Rest of the process...

Well my DH (Darling Hubby)... is recovering and has gotten the stitches removed from his neck and tomorrow gets the ones removed from his chest at the doctor's office. This has been a long and slow recovery process...but with each day of healing and strength returning to normal...you have to give God His props! :)

My DH just celebrated his 50th birthday on July 31st...which was also just declared National Dance Day by the Dizzy Feet Foundation and SYTYCD (So You Think You Can Dance)...makes ya want to dance a jig when someone you love, who has been so ill, starts to recover.

Life doesn't always hand us the cards or deck that we want in every moment...but at least we know the King is in there somewhere :)

Still here....

If you know me personally and have been following my Facebook posts, you will know that my DH had to have two surgeries recently- which started with a trip to the ER 2 1/2 weeks ago with a fever of 104! It has been a long and bumpy road since 1984 for him, as he has Short Bowel Syndrome- so we are bound to have these potholes of life from time to time. He is getting better, but we still have to do the Lovenox shots twice a day for now (Man, do I hate needles!)....ahhhh, the things we do for love!

I pray that someday he can have a successful small bowel transplant- but to date that has not been an option; and he has been TPN dependent for 26 years now. Although in the last 9 years, he has started to get infections and he is meticulous in the cleaning and care of his Groshon central line.

I just thank God that he is still here and that we have had this mouch time together. I usually don't get into all of this personal stuff, but I am feeling kinda sentimental and reflective today and just downright thankful and lucky to be alive and to have a wonderful, loving husband :)

Think...Reflect...Ponder...Remember...

I just finished the altered book for my oldest daughter Tiffany's college graduation and she loved it!...I can't wait to see it filled with pictures from her Nursing School and Clinical Adventures!

It made me think and reflect about those moments in life that matter the most. Like your "firsts"...marriage...your spouse...your children..family & friends...vacations..."favorites"...and all of those everyday "life happens" memories that we talk about and those that we forget about over time.

We need to start taking time to be more intentional...to take the time to think, reflect, ponder and remember those moments that are special, funny, sad, make us think. etc... Start writing them down so that when you are old and can't remember, or have grandchildren you can share what your thoughts and feelings were when you were their age.

I find it fascinating to know how much a loaf of bread or gallon of gas was when my parents and grandparents were my age or younger. How fashion and technology has changed over the years....hairstyles....fads... trends...home decor...fashion. We would not be able to compare these things and more over the generations if someone had not taken the time to document and take pictures of what everything had looked like back then.

The same holds true with our own lives... thoughts...likes/dislikes...family photos...recipes...how well will our children and our children's children know us when we are no longer here. When someone says to them that they look like you or act like you...will they really truly know what you thought...what you looked like...how you felt or what you liked? They will if you take the time to sit down from time to time to think...reflect...ponder and remember what is important to you and take the pictures and write the words to convey YOU to everyone else who will look at them and read them later...scrapbooking and book altering helps me to accomplish this.

I challenge you to make time to document those important things in your life.. the good, the bad and even the ugly...so that your soul will be heard....long after your voice is silenced this side of Heaven :)

Sad News Indeed....

Well...one never knows how or where to start sometimes...so I am just going to start here. My dear MIL Ginny passed away from her brain cancer shortly after we rang in the New Year. This was my "Proverbs 31" example...how to be a wife and mother. She taught me all of the things that my own mother never taught me in life. How to cook, how to clean...how to make homemade noodles...what the value of family is...how to love someone even if you don't like what they do or how they act, etc...

She was the epitome' of the word "Mom". Heck!- even her co-workers at the last job she held at Carnival Foods Deli, called her either Mom or Grandma! If you called in and asked for the Deli, you had to say "Is Grandma there?" because if you asked for Ginny, they had to stop and think for a minute who you were calling for.

There were some funny moments that we shared over the years...some crazy moments..some sad and serious moments and all of those other "Mom-ism" moments that a daughter and her mother would share. And yes, she treated me just like Sue. Like I was her daughter, not her Daughter-in-Law. Sue and I would joke around over the years about who she liked best, just like two siblings would, and we both would always say that she liked "Donnie" best! (My husband and Sue's brother) :)

Once you had met Ginny, there was a unique bond of the heart that you shared and it seemed as if you had know each other your whole lives. I actually had the honor and privilege of having know Ginny for half of my life. I was 40 when she moved on to go live with Jesus; and Donnie and I had met just after I had turned 20. I turned 41 on February 8th, and I missed the card from Ginny that always told me she loved me this year :(

We would tease each other from time to time too and when she would get sassy she would point her index finger at me, and I would always say "Calm down, Virginia!"...then we would crack up laughing or smile and she would say "Oh, you!" :)

The grandkids all called her "G"...because really she was so special that she didn't even need a full name, kinda like when the music artist Prince decided to use a symbol for his name... the great-grandkids all started calling her "GG"...and That she was.. a "good gal"...GG :)

I am sure that there will be many moments when I will miss Ginny over the years to come, especially on holidays, birthdays (she was a firecraker baby- born on July 4th)... familt gatherings. I am just glad that during the last days of her life we were able to have those conversations that mean the most... the ones about life, love, family and our personal relationship with God/Jesus. I can rest confidently in the fact that she loved the Lord and has accepted Him into her life years ago and knew where she was going. I was able to re-assure her nefore she passed on, that NOTHING can EVER separate us from that LOVE and she died peacefully in her sleep.

I had to laugh (and felt bad about it at first)...as Donnie and I made it to Sue's before the guys from the funeral home showed up to take her. Ginny had told Sue that she wanted me to have the diamond earrings that she wore everyday because they were special to her and she wanted to pass them down to me as a gift. She used to tease me all the time about leaving them in her ears as her cancer progressed, and she told me that she was going to die with them in and when I went to reach down to take them out of her ears, she was going to reach up and point her index finger at me and say "Gotcha!"...we had more than just a few laughs over that one :) Well, Sue took them out a day or two before she passed away to keep to give to me. When Donnie and I got there and went into the bedroom to pay our respects, the dentures that she wore had shifted out of her mouth slightly and her head was tilted a bit. The minute I walked into the bedroom, a combination of tears ands laughter overcame my body at the same time. Tears for the loss of someone that I deeply love...and laughter because it looked like she was laying there, while somehow still saying "Gotcha!"

Virginia...you were truly a gem that will be missed dearly, everyday of our lives...make sure that you are helping Jesus to put our room next to yours in Heaven!

Love, Shannon (Donnie, Tiffany & Paige) <3

Family Matters...

It's been a little while now and we have been going to Donnie's sister Sue's house to visit with my dear MIL Ginny. She has good days and bad days and I am sure "everything else" in between days too. The other night I decided to cut her toenails, give her a foot massage and paint her toenails a pretty shade of shimmery pink. She looked at me and told me how good it felt and it almost made me cry. It was such a small and simple act of kindness, and I didn't think anything of it at the time. I just knew that she couldn't cut them herself because she was too weak. I love her, so I decided to just "do it", as Nike says. As she sat there, just relaxing with her eyes closed, I started to think about all of the things that we take for granted,and how even the simpliest acts of kindness can affect our emotions and general well-being. Then I started to think about how wonderful a world we would be living in this side of Heaven if we all treated one another with the love of Christ and not as the rest of the world treats us. Never forget that family does matter...especially those family matters of the heart...like scratching your child's back at bedtime, telling your family that you love them, or painting toenails and foot massages! :)

Cleaning Day!

faAt noon today, I am going to help my friend clean her humble abode. She was recently divorced because her louse of a husband who has cheated on her numerous times over the years walked in one day and told her that he didn't love her anymore. Really!?!...could you not have figured that out years ago, you crackhead!?...he isn't a crackhead, but that's the closest thing that I could think of at the moment, without going off on a man-bashing tyrade!

Anyhoo...she had to go from a multi-room house to a 3 room apartment, so as you can imagine, we have a LOT of purging, organizing and cleaning to do. She says that it's hard for her to have to let me see her "mess"...but I told her, "Hey! Think nothing of it, that's what friends are for." And I truly believe that she would drop everything in a heartbeat to come to my rescue if I needed her...so I get to reap the blessing in disguise of knowing that I am helping her to get the interior of her house shiny and new. And if you think about it, nobody likes anyone else to see their "messes"...if they did, the dishes would never get shoved in the oven or dishwasher, or the clothes in the closet that were on the floor...or the other things that people do when they get unexpected guests and friends drop by.


I have always likened the interior of one's soul to the condition of your home. What I mean by that is, to me at my house, I am always in a state of some sort or another of organization and "tidying up"...therefore it reflects an outward view to the world, who happens to "drop by"...what the inner condition of my spiritual life is like at that moment. (Which always fluxuates between spick and span and dusty)...just like my struggle this side of heaven to be like an alien in a foreign land.

For me, I am always in a constant state of "tidying up"...maybe I yelled at my kids or hubby that day...maybe I was so mad that I dropped the *F*Bomb...maybe I was so tired that the laundry just sat in the basket until it was all wrinkly and then I got mad all over again. Whatever the case may be, it's like that with my walk with God too. I get mad and I yell at Him "Now would be a GREAT time to come down here and take me home, God!"...(I have never dropped the *F*Bomb at Him)...but that laundry basket metaphor...now that's a good one...so if I am not in His Word or don't do what He tells me to do, then my soul becomes all shriveled up and wrinkly, just like those clothes!...and I do believe that God is my Father...so I talk to Him as I were His daughter and we have that "parent/child" dialog most of the time.

I am working on how to organize...(or get rid of)...all of the "stuff" that I have accumulated over my 40 years on this planet. Some of the stuff is clothes that I keep as I convince myself that I will someday be that size 6 that I once was...instead of the size 14-16 that I am now. You would think that as I struggle with an underactive thyroid that I would just get rid of them...which I am, but it has not been an easy road, I can tell you that. It's almost as if it is a personal mourning over what I once had, and in a way...who I once was.

I am getting ready to switch doctors because I feel that mine is not even keeping up on when I have to get my blood work done, as I always have to call him and then he says, "Oh yeah, you should have had that done last month."...DUH!??? Everyone keeps telling me to seek out an Endocronologist...a doc who deals with the thyroid and the immune system...so I am toying that idea around currently.

But just like my house and the inner condition of my soul...I must constantly search and seek out the "better things" and the "specialists" that God has set before me, in order to be walking down the narrow road. Boy, does that wide road get confusing at times!

So, for me....I get to be blessed today, knowing that I am helping a close friend "air out her dirty laundry" ...and free the fetters that have kept her soul locked up fo several months now...getting your hands dirty by helping out a fellow sister in Christ...it doesn't get much better than that! :)

Sometimes Life Ain't Always What It's Cracked Up To Be...

I am generally a fun-loving, easy-going person by nature, and have even been referred to by my friend Jenny as a "cartoon character". But somedays, do you ever wonder how you got where you are? I mean sometimes...life just "ain't" (yes, ain't!) what it's cracked up to be. Cracked...would be the logical word for it sometimes!

This morning my husband had an explosive outburst of rage that seemed to come out of nowhere and it was directed straight at me! (Actually most of my bi-weekly paychecks are direct deposited into our joint checking account and he only gives me the checkbook when it's time to go to the grocery store...and then, I have to listen to him complain about how much I spent and what I bought! I can take a lot, I mean A LOT! before I get mad and come undone). So, I guess the fact that I tried to take $20 out of his wallet this morning is what set him off. So, in all actuality, I guess you could even say that I caused that explosive outburst in him. And...I guess the fact that I said to him,(after he told me to shut up), that I have a "constitutional freedom of speech"... more than likely infuriated him even more. (There was some feeling of satisfaction in saying it, and knowing that he would have never thought to say it, that made me feel better).

I just get sooooo tired of having to ASK for money and explain WHY I want it and WHAT I am going to do with it!- I scrapbook!... I read...and we have a teenager!- what do you think that I am going to spend it on, genius!?!

I can see...(and live it most days)...why the #1 thing that couples fight over and marriages end over, is money. Being a Christian,(you would have never known it this morning!)...it gets hard to stay on the course and not fall off the wagon. I really can understand how people can get so mad at each other that they walk away or hurt each other. Before I knew Christ and accepted him as my personal Savior, I could have really hit my husband over the head with a cast iron skillet and never thought twice about it!(really!)

Life...as we are told, by Christ...IS going to be hard, and it is going to be filled with trials and tribulations...and I guess even the occasional frying pan! :)