STRAIGHT TO THE HEART...

"While I realize I am a creation of God 

I am also obligated to realize and remember

 that everything else

and everyone else

is also a creation of God."
Maya Angelou

It seems to me I have wrestled a long time with 'what I want to be'...whether it's when I grow up or whatever.  Perhaps some people never grow up, you suppose?  

When I was a little girl, I so wanted to be a nurse.  In California I was a Bluebird...volunteered to work in a hospital (don't get riled up re child labor, it was during WWII and everyone helped out).  I emptied bed pans, etc. and I really like the task.  I also worked in a drugstore along with helping new mothers w/babies as they came home from the hospital.  Also baby sat while reading Gone With The Wind.  Good training indeed.

Later on I was extremely content and happy being a wife and mother with those sweet little sons of ours.  They grew, matured, married and established homes of their own.  I was an empty nested mother...I continued on the 'yellow brick road'.

I was with a couple of my girlfriends when one of them very bluntly told me she would be glad when I decided what I wanted to be.  I never forgot that...I let it bother me for a long, long time.  I had thought I was what I wanted to be.  Was I a misfit because I had no 'career'?  One day it hit me like a brick, I was what I wanted to be...a wife, a friend, a good person all wrapped up and tied w/ribbon.

On the negative side, I was extremely judgmental...not a good thing is it?  God certainly disapproves of it; told me so, too.  

I gossiped, the truth didn't always find its way out of my not so nice mouth.  That's disapproved also.

God brought me down in a crash.  I became addicted to pain meds; not only because of pain but also due to unhappiness and discontent.  I don't understand to this day why I was unhappy but I was and that was that.  Things happen in our lives that are not always understood, they just move in and take over. 

My addiction lasted thirteen years.  I don't know why it took Michael so long to take action; I think he just chose to ignore it.  He finally called our adult sons to come for an Intervention.  The five men in my life met w/me for what was one of the most painful, humiliating things in my life...which became one of the most productive.  

It saved my life; I honestly only had about a month left and I would have died...that's how close it was.  Together, Michael and I took action, were blest w/a wonderful physician who had been through a similar experience in his life; we worked together with God and pulled me through.  

Michael had planned a 100 day trip for the two of us from Wisconsin to Coldfoot Alaska following my recovery.  It was one of the most beautiful trips ever.  We camped along beautiful rivers, fished in waters between Russia and Alaska, cooked & camped atop the Al-Can pipeline, eaten by giant mosquitoes, hiked up mountains to lakes high up all by ourselves, surprised a group of salmon poachers who probably thought we were snooping for game wardens.  Name it, we did it. 

I became a nicer person, more empathetic, more humble...finally maturing I suppose.  Michael and I moved to China - some rather different changes.

We walked to work...sometimes together and many times separately.  My eyes saw so much; my heart was also moved much.  One day as we approached our work building there was a woman sitting beside the entrance, screaming at the top of her lungs for help.  No one was stopping to help; I pleaded with my companion to please stop and help.  She said 'no' that the woman was crazy.  To this day I visualize that woman in my mind.  

A woman who lived in our complex rang our doorbell begging us for some help...we got an interpreter who discovered the woman wanted Michael to help her teenage son with his lessons. We were both swamped with work but M took him on.  I took her as a student and off we went.  Both of us included the book of John in the studies...that led to the father in the family also studying about God.  That resulted in all three becoming Christians - baptized in the sea by Michael.  Recently we had news Maria (the mom) had died; the son also married.   

That time was a life changing experience...for both M and me.  Encourages me to do what I love...to write, to encourage others in every way possible.  Maya Angelou wrote:

"The idea is to write so that people hear it 

and it slides through the brain

 and goes straight to the heart".  

That's my desire. 

It has taken me a lifetime to become a nice person, a kind person.  A person who longs to make others happy, loved and valued.

For that I am thankful to God, my family and you...my friends for lifting me up.

From my loving heart...to yours!  Vasca