Life Ramblings – Impacting Journey

Category archives: Life Ramblings

Bloody Life Lessons

09Aug10

“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!

Filed under Life Ramblings, UFC Wrap Up| Tagged anderson silva, chael sonnen, champ, fight, survival, UFC, winning | 4 Comments

My Own Prison

27Jun10

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.

Filed under Icky Love Stuff, Life Ramblings| Tagged forgiveness, forgiveness is a choice, hatred, prison, release | 6 Comments

Follow the Yellow Brick Road

17Jun10

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 31^st, 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.

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 26^th, 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.

Filed under Icky Love Stuff, Life Ramblings| Tagged asheville, bad men, drama, firefigher, follow the yellow brick road, liars, relationships, tj fortenberry, tj fortenberry nc, truth | 40 Comments

Under The Big Top

28Jan10

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.

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

Filed under Life Ramblings| Tagged circus, circus of the stars, clown, roy horn, tigers | 2 Comments

Get Involved

17Jan10

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/

Donate Online

Filed under Life Ramblings, Ragamuffin Corner| Tagged child sponsorship, compassion, donate, earthquake, earthquake victims, get involved, haiti, port-au-prince | 4 Comments

Really Cool Scars

09Jan10

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.

Filed under Life Ramblings, Ragamuffin Corner, The Mom Diary| Tagged forgiveness, healing, injury, life, moving on, pain, really cool scar, scar, scar tissue, sin | 8 Comments

Predict This!

07Jan10

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.

Filed under Life Ramblings| Tagged decisions, don't count your chickens, school closings, snow, snowday, weather | 7 Comments

End of The World Resolutions

04Jan10

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 6^th, 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

Filed under Life Ramblings| Tagged 2012, death, end of the world, goals, john cusack, mayan, new year, resolution | 6 Comments

Call the Exorcist – Happy Halloween!

30Oct09

pumpkin “Mom, are ghosts real?” my six year old daughter asked me two nights ago as I helped her change into her pajamas.

“No honey; you have nothing to worry about,” I sort of lied. I do believe that spirits roam this earth – call me crazy if you wish – but I didn’t want to divulge this belief to an incomprehensible kindergartner just before bed time.

Why do I believe in spirits? Because I’ve seen them at work. Here’s a true and truly spooky story for you. Happy Halloween!

When I was eighteen I spent nine months in a Christ-centered drug rehabilitation center in Nashville. Just before I was ready to graduate from the program a new woman was admitted into the home under what we were told were “emergency circumstances”. My roommate had recently left the program and after some verbal preparation from the staff members, the new girl, whom I will refer to as “Reagan” from the Exorcist, was given the spare bed in my room.

Reagan was thirty two years old, much older than all of the other girls in the home. She was tall and slender with skin reminiscent of rice paper and fiery red hair that needed a generous dose of conditioner and good brush. From the first glimpse I caught of her, her crystal blue eyes were wide with terror as if she were stuck in the climax scene from a Wes Craven horror flick. Her left leg was secured in a walking cast and her hands were rigid and clenched in a way that I was sure her nails drew blood from her palms.

“I threw myself down some stairs,” she whispered to me, nodding to her broken leg as we sat on our opposing beds the first night of her stay.

“Really?” I asked watching her clasp a hand around her elbow and rock slightly.

“I was supposed to break my neck,” she added. “I was supposed to break my neck.”

Despite my apprehension, when it was time for lights out, I fell asleep peacefully knowing securely in my faith that no harm could come to me. Around two a.m. I was awakened by a strange sound. I sat up in my bed and by the moonlight I could see that Reagan’s bed was empty. A quiet tearing noise was coming from somewhere unseen in the dimly lit room. I rose up out of bed and slowly padded across the room toward the sound. In the corner between her bed and the wall, Reagan was curled into the fetal position not facing me. The tearing noise was coming from her ripping her red hair out with her hands.

Reagan spent the next day with a team of counselors and psychologists. As we prepared for a second night in our shared room, she confided in me that before “everything started happening” she was some kind of social worker with juvenile sex offenders. I can only imagine what kind of evil she had been exposed to.

Once again, I fell asleep easily only to be awakened in the early hours of the morning. Through the darkness I saw Reagan walking toward the door to the hallway. “Where are you going?” I asked startling her.

She whirled around in her white flowing nightgown (which was eerie all by itself). “What did he say to you?!” she screamed at me. “He’s here! He’s here!”

Oh. My. God.

reagan

At this point I started quoting every freaking Bible verse I could think of. She was hysterical and shaking uncontrollably. Thankfully, the night staff was right next door to us since Reagan was positioned between me and the door. They rushed and in and took her out of my room.

The next day Reagan left in the back of a patrol car. She was too much of a threat to herself and to the rest of the residents to stay in the house. I imagine that she was properly escorted to a padded room somewhere and rightfully so. I don’t know whatever became of her.

Looking in her eyes, I knew that what I was seeing was NOT schizophrenia in action – it was someone very evil staring back at me. It made me wonder how many people locked away on psych floors will never been fixed by modern medicine.

Now I’m going to have to try and go to sleep.

Do you have a spooky story that has happened to you???

Happy Halloween friends!

Filed under Life Ramblings, Ragamuffin Corner| Tagged demons, evil, exorcist, ghosts, halloween, possessed, reagan, scary, scary stories | 7 Comments

More Than Meets The Eye

28Oct09

By trade I am a web designer and no, I don’t want to build your website. While it is good money and I don’t suck at it, I really hate doing it. Crap like this is boring, frustrating, and gives me a brain cramp.

While it is a profession that I despise, I must admit that it is quite interesting. It never ceases to amaze me how gargoobled letters, symbols and numbers can produces something as beautiful as this:

OK, maybe it’s the beach that makes it so beautiful…. *sigh*

In reality, my eyes know that this beautiful beach is nothing more than the mess of characters in the source code above. Isn’t this though, the reality of life? I know that I can present a pretty glossy exterior when MOST of the time, I’m a MESS just below the surface. I’m a tangled weave of gargoobled intellect, fears and emotions.

So are these women…

women

It’s too bad you can’t read someone’s source code to find out what they are really about before you allow them into your world. I’m often too trusting of a person and allow the wrong people to get inside my secure little realm of existence. I tend to believe that everyone is truly good and kind at the core of who they are and everyday that happy little fantasy is shattered more and more. It’s a sad realization that there are some people who, if given the option of a “Make Your Life Wonderful” button and a “Make Your Life Miserable” button they will choose to make you miserable every single time.

BUTTONS

What kind of friend are you? Which button do you choose to push?

Filed under Icky Love Stuff, Life Ramblings| Tagged crazy ex-girlfriend, deceptive beauty, emotions, friendship, html, misery, people, php, source code, web design | 16 Comments

Impacting Journey