They say getting sober is all about surrender
They are right
Pouring the amber liquid down the drain…
The fight
The Fear
Acquiesce or die…
….Year one is Release
It is said staying sober is all about Believing
They are right
Imprinted in our brokenness…
The struggle
The creed
Loss of euphoria’s lies…
…Year Two is learning to Trust
I say living a sober life is all about Faith
I am right.
The Light asked me to leap…
The Turquoise
The Sea
Free fall where I am destined to be…
…Year Three is my Hope
A note to my four children:
No matter what….
I will always love you.
Whatever comes your way, I’ll be supporting, loving and praying for you.
I am forever on your side, through your success and failure, I will always love you
Whatever you may become in this life is beyond my grandest imagination…
No matter the manifestation, I will be your biggest fan.
Your Dreams will become my own, and I shall fight when you are too tired to go to battle.
Love always, Mom
Consider the infinite beauty of holding the perfect baby in your arms after a long arduous labor. In that earth-shattering moment where you were physically connected just moments before, it is hard to embrace that they may embark on a life adventure that you didn’t foresee for them.
I’ve raised a son, he is eighteen, graduated third in his senior class of hundreds and he is absolutely one of the great love’s of my life born of my body, my heart, and my soul.
Caleb is currently at North Central University in Minneapolis, Minnesota. In case you haven’t heard of this private university, it is known globally for its music pastoral program. As a matter of fact, Prince himself utilized the high-tech studio on a regular basis to record and practice when he was still alive. My boy dreamed, trained endlessly, but most importantly followed the calling on his life.
For those of you who know my son, Caleb, he is a mere genius. I can list his many accolades but to not seem prideful (because I’ll admit I am) I’ll stick to the topic.
When Caleb came to accept Jesus Christ as his personal savior he was teaching himself the guitar. Our family had recently experienced a second deviating loss of a sibling of Caleb’s within a short time frame. My boy lost two infant brothers back to back. Two graves, two shoebox coffins that forced a young man who never felt emotion embarked on a chasm of eternal anger or possibly a God-given outlet. Secretly I prayed for us all (to a God I had myself rebuked for years after leaving Him twenty years prior). Caleb found the wonderful and powerful outlet of music. At the time he was in the Medical Science Academy at his high school that was acclaimed for producing doctors and engineers. Both of which my boy could become, as a matter of fact, this kid could be anything he wanted to be.
One dark night as I did laundry, Caleb ate his dinner after a long night of leading the youth in worship at our local church he summoned the courage to declare his purpose to me.
“Mom.”
“Yes, Caleb?” I stated after putting together an impossible puzzle known as matching socks.
“I feel God is calling me to be a Music Pastor.”
Great pause took place in my heart. Caleb could be anything, ANYTHING in this world, and succeed in that endeavor past the stars. His IQ is off the charts, his ACT scores through the roof, and his writing ability clearly announces his feelings, facts, and heart in a fluid and concise manner. In that, he wants to go into the ministry? To make a menial living, and live a life of constant and at times unappreciated service. I look over at my sixteen-year-old man-child as he eats his dinner prepared with love and sacrifice by his stepdad, and all I could see on his face was a look of concern, deeply wanting approval.
…Of what I’d say. What I’d think, how I’d react. All I could do was swell with a pride matched by one of the greatest of moments in my history. For instead of focusing on money and stature, he was following a deep, intense, and at times very challenging calling on his life. I could barely tether in my smile as I answer him:
“Son, do what fulfills you. You can always make money, you can never get back a purpose not served. God will provide if you follow your calling. Don’t find yourself trapped by expectations of what you are supposed to be. Be…Just be what you are called to be.”
He is studying music at a renowned school of worship in Minneapolis, Minnesota at this moment.
My second son, Cameron is gifted with visuals, behind the scenes talent, as the captain of the camera he has an acute artistic ability. He has an eye for the camera and his ability makes me shiver. His love for his family forces me to marvel as he offers me emotional comfort and wise words, I would have never expected from my own child. Cam has been my confidant, my rock, and the one who I can always count on. His ability has endless possibilities, past the confines of any insecurity that we all hold deep within.
Cameron volunteers at his church doing the technical aspects that allow the service to rock out and is a leader in his youth group. But mostly, he meets the heart of the youth that look up to him, he joins with people where they are, he cancels plans that mean the world to him in order to minister to someone who needs him more than his “fun” plans coincide with. My Cameron, my darling gift of a son has a greater purpose than I could have ever imagined. I asked him one day, “what do you foresee in your future?
He simply answered,
“I don’t know yet, but definitely something in the ministry.”
I once saw him directing films in Hollywood, following his starlit dreams of fame and fortune. Yet, God called my second son to be His and serve His people.
My two little one’s futures will transpire as they grow in the goodness and trials God has in store for them. Although, my eight-year-old son Trasen already has a passion for the word. After summer camp the pastor told me he begged to read his Bible with his flashlight every night before bed. He also received the “Wisdom” award at Spring Hill Camp.
Lilia and Trasen shall see the magnitude of greatness they are called into in due time.
I’ve always read a children’s book to my kids called:
I Love You, Stinky Face.
At the beginning of the book, the mother tells her child, “I love you, my wonderful child.” ~But the child has some questions, and valid ones at that.
It tells a story of a child asking his beloved mother, would you still love me if….I’m something different than what you want me to be.
What if I’m was an alien, a one-eyed monster, a big ugly ape, or a skunk with a stinky face?
Would you still love me then?
The mother answers, I will love you and I will provide the needs you have no matter where they may take you.
The mama of the one-eyed monster read bedtime stories until his one big eye fell asleep, the ape she fed a banana birthday cake and the skunk she gave a great big bubble bath. She met the child’s needs despite uncertain and unexpected circumstances. I mean in all reality no one really wants a one-eyed monster for a child, but if I had one I’d love it with all my being. It’s translated into an unconditional love that a mother can exude, the kind of love that transcends time, situations, and struggle.
After reading this book that is tethered and worn after four children worth of bedtime stories, it gave me great hesitation reflecting on my current struggles.
My oldest baby has grown up and he is making his way into the world as I’ve always dreamed he would. All of God’s endless possibilities are at his footsteps.
But as far as me…I feel left behind.
It spreads through a familiar feeling of abandonment; my greatest nightmare, my most abundant personal parental reality, as to this day…my father is absent. And my mother…well it’s very complicated, to say the least.
Has Caleb abandoned me? Of course not! He has followed God’s gracious path towards the greatness He has planned for him. Caleb has to find his wings, his greater purpose to fulfill all he is called to be.
But I’m home. Without his beautiful song echoing throughout my home and my heart.
Has he left me? No.
Is he gone? Yes.
Do you love me, God, even though I’m a skunk that needs a big ole bubble bath?
A one-eyed monster that needs help reading her bedtime story?
God says, YES my child I love you no matter what, in spite of your failure, disparage, or in times of deep loss. Even if it is the healthiest kind, such as your adult son leaving.
Caleb is done being my child under my roof that I worked so hard to grow up, Cameron is on the brinks. I’ve found myself in the midst of what some call a mid-life crisis, having cut my hair and gaining fifteen pounds, and at times being tugged at to fall back on unhealthy coping mechanisms, I cling to God begging Him to not take His love away from me. Even in the midst of not living up to what I know He has in store for me I’m contemplating how to figure out this new life, new dynamic, and major transition, I have to ask Him what if today I were a slimy green alien would he still want and love me?
And do you know what my Father in Heaven says to me?
I will always love you,
Stinky Face.
I discovered yesterday that a poem of my mine hit the New York Times Best Sellers List 25 years ago…hours after I feared releasing this blog for fear of losing love due to an interrupt to succeed. Yup that is my reality. You don’t win you lose.
When incarcerated, isolation is often used as one of the worst possible forms of punishment a criminal can receive. Torture techniques include placing people in holes of darkness completely alone, depleted of any interaction with another person for extended periods of time to break the spirit of humanity.
Being alone can be more dreadful more than death.
When I became a full-time author two years ago I was on the precipice my greatest dream coming true. When I was six years old I began writing anything and everything coming to my heart a rapid pace I would grab my pencil to put into expression my conflicted painstaking experiences. Through the darkness of my tormented and lonely childhood, God gave me a precious gift, and a means to navigate unthinkable situations.
Needless to say having the ability to publish two books in fourteen months is something that I am very proud of. My memoir ‘The Return to Happiness’ hit bestseller lists on Amazon, ibooks and Barnes and Noble, and Kobo. MORE importantly miraculously, my words have helped thousands and thousands of women all over the world giving a voice to the devastating grief of pregnancy and infant loss. God once again used my torrent of torture to flow vastly into the form of words, yet this time healing others, not just myself. What a magnificent God we serve.
But it wasn’t all celebration cakes and congratulations on Facebook, I faced the darkest time in my adult life while birthing my dream.
The first six months of pursuing my most coveted aspiration came with a lofty price that has the ability to haunt me until I meet Jesus. I (unknowingly at the time) sentenced myself the most horrid punishment of maltreatment…isolation.
For those of you who don’t know me personally, I am the infante definition of an extrovert and a complete and total spaz. I thrive off of people, I love (most) everything about God’s people. The joy or sorrow in their eyes is my goal to discover the reason of either. Two is always greater than one in times of celebration or despair.
As you can see isolation isn’t beneficially for anyone, especially for a person like myself. Alone, sheltered, and wrapped up in my own fictional and nonfictional world I fell into the darkest depression and dependence on alcohol and prescription medication that I ever had faced. Anxiety and depression have always taunted me as I have dealt with abandonment, abuse of the worst kind, a son diagnosed with a chronic illness at four and two back to back second-trimester pregnancy losses. In prefacing that I have dealt with some mental health issues goes without strong merit.
I’ll never forget my first glass of wine. A magnificent feeling overtook my mind and body, but mostly the pivotal escape from inner darkness and the child that always felt left behind is what continued to call my name to the lies of the bottle. The girl who saw too much, the forsaken and tormented version of my inner child was sedated and finally left numbed. It was the most intensely wonderful thing that I had ever injected into my body. And I didn’t care if it was wrong. I simply loved that I could not feel.
Labels kill the over achiever as floods wipe out the innocent. I never wanted to admit my poison because I wanted so desperately to be loved.
I never became a raging alcoholic in those years of young adulthood. Thankfully I never received a DUI, or put my kids or myself in danger, or lost a job. People drink and it is widely acceptable even marketed as a way to overcome a really bad day. I was successful in many of my areas that in enabled me to somewhat cover up my guilt with my many outlandish accomplishments (yup I’m that humble) LOL. A definite result of my distorted childhood was the need to please and to receive love, therefore, I was 110% or nothing. If I was triumphant than I was loveable.
In that, it is pertinent I add a few of the prodigious things I did in my life before I drop the biggest bombshell to you all that I’ve managed to keep hidden for two years:
All of those things I didn’t accomplish on my own. I once had a deeply rooted relationship with Jesus and loved my Lord more than myself. When I left Him I still continued to soar, yet slowly crumbled deeper than the sky could lift me up.On the cliff of greatness in 2014 looking off into the sunset of finally becoming a published author I knew this would top anything else I had done in my life. Yet I was only touching the surface of my journey back to God, deeply I was falling vastly into depression and drinking. I was alone. Because I chose isolation. From church from God, from friends. I was too busy building my business, writing my books, and well for lack of better words trying to drown my sorrows.
I ended up drinking myself into a horrible mess, dipping deeper and darker into depression. I called a suicide help line one night. I felt so lost, my dad had left…again….my past was ruining me, haunting me, nightmares made my turmoil happen over and over every night so I’d stay up all night working and numbing myself into a place where my sleep wouldn’t hit the stage of dreams. The police came to my house at three am to make sure I wasn’t going to hurt myself, waking my husband up to attest to the fact that I wouldn’t kill myself was one of my darkest moments. The fear in his eyes was enough. Enough to find the inner will to fight the greatest storm of my life.
A week after I called the suicide hotline I hit it. The cement wall holding the ability to crack my skull open and leave misery-drenched in the form of red, fluid that holds the breath of death, with no hope of reconciliation.
I decided to quit drinking cold turkey soon after a dreaded night to my realization that I wouldn’t have reacted that way if I had been sober. I mean really, me in a screaming match? Nope, not reality, not truth, not the grace God has instilled in me.
The whole next day, horribly hung over, I laid in my bed alone, I covered the windows with the darkest of blankets and cried. I shook with withdrawal symptoms and when my older boys got home from school I instructed them to come up as I had to tell them something.
They entered my room sorrowful from the sheer greeting of a black room and a clearly sick mom. They had no idea my drinking had gotten out of control as I was the master of deception. Remember, if I fail I’m not loved. It’s what my parents taught me. What else would I know?
I told my boys that I had an altercation with our neighbors and some changes were on the horizon. My oldest son Caleb said, “Mom you need to get involved in church. You need community, I’m worried about you because I know you and this isn’t you.” Caleb looked around the dark sullen room and my listless body still in bed at 4 pm with compassion and concern.
My oldest son Caleb said, “Mom you need to get involved in church. You need community, I’m worried about you because I know you and this isn’t you.” He peered upon the dark sullen room and my listless body still in bed at 4 pm with compassion and concern.
Yet the only thing that was was in me was anger.
Church?
God!?
A God who only took from me, who wrecked me taking my two infant boys, Caleb’s health, my innocence, my father? The love I yearned for but never received from my mother. NO WAY would I ever serve Him again. I was so faithful in my youth and He still gave me nothing but adult years of suffering.
My children left heartbroken seeing their mother who was usually strong lying on a bed that had the stench of death. The woman who they watched make dreams turn into reality was truly giving up. I can’t even imagine the pain I placed on their young hearts.
Twenty-four hours after my last drink I went into delirium tremens (DT’s) which is a possible, fatal condition caused by severe alcohol withdrawal. I write in more detail in my upcoming book about how this felt, but I can paraphrase and say it was like a nightmarish light show that was evil instead of in celebration. Streamers fell from the sky in a brilliance of color, but it didn’t feel like the fourth of July it felt like the end of life. I reached up to grab what seemed real only to see it dissipate in the confines of my pale hands. Rock bottom never looked so colorful and felt so regretful.
The next morning being the hypochondriac I am, I googled ‘hallucinations after ceasing alcohol’. Of course, every site said get yourself to an emergency room because you could die
Deep inside me, I knew I didn’t actually want to go to be with the Jesus yet, so I had my husband Alan take me to the local ER. Staff became serious extremely fast as I was admitted, and I was placed on a “seizure” watch in fear that I could seize and die.
My initial fleeting moment of wanting to die weeks earlier could become a reality and in the grips of such deafening possibility of truth I held on like I had never fought in my life before.
I saw Alan.
Caleb.
Cameron.
Trasen.
Lilia.
Mostly I saw me.
My potential. What I meant to people.
My smile.
My love, soul, gifts, and deep torment that can be used to gift those going through the same.
I fought so hard I felt like my hero Rocky Balboa after his fight with the Russian. Beaten, yet ultimately blanketed with a title belt around my waist.
The doctors at that point recommended rehab for dual diagnosis depression and alcoholism, with my pride fighting to hold me back…I went.
Being in a facility akin to the darkest of places a person can go was a creation within my being I wasn’t accustomed to. Giving in to failure, not clinging to my success. I heard stories much more tortuous than mine. I saw heroin addicts, suicide attempts, schizophrenics, deeply depressed people and severe eating disorders.
And in that my chains were broken, for we are all at the throne. We all struggle no matter our life path.
All of the unlovely sat at the table we ate our meals at and we loved one another, while Jesus sat at the head of the table I actually felt Him and knew through His stripes we were healed.
Eight painfully beneficial days later I left and something on the last day during one of our group meetings we were told that seventy percent of us will relapse. \
Seventy percent of you will fail.
In essence, that means thirty percent win this battle. And I’m really good at winning, my prideful self-self-declared.
But instead of victory, this time,I became a statistic. One month later I was back.
I had become the seventy percent.
In the months that followed my second visit to Rogers Memorial Hospital, I rewrote both of my books that were crafted in a non-authentic clear-minded way. I completely stopped drinking and went on this amazing adventure that a year later brought me back to my best friend, Jesus.
My son was insightful in giving me powerful words from the throne of God that we thrive when we have people rallying around us not trying to cope on our own. Two are always better than one.
We need each other to thrive, grow, prosper, and be kept accountable.
In this increasingly hard time in my life with my Caleb going to college and feeling like a quarter of my heart is in Minneapolis for the first time in a while I’ve been struggling.
God has called me to greatness, He has predestined me to write my story of addiction and childhood/adult abandonment and how I overcame impossible odds to find my destiny Yet, first I have to arrive.
Again I stand at the brinks of a multitude of choices to deal with transition and the pulling question of which direction will I take? Will I allow evil to spit the ugliness of sin on my face or will I shower myself with the grace of a Savior filed with ultimate possibility?
In my young life abandonment meant if I wasn’t the picture of perfection I wasn’t loved. In my mid-life my parents exude the same standard. For I’ve been shown that if I mess up, or am less than righteous, love simply leaves. It is gone, sometimes forever. That is why sharing this with you all is so hard for me. For I am flawed, and so blessed to have you all hugging me and praying for me in a church that is anointed and blessed, yet if you know my darkness will you still offer me light? This hasn’t been my history so it is hard to grasp that it could be my future.
And I do know that my bullet point of my greatest accomplishments mean nothing, yet I needed to state them for fear of loss. Of love, fellowship, and YOU. Each and everyone of you who meet my eyes on a weekly basis and pray with me when I leave the service to grab a tissue because I miss my oldest boy. I love each and everyone of you. And I pray you still love me, even though I’m flawed, gravitated toward forgetting, and a broken child of God.
My shame in the perils of escape through drugs and alcohol have defined me for many years. Success that many will never see has also defined me for many years. And the God in my soul says NO! None of it matters, success or failure He accepts me and hugs me like the father I long for.
Jesus is the King and through it is well. Simply put… it is well with my soul.
Friends, I will NEVER be perfect, but I will forever need love. In my life my idea of my perfections have been rewarded with love, and mistakes that are punished with the very worst form of torture; isolation. And sadly, as this was done to me by my parents as a child and still as an adult, it was what I gave myself in 2014.
If I’m writing books or in rehab, I’m flawed, ugly with shame and still have the ability to fall. So many thanks to you to my new family at Journey Church. I even obtained the mentor I have been praying for through her testimony one Sunday at church, of her struggle of parental abandonment and addiction. Since then we meet regularly, she keeps me accountable and Alan and I are attending our first life group with her on Thursday…
That is community!! The essence of where two or more is gathered greatness is imminent. Isolation provokes death for your soul and body, yet communion invites prosperity and more joy than we can conjure up in our minds.
The chasm of greatness brings me to the soaring cliff of stamina where we all have the ability to jump to the other side of healing. That we are forever free, falling into the hands of grace and eternal forgiveness.
Beyond blessed , I wrote a poem 26 years ago that was asked to be in an anthology of poetry that hit New York Times Bestseller Lists. Little did I know when I wrote this blog blog the other day that this had occurred. I wanted to reveal my real self, my struggle and my accomplishments to show how great our God is in in the midst of both.
When incarcerated, isolation is often used as one of the worst possible forms of punishment a criminal can receive. Torture techniques include placing people in holes of darkness completely alone, depleted of any interaction with another person for extended periods of time to break the spirit of humanity.
Being alone can be more dreadful more than death.
When I became a full-time author two years ago I was on the precipice my greatest dream coming true. When I was six years old I began writing anything and everything coming to my heart a rapid pace I would grab my pencil to put into expression my conflicted painstaking experiences. Through the darkness of my tormented and lonely childhood, God gave me a precious gift, and a means to navigate unthinkable situations.
Needless to say having the ability to publish two books in fourteen months is something that I am very proud of. My memoir ‘The Return to Happiness’ hit bestseller lists on Amazon, ibooks and Barnes and Noble, and Kobo. MORE importantly miraculously, my words have helped thousands and thousands of women all over the world giving a voice to the devastating grief of pregnancy and infant loss. God once again used my torrent of torture to flow vastly into the form of words, yet this time healing others, not just myself. What a magnificent God we serve.
But it wasn’t all celebration cakes and congratulations on Facebook, I faced the darkest time in my adult life while birthing my dream.
The first six months of pursuing my most coveted aspiration came with a lofty price that has the ability to haunt me until I meet Jesus. I (unknowingly at the time) sentenced myself the most horrid punishment of maltreatment…isolation.
For those of you who don’t know me personally, I am the infante definition of an extrovert and a complete and total spaz. I thrive off of people, I love (most) everything about God’s people. The joy or sorrow in their eyes is my goal to discover the reason of either. Two is always greater than one in times of celebration or despair.
As you can see isolation isn’t beneficially for anyone, especially for a person like myself. Alone, sheltered, and wrapped up in my own fictional and nonfictional world I fell into the darkest depression and dependence on alcohol and prescription medication that I ever had faced. Anxiety and depression have always taunted me as I have dealt with abandonment, abuse of the worst kind, a son diagnosed with a chronic illness at four and two back to back second-trimester pregnancy losses. In prefacing that I have dealt with some mental health issues goes without strong merit.
I’ll never forget my first glass of wine. A magnificent feeling overtook my mind and body, but mostly the pivotal escape from inner darkness and the child that always felt left behind is what continued to call my name to the lies of the bottle. The girl who saw too much, the forsaken and tormented version of my inner child was sedated and finally left numbed. It was the most intensely wonderful thing that I had ever injected into my body. And I didn’t care if it was wrong. I simply loved that I could not feel.
Labels kill the over achiever as floods wipe out the innocent. I never wanted to admit my poison because I wanted so desperately to be loved.
I never became a raging alcoholic in those years of young adulthood. Thankfully I never received a DUI, or put my kids or myself in danger, or lost a job. People drink and it is widely acceptable even marketed as a way to overcome a really bad day. I was successful in many of my areas that in enabled me to somewhat cover up my guilt with my many outlandish accomplishments (yup I’m that selfish). A definite result of my distorted childhood was the need to please and to receive love, therefore, I was 110% or nothing. If I was triumphant than I was loveable.
In that, it is pertinent I add a few of the prodigious things I did in my life before I drop the biggest bombshell to you all that I’ve managed to keep hidden for two years:
All of those things I didn’t accomplish on my own. I once had a deeply rooted relationship with Jesus and loved my Lord more than myself. When I left Him I still continued to soar, yet slowly crumbled deeper than the sky could lift me up.On the cliff of greatness in 2014 looking off into the sunset of finally becoming a published author I knew this would top anything else I had done in my life. Yet I was only touching the surface of my journey back to God, deeply I was falling vastly into depression and drinking. I was alone. Because I chose isolation. From church from God, from friends. I was too busy building my business, writing my books, and well for lack of better words trying to drown my sorrows.
I ended up drinking myself into a horrible mess, dipping deeper and darker into depression. I called a suicide help line one night. I felt so lost, my dad had left…again….my past was ruining me, haunting me, nightmares made my turmoil happen over and over every night so I’d stay up all night working and numbing myself into a place where my sleep wouldn’t hit the stage of dreams. The police came to my house at three am to make sure I wasn’t going to hurt myself, waking my husband up to attest to the fact that I wouldn’t kill myself was one of my darkest moments. The fear in his eyes was enough. Enough to find the inner will to fight the greatest storm of my life.
A week after I called the suicide hotline I hit it. The cement wall holding the ability to crack my skull open and leave misery-drenched in the form of red, fluid that holds the breath of death, with no hope of reconciliation.
I decided to quit drinking cold turkey soon after a dreaded night to my realization that I wouldn’t have reacted that way if I had been sober. I mean really, me in a screaming match? Nope, not reality, not truth, not the grace God has instilled in me.
The whole next day, horribly hung over, I laid in my bed alone, I covered the windows with the darkest of blankets and cried. I shook with withdrawal symptoms and when my older boys got home from school I instructed them to come up as I had to tell them something.
They entered my room sorrowful from the sheer greeting of a black room and a clearly sick mom. They had no idea my drinking had gotten out of control as I was the master of deception. Remember, if I fail I’m not loved. It’s what my parents taught me. What else would I know?
I told my boys that I had an altercation with our neighbors and some changes were on the horizon. My oldest son Caleb said, “Mom you need to get involved in church. You need community, I’m worried about you because I know you and this isn’t you.” Caleb looked around the dark sullen room and my listless body still in bed at 4 pm with compassion and concern.
My oldest son Caleb said, “Mom you need to get involved in church. You need community, I’m worried about you because I know you and this isn’t you.” He peered upon the dark sullen room and my listless body still in bed at 4 pm with compassion and concern.
Yet the only thing that was was in me was anger.
Church?
God!?
A God who only took from me, who wrecked me taking my two infant boys, Caleb’s health, my innocence, my father? The love I yearned for but never received from my mother. NO WAY would I ever serve Him again. I was so faithful in my youth and He still gave me nothing but adult years of suffering.
My children left heartbroken seeing their mother who was usually strong lying on a bed that had the stench of death. The woman who they watched make dreams turn into reality was truly giving up. I can’t even imagine the pain I placed on their young hearts.
Twenty-four hours after my last drink I went into delirium tremens (DT’s) which is a possible, fatal condition caused by severe alcohol withdrawal. I write in more detail in my upcoming book about how this felt, but I can paraphrase and say it was like a nightmarish light show that was evil instead of in celebration. Streamers fell from the sky in a brilliance of color, but it didn’t feel like the fourth of July it felt like the end of life. I reached up to grab what seemed real only to see it dissipate in the confines of my pale hands. Rock bottom never looked so colorful and felt so regretful.
The next morning being the hypochondriac I am, I googled ‘hallucinations after ceasing alcohol’. Of course, every site said get yourself to an emergency room because you could die
Deep inside me, I knew I didn’t actually want to go to be with the Jesus yet, so I had my husband Alan take me to the local ER. Staff became serious extremely fast as I was admitted, and I was placed on a “seizure” watch in fear that I could seize and die.
My initial fleeting moment of wanting to die weeks earlier could become a reality and in the grips of such deafening possibility of truth I held on like I had never fought in my life before.
I saw Alan.
Caleb.
Cameron.
Trasen.
Lilia.
Mostly I saw me.
My potential. What I meant to people.
My smile.
My love, soul, gifts, and deep torment that can be used to gift those going through the same.
I fought so hard I felt like my hero Rocky Balboa after his fight with the Russian. Beaten, yet ultimately blanketed with a title belt around my waist.
The doctors at that point recommended rehab for dual diagnosis depression and alcoholism, with my pride fighting to hold me back…I went.
Being in a facility akin to the darkest of places a person can go was a creation within my being I wasn’t accustomed to. Giving in to failure, not clinging to my success. I heard stories much more tortuous than mine. I saw heroin addicts, suicide attempts, schizophrenics, deeply depressed people and severe eating disorders.
And in that my chains were broken, for we are all at the throne. We all struggle no matter our life path.
All of the unlovely sat at the table we ate our meals at and we loved one another, while Jesus sat at the head of the table I actually felt Him and knew through His stripes we were healed.
Eight painfully beneficial days later I left and something on the last day during one of our group meetings we were told that seventy percent of us will relapse. \
Seventy percent of you will fail.
In essence, that means thirty percent win this battle. And I’m really good at winning, my prideful self self-declared.
But instead of victory, this time,I became a statistic. One month later I was back.
I had become the seventy percent.
In the months that followed my second visit to Rogers Memorial Hospital, I rewrote both of my books that were crafted in a non-authentic clear-minded way. I completely stopped drinking and went on this amazing adventure that a year later brought me back to my best friend, Jesus.
My son was insightful in giving me powerful words from the throne of God that we thrive when we have people rallying around us not trying to cope on our own. Two are always better than one.
We need each other to thrive, grow prosper, and be kept accountable.
In this increasingly hard time in my life with my Caleb going to college and feeling like a quarter of my heart is in Minneapolis for the first time in a while I’ve been struggling.
God has called me to greatness, He has predestined me to write my story of addiction and childhood/adult abandonment and how I overcame impossible odds to find my destiny Yet, first I have to arrive.
Again I stand at the brinks of a multitude of choices to deal with transition and the pulling question of which direction will I take? Will I allow evil to spit the ugliness of sin on my face or will I shower myself with the grace of a Savior filed with ultimate possibility?
In my young life abandonment meant if I wasn’t the picture of perfection I wasn’t loved. In my mid-life my parents exude the same standard. For I’ve been shown that if I mess up, or am less than righteous, love simply leaves. It is gone, sometimes forever. That is why sharing this with you all is so hard for me. For I am flawed, and so blessed to have you all hugging me and praying for me in a church that is anointed and blessed, yet if you know my darkness will you still offer me light? This hasn’t been my history so it is hard to grasp that it could be my future.
And I do know that my bullet point of my greatest accomplishments mean nothing, yet I needed to state them for fear of loss. Of love, fellowship, and YOU. Each and everyone of you who meet my eyes on a weekly basis and pray with me when I leave the service to grab a tissue because I miss my oldest boy. I love each and everyone of you. And I pray you still love me, even though I’m flawed, gravitated toward forgetting, and a broken child of God.
My shame in the perils of escape through drugs and alcohol have defined me for many years. Success that many will never see has also defined me for many years. And the God in my soul says NO! None of it matters, success or failure He accepts me and hugs me like the father I long for.
Jesus is the King and through it is well. Simply put… it is well with my soul.
Friends, I will NEVER be perfect, but I will forever need love. In my life my idea of my perfections have been rewarded with love, and mistakes that are punished with the very worst form of torture; isolation. And sadly, as this was done to me by my parents as a child and still as an adult, it was what I gave myself in 2014.
If I’m writing books or in rehab, I’m flawed, ugly with shame and still have the ability to fall. So many thanks to you to my new family at Journey Church. I even obtained the mentor I have been praying for through her testimony one Sunday at church, of her struggle of parental abandonment and addiction. Since then we meet regularly, she keeps me accountable and Alan and I are attending our first life group with her on Thursday…
That is community!! The essence of where two or more are gathered greatness is imminent. Isolation provokes death for your soul and body, yet communion invites prosperity and more joy than we can conjure up in our minds.
The chasm of greatness brings me to the soaring cliff of stamina where we all have the ability to jump to the other side of healing. That we are forever free, falling into the hands of grace and eternal forgiveness.
A letter to my oldest son who is on the brinks of leaving home and going to college. Join me as I give him my ten tips that I have learned when I was in his shoes.
To My Oldest Boy,
After turning forty nearly two years ago, I found myself completely perplexed as to why people find such a milestone to be a negative impact on their lives. I mean, I felt like I was chasing a lifelong dream of becoming an author, had a beautiful marriage, wonderful children who were equally making their dreams come true, and still felt and looked super young. I just didn’t get the whole hating on forty thing…
But what I’ve discovered your last year in high school, Caleb, is that it isn’t an age that manifests itself as a presence, yet a moment such as you graduating high school that can carry such a heavy burden. This has truly been a year of reflection for me~yet also a year of beautiful discovery. I’ve pondered your eighteen years as if it were a test I was studying for or a book I was researching to write. It was as if I had all of a sudden woke up out my normalcy to discover that “normal” was about to change, BIG TIME. I would no longer have all four of my babies under one roof. But more so, I wouldn’t be apart of your everyday life. I mean, come on, that is a GIANT pill for a mother to swallow. Letting go is the ache of the heart, the impossible filtration of the mind, and the awkward pull of the universe. People have struggled with letting go for as long as God has had us walking this strange place called Earth.
Trying to wrap my mind around the fact that I am old enough to have a child heading to college, I;ve come up with ten things that I think you should take with you. So here are my top ten things you should experience in this next exciting, personal roadmap years of your life:
So, my son, as I drop you off in two weeks at the doorstep of your next adventure, and I travel back to find my new normalcy, please take with you, my heart, my words, and yes my blogs. No, just kidding, my life experiences, that in essence have always existed to share with you and your siblings. My ventures as well as yours, are meant to grow, root and propel the remarkable people you will encounter in times of greatness and in moments of struggle. My sweet oldest boy, that is what life is all about.
I love you always and forever,
~Mom
God’s beauty comes in so many forms we miss them every day. What if your ugliest of secrets could be used to be His most beautiful of testimonies? Join me in finding our inner wish flower!
Every now and then in life, a wish has the potential to manifest into reality. Possibly, a plush garden that we are set free in and given free reign to grow and prosper. But in all reality, nothing of the sort comes without a lot of hard work dedication and sacrifice. A short time ago I clearly heard the voice of God telling me that He has extraordinary plans for me…perhaps a stunning garden of my own to dance and sing in if only I was ready….
I saw a vision so magnificent chills prickled my skin to the point of ache. My eyes filled with tears filtered through a colander crafted by Hope. The kind of desire only God’s promises can bring, those created with the purest of gold. The sun formulated shadows on the stunning Wisconsin landscape as I envisioned my dream turning into reality, for as we all know God doesn’t lie. Holding on to the peak that God had just given me, I imagined myself right where my Maker had told me I could be…
But under one very important condition, one that I wasn’t sure I could meet.
I had to give up my last vice, the one that had been plaguing me for the better part of my adult life. My poison, my escape, my greatest lie yet what I oddly considered to be my very best friend.
God clearly told me “no more one foot in, one foot out!” He declared that in order for me to fulfill the destiny He has laid out in front of me I had to stop blowing on the wish flower hoping my dreams would come true. It was time for me to become the wish flower.
Early in springtime, our green grass is filled with bright yellow weeds we call dandelions. Most of us find them to be a hassle, an annoyance, and something that eventually turns into a feathery mess that only creates millions of more ugly weeds.
Each and every one of my four children in the innocence of childhood found such “ugliness” to be a flower that they could pick for me. When my three boys were little they would run to me with a handful of the golden weeds, proudly handing me what they saw as a dozen yellow roses. Of course, my eyes lit up and I kissed them harder than they liked. I’d put those darn, hideous things in a cup of water and place them where all could see. They were flowers from my sons after all.
Recently my youngest child, my one, and only daughter discovered the brilliant abundance of flowers everywhere her eyes could scan! The same glory shone on her face as she picked as many as her small hands could hold to present to me. I smiled and warmly held on to the memory of my older boys doing so as preschoolers and finding myself so blessed that I got to be the recipient of dozens and dozens of dandelions one last time.
As the weeds went to seed I taught my daughter to pick one, close your eyes tight, make a wish, then blow! We had so much fun running in the meadows captivating our wishes and watching them fly in the wind. A few days later my daughter and I were on a walk and she declared with her sweet angel voice: “Mommy, let’s pick the wish flower.” As she tugged on my hand dragging me over to a dandelion that was resigned to nothing but a bunch of white seeds held on by a frail material that would scatter with the slightest of winds, she picked one for herself and then one for me.
“Blow, mommy, blow the wish flower.”
In sweet unison we sent the seeds out to pasture with all the breath we could muster. Fragments of the once robust weed were sent in every direction to cultivate the next season of the ugly weeds life.
I took great pause looking at a stinky old weed through the eyes of my children, and in that moment I realized how similar I am to that “flower”.
Often times I feel less than desirable and misplaced. An annoyance that shouldn’t be adored as a “real” flower, but merely one that only looks like one from a distance.
Standing there watching the tiny buds of future life fly in the sky destined for their landing place I realized that is how God uses us. He takes our “yuk” our undesirable and unlovely things to plant the earth with His mercy, grace, and beauty for all to look on in awe. I’ve discovered through struggle and past turmoil that our past where we no longer live, but where we can be used in tremendous ways.
Of course, the catch twenty-two is we can’t live there anymore if we are destined to do the work God has in store for us. We have to move past the comfortability that holds us back, whatever the last straw is, we have to break free and move into the light and testimony of the calling He has on our lives.
A few days later I did it! I leaped into the arms of promise and purpose giving up my crutch and truly began living, soaring toward the woman God has in store for me. I’m ready for Him to breathe new life into me and blow my seeds all over this world. For every part of me, broken and beautiful is wonderfully and fearfully made and God has promised me that He will use it all for His glory.
For as a daughter of God, I am His wish flower.
My oldest son was given a grave diagnosis 14 years ago, insulin injections for life. Since then he has defeated the lies his sickness told him and has risen to the call God had for his life.
My oldest son Caleb’s job on this earth is to prove adversity as lies and disparage. And he has done so further than I could have ever imagined after he grew sicker than I could have dreamed at the tender age of four.
A season that threatened to take my first born son away gutted me deeper than anything had up to that point in my life. Caleb was four years old and deeply energetic and gregarious. His smile was larger than the world and his body seemed invincible. Until it wasn’t.
He ate all the time, yet lost weight. He was tired yet couldn’t keep his eyes open and vomited more than he didn’t. My boy was sick. And I was scared. More like terrified.
This was before “Google” and “WebMD.” The days where we simply had to trust our doctors, and they were telling me he was okay. But my son was far from okay, he was leaving us and I knew it. I feared cancer, I felt the worst knock on my door that whispered to me, “you are going to bury a child.”
I demanded a blood test.
Indeed, he was sick, he was declared a type one diabetic, insulin dependent for life.
My immediate response was relief, I get to keep him! I don’t have to bury a child, he can live with diabetes!
After a week-long stay in the hospital nursing my dying son’s body back to life we faced a scary yet comforting reality; that our lives would never be the same, but we did in fact, get to keep him. He wasn’t leaving us, he just had to try a lot harder than other kids who weren’t burdened with constant insulin shots and finger pokes. Endless carb counting and ketoacidosis monitoring. I would wake up in sheer panic at 3 am running to his bedroom with a juice box in hand terrified his blood sugar had dipped too low, and more times than I’d like to admit it saved his young life.
Exodus 23:25~Worship the LORD your God, and his blessing will be on your food and water. I will take away sickness from among you.
Cameron his brother closest in age, was his diabetes manager. His dad and I nurtured him to health and held each other up as we grieved the failure of our boy’s body. Later my husband and I divorced and Caleb’s step dad took over the main scheduling of diabetes appointments, insisting that Caleb be placed on the latest technology, an insulin pump. Alan called and called until he found a doctor who could help Caleb in Madison, Wisconsin. We came together as a family, rallied around our Caleb as families do.
June 18, 2002, will always be special. It both saved my son and took something from us, our innocence. But in the midst of struggle and health issues, I can say this…my son has overcome impossible odds.
He was told he couldn’t, yet he said he could.
Caleb is a black belt in Taekwondo…a fighter indeed. He was recently third in his graduating class, winner of more awards than I can count. He is smart, logical, and deeply emotive as God has given him the gift of song.
My son is smarter than 99.999% of his peers, could be a doctor, a lawyer, a chemist, or scholar, yet God has laid upon his heart to be a music pastor.
And I told him to follow his calling. If God says to live a life of touching people’s life through worship and song, it is just as powerful (or more) than performing a surgery.
My boy is on the brinks of his own life. He is ready to go into the next part of his life and he takes his disease with him… as he owns it, it doesn’t own him.
Fourteen years ago we met type one diabetes. We welcomed needles and medicinal liquid into our lives because we had to. But today we are blessed. Simply because we got to keep him.
The world got to keep him. And oh, so many lives he has touched already. And more he will with his heart, drive, and spirit to serve the God he loves and praises every day.
As a mother who loves her babies more than life itself I am left humbled that God chose me to be a type one diabetic mom. I’m honored deeper than you’ll ever know that the world gets to keep my boy, my joy, my first born child who has been chosen for a purpose greater than I could have ever imagined…to defeat the lies of his disease in order to serve his God.
Songs of inspiration…
Caleb wrote this song as an expression of his testimony of strength, grace, and perseverance that God has given him along the way…
Hearing the testimonies of some amazing young people recently made me introspect and consilidate my own story…my reason for praise in midst of darkness.
I was raised in a Christian home. Kinda. My grandparents were my primary caregivers from age four until nine, and we went to church every Sunday morning. Yet I longed for my mom and dad who were too busy living their own lives with their other families to care. At least that is how I felt. And still do.
While doodling on the offering envelope with the smell of oak pews and mold in my essence I caught words in the sermon that yelled the consequences of not knowing Jesus as my personal Savior. This revelation terrified me as I didn’t have a savior and the thought of flesh-eating fire was a little…well…scary.
So I accepted Jesus into my heart in the depths of the night, in the suburbs of Chicago as a little girl who had wide eyes of fear of a God who could abandon her and send her to hell as fast as the night turned to day. It seemed real enough given my circumstances thus far in life.
Fast forward ten years where I was given the opportunity to truly experience Jesus through worship. Music in its truest form has a way of convicting the heaviest of hearts and breaking through the thickest of oppositions.
I was sixteen, passionate, and in love with Jesus, proclaiming His Love and shouting His mercy at every turn. I wrote an award-winning poem, I sang in worship, played my flute to his honor Him and brought the Word of God whenever I was asked in the form of speaking.
I. Was. On fire.
Pain and parental abandonment meant nothing in the face of Christ’s unconditional love and that can be the raw beauty of a life story, the light is outweighed by the darkness. Love gives way to hate and we can be set free…
I met my first husband at Intervarsity Christian Fellowship and we praised our God together. Our testimony alone was the place we were despite the places we had come from. And our spirits were full.
Until tragedy struck our young lives and instead of turning toward Him we fled. Faster than the wind and swifter than a famine. We abandoned our faith in exchange for anger and resentment of a God who had always given us all we needed. We left Him and neglected His Grace because we couldn’t see The Testimony in the face of devastation.
We had a child, a baby boy with black hair and big eyes encompassing possibility that I just couldn’t leave in a mess of complications filled with single parenthood. So I followed the journey of godlessness, believing every last lie I was fed. We were a family filled with love and questions of how God could bring tribulation to good people, and how Jesus could leave us unwashed with His grace?
I lived breathed and knew secularism. It suited me, being a strong independent woman who knew who she was and where she wanted to go…on her own. My future seemed bright and filled with joy and promise. As the enemy screams so you succumb to the lies.
Eventually, divorce came and left me ragged, turmoil knocked at my door and Jesus never felt so far away. I married again, a Canadian with a heart bigger than hearts themselves; just not enough to save me.
Because people never can save us.
We had a baby together in the cold of March and we felt the loveliness that a child comes from. Yet we didn’t praise our God who gave, we simply just didn’t...
Then a year later we lost a baby in the warmth of spring with the songs of birds and promise. Jaden Hope went on to the next and I hated God more now than ever.
“See!” I cried. “You are not my God.” No God would take the one thing I love the most, my children.
Yet, eighteen months later I found out my twenty-three-week old baby boy would die too.
My anger peaked, my faith diminished further into a blur of reality and existence, a place where no one knows which is more powerful.
“This is why I don’t believe!” I bellowed into the night’s sky trying to figure it all out.
Why? Why just why?
He told me that I was not broken that I was filled. And I shouted, “leave me alone, I don’t know what you want from me!”
Days later a dear friend from my youth prophesied over me telling me that God had provision over my life that I would find Him again and be even more of a powerful tool than I was in my youth. My eyes rolled and my heart churned in a cadence of anger. “You are not using me, God, for you have wrecked me. You’ve taken from me. You’ve left me for dead. I hate you.”
Yet I didn’t hate, or regret, or demolish my God. I was finding my way back through His grace.
For He had a plan.
Four years later as I gave birth to a perfectly healthy baby girl in the trenches of a cold December Wisconsin afternoon and then I saw His grace come full circle. The hospital room was filled with people watching the unfolding of God’s promise and Truth as my tears met my husband’s forming a perfect Rainbow, letting us know we will never be stricken by the same tragedy twice and that we had finally met our Grace.
My climb back truly began somewhere in between. My older sons at that time immersed themselves at Journey Church in Kenosha, Wisconsin after I brought them there instinctively after a major life crisis struck.
The sound of song flowed beautifully throughout my home as my oldest son, the black haired baby who had grown up found a passion for music as I had as a teen so many years ago. My second son Cameron bled the Word of God and even though I wanted it back only in small pieces God always had a plan.
They begged us to come to church and I fought it until I just couldn’t deny the gift of grace on my life any longer. The testimony begged to be told, the ending needed to be unveiled. Because God told me one cold February night at Saturday church as Pastor Jordan sang and the angels watched that it was time to come home.
To fulfill the prophesy allowing my life to be used in a greater manner than it was in my youth. It was time, and He told that through my suffering He was using me, waiting for me, but mostly, loving me.
And…He really was all along the way.
Luke 15:32… My son,the father said, ‘you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. But we had to celebrate and be glad because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.”
My life isn’t perfect, I struggle and then I fall. I get it and then I don’t. But through my vision of loss and redemption, I see that my testimony alone is the place I am despite the place I came.
Please enjoy the song that inspired this blog post…and may its words soak into your heart as you overcome odds and fulfill your destiny…
Recently, I went to a Christian woman’s conference hoping to make some new friends. Little did I know I’d end up spending the weekend with some pretty amazing millennials.
The term daughter can bring an uncertain sting to a girl who has begged and pleaded for an eternity to be loved by the hand that created her. At the feet of their own father they cry out, “love me, see me, want me.” But when their cries are fruitless there is a question of validity and an intense breach of trust being forged and often the opening of a lifetime wound.
Recently I attended a women’s conference called Shine in which I was so excited to go to I could barely stand it. Then as it approached I became more and more filled with the fear that haunts us when we least expect it. The foreboding that can hold us back from greatness.
I found myself afraid because I was going to this mega celebration…alone.
My mother always taught me that going at something alone is brave, that it builds character. I’ve tested this theory, this life lesson. I’ve gone to a movie alone, dinner party of one, Starbucks with yours truly, simply to see if anyone would actually see me. And guess what, never once did anyone care that I was in fact, this huge big smile sitting at a table alone. Nope, no one cares. Because we are all so inside ourselves our own complicated mess of complications.
And this created an inner dialogue that was so intense. God would say to me: why do you care that you are alone? For you have me and I created this interestingly smart woman who has all the potential in the world.
Even when I didn’t want to hear it. He was there telling me that I was enough. That I do not need other people to validate me because I am well…in fact a Daughter.
That may be easy to accept when the people who are supposed to validate you, don’t do their jobs.
But often times they don’t. Our fathers, mothers, sisters and brothers can leave us unloved and dry of life-sustaining water for years upon decades. And when that happens waiting on God to provide at a huge women’s conference where everyone going is there with a stunning woman on their arm is somewhat…daunting.
I almost didn’t go.
God asked me, “Why are you doubting?”
I paused. And He read my heart singing:
Seek Bravery, not Fear.
But I’m scared to be alone. I hate not being accepted. I’m insecure even though I may seem larger than life. I am a facade.
No~you are greater than any comparison you will conclude and I will show you as long as you believe, have faith, and go at it alone.
Yet God knowing me, truly reading that I am not the “alone” girl I had been in the child of my past I received a text from an extraordinary young woman later that day.
She said she wanted to sit with me at Shine.
Twenty-three years my junior I wasn’t sure. My inner insecurity said,
“Don’t ruin her fun.”
“You are old.”
“You aren’t, hip, yo.”
“You aren’t good enough.”
“You should be alone because no one really loves you.”
Against my inner demons I texted back,
I’d love that.
And so I embarked on a life-changing weekend sitting with the daughters of our future, the difference makers of the days ahead. The future mothers, friends, wives, leaders, lovers of life that are about to embark on the truth they are being called into.
I can say there is a lot to be spoken of spending time with the generation that follows you.
Looking at the youth ready to face their own opportunities I relished in the excitement their eyes reflected back at me as they shared the call they felt were on their lives.
I met amazing young woman number one who has aspirations of becoming an author and public speaker.
Inspirational strong young woman number two wants to be a midwife specializing in women experiencing miscarriage or stillbirth.
Dynamite girl number three aspires to be a worship pastor, one of the most captivating ways to meet God. And~has a calling on her life to write her life story which involves a broken relationship with her father.
Okay, for those of you who don’t know me, get ready for some provision…
I’m a best selling author and a national public speaker who has spoken in front of thirty thousand people.
I have lost two baby boys, one at eighteen weeks gestation and one at twenty-three both due to chromosomal abnormalities.
And lastly, my oldest son leads worship, touching thousands with his passion and fervor for both music and well…God. And I also have a horribly broken relationship with my father that guts me every day.
Wait…What?!?!
And I thought I was going to this thing by myself?! Are we ever truly alone in this life as long as God is in charge? Resoundingly NO! Our life story runs through and through with a beautiful symphony of a song that weaves in and out past the years of pain and conclusion. It is beauty. It is God. It is a community of women. It breaks barriers of age, judgment, and class. Yet only if we let it. These girls welcomed me and we soaked each other up like precious water after a hundred year drought.
We can learn a little from the youth, can’t we ladies who have lived a little life?
My weekend ended on a high. After I left my girls I paused and decided that I needed to get a few “selfies” with my date for the weekend. Me.
In that, I met two amazing women (a little closer in age to me this time) who had attended the conference together and then an amazing conversation took place. I told them that I came alone. But am leaving knowing I’m never alone, that no matter the demographic or the anticipation, God gives you what you need and what is needed from you.
I told them that it doesn’t matter who I am or what I’ve done that without togetherness it doesn’t work.
I shared with them that I wrote a little book called, The Return to Happiness.
One of the girls said she knows several women who have suffered pregnancy loss and would love to connect them with a resource such as my book.
I cried out, knowing I had been alone losing my babies yet when women unite, it is always better together, stronger, and far more powerful.
I made new friends in that moment and left the weekend behind filled to the rim with love, community, and possibility.
Yet I left with the youth deeply embedded on my heart.
The daughters and I worshiped, loved, and learned from one another far from fear of lost trust, abandonment or pain. Yet gave us more than we could have ever anticipated. Leaving us with an overwhelming joy and praise blanketing us all, knowing that we are in fact better together. Forever.
Overcoming odds, fulfilling destinies... 