Category: My Life

Stepmom Appreciation

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This Sunday, May 19, is Stepmother’s Day. I want to give a shout out to all the women who are working this day out today. When you come into a pre-existing family, there are rules and rituals already established that you are not a part of. It’s never easy but with some help there is hope.

As one warrior to another, let me say that you are more than enough. You not only took on a new marriage and a new love of your life, you promise to love the children that are part of the man you chose. You now represent the majority of families in America, for better or worse. Love them well and know that you are a mentor. They  have two parents and so you aren’t there to replace anyone. You are merely there to mentor, guide, and love. You can do this! Get a great support group. They abound in communities and on the Internet. If you are looking for some help, don’t hesitate to find a good therapist who specializes in step families! I am part of a wonderful group of women who not only visit each other, call each other, and support each other, they are going through the same thing. Some are further along and help you navigate the path more clearly. My stepmom friends have been an absolute godsend to me! I don’t have a clue what I would have done without them. I honestly think my marriage would have been in danger without them. They cheered me on, they loved me through it, they told me when I was wrong, they helped me step back when I was in too deep, and they brought me back from the brink many times. I love them as sisters and mentors!

Today I honor you. You are brave. You are trying. You are amazing to even take on this endeavor. Most of you are not evil, though I’ve met some while not evil, are narcissistic and foolish. That’s an ugly combo. Hopefully that’s not you. I love you and just in case everyone forgets, I wish you happy Stepmother’s Day from the very bottom of my heart!

 

For So Long

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For so long 
You and me been finding each other for so long 
And the feeling that I feel for you is more then strong, girl 
Take it from me 
If you give a little more then you’re asking for 
Your love will turn the key ~ Lyrics to I Just Want To Be Your Everything by Andy Gibb circa 1977ish

When I was 12 I was in love with Andy Gibb, the younger brother of the Bee Gees. I wanted to marry him when I grew up and this song was one day going to be sung to me by Andy himself. Of course Andy Gibb was quite a bit older than I was and didn’t know I existed but those were minor details. I had posters of him and Rob Lowe plastered on my wall. Andy Gibb was my teen crush. Before that, when I was in elementary school, I was going to marry Donny Osmond. I guess I’ve always had a thing for musicians and Mormons.

Life has a way of moving forward and Andy Gibb married Victoria Principal who I saw in an infomercial years later as she urged me to put cream on my neck because “you may forget but no one else will”, and I never did. She later divorced Andy Gibb because of his heavy cocaine addiction. Andy eventually died in 1988 at the age of 30. By then I had moved on in my life and mourned my teenage crush by reading about it in People magazine and thinking it was so sad. So where am I getting at?

Only that while on vacation in Kauai this spring, Doug and I rented a jeep and were cruising down the coast as I scanned the radio for a station. I found one and settled back when suddenly the intro for I Just Want To Be Your Everything came  on. I sucked in my breath, turned the volume up, and sang to my heart’s content. Suddenly the words meant so much more to me! I was truly with the absolute love of my life, and that dream of a guy who would love me like the words to that song were real. Gone were the relationships of teen fantasy,  it had all fallen into place when the timing was right realizing that before that I was only trying to rush the for so long part of the song.

I wish I could show all of you young girls, who are reading this, my life in snapshots and how if I had just waited for correct timing I would have made that teen girl’s fantasy come true. In that moment on that road in Kauai, I reached over and grabbed Doug’s hand. I squeezed it, smiled big at him and said, “Baby, I love you and guess what? We’re in Hawaii on a beautiful day, having fun, with not a care in the world. Do you know that when this song was popular I was in Junior High?” He drove on, smiled and said, “Umm hmm”, having no clue of my revelation, and looking for a place to pull over at the beach he continued, “Bet you didn’t know you’d be here with me”.  No, I didn’t but I’m super glad I am!

Even Birds Do It

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Think of the now ubiquitous “failure to launch” syndrome of those twenty- or thirty-somethings still living with their parents. They cannot end childhood and fully enter adulthood. But the bigger issue is often the parents’ inability to end the pattern and stop the toxic dependency by pushing the grown “kid” out of the nest. They refuse to end their “helping” role, which is not in fact helping.

Cloud, Henry (2011-01-18). Necessary Endings: The Employees, Businesses, and Relationships That All of Us Have to Give Up in Order to Move Forward (p. 11). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

The book Necessary Endings will clarify things for you. I read it at a moment of desperation and eliminated and limited detrimental things in my life, even clutter both physical and mental because the wisdom penetrated that deeply. However, this thought made me stop reading for over 24 hours as I processed the concept and tried to figure out the why.

There is an idolatry of ourselves going on these days and it manifests in the control of our children. We have determined that our child is the smartest, brightest, most likely to succeed (even if I have to do it for you), brilliant, talented, moral, beautiful, and end all to all humanity. Cancer has not been remedied, nor wars ended simply because our child has not reached that age of maturity YET. But fear not world! Our child will git-ur-dun. Oh, and by the way, if you don’t like my child? Well, you’re just a hater who wishes your child was as good as mine.

Sometimes I wonder if I’m the only woman on the planet who thinks her children are smart and they are one of many smart children, but my measure is are they good kids? I think my kids are good looking but so are so many other people but are their hearts right with God?  I love my kids but life is life, consequences are consequences and  I knew one day I would push them out of the nest so that they can either fly, or fall to the ground. So far my stats are decent. Two have launched willingly, two have been launched, all have flown. Only, the verdict isn’t in yet because I hear sometimes they boomerang.

We could just chalk this failure to launch thing to the economy, to immaturity, to a variety of factors but the statistics are that suicides and homicides are climbing, depression, anxiety, sleep disorders, drug usage, and STD’s are at an all time high among our kids. Something is wrong. What is it?

Could it be that in this consumer driven, all about me culture that we live in we fear that our children’s failure reflects on us?

Therefore, propping them up in whatever capacity we can alleviates the self-inflicted embarrassment that is thrust on us. We have to have the best kid  and provide the best privilege because we are the best parents.

If you think I’m wrong watch how it plays out. I’ve seen parents of adult children throw their grandchildren on the altar of their ego manifested in their child. We all watched it play out with the Casey Anthony case. We aren’t doing it for the child’s sake. We’re doing it for ourselves. We have created an image of ourselves and the statues that we worship resemble the faces of our children because they look like ours. None of us have to watch TV to see how this plays out. We need only to look in our own homes and those of our community to see the reality.

If Only Relationships

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Don’t land me in one of those relationships where we’re always pecking at each other, disguising insults as jokes, rolling our eyes and “playfully” scrapping in front of our friends, hoping to lure them to our side of an argument they could not care less about. Those awful if only relationships: This marriage would be great if only  …   and you sense the if only list is a lot longer than either of them realizes. 

Flynn, Gillian (2012-06-05). Gone Girl: A Novel (p. 29). Crown Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Have we all not been the uncomfortable witness to this scene before? While on vacation I came across this couple where they professed undying love and showed constant annoyance while just kidding.  They sighed and bickered at each other each time they engaged in conversation, they sparred skillfully since it was nothing new to them, stabbing each other verbally, extracting the sword as if it was par for the course and laugh it off.  I sat and wondered if people realize how hard that is to watch? Do they know how uncomfortable it is for us who don’t want to play this game with them? If this is their public image, how absolutely awful must their private life be? 

One day the person wishing their If Only Relationship was something more will find their If Only Relationship is gone. Then the cry will be If Only they were here.

I am a firm believer that God will teach us daily lessons if we’ll pay attention and today my lesson was learned. Be grateful and kind to your spouse. Learn to forgive and let things go because if you don’t, you’ll end up like those two, trying to say what your heart is bitter about through public insults. 

I have to go and kiss my husband’s forehead and tell him that he is my ONLY and there is no IF about it. I accept him as he is!

Cry Out Help

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This is part 3 of 3. To read part 2 Click Here

And we don’t understand a lot of things. But we learn that people are very disappointing, and that they break our hearts, and that very sweet people will be bullied, and that we will be called to survive unsurvivable losses, and that we will realize with enormous pain how much of our lives we’ve already wasted with obsessive work or pleasing people or dieting. We will see and read about deprivation and barbarity beyond our ability to understand, much less process. Side by side with all that, we will witness transformation, people finding out who they were born to be, before their parents pretzelized them into high achievers and addicts and charming, wired robots. 

Lamott, Anne (2012-11-13). Help, Thanks, Wow: The Three Essential Prayers (p. 24). Penguin Group US. Kindle Edition.

We proceeded on the road to file civil charges to add to the felony charges and the thief returned the money to get us to drop the filing of the civil charges. We agreed to this because after all the felony charges are what’s important. Some felt we should have gone to the legal system to ask them to drop the charges but a wise friend asked me an extremely important and very poignant question:

“So you’re thinking of dropping the charges so that what? He can go to his next job and steal from them? What will be your accountability to the next employer because you will be accountable, just as everyone who doesn’t hold him accountable to, at minimum, an apology will be held accountable when he does it again.”

To say this was powerful was NO JOKE. Do I want to be accountable for his next robbery? Without godly sorrow we continue on the path to destruction. Evil was allowed to live in the camp because we have a distorted view of what it means to be a Christian. Did I want to contribute or did I want to get off the ride? Yes I want off the ride, because it was nauseatingly painful to watch the ripping apart of friendships.

I went into a time of reclusivity and prayer and just as my faith demanded I cried for help.  Just as God promised, he was quick to issue the balm to soothe the wounds, the strategy to combat evil, and the lesson so that it doesn’t happen again. Life Happens.

Wolves Come In

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1Corinthians 7:10 Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation,and leaves no regret, but worldly sorrow brings death. 11 See what this godly sorrow has produced in you: what earnestness, what eagerness to clear yourselves, what indignation, what alarm, what longing, what concern,what readiness to see justice done. At every point you have proved yourselves to be innocent in this matter.

This is part 2 of a 3 part series. To read part 1 Click Here.

The second thing that happened was a employee at work stole $1,000 from another employee. He used one of the devices where you can swipe a credit card on a mobile device. The employee whose card was stolen was notified by her bank that a debit sale had been made and deposited to this employees account.  We fired the employee who stole the money and we filed a police report. The bank was refusing to refund the money because the parties knew each other, however was very cooperative with the police in the investigation.

The man who stole the money was a new convert to the church and a friend to the other employees. The employee who had her money stolen was hurt beyond belief. She had loaned the man money for gas and food in the past (he has a family), she had befriended his family, and she was being repaid with evil.

The other employees were also caught in the fire. They are friends with everyone and so they wanted to remain friends with both the thief and the one stolen from.  Only the problem was that godly sorrow verse kept crying out to be heard. How do you move on when the person isn’t sorry? How do you sit at church with a wolf in sheep’s clothing or when the person’s family is railing at you and acting as if you are the bad guy for not dropping it? There was no remorse shown for the kindness and the trust shown.

I watched her pain, I felt it, I understood, and yet we have to let the legal system do its thing. We have to watch the blame shift to the the other employees for their possible compliance. Most importantly, I have to look at the leadership and ask was it that I had created an environment of unaccountability, by not running a tight ship, that had created the perfect environment for  this to happen?

The wolf was allowed to come in and scatter the sheep. The small group that they all belonged to is frayed because we don’t understand the Word. Instead there stood two camps. One camp who saw no godly sorrow and one who saw that things happen and oh well we move on.

Life Happens

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1Corinthians 7:10 Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation,and leaves no regret, but worldly sorrow brings death. 11 See what this godly sorrow has produced in you: what earnestness, what eagerness to clear yourselves, what indignation, what alarm, what longing, what concern,what readiness to see justice done. At every point you have proved yourselves to be innocent in this matter.

I am back from my self-imposed reclusiveness. I was pondering some things in my life, getting my heart right about matters and thinking things through. Thank God for the Holy Spirit who guides us in all truth and recognizes the heart conditions we find ourselves in. If, when, we submit to the thoughts and processes of this it is beyond amazing what can be cleared up in one’s life.

After a series of events late last year, I was crispy fried. I learned a lot through the process though and I think I love God more than ever because he allowed some refining to take place. The image of the chiseling of skin was a fresh reality and yet, just like my facials, the chemical peel burns but the skin underneath is untouched and soft to the touch.

So what happened? Well, some really good people did some really bonehead things, myself included, and some wolves in sheep’s clothing came and separated out the herd.

I was having employee/employer issues. In any other business environment what was happening would not have been tolerated even for a minute, but we’re a ministry, so you extend grace right? No, because subpar is still subpar, whether it’s for God or man. I was guilty of failing to lead.

Finally one day I snapped. Suddenly, I was no longer nice Pastor Susan, I was evil Pastor Susan. I seemingly had done things without warning and I was now viewed as stepping way out of bounds. Like with anything else consistency is the key and I was an inconsistent leader.  It had now seemed to become personal. I learned a great huge lesson. Take care of every small, even minor detail before it becomes a big insurmountable obstacle and changes dynamics.That’s good leadership. To be honest, this wasn’t the first time. I once had an employee give me a card on a Monday for being the best boss ever and on Friday when I had to let her go, I had become a “terrorist”. So obviously, God had to pull my chain and teach me some things. Again.

Reflections

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In the last few minutes of 2012 I am reflecting on how this year went. We started out 2012 as we start each year with a 21 day fast to seek the face of God for His will for us in the new year. Apostle Reegis Richard came at the end of the fast and prophesied over us that 2012 would be the restoration of all things. It was that and more.

I slowed it down in 2012, although my husband would raise his eyebrows and snort at that statement! I took a day off each week even when I couldn’t. I took a study day each week until October, when a series of mishaps happened at the RMA store which launched me into working there steadily on top of my regular job. Life brings learning curves! Good thing I am a quick study!

There was, as there always is when you follow God, adventure. We discovered what it was like to be empty nest people. Dreams do come true. My dream was to have peace and quiet and a clean house and VIOLA! it’s magically delicious! Only, well, now I’m remodeling so things aren’t where they will eventually be when it’s over. I got rid of the red couch and the gold walls and bright living room,

The Young's Tree
The Young’s Tree
and Doug painted the living room a color called Wild Honey, that looks like really pale yellow, and River’s Edge, a color that is light blue with an accent color called Caribbean which reminds me of the waters of the Atlantic, turquoise in color. Then I sat with the colors and a bare room until this last Saturday when I bought a turquoise couch that won’t be here until April because it has to be made in America which according to the sales person takes longer than Chinese couches. Whatever! I’ll be patient. I guess.

The highlight of my year was when my child got married. Well, he’s not a child anymore but to admit that means I have to admit aging and I don’t want to! He married a gorgeous girl on the inside and outside named Frances. When your son gets married there is a dethroning of a queen (me) and the crowning of a new queen (Frances). I decided to do this boldly and with grace and meaning so I donned a mom apron and at the rehearsal dinner instead of a drawn out speech I presented a before video and then cut the apron springs and presented them to my daughter-in-love and gave them an after video. Cause you have to.

And life just isn’t life unless there are challenges. There were betrayals, misunderstandings, lessons that had to be learned, but you can focus on that or you can decide it will not rent space in your head and move forward and that’s what I am going to do. Thank God for forgiveness.

So goodbye 2012. You were beyond good to me. Tomorrow I will put away the Christmas decorations and enjoy my first day of 2013. I await greater things and since this year was pretty spectacular, I can barely wait!

Lulu Turns 5

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This is a blog from 5 years ago. It tells Lulu’s story of how she came to be our puppy. Lulu is turning 5 in just a few days, I love her more today than I did when she first came home! So please indulge me in my reminiscing!

January 7, 2008 -About 3 p.m. today (yesterday for you reading this) animal control called me. Some idiot left a litter of five puppies abandoned at the shelter. These little guys are about 1 maybe 1.5 weeks old, not old enough to be without their mom. The shelter couldn’t keep them as they needed to be kept warm and bottle-fed, and they aren’t set up for that, so they called me to see if I would be their foster mom. I asked PD because he’s not really cool on these ideas of mine. He said ask the kids and I knew then it was on!

So Lauren and I went to go and pick them up. PD should never send the two of us to the pound. We want to adopt all of them. We almost got one but she was a female and we knew that was a bad mix with Greta in the house, we were already pushing it with the puppies.

Sometimes I am ashamed of my species. I mean honestly, we are in the middle of a storm here in California, and some jerk abandons helpless animals. They were shaking and extremely dehydrated when I got them. We quickly got formula, warm blankets and a heating disc and we fed them, burped them, stimulated them and put them down for a nap. We’ll have to feed them this way every couple of hours. Yes, it’s going to be a pain but the alternative is not giving a living thing a chance at a life. I am just praying they make it.

Why don’t people spay and neuter their animals? They do it for free for God’s sake! Why would you choose today of all days to dump them? Why not just cowboy up and take them when the shelter is open? It really makes me mad. I mean be honest the reason why your dog got pregnant is because you are irresponsible.

On the other hand, the kids and I were sitting there with baby bottles feeding hungry little puppies, kissing them, and smiling at new life. Right now the kids are fighting to be the “one” who gets to feed them but we’ll see if in a few days the newness of it all doesn’t get really old.

For now, I am going to take a nap and get ready for my turn at feeding. Now we all have to pray then get adopted into good homes and live long happy healthy lives. Oh, by the way, Greta is NOT happy. She is the MAIN dog around here and she wants them gone!

Here is a couple of pictures to melt your heart. They aren’t great quality, as they were taken with my cell phone.

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