A few reasons that I am grateful for my parents...

One of the things I learned while attending a Criminal Justice class in college had to do with individual perception. Upon investigating a crime scene with witnesses, a good investigator will always take statements from each individual, then later put them together to create an entire story. No one single witness can give the entire story because as individuals, we all have our own unique perception of what we see, hear and feel, and it will not be a carbon copy of what the persons standing next to us sees, hears and feels.
The same can be said about family, particularly siblings within a family. 

I was born in 1963, the oldest of four children and the only daughter. In 1965 my first brother was born. In 1968 my second brother was born and finally, in 1975, my third brother was born.
In the fall of 1969, I started first grade. Before long, my mother begin allowing me to visit the homes of school friends and soon I was allowed to spend the night with them. I did not have frequent 'play dates' or overnight visits, and perhaps this is why I treasured those I did have and those visits became branded within my mind.

One friend lived just down the road from us, as was the case of most of my friends who I was allowed to visit. She lived in a house that was at the end of a washed out lane that ran alongside her grandmother's house. Her grandmother's house was a tiny thing that was not in good repair, but the grandmother kept it up as best she could. My friend's house, on the other hand, was large and very pretty...from the outside. But once inside, things changed. The living room was well done, with sheetrock and flooring and it presented itself beautifully, though stacked high with boxes and tools. Off of that ws the kitchen that had the sheetrock up and a few base cabinets sitting in the middle of the floor, along with the clutter and tools. But as you opened the door that led into the hallway towards the bedrooms, everything changed.
The bedroom part of the house was simply dried in with the exception of her parent's bedroom. It did have sheetrock and a door, but the walls had not been finished, and the floors were bare plywood. The bedrooms of my friend and her little brother were framed with 2x4's, and cardboard from boxes had been tacked on the walls for separation and privacy.  There were two wood heaters for warmth in the winter, and I can well remember just how cold that house was! The bathroom was nothing more than an empty room. They had no running water, no septic system, no toilet, no bathtub and no lavatory. Behind the house, and only about ten feet away from the house, was a two-seater outhouse with a door that wouldn't stay securely closed. At night, my friend and her brother used a coffee can without a lid as their 'slop jar'. The first few times I stayed overnight, they did not have electric, either.  
My friend's father supposedly worked in Houston and might come home on the weekends. Then again, he might not. When he did, everyone walked on eggshells in his presence because he was not a nice man. My friend didn't tell me this, but her brother and her cousins did. My friend's mother worked at a hospital and most times she worked nights. My friend and her brother pretty much lived with their grandmother, which is also where they ate and took baths. My friend, however, was always better than me and she told me so repeatedly. She never missed an opportunity to tell me how much smarter she was than I, how much better her parents were than mine, how much nicer her home was than mine and so on. Sometimes I'd get mad and hit her. One thing I was better at than her was fighting. But, we never stayed mad at each other past a few minutes. She really didn't have many friends that visited and I wasn't invited to visit friends very often, so we made it work. She would make me giggle and she would make me wonder why she was so intent on creating an illusion about her life that was nothing like her reality. Even then, I had compassion for her, even if she did sometimes get on my last nerve!
Because of her, I joined Missionettes at her church and she and I would spend hours memorizing scripture and trying to work on badges. We also enjoyed Vacation Bible School together...Back in the 70's, Hi-way Tabernacle had the best VBS one could ever hope to attend!
She only came to my house to spend the night two times in five years. 
The first time she came over she was about 9. Mother had fried t-bone steaks for dinner. We had a calf butchered at least every year and we ate well. My friend sat down at the table and as we were filling our plates, she got finicky and pointing to a beautiful t-bone asked, "What is that?" Momma said it was a t-bone steak. My friend asked, "But what kind of meat is it?" Momma said, "It's beef." My friend withdrew her pointed finger, stuck her nose in the air and said, "I don't eat beef. I only eat hamburger. Do you have any hamburger?" My mother's green eyes flashed in what I can only call amused anger and she said, "Hamburger IS beef, young lady! Hamburger is ground up STEAK, just like the steak that is sitting on that plate in front of you. We are having STEAK for dinner. NOT hamburger." Well, my friend refused to touch the steak and played with her potatoes while the rest of us ate as if we hadn't eaten all week. She continued to pout after dinner and when bedtime finally came, we went to bed only to have her start screaming around midnight and crying that she was scared and wanted to go home. Momma got up and drove her to her grandmother's house. The friend was mad at me for weeks after, for God only knows what. I, in turn, was mad at her for being such a rude titty baby! At her house, the only food to eat was bologna and peanut butter sandwiches for breakfast, lunch and dinner. At my house we had steak, potatoes, peas, cornbread, iced tea or Koolaide, and anything else we wanted, yet she wanted hamburger! Then she cried like a baby and messed my sleep up! 
The second time she came over was to my one and only slumber party when we were ten and right before we moved away. She was better then, but I think it was only because she was scared of looking bad in front of the other girls. 
Years later I would hear that her parent's divorced and that her father had another wife and kids in Houston...the entire time he had a wife and kids on the Prairie. I don't know if this was true or not, but it made sense as I remembered things about him and how he treated my friend, her brother and their mother. 
I've tried to find her many times since, I've even enlisted the help of friends, but it is as if she vanished. After Jr. High, no one knows what ever become of her. 
I think I will always miss her. 

Another friend was almost a relative, though not quiet. We were probably closer than cousins and she was, for a long time, my best friend, even though she was younger. There were six kids in that house, four boys and two girls with my friend being the prettiest of the bunch. They were poor, but not as poor as the friend above. Her dad worked Monday thru Friday, and her mom worked cleaning houses whenever she could. They lived in a two bedroom house, little more than a shack, but they made do. In one bedroom the two girls shared a bed and three of the bigger boys shared another bed. The baby boy slept with the parents in the other bedroom. 
Her mom was the best cook I've ever known, hands down! She could make the most appetizing of meals out of nothing and those meals could feed her army and still have leftovers for the next day's lunch! 
They also had electric, running water, indoor plumbing and propane. Their house wasn't spotless, as no house with six wild kids can be, but every day those kids swept the floors, did the laundry and washed dishes. That is, when they were allowed inside the house. The rule was, "Go outside and play and don't kill each other". They never did, though it was touch and go on many occasions. 
Her parents? Well, I loved them both! Many people called them 'trash', but they were good to me and they were fun to be around. Her parents enjoyed their kids and there was a lot of laughter way back then in that little shack. 
Of course, there was a lot of fighting between the kids, especially my friend and the oldest boy. I never understood the hatred she had for her oldest brother until I was thirty years old. Unbeknownst to me at the time, her oldest brother was sexually abusing her and he would go on to molest others as well. When I heard this terrible news, though the puzzle pieces fell into place, my heart was broken for her. Thankfully, the most he ever did to me was pull my hair. I bit him and drew blood, and he never touched me or my hair again! 
Last time I saw her was at the funeral of someone we both loved deeply; someone we did not know the other knew, someone that did not know we knew each other, and someone we thought loved only us. We hugged and we held each other for a long time, our tears wetting each others shoulders. We needed no words. She was my dearest friend and we'd loved the same young man that we stood there mourning. I told her to come see me. She said she would, but I knew then that I would never see her again. I think she knew it, too. 
That was  29 years ago.


Another friend was an only child, though her father had been married previously and she had half siblings. Those half siblings rarely, if ever, acknowledged her or her mother. This friend was always whining about something from the first time I met her until the last time I spoke her her, forty plus years later. As a kid, she had a weight problem that would follow her through her adult life. I don't know what the problem was when she was a kid, but as an adult it had a whole lot to do with laziness. Anyway, she and I were always fighting about something, most usually because she was a whiner. I spent the night with her one time when I was about eight or nine, and that was enough for me to never want to do that again!
I can't describe the way I felt at her house, other than to call it something akin to terror. The very presence of her parents scared the hell out of me! It didn't take anyone telling me for me to realize just how mean and cruel her parents were. Through the years I've heard what great people they were, but I'm telling you, behind the closed doors of their home they were NOT great people. The entire time I was at her house her parents seemed to dare me to do anything out of line and my friend advised I walk a very tight rope or else her daddy would beat us both. She made a believer out of me when she showed me the dark stripes on her back. He even pulled off his belt and showed it to me, shaking it in my face for good measure, if I did ANYTHING out of line. Problem with this was...I had only been at her home an hour and all we'd done since I got there was look through her books and giggle!
I never was so glad to leave a place as I was to leave her house the very next day! 
Years later, as an adult, I renewed the friendship and managed to hang on to it for a couple of years. Her father had died, as had her first husband. She remarried a man that was the same age as my father and not worth two cents. They moved away from her old home place and left her mother. Once her little family was settled, her husband went back down to the old home place and lived with her mother for months before her mother sold out and followed her daughter, with her daughter's husband in tow.  I tried to keep the friendship alive, but I just got so tired of her whining, blaming, hypochondria, holier-than-thou bullshit that I went off on her one day. A few days later she wrote me a letter and in it she said that she never wanted to speak to me again and if she saw me in heaven, she still wasn't going to speak to me or even acknowledge my presence there.  This was completed with a sentence, written in big letters and punctuated with a row of exclamation points: "AND I MEAN IT!!!!!!!"
She always could make me laugh!

Later, I had another friend who lived on the opposite side of the river in one of those trashy subdivisions that made greedy land developers rich by selling flood prone bottom lots to unsuspecting people who either hoped for a better life for their kids, or needed to escape the trappings of the big cities for legal or illegal reasons. I'm not really sure if her parents worked or not, I honestly can't remember. I do remember that they lived in an unfinished and shabbily built house in a low draw and on pilings that lifted it about five or six feet, not nearly high enough for the draw it was in or the proximity to the river. (Even at thirteen I knew this.) The interior consisted of an open concept living room, dining area and kitchen, and these rooms had plywood on the walls instead of sheet rock. The kitchen was a half-assed attempt at cabinets and counter tops, also constructed with half-assed skill. There was a hole, about two inches by four inches, that was in the corner of the dining area. This hole was covered with a piece of 2x4 lying flat and nailed into the floor on one end. When it came time to sweep the floor, the 2x4 piece was moved away from the hole and everything was swept into the hole. This included emptying ashtrays on the floor and sweeping the butts into the hole. 
A sheet covered the opening into the hallways and bedrooms, and upon entering this area, you discovered that you could see through the framing from room to room, including the bathroom. While a sheet covered the bathroom door, as well as the doors leading into the three bedrooms, the only things that kept you from seeing through to the exterior walls were the strategic placement of dressers and chest of drawers, cardboard boxes and clothing on hangers that were placed on nails in 2x4's. The parents bedroom did have a couple of small tarps hanging from the walls to give privacy, but that didn't cut down on the sounds.
Her parents were heavy drinkers, heavy smokers and heavy filth talkers. The fact that they had two teenaged daughters did nothing to stop their sexual appetites, which were heard clearly through the tarp covered walls at night. The two times I spent the night with her, I went to sleep with a pillow covering my ears and praying I didn't smother in my sleep!
Her parents had a male friend who lived in Houston, but on weekends he came to their house to see their oldest daughter. (My friend was the youngest.) The girl was about fifteen and had for all intents and purposes, quit school. She went just enough to say she was a student, but that was about it. She was allowed to smoke, drink, cuss and date whomever, whenever she chose. On weekends, she chose the male friend, who at the time was in his thirties. Later I would be told by my friend that he had a wife and kids in Houston, but the wife was a bitch and my friend's older sister 'understood' him. Even then, I wasn't stupid.  The two times I was there, the sister hung all over this man with her parents approval. They smoked and drank and talked about trashy, filthy things, and my friend and I would get out of the house and their company just as soon as we possibly could. 
She and I did a lot of walking on those visits and she did a lot of talking about her family. From these talks I figured out that her sister was a prostitute and her parents were her pimps. They liked the male friends coming in on weekends to spend time with her sister because the men always gave them money before they left. I also remember the last visit where we loaded up and went to the drive in movies. The sister was dolled up and once there, she went off 'to work'. When the movie was over, she came back to the car and pulled a wad of cash out of her short shorts and handed it to her mother. She slid in next to the male friend and said, "Now I'm yours." and all the adults in the car were happy. 
Not long after, we moved and I never saw this friend again. To this day I feel an ache in my heart for my friend. She wasn't like them when I knew her and I wonder if she ever got away from them, or if they eventually ruined her as they had her older sister? 

Another friend lived on a property that had once been a working farm. Her parents had gotten 'down on their luck' and needed a place to live, so they moved in to a falling down trailer house that had been backed in to the edge of a forest and dropped. When I say dropped, I mean just that. There wasn't a single block under that house; just the tires underneath, that had eventually lost air, and the jack in the front. The front door wouldn't close properly and waking up to possums and raccoons in the house, as well as snakes and rats, was a common occurrence. The first morning I was there, they all laughed at me because I yelled out when I stepped into the kitchen and found a possum on the table! Making this one and only visit even more uncomfortable was that there were no beds. My friend and her sibling slept on the floor on salvaged sofa cushions. 
Her parents were drinkers, heavy smokers and hell-raisers. There were piles of beer cans and liquor bottles all over what could be considered their 'yard'. The two nights I was there, they had friends over and they would still be sitting outside under the pines stirring a fire, laughing, cutting up and getting drunk when us kids finally fell asleep. They also liked for their kids to be outside and as soon as we woke up, we had to quietly make ourselves a bowl of cereal, quietly eat it, quietly clean up after ourselves, quietly get out of the house, quietly stumble over passed out people in lawn chairs and on logs throughout the yard, quietly get a few hundred yards away from the trailer and then...run and scream like banshees escaping a prison!
We climbed trees, rode horses, caught pollywogs on earthworms, played in the old barn, beat her boy cousins up and played in the old farmhouse. We had a blast! Sometimes after noon on both days, some adult would call us to the house where we had hot dogs or Spam sandwiches with chips, cookies and Koolaide. We'd eat, then clean up as the adults started drinking again, including Sunday afternoon. 
I never got to spend another night with her after that weekend. Her dad got a job somewhere and they left the old farm. I never saw her again. 
I hope her life has been nothing even close to her name: Stormy. 

So, I am sure that you are asking what these friends have to do with the gratitude I have for my parents? And, what any of this has to do with a siblings perception?
There are lots of reasons...
My father has always been a hard and dedicated worker, whether for himself or for someone else. The only time he wasn't at home every single night was when his job required him to be out of town. Aside from that, every night Daddy came home to Momma and us kids.
In turn, Momma always had a good hot meal waiting when he got home. Just about every morning, as my brothers and I ate breakfast before school, she would get meat out of the freezer to thaw for supper, and every afternoon she would start cooking not long after we got home from school. We might not have what we liked, but we always had what she and Daddy liked. We learned to eat it and go to bed full, or not eat it and go to bed on an empty stomach and sometimes, with a very sore behind!
Daddy never was a drinker to much extent. A beer or mixed drink now and then, but never every day and not once in my life have I ever witnessed my Daddy drunk. Truth is, I do not think my daddy has ever actually been drunk!  Mother hated alcohol in any form from the time I was a baby until I was twelve and she started drinking heavily. But up until I was twelve, she would not even allow beer on her property and would throw a fit if she found any.
Daddy was never a heavy smoker, either. A cigarette now and then, but he preferred cigars and pipes, and you'd be more apt to see him without either than you would with them. Mother started smoking at the same time she started drinking, when I was about twelve. But before then, one did not smoke in her house.
Now Daddy can cuss like a sailor, but I was almost fifty-one years old before I heard him use the 'F' word and that was a slip in a moment of hurt and anger.
Daddy didn't tell crude, vulgar or off-color jokes around us kids when we were little. He was raised better and he knew it! He never talked about sex stuff around me, either. Even living on a farm and having animals mate was embarrassing to him if there was a female around. 
Mother did not cuss at all until about the time she started drinking. Before then, she was not afraid to drag us to the bathroom, kicking and screaming, and stick a bar of Lava or Safeguard soap in our mouths. After we were done spitting and gagging, she'd take a keen switch to our bottoms. I learned early to make sure she wasn't around before I uttered a cuss word! 
And, though we were far from rich, we always had decent houses to live in. We always had electric, running water, indoor plumbing and not once did we live in a house that wasn't finished. Later, Daddy and Momma did buy land with a hundred year old house in bad repair. They did the best they could making it livable, and my baby brother did live there during his high school years, but for the first twenty years of my life, they chose better houses and sacrificed land. The one time we had a snake in the house, Daddy got out of bed, grabbed his belt and while in his underwear, beat that snake to death with his belt. Later, he got dressed and put that same belt on. 
When I was a young adult, I opened a drawer in Momma's kitchen and discovered a possum. There was a hole under the kitchen sink that we didn't know about, and as soon as my brothers got that wretched thing chased out, they sealed the hole and later killed the possum. 
We just didn't put up with nasty critters in any house we lived in.
My Daddy did not beat on us kids. Not ever. And while he could be scary to my boyfriends, mine and my brothers friends loved him. (They still do!) He has always been a joker and a teaser, and just because you were a friend of one of his kids and he didn't know you well, that didn't stop him. Truth is, Daddy has always loved kids.
Momma? Well, Momma never was a great lover of children and she's said this herself many times. She didn't mind spanking us for the smallest of infractions, and sometimes she'd spank the neighbor kids, too! When it came to kids, Mother had no fear of them OR their parents. If she was going to tolerate them and watch out for them at her house, feed them her food, allow them to play with her children, then they had better be on their best behavior or she would remind them who was the boss at our house. She could be downright lovable and sugary sweet when we had visitors, and as long as the visitors behaved themselves, this is all they saw. But let them mess up and they discovered that nobody messed with Momma (or her kids) when they were at Momma's house.
While I was molested by a cousin, that kind of crap did not go on in our house and under Daddy and Momma's roof! 
My parents never had 'drunken parties' until dawn with adult friends and relatives passed out all over the house and yard. We didn't have piles of beer cans and liquor bottles in our yard, and we'd better not have ANY trash in our yard, Period! 
Daddy and Momma didn't sleep late, much to the constant aggravation of their children who wanted them to. Saturday mornings everyone in the house was up by 8am, 7am if Daddy was really pushy. Momma would make a big breakfast and then Daddy would have the boys outside working and I would be inside cleaning the house, and as soon as I was done inside, I went out and helped my brothers. Of course, once Daddy got the kids busy, he'd sneak back inside and take a nap, which angered everyone, but that didn't stop him. Looking back I think if a man is going to get up five or six days a week and work ten to twelve hours a day, he deserves a nap or three in the middle of the day on weekends. But when you're 8 or 10 or 16, you just don't see it that way.
Of course, Momma always took a nap after lunch. Seven days a week she took her nap, and if you didn't want your behind blistered, you would either take a nap, too, or be very, very quiet while she did. My second brother and I went through our childhood with very sore bottoms most days after lunch, but Momma rarely missed a nap. 

Looking back now, I see that the first twelve years of my life were good. A move when I was almost eleven was very hard on me socially, but the home life remained good until a few months shy of my thirteenth birthday. Aside from the occasional visits with grandparents, aunts or friends, our parents raised us 100% of the time. Home meant Momma and Daddy. Vacations meant grandparents, aunts or friends. 
They also knew where we were just about all the time and we didn't stray too far without notifying one of the other where we were going. 
My parents made sure we had a decent and finished house, and to Daddy, anything else would have been an embarrassment.
Daddy worked hard to provide for us and Momma worked hard to cook for us, clean up after us and care for us. It wasn't easy for either of them. Sometimes Daddy would come home after a bad day and raise hell with everyone in the house. Sometimes he would go outside, slam doors and throw things, but he never hit any of us, nor did he ever spank us in anger or because his day was bad. Sometimes Momma wouldn't feel good or her nerves would be on edge, and on those days we probably got a few spankings and licks we didn't deserve. Many times she couldn't keep up with all of us kids and the house keeping, so she'd hire help to come in and get the place cleaned and organized. 
But no one is perfect and no one is happy and carefree one hundred percent of the time. My parents were human, they remain so today, and I realize that this is just part of being married and raising kids.
My parents taught us how to work and how to care for each other, even if some relatives didn't agree with this. I do agree that kids need to be allowed the time and freedoms to be kids, but they also need to be taught responsibility and how to work. Regardless what my siblings or relatives remember, I remember a fair balance of both. 
When my mother suffered a mental breakdown just a few months after my third brother was born, and then her having a total hysterectomy almost a year after he was born, had I not been taught earlier how to work and look after my brothers and take care of things around the house, things would have been a lot worse than they were. 
My brothers don't remember, but I do. I remember making them breakfast and lunch and helping Momma with supper. I remember changing my baby brother's diapers, making him bottles, giving him baths and getting him to sleep. I remember watching my brothers while Momma slept or while she left the house to 'get away' for a little while. Aside from the couple of serious fights my brothers and I had, and knocking a bathroom door down, no one was ever injured on my watch, none of us starved to death, or did without baths or clean clothes, and we managed to not tear the house down...except for that door, of course. 

Looking back at a handful of my childhood friends and the lives that I witnessed them living in their own homes with their parents and siblings, I am most grateful to God in Heaven for giving me the parents He did. The first twelve years of my life weren't perfect, but looking back I know without a doubt...they weren't very bad, either!

Bad Chapters don't define me...

Bad chapters in my life do not define me...But they do present themselves as opportunities to show what God has done in my life!
Growing up, there were a lot of things that harmed me and there were a lot of things that I thought, was even told from time to time, that I brought on myself. It finally got to the point where I was filled with so much pain and anger, that I turned it all inward and begin years of self-destruction. I did things that I knew were wrong, but I was past the point of caring. I figured that if no one else cared and I was responsible for the bad, I might as well be bad and maybe someday I would just die.
I hated me; everything about me. I didn't care. Nothing mattered.
So, I made some very bad choices and I followed some very bad paths. I did many things that I would later be ashamed of, even regret to the very core of my being, but at the time I simply did not care. The pain was too intense. The hatred of me and all that I was, wanted nothing more than to destroy my very existence on this earth.
Later, God started speaking to me...that same Voice that had saved me from my attempted suicide, that voice begin speaking to my heart.
At first there was severe condemnation...I had been raised in a church that used the 'guilt trip' as a means to salvation and for several years, I fell right back into that terrible teaching. Once again, the ugly thoughts of suicide invaded my mind and I struggled to keep those thoughts at bay for several years.
Eventually I found my way...not the way of my 'ancestors', but MY way; the way that God had prepared for me, the way away from and out of the guilt of condemnation. It was at that time that I begin to understand the wonderful, loving and forgiving true Grace of God and it's healing power begin to slowly, but thoroughly, cleanse my entire being.
It was also during the beginning of this 'renewal' and 'awakening', if you will, that I felt a 'call' on my life. A 'call' to share my experiences, a 'call' to help others who, like me, were in such horrible, indescribable pain. I even said, "If I can help one person, just one single person, it will have all been worth it."
And I meant every word!
Only problem was??? When I begin sharing my testimony, sharing my story, the very people who 'claimed' to be supporting me spiritually, the very people who 'claimed' to be my brethren in Christ, the very people I called 'family' and 'friends', these people would shoot me down! They would stop me before I even got started and they would tell me that I needed to 'forgive myself' and that I needed to 'forget the past'.
They wanted me to cover it all up and just act like nothing ever happened.
I heard that 'you need to frgive yourself and move on' line so often that I started questioning my motives, then I started questioning God's 'call', and then I started questioning God.
Even though I knew what He had called me to do, even though I felt that my story was one that needed to be shared and told, I finally got so tired and so sickened by having these 'wonderful' people chastise me that I stopped. I just quit even trying.
I withdrew from everything and everyone, and I kept it all hidden within my own heart. I convinced myself that maybe I had been wrong and maybe it would be easier to just stay away from people instead of  'accidentally' dropping a word here or there and then having them tell me that I needed to 'forgive myself'.
And, of course, everyone was happy. Everyone was comfortable. No one had to think of bad things or hear bad stories, no matter how much God might have forgiven, healed and restored a person. THAT wasn't important. What WAS important was that these people's level of comfort wasn't challenged or threatened, and all was well in their little narrow worlds.
Yet...in my world? There was no peace. The desire to share my story was as strong as ever. God had not released me from the 'call' and I knew it. But still, I allowed others to keep me silenced.

Almost three years ago I received a call from a distant cousin. I had not spoken to her in years and did not understand why she had called me. But in the course of the call, she suddenly said, "I just have to thank you." I asked, "For what?" She said that I had saved not only her life, but her child's life as well. I did not understand and I said as much. She then said, "Remember when you talked to me that day and told me your story?" Sadly, I did not. She went on to say that until that moment, the moment that I told her my story, she had planned on aborting the child she carried (that no one knew about at the time) and then she had planned on taking her own life afterwards. I was shocked and it was one of the few times in my life where I was at a loss for words. She went on to say that after I told her my story, something changed in her heart and she changed her mind, decided to keep the baby and give her life another chance. She said, "It was tough at first, and it's been tough many times since then, but I have never regretted changing my mind. I am so blessed now and I owe you. You saved mine and my child's life. You did that and you should be proud."

I forgave myself a long, long time ago. God forgave me, as well, and He gave me another chance. Not to forget the 'chapters of my life', but to embrace them, to own them and to always remember where I was so that I would never forget how far His love, His forgiveness and His precious Grace had brought me!
I will share my story. I will speak of my testimony. I will tell the world just how wonderful and gracious my Father in Heaven is. I will shout out from the mountain tops just how far my wonderful God has brought me.
And, if any 'chapter' of my life makes you uncomfortable to hear or read my story, then I can assure you...I'm not the one with the problem!
This is who I am...a book made up of many chapters.
I am not defined by any single chapter.
My identity is the entire story, and by the Grace and Love of Almighty God, it shall end well!

My morning prayer for May 22, 2014

Dear Father in Heaven,
I just want to Thank You for not judging me the way religious fanatics do and for loving me the way that they do not. Thank You for Your Forgiveness and Mercy; the two things that so many of Your children claim to possess, but do not. Thank You for Your Amazing Grace...How sweet and healing it has always been to my soul! Help me to be better today than I was yesterday, better tomorrow than I was today. Help me to allow YOU to be seen in me, instead of people only seeing me just being me. Help me to not judge others unfavorably, to love them as You love me, forgive them as You have so lovingly forgiven me time and time again, to be as merciful to others as You have always been toward me, and to always be graceful and extend grace in all things.
Help me this day, Oh Lord I pray, and every day that is to come, for it is You alone that guards and guides my life. May I not cause You shame.
In Jesus' Precious Name I pray,
Amen!

My Thoughts on Funerals

Funerals. I hate them and then, I sort of like them. Let me explain.

I like the beauty and smell of the flowers, the craftsmanship of the casket, the music, the songs and eulogies of heart felt remembrance. I like how nothing can bring a family or group of strangers together quiet like a funeral. I like the genuine hugging, the kind touches, the soft words meant to bring comfort. But, that is about all that I like about funerals. I hate everything else about them!

I am not good at letting go. I am not good at saying goodbye when I know that it's forever, or a really long time. I'm not good at sitting in that pew and remembering the person alive; memories of both the good times and the bad times turn me into a basket case. I am not good at keeping my emotions in check, nor am I good at not allowing the emotions of others to effect me. I can barely contain myself when I see the deceased in the casket, or know that their earthly body is closed up in that box or their ashes rest in an urn on a pretty little table with their picture displayed beside it. I want to scream, I want to bawl and do so loudly with snot spilling forth from my nose and tears dripping off my chin as I fall on the floor because my legs will no longer hold me up. Or, I want to stand up and dash out of that place and never look back.

I also hate the bullshit...the deception of, "She was a saint!" or "He was such a good man!", when I know in fact that she was a a witch from Hades and he was a cold-hearted, mean s.o.b.. The fake tears and fake sadness by those people who, you know for a fact, hated the dead person with a passion.

I also hate the funeral preaching. I REALLY hate the preaching at a funeral! In my opinion, it is utterly ridiculous to try to get people saved at a funeral. I wonder, what do these long-winded opportunistic preachers have in mind? An altar call right next to the casket? Or, are they trying to preach Uncle Lucifer into Heaven? Scare the Baptists into converting to Pentecost? Make the Atheist believe there is a Higher Power and if they don't straighten up that Higher Power will kill them, just like He killed poor old pagan Aunt Bessie who may, or may not, be burning in hell like molten lava? 
I once went to the funeral of a relative who was a turd if there ever was a human turd. The first hour the preachers (there were several) spoke of what a good, kind, sweet man he was to the point that one of us voiced that maybe someone needed to get up and go check inside that casket to make sure we were at the right funeral! The next hour was spent preaching, and I'm pretty sure the preachers touched on just about every book of the bible during their sermons. By the time they concluded the sermon, I mean service, we were all so tired and miserable that even those who frowned upon alcohol and tobacco were considering going out for a case of beer and a carton of cigarettes! 

I hate the dishonesty of many funeral eulogies. A lie is a lie is a lie, no matter how you tell it or why you tell it...a lie is wrong, Period! A lie about a dead person doesn't make that person any better or get them into Heaven if they aren't already there.

I hate the guilt of a funeral. It is said that you are supposed to go to a funeral, or a viewing, to pay your last respects to the deceased and offer support to the family and/or loved ones who remain. Well, you either did or didn't respect the deceased when they were alive and could see and hear you, but I just don't think 'paying respects' to a dead body does them any good. A funeral does allow one to say good bye, see for themselves that the person is really gone, but paying last respects to the deceased? You are doing it for you, maybe to ease your guilt or say goodbye for you. Your dead friend or relative is dead. They don't care if you show 'respect' or piss on the flowers. They aren't there.
Showing support for those left behind? Maybe, maybe not. If I'm going to feel their pain and turn into a bawling, snotty, wailing cow, (and I will), I just don't see how that can be supportive to anyone. Of course, there is my morbid sense of humor as well...It shows up at the most inopportune of times, (when I'm sad and nervous), and never fails to offend someone. So, why even set everyone up for that? Why put others through that?

I hate having to dress up for funerals. It never fails that someone will die at the most financially trying of times and you look around in your closet, your husband's closet and the closets of your kids and realize that none of you have anything 'funerally' to wear! You or your husband, or both of you, not only lack extra money, but you are going to have to take off work and then go shop for funeral clothes for the entire family with grocery, mortgage and car payment money. No, no one should attend a funeral in a tee shirt and bermuda shorts with flip flops. However, if going to a funeral is more important than putting food in the mouths of your kids and paying for the roof over your heads and the car you need to go back and forth to work, there is a serious problem. Oh, you can plan ahead and buy everyone a suit of nice clothes for a funeral and hopefully someone will die so that you get a chance to wear them before the kids grow and you and your husband gain or lose weight! 
Fourteen years ago I bought two nice black dresses to wear to funerals in hopes that I would never be caught off guard again by the thoughtless death of someone. Eleven years ago I stopped smoking and two years later I had gained fifty pounds. Those dresses still hang in my closet. They fit the hangers as well as they ever did, they just no longer fit me!

Tell those you love that you do. Show respect to those you care about while they can still look you in the eye. Say what you want to say while they can hear you. Hug them while they can hug you back. Give them flowers while their noses are still able to smell them. Tell people about Jesus and let them see Jesus in your life while they can still make a conscious choice to accept Him or deny Him. And, if you fail to do these things and those people die, leaving you riddled with guilt, vow to do better with the next person. Make some changes in your life so that when the next person passes you can know in your heart that you did better this time and there was nothing left unsaid or undone. 
Just remember...Some people actually enjoy funerals and weddings. (I'll get to weddings another time.) Some people attend funerals and weddings like some people attend Friday night football games and Saturday night beer joints. It's their 'fun' thing to do, to be seen and to see, and they relish in the sadness of a funeral and the joy of a wedding. We see nothing wrong with these people, nothing at all. Therefore, people shouldn't see anything wrong with those of us who don't attend funerals or weddings. Some of us don't attend Friday night football games or go to beer joints, either.

 

The City Relations

I was raised in the country and it didn't matter if we lived on an acre or ten, my parents always managed to make that land a 'farm'. From the ages of about five until I was fourteen, we had a milk cow and calves, chickens, pigs, a horse and we always had a garden. My brothers and I worked and played in the dirt and our favorite place to be was always outside. (It was also Momma's favorite place for us to be!) We caught crawdads & minnows in ditches, dug up earth worms and fished in ponds and rice field canals. We climbed trees, made forts, played cowboys and Indians, hunted rabbits at night, rode our bicycles, played football, fought each other, defended each other, got dirty and were healthy and happy. Most of the time we ate very good, even if it wasn't always food we wanted to eat. We had our own fresh milk and vegetables, as well as butchering our own pigs and chickens and sending our calves to the locker. 
We also worked, and we worked hard. 
My first brother, the one born two years after me, and I milked the cow, fed the animals, worked the garden and helped Momma. He was Momma's 'Worker Child'. My second brother, born about five years after me, worked some, but mostly he worked hard at trying to look like he was working hard when in fact he wasn't doing much of anything but providing us with comic relief.  Number 2 brother was always Momma's 'Beautiful Clown Child'. My third brother was born when I was almost eleven and he never did too much of anything except argue. He was Momma's 'Smart Child'. As far as I know, I have never been anything other than 'The Girl', and have never been anyone's favorite anything until I met my husband and became his favorite wife, and had my kids and became their mom.
Anyway, my brothers and I worked and played, got dirty and went barefoot a lot. We also spoke 'country', like our Daddy, where a 'tire' was a 'tar', a 'wrench' was a 'ranch', and we were always 'fixin' ta do sump 'um'. 
Because of this, our 'city cousins' and their 'city mother', our Momma's older sister who was raised in the same Big Thicket house as our Mother and by the same country parents as she, felt sorry for us countrified heathens and would invite us to 'visit' them in Houston every summer. Only later, when I grew older, did I realize that they thought our Daddy was a mean hard drinking, hell-raising man who worked us kids near to death and they felt it their Christian duty to offer us relief and 'culture' from his heavy hand. Had I known this then, I would have given them hell, but I didn't. Fact was, I viewed these week long summer or spring break 'vacations' with both excitement (for the first day) and homesick anger (every day after). 
On March 10th, 1970 I was in first grade and six years old. I went to school that morning everything was normal, but when the school bus dropped me off that afternoon, I saw that my aunt and her oldest daughter were there waiting for me. I was happy to see them, but knew something wasn't right because they said they were taking my brother next to me and myself back to their house for a few days. I reminded them that I had to go to school, but they said it was okay and we were having a little vacation. I didn't want to go. Something was very wrong, but I had no choice and my brother and I climbed in the back seat and away we went. Just outside of Splendora I HAD to know what was going on because I had a really sick feeling and I was scared. From the front seat my aunt told me that my Nanny (My Daddy's mother, my grandmother) had gone up to Heaven to live with Jesus. I was smart enough to know that this meant that she had died and I was never going to see her on this earth again and I quietly cried, "No!" My aunt told me that Jesus wanted her with Him now and she would be happy and well and I shouldn't be sad for her. Well, I WAS sad and I was MAD! I didn't care what Jesus wanted. I wanted my Nanny on earth with ME! When I started to cry, my aunt ordered me not to cry and not to be sad, but I was a rebel even then. I did cry and I was sad. In fact, I'm STILL sad! I was not allowed to see my Nanny for the last time. I was not allowed to tell her 'goodbye', not allowed to grieve as I should have been. But that wasn't my aunt's fault and I've never held this against her. She was just doing what her baby sister asked of her...take up the slack, watch the kids for a few days, give Momma a break. It became sort of a habit after that and until I was about 13. 

My Aunt and Uncle lived in a nice brick house on a tree covered lot in Northeast Houston and off of Mesa Drive, back when that part of Houston was nice. Back in the 70's, the pace was slow and the neighborhood was safe. I could ride my cousins 10 speed bike all over the neighborhood without fear of anyone kidnapping me and I did love that. They also had an ice cream truck that came around every day, something we never had in the country. Sometimes they would take us to the Galleria shopping, or to the Budweiser Brewery and bird park. Other times we would pile into my male cousin's car and go cruising the streets of downtown Houston after dark. Now THAT was a Lesson for this 'country bumpkin' for sure! I saw my first 'cross dresser' when I was about ten years old and I was shocked as any ten year old might be! I also learned what 'street walkers' were and on what streets in Houston that they could be found. Only later would I stop and wonder why it was that my straight laced, refined and ultra United Pentecostal cousins would know these things, even know these streets??? As I look back now, it all makes perfect sense because my male cousin remains a perverted jackass and it didn't 'just' start when he got married the first time!
My aunt was married to a man who worked for a refinery in Pasadena. They had one son and three daughters, the son being somewhere in the middle, truth is, I really can't remember their birth order except for the baby. Their kids were older than I, the youngest about six years.
The son would begin molesting me when I was six, but never did he so much as touch me when I was at his home in Houston. I guess that was sacred ground for him. He preferred molesting me when his family would visit at my own home or at my grandparents house and the last time was at his and his new wife's home, but never at his parent's home. The girls were high strung, haughty and spoiled rotten, and I have never known any three females lazier than those three when they lived at their parent's house!
Since I was always busy doing something, I would arrive at their house and start cleaning. Not only did the place need it, but cleaning kept me occupied and there really wasn't anything else to do there. They had no television, for they felt that television was a sin apparently worse than anything else, including riding around at night looking at cross dressers and prostitutes. I would play with their Barbie dolls and then look through their tons of fashion and bridal magazines to the point where my eyes would cross. Later, I'd sit and stare at the piles of unfolded clothes, dirty dishes lining the kitchen counters and table, mold growing in the bathrooms and mirrors so filthy I could barely make out my own image and I decided to get busy! 
Even then I wondered how on earth a mother and a daddy could live in a house that dirty and unkempt with three able-bodied pre-teen and teenaged girls and one teenaged boy running around? Not only were they lazy, they were disrespectful and I can't even recall the number of times I would go hide in the corner of their bedroom and cry when they got into their screaming matches with my aunt and uncle! It often sounded a lot like the primate exhibit at Houston Zoo during feeding time. What was worse were the evenings when my aunt and uncle would get into those screaming matches! I don't know how many nights I went to bed in tears and begging God to PLEASE let me go HOME! I even had songs that I would sing in my head..."I'm Five Hundred Miles Away from Home", "Oh, how I want to go home..." I wanted my Momma and my Daddy!!!
Of course, there was the church...and if anyone ever had 'churchitis', it was my aunt and uncle! 
Because we were heathen children being raised Assembly of God, my aunt felt it her God-given duty to brainwash us with 'the TRUTH' of 'Oneness'. Forget that I had gone to church with my United Pentecostal Nanny every Sunday she had me and up until she died in 1970. Forget that I had asked Jesus into my heart when I was five and still couldn't read. And forget the fact that I had been baptized In the Name of the Father, The Son and The Holy Ghost when I was about eight. I was still a lost heathen in their eyes and I had to be 'fixed'. So, they'd drag me to church,and I do mean drag because I simply didn't like going to church, period. They'd dress me in their fancy clothes that were always too old for me...I was tall and they were short, so at ten I could fit into clothes and shoes they were wearing at sixteen and twenty. We'd head to church and be introduced as 'our cousins from the country', and the people would look at us with  pity as if we were the two headed cousins from a carnival freak show.  Sometimes it was fun...the music in a UPC church is ALWAYS wonderful! But sometimes it was 'strange', like when people would be running up and down the aisles screaming their lungs out and running into things, sometimes coming close to knocking themselves out. THAT scared me and made me VERY uncomfortable. I just never could understand why the Spirit of God would cause someone to harm themselves? But, at one point, I did feel God and I was baptized In the Name of Jesus as per UPC belief. I remember praying and saying to God, "I don't know if this is right or not, but I want to be sure and you understand." I know in my heart that God always has, but Momma was a different story!
When my aunt proudly told mother that I had been baptized Oneness, you would have thought that my aunt had said that I had been infilled with a demonic spirit!!! I can still vividly recall the fury in my Mother's beautiful green eyes that day! We're not Catholic, but it is with little wonder that she didn't call a priest to perform an exorcism on me. I'm pretty certain she wanted to murder my aunt, though! I think Mother was furious at her for several years after! As for me? I was okay with it because I felt that God was okay with it, and after all, He is the only one that mattered.
As big as my Aunt has always been in the United Pentecostal Church, she was even bigger in hair. Back in the 60's and 70's, women with big hair was the 'thing' in the UPC church. By 'big hair' I mean the tall bee-hive hair-dos, complete with 'rats', teasings and Aqua Net shellacs. My aunt was superb in this art and many women in her church came to her weekly to get their hair done. In turn, one of the ladies would do her hair, so that all the ladies would look nice Sunday morning. It didn't matter if they got their hair done on Wednesday, Thursday or Saturday, the teasing & Aqua Net would keep it looking as good as 'just done' on Sunday mornings. The ladies would sleep in hair nets and scarves to keep their 'do' fresh and with a minimal of poking and spraying the next morning, the hair remained in tact and as big as ever.
My aunt always drove her kids to school and there were a few times when my city cousins would have school and my country brother and I did not. I still remember vividly this one particular morning...My aunt, who apparently did not sleep in nightgowns and preferred sleeping in her underwear and a slip, pulled on a thin ratty button front house 'coat' and slipped on her ratty looking house slippers, grabbed her purse and out the door we went to take my cousins to school. I was appalled! My mother NEVER left out house without being fully dressed and here my aunt was, driving several miles to take my cousins to school IN HOUSTON and in her slip and see through house coat!!! But my horror was not complete because after we dropped the cousins off at school, my aunt stopped at Merland's grocery store and GOT OUT! I was shocked! I couldn't believe it! But, she got out and ordered me to follow and inside that store we went; not a hair on that UPC up-do out of place, her slip a good two inches longer than her see through house coat and those ratty house slippers slapping the tile in Merland's grocery store as she marched us to the lunch meat section, then the cheese, then the chip section, then the bread section and finally to the check-out where she talked to people as if she had clothes on! I was MORTIFIED! When I got back to my Momma, I told her about this in whispers and she shook her head, inhaled slowly and deeply and kind of made a groaning sound. Some time later Mother took us to visit one of her oldest friends in Thicket. The friend wasn't dressed and had on her nightgown and house shoes. It came time for lunch and the friend said she was going to run down to the store for lunch stuff. Mother asked, "Aren't you going to get dressed?" The friend, who also had the same name as Momma's sister, my city aunt, laughed and said, "Why? I'm just going to the store. I go like this every day." Mother looked at me and I looked back and we both shook our heads. Later Momma would say that some people just had no decency!
As for the hair, though, it played a big part in my aunt's life for years to come. There was this man in the church who loved hair and he started helping my aunt. As she got older, she started sending him her 'customers' and he ended up being the only one who did my aunt's hair. Well, one week he kept putting her off and he did this through Saturday, promising to be at her house first thing Sunday morning. For what ever reason, that particular Sunday was a big day at church and my aunt was getting pretty nervous about her hair. Sunday morning the man did not show and when she tried to call him, his mother said that he was asleep. Well, my aunt grabbed my Uncle's belt and drove herself, I'm sure in slip, housecoat and slippers, straight to the man's house. His mother opened the door and my aunt marched right past her, went straight to the man's bedroom, walked in, flipped on the light and proceeded to give that man the whipping of his life! When she had exhausted herself, she marched out of the house and past the man's protesting mother, drove herself home, fixed her own hair and went to church! 
No man comes between a woman and her hair!
My aunt did not cook often, and with good reason. She was NOT a good cook, at least compared to my momma she wasn't! Now, she had freezers filled with food, but I would guess that 99% of all that food was freezer burned, or at least it tasted like it was. She had a pantry full of canned goods, but she never used any of them, and her refrigerator was filled to the brim with food, but most of what was in there had things growing on it. She was a food hoarder, no matter if the food was edible (it usually wasn't) or should have been thrown away years earlier (It should have been). However, in spite of her not cooking regularly, her kitchen was always filthy and even though she had a dishwasher, her sinks were always filled with dirty dishes and there wasn't an inch of counter space that didn't have dirty dishes cluttered around. When we were at my aunt's, we ate a lot of Kentucky Fried Chicken, a lot of hamburgers and a lot of Shipley's Donuts. She did have Chex cereal, though. About the only meal she 'cooked' regularly as far as I can remember. 
Most times when we arrived at my aunt's house, the only place to sit was on the clothes baskets. After I started folding clothes, like I did at home, I would discover the clothes baskets was actually a couple of sofas. 
And books? Lord have mercy, but my aunt had the books! Mostly Harlequin Romances, but later she'd graduate up to the Zebra Romances, also known as soft porn with a romantic undercurrent. Like my grandmother before her, my aunt was an avid and obsessive reader. Nothing, and I do mean nothing, was more important than reading those romance books. Well, except for church and hair and the mail. 
Mail, you might ask? Well, now, that was a stealthy event! My aunt taught her daughters, and then me, to listen for the closing of the metal mail box attached to the wall next to the front door. As soon as we heard that slap of metal, we had to sneak out, retrieve the mail and hide it on our person until we could get back inside the house and then we had to slip it under a sofa cushion, under the sofa, or anywhere that my uncle would not be able to see or find it. Later, she would retrieve it, go through it, sort it and give him what she wanted him to have. The biggest fights I ever witnessed was when my uncle retrieved or found the mail before she had sorted it! For years I didn't understand, but as my reading improved I would often see envelopes from the finer stores and later I would realize that these were bills for charge cards. I then understood why my cousins always dressed so well and why they gave me clothes finer than anything my parent's could ever afford. But even before I understood what was going on, it bothered me. My parents did not have to hide the mail from each other and I had learned at an early age that hiding things was a sign that what you were doing was wrong.
Don't get me wrong. I loved my aunt and I dearly loved my three girl cousins. They taught me a lot and showed me some wonderful, interesting and fun things. From them I gained my love of shoes and an appreciation for the finer things of life, even though those things rarely fit into who I am now or the lifestyle that I prefer. I still appreciate them and I thank my cousins for that. 
But as 'countrified' as I was, I wasn't dumb or underprivileged as they believed, and still believe today. My Daddy has never been a hard-drinking or physically abusive man, nor was my Momma physically abused and a poor, little victim. Through all their faults, my parents were good parents who taught us right from wrong without having to play duplicitous games or put on 'airs'. Daddy worked hard and so did Momma. Momma's house was not always clean, but that woman cooked some mighty good food and she did things with us kids that were far more important than anything anyone could ever put on a charge card. My parents took us on trips, camped out with us, showed us how to make a fire and how to hunt, fish and clean our harvests. They taught us that lies were wrong, hiding things was wrong and getting dressed before leaving the house was right! (haha!) 
And while I always looked forward to that first day or two at my aunt's house in Houston, returning home and seeing my Momma, hearing her voice and knowing that I was home was always the best part of the entire trip!
Aunts and Uncles and Cousins are great, but Momma and Daddy and little Brothers are always better! At least they were for me...

Don't get me wrong. I appreciated my aunt driving all the way to our home in the country and getting me. I appreciated the time my female cousins spent with me and the things we did while there...shopping, going places, playing dress up, playing board games and so forth. I appreciated all of the fabulous clothing & shoes they gave me. 
But...there was just no place like home and no one as comfortable back then as my Momma.


 

Coming Home

When I was a teenager, my Daddy drove an eighteen wheeler 'Over The Road' at times. He was a 'flatbedder' and hauled a lot of oil field pipe, as well as other things, to places like North Dakota, Wyoming, Montana, which seemed like a million miles away from Southeast Texas. He might be gone for weeks on end and though his being gone seemed easier on everyone else, I missed him. 
We lived several miles off the Farm Market Road and in what used to be, a very nice subdivision. If the wind was right, my brother Jim and I could hear him as soon as he turned off the main highway and our ears would follow him as he idled home. This was especially true in the middle of the night. 
He would often call and let Momma know that he would be home and she would tell us. Many times she would warn us that it would be late in the night or early the next morning, so we couldn't wait up for him. On those nights, no matter how cool or hot it was outside, I would open my window a little so that I could hear him as soon as he turned off the highway. And even if I went to sleep, I would wake up as if my ears were standing guard and listening for the sound of that Mack coming home. Only after he was safely inside the house would I return to sleep, and I would sleep sounder than I had since before he had left the last time.
When I grew up and moved out of my parent's house, on those times when I returned for an overnight visit I found myself sleeping deeper than when I was in my own home. I once asked Momma about it and she said that it was because a part of me felt like a child who knew that as long as Momma and Daddy were in the house, I was safe and could sleep in peace. 
I liked that and the child in me agreed with that.
Almost a year ago, my momma left my daddy. This past March I visited Daddy for a few days and I slept in his and Momma's old bed. I wasn't scared, but I wasn't able to sleep well. Partly due to my being ill, but the biggest problem was the sadness I felt. Almost fifty one years of marriage, four kids, eight grandkids, six great grandkids, too many memories to count and my parents were getting a divorce. 
In April of this year their divorce was final; their marriage and their love was done.
But, as I tried to go to sleep tonight, I remembered how excited we were, my brothers, myself and Momma, when he'd call and say that he was on his way home. She'd lie in bed with her bedside lamp on and read a book, sometimes falling asleep. I'd crack that window open and drift off to sleep willing that Mack to bring Daddy home. And when it finally did, she'd awake and welcome him home and then we'd all sleep as sound as babies snuggled close to the bosoms of their mothers.
I love you, Daddy. I love you, Momma.