Hello, and welcome to The Time We Have Been Given. My name is Tina, and I am many things. I am a writer, including for Venn Magazine (which I invite you to check out here), a single mother of four teenage sons, a survivor of physical, mental, and other abuses, and a woman with a passion to help others heal and grow, starting first in my home. I am a gardener, a horse lover and long-time breeder of quality American Miniatures (you can check that website out here), a lover of the outdoors and all that is in it. I am a farmer at heart. I love to read, and to research, and to help others through doing so. I am a follower of Christ.

I have been meaning to start this blog for some time, and the changing of the year seemed like Time. 2014 brought a serious back injury into my life, which is causing me to slow down, rethink, and make changes in my life. In doing so, I realized some things. I had fallen back into survival mode, which is easy to do when that is where you have lived most of your life. Doing so though, was causing me to feel dead again. That isn’t where I want to live. My sons need more of me, my writing needs more of me, and it is time to pursue what I am here for.

In realizing that, thoughts began to crystallize. I so long to help others through teaching. I walked into a lot of pain in my life because I didn’t know there was anything else. I didn’t leave because I didn’t know I could. Fear paralyzes. So this blog will be varied in topic, but it will include messages to my sons (and others) of things they need to know, it will be tips in home-making as if it weren’t for my “Kentucky momma” I wouldn’t have even known where to start when I left home, it will be information and hopefully inspiration on living and loving, dreaming and doing, healing and growing. I hope it also is that for all who find their way here. It will cover fun things, needed things, and painful things. I pray it will motivate myself and others to make your own place in life a place of peace and growth. The title comes from one of my favorite quotes of J.R.R. Tolkien, words spoken by the wizard Gandalf to Frodo: “All we have to decide is what to do with the time we have been given.”

Go make some good decisions today. Blessings!