He's Still Working On Me

What a year!! I started this blog a while ago and I have not posted in a bit. Mainly because life has gotten so busy to the point I do not have time to sit and think!! That is NEVER a good thing.

But lately, I have had a time to reflect on things. Where was I a year ago? What was my mood like? Where was my heart?

Well, thanks to Facebook, I can look back on the last year and read my status updates and see where I was. Who WAS that person??

Oh, yeah, that was me. Was is the main word there. As a Christian, I await the day I am called to join my Savior in Heaven for all eternity. But, while I am here, I am human, I make mistakes, I learn from them, and I also grow stronger as the days go by.

Today at church, Dr. Ron Dalton proposed this question...Are you ready for what God wants to do in your life? You don't have the power to do those things, but you DO have to make straight the paths for God to work. For me to let go, I have to let God unsettle my past and where I currently am to get to where He wants me.

Whoa...powerful words. I have learned so much over the last year. Who my friends are, who some people TRULY are, the work God has done in my past to get me where I am right now...it's amazing how a lot of those things have come full circle over the last 12 months.

Who knew in one year I would go from being unemployed to working with the mentally disabled and finding some of the greatest people in the world to work with! My staff and coworkers are the GREATEST people ever!

Who knew a year ago I would be the Sunday School Superintendent at my church which has led up to me being in charge of the children's ministries and the Christmas program? I NEVER thought I would ever be the one to do this!

Who knew a year ago I would be living in a new house and the kids going to a new school? That was a plan God had in the works for almost 10 years! I thought I was losing out on friends with everyone moving away, but instead it was a blessing in a desperate time of need for me and my family!

I have met a lot of new people over the last year. I have also learned that some of my friendships are actually deeper than I thought, and others are just on the surface and mean nothing more!

Who knew going to a concert in Champaign would introduce me to a new friend in a neighboring city that has been a prayer warrior for me and a great inspiration on a daily basis! You never know who will be sitting next to you, I encourage you to talk to them! I am so glad I have, Jeff has become a great resource when I need a word of encouragement or just to know that someone out there has the same thoughts I do!

I know God is doing a lot of shaking up right now. I kind of compare it to a container of seasoning in the cabinet. You have your "steak seasoning". It is a blend of all the right spices to make your steak awesome. But, if you let it sit and not use it for a while, things tend to settle. If you try and use it without shaking it up a bit, you may not get the right blend of everything to make your dinner fabulous. Instead, you may get a mediocre steak. And trust me, there is nothing more disappointing than waiting for a steak and it just isn't right!

Now, sometimes sitting that long makes some of the seasonings in that mix turn stale or just lose their flavor. So, you may need to get a new bottle of seasoning to bring back the kick, or you might find a new bottle that is better! The thing is, you will never know until you get rid of the old, stagnant seasoning that has settled and let God shake things up to let you know where things are in your life.

Do you have friends that are sucking the life out of you? Do you have friends that once were true, honest friends and now only look to destroy you? Do you have a job that makes you happy? Does your family know they come first? What part of your life is God shaking up to make way for a new "seasoning" to come in and put you over the top?

I have recently had my eyes open to a lot of these questions. I thank God for opening my eyes and telling me it is ok to no longer fight for those friendships or relationships. Sometimes it is just better to walk away and not get the last word or let that person know they have hurt you. I have chosen to take this route. I would love to tell some people how they have hurt me. Would it really benefit me to tell them, or is that what they are waiting for? Do they want to hear how my heart broke when they stabbed me in the back?

I have great friends. Ones that want nothing but to hear my voice, see my face or feel my hug. I love them to the ends of the universe. Male, female, gay, straight, black, white...it doesn't matter to me. If you have me in your mind, I have you in mine and I love you and pray for you always. If you don't, well, I still pray for you.

I do not know what the next year brings for me, I am wondering if staying Superintendent is in my future? I wonder if staying at my current job is there? I don't know the answers to any of these questions, but I put them in VERY capable hands. His hands. He knows my wants, my desires, my dreams. But I MUST remember it is His WILL and not my own that will determine my future.

Maybe I have rambled on here for a bit, but church has been such a big part of my life lately. I am SO thankful for my friends and family I have made there. The people who go to church with me are so much more than just people...they ARE my family. I love them and worry about them and talk to them as much as I can. Family in my house has nothing to do with bloodlines or heritage, but rather those who are there and want to be there. I miss my grandparents dearly, but I have so many others that have taken roles on for me that I feel that missing space has been filled.

So with that I tell you this, prepare the way for the Lord in your life. Let Him shake things up. It may, no, it WILL suck at times. But don't give up. He never gives up on us, He never stops loving us. He will show us his way, just let Him lead!

Are you MENTAL???

Mental illness is a hot topic in America right now. I have an opinion about the subject, just like everyone else does. But, my opinion comes from personal experience. I have a form of mental illness. Yep, there you go. Laugh if you want, but I will continue to explain if you choose to read on. I will be bouncing around in the writings too follow...not because of the mental illness, but because there needs to be explaining as I go.

In 2006, my husband and I were presented with a possibility to adopt a baby. We already had the twins and thought we were done with the kid thing. Apparently that made God laugh and He then showed me the road He had planned for me.

Now, this brings up a question for you. At what point do you start to love your children? Do you wait to love them until they take their first breath, when you find out you are pregnant, or do you start to love them when you begin to try to conceive? Well, for adoptive parents...we have loved them from the moment we were told we could never have children of our own. The difference here is that someone has to decide for us if we are worthy of ever being parents...not try until it works.

I fell in love with my children after I got married and decided I wanted to be a mother. I fell in love with the idea that someone was going to call me mom and that I would be able to play a role in their life. I fell in love with my future children the day I met with the social worker. I did not know what kind or how many children I was going to be blessed with...but I fell in love.

What makes the child yours? As an adoptive parent, I would be the first to tell you that it is not blood, dna, or legal status. Did you know that for the first six months after an adoption you are only the childs legal guardian? So what do you do? Tell them to not call you mom or dad until the time is up, not get attached to them until the papers are signed? We had Tyra and Tyrece in our home for five days before their biological mother agreed to sign papers.

Let's fast forward to 2006, I get the phone call, I was hooked. Wether or not we ever were actually going to do the adoption did not matter. I thought I was done with having children and this showed me that I really was not done. I did want more! Made some phone calls, got some things in order, and in less than a week, my dream was swept away. Any chance of me having a "normal" adoption or life, gone.

I received a phone call a little after 7 on June 28, 2006. I was told that the baby, a boy, was here. I instantly was confused. I was under the impression that the baby wasn't supposed to be here until October. I was not prepared for this. And then the second bomb went off...he was fighting for his life. The birth mother was only 23 weeks along. Weighing in a little over a pound and maybe a foot long, he was at the local hospital...my son, or what I thought was going to be my son, and here I was at work with no clue.

Ever have one of those fears that someone you love is sick and there is nothing you can do to help. Well, I had that, and then I had to convince my administration that I needed to go to the hospital right then because a baby that I was going to adopt may die before I get a chance to see him. Your average person does not understand this. I didn't understand it much either. I was in such a state of shock, helplessness, hurt, fear...and a million other things all rolled up into one.

Now, I will not bore you with the whole 17 days of his short but powerful life. Tyson Andrew came in a fighter and left in peace. He passed away July 15th after suffering a collapsed lung. I remember the phone call like it was yesterday, no, more like it was five minutes ago. The birth mothers mom (yes that is confusing) called me at home to tell me the news. We had made the decision the night before about what to do if something went wrong, but I had two children at home that needed their mom and I could not sit up in the hospital and wait for the inevitible. The words "he's gone" still ring in my ears everyday. The sinking feeling that went through my body still comes when I least expect it.

The next night as I lay in bed, numb, crushed, and again a million other words to describe it, and probably only fell asleep from exhaustion, I shot up about two in the morning and felt like I was dying. My chest felt heavy, I couldn't breathe, I was sweating, I heard my heart pounding in my ears, the world was going in slow motion around me. I tried to scream, I tried to talk, I tried to wake my husband up who was laying right beside me, but I couldn't do anything but lay back down and pray for this to go away quickly.

The next morning I told a friend what happened and she said I most likely had an anxiety attack. I had never had one before. I never wanted to have one again. But later that day, while sitting on the couch, it happened again. And then when I would try to get in the car to go to the grocery store, I started to shake. I would get in the grocery store and I thought everyone was looking at me. They KNEW that I had a baby die. A baby that some people would like to say "Was never really yours to begin with, you never completed the adoption".

From that day on, I only went to the grocery store in the middle of the night. I pretty much secluded myself to work and home. I even tried to go to a family function....family...the people that love you and mean you no harm....I couldn't do it. I sat in the bathroom for a bit trying to compose myself, but I couldn't do it. I had to run. I HAD to get out of there. Everyone knew. Everyone was looking. Everyone was judging me.

Now, I will stop at this point and tell you flat out that things like this NEVER had happened to me before. I NEVER had these crazy rationalizations of life or grocery shopping or anything!! I did not know what was going on with me.

Well, let's fast forward again past the doctor visits and the realization that I needed counseling. I was told that I had an anxiety condition that would require me to be on medication for the rest of my life. Take a long pause here.....THE REST OF MY LIFE!!! For something that happened to me, that took 23 days of my life, I was forever changed and now had a mental condition. Boy, doesn't that just make you feel like a winner.

Let me introduce you to Angi...the mental patient!! Since that day, I now question myself a lot more. Is it my mental condition or is that really me? I hate it. I hate this. I hate that my life has come to this. But, there is no diet, no exercise, no superfood that can cure this. There are only medications out there to help me control the attacks. To go from a happy, healthy person to this, crushing. I hate that I just cannot accept things as they are sometimes, there ALWAYS has to be a reason behind something.

What you may not realize is how many "mental patients" there really are out there. We hide. We don't like to talk about it a lot for fear of what others may say. Most of us do not want to shoot up schools, malls, have random outbursts in public. We just would give anything to have normal back. I would give ANYTHING to not have to take a pill. Looking at the bottle makes me feel weak. The look in the eyes of the people at the pharmacy when I pick up my medications bother me.

My relationship with God has helped me a lot in the last couple of years to clear up some of those thoughts. I have been given some of the best "advice" in the form of scriptures that have ALWAYS been there, even before I was born. I get daily reminders of how He is there to help me. Just when I think that I am crazy to think that God talks to me, my devotional book gives me the scripture I have held on to for moments like these!

Matthew 6:25-27 “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life?

So, I leave you with this thought...look around you. There are "mental patients" everywhere, scared to come forward. Love us. Help us. Don't judge us. Just be there for us. Tragedy is one of the biggest causes of mental issues in people with no medical history of it. Be nice to the person in line next to you, you have NO IDEA what they may have gone through before they got there.

What is your worth?

What determines a persons worth? Do you get to decide or do you let others help you with that?

Recently I have been trying to figure out what my worth is. Am I worth spending time with? Am I worth respecting as a person/mother/wife/friend? Am I worth someones consideration?

Now we can break down the consideration part into a couple areas. Do they consider me when they have just received free tickets to an event and can invite one friend? Do they consider me when they are down and need someone to talk to? Do they consider me when they are in prayer? Do they consider me when they make the choices they do that might affect my life too? So many things to think about.

What I have thought lately is that I am worth something. I am worth waking up for, I am worth starting up a conversation with (I love to talk if you didn't know that already), I am worth getting to know, I am worth praying for. My worth may not be much for others, but when I consider how much God loves me, He has shown me that I am worth dying for.

Imagine that. I, me, Angi, was considered a long time ago and was thought of. Thought of enough and loved enough that I was worth going to a cross for. So, knowing that, why wouldn't anyone else consider me for the smaller things.

Consider loving me...I don't need you to die for me, Christ already did that. Consider suffering for me...not physical pain, but how about watching a chick flick or sitting through one of my rambling conversations. Consider my hunger...for food or conversation, I love both equally, especially when it is a conversation over a good steak!

When I consider my worth, what I have to give back also comes to mind. I have 4 kids and a house to take care of. That takes up a lot of my time. And now, I am looking to go back into the working field. HOW IN THE WORLD CAN I FIT A JOB IN MY DAY??? I have no idea, but discovering my worth has made me realize what I am worth to a company. I may not be worth much to my former employers, but I am a new person, a stronger person than I was then. I no longer need to have someone tell me who I am or where I measure up in this world. I know where I belong.

I love meeting new people and making new friends. I feel bad at the same time because I would love to devote a lot of myself to them to get to know them as well as I do my old friends. But, I do not have that kind of time. Plans usually get changed on a minute by minute basis. And I am NOT a fan of that. Of course, I do like to have plans, but I hate making them because they never usually get followed through with, not because I am lazy or don't like to do things, but because life happens, at every turn.

My worth is not based on how much these friends like or accept me either. I used to care about that. Now, I don't have time for it. Yes, my computer is logged on to Facebook a lot, not because I don't have a life, but because I have a nice, sturdy, non-cushioned chair right in front of my compter. Sure I have a couch and a recliner, but my back cannot take those. So, I sit in front of the computer.

I also don't watch much tv, I do have two shows I follow, Grey's Anatomy and Castle, but most of the time the tv is tuned into Nick Jr. or some sort of cartoon. I listen to music and read. Yep, I read a lot. Biorgraphies or Autobiographies are my favorite. I like real stories, not the made up kind. Why, because I do not feel the other is worth my time. (Ok, the picture I threw in here really doesn't have a lot to do with the blog, but it does have a character from Castle on it...so it works. Just go with it!!!)

There is that word worth again. So, in discovering MY worth, I had to identify exactly what was worth me keeping in my life. That may sound kind of harsh, but it is a reality some never face. So they stretch themselves trying everything and never finding anything. I have come to decide on what is my core worth. That is what I stick to.

I no longer take offense if someone decides they don't like me as a friend or decide I am no longer worth talking to. I have learned that there are MANY other people in this world and they are NOT the last people on the face of the earth. You don't like me, ok, great, move on...no more wasted energy in figuring out why. I do not care why. It does nothing for my feeling of self worth to care.

If you ARE in my life and feel like I am worthy of your attention, then you better keep mine. I no longer will change me to fit your life. I have a life planned out for me by God, He is leading my steps and I no longer ask why someone has left. Everyday I am shown many times through the day exactly how much I am worth to God. And I am loving every second of it.

Maybe if you want to be in my life, you need to be as concentrated on His path for you as I am. The path is not easy, it is not smooth, it is not lined with beautiful flowers that are always in bloom. This path has many rocks and many detours. But the path to my worth has such a great ending, and it is the same ending that is out there for everyone else too. It isn't just my ending, but one that was offered to all of us a long time ago, if we just chose it.

If you need to find your worth, start where I did....with Jesus. He never fails!

Who was that?

How can we be sure when we hear God? Is it because it is a booming voice in the dark telling you His ways? Or can we be sure because a beautiful angel comes down from the Heavens and tells us not to fear?

Sometimes I hear God in my own words! I can be praying for days looking for an answer and at the strangest moment, I come up with some thought to help out one of my kids that it is like a slap in the face of what I needed to hear!!

For example, I was going through some very rough times in my life about a year ago. I thought my life was going to be over, I had no clue how I was going to recover. I was the lowest I could ever remember being. As I was sitting on the deck watching the girls play in the yard, Millie fell down, not hard mind you, and started screaming to the max. I went down, comforted her, showed her that her injury left no mark on her and told her to get up, dust off and move on. The pain would go away if she just kept going.

Yep, at that moment I looked up and thanked God for the answer.

Could it be in a message from my pastor or friends during a Bible Study, or from a song I have heard a million times but just this once I listened and heard something different!!

But that is also when I start to doubt. AM I hearing Him or just making things up to fit into my life and what I want to hear? It can almost drive a person to insanity just trying to figure that out!! They talk to their pastor, their closest friends, counselors trying desperately to figure out, "Did I hear God or am I crazy and making this up?"

If you are in constant prayer and communication with God, why would one believe it could be anything else? Every step of every day that I take is led by Him. I pray from the moment I wake until the moment I sleep at night. I pray for His direction in every aspect of my life. How could I doubt, or how could anyone else tell me that I have not heard Him. They aren't me!

I am at that point. I am very certain I have heard Him. I think it is crazy as to what I have been told I need to do with my life and how my prayers WERE answered. It just doesn't make sense. I have found a couple of books...not searching them out, just happened to come across them, and I am amazed at what I am reading. I have to stress that I did NOT seek these books out for their content. I merely search free books on my Kindle every now and again and download things I might like to read. I have everything from kids books to high school biology books. Why....they could be interesting!

So, I start reading this book, not thinking it was going to have anything that I could apply to my life. I should backtrack a bit and say that I am not a fan of "fake" books, novels, fiction. I get too critical of them, maybe it is because I am a realist, or just the fact that I don't have the greatest imagination. One of my favorite books was "The Time of My Life" written by Patrick Swayze and Lisa Niemi. It was all about the life and struggles those two had as husband and wife, and separately.

I am not going to disclose the names of the books I am reading at this time, as they may cause some to put their own two cents in on my life. The books I have read ARE biblical based books by very christian women. They are about struggles they have faced in their lives and how they overcame and learned to live again. My struggles are not the same as theirs, but their words of wisdom DO come into play with what I have been praying, almost begging God for lately.

Not only have these two books spoken to me, I have also had the opportunity to hear some pretty amazing sermons lately. Again, these people had NO CLUE of the struggles I have been having. Yet, in those moments, the questions I have posed to God in my daily prayers were answered by their sermons. Coincidence??? I don't believe in them!

I believe God uses whatever He can to get our attention. I believe God uses methods that differ for each individual because if he sent a burning bush to get my attention, I would just call 911. If he sent an angel coming in the night to wake me and tell me all is well, I again would call 911. Those ways are not the ways to get to me. Music, books, teachings, my kids....all areas where I learn the most.

So, I will go into this day, again praising and worshiping Him and thanking Him for all of His goodness. I will go open and ready to hear whatever it is He has in store for me and trusting that it is His will and not my own that I am following. I cannot guarantee I will slip and maybe make a mistake or two along the way, but I will always do my best to stay on the path He has laid out in front of me. He never said it would be easy, but He does PROMISE it will be worth it!

Who make the statutes anyway??

In life, we learn a lot of lessons. Some of them are that each person is different, in every way. Why do doctors tell you it will take 4-6 weeks to heal, because some heal quickly and others take longer. Does that mean that person A who broke his arm the exact same day as person B is wrong for healing quicker than his friend?

Who says how long it takes to heal from anything? Injuries, deaths, divorces, rapes, illnesses, muggings, shootings...they are all things that cause pain and suffering for people and they all require time to heal. So if each individual person is different, who is to say what the correct and exact statute to heal and move on is for each situation.

Death of a child...well, you should be ok to move on in 6 months because that is what so and so did. Well, I'm here to tell you, 6+ years later and I am not completely healed from the death of my son Tyson. Partly because of the circumstances surrounding his birth and potential adoption. MANY things were said, many feelings were hurt. But the truth behind that is that no one was inside my head at the time to know exactly what I was going through or feeling or experiencing. So, who is anyone to say, "You should be over that by now".

Divorce...I know many people who are divorced and some move on quickly while others are still stuck in the past. I also know others who HAVE moved on and are STILL stuck in the past. Do you wait to start dating again until the divorce is final? Six months later, a year later??? What is the correct amount of time. Or, did you mourn the relationship a long time ago and were just staying together for the kids and you are ready to go the second you set it in your head you are done dragging this dead horse around with you?

Were any of you involved in that relationship? Were any of you there behind closed doors? No, so who is to say what decisions that person makes is right wrong or other.

Mugging victims and rape victims are pretty similar. Your trust in a person, or walking down a street have been ripped from you. Your trust of anything good in the world is gone. Someone took something from you; your phone, your wallet, your purse, your innocence. All prized possessions that are stripped away by the greed and want of another person. AND, they aren't always a stranger. They could be a person you know, a person you trust.

I have never seen a doctor predict correctly the time it takes for a person to heal from an injury. My first c-section I was told I would be down for days in pain. Halfway through the first day I was itching to get up and clean my hospital room, straighten it up, take a walk through the hospital...SOMETHING!!! I couldn't stand being kept down. I didn't know that I was supposed to be in pain and laying in bed for a long time. I didn't know what it was like to have a surgery as I have been pretty blessed in my life to be remotely healthy (except for my ears).

My second one WAS a bit more painful. The reopening of a previous incision can never be easy. There is a delicate process of making sure the scar tissue that resulted from the first incision has not attached to another part of the body and it takes longer to heal once you get through it. And, once that incision has been closed up, it has more of a tendency to reopen as it was already damaged once. You have to take special care of yourself so you don't compound the problem and make new problems arise.

Could someone please make a chart for these kinds of things so I know what is socially acceptable with my life. I checked Google, Bing, Wikipeida and they got nothing!! I think if we all had a pocket chart we could refer to things might go better for everyone else involved. "Oh, hey Kevin...sorry to hear about your mom, how are you doing?" Checks pocket chart..."Well, it's been 6 months so I am over it now. Thanks for asking or I never would have checked my trusty chart and would still be wallowing in sorrow of losing the most important person in my life! Whew, what a lifesaver!!"

Kind of like life. We all suffer difficulties. Sometimes the first time you experience something, you have no idea how to react, so people TELL you what to expect or what they experienced and you think, well I didn't feel like that or have that problem so there must be something wrong with me. OR is it just that you are a different person than them and experience pain, suffering and healing differently than everyone else.

This would also apply for happy circumstances. What is the correct amount of time for someone to be happy after seeing their child succeed in life? What is the appropriate amount of time to rant and rave about a great movie you have seen? Yes, people make me laugh, and years later I recall the stupid thing they said or did that made me laugh and I laugh again like it just happened. Why is that wrong? Is it because you don't get it? You weren't meant to or you would have experienced that for yourself!

We all probably remember the first time we were let down by someone, hurt by someone or suffered physical pain beyond anything we ever had before. How and when you suffered those molds who you become and how you deal with things later in life. If you are born into disappointment, it is nothing for you to lose a job many times in your life. It's expected. If you were lucky enough to be spoiled, you react VERY differently to the same situation.

I don't need to spell out to everyone in my life every disappointment, let down, injury or thought I have ever had or experienced in my life to make anyone understand my decision and why I handle things differently than you do. I have a baby and I am ready to resume life as usual later that day. I get an ear infection, I want to stay in bed all day. A person says something to hurt me, I cut them out of my life. I find something I like, I dive head first in to find out all about it. Why? I don't know. I just like to learn new things and want to know as much as I can as fast as I can. Sometimes I learn that I don't really like them afterall, but at least now I know I don't like whatever it is.

So next time you see someone who has experienced something in their life, instead of judging what they have done or how they deal with it, just love them. Love them through whatever they have going on and revel in the fact that they are different and can appreciate things differently than you.

Happy New Year??

The end of 2012 has finally come. The world did not end. To some that is a great thing. To others, that would have been more of a relief. I'm not exactly sure which side of that I fall, yet.

The world ending would have meant that I was to my final destination, in Heaven praising and worshiping my God. But, alas, it did not. I am still praising and worshiping Him, but I still have to deal with the disappointments and realities.

This year has been the year of growth for me. I started off the year in a good place. Diving head first into my church with a new membership with the Limestone Community Church of the Nazarene, joining the choir and praise team, and starting a streak of attendance I can only smile about.

Then in March, after 10 years of employment, I left my job and took a leap of faith that God DESPERATELY wanted me out of that job, away from the people there (coworkers and "clients") and He did everything He could to make me realize I just needed to trust Him. I did, I took the leap, scary and all. I thought I would have had a panic attack, and I didn't. Instead the door to more exciting and rewarding opportunity opened up.

April must not have had much on the agenda because I don't remember much of what happened. May on the other hand, that was a month I could have done without. I lost two people in my life, only days apart, that by all means were gone WAY too early. The first was my best friend from high school's sister. The day before her birthday, Gina was taken home to be with her Savior.

Only one day later did I find out that a former neighbor of mine had passed away in her sleep. She was a mother of 4 and MY AGE!!! She was the one that was here when we brought the twins home. She was also the one that was here when we went through the loss of our son Tyson. She was also the first friend I got to tell I was pregnant!! The memories of our talks are all good ones and I pray her children never forget the wonderful person she was.

Also in May, I was faced with a mother's, more like any parents, worst nightmare. I won't go into too much detail as we have dealt with the issue and believe we have handled it in the best manner possible. But all three of these events happened DAYS within me leaving for the mission trip with my church. I could not believe how under attack I was by satan. I was not going to cave. I could not cave.

Finally June arrived and I went on the mission trip. It was the most amazing experience I have had in a while. I was able to do some hard work for some good people. I discovered there really is a world outside Illinois. I also learned EXACTLY  how to annoy our Youth Pastor Mike Pierson, and I successfully did so....a lot!!!  It was also a first for me, a first away from all of my children for more than one night.

I had some pretty amazing people that helped  me to cope with that, and even more amazing people that realized when I needed a moment because I was missing my kids. All in all it was a great trip with great growth and awesome experiences!! Oh, and the end of ANY kind of love of Sloppy Joes.

Once back in the boring old state of Illinois, I gained a new confidence about myself and started on my weight loss journey. With a complete new understanding of who I was on the inside, I now wanted to make myself feel that good on the outside. I had no idea where that would take me.

Now down 50 pounds, I see a new, stronger, more confident person who is ready to tackle the world with a vengence. I have SO many things I want to do now that I held myself back from before. Now...how to get started on them all???

Well, I jumped a little there, but August brought a new journey for me also. I started BOTH of my little ones in preschool. Something I swore I wouldn't do. But God put the opportunity before me and I could not ignore His command. I bawled like a baby the night before. I could not believe my girls were big enough to start an adventure in this world without me. I still cannot believe it. They are learning songs I have not taught them, hearing stories I have not read to them, and they LOVE it!!

Of course there have been illnesses along the way and other things to deal with. But there has been an internal battle with me. A battle I have been fighting for years. A battle that I now know how to conquer. A battle that the answer came straight from God as to how to deal with it. I now have the right mind set to start on this adventure, and an adventure it will be.

I am older, wiser (somewhat), have lived quite a hectic life, but the main thing I have never done is find out what makes me happy. What makes me tick? What makes Angi smile at the end of the day? I have always worried about making others smile that I tend to neglect that. I always have my kids best interest in mind and usually sacrifice a lot to make sure they are happy. What parent doesn't!!

But in the whole 25.....ok 36 years of my life, I have never really taken time to figure out what it is I want in life. I have had so many hurdles, road blocks, detours along the way of what I "thought" my life was going to be like. I never took time to just think. Well, after a long year of being in constant prayer with God I have realized what I need to do to continue growing. It may not be a popular choice, it may not be YOUR choice. But it is my life and I have to live it, not you.

I pray in 2013 my smile will return, my joy will be over flowing and the cheers keep coming. I pray that all of my friends defeat what ever battle they may be facing. I pray that through it all, you realize what is most important in your life and go full throttle towards that goal.