Saturday, November 24, 2012

The Good In Riding Out The Storm

It has been many months since I wrote in my blog and soooo much has happened since then. I have an entirely different life now and live in an entirely different world. I now see that as a really good thing but at first I wasn't so sure.

In June, I shut down my business of 23 years in Raleigh and moved 600 miles to live with a man I met online last December. For the first three months, I cried my guts out every day and thought about running back to what was familiar. I was scared to death to be living in a strange place with a drastically different culture than what I was used to. I was extremely uncomfortable having no income of my own and being dependent on someone else to feed me and provide me with what I needed. I felt like I had lost all of my independence and all of my power. In some ways, I felt very much like a dependent child and that was horribly uncomfortable for me. My independence has always been extremely important to me. I tried to get some business, but wasn't having very good luck. And then I started having some health issues that made me fear I was suddenly no longer able to work at all and support myself. That thought was terrifying. I felt as if my whole world had come unravelled.

Eventually, I did start getting some customers and one of the first ones happened to be a psychotherapist (another angel story?), She saw that I was a basket case and agreed to trade her services for cleaning service. In the therapy session we had, she said that she could see that I was "biologically depressed", which was a term I'd never heard before. She strongly encouraged me to not make any decisions about moving back to Raleigh or staying here until I got on some medication for the depression and extreme anxiety I was experiencing. As much as I hate taking medication, I knew she was right. So I made an appointment with a doctor and got some meds.

After a while, the anxiety subsided and the veil of depression started to lift and I was able to see things from a different, more positive perspective. During the first few months I was here and was so fearful and confused, there was always something inside of me that was telling me I was in a good place and should stay. With the help of the medication and a couple of therapy sessions, I began to see the good in the new life I had and the new companion I had. I began to, as I always preach, LOOK for the good in my new world. And, as always, I found lots of it!

Yesterday was Thanksgiving Day and Jim and I had a wonderful wonderful day together, just him and me and my doggy Bossy. Together we cooked a traditional Thanksgiving dinner and celebrated our first holiday together as a couple. We even bought some new dishes to use for special ocassions. We hug and kiss a lot now and every day we say "I love you". I've got a handful of customers now and am learning my way around and adjusting to the new culture I now live in. I love living in a little log cabin in the woods. Jim and I have created a very cozy home together. I've come to really love and trust him. And Bossy loves Jim too. They're buds! :)

I'm very thankful for the people (angels?) who have crossed my path just when I needed them and helped me to stay the course and ride out the storm. Once the dust settled, I looked around and saw a lotta lotta good in the world around me. And that's a good thing! Keep looking for the good!

Here's our Thanksgiving table!  Happy! :)

I should add that our new dishes came from the Dollar Tree and it only cost a total of $13 for the beautiful table settings. More good! Yay! :D




Sunday, March 18, 2012

Angels don't say "Duh!"

It's been a while since I've had, or at least been aware of, an "angel experience" as I call them. Maybe it's happened and I wasn't paying attention. Today I was paying attention.

The saga continues with my 21 year old Jeep Cherokee. I swear, she has more mood swings than I do. And she never seems to have them in front of a mechanic! She saves her episodes just for me. Today I went to the grocery store and, when I came out with my groceries and unlocked the car door, the security alarm started beeping. I turned the key a couple times, which is supposed to reset the alarm. But it just kept beeping and beeping. This is the second time this has happened.

So there I was in the grocery store parking lot with the security alarm beeping and the lights flashing on my car. I kept turning the key back and forth but to no avail. I loaded my groceries in the car and then started turning the key again.....still to no avail.  People were walking by without even looking up. I'm not really sure what good those security alarms are since nobody pays attention to them.

Suddenly I heard a voice saying "Do you need some help?" I looked around to see where the voice was coming from and what did I see but a Kevin Costner look alike coming towards me with his steel blue eyes fixed right on me! Part of me was glad to be having car trouble at this particular moment! LOL

I threw my hands up and said I didn't know what to do and explained to him that it was a security alarm issue. He said "It won't let the car start will it?" I confirmed that, indeed, I could not start the car as long as the alarm system was disabling it. I had to get the alarm to stop. I told him that normally I can turn the key back and forth a couple times and it resets the alarm. But this time it wasn't working.

After a short silence, Kevin or whatever his name was, suggested I try the passenger side door. He said maybe the driver's side lock was worn out. My eyes widened and I said "OMG, I can't believe I didn't think to do that!" I walked around to the passenger side, turned the key twice, and off went the alarm! I wanted to hug Kevin. Well, I wanted to hug him anyway, but now I had to restrain myself. I laughed and told him he was my favorite person in the world. He just laughed and said he was glad I got it worked out. And then he just dissappeared into a cloud.

I know Kevin was an angel because he didn't say "Duh! You big dummy! Why didn't YOU think of trying the other door!" A mortal would have! LOL

OK, I have to make a couple confessions. The guy didn't really look anything like Kevin Costner and he didn't really dissappear into a cloud. He actually got into an old blue Firebird or Camaro or something like that. I added those things to make the story more interesting. It's a writer's perogative! hee hee :D

But the experience came at a time when I've been feeling kinda helpless in some ways, especially when it comes to my car. It gave me renewed faith in humanity and a renewed sense of security. When I look back over my life, there have been so many times that help has come from out of nowhere just in my time of need, just like that man did today. I had forgotten what I have written many times in this blog and that is that we will always have what we need when we need it. Sometimes we don't know where it will come from. Sometimes it doesn't come till the midnight hour. But it always comes.

I'm feeling a little less insecure now. And that's a good thing. I'm gonna keep looking for the good! :)

Tuesday, January 24, 2012

The Good in Rain

I recently went on a long road trip to visit a friend and it was gray and rainy the whole weekend. I had a great rental car with a sunroof! But no sun to be found! My first leg of the trip coming back was done at night, in pouring rain, which made the driving stressful, to say the least. There were times when the rain was so hard you couldn't see the lines in the road to tell which lane you were in. And sometimes there would be flashes of lightening that would blind me for a second or two. Very scary and tense! When I finally made it to my hotel room, I just about collapsed into the bed from exhaustion and went straight to sleep.

The next morning I was awakened by what sounded like rain! I got up and looked out the window and, sure enough, it was STILL gray and rainy, though not as bad as the night before. I closed the curtains and laid back down on the bed and almost cried at the thought of more driving in rain.  I was not in a very good frame of mind! I called my friend, who I had just visited and lamented about how tense the driving was the night before and now here I was having to do even more of it. But I knew I had to do it, so I showered and packed my stuff up and headed out for the road again.

For the first half hour or so, I had an attitude. Here I was with this great rental car with a sunroof and can't see any sun! I had six hours of driving in this crap! And I didn't even really want to be going back home. I had enjoyed my time with my friend and was kind of wishing I could just stay there with him. But before long, I started seeing a different picture.

As I began to descend from the mountains, the clouds broke and the rain stopped. There was a mist hovering above the mountain tops and the wet rocks glistened beautifully in the sunlight that was peeping through the clouds. The heavy rains had created majestic waterfalls coming down the side of the mountains. It was quite surreal, very much like the scenes you see in movies where a person has gone to heaven.

My grouchy attitude was replaced with a feeling of peace and serenity and my perspective changed. I was able to see a different picture. And even though the rain started again and I never did get to open that sunroof, the rest of the trip back was quite nice. Instead of complaining about what was bad about the trip, I decided to think about all the wonderfulness of it. And I realized that driving in heavy rain was the ONLY thing about the trip that was not wonderful! But I'm now glad that I had that one "bad" aspect of my trip because it helped me to practice looking for the good in the trip! And I thought of good things that I might not have thought about if the "bad" thing had not forced me to deliberately look for something good. And THAT is a good thing!!!!  Keep looking for the good!!!! :D