Just because I think they’re beautiful, and beauty matters.

I’m not even sure where or how to begin, its been so long. Not knowing has kept me from doing, but it is time. I need to jump back in, and see where this goes. For the first time in far too many years, I *need* to write. Today, freestyle. I don’t’ know if I’ll keep this blog going, redesign it and start anew, start another, or maybe both. I initially began this with the goal of writing through raising 4 sons on my own, as an abuse survivor. Then my computer died. Then I lost all of my support group one by one, due to life. Lives get busy. I’m an Enneagram 5, very much an introvert, very much conditioned to “never show you need anyone” and “don’t bother people” from my upbringing. So as life moved on for others, I just let them go. I didn’t know how not to. Besides, I didn’t have time myself. It was taking every bit of me and then some to work 2-3 jobs, raise my boys, ward off the abusive ex, tend the minis, and try to heal. The last went by the wayside first.

Its been a lot of years. My oldest is about to graduate with his bachelors in a couple of months. My youngest has moved out east, married, taking a break from education, and settling into his new community. My middle two are still here, thankfully, though I seldom see my 2nd born. I moved recently, and that has improved, he has been by twice, and that makes me happy.

For the first time since 2017, I have a home. The last years had slipped back into survival, depression, and what has felt like a constant game of whack-a-mole, where I’m the mole and every time I stick my head out to try to improve, get ahead, make a viable living, whatever I get whacked back down into darkness and silence, with a massive headache. But Jesus began whispering again, or Spirit did, or both, last year. 2021 sucked. There isn’t another word for it. Well, there are but I probably shouldn’t use them here. I went into the year hopeful and excited…it felt inside like headway was being made on multiple fronts. Not the least of which was my debt situation. The ex took out debt, a lot of debt, in my name while we were married and for the first couple of years after the divorce until a cease-and-desist letter finally made it stop. I had just taken all of it because of his threats of fighting the divorce if I said anything about literally anything. I wanted out, and there appeared to be only one way, as affording a lawyer was out of the question. And the cost of raising the boys, even on a shoe string….but I’d been working at it, and finally the end was in sight. I was down to the last 5k in debt, and oh what a feeling of relief that was!!

Then Feb 8th happened. I had an accident that left me unable to walk for 3 months, with a 2yr recovery period attached per the Ortho doctors. I’m halfway through that, and the pain is still a daily issue, but I’ve accepted that there will never be another pain free day. I just didn’t think anything could make what I already dealt with from the kick in ’14 worse. Wrong! Ah, well…I’m still here. I was just getting back to part time work in late May, when a medication caused a severe reaction that left me in the hospital for a week and caused another few weeks off. In July, my prize foal, the one I’d been working on producing for way too many years, was kicked in the head, and died 10 days later at TX A&M large vet hospital. I changed jobs that month, because it was abundantly clear that I couldn’t physically do the previous one, but it became clear over the following months that the manager wasn’t exactly honest about the physical demands of the new job either, so I began looking again. October, the man who came into my life in 2013 as a friend and hiking partner, that had turned into a relationship neither of us foresaw, had 2 strokes, a pontine and a corpus caloseum. Minor strokes, thankfully, but still strokes, and a neurologist who didn’t listen. December, I was taken down by a Mastiff who decided I looked like a good plaything at work and fractured my pelvis. He did, though, seem sorry and let me rub his belly while I laid on the floor catching my breath. Dogs…gotta love them (most of them…and yes, I still loved the big goober. His pet parent, not so much, as when told what happened his reply was “yah, he does that to us all the time at home”. It would have been nice to know this information so one could adjust for it) So yah…I was more than ready for 2021 to end. I went out of the year with more physical disabilities, a disable husband who still couldn’t walk or balance, and a sudden need to move because his mother hadn’t been safe at home for a year even with us living there (when the ER gives you frequent flyer miles for your monthly visits with her, it’s not a good thing). That would be a whole different blog post. Anyhow…praying. God, I feel you niggling. I am glad He was, because I wouldn’t have gotten through the year otherwise.

He kept bringing up a time in 2011 when Father suddenly said something to me, and I almost wrecked my car. A time that I had for years, looking back, decided I’d failed Him, yet again. Because He said it was time for me to bloom, and if anything I felt like I’d withered. Chop that dead rose off the branch type of withered. Bloom? How? What? I am still asking those questions, but Spirit is stirring. I don’t know where this is going …..

but my very name means Follower. My Finnish middle name means “Raven”, when I looked it up, and upon looking up what ravens symbolize, it is complicated. Wikipedia says they represent loss and ill omen, but also prophecy and insight, and are connectors of the physical and spiritual worlds. Another site says they represent wisdom, affection, healing powers, longevity, death, and fertility. That is an interesting mix. Another says they are symbolic for battle, protection, and fighting for those you love, what you believe in. Norse mythology, they symbolize the mind, thought, wisdom. All of these I find worthy of thought.

Father opened the door quite suddenly though to a new home, and things fell into place no matter how many fleeces I tossed out. Then, 12 days ago, Neil had another stroke. We knew something was wrong because he kept randomly falling. Being male, he resisted going in but only for 2 days this time. After the MRI in the ER, we went straight to the ICU. The main question seemed to be “why is he conscious, he shouldn’t be conscious!”. We learned that because the neurologist wouldn’t listen last time, he was placed on a medication that not only didn’t help, but may have caused the sudden increase of blockage in the basal artery from the 45% it was, to now 100%. I was told he won’t live long. That his brain, although rerouting blood flow since all the parts the basal artery supplies have been cut off, can’t keep up. And after a week, they sent him home -“there’s nothing we can do”. His family doctor was a bit more positive, and said he has patients who have lived years like Neil, as long as we can stop the buildup from getting worse in other arteries in the brain now supplying blood and oxygen. His lab work was all well within acceptable ranges. We are working against genetics, we were told.

The last week has been….odd. I feel depression setting up house, PTSD is a constant again. Right before this I had been offered a very good position in an office, a job I can physically handle, and my background check had just gone through so I had quit the other job, and now find myself in limbo. The hospital said never leave him alone, seconds will count next time. He wants me to take the job, we need a paycheck to pay rent. There is a strange mix of optimism, hope….with a lingering layer of depression, despair, loss. I am not sure how to walk this. And I find myself driven back here. There’s a message sent in 2016 that had not shown up before. Reading it, oh how I needed that. Has it really been that many years? Six years since I began this? I knew it was a while, somehow I didn’t realize it was that long. That sounds like a very long time. Doubt tries to enter -don’t bother, you won’t keep it up again, you know that. You can’t finish things. I have learned a fair bit about myself though in the last few years, and one thing I do know, I may get knocked down…but I get back up. Every. time. Sometimes it takes a while. But I do. So I am here, and will try again. I do not know yet what this blog will become, or if it will. The original topic is now a moot point. We will see.