It is Over

Today, I declare I am officially Bankrupt and Divorced.

Earlier this year, I posted that it would take another few days....but today it is done. What now?

I have been living the last two years in between. Not married, not divorced. A single mom of two amazing kids. I was trying to keep up on the lunches, school notices, daycare, dishes, laundry, meals, budgets, money, the list goes on!

Today, not much has changed. I can tell you I have kept up on the school notices. I have space to followup on my teenager in regards to homework. I am not living as overwhelmed as I was this time last year. The haze has lifted a bit. I can breathe.

The changes that happened are not seen. To some I don't exist anymore. That is ok. I am learning that lonely and sad is so much better than silenced, beaten, and pretending.

I have so much to say, and I am not sure where to start. I have been silence for decades upon decades. I have lived in the shadows taking hit after hit mostly emotionally. I have put up with people who say they care but prove with their actions the opposite is true.

For today only, I am just celebrating the space I have to breathe. There is alot bubbling up as I heal. I will not stay silent anymore. I will find my platform to speak. I will shout, but not yet. I need the emotional space to just revile in the completion of what I have fought to gain. Independence.

Trevor Shelton has been my voice of encouragement over and over. Not everyone who started with me will finish with me. Not everyone who said I could call them are people that know I still exist. I have even buried a friend last month who lost her battle and voice. She lost her will to continue to try.

Not many people with my story are able to get to the point they can tell the story. In fact I would argue that the fact that I am sitting here writing this out is a testament to the Grace of God. A testament to my faith, to my will, to my fight. It is not me against the world. God wrote my story and He will finish it. Everything my mom has dutifully prayed for. Everything my Aunt has prayed for. I am sitting here as a result of God Himself and for no other reason.

Agiligy in Uncomfort with Change

I always want to start out a post with an apology for how long it has been between posts, but that is if someone is only following this blog and doesn't interact with me on a daily basis. It is like I am apologizing to myself for not being attentive to my need to write.

People said to me last year when my world blew up that it will take me two years to come out of what has happened. When I researched people who have been in similar circumstances I found two years was actually a speedy recovery. Currently I am in to this by 408 days out of 730 days if all ends exactly two years from the day it started, leaving me 322 days left. I have gotten through 408 days by living only day by day. I have made little plans for the future. I look at my life and I hate it. I hate it cause I know what it could have been. I see the choices I made with goodwill, love, kindness, and hope with disgust and shame. I was so ignorant, so naive, so trusting, that I worry daily I will never see those things in my life.

I have spend time investing into emotional security and success vs economic success and security. It is no greater or lesser a pursuit, just different. I truly believe my resolve to becoming emotionally secure and healthy over economic security will eventually lead to economic security and this is the philosophy I live by. If I break down what it takes to be a success, which has been attempted by the best and greatest throughout history there are many paths. I think life in America for the pursuit of happiness and freedom is what humans strive for unilaterally. Telling our stories on how we get there enables others to see different paths and perspectives they never thought of before to get where they want to be, to get to success.

Our leadership at AT&T said, Agility and Uncomfortable are the two words for 2017. There are many paragraphs and words I could re-digest to you that could help explain what they meant by these two words, but I don't want to rehash AT&T corporate agenda. I want to make it personal, which funny enough is also a corporate agenda, but specifically unintended here, just meant as an ironic pun.

Being Agile in the last 408 days has meant changing to the emotional needs of my kids, and being available to support their healing and growth as much as humanly possible. I saw a FB post that a mom's goal is to create a childhood for her kids that they don't need to recover from. If I had been given the opportunity to heal and recover before my childhood was over, maybe I would not have to take the time to do it now. Since taking in a renter and seeing/hearing where they have come from, if there was opportunity to provide a childhood kids don't need to recover from, how much better would we be as a society, as a nation, as a world. Maybe there would not be kids who are scrounging for food through garbage in the streets of India, or people drinking unsafe drinking water is many parts of the world. If Agility were allowed to grow and change us individually, maybe kindness, truth, and justice are also allowed.

I have not read one blog post or twitter post, Instagram post, FB post of anyone asking to be uncomfortable. I know we all don't wake up everyday and say, 'Today, I want to be so uncomfortable!' No all ads, movies, shows, life stories, ect are all in pursuit of being comfortable. The Bible is the only book I know that says, life is going to be hard. You are going to run a race that not all will finish at. The sheep will be separated from the goats, and the road to heave is narrow. If St Mother Teresa woke up one day and said I am tired of living like this, I want to be comfortable, she would not be a saint. If Martin Luther King Jr woke up one morning and said, 'you know, I am good. People respect me, I don't think I feel like marching for my brothers and sisters injustice today,' that he would be the man who lead the American Nation through the civil rights movement? NO. In order to change the world we HAVE to be uncomfortable.

The life pursuit I have to be Soft & Strong has to look and feel agile and uncomfortable. In my last 322 days I will do just that. One day at a time, one hour, one minute, one second. I know my world will change through this adventure. It is not an adventure traveling the world or getting rich, using other people, it is not the easy road. God never said it would be easy, but over and over said it would be hard. I know I will change my world, and hopefully as a result of my personal change, the world will change eventually as those who can and will join me.