to the football game would be fun for he and I.  But…oh no, my newly 15 year old “schooled” me on the fine art of what it is to be a high school student who is cool and what it means when mom comes to a game (layman’s terms, NOT COOL ie. social suicide).  I was informed that she talks to boys and doesn’t really watch the game.  Well duh!  I am not stupid, I know that you go to the game to hang out and giggle over whether the boy you think is cute is going to look your way. 

Now I remember the days of high school football games, and all of the things that she said, I did and I didn’t want my mom making me sit in the bleachers with her when I wanted to be wandering around hoping to catch some boys eye.  In my defense, I wasn’t going to make her sit with me, I told her that I would even come in the gate way after her, not speak to her or even wave.  No way she wasn’t having it and she was ugly in the process of telling me no. 

Now normally I wouldn’t have let her have her way and with as ugly as she was, I would have not taken her at all, but it was her birthday and when I asked Nathan if he wanted to go he told me he didn’t want to.  So I relented and said nothing more about it.  But then there was Saturday.

I got up early and went to work in the yard and let Jordan and her BFF Ashley sleep in.  Jordan emerged around 11 a.m. and asked me what movie she and Ashley and a few other friends could go see.  I told her and then asked how the ride situation was going to work out.  I was “informed” that I had to take her and then could I take all of the other girls back to their house.  Now I didn’t sign on for this, but being the nice, cool mom that I am I said ok.  Well, I told Jordan that I was going to go to the movies too since I had to take everyone home.  Well, she “went off” on me and said, couldn’t she just do something alone.  (I guess going to the football game alone didn’t count)  I told her that if I wanted to go to the movies that I could and would, and that if I chose the same movie that didn’t matter because I would go if I wanted to.  She went nuts, crying mumbling something like it wasn’t fair and that I didn’t care what people thought, not cool, I don’t know what all she had to say but she wasn’t happy.

Now ordinarily I would have not let her go, but I had already committed myself to taking everyone and couldn’t back out only 40 minutes before we were to go, cause other kids were already on the way to the theater.  I took the boys to see Igor and left her “alone”.  We had to wait 40 minutes for the girls when we got out of our movie and the boys were hungry and impatient.  I had to hurry them along because Ashley needed to be dropped off at a beauty pageant, to watch another friend perform, which meant that the boys didn’t get to eat as soon as they wanted, so I got an earful from them.  I then get asked can Jordan spend the night with one of the other girls.  Well, lets just say that there was no way she was gonna get to do anything after I had been abused verbally and might I add emotionally.  Yet here I am with a van full of girls wanting me to say yes.  I had one of the other girls whose mom had said she could if Jordan could, so the manipulation was in full effect.  Well, I am wrestling with what to do and was feeling like my cat Charlie, who the boys love to corner and then grab and hold against his will.  I was not a happy camper.  I told Jesus that I needed a solution cause I couldn’t tell her no with all the girls in the car, cause it would have become an argument and I didn’t want to embarrass her in front of her friends by explaining that she had been nasty to me and there would be no reward.  He told me to pull over and talk to her in private.  So that is what I did, pulled into a Food Lion parking lot and had her get out of the car.  The whole time she is crawling over all the girls in the van she’s saying, “what?  whats going on?”  I calmly explained that she wasn’t going to spend the night with anyone and why and why I had to stop the car to explain.  I think that she got it and understood.  She hurt my feelings, rejected me, wouldn’t hear anything but what she wanted, and was just plain ugly. 

Now so that you don’t misunderstand, I love my daughter and she loves me.  Most of the time I don’t see this side of Jordan.  I don’t know what jacked her up but she had her moment and now that is over.  I am ok with her and she is ok with me.  But just for the record, I am proud to say that I didn’t cause my daughter to commit “social suicide” but there is still hope for another opporuntity.  (wink wink)

What a week. September 18, 2008

What a week this has been so far. My baby girl is going to turn 15 tomorrow and on Wednesday she started taking driver’s ed.  Yes you heard me right, driver’s ed.  This summer my parents took her out and starting letting her drive out in the country and since she got home from her visit with them, John and I have been letting her drive through the neighborhood.  I just find it so hard to believe that in 2 weeks she will be done with drivers ed and will be able to take her permit test and then can legally drive wherever she wants as long as I am with her.  What happened to the time? 

This evening my husband left to go on a men’s retreat with his dad.  He won’t be back until probably Monday morning and I miss him already.  I am so thankful that after almost 20 years of marriage I am still madly in love with my husband.  He is the greatest guy I know and I can’t believe that he chose me to love in return.  Thank you Jesus!  Thank you for the gift of children who are growing up and for giving me a man that I get to love and who loves me.

My Granny Hobbs September 11, 2008

Man what a day I had today.  John’s Granny Hobbs came to the house to bring some groceries and dog treats(she loves our dog, Wishbone and brings treats for him all the time).  See she has been really worried about our family since she learned that John has been without a paycheck for the last couple of months.  (If you don’t know the story it is a long one and I won’t tell it here, but the short one is that he is still pastoring our church but without any financial compensation.) 

Anyway she sat down to chat and asked how the kids felt about packing their lunch.  She told me she was concerned about them being embarrassed because they couldn’t buy any “extras”.  I told her that I thought that they were fine packing their lunch and I hadn’t heard them say that they were having anyone tease them because they were not buying ice cream or anything else.  She proceeded to tell me about how when she was a small child she would take a biscuit to school in a paper bag and that she drank water with her lunch because her family was so poor.  She said there was never any money for extras like chocolate pudding or a piece of fruit.  She told me that my kids packing their lunch tapped into how bad she felt as a child about her lunch experience.  She proceeded to tell me a story about one day that a girl came up to her and offered her half an orange that she said she couldn’t eat;fruit was something that she never got to have, so she ate it and it was the greatest thing that she had had in a long time.  She said that when she finished eating the orange the girl and her friends sat around and laughed at her because they had dug the orange out of the trash can and gave it to her.  She welled up with tears as she related the story to me.  I haven’t gotten over it yet.  I have cried several times this afternoon just thinking about Granny Hobbs, as a small girl, enjoying a rare treat only to find that it was a dirty trick, that at age 89 still sticks with her in such a way that she would cry again.

My children, for the most part, aren’t aware of our financial situation and I hope that it stays that way.  Truthfully the Lord has used others to meet the needs of our family and it is a miracle.  My bills are paid and my kids have a lunch to pack complete with an apple, thanks to Granny Hobbs who brought me a bag of them.  

The thing that will mess you up most in all of this it that my 89 year old Granny Hobbs, who is on a fixed income and doesn’t have a lot to share, has given so much to our little family so that we would not go without.  That is a gift that so many people don’t have, much less even understand.  Someone told me today that if you tried to explain being filled with the Holy Spirit to Granny Hobbs she would not understand it at all.  But you can try to explain the “giving out of your own need” to a financially blessed, filled with the Holy Ghost, tongue talking, Jesus loving believer they wouldn’t understand that at all either.  Something is wrong with that. 

I pray that when I am 89, that I can see with the eyes of Jesus and my Granny Hobbs, cause she is my hero and I long to be like her when I grow up!