Filling That Space

Something happened the other day that made me really slow down and remember God is in charge in a much bigger way. My daughter lost her engagement ring. All moms hate those calls when that usually bubbly voice is overcome with sadness. In all of the phone calls like that, since she has walked out of our front door into the world she is creating, we have been blessed that more than not have just been fender bender or parking ticket or friendship blip calls and nothing more. But listening to the pain in my baby’s voice and not being able to fix it is devastating. I’ve said before, that a mother’s happiness depends on the heart of her unhappiest child and so since I heard the news, I have woken up every morning praying that she will find it. Though it didn’t cost thousands of dollars, I know that Chase saved up for it and that because he picked it out especially with Brooke in mind….

She loved it more than any other ring in the world. When she told him she lost it, of course he was sweet and felt bad for her, but showed his true colors by saying all the right things that reminded me of another story, years earlier…

My sweet little niece Adrienne hadn’t had the best examples of loving relationships while growing up. I remember telling her… “Someday, you can make your own life into all the things you missed out on when you were growing up.” And she did. Going out into the world, she dated a bit, but when she found Vance, it was different. He put her first. I am sure she already was in love by the time the accident happened, but I remember her telling me that when she crashed his brand new car on the freeway and called him crying and all he asked was “Are you okay?!” She said at that moment she knew that he was “the one.”

When my first mother in law (her grandma) died, Brookie and I met them for the funeral. We went out to get coffee before the service and though now, I can’t remember the exact story… it went something like this… Adrienne was so happy with the coffee in all her sadness and Vance smiled and said something about how cute she was. It was a silly little conversation, but Brooke saw something in that exchange that  touched her so much that later she told me that she was going to find “a Vance.”

Later, when she grew up a little more and began dating, no guy ever measured up to the love she remembered witnessing all those years earlier. She almost lost faith that there may only be just one Vance out there, until she met Chase. So many small little stories through-out their six years together have all added up to  Chase earning the space she saved so many years ago while watching her cousin’s sweet relationship. She’d been a flower girl in their wedding and felt their love was magic. So years later, she had her template.

Today, in all of my pain for her in her loss, I know whether the ring is found or not, Chase already said all the right things, just like Vance did.

He loves my baby with the same respect and devotion that Vance loves my sweet niece. And oh yeah as far as happy endings… My sweet niece has created a wonderful little family with God blessing her with the most beautiful children and sweet life. I am sure they’ve had their ups and downs, but it made me realize God answers the bigger prayers.

I pray that Brookie finds her ring, God found her a perfect love. He found her exactly what she asked for. God is definitely a God of answered prayers and he answers in detail!

(Please pray my baby finds her ring!)

Our Heroes

We don’t know why bad things happen,

our hearts can’t begin to touch the pain.

Some things seem just so senseless,

as we are left with nothing but disdain.

And yet we find the heroes

in the darkest times of trouble,

they seem to rise above the rest

amidst the broken rubble.

They make us believe in good again,

they make us want to fight!

Through the blackest part of dark,

they  help us see the light.

Here’s to all those souls

that run into unknown danger,

those ones we now call heroes

who once to us were strangers.

Diane Reed

2013

After 911 I was positive that the blast I heard outside of our little store in 2003, was a bomb. In fact, I had no doubt. At the time, we were in the midst of all the Terrorist scares and it never occurred to me that it was anything else. Though it happened to be an earthquake that rocked our little town and destroyed our building, killing two women as they ran out of the store next to ours. They were found between our car (that my daughter had asked to wait in) and another. I will forever be grateful that my daughter decided to come inside that day and help me open. (But that is another story that you can find on my ABOUT page here on my post.) The thing that I want to touch on today is not the tragedies themselves, man-made or natural disasters, but the heroes that rise from them. When I finally got out of my store after the earthquake and had been reunited with my family, I ran over to my car where strangers were pulling bricks off of it and cried out to them, “Oh thank you so much but there is no one in that car!” That memory still brings grateful tears as I thank God for all the choices that were made that day that saved my daughter.

The thing that I remember most about that day, is how all of the strangers band together. Neighboring merchants became family as did the customers that had been there. Years later, there still is an unspoken bond that seems hard to break. I will never forget all the bonding that went on in our local park that day, as we waited for instructions for what would come next.  But even more, are those heroes that ran into the dust trying to save the trapped and hurt. Funny how character really seems to kick in during those horrific times.

I write this for  all the unsung heroes that may never know the ones they saved the day their hearts just kicked into gear. I am grateful that those men pulling bricks off of my car didn’t save my daughter that day because she was not in it. But God forbid, they may have… and I know that their hearts were out to save anybody in need that day.

I saw “that” same kind of courage in the Boston clips. The ones running towards danger… the ones putting their lives on the line for total strangers!

I think one of the most moving statements that I have read so far has come from comedian Patton Oswalt’s Facebook page. He is typically known for his sardonic, witty posts about current events, but I think he said it better than anyone else here :

 “I remember, when 9/11 went down, my reaction was, ‘Well, I’ve had it with humanity,   “But I was wrong. I don’t know what’s going to be revealed to be behind all of this mayhem. One human insect or a poisonous mass of broken sociopath. But here’s what I DO know. If it’s one person or a HUNDRED people, that number is not even a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a percent of the population on this planet. You watch the videos of the carnage and there are people running TOWARDS the destruction to help out … So when you spot violence, or bigotry, or intolerance or fear or just garden-variety misogyny, hatred or ignorance, just look it in the eye and think, ‘The good out number you, and we always will.”                Patton Oswalt

Bottom line is that GOOD outweighs evil. Always!

In Honor of my 100th Post!

This is my 100th post. The one I have talked about many times before. The one that is supposed to be the milestone that inspires me to finish my book I have had in waiting….  I thought that it would be the perfect post to…. honor somene who inspires me daily…

My Mom…

She was born  March 3rd in  1934.  My grandfather was a machinist and my grandma stayed at home, being a mom. My mom was the apple of her parent’s eye. Blonde and full of life.

When my mom was six years old, “polio” was a dreaded word, feared by all. There was an outbreak of it, right in their own neighborhood in Seattle. My grandma was especially careful trying to keep her little family far from any germs, staying away from public places and washing everything. One day her neighbor asked them to go on a picnic to the lake, explaining that they would stay far away from people. My grandma reluctantly agreed and as they were unpacking their lunch all the kids  went exploring,  and accidentally knocked down an old hornets nest. My mom was stung where ever her little sunsuit did not cover. They rushed her to the lake and placed mud all over her wounds. shortly after, she came down with polio. It could have been a number of things that led to her contracting the terrible disease. The stings, the mud, or the trip on the bus downtown a few days later when her resistance was low. Who knows. It doesn’t really matter now. (Though I will always be puzzled about why they went on a bus ride downtown, right smack in the middle of people~ with all those germs, but… Oh well…)

     My mom on her way to school. (Her crutches are laying in the background)

The fact is that her life was changed forever. Her childhood was taken from her, the life she was meant to have was as well. And yet she learned to walk again where the doctors predicted a life of being paralized. She had horrendous surgeries, a bone taken from her leg, to straighten her back, a body cast for a year, and then later as she learned to walk again, cruel and clueless kids, stealing her crutches as she walked to school. And yet, she has fallen in love and been married twice in her lifetime.

           I’ve always  loved this one of my mom! She looks so happy as if her whole life was ahead of her!

She has been a successful artist and a wonderful mother. From an early age, she would sit me up on the counter and let me help…  pouring in the ingredients and stirring it with a spoon, always remembering to let me smell the vanilla and stir up my own concoction of “something.” I am sure that is WHY I love to bake!… she has been a wonderful grandma and the best memory maker you could ever ask for!

Mom and me 1958

One year my mom, found Winnie the Pooh (Always my favorite) blow up characters as party favors at my 8th birthday party! Every party she threw was more special than the year before. (She always out did herself!

My mom with my son (her first Grandchild)              My beautiful mom and daughter on the boat in New Port Beach, on my wedding day

She is in a lot of pain a lot of the time and I guess I never really understood much of it, until I got to an age when it was a little harder for me to get up in the morning and I began having the usual aches and pains that come with getting older. And I know, I only experience an inkling of a crumb of a speck of what she experiences daily and has for a long, long, time.

When I was younger, I hate to admit that I hated her polio stories. In fact, I’ve hated the number six all of my life because that was the age my mom got polio. I hated that she complained about her aches and pains and that she couldn’t do as much as I wanted her to. To attend my school functions and walk long distances. Funny, how selfish we are as kids. Now it is as if I have different glasses on, (I actually do! Recently having to finally give in to getting a REAL pair due to old age!) I can see more clearly. She is actually a hero for doing so much. She did art shows for years. With my dad’s help. And then ours, when I was able to drive. We all pitched in to help set her up and break down at her shows. My dad was so tickled as she obtained a following of faithful customers. She always made sure that we went to church every Sunday, even though my dad only would go on very special occassions… Easter mainly. Oh yeah and when I got baptized… smile.

Today, my mom has survived a lot. Polio was just the begining. My sister was in a horrific car accident and my mom would drive an hour a day to go see her. Sometimes twice. She did not give up when the doctors told her to not hold out too much hope. She prayed and talked to  her, until she came out of her coma and worked with her until she was able to live a pretty normal life. A few years later, my dad died of a heart attack jogging around the block, she was the one who found him. When you add it all up, she has not had an easy life. And yet she has proven that she is who she is because of surviving it all. And she has survived.

The thing about my mom is she has always had faith. She always believed that God had a plan. She never gave up. After my dad died, she began reaching out to hurting people in way of cards that she wrote in the form of letters, adding different scripture verses that pertained to what each person was individually going through at the time. They say Elizabeth Barrett Browning is in our ancestory somewhere and I don’t doubt it~              and so we write. That’s just what we do. My mom does it, I do it, my daughter does it. It’s just in our blood!

A few years after my dad died, she reached out to an old childhood friend  at my grandmother’s suggestion, with one of those letters right after his wife died.  He ended up coming for a visit.

They have been happily married for almost three decades.

So you see, even though life handed her some big obstacles, she always rose above them and God blessed her for it.  The lesson she has taught me and many others through out her life is that God is a God of MIRACLES and that nothing is too big for HIM. Not the opinion of a doctor or the diagnosis they may give, or the closing of a door. She has taught me that there is always a door to open somewhere, not too far down the road.

I don’t always tell her often enough but I am proud of her and she is one of my biggest heroes and best friends.

I love you mom!

The Difference Makers

A child is supposed to feel safe. And yet if that is the case, why are so many adults in therapy?

Some people had wonderful childhoods and were raised with caring and loving parents who taught them right from wrong, others had good parents and comfortable childhoods and their parents made mistakes but did the best they could. And still, others had horrific childhoods and terrible parents and seem perfectly fine. And yet all of these people have one thing in common. An inner child who is still there.

Recently, I have gone through a process of recognizing my inner child. She is the one who doesn’t trust because those who she trusted hurt her. She is the one who was never allowed to talk about her anger and so she learned how to lash out. She is the one who always wanted a voice, and now speaks too loudly sometimes. She is the one who felt so out of control most of her life, so that now she needs to control EVERTYTHING!. She is the one who was disappointed and so only sees the negative in things so she will never be disappointed again.

Ahhh, that feels so negative. It really isn’t. My inner child remembers the great things too. She loves to learn and organize and create and run and laugh and play. She has a special handful of friends that she trusts with her life and would do anything for. She always looks forward to a good time. She is in there too, all of her. Experiences and memories, Lessons and moments, all moving her along like editing a motion picture.

Stop and close your eyes and find your inner child. Who is he or she, really? If we all got a chance to go back and meet each other’s inner children, and really understand where the guy who cut you off on the freeway or the back stabbing, coworker at work first began, perhaps maybe we would have more compassion for all of them.

The little girl who was always worried that her Daddy wouldn’t get home safely because of his drinking, the little boy who felt brushed aside because his mother was too busy getting ready to go out. The kid who always heard fighting and never knew when the next explosion would take place. The little step son who never could do anything right, the kid who always waited for his dad to show up when each time he never did.

Always lonely, always worried, always brushed aside, feeling unimportant, abandoned,  the one who started out not fitting into his own family, always seeking the perfect place where he could feel as if he belonged. The little girl who had to grow up fast because she wasn’t allowed to be the child. Always fixing, always nurturing.  Always performing, and yet she was just a little girl, but today not quite a grown up.

And yet the parents that did come through, the other family members who stepped up to the plate when they were needed most, the friends and mentors, the teachers, the ones who gave them a voice, the protectors and rescuers, of those who were lucky enough to have them, all MADE A DIFFERENCE.

Today, if we look inside of ourselves, we all can find a piece of that child still lingering inside of each of us. Perhaps if we all reached out to just one child we recognized as hurting, and began mentoring instead of criticizing, hugging instead of scolding, teaching instead of berating, sharing with instead of rushing away, we might just break the cycle and begin to lead the way, to find the children and to become the protector, the mentor and the difference maker, in a way helps lead the child inside of them to a place where we all can grow up and be someone else’s hero. Because…. all of those children eventually grow up to remember the difference makers in their own lives and hopefully, someday will grow up to  become somebody else’s hero.