My Crazy, Beautiful Life

To start with a brutally honest secret, I never wanted to be a mom. Until I met my husband, I never had any desire to have a child. Even when I decided that I'd like to be a mom, I never had a desire to be a stay-at-home mom. I believe part of that has come from needing to feel like my child and I would survive if something happened to my husband. Another part of it comes from a need to identify myself as more than a wife and mom. Please know that my most prized titles are "Matt's wife" and "Anabeth's mom". Those are my two biggest accomplishments in my life that money can't buy. I can sincerely say that if everything were to disappear today, and I still had the two of them with me, I would still feel like everything would be ok. Though I choose to still work, and my husband says I need to work, it doesn't give back the piece of my heart that leaves me every single day when I either drop Anabeth off at school or leave to go to work. I never cou...

Tomorrow will be our 10th Valentine's Day together, so I wanted to devote a blog post to the man that has been by my side. Many people have no idea just how amazing he is. Matt is the kind of guy that is happy to be in the background, but will voice his opinion when he has a strong one. He has never done anything for the purpose of someone noticing or giving him a compliment. Matt has one of the biggest hearts of anyone I know. In October of 2004, we began dating. Soon after, I moved to Florida to be closer to my mom since she had a lot of health problems and was looking at having a double lung transplant. Matt soon began visiting on a regular basis and spoiled me from the onset of our relationship. Anytime he was going to visit, I'd get a delivery of flowers at work and since the beginning of our relationship, I've received flowers on every Valentine's day, birthday, and anniversary. We were engaged in May of 2005 and married in May of 2006. In February of 2007, ...

So, I don't make new year's resolutions, but I do try each year to be a better me. Since my mom died, I have been in the process of doing a serious clean up of my house. I have been slowly coming out of my hoarding tendencies since I moved to Virginia after college and had too much "crap". With each move and with each life change, I get rid of more and truly come to appreciate and realize what is really worth keeping and important to me. One of my goals...a result of the prodding and frustration of my poor husband...is to finish projects I start. I am a true lover of crafting. My main hobby is crocheting, but I truly can enjoy and love almost any kind of craft. I'm a creative person and love to make things. I especially love to make things for other people in hopes that it will bring them some joy. For my fellow Christian friends, I truly believe my spiritual gift is that I'm a giver. I freely give my time, money, or anything else that I have to make people ha...

I wanted to address the main traumatic events that I've been through and what I did wrong and right with each situation. Please know, I absolutely realize that each person is totally different, but I just wanted to give some things to think about if you're dealing with these things and feeling lost. Also, if you know of someone that could benefit from my story, please share my blog with them. Also, if you or anyone you know would like to talk or just have someone to cry to/with, please use or pass along my email address alij1217@yahoo.com and I'll be happy to give you or them my phone number or we can just email! First thing was dealing with being raped. The first time I was raped, I was in high school and I don't think I told anyone until I told my husband before we were married. The second time, I was in college and told a few people, but it was quickly swept under the rug and "forgotten" about. What I did wrong was that I didn't deal with it. To deal...

So, if you're reading this, you've hung in through 5 parts of my life story. Thanks for hanging in with me! After I graduated from college and moved away from not only my hometown, but home state, I SLOWLY started my journey back to my Christian roots. As much as people that know me think I'm super outgoing and never shy...it sincerely overwhelms me to go places alone. Now, that doesn't include shopping and regular things, but going to a new church, starting a new job where I don't know anyone...totally overwhelming and intimidating experiences for me. For this reason, I really didn't start going to church again regularly until I moved to St. Pete, FL and I had my mom to go with me to try out a church. I met some people and began regularly attending church and a cool young adults program they had during the week. I also got involved in a ladies' Bible study. As I said in my "love story", my husband moved to St. Pete about a year after I did. At tha...

So this is the next to last part of my story. I feel like it deserves it's own post because it's the best part of my story. So, this guy that I met and was predicted to marry...he turned out to be pretty special, but it wasn't an easy process! We had eaten lunch together at work every day and he would say he wanted to come play tennis with me since we both enjoyed it. Months of this go on and never does he come over and I begin to lose faith! Finally one day, he asks me to go to dinner. I sincerely thought he asked me by mistake, so I confirmed that he really meant to ask me! We go eat dinner and I invite him to watch a movie or something, but we end up going our separate ways. A week or so later, I'm taking a friend to school as his car was flooded in a storm. I run out of gas in an area of the city I know nothing about. I have one phone number of anyone in the city and you guessed it...this boy! I call him and ask if he can bring me some gas. He comes to the rescue ...

So, the last one was just covering a couple of years, but as you saw, it was a pretty dramatic couple of years. I've now made it to my junior year of college...or really my second sophomore year because I wasted my first one with too much alcohol and not going to class. I was reunited with my best friend and she convinced me to go out for her sorority. This was something I never imagined doing as I really didn't care for most of the girls I'd met from sororities. However, I found a group of girls that was a lot like me. For the first part of the year, I was still dating my friend from high school, but long distance relationships and me never got along well! I was still doing a lot of drinking, but I took school more seriously as I knew I wanted to graduate and had to go to class and study to do so. I was in limbo about what I wanted to major in since I'd found my original major included too many classes I had absolutely no interest in. I finally decided on health info...