Struggles turned to Strength

Wow what an amazing adventure this life has been. Yesterday marked the anniversary of  a day in my life that time literally stood still. From that moment on I knew NOTHING would ever be the same. It was a moment like all defining moments that looking back now was just the beginning of something great.....

This is from my first blog post 5 years ago......

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The day time stood still

As most of you know on Dec. 22, 2009 I was diagnosed with breast cancer. This was a shock to everyone including myself. It was definitely a day that will stand out for me among some others. I look at it more as a chapter change not an ending. As all great books have many chapters with ups and downs, so do I in the story of my life. There has been great good, bad, and ugly times. Nobody ever says that life is going to be an easy ride so we just have to sit back and enjoy what we see!

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I read this, knowing that only a month prior to me writing it, I heard the 3 devastating words that nobody wants to hear....YOU HAVE CANCER. So much has happened in this 5 years that this post couldn't even begin to capture my feelings on this time. Head back through the blog and you can follow the whole journey.

Today, 5 years later, I look at my life through different eyes. I see people differently. I have less desire for things and stuff (well except for my amazing new watch I got yesterday!! lol) I have an appreciation for nature that was not there before. I see amazing sunrises and sunsets, and yes it is beautiful, but to me its a reminder that I am still alive. I am here. I got to stay here on earth so I better not waste that gift! 

The last 5 years has not been easy for me. Most would think, 'Oh you are cancer free...life is good'. While that is true, there was a long period of time after I was "cancer free" that I had to deal with what had just happened. I dealt with cancer after effects, then right after I quit my job to be a stay at home mom my husband lost his job, then an almost 2 year unemployment, my home was almost taken away from me twice, I lived second to second and was in complete survival mode, and then the worst of the worst of this five year stretch the 6 funerals in 6 months that I attended (including both of my sweet grandmothers). I am not pretending that I handled everything wonderfully, none of us would we are human, but at the end of each day I forced myself to find the good in each day and write it down. I started the practice with my family too, and it made so much impact that I can't even begin to tell you. Try it for a month or two each night to find some good in the day. You will CHANGE YOUR LIFE!!!

This five years has taken so much from me but I CHOOSE to look at life different. I choose to see what I have taken from it not what its taken from me. I have taken knowledge, appreciation, realization, true meaning of faith in something bigger than you can see, and love that is indescribable.  I choose to live...I will make the most of my time that I am allowed here and hopefully make an impact on the world around me. That is really all I ever wanted anyway. 

Thank you to those who read these things, to my sweet friends who never stop showing me how amazing they are, and thank you to my amazing family for never letting me forget what it means to live. 

Finally, thank you to the horrible crap disease that tried to take me from my life. You have been my greatest challenge and my greatest teacher.

Time

Time is one of those things we want to speed up, slow down, stop, hurry, or go away completely. It is a measure I guess of how we feel at the moment we are in. It's a beautiful mess that we will never understand. We try to make it scientific and measure it, but we know that time is really a feeling. It is a feeling of happiness in a moment, sadness, fear, hurt, anger, and any other emotion we have. It goes along with the feelings we have.

What would you do if today you were told your time was almost over here on earth? What if somehow you knew that your time was winding down? Would you do anything different those last days here? would you call up that long lost friend? Would you be a little less stressed when someone cuts you off on the road? Would you talk nice? Hug longer? Change careers?  Forgive someone?  Travel the world? Sit at home with the ones you love? Anything....?

I am saddened over the last few days of some lives cut short. Young lives, not that it makes it any easier if you are not young, but not what we expect to deal with in our younger years? I think of these things all the time unfortunately because the reality of cancer was all too close, but these things usually come up when we have lost or seen loss around us. Children should not have to lose their parent but sadly it happens every single day. We spend so much of our lives in a go go go constant motion kind of way that we forget to breathe. Breath....how lucky we are just to have it really! When is the last time you were thankful for your breath? For some, maybe everyday, but for others that thought never enters your mind. My point today in this post is nothing more than a reminder. We are here we are alive BUT you have no idea when you time clock is up. Why wait till you are told (if you are even told) to do the things you know need to be done!?

I have no regrets from my life and truly believe that each bump in the road has given me way more than the scars it has left behind. I urge you today to take that 1 thing, that one thing that has been nagging you everyday, and do it. Make the change in your life. Make this life count! You only get one shot, for an undetermined amount of time, and it is you JOB to DO something with it! That  is why we are here. I doesn't matter how much you have it is what you do with what you DO have that is the measure of you! (Ironically enough this was the previous Sunday's topic at church.)

I feel that life is a series of UP an DOWN moments and the reactions we give to those moments. If you want a happy life, a meaningful life, a life of purpose....well go make it that way. Its your JOB to do something to make an impact around you. These people who have passed on made a mark on many that they knew and didn't know. It's your turn to do the same.
Make a difference. Make it Count. Make this world better than you found it. Instead of complaining of all the sadness, the evil, and the fear in the world be what you want to see. You will be amazed at how your world around you begins to change. We attract what we put out there. Put out positive and be positive and those are the people who will flock to you.
IT STARTS WITH YOU!

Sparks

 I can't believe the difference a year has made. I went from storms and the most challenging moments of my life so far to this pure happy and peace I feel today!
Last year at this time....I was sad. I was penniless. I almost lost everything I owned (well not owned for 30 years obviously lol). I worked constantly. I was grieving the many losses I had suffered. I delt with my own fears of my own fate/mortality. I had no idea what was coming next. I was just stuck for a while. I felt that I was in quicksand. Thanks to great friends, family, and cheerleaders that refused to leave me when I decided to sit a while, I finally got up. I stopped for a bit but from the shell of a person I had become I found something within. A spark of light that never left me.
I have always believed in the power of prayer and had great faith in God but was always held back by something. I wanted to know the future. I was trying so hard to predict the future and grieving the past that I lost the present! I had to learn that it was not about MY plans. I have been through many trials in this 35 years of life but I had never been tried and tried and tried again to the point where I finally broke. I broke. The girl who had to hold the world together around her for everyone else for so many years broke. What an insane out of control spiral of events.
There I was lying on the floor feeling as if I had been in battle. It was me, one person, against an entire army of people trying to bring me down. As I lay there on my final blow, broken and tired, I saw a spark. That spark came in the darkest hour and began to grow. I realized I was not alone. I never really was. I was surrounded by sparks and needed to find a way to bring them all together to get back up again. I broke that day, but I broke the desire to control everything that happens. I broke the desire to predict the future. I broke the desire to live in the past. I BROKE only to be built back up to an even stronger individual with knowledge and wisdom that many have not yet seen.
What a gift. I am back up on my feet but changed and different.

It amazes me how this has happened to me more than once in life and I am only 35 years old! It only takes one spark to start a fire. In our darkest moments that we may be having there is always a spark within you that can help you back up again. Know that all you need to do is stop and quit fighting so hard! It is there. It is what makes us human. It is what drives in our decisions. It is the one thing that NOBODY and NOTHING can take from you. It just sometimes takes a while to realize it is there, but once you do....watch out! One spark that begins to connect with other sparks begins to make BIG things happen!

Just stand up friends! All of the sparks are here ready to help you ignite your dreams!

Sailing into the sunset

"You can never cross the ocean unless you have the courage to lose sight of the shore"

Wow these words can't be ringing more true. I discovered something today....I am not as adventurous as I once thought I was. I take risks here and there BUT the difference is the risks that I take. I take calculated risks, you know the ones that really can't even be considered much of risk because I have thought out so much what will happen after this "risk".
There are many out there who are great risk takers.  I have heard one common theme from all of the people who have changed the world, done something amazing, and made an impact on those around them. They take the risk that it takes to get there.  They make the CHOICE to go when its dark and unknown. They ignore the voices in their head  and possibly the people that tell them to stay safe, that you will never make it, and that you are only going to mess things up again. I am not sure if it is literally that few seconds of courage you need when making the big choice or if it's an instinctive ability to ignore all you know and leave the box. Is the wonder that some people posses that nags at their brain daily (like an itch you can't scratch) to try this new thing?? Maybe it's all of these things.

I look at us as if we are all on an island. We are all here and we all know this place is great. Just as anywhere else it has its ups and downs but we are getting by just fine. There is no real reason to do anything else. We have everything we need right here. Then one day you have a thought cross your mind if there is something else out there. Nobody knows and everyone says why bother because you are OK here. You think to yourself,  'yeah you are right' and push the thought to the bottom of the list of things....for now.
Then few weeks later, here it is again. For months and months the thought comes in your mind and it gets harder each time to push it out. The wonder, the possibilities, the thought of the unknown, and the belief in something better that you can't see is out there continue to fill your mind until one day you decide that you don't even want to be on this island anymore. You now will do whatever it takes to go and see what lies past the shores and just out of your sights. When you tell the others most do not understand for they have not spent their last months contemplating all of the possibilities out there. They warn you of the dangers and remind you of the unknown that you will soon be facing. For many, this is the point in which the thought is pushed down again and you decide they are probably right and it is safer here in the place you know.
Maybe a few more attempts and still nothing will happen and then you will spend the rest of your life fine. There was nothing wrong here remember, but you will never know what may have happened if you only had the courage to try. This will nag at you forever. Then, there is the one day when you are able to possess a few moments of strength and courage and you take that moment and get your boat. You head out into the direction of your dream. You don't tell many this time for fear that they will only want you stay. They don't want to harm you but they just don't get it yet. We are never all in this place of sailing away at the same time. We are all on our own journeys but just coexisting next to each other on this island. So there you are looking back at the island that you knew and loved for all this time. You are thankful for its lessons and for your time there but you know with certainty now that out there in the other direction, the one you can't see, there IS something. Its waiting for you to go and see it. The mere thought of this is enough to almost make you turn around. As you get further away from the shore and the island begins to shrink behind you thoughts fill your mind. The words of your loved ones telling you that this is crazy, the doubt begins to fill your brain, and the unknown quickly turns on you like a scary monster in the dark. You question it and now begin to FEAR the one thing that has filled every waking moment of your thoughts for months. It now begins to grow dark, so dark now that your beautiful vision of what this was going to be is now blanketed with unknown. It is then, and only then, that you get to make your choice....you can go back to what you know and the life you had OR you can continue on in the dark knowing that very shortly the sun will rise and your dreams will soon become your reality.  So you choose...............