My wonderful children

I am moving in eight days, again.  When I had all my kids at home (all ten of them) they used to love to shock people by telling them we have moved 19 times over the years.  Am I military? you might ask.  No, not at all.  Then why would I move so many times, especially with such a large family.  Good question and one that is too complex for me to delve into today, maybe I do not even understand totally.

But all that moving certainly did produce well-rounded people, with not much need for the security that comes with a ‘permanent home’ (is that maybe a bit of an illusion, anyway?).  One of my comments used to be that I wanted my children to have their security inside of them, not in external circumstances.  most of my kids are in their own homes.  My youngest is at the stage that he has one foot in and the rest out, sort to speak.

I have a dream that I have been chasing for many years – building up a non-profit to help empower people who are helping others.  Needless to say, this has created a lifestyle for me that is not too security-based.  I am now 60 and I continue to believe and give and live for my passion, for my dream.   I have to be out of my apartment in eight days and just found a place to sub-let yesterday.  I act like I eat stress for every meal and enjoy the flavor, but lots of times my insides churn and I fight that enemy, anxiety.

BUT, I have been living like this for 40 years now (40 years!) and it appears that the older I get and the more my kids are independent, the more I feel driven to shed my ‘stuff’ and be free to keep trying to fly.  One of the biggest struggles has been always, over the years, finances.  Even freedom costs money.  The lack thereof and the pressure produced by that lack tends to produce anxiety.  Sometimes big, bad, ugly anxiety.  How do I deal with this damaging enemy of mine??  I have faith in a higher being than myself.  I believe in God and that He is directing and guiding my life.

I have this impression these days, and I might be wrong, that it might be more accepted for me to make known that I am gay (though I am not) than for me to announce that I believe in God and that I hear His voice and that I try to follow Him with a passion.  My struggle with beginning to blog was this:  do I hide my faith in the closet?  I want to be accepted, I want to build my readership, I want people to read my words and I long to encourage people.  So, do I hide the very thing that sustains me?   I do not attend church but my faith and my belief that I am following divine direction keeps me a bit saner as I push through the brambles and thorns of life, to see people set free.

As I stated in the beginning, I am moving.  And it is all very precarious at this point.  I developed a migraine headache yesterday.  A bad one – I thought, uh-oh, I know these signs, that stupid stress monster is rearing its ugly head and making me sick.  I cannot sleep.  So this morning, I turned to my Bible.  I stopped.  I got on my yoga mat.  I stopped.  I got quiet.  I tuned in to something in me, yet so much bigger than me.  I was led to John 14:1.  “Let your heart not be troubled; believe in God, believe also in Me.”  Then I opened a very old devotional book I had on my shelf – have not opened it for a long time.  Opened to this:  “do not worry about your life, what you shall eat, or what you shall drink, nor about your body, what you will put on…”  Matt. 6:25.     For years and years and years, when I find myself out on a ledge once again – needing to jump and needing to believe that ‘He’ will catch me, I always have to come back to this same question.  ‘Is my God real?  Or am I crazy?’   And time after time after time after time, He has proved to me, He is real (and yes, I am a bit crazy).

So, here is my story, here is my song.  The real one.  The continuing saga of a simple woman, with ten kids and now 8 grandchildren, still determined that my God is real and that He cares for us and that we really can make a difference.