The Tipping Point!

I just had an epiphany!  For years I wondered what that moment in time was that turned me away from being a "good girl" into a wild thing that didn't care who, what, when or where. That moment that changed my life happened a day or two after my high school graduation.

You realize, of course, that I am 62 years old and quite frankly I would have thought I would have figured this out many years ago. BUT, I didn't. BUT, now I have. 
 
That moment I have remembered so vividly for 44 years never clarified itself until this moment. All through school nothing I ever did was good enough.  I got A's and B's but even when I got an A, it should have been an A+.  All through high school I took courses that groomed me for that glorious day when I would FINALLY walk out of that misery and into college and a new life.  I had struggled to keep my nose and everything else clean and would finally go to college and begin a new life.

A day or 2 after graduation, my mother and my step-father came out to the front yard where I was working on something and they wanted to talk to me.

And here is what he said, "Your mother and I don't have the money to send you to college..." and he paused.  In that pause, however brief it may have been, I thought about the College that had accepted my application and would get me a job to help me pay for tuition.  I wasn't stupid.  I knew they had no means to pay my college tuition.

Before I could speak, he continued, "We thought you'd get pregnant and drop out. We just never thought you'd graduate."

I have told that much of the story before, but somehow had never realized what they had done to me, or rather what I allowed that moment in time to do to me.  I was speechless.  My whole life was suddenly a lie.  The dirt under my fingernails was suddenly worth more than this piece of flesh called, Pam.

It was that moment that told me that every time my mother told me I could do better, she really didn't mean it.  She had never believed it.   It was just something she said because mothers were supposed to say that.  I suddenly became even more worthless than moments before.  The dreams I had of going to college ruptured and bled out on the sidewalk like a huge brain aneurism.

My last hope was to join the Navy and settle for what I could get.  Three months later I went for my physical and had to spend the night in a hotel.  I was raped in the hotel.  My first intimate encounter and it just had to be that way.  I was too ashamed to tell anyone and I thought I deserved it.  
 
During the physical the next morning, the doctor saw it and called the female recruiter to show her.  I got dressed and she told me that the Navy was not the right place for me and I was rejected.  The why was never mentioned.  No one wanted to ask me what had happened.  I put my High School diploma and my Beta Club certificate in my suitcase and left.
 
That was the tipping point.  I was worthless to everyone and I might as well get used to it.  Anyone could do anything to me and it was okay.  I could be used, abused and thrown away and no one cared, not even me.

It took me almost 25 years, 2 psychiatrists, 3 counselors, a psychologist, years of therapy and lots of crappy living to realize one solid thing.  I never needed my mother nor my step-father nor anyone else to lift me up.

What I needed was THE LORD JESUS CHRIST!  Then my life fell into place.   It made sense.   I was worthwhile to GOD ALMIGHTY and what the rest of the world and everyone in it thought didn't matter a whit!  As long as I please GOD, the rest of the world can jolly well dance.

Shalom!  Pray for the Peace of Jerusalem! 
 
:-)

The tipping point?

Life is peculiar.

No doubt about it.  Life is definitely peculiar.  Just when I thought I had everything figured out, it changes.  Current events not even in the picture, I am referring to the desires of childhood.

I wanted 1 husband, children (lots of them), a white house with a black roof and a white picket fence around it and several pets in the yard.  I suppose it was the dream of an apartment dwelling child sharing her room with her sibling and a half-sibling at that.  At that time, the age of 6, he was my brother and I accepted it at face value.  To this day, he is still my brother.

Then, life happened.  My parents all divorced again and remarried.  New sisters were born and my father gathered 6 new step-brothers and sisters into my life.  I lived in more apartments than houses and none of them had a white picket fence.  I grew up and found out the dream I had didn't just happen.  You had to have the skill sets to make it happen.  You have to know what it takes to make it happen.

Living the dream is only possible if you know how to work to get it.  Take the simple idea of 1 husband.  You have to first know that it is possible to do that.  When it was the norm to have one husband and not fool around on them, most women knew what they had to do to make that happen.  You didn't just "up and leave" when it didn't "feel good" anymore.  You stuck it out and you didn't run home or run off to some gym or bar to work out your frustrations and find a new "interest" or "feel good."  That kind of love that lasts takes work and it isn't being taught that way anymore.  And that is a shame.

I live in a small yellow house with a green roof and the fence is in the backyard and contains dogs and grapevines. I had one child who is grown, married and trying to live out his own childhood dreams.  And that part of my dream as well turned out different.  I did not raise my son.  I had an influence on his life, but was not allowed to be there with him when he needed me and I needed to nurture him.  That is my regret in life.  That is the part of my dream that I so wanted to come true, but I didn't know how to do it. His father and I divorced.  Why?  Best reason I can come up with is this.  Each of us in our own special way was a total butt hole.  Neither of us knew how to make it work and only tried sporadically with limited skill to do so.  Neither of us was willing to put down the baggage we brought in to the marriage and simply burn it.  We kept our baggage and cherished it and lost sight of what was important.

It took many years and many heartaches to finally figure out how it all is supposed to work, and it IS work.  It is filled with compromise.  One of you has to compromise first so it may as well be you.  Get that first time out of the way.  It gets easier after that.  One thing you must remember about compromise is that you NEVER sell out your ethics or moral principles to do so.  Let GOD guide your compromises so you do not sell something that doesn't belong to you.

My life is simple.  I worship GOD ALMIGHTY.  YESHUA is my Savior.  The rest is just living.  My husband and I have similar views on politics and religious topics.  We occasionally disagree, which is good because if we both had identical views on everything, one of us would be unnecessary.  I have my flower garden, I mow grass, take care of 6 dogs, 2 cats and feed the birds.   He has his acres of gardens that he takes joy in.  He likes his grapevines and worm trees (don't ask).  He likes fishing and hunting.  That's not for me.  We were content.  We were literally fat and happy.

Our new friends were the cardiologists and all the nurses and clerks at the office.  So, it finally occurred to us that maybe that was not the thing to be.  We had to become discontented with our life.  We had to change.  We had to get out of our comfort zone and do things differently.

In achieving contentment, which I am quite sure was never in either of our dreams as children, we achieved a negative lifestyle. Now we are working hard to overcome in a short period of time what has taken 20 years to accomplish.

We got some new friends - determination and ambition.  We are doing things that promote good health and making a concerted effort to do some sort of exercise every day.  Our bodies are the temple that the HOLY SPIRIT lives in and we are doing quite a bit of home maintenance.

Shalom!  Pray for the Peace of Jerusalem!

You Got The Shakes?

There comes a time in everyone's life when weight is paramount in their mind.  It starts in youth and progresses throughout life. In these modern times we are mainly concerned with losing weight .  What if I told you that you could do it?  What if I said it would be easy if you followed the plan?  Is losing weight the only gauge by which we determine how healthy we are?  How Scriptural is gluttony anyway?  Is it simple gluttony or are we just so malnourished our bodies are never satisfied and we just keep eating more and more to satisfy the body's desire for those nutrients it is not getting?

How about we start with the proper nutrition?  Here, in the United States of America, we have far too much to eat.  At least that is the way it appears. While we have "super sized" our fast food meals they in turn have "super sized" our behinds and depleted our wallets.  We are continually eating but never truly satisfied.  But where do we start?

There are so many "diets" both fads and some really helpful solutions.  There are those solutions that send your food to you already in proper portions. All you need to do is heat it in the microwave for 90 seconds. They give you suggestions for meal planning, snacks and all you have to do is follow the plan.  They even include a bottle of vitamins to enhance the whole experience.

There are the ones that sell books by the millions that require a "life style" change.  You learn to eat new foods.  You measure and cook your food from scratch and learn to live without all those nasty tasties that contain the fats, carbohydrates, sugar and all things pre-made and filled to the brim with tasty decadence.

You can diet online with your counselor monitoring your every move, at least the moves you post on your webpage.  You can count calories, fat grams, sugar, sodium and a vast array of other ingredients designed to make manufactured food palatable.

You can exercise without moving, exercise by learning a martial art, exercise by learning to dance or any variety of the these.  There is jazzercise and "Dancin' to the Oldies.  Don't forget muscle confusion and the body fit for a beach.

If you search long enough you can find whatever suits your fancy to lose weight and muscle up.  There are even lose belly fat drugs sold by the millions on commercials and infomercials. 

And it all boils down to this, if all you want to do is lose weight there is a way out there to do just that.  Some methods work for everyone for a time. Keeping it off may pose its own problems but it can be done.

One of the reasons I got involved with Body By Vi is because for the past 5 years or so, I have steady put on the pounds and felt like a real porker.  I tried several different things and they all worked, but I gained the weight back and more!  I felt better thinner.  I felt better about myself.  I had more confidence when I was thinner.  But nothing seemed to help me get on the right track.

One day my husband's nephew came to the house and showed us the Body By Vi - 90 Day Challenge.  I saw it.  I got it!  I couldn't wait to try it.  The thing about it is that it works!

The one thing that I have yet to mention is what it did for me mentally.  It actually pulled me out of a pit, a very deep, very dark pit.  It is amazing what proper nutrition can do for you; what it can do for your state of mind.  I was suicidal and I am certain that it showed on every fiber of me.  It was, after all, one of the main reasons I got fired.  The COO of the company told me that it was painful to look at me and he hated to see me coming down the hall.  Little did he know (or apparently care) that within 3 days of getting the proper nutrition that I would become a happy, outgoing, talkative, stunningly beautiful, energetic 62 year old woman who no longer needed his validation to exist.  Two years of deep depression, low self esteem, suicidal thoughts, intense counseling and drug therapy were all put behind me within 72 hours of starting on Body By Vi - 90 Day Challenge.

The icing on the cake is that I could make money promoting the product that literally saved my life!  I could make money simply helping people get healthy!  An that, dear reader, works for me!  Why not make money doing something you like to do and help people at the same time?  Why not find out what it's all about?  Visit my website and sign up for more information. http://easy2getfit.myvi.net/

Shalom.  Pray for the Peace of Jerusalem.

To All The "Know-It-Alls" - You Know Who You Are

I can write this with full knowledge that someone out there (probably someone I know) will be offended.  I know this because, as they say, "I are one of them there thangs!"

How I came to be.

When I was a child of 5 or 6, I knew that I had to be a quick study.  There was nothing worse in my home than a wrong answer even if the question asked had no right or wrong answer.  Then there were those questions that had NO right answer.

The questions that had no right answer were the ones like, 'DO YOU THINK I'M STUPID?"  If I was dumb enough or simply not paying attention and said, "yes" there would be a steep payment. That one I learned pretty quick that I had to be paying attention and the correct answer was always, "No, ma'am!" The emphasis had to be on the "ma'am" and not the "No" or it was considered a "smart remark" which had its own punishment.

"ARE YOU STUPID OR WHAT?!" was a tricky one.  It could be followed by, "I DIDN'T RAISE YOU TO BE STUPID!" so I had to wait to answer.  I couldn't wait too long or that was another cause for punishment.  Sometimes I felt pretty stupid or she wouldn't be asking me dumb questions.  Not something I said out loud. 

"LOOK AT ME WHEN I'M TALKING TO YOU!" and "DON'T LOOK AT ME LIKE THAT!" were often paired and unless there was a mirror, I never knew how I was looking at her.  When I didn't know how to look, I would try looking blankly into space or down at the floor or even concentrate on a speck on something in the room. That meant I wasn't "listening" and many times I got caught up in my own fantasy world and really wasn't paying attention. That stinging slap or the pain of the belt brought me back to reality.

To a child of 6 with that kind of logic bouncing around, it became apparent that adults were actually fairly stupid, mainly illogical and not something to aspire to. The end result was that I buried myself in books - all kinds of books. By the time I was 12, I had read every science and science fiction book in the library.  I read science fiction to escape and science to find out how.

I remember lying on the grass peering into the stars wondering when my "real parents" were finally going to come back to get me.  I was not related to these earthlings!  I couldn't possibly be. They were illogical and mean and none of it made sense unless I was no part of their genetic pool.  I dreamed of the time when the spaceship would land and they (my real parents) would hug me and be so glad to see me.

Obviously that day never came as I am still here and I have become one of those dreadful things - an adult.  I lost the innocence and logic of childhood and became what I despised most - one of "THEM."  What I find fascinating in this modern world of ours is that children are becoming adults far too soon.  My journey into the world of no logic and cruelty came in my 20's while many of the children ages 12 and up are venturing into the land of illogical cruelty much sooner.  I see the signs of stupidity beginning to flourish in the 14 and 15 year olds as they become sexually aware creatures. They give themselves away like over-ripe fruit falling from a tree only to lie upon the ground to rot.  They lose themselves early and master the art of cruelty and lose the logic of children.

Ah, but I am off on a rabbit trail.

When school grades are brought home and A's and B's are not good enough.  The paintings and drawings are never good enough.  The choices made are never quite right. Dressing for school becomes a dreaded chore.  The way hair is combed or brushed is never quite right.  You become increasingly aware that having the "right" answer is paramount.  You never say anything unless you are certain that what you say will be correct.  Eventually, you get a reputation as a "know-it-all" which is incorrect because you really only know what you have just said. You really don't know it ALL nor did you ever think you did.

Reputation is what people think about you and you will rarely change anyone's mind once they believe they have the "truth" about you.  So ignore the ignorance and move forward.  You learned early in life to dissect every response and come up with the most accurate and acceptable.  It becomes second nature and you think no more about what to say than you do about wiping your behind or breathing.  You know that if you are not absolutely certain about the answer, you will say nothing.

Someone may seem to know it all, but it may only be your perception of them and not the reality.

Oh, I really don't know who you are.

Shalom.  Pray for the Peace of Jerusalem.

A Letter to a Friend

Dear Friend,

I am writing this letter to you specifically.  Although we have never been what the world considers best friends or BFFs, I still consider you a dear and close friend.  I have prayed for you often just as I have prayed for your children and your spouse.

Times will often be difficult.  It will sometimes seem as though friends do not understand or they are so far from you, but I want you to know that you are only a prayer away from me.

We share almost nothing in common except that we live on planet Earth and one other important thing.  We are one IN CHRIST.  We share the Saviour and in that one thing we are united.  If you hurt, THE HOLY SPIRIT is there to bring that hurt to me so that I may pray for you.  While I seldom will know the true reason for the prayer, THE SPIRIT has lead me to pray for you.  It may be a simple temptation of an extra doughnut hole or it may be a much bigger temptation to not read or study THE SCRIPTURES or a temptation of jealousy or lust.  THE HOLY SPIRIT knows as does GOD and that is all that is truly important. 

You may be in the midst of great persecution and fear for your life if someone finds out that you, indeed, are a Christian.  It may be the temptation to leave your BIBLE at home rather than take it to work with you and read during lunch.  It may be an unfaithful or brutal spouse that beats you in a drunken rage.

Whatever your trial, tribulation or temptation, you are truly NEVER alone.  While I cannot be there to lift you up, please, dear Friend in CHRIST, know that HE will never leave you nor forsake you and HE has sent THE COMFORTER to be with you through to the end.  Please, fear not man who can torture and kill the body, but fear HIM who has control over the soul and that ONE is JEHOVAH GOD, YHWH.

Be of good cheer and embrace the PEACE that transcends all understanding.  HE is with you always and forever.  Do not dwell on the issues at hand, dwell upon the GLORY that you will soon see.  Our time is but a vapor, a wisp of wind in time.  We rejoice in an Eternity with the CREATOR, ALMIGHTY GOD, THE ALPHA AND THE OMEGA, our SALVATION.

Shalom.  Pray for the Peace of Jerusalem.

Always in CHRIST,
your friend