"Shoulda, Coulda, Woulda"

"Shoulda, Woulda, Coulda"...It's a odd phrase...It's a phrase that we have all said at least once or twice in our lifetime. I believe it is also the brother phrase to "What if".. They could even be used in the same sentence, side by side..working together...one as dangerous as the other...

A close friend and I were having a conversation and these words were said by my friend..I went home and I couldnt get the words out of my head. It got me to thinking about my own "Shoulda, Coulda, Woulda" moments. You know, the thing about that phrase is that its the not knowing...We repeat over and over in our head that if I "Coulda" handled that differently..or I "shoulda" said that but didn't...and then there is the finale, If I had said and done something different then this "Woulda" happened. Sometimes we can even torture ourselves over these 3 little words that we give so much power to...

I believe that these situations are placed in front of us to overcome...so that next time that opportunity passes in front of our face we don't waste it and throw it away..or rather just walk away. Also, just because one opportunity has passed and you may not have handled it the way that you should have..does that mean that the opportunity is gone forever? What if it's to late? Or does that mean that one day a situation might propose itself again and you have learned your lesson with "Shoulda, Coulda, Woulda" and you go about it compeltly different...you say the right thing, you do the right thing, and everthing works out just the way it should have the first time... Do you close the door on that opportunity forever and say "what if" or do you keep the hope that one day...when all the cards fall right, the stars are aligned, and nothing is standing in the way your "Shoulda, Woulda, Coulda..but didnt" turns into something you will never regret..something that you know is just the way it should be...

Read more...

Growing up..

Last night as I layed in bed about to go to sleep, Khristian came in my bedroom with a stomach ache. Bless his heart, I could tell it was really hurting him and he was trying to be tough but I could see in his face and eyes that he was in pain. I gave him some medicine and told him to try to go to bed and get some rest...I layed in my own bed for a few moments before I decieded to go lay in his bed with him...I craweled up next to him in his tiny little bed..he wrapped his arms around me and curled up into a tiny little ball just like he used to do when he was smaller. As I layed there and rubbed his back until his little body relaxed enough to drift into a light sleep, I realized my little boy was growing up on me. There wouldnt be to many more nights that he let me curl up next to him and make him feel better..I miss the days of him calling me Mommy instead of Mom or Momma...He is growing up...

Just when I thought he was asleep he whispered "Thank you Momma"..to which I replyed "What for?" and he simply replyed "For being here.." I couldnt even answer him because I had a lump in my throat the size of Texas..I just hugged him tighter...

I couldnt bear to get up and go to bed at that moment so I just layed right there next to my son..listening to him breath and Thanking God for allowing me to be his Mom.  I felt comforted in that moment because I know that I have a special place in his heart and he will always need his Momma...it just may not be to rub his back until he drifts off to sleep...

Read more...

Slowing Down...

It's amazing how when your so busy in just everyday general life and your running so fast that your feet and mind can hardly keep up..and then WHAM?!...something hits you like bolt of lightening and you stop running from place to place, task to task...and you realize that years have passed.... There are friends you have lost touch with, there are family members that you have forgot there birthday, there are unfinished tasks that you started and never finished because you never feel like you have enough time in the day to accomplish everything you need to do... It's sad to think that in this day and time, we are so busy that we can't find a spare minute to call that friend up that lives 30 minutes away just to say "Hey Friend..how ya been?"

Khristian and I were talking on the way to school this morning like we always do and at 9 years old he made me stop and realize that I am doing the exact same thing I said I would never do. I am letting life get the best of me...I am letting the world run "my" world. He pointed out that today was a gorgeous day...I agreed..then he asked me if I had said my prayers this morning....and sadly I said no, that I had forgot because I was so busy...and the sadder thing is I didnt say them last night either...that means that I had gotten so busy with everything else that I had forgot to give thanks to the one person that never forgets me... I instantly turned the radio down and prayed a silent prayer but the guilt I felt is still with me.

Bless his heart, Khristian was on a roll this morning because then he proceeded to point out that we, as a family, had not had a pizza and movie night in a while.. (this is a family tradition that we have had since he was 3 or 4, where he picks out  a movie and I pick up a pizza and we all pile up in my bed)...sadly again, he is right...I promise him that we will do that this weekend...he then proceeded to tell me that we had not had a game night in a while..yep you guessed it...right again. He never fails to amaze me...at 9 years old..he has just taught his Mom a lesson...

Yep Jessica...it's time to slow down and remember the small joys in life that make it so worth living...

Read more...

“Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight.” Proverbs 3 : Verses 5-6


When your lost, I mean really lost in every sense of the word, and your stumbling around in your life trying to make sense of everything, all the while, your life…everything around you… seems like its crumbling into tiny little pieces around you. You collapse in the middle of it and start grasping at the shards one at a time…examining, scrutinizing each piece…your life… and wondering where did it all go wrong? How did it get to this…How did I get to this? Each piece holds a different story, a different time, a different piece of you…..You pick them up to try and fit everything back together , to find a time when everything made sense, to find a tiny piece of comfort, but all you feels is hopelessness. You can’t figure it out…you can’t wade through the sea of desperation and confusion…sadness… the feeling of being absolutely alone. You are searching for anything to make the pain go away, because it hurts so much that you can’t breathe and all you want to do is simply disappear…..

As I was being discharged from the hospital to take Khristian home it should have been a happy day, a joyous day…. I cried all the way home…to my new home…away from the place I had always called “my home” I cried till there was no more tears to cry…and then cried some more. I cried until the soft skin under my eyes were red, raw, and puffy. I wanted to cry until all the pain was gone...till there was nothing left of me and I was just a puddle of tears on the ground.

As we rounded the curve on Highway 29 towards the straight away to our new home, I wanted to jump out of the van and run as hard as I could in the opposite direction. I wanted to run to the place that I had always found comfort…sadly that one place…was no longer my safe place. So I just sat there instead…fresh tears forming behind my eyelids…

I wasn’t sure what to expect when I stepped through the door, I didn’t know whether I was going to feel like a visitor or like I belonged there. You see, I had visited on weekends but on Sundays I knew that I was returning “Home”. The place that when I closed my eyes memories played in my mind like a slideshow.

I would love to tell you from that point on that it was one big fairy tale and that everything magically worked itself out. Truth is, things got worse before they got better…they always do. Isn’t that funny, you think that things can't get any worse than they already have and then God is there to prove you wrong...they can and they will.

Without going into too many details I am going to be honest and say that I wasn’t the best mom that I could have been to Khristian in those first 6 months. It was tough, it was hard, it was emotional, and to me more than anything, it hurt me to look at him. Not that I didn’t love him...I did….you can love someone and still not fully accept the situation that you are in. You are in denial because you don't want it to be real. With denial comes anger, and with anger comes sadness, and with sadness comes depression...

Funny thing about depression, he sneaks up on you. You don’t know he’s there until sometimes it’s too late. It’s like he’s packed his bag and has made a permanent home inside your head, he makes your heart heavy, he makes it hard to breathe….he makes it hard to live. He doesn’t want you to live, smile, or value anything in your life because he doesn’t feed off those things…He feeds off sadness, bitterness, and hurt. When you feel these things, depression gets bigger and more dangerous. At that point, you have just given depression control over your life.

The tears continued for months on end, depression had settled and made his home, and I couldn’t find my way out. I can’t remember exactly how old Khristian was at this point..maybe 6 or 7 months...but I came home from a overnight drinking binge with one of my friends and I knew…I just knew..I couldn’t go on like this anymore. I was suffering, my family was suffering, and more importantly..my son was suffering. I entered my room to find a bible sitting on my bed, which by the way was not what I wanted to find nor see. It made me angry for some reason..I had never thought that I was angry at God but at that point I wasn’t thinking clearly so I picked up the Bible and threw it as hard as I could across the room. It slammed into my closet door, bounced across the room a couple times and finally landed…open.

As I plopped on my bed and covered my face with my pillow getting ready to scream at the top of my lungs, something pulled my eyes back to the bible. I’m sure I stared at it for a good 5 maybe 10 minutes before something made me pick my body up and walk over to the open book. Something said “Read”. I sat and read…. “Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight.”

That verse changed me…right there on that floor I begged for God to take the pain away, for him to guide me and show me what all this meant, to help me understand, and to forgive me. This time when I cryed I wasn’t feeding depression…I was letting him go. Something inside me broke and I gave it all to him. Most people call it praying but I sat there and taked to God like he was my friend and I found comfort in this. The more I talked the better I felt. At which point, I needed to hold Khristian. When I say "needed" I mean I was desperate to hold him. I needed him. I picked him up, my baby boy and I held him...I held him for hours, I kissed him, and I asked him for forgiveness over and over. I promised him that I would be a better mother, and I vowed to never again let another moment pass that I wasn’t thankful to be his mother.

I knew that I may not understand what all this meant…but God did. He had a purpose for me and he had a purpose for Khristian. I have no doubt in my mind that it was his voice I was hearing in my head that day. He was there all along...he was just waiting for the perfect time… the time that he knew I needed him the most. When I was at my lowest point, and I couldn’t go any lower than what I was….he was there saying I love and accept you all you have to do is accept and love me back.

“God is good all the time, All the time God is good”

Read more...

There's one thing about writing that makes a lot of people uncomfortable, it's the one thing that hinders someone from being a  really great writer and keeps them at being just a really good writer. What I'm talking about is vulnerability....people write about what they know and what they know is most of the time from personal experiences. When you write about a personal experience ,whether it be good or bad, your putting yourself out there. That scares a lot of people...myself included.

I have sat down several times in the last 2 to 3 weeks in hopes that I was going to start on one of my biggest goals that I have set for myself..and that was to start my book. Well, here's where that little problem called "Vulnerability" comes in....I write alot and mostly it's just what I'm feeling at the time, from past expierences, or even from a more recent event. Just whatever comes to mind at that time. When I think about putting some of what's in my head out in the world for everyone to read it's scares me...it makes me vulnerable.
So as I'm struggling with this I realized the only way to get over this fear is to just do it. Jump in full body, heart, mind and soul...starting right now. I am going to insert a piece that I wrote several months back and even though it is quite recent it is one of my most personal and vulnerable writings that I have ever written. My heart is racing as I type this and I'm sure it will be pounding out of my chest the moment that I press that Publish button....but I think the biggest difference between being a great writer and a good writer is when you pour your heart into something and people can feel it. I hope you can feel it.....

Falling in love….

You can fall in love many different times with many different things… different people…and at all different times. I can listen to Travis play a certain song on the Martin and I fall in love with him all over again…see a certain pair of shoes…taste a certain food…watch a certain movie. I can sit back and observe my life from a distance and I fall in love with the feeling of contentment. This isn’t the life that I had planned for myself but this is the life that God knew that I needed…


As I sit and watch a movie on lifetime about a woman that has never wanted children that suddenly finds herself pregnant, as soon as she has the baby she falls instantly in love with the child. It makes me think back to a time when I myself was in that same situation…17 years old…normal teenager that had her whole life planned ahead and a child certainly wasn’t in that equation. That term “Falling in Love” keeps coming back in my mind. You know… the books, society, your family, friends, everyone around you says you’re going to instantly fall in love with your baby the moment you see that sweet precious face. For me they were wrong…I didn’t…I’m probably breaking some sort of motherly code here by saying what I just said but I have lived 8 years with that secret..Thinking I was a bad mother due to the fact that I didn’t feel what others said I should feel at that exact moment. I couldn’t figure out what was wrong with me….

Do you want to know what I felt?

Imagine yourself sitting in your  home, work, school, somewhere that you feel completely comfortable…you pick up a glass of water that you can see right through…you take a sip…suddenly a situation that should have gone so smoothly turns in the blink of a eye…the water has gone down the wrong path…In a full 60 seconds you feel more emotions than you have probably felt in days , maybe even months….Scared, panic, confusion, you can’t breathe, when you try to take a breath you feel as though you’re going to suffocate, it starts to hurt, eyes water….you finally get one full breath down…barely…then another, and another, breathing starts to get a tiny bit easier…throat still burns… eyes still watery…a small bit of relief starts to set in…throat still burns…but your breathing….

As I looked into that face…that face that I had harbored in my stomach for 8 months…that’s what I felt…Where was that “falling in Love” feeling? ..I wanted it…I so wanted it more than anyone can imagine…I was desperate for the feeling…any feeling than the one I had right at that moment. All of the air was being sucked out of the room...everything around me felt like it was fading away and no matter how many time I tried to suck in a deep breath I felt like my lungs were collapsing…no air…panic…what am I supposed to do now….Please God, give me the feeling that I’m supposed to have… This isn’t the path that I’m supposed to take… I can’t do this…I can’t breathe....My mind and body was exploding with so many emotions and thought’s ...I couldn’t control them…and the one thought that kept reoccurring….”What am I supposed to do now?”

I saw a stranger looking back at me as the nurse placed him in my arms. He was a beautiful stranger but a stranger all the same… Then before I could take 2 seconds to tell this little stranger hello and maybe even ask how he was doing…the whirlwind began. … People were everywhere…asking questions…signing papers…pick out a name…change a diaper…and the strangest thing of all….calling me mommy… I wanted to scream “I am not a Mother, I’m 17!” I wanted to put my head between my legs and breath, count to 10 with my eyes squeezed shut, and pretend I was playing hide and seek with my younger brother again. Pretend that none of this was real….I would open my eyes and everything would be back to normal…or what I called normal. 1…breathe...2…breathe...3…breathe...open eyes…. The scene hadn’t changed but I knew in that instant that everything…my whole life…had changed in the count of three seconds….

Not soon after, my inner voices started arguing internally…both whispering in my ear….keep him…give him away….keep him…give him away…

There’s that question again….What do I do???

One voice whispers… you can do this….you can’t give him away…It’s wrong….own up to your own mistakes …you’ve made your bed now lie in it…

The other voice whisper’s ….your wrong, you can’t do this….what were you thinking…you can’t give this child a home…you’re a baby yourself…this child deserves better than you...you will never be able to provide and make him happy…

The voices soon began to become the voices of my parents…my family…my own….  Before I knew what was happening the room grew gravely silent… the social worker sat down beside me with a false sense of comfort and picked up my hand and held it….”Jessica… what do you want to do?”

"What do I want to do???"  "What do I want to do???"  I wanted to scream at the top of my lungs and shout “What the hell do I want to do???” I don’t know what I want….I want my life back…I want my youth back….I want to go home….I want to be able to breathe without feeling this dread…this loneliness….this abandonment….fear….panic….I want this floor to open up and swallow me whole so I don’t have to feel anything at all…I want all of you to stop looking at me with your mask of pity, false sympathy, and most of all disappointment. That’s what I want….This…as I look around…is not what I want….

I can’t think clearly...my mind is all fuzzy and I can’t hold one thought without my eyes burning with tears and my chest squeezing with anxiety and fear. I nearly shout at everyone to get out of the room…I want to be alone…that’s all I want at this very moment…the nurse brings me my baby…how weird It feels to say that…”my baby”… I am alone in this room with this stranger that is called “my baby”….I can’t help but to sit there and stare at him…I count his toes…his little fingers…trace the outline of his face,., his chin….the small slope of his eyes that he so obviously got from me….I place his hand flat next to the palm of my hand and I wrap my fingers around his….kiss him gently on his forehead…and ask….”What is it you want me to do??” In that instant, he opened his eyes and looked straight at me and held my gaze for a mere second…it felt like 10 years to me…and I knew….No...I had not “fallen in love” but I wanted to get to know this little stranger….I wanted to know everything about him… he was mine, a part of me, and I knew he would give me the strength I needed.

At that very moment, I knew that the falling “in love” part would come eventually and nothing else mattered.

Suddenly, while holding my son’s hand, I realized that I was breathing effortlessly for the first time that day…. Breathe in…Breathe out…

Read more...

Goals for the "Year of 27"

1. Run a full 5 Miles without stopping
2. Learn to play at least 1 song on the piano ( I have always wanted to learn)
3. Sing karaoke ( I am terrified of this)
4. Have at least 5 chapters of my book wrote
5. Bury a time capsule that my family can only dig up when I have passed away (sounds morbid I know but Its something that I have always wanted to do)
6. Learn how to play tennis ( I have no clue how to so if anyone out there has any knowledge I am all ears)
7. Learn how to do the Cha-cha
8. Go on a hot air ballon ride
9. Go rock climbing
10. Solve the Rubik's Cube

So, there you have it...my goals that I have set for myself...and so we shall begin...

Read more...

Goals

I remember almost 4 years ago when something inside me changed and I was ready for a change. After spending a whole entire weekend crying my eyes out to poor husband about how I hated the way I looked and how unhappy I was about what I saw in the mirror...he did something that surprised me...he went out and got me a year's membership to the gym, handed me the entrance card and simply said "If your not happy about the way you look, change it." Now ordinarily any other woman would have gotten their feelings hurt or been a little pissed...but oddly I wasn't. Something inside me snapped and I was determined to get the weight off. I started with a simple goal of 20 lbs..when I accomplished that I moved my goal to 40 lbs, and so on...till 2 years later I had hit my over all goal of losing a total of 105 lbs. My point in saying all this is the fact that I set a goal for myself, I worked towards it and I accomplised it. I was so proud of myself for doing and going after something that I wanted so desperatly. I loved having a goal and working towards it. Everytime I hit and passed a self made goal I grew more and more confident with myself and It made me more determined to hit and pass the next goal. Not only was my outside apperance changing but something within myself was changing to....I will never forget the feeling that I got when I stepped on that scale and it read 135 lbs..I had done it! I did what I set out to do. No words will ever be able to express the pride that I felt that day! I have a reason for expressing all this..just follow along with me if you will...

If you know me and you know me well, then you know that I have a immence fear of growing old. Friday was my 27th birthday and something has been nagging at knawing at me all weekend. While I am scared of the physical attributes of growing older, Such as; Wrinkles, grey hair, arthritis, clammy skin, lose of memory, failing health, etc....I believe that my number 1 fear of getting older is my lose of youth..more so than that...the fact that I may grow older without having done the things that I want to do before my death....Again, I have a reason for telling this...

I'm not sure how many of you out there have done this but when I was 16 I actually started a list of things that I wanted to do before I die....a bucket list per say. Its a handwritten list, Some thing have been added and some things have been marked off. Sadly, not a whole lot of things have been marked off that list as of yet. To be honest, things on it are not world changing or even things that other people would find important. Actually, some of the things would make you smile and tell me how silly they are..but...the things on my list are important to me...they are things that simply make me smile. Things that make me in one word...Happy...

Now to the point of telling you all this: I have set a goal for myself for the year of "27" or I should say I am going to set 10 goals for myself for the year of "27" as I call it. I can kill 3 birds with one stone as the saying goes. I have been missing having a goal for myself...working towards something and I don't like the idea of growing old and never doing the things on my list that I have always wanted to do. So...here's what's going to happen: my next blog will be simple and short...its going to entail 10 goals that I must work towards and accomplish before my next birthday. That gives me 12 months to scratch 10 things off my list...I will feel better about growing older, I will be more accomplised..and I think overall I will feel a better sense of contentment. I have a good feeling about this and to be quite honest...For once, I am excited about growing another year older.

A wise woman that I know once told me "Jess, live each day as if your about to take your last breath..this life is meant to be enjoyed and you have to take the moments and time you have and make them memorable!" Well, she was right...and I intend to do just that!

Read more...