Bloody Life Lessons

“I believe I can do things people think are impossible,” is a quote I read today from the UFC Middleweight Champion, Anderson Silva.  I’ve been doing my homework on this guy simply to try and find out what universe he fell out of.  They SAY he’s from Brazil, but if you saw the bout last night with Chael Sonnen, I’m sure you would agree with me that this guy is clearly NOT human. 

While this blog is not intended to be about mixed martial arts, it has been on my mind all day, so please bear with me. 

If you’re not a fan, let me give a brief back story.  Silva has the longest winning streak in UFC history.  He has not only defeated his last 11 opponents, he has embarrassed them.  The Spider, as he is called, moves like smoke around the octagon anticipating and countering his opponent’s moves seemingly before they are ever even contemplated.  He’s fascinating to watch.  The dude is a freak.

Well, enter Chael Sonnen – a hot little Billy Badass who says he’s going to “Retire the Spider.”  This guy talked so much crap about this fight that a lot of the MMA world began to wonder if he might just be suicidal.  I’m sure at some point Dana White said, “Thank God we’re on PPV after the kiddies go to bed.  This is going to get ugly.”  Sure, Sonnen is a great fighter but like I said, Silva is a freak.

About a minute into the first round, every jaw in the UFC dropped as Sonnen sent The Spider to the mat.  Silva was flat on his back and being relentlessly pounded in the skull.  At one point, Chael was clanging imaginary cymbals against the champion’s temples.  It was excruciating to watch.  This went on for four and a half, five minute rounds.   At the sound of each bell, the champ pulled himself up, washed out his mouth, took a few deep breaths and jumped back in for more punishment.  Chael Sonnen lived up to his trash talk and handed Anderson Silva his ass… right up until round five.

And The Spider caught his prey in this tangled web:

One of my best friends and I were lounging in the pool together today, rehashing some of the hell I’ve lived through in my short 29 years here on Earth.  She looked at me, shook her head and said, “I don’t know how you’ve survived everything you have and still have any kind of faith left.”  Maybe I should’ve taken a cue from The Spider and answered, “I believe I can do things that people think are impossible.”

The first time I went down for the count, I was seventeen.  Round two ended in my early twenties.  My husband’s death wrapped up round three in 2008.  Having my heart stomped on earlier this year is hopefully then end of round four.  Round five has begun and mark my words… when the bell rings this time, the champ is going to come out on top!

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My Own Prison

I am in a prison cell. The walls are cold with hatred. The floors are paved with broken promises and dreams. The doors to freedom are barred with anger and resentment. My ankles are shackled with rusty chains of sorrow and hurt. There is no daytime here. Only night. Only pain.

The prisoner is me.

The jailer is me.

“To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you.” – Smedes


Growing up in the church, I’ve heard teachings on the importance of forgiveness all of my life. Up until a few weeks ago, I had never had a need for them. Sure, I have known some really really terrible people in my 29 years that I haven’t walked away from unscathed. However, when you know terrible people, you realize from the beginning that they are capable of terrible things. In a way, you have an innate defense against them and when they wrong you, the sting isn’t as great because you always knew it was a probability. It’s the ones you don’t see coming that really have the capacity to turn your world upside down.

˙uʍop ǝpısdn sı pןɹoʍ ʎɯ

Over the course of the last month, I have discovered that anger is a disease that has the power to rot a person from the core of their being. It can easily become an all-consuming, life-sucking force with the ability to drain the very daylight out of the world. It’s a miserable way to live. Those old, bitter women who live alone with their cats in houses that trick-or-treaters are afraid of… I. Get. It. I found myself this week well on my way to buying a kitten.

However…

I have made a decision.

I will CHOOSE to forgive and open my cell door. Forgiveness is a choice, not an instinct, and most DEFINITELY not a feeling. By choosing forgiveness I choose to cut the tether between myself and the source of my pain. I must choose it every moment, every hour, every day when the memories creep back in. But one thing is for sure, I won’t allow another day to be stolen from me.

Besides, something’s gotta give soon… I’m allergic to cats.

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Follow the Yellow Brick Road

I have gone back and forth over whether or not to actually post this blog.  Some might consider it “airing dirty laundry,” but I’m now considering it a PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT.  Most of you already know that TJ and I broke up and I have been purposefully very vague on the details.  This blog is painful for me, for the obvious reasons.  I am hurt.  I feel utterly blind and stupid.  I am angry.  But more important than my feelings, is the need for the truth to be told.  So, follow me down the yellow brick road if you will.  Guard your heart and your mind so that you or someone you love may never have to walk this path yourself.

The following story, as God as my witness, is true. 

If you’ve been around my blog for any time at all, you know that my husband died tragically in a car accident on May 31st, 2008.  We had two children who were ages 2 and 4 at the time of his death.  That accident shook me to the core.  Six months later, on what would’ve been my wedding anniversary, New Year’s Eve, I was invited to a party that I didn’t even want to go to.  During the course of the evening, I met a wonderful man that I hit it off with instantly.  He was truly an unexpected ending to a night I’d been dreading.  We talked until nearly four in the morning, had dinner two days later and the next weekend he made his very first trip to my home in Nashville, TN.

His life was crazy, to say the least.  He was in the middle of a painful divorce and was juggling a booming repossession business and a full time job at the Asheville Fire Department.  Regardless of his hectic life, he made room for me in it.  Because my children had already lost one father, I proceeded cautiously into the relationship.  It wasn’t until he and I had been together for six months and he asked us to move to NC that I finally allowed my children to really become involved with him.

The next year of our life together was wonderful.  Every week, he drove the 300 miles between us to be with me and my children.  We attended my daughter’s school programs, her softball games and my son’s baseball practices.  He flew me to Vegas (twice) for Valentine’s Day weekend and we took the kids to the beach for my daughter’s birthday and to Disney World for Spring Break.  When we were in NC, he let my baby boy go to work with him in the big repo truck and took him fishing.  We began making plans for the future, plans for a wedding and another baby.  He wanted a boy named Ace.  We found a house in NC and he sold his prize truck to pay cash to finish it’s construction.  Aside from some hiccups in the relationship, it was wonderful.  I was happy.  My kids were happy.  My daughter kept asking when we were going to get married so he could really be her daddy.

TJ Fortenberry is a liar and a cheater! TJ Fortenberry is a liar and a cheater!

Then in April, I caught him in a lie.  One lie turned into two and then into three.  He explained everything away and made me feel like I was crazy for doubting his love and devotion to us.  I believed him.  He began to make huge steps in rebuilding our broken relationship and even insisted on us to begin couple’s counseling, which we attended together, so that “we could have a solid foundation for our new life together.” 

On my birthday, May 26th, he’d just gotten in from a long trip to Michigan with his mother to visit her sister who was diagnosed with breast cancer.  He flew into Asheville and then drove all night, so I could wake up with him next to me on my birthday.  He crawled into my bed at 6AM that morning.  I had an amazing day.  We picked my daughter up from school together and he cooked dinner for me and my neighbors that evening.  That night, we were planning to go out to celebrate.  He had to get clothes from his car and disappeared for what felt like an eternity.  When I finally walked outside he looked up from the trunk of his car like he’d been caught.  He came inside and locked himself in the bathroom for another twenty minutes.  When he finally emerged, he was a different man.

“I need to talk to you,” he said.  We sat down at the table.  “You know how much I love you, right?”  I nodded.  “I need to be honest.  I lied to you again.  When I was in Michigan, my ex wife was with us.  She went to be moral support for my mom because they are so close.  I knew you would be mad.  That’s why my phone was off in the car and why I only called you from gas stations and restaurants.”

Lying again.  This was the final blow.  I threw him out of my house.  He was supposed to stay until we packed up the truck five days later and moved to NC. 

“The truth shall set you free.”

The truth, the real truth, came out the next day.  He was never divorced.  He was never separated.  He was living the ultimate double life.  His wife had no idea.  I had no idea.  He lied about lying.  He never went to Michigan with his mother.  He was in the Bahamas with his wife for her birthday, which ironically is the same day as mine.  He felt sooo bad about having to miss her actual birthday because he had to work at the fire department. 

For a year and a half, he built a life with me and my children and every time I had a doubt about him, he had a plausible explanation.  I trusted him blindly, completely and ruthlessly.  All of the promises, pledges of undying love, and pleadings of forgiveness are meaningless.  All of the nights we would lie in the bath and talk until the water ran cold were a LIE.  The man that I loved with all of my heart, trusted blindly, forgave relentlessly…. NEVER EXISITED.

I was nothing but a pawn in a sick fantasy. 

He always told me, “I’m a good person.  I don’t hurt kids and I don’t steal from old people.”  My kids are hurting.  My daughter has cried herself to sleep more than once this week. 

His wife is an amazing woman.  I am blessed to know her.  She doesn’t deserve what he’s done to her probably for the entirety of the marriage.  Yes, we know that I am not the first.  Yes, we know I wouldn’t have been the last if he’d gotten away with it this time.  Practice makes perfect and this was pulled off almost flawlessly.  ALMOST. 

 I can’t help but wonder who else played a role in his extraordinary charade.  All of the guys that worked and covered and lied for him… so that he could pull off this lifestyle.  Do you not have souls either?  Is the money that good?  Has he been lying to you too?

You had us all fooled: me, your wife, my kids, my family, your family, our counselor and even yourself…But not anymore.  Here at the end of the yellow brick road, the big curtain has been pulled back and just like the Great and Powerful OZ, you, TJ FORTENBERRY, are nothing but a small, pathetic, little man. 

TJ Fortenberry is a liar and a cheater! TJ Fortenberry is a liar and a cheater! TJ Fortenberry is a liar and a cheater!
TJ Fortenberry is a liar and a cheater! TJ Fortenberry is a liar and a cheater! TJ Fortenberry is a liar and a cheater!
TJ Fortenberry is a liar and a cheater! TJ Fortenberry is a liar and a cheater! TJ Fortenberry is a liar and a cheater!
TJ Fortenberry is a liar and a cheater! TJ Fortenberry is a liar and a cheater! TJ Fortenberry is a liar and a cheater!
TJ Fortenberry is a liar and a cheater! TJ Fortenberry is a liar and a cheater! TJ Fortenberry is a liar and a cheater!
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Your Crazy Mom

There is a time and season for everything.  While this is not the end of the Impacting Journey season, it is the beginning of something new.  After days of confinement with 2 young children having almost no adult interaction, I have started a new blog called, Your Crazy Mom.  Appropriate don’t you think?  Seeing as how I have been teetering on the edge of sanity all week.

Anyhow, this new blog isn’t just for moms – but it will talk a lot about being one.  It’s a place for real moms who don’t always have it all together – or more frankly, moms who are just really lost sometimes, hoping like hell to not screw up their kids. 

I hope you will stop by, have a laugh and bring your friends.  It’s us against them… moms have to stick together.

www.yourcrazymom.com

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Under The Big Top

This past weekend we took the family to the circus.  It has been years since I have attended and I have to admit, I might have even been more excited than my kids about the prospect of going.  I love it all: the animals, the trapeze, eating grape flavored slush out of a tiger’s skull. 

My favorite circus as a kid was the Circus of the Stars.  Remember that one?  They had everything from Vanilla Ice doing asinine motorcycle stunts to George Burns singing “Young at Heart.”  Today our has-been B-Listers are whirled around a dance floor.  Back in the day we swung them from a thirty foot wires and beams WITHOUT THE SAFETY OF A NET!  Eat that Lisa Rinna… oh, wait – you were on both.  *Teeheehee*

When I was a kid, running away and joining the circus was on the list of things I contemplated doing with my life, followed by being Shamu’s trainer, a truck driver and a water chemist.  For about three months I had dreams of becoming a professional clown.  (Some would say that I have succeeded and to those I give the invisi-bird.)  It occurred to me on Saturday just how creepy the circus really can be and that the people who do grow up and join the circus must be of a “special” breed.  (Perhaps the Insane Clown Posse really aren’t that far off.)  They put a clown in a box, shove some fiery steel stakes through it and call it “family entertainment.”  When they cut another clown in half and carted away his frantically flailing pieces, Will looked at me with wide eyes and exclaimed, “Well, that wasn’t nice at all!” 

While I enjoyed every minute of it, with this circus experience I realized just how much of an adult that I really am now.  Here is what I thought of the circus.

  1. The insurance premiums on this bunch must be through the roof!
  2. With that set of boobs, the circus must pay really well.
  3. I hope my daughter doesn’t get curious about the peculiar bulge in the front of that leotard.
  4. Geez.  I hope his mother wasn’t planning on having grandkids.
  5. I need to make sure the kids scrub their teeth tonight.
  6. PETA has to be going NUTS in the parking lot.
  7. Who on earth would pay $112 per ticket for this?  That’s a week’s worth of groceries per person!
  8. I’m glad that kid isn’t going home with me. 
  9. What kind of an idiot gets into a cage with 12 tigers?  Didn’t he learn anything from Roy Horn?
  10. We should not have brought Will.  He will try this at home. 
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Get Involved

I had grand ideas for several pointless blog topics lamenting over the cold weather and how much I hate Twitter, but in light of the recent earthquake in Haiti I can’t seem to allow myself to pen a bunch of frivolity.  In the span of several minutes over 100,000 people were crushed to death, hundreds of thousands more were injured and buried under rubble and debris.  Orphaned babies are sleeping in parking lots.  The hospitals are gone.  Prisons overturned.  My brain can’t quite grasp such tragedy.  I’ve been glued to CNN since Wednesday.

I often write about Compassion International, a children’s aid non-profit that is doing amazing work in third world countries around the globe.  Compassion aids 65,000 children in the country of Haiti alone.  Around 6,400 of those children are in the epicenter of the earthquake in Port-au-Prince.

If, like me, you are feeling hopeless in the middle of this disaster and want to get involved, please consider Compassion.  All funds raised in response to the Haiti earthquake will be used immediately to reequip Compassion’s local support structure and to provide for the immediate needs of Compassion-assisted children and families.

Whatever you do, please get involved somehow.  Sure, our country is in an economic crisis.  However, even the poorest of us in this great nation still have so much more in comparison.  Please give and even more importantly – please pray.

Read the Compassion Blog here: http://blog.compassion.com/tag/haiti/ 

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Really Cool Scars

One of the many superpowers given to mothers is the ability to decipher meanings of certain sounds from our children.  With the slightest peep we know whether to feed them, defend them, or yell in their general direction, “OMG, stop whining already!”

Unfortunately, today I heard the type of cry that makes a mother’s heart stop dead in her chest.  A bone chilling scream echoed from the bedroom and when I charged through the doorway the first thing to catch my eye was blood pouring from my little boy’s side.  Thankfully, the wound was not severe enough for stitches, but as I assured him earlier, “It’s gonna leave a really cool scar!”

On my right knee I carry a scar from a bicycle accident in the fourth grade. The skin was ripped open in three different sections and tiny bits of gravel and sand were jammed underneath the surface of my flesh.  The doctor gave me a cream – I don’t remember what it was, but I hope the FDA has outlawed it – that, I swear, melted the scabs off every time they tried to form.  It was like bathing in battery acid.  I also spent the next week at summer camp on crutches.  Twenty years later, when I look at the purplish discoloration just below my kneecap I don’t remember falling of the bike – I remember the battery acid and my bruised armpits from the crutches.

Isn’t that often the case with scars?  The healing process is usually more memorable than the initial injury.  It certainly takes longer and is generally more painful.

I consider the many scars I have that are unseen.  The deep gashes left in my heart, my soul and spirit from choices I’ve made in my life.  Bad decisions are easy.  They are usually quick and even, initially, painless.  It’s the recovery from them that is so bitterly agonizing.  You never forget the moment when you recognize the villain as the face in the mirror.  When you realize that you have failed, you have wounded those that you love, and that your own pain is caused by your own hand. 

My scars show themselves in my relationships, in my hesitations about my future, and certainly in my parenting.  However, I am learning to remind myself that they are just scars.  The pain is gone.  The wound is healed.  All has been forgiven.  They scars are not eternal penance for my sins, but simply a reminder to never turn back. 

I’ve also learned that the right decision is almost always the more difficult one to make.  It’s usually not the one that you think you want.  On the bright side though, the right decision doesn’t lead to daily doses of battery acid on wounds – and that, my friends, is worth avoiding at all cost.

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Predict This!

Yesterday at this time, Middle Tennessee was in a state of sheer panic over the threat of severe winter weather.  Nevermind that our meteorologists would be more accurate predicting the second coming of Christ.  Nevermind that this particular forecast was downgraded three times over the course of a week.  Nevermind that the only time we actually get hit with real snow is when they are calling for sunshine.  Gas prices skyrocketed, Kroger sold out of milk, and – thirteen hours before the first anticipated snowflake fell – 55 counties closed their schools. 

Currently, you can find me curled up in the recliner with a cup of coffee, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, and my laptop staring at a snow free landscape out of the front window of my home.  There is no snow; not one flake on the ground.   While, for the sake of my kids I am mildly disappointed, I am not complaining.  It’s noon and I’m still in my pajamas. 

I do find the pandemonium of Nashville yesterday pretty humorous given the outcome of our Winter Weather Watch.  It leaves me considering how often we allow ourselves to go into a tailspin over a maybe.  We convince ourselves that possible scenarios are imminent based on our hopes or fears rather than fact.  How many times do we make decisions, sometimes life-altering ones, based on uncertainty before we have given the clouds a chance to turn and miss us completely?

There are medical maybes.

There are financial maybes.

There are relationship maybes.

Are you making choices based on fact or changing circumstance?

Maybe it all goes back to the old saying, “Don’t count your chickens before they hatch.”  I’m sure the county school board is feeling that one today.  The skies still might open up and pour down white fluff from above, but I doubt it.  After all, my daughter forgot to wear her pjs inside out and flush an ice cube down the toilet.

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End of The World Resolutions

The Bible told us.  Nostradamus told us.  The Mayans told us.  John Cusack told us.  The end of the world is coming.  We’re all going to die.  

It’s Armageddon Week on The History Channel and I’ve been glued to the tube for four hours now contemplating the tragic and violent end of life here on Earth.  Is our great planet going to be sucked into the black hole that is looming in the center of The Milky Way?  Will our bodies rot from the inside out with plague and disease?  Will we blow each other to kingdom come through warfare and genocide? 

Y2K and June 6th, 2006 have come and gone and we’re still circling around the sun, so 2012 has become the new “In” date for the apocalypse.   And since Obama is certainly the Antichrist, the days of life as we know it must be drawing to close.  Buckle up folks; the four horsemen are on their way… and I don’t mean Jose, Jack, Jim and Johnny Walker. 

All joking aside, what if 2012 is the end of the world?  Hell, what if Friday is the end of the world?  What will you have left undone? Unsaid? Unfinished?  Will you have loved those you love well?  Will you have lived the one life you have the way you dreamed you would?

What are you waiting for?

I haven’t yet made any resolutions for this year aside from the staples “Lose five pounds” and “Get something published.”  So, I think I will resolve to live 2010 like 2012 is the end of the world.  You know… Just in case.

“No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.”- Matthew 24:36

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Thankful for Rotten Grapes :: The Legendary Hash Brown Casserole

amoloA year ago after my sister took a trip to Africa, my kids and I chose a little girl to sponsor through Compassion International.  Prisca is the same age as my daughter and lives in a high AIDS risk village in Uganda.  When we received our first letter from the child I realized how incredibly fortunate my little family is.  For less than what one meal at The Cheesecake Factory costs me, Prisca is provided with food, clean water, medical care and an education.  As I sit and contemplate what my children are going to receive from “Santa” this year, Amolo will be rolling her hoop in the dirt with her siblings.   

I am thankful for the roof over our heads.  I’m thankful for my daughter’s winter coat.  I’m thankful for the grapes that are rotting in the refrigerator.  I’m thankful for this jacked up economy that we complain about so much.  May we all take a moment and remember how good we really have it.

The Legendary Hash Brown Casserole
recipe by M*M

hashbrowns

Before my husband passed away, he loved this dish so much that my mother made 2 casseroles every Thanksgiving – one for Robert and one for the rest of us.  Haha!

Preheat oven to 350° 

Mix the following ingredients and spread into casserole dish:
1 32oz bag of frozen hash browns thawed (I prefer southern style cubed)
1 can cream of chicken soup
16oz sour cream
2 cups of shredded cheddar cheese
½ cup melted butter

Top with:
2 cups of crushed cornflakes mixed with ¼ cup of melted butter.  Spread over the top and bake for 1 hour

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