Just a few more days...

In just a few more days...Saturday at the latest...I get to see my sister! Oh how I have missed Kalla. Three months is definitely to long to be apart. The summer was hard with her living in Houston...Her dealing with Chris...Her telling me about it...Me responding and being honest to her...Probably pissing her off sometimes-but I love her and miss her! I cannot wait to see Kalla...I feel bad for anyone who is in the general vicinity when I see her for the first time, because there will probably be a lot of screaming!
Come Saturday...I get to shop all day! For Sara's 18th birthday, I was going to take her up to the outlet malls and Columbus mall...Now with Kalla here, it will be all the Green girls together...Tons of laughing, plenty of beating each other up, and tons of inside jokes...That are meant only for us!!!!!
I can't wait for her to come!!!!! I will actually get to see her once a month for the next three months!!!! She visits this coming weekend (October), she will be here for Thanksgiving (November), and then her and Chris are coming before Christmas (December)! I am so looking forward to having my Kalla time!

Wedding Weekend

It took a long time to recover from the wedding--much drama and much adventure, but a lot of fun! Here are some highlights!

1. Flat tire--delayed and stuck in Danville, IL Super Wal-Mart for 2 hours and then was about an hour later to the rehersal. If it hadn't been for the trucker who helped us get the tire off who knows when we would have made it!















2. Zack--the guy I had to walk with for the wedding is a GIANT! Seriously, the guy is like 6'4" and I am only 5'3". The picture doesn't do justice, but here he is. And if it couldn't get any worse, by the time we made it to the reception-his pants which had been too tight all day, ripped in the crotch and he spent the rest of the reception with ripped pants.




3. Kalla met a boy--Chris to be exact. He is nice, but I am always cautious when Kalla tells me she likes a guy.








4. All in all it wasn't too bad--once you got past all the drama and having to deal with so many family members--though I have informed all my siblings and my cousins that they should elope when they decide to get married!

Stuck and Lost

How do you say good bye to someone that has been an everyday part of your life for the past 20 years? How do you let them pack their memories and yours in boxes? How do stop from shouting, "Don't go! Stay for me! I need you!"? I want to be selfish at this moment and yell STOP--I need you more than anyone else does right now. This new adventure offers answers and solutions I can't give you, but if I could believe me I would be sharing them with you right now! Whether for a season or longer, I have to let you go on this adventure without me. I will be here longing for you in the littlest things, that I had probably taken for granted until now. How do I move on without you? How do I do all the fun things without you? Where will a shoulder for me to cry on be? Who will share those stupid inside jokes with me? Who will make me laugh unintentionally? Who will be my best friend? Know one thing, I am here...I will be going nowhere, so when your ready to come home here I will be waitng. So I am not going to be selfish, but that still doesn't make it easy, I do need you and I do want you to stay, but maybe this adventure for you holds answers for me too. Maybe solutions and secrets for life are waitng for me. So good bye, not because I want to say it, but because the time has come. You have already begun an amazing adventure and experience that I am just waiting to se the results of. There was the lost...Now the stuck How do I stay in a job where the corporate bull shit has seemed to have taken priority over the best interests of the child? How do I continue to work in a field that I love, but at a place that I detest? When did saving my ass become what I feel my job is instead of saving the kids? There was a reason I was there, but I don't know if there still is. I'm stuck at work...I'm alone and I hate the feeling. I want so much more--but that means change and I don't know if I can accept that. I have made a friend that I enjoy talking to and can talk to--but if I leave can our friendship survive? She was part of the reason I was there and maybe still am--but how do I help when I have no time to talk with her? How do I stand up for what I believe in and still feel that my job is not on the line? When does the bull shit end? When do I get the sense of peace? And when do the answers end?

Fear of Who I Have Become

I wake up in the morning and sometimes I am so fed up with who I am and what I do. There are things I see in myself that I despise in other people, but I don't know how to change that. I am judgemental and critical, I can be too emotional and becoming a blubbering fool.
I wonder how we get to this place? How do we become whhat we have always disliked in other people? I want to be proud and supportive of those I love, but lately I have made them feel worthless, which in return makes me feel worthless. There are people that I believe I am better than and with that belief I hurt them, even if they don't see it.
This has been hard to accept, but repeatedly God has shown me these "bad seeds" in my life, but He won;t do anything about it until I let Him. So now, I am ready to give it to Him. I am ready to become that woman that God has intended me to be all along. Will I be perfect? Never. I can, though, begin to live as God has intended me to.
I want to wake up in the morning and be proud of who I am. I want to see the mistakes and change them into something good. I want to be happy with who I am, because it is who God has made me to be and not something that I have let myself become.

The Wandering

For so long I have been wandering and it has just been recently that I have felt like I am going somewhere, hearing something, and feeling protected. I have never been able to get the iddea of having somewhere to go when you are lost and feel alone. I ahve heard that people have these places--whether real and/or physical, but for me that has never been the case. I have always just felt alone with nowhere to go. Lately though, I have realized my place, a book or rather a devotional. And while I ussually cringe at a devotional this one has me inspired. As a woman it gives me strength, as a wife hope, and as a future mother (though no time soon) love and compassion. I still feel like I'm in a dessert with no where to go and no mirages to see, yet I now see glimpses. I have hope and feel that maybe there is a purpose for all this.
One of the hardest points of this wandering period has been doing it alone. I struggle with sharing my feelings and what I am going through. I know that it would help to share, but I don't know how to explain. Even here I know key components are missing--I just can't get them out. My prayer lately has been how do I share this right now and when it is over? How do I use this pain and growth to speak into others lives? How do I use my weaknesses to make another strong? I don't have the answers but I know who does, and He is giving me glimpses--maybe not to overwhelm me or maybe He knows I'm just not ready--but I do know that I am going to try to cherish this wandering time and hopefully experience all that I can from this lesson.

Bothering Thoughts

It has been in my thoughts for as long as I can remember and it is hard to deal with and face each and every day, even though I am now married. My dating relationship was not pure. I never had sex, but it doesn't mean that buttons weren't pushed and lines crossed. I still on a day to day basis struggle. I even sat worshiping this morning and I read something that made me start beating myself up again.
God forgave me. He saw everything I did and knows I felt afte every time and he forgave me. He loved me and He continued to watch out for me. And my response--I'm not good enough, He couldn't possibly still love and care for me. Day after day I told myself this. I made myself feel worthless and continued to cross lines because I didn't think it would matter. Yet I would always stop before it went to far.
For awhile I have felt like I could not find God. I felt alone and felt no connection and I blamed Him. I said that what I had done was too much and that He didn't care anymore. But today I fully realized that I was pushing Him away. He forgave me, but I never forgave myself. I never let myself feel that I could be loved and that I could be pure in His eyes still. I took it all my shoulders and could not turn the pain and guilt over to Him.
Today though I start living differently. I gave it to God. I still regret what happened when I was dating, but I know now that it doesn't matter. I have a Daddy that loves me and a husband who adores me. What I did then has no bearing on His love for me now. I know can honestly say that I feel myself sitting on His lap with His arms around me and I feel like the prodigal daughter who has finally found her way home.