Life in the Lemon Grove

In hard times people like to refer to the saying, “When life hands you lemons, make lemonade,” but sometimes if you stand stop walking and turn around you realize you are in a lemon grove and ALL you see is lemons.  You can only make so much lemonade, and to make matters worse when that happens you can’t seem to find any sugar at all.  Let’s just be honest last thing you want in the middle of a lemon grove is SOUR LEMONADE.  At one point in our lives or another we have all lived in a lemon grove, where nothing ever seemed to be turning out right.
The thing about a lemon grove is even though it grows thick around you , and at eye level it is hard to see through, if you just keep walking one you will eventually come to the end.  Its the same with life struggles, the key is to keep your head up and keep moving forward.   Stopping to make sour lemonade is only going to slow you down on your journey, make you miserable, and probably anyone who happens to be with you too, because I don’t know too many people who can drink sour lemonade and keep from complaining.


A lemon grove can appear to be a beautiful place, but its not somewhere you want to live.  You cant live on a diet of only lemons no matter what some health gurus may say.  You have to have a healthy source of water, protein, vegetables, dairy, and YES EVEN FAT…. so get out of that lemon grove and go find yourself a slice of Chocolate cake !!! (I give you permission.)  Camping out in our circumstances tends to only make things worse, we tend to try to dress up the place and live there, making the best of what we have.  We take on relationships we know aren’t good for us, we live in  clutter because we “can’t” get rid of our stuff, we sleep our worries away, but in a sense this is the same as standing in the lemon grove and attempting to make lemonade, lemon meringue pie, lemon custard, and lemon pound cake. We attempt to make the best of the situation and try to fill ourselves with only lemon recipes, when we know we need more and even know there is a table prepared for us at the end of the grove, we just have to get up and move.


I know in my own life I have spent too much time in a lemon grove.  After a failed marriage and many negative relationships, I began to think that it was where I belonged, but I truly believe that God had more than sour kisses and rotten fruit in store for my life.  Its a daily choice to keep my eyes focused forward and keep moving until I’m not surrounded by lemons anymore.  Life will always have its problems.  In fact the book of James suggest that not only should we understand that trials may come, but that we should expect them and consider it pure joy.  Its hard to be joyful when you have a sour taste in your mouth.  The sour taste taints everything else you eat, but we have a choice  we can choose to sweeten the sourness of the lemons that life has thrown us or we can sit down in the middle of the grove and commit to a lifetime diet of only lemons.  It is our choice.
Sweet Friend, I know we have all been there, and in some way or another I know that most of us, if we are honest with ourselves are there right now.  I challenge you to slow down just for a moment, and take a look around you.  What are the lemons that life has thrown you, and what are you doing with them?   Where in your life have you become comfortable with your circumstances?  Where are you allowing things to bog you down emotionally and steal your joy.
Just remember you don’t have to carry all those lemons with you out of the grove, they will burden you and weigh you down on your journey, allow yourself only to carry the choice fruit.  These are the things you have learned from your time in the grove, the lessons, and  the growth.    Once you are out of the grove you can take what you learned and use your lemons to bless the lives of others with more than just lemonade.  Your life out of the lemon grove will be so much better than you can imagine when you look back. Just keep moving.

 

       

An Open Letter to my Boyfriend who Raped me

It’s been well over ten years, and I had thought that so much of this was behind, me until I went through something very similar a few months ago and everything came flooding back.   I write this letter with an open heart, but a heart that hasn’t been whole in a long time. There are several hundred miles between us and I know you will probably never read this, and that’s okay, because I write this letter more for myself, and for the other women out there who have faced the same thing, to know that they are not alone. If you do happen to read this, I hope that you will read it with an open heart and understand the full extent of the damage you caused, but also know that I forgive you.
I remember the first time I saw you, the first time we locked eyes, I was young and innocent, and had never had a guy look at me that way.  I loved that you were sweet to me and wanted to spend you time with me, but eventually, what you took from me broke me in ways that you will never even begin to understand.  I really do want to believe that you have a good heart.  You came from a good family, and I know you had things that you struggled with, and I think they had a direct impact on why you saw me the way you did.
I look back and smile on the good times, the extravagant dates, the sweet moments, the storybook romance, of the first few months.  Those times were good, and to everyone else things seemed just fine, what they didn’t see was what went on behind closed doors, the tears, the guilt, the pressure, the hurt.  It took me almost year and a half to even let the word rape show up on my lips, but when the story was told, when the people were taken out and all that remained were the details, that’s what it was.
Asking why will do no good, because I don’t think you even realize what you did was rape.  I hope it wasn’t malicious but a power struggle, and was someway for you to feel better about yourself. What I want to know is why did my tears not affect you? How could you push me, especially when you knew my complete physical innocence and the guilt I felt about the things you were pushing me to do. How could you look into my eyes and see the tears running down my cheeks afterwards and not see the pressure you were putting on me and the guilt that I was feeling?  How could you have sex with me, taking my virginity, while I was crying the entire time, and then let me sleep in the bathtub because I couldn’t face you, and roll over and go to sleep like nothing was wrong?  How could you face people knowing that they knew you were cheating on me with multiple woman and that I had physically caught you with them, and yet you manipulated me to stay?  How could you watch me be broken as a person and not care, and mutter the words I love you daily?
I wish that you had just let me go.  I wish that you had seen me for the innocent girl that I was. I wish you hadn’t seen me as a conquest, as a girl who had never been kissed, as a girl you could mold and shape to what you wanted her to be.  And I know I wasn’t the first that you manipulated, but thank goodness I do actually believe that I was the last.  I wish you had realized that I wasn’t ready and let me walk away.  I wish you had not held that knife to my throat and made me feel like I should have thought it was normal because it was “play.”   I wish you hadn’t made me feel bad, for not drinking, and then used that pressure to get me drunk, so you could take what you wanted.  I wish you hadn’t have taken  my first kiss, my virginity, and my reputation.   But beyond those things I wish you hadn’t taken my security in the woman that I was, the idea of the kind of man that I deserved to be with, my emotions, my tears, and my sanity.  Most of all I wish you knew the things that have been caused as a ripple effect from those months with you, the panic attacks, the night terrors, the relationships with other abusers,  and the marriage I lost. (partially over the fact that, my husband was scared to touch me because of what you did.)
I felt black on the inside.  I felt numb, I had no emotions I didn’t cry more than a couple of tears at a time for years upon years.  I tried to forget. I tried to forget your hands around my arm jerking me out of the car, and the night you pulled me out of a chair and drug me by my feet across the floor because I didn’t want to go to bed.  I try to forget that I have been told by close friends of yours that you saw me as a conquest, and just wanted to add another cherry to your belt. They also told me that you thought that because I was a virgin, a “church” girl, and had made it clear that I wanted to wait until my wedding night that I was a challenge.  I know you were young, and that you drank a lot at the time, I know you were deep down a good person but struggled with things, but none of that is an excuse for what you did.  I have seen and heard over the years about the life and family that you have built, and for that reason I am glad that I was “brainwashed” enough to not consider pressing charges. You would have none of that now if I had pressed charges.  It doesn’t maean that sometimes its hard to see you with your marriage and your kids and the happy life you have built when I have struggled for years.
People ask me why I stayed and I sometimes wonder if you even knew.  But with the way I had been raised I knew sex before marriage was wrong and so i though i  had to marry  you to make it right, and I already felt like the weird girl because I had never had a boyfriend, and to be honest one or two days a week when things were good made me it seem to make up for the really bad days. Because of this fact, I let myself stay hoping that things would change.  We were talking about wedding plans, we were picking out names for kids, and looking back I don’t know how much of that was real on your end, but because of those “promises” I made choices I never would have made otherwise, including walking away from the life that I loved, the people that I loved and the hope and faith that I believed so strongly in.
The things you said to me, the fact that I would be nothing without you, the fact that you would ruin my reputation if I left you, that I was a tease and a whore, that I was fat and ugly, those things broke me far greater than you will ever know.  They have made me doubt myself, and made me think that the only kinds of relationships that I am deserving of are ones where I am controlled and hurt and abused like the one we had.  They have made me sit through counseling and journal to try to get past the anger and the distrust that has  jaded my life.
I say all this to you, not to rehash, but to once and for all put it in front of your eyes what you did.  There is an epidemic in this world where people don’t take responsibility for their actions.  There is a reason that one in four women on a college campus is sexually assaulted and that most of them are assaulted by someone they know in a setting outside of “attack”.  There is a reason that only a very small percentage of these assaults even get reported.  These girls are shamed like I was not to tell.  They are made to believe that it is their fault.  They are made to believe that they are less of a woman if they admit it happens, and that no one else will ever want to love them.  There needs to be accountability for actions like these.
I do hope and pray that real changes were made in your life.  I hope for your wife’s sake that you look back on what happened and you regret it.  I hope for your daughters sake her first boyfriend treats her with more respect than you did me.  I hope you have grown up and learned from these mistakes.  I hope you teach your son to value women, to cherish them, to protect them, and to listen when their lips, their emotions, their tears, and their actions say no.
I do forgive you for what you did.  Its taken me a long time to be able to put these words down on paper, to  say to you without anger what the facts were about how you made me feel and made me see myself.  Forgiveness is something that has to be given for healing, even when there is no remorse, my only hope is that in knowing these things and in the light of how you feel about having your own daughter, I hope and pray that you would feel remorse and would have changed things if you could go back.
It’s taken me a lot of time to realize that what you did to me was no worse than things I have done in the eyes of the Lord and all of it is covered by grace if we ask. I know deep down in my heart that if you have truly ever asked for forgiveness that it has been granted , and so for me to harbor ill will and resentment is wrong.  So I have to move forward, I have to forgive, I have to choose love over pain.  I need to say the words that I forgive you.  I have to hope that the Lord will continue the healing process.  I have to hope that one day I will be fully healed.
I have chosen not to let this hold me back anymore. I have chosen to use my experiences to fuel my passion to help other women.  I have chosen to love you and your family instead of hate.  I have chosen to as much as is possible to be whole again.  I want you to know for what it is worth that my heart could never fully hate you, I knew you were broken, I knew those were reasons for your actions.  I would have been sad if someone had told me something happened to you.  I actually hurt for your family when you had grandparents passed away.  You never were a monster to me, but I just want you to know that even though they say that time will make you stronger and it will heal any wound, it doesn’t mean that you will be healed without any scars.  I just realized that as time moved on there was no point in covering up my scars, they made me who I am.  I realized there was no reason to hide, because I didn’t trust people.  I realized there was no reason to continue to run to men just like you, because I feel like it was all I deserved, just because I had been hurt so severely.
And one more thing … I hope that if this had to happen, that one day, something good will come of this.
From,
Me

The Thin Blue Line

The events of the last few weeks have been absolutely heartbreaking.  I have received more emails about the lowering of flags to honor police officers, and as a memorial to the fallen, than I ever care to see again.  It breaks my heart to watch the senseless killing, but as someone who has dear friends in law enforcement spanning several states, counties and departments, it hits even closer to home.  The most important thing an officer does is make sure that the guys (or girls) on their shift go home, to their families, in one piece at the end of shift.  Its not a just a job anymore it truly has become a calling.  Law Enforcement officers have always known the danger that came along with putting on the uniform, but today more than ever, they radio in-service at the beginning of shift, with uncertainty of what lies ahead.  Very few walk the line, because very few can make that kind of commitment.
Every shift they walk into situations without always having complete information.  They step into the middle of altercations knowing they may end up taking physical blows. They assist motorists or perform traffic stops on the side of the road trusting that people will slow down and move over.  They swelter in the summer wearing an extra 20 pounds between their their bulletproof vests and duty belts. And yet, daily, show up for shift knowing that they can’t predict what will happen.  Even with all of this,  we still expect them to do their job, a job so many of us don’t have the capability or the commitment to do, so that we will be protected and safe.


The things an officer sees in his time on the job, would be enough to make most people cry or be physically sick, but they have to become accustomed to it.  Many of them becoming even more distrusting of the world, because of  all the bad they see. Most don’t talk about these experiences internalizing them and trying to forget, making a choice to put it behind them and put on their uniform each day to protect  and serve.
An officers family isn’t exempt from the duties as well.  They have their own.  Never let them go to shift angry, always kiss goodbye, let I love you be the last thing you say, don’t worry ( most struggle with this one but its accepted),  knowing little things like that they have to sit in a restaurant where they can see the door, keeping meals warm for when calls run over shift change, and adjusting holiday plans around shift schedules.  It’s a sacrifice.  A huge one!  And we should all be grateful, for the protection, for the service, and for the sacrifice, made daily by men and women across the United States who walk the thin blue line.


Take time out this week to thank an officer! For all they do!

Take Back your Life

Yesterday I talked about the sunrise about separation.  I talked about the fact that I am starting to see the light coming up on the horizon, and I know that a new day is fast approaching, but I am realizing in seeing this that this if anytime is when I need to take back my life.  For the last few months I have just been existing, just been surviving, walking around with my head either in the clouds or trying not to feel anything, but the time for that is over.  It is time to take back my life and like I mentioned in a post a few weeks ago about the fact that it was time to make some major changes.


I have come to see my impending divorce as a chance as a fresh start.  I have decided not to let it define me but to look at it as a blessing.  It was obviously not the plan that the Lord had for me and I need to move forward with that in mind.  I look at this as an opportunity to mold this new person into exactly what I want her to be.   There has been quite a few things on my mind that I want to make changes and now seems as good of a time as any.  So this blog post will serve to stand as accountability for these changes and help me to see how far I have come.


First and foremost I want to make some changes in my spiritual life.  Putting God first in my life has to become non negotiable in my life.  I have for too long let my spiritual life slide.  Here are things that are going to change in my life spiritually. 

• I need to find a new church home here in Sylva
• I need to create a plan for being consistent in studying the word of God daily
• I need to create a plan for being consistent in reading the word of God daily
• I need to find books to read that will encourage me in my walk with the Lord.
• I need to create a prayer plan to help me pray for others not only just for myself and not only when things seem to be upside down
• I need to find a small group or a women's bible study as well as a couple of women who are local to help me stay accountable.

I will be blogging later about the plans I create for these spiritual accountabilities in hopes that It might help someone else.


Secondly I need to get myself organized and back in the swing of a routine.  I have been working a new job for the last 2 months and have been on nights for about the last month  and yet again I have just been trying to survive.  I have found that my body needs more sleep when I am working nights but I still have to get all the things I have on my plate accomplished and it is so much more difficult when you only have a couple of hours in your day when you aren't at work or asleep. Over the next few weeks I will be blogging as I create plans and systems to make these changes in my life.

• I need to create routines to help me stay productive and make sure that things are getting done consistently
• I need to create a weekly schedule to make sure that priorities in my life do not slip and that I do not compromise sleep to accomplish this.
• I need to create a plan of how to keep my apartment clean ( not talking picked up and tidy, but making sure that maintenance  cleaning and weekly cleaning is done )
• I need to create a system for planning and tracking goals

Physically I have realized now is the perfect time to sculpt myself into the physical person I have always desired to be.  I need to see this as a priority to eat right and workout as well as getting the right amount of rest.  Yet again I will be blogging and posting to social media the progress I make over the next few months,  but here are the things that need work.

• Getting Healthy- The main goal is not necessarily weightless but that is a side goal and an easier way to view progress
• I need to be working out 3-4 times a week minimum with both strength training and cardio
• I need to be eating more healthy home cooked meals
• I need to be drinking more water
• I need to be making sure to take vitamins daily.

I am sure there are other things that I need to change but at this point these are the major things.  Its time to take back my life.  Who else is with me?  What things do you want to change in your life in order to take it back?

There is Sunrise after Separation

I grew up in a Southern Baptist family where divorce was just not something that was even discussed.  It was not an option, families stayed together no matter what.  Examples had been set that no matter what the situation you stayed.  Stories were told about an ancestor generations back who had stayed in her marriage until death even though, her husband was a womanizer and even worse.  When I began dating this ideology stuck with me.  I was looking for a husband, a forever kind of love. A love of commitment that would last a lifetime that would mimic that love that had been modeled for me by my parents and grandparents.   One day I met a guy and I thought over the next few months that I had found that forever kind of love, but within a few short years my world was shattered.  We had had our issues, but I knew I wouldn't leave.  Not until I spoke with my pastor and after counseling sessions and there being no attempt from the other side to make an effort to make changes towards healing our marriage, did I even begin to consider his suggestion of separation.  It took months before I had up the courage to stand up for myself and make the statement that if an active effort was not going to be made that I would ask him to leave.


Even after I made the decision that the pastor was right, that some time apart would help us make a final decision, it still took time before I actually got the nerve to take the next step.  I came home from what was supposed to have been a joint counseling session that I had gone to by myself and with tears in my eyes neatly folded and packed all of his clothes in trash bags and packed up all his belongings and stacked them neatly in the living room and then went into my office closed the door and began to pray.  Not a word was said, he just picked up his stuff and didn't come back.  That day I felt like the sun had set on all my hopes and dreams.  I felt like my dreams of being a wife and a mother had been shattered, and I had no way of seeing the big picture, all I could see was that my heart was broken and I wasn't sure how life would ever be good again.  I felt cold hearted and black on the inside, I felt dirty and shameful even though I knew I had biblical reasons for initiating the separation.


I never thought that there would ever be a sunrise on a new day.   I had been left with rent on the house and all the bills, on top of losing my job just a few months prior, I had no car and no way to get to a job even if I could find one.  If someone had told me that this was sunset on my marriage, but that there would be a beautiful sunrise in a few months on the new part of my life I would not have believed them, but the interesting thing about sunrise is that the time between sunset and sunrise gets very dark.  We always know that the sun will come up the next day, our body has been trained to think that way.  We don't worry that the sun will come up again, we just believe in the goodness of God that it will.  So why was this any different.  I knew what to expect but I didn't want to believe it. 


The good news is there is sunrise after separation, I sit here 13 months after I packed my husbands things and gave him the option to leave, and I see light on the horizon.  Things didn't work out for us to fix our marriage, but I see the amazingly strong woman I have become.  I have learned some hard lessons, I have cried a lot of tears, I have been angry with God, and run from my friends at times, but I know that in the long run the sun WILL come up, and the thing about sunrise is its always beautiful from Gods view.  We may sometimes only see part of the sunrise due to fog or rain, but sunrise always happens.


The view of the first light on the horizon of the night following my separation is such a beautiful sight, but even sunrise takes time.  I know that in time the beautiful colors will spread across my life and the dark season of night will be over, but until then I must just sit quietly and wait.

B-I-D * 3 little letters changed my life *

A 3x5 greeting card literally changed my life.  Yes that probably sounds a little dramatic, and if you know me at all you know that has a little bit of truth to it.  But, as dramatic as it may sound, its completely true.  Fall semester of my freshman year was miserable.  I sat in the hallway of my residence hall and cried and poured my heart out to my best friend on the phone.  I hated  the campus, I hated my classes, I was fighting with my roommate.  My heart had been set on another school, and although I was trying to make the best of it, I wanted to run away.




I went home for Christmas and had a couple of conversations about Greek Life, with my aunt and a close family friend, but everything in me said that Greek Life just was not for me.  I had no desire to pay for my friends, or be apart of something that would take all my time.  I had actually been to a couple of open house parties with one of the sororities on campus, and just realized I did not fit in with them at all.  I had a thought that all sororities were the same and had no desire at all to go through formal recruitment in the fall, even to see.




The night of the start of formal recruitment I had no plans to go, but a friend of mine was dead set on going and she was determined not to go alone.  So even though I hadn't signed up ahead of time I quickly got myself together and headed to the first night of recruitment.  Throughout the night I saw how different the personalities of the 5 sororities were but i still wasn't sure that there was a place for me, but when my feet stepped off the last step on to the 5th floor something just seemed different.  The doors to the hall opened and I caught a friendly face from high school, The feeling on the hall was light and airy, the walls were painted pink, and this group of girls were the most beautiful and cheerful girls I have ever met.




Recruitment in a word was disappointing, I remember thinking the entire time that there was only one place I felt like I would fit in and yet, I was the girl who was completely content in high school, and was friends with everyone but when it came down to being chosen, or winning, I always came up just shy of what I wanted.  Whether it was a sports team, a part in a play, a boy I liked, I always seemed to be just under the point of getting what I wanted. So as I walked off the hall on Sunday afternoon after the Pref Day ceremony, I knew where it was that I felt like I belonged, but because of the feelings I had about never quite being good enough I thought there was no way that I would ever get a bid, but I knew what I had to do.  With the way that sorority recruitment works you choose the sorority and they choose you.  It was very risky to only choose one sorority on your pref card. I knew there was only one sorority that I loved so I only chose one that day, and left the conference room feeling disappointed.  I was just sure that this was going to be something else that I wanted that was just out of reach.

A few hours later back on the hall  in my dorm, bids were being delivered .  There were a group of about 5 of us  standing in the hall.  3 of us got bids, I couldn't bear to open mine but when I did, there it was in beautiful black ink.  I would be a pledge of Phi Mu Fraternity.


Over the next few weeks my thoughts about college changed.  I had a whole new group of friends, I was introduced to even more new people, organizations on campus, and opportunities for jobs that I would have never known about or perused otherwise.   In fact if I had not "Gone Greek" I wouldn't be sitting in my desk chair at my current job that I love right now.  Going greek, started a chain reaction of events that made Western Carolina University and its people some of my favorite ever.  It created a woman who was confident in who she was.  It created a woman who realized she wanted to be just as involved on her college campus as she had been on her high school campus.  It allowed that girl to realize that the reason she was miserable was because she wasn't involved and wasn't looking for opportunities to make this campus one that she loved.


That BID ... changed my life, I learned to be a woman who lived by values of Love, Honor, and Truth, and Western Carolina became my Home.

An Honest Conversation with a broken person

Sometimes things are hard to talk about, but very few things are better left unsaid.  Honesty really is the key to happy life and relationships, but one of the people we are most often not honest with is ourselves .  We walk around sometimes in a daze thinking everything is okay when sometimes things are just NOT okay!  How many of us live day to day with worries, doubts, and fears, and even worse the fear of sharing this with someone because we are afraid that we will be found out.  So many times the things we struggle with are made even worse when we try to deal with them on our own. Sometimes we don't even want to be honest with ourselves , because healing is painful and sometimes it is easier to just keep existing.


So time for some honesty! :)   It's freeing, and healing... right????  Honesty doesn't mean searching for pitty, it doesn't mean being the victim, it doesn't mean wanting someone else to take care of the problem for you.  Honesty is merely about making the situation real in your own eyes and allowing others around you to be able to help you heal and grow.


Todays world is terrible to shame people, to take simple problems and simple issues and make them feel like they are broken and without repair.  Self shaming has become so prevalent in today's society and while the world looks at the solution to the problem as a need for more self esteem, I do not believe that a false sense of strength and an inflated ego are going to do anything but mask the problems that so many are facing today, but HONESTY will.


So here's me being open and honest.  The last few years have down right sucked! I look back on the last few years and see the girl I love and who I was proud to be fading away through a sequence of events that I didn't ask for and certainty didn't want, but through conscious decisions I made I placed myself on the track that ended up in these places.  People don't want to talk about hard stuff, but one thing I can say is that in going through these things I have become very blunt and very honest about the hard stuff. 


So lets talk about the hard stuff....A year ago my husband and I separated due to a woman stepping in between us, and although he couldn't see what she was doing, it was obvious to me and so many others the direction she was manipulating things to go.  This on top of other issues was something that we could not recover from.  The last year has been a time of self discovery and the beginning of healing, but what I have discovered about myself is that there are thoughts and insecurities that loom deep in my heart that cause me to question myself, and so much of this comes from self shame and the shaming the world continues to lay.


But that stops TODAY!  I am starting a journey of growth, and self discovery today that I hope will impact every aspect of my life.  This newly single again thing is hard.  God didn't design marriages to fail, and so life after a broken marriage is not easy.  I feel lost, I feel lonely, I feel broken, I feel crazy!  Over the past few months  I basically have just been existing trying to cover a gaping wound with a bandage that didn't fit. The next few months will be difficult but I am going to make these changes one at a time, and for accountability I am going to blog through the process.


I finish today with this thought.  It is okay to not be perfect.  God made us who we are for a reason.  We were created with perfect talents, and personality traits to fulfill his perfect purpose for us.  Far to often though we forget that, when we struggle we see ourselves through the eyes of people around us.  Far too often we give into shaming, and negativity that is around us, we sink ourselves to that level to try to feel apart of something, when we should focus on our own "perfect" selves.