My Story

This is my attempt to give the reader a brief-ish overview of life events that shaped me to be the person I am. Because of this, this post will be very personal and cover some touchy topics (maybe).  Please read and respect my story as that. my story.   This is also my third attempt at writting/starting this post. I don't exactly have a way to tie everything together, so it will be a bulleted list of sorts. I have been thinking about this blog for a while, not many people know the whole me. Hubby is probably one of the few, others know important bits, but not the whole story. Ok so here we go !!

-Igrew up in a nice neighborhood. Some different things about my childhood are, that my mother was a work aholic (no joke on this one), and that I had a dad who was paralyzed.  The paralyzed dad thing never through me for a loop, it was something I grew up with, he was that way when I was born, he is still that way. Because of this there were some awkward times. The father daughter dances with girl scouts were always a little odd, but my dad tried his best.  The other awkward dance that I remember was the father daughter dance at my wedding.  I had a song picked out, but the decision to "dance" or "sway" together hadn't really been decided until minutes before the "dance" was supposed to happen. It was special in it's own way, but awkward as well. Everyone looking at you, and also my dad let my niece join in... but it was special in it's own way.  My dad is actually a pretty cool dude, he surprisingly does a lot of things a non para person does. He drives, owns a business, golfs, other things!  He became a paraplegic from a body surfing accident that happened in Cape Cod. Yes that Cape Cod that our family goes to on a yearly basis still :)

-I have a rare/weird medical issue that I was born with. I was born with panhypopituitaryism... thats a big word! :)  Basically it means I don't have a working pituitary, so thusly have to take meds to replace the hormones that are controlled by your pituitary.  But that wasn't the end of it. It is believed that because my pituitary didn't grow right, it caused a mid line deformity, causing things like dislocated hips as an infant (I didn't learn to walk until I was 3), knock knees, slipped epiphis, and cranial deformities.  The thinking on the mid line was that the hip and knee issues were all on the same side, it could also have been just a fluke that they were on the same side.  Oh and non medical talk for all you, slipped epiphis is ball of hip joint slipping out of socket, I was in 7th grade when I had corrective surgery for that. The knock knee surgeries were when I was in 8th grade I think. My first cranial surgery was when I was in 7th grade as well. That surgery corrected my jaw, corrected my nose and my eyebrows. The last two were a little on the vanity side for me, but what did I know at 13 or 14.  I had another cranial surgery to repair my nose again and to try again at the eye lids. I had droopy eye lids that were believed to obstruct my vision somewhat. I think looking back, these surgeries somewhat attributed to my low self worth.  The belief that oh this is wrong with you, so lets correct it type of thing. As a result of me trying to learn who I was, I turned down the opertunity to have another surgery and further teeth/jaw correction. I am fine the way I am and sometimes wish people would accept that. I know they are just trying to help...

-I went to a catholic high school. Ok, well this is a known thing to most people. But the reason I went to said catholic High school was because of a big time bullying problem at the combined middle & high school I went to for middle school.  For middle school I went to a public school, and generally enjoyed the classes. There was one person who was relentless on the bullying.  It came as far as getting the cops involved on our side and a restraining order, yeah I am serious.  But the dad of the kid didn't take it all seriously and had a "boy's will be boys" attitude about the whole situation. It wasn't good, so my parents got me out of there as soon as they could. So from 9th grade on I went to Catholic Memorial HS.  While I really enjoyed my time at CMH it wasn't perfect, there was still bullying, there was still the low self esteem, and my massive shyness. But it was a far better environment for me then NB West.  I think if I went to school now a days and had to go through the bullying that is around now I don't think I would be living to tell my story. And I am serious on that one. The bullying now is so beyond crazy. Creating I hate so and so FB pages and all this hate that can be done through technology to the point that you can anonymously send it.  At the same time, bullying has been around since the beginning of time and it will continue no matter how hard we fight to stop bullying. Only so much can be done.

-I was a girl scout for 12 years. Ok, sorry fellow GS readers who may read this next sentence... But when ever I tell people I have been in scouts for that long I honestly have a "I am such a looser" attitude about it. Seriously in scouts for 12 years, wow you must have had no life.  Well, um, yeah, thats why I was in scouts for 12 years...  But at the same time I am proud at what I have accomplished and have a lot of fond memories.  I still have all my patches (yes people, ALL of them, including the tri its from brownies) and I have all my pins. I gave away the uniform, but the patches are meaningful to me. I need to figure out a nice/not trashy way of displaying them somehow somewhere in my house. I have alot of fond memories from the middle school on years of scouts.  I belonged to an awesome troop.  It was pretty much run by the girls with input from our leaders.  We went on bi annual trips to places in the US.  I still remember stories from trips. One example, I was recently telling my hubby about a gs trip I was on where our fearless driver had decided to take a winding road to some monument or something, and well he didn't make it.  The bus was to big for the road so he ended up having us all get out and had police escort the bus off the road BACKWARDS. There was no room to turn around on the road, so he had to back up.. Oh and the only He on our trips was the Coach bus driver, yes we rode in style!! :)

-A big scary thing for me to write about comes next.  Something only my imediate family know, and the hubbs knows to. I was an emotionally disturbed person in middle and early on in high school. I was classified as "depressed" by my therapist at the time.  But that is not what I am sharing in this spot.  Because of a lot of issues I struggled with as a teen I thought it best to end it all.  I attempted suicide in 9th grade.  It was more of a total emotional melt down/refusal to take my pills/refusal to go to school type of suicide attempt.  It was hard on the whole family, but at the time it was the only way I could get my family to notice that something wasn't right, and it wasn't all caused by me.  As a result of this I was out of school for a few days and of course had the "Big" talk with my parents and the principal at CMH. Yeah that was so beyond not fun, at the time my parents still didn't get why I pulled "the stunt" and at the time I couldn't put the words together to say that I felt alone and hated at that time. I still struggle with feeling of failure, and I blogged about that, but I really felt like a big time failure before and during this stuff.  I did find solace in a teacher once I got back to school.  I don't know how we connected, I don't remember that, but I do remember going to her office after school and just talking with her. She was my math teacher, so it also helped me! I got some tutoring as well!! :)  After 9th grade generally high school was good. Yes it did have it's awkward moments, but everyone does!

-Ok, along the high school parts... I guess I should share some of the basic HS stuff. I went to my senior prom. I was super excited about this. I wasn't dating anyone at the time, but a nephew of a good friend of mine was off after his first year of college at Notre Dame and decided it would be nice to ask me to prom.  I was stocked!!  Um other than that nothing really fun happened :/  Oh wait, I further felt that the catholic faith wasn't my thing. Which that is a little um awkward  being that I had been raised in the catholic faith, got baptized, first communion and reconciliation, and the fact we had catholic services A LOT at school. But not being exposed to anything else I didn't start to know what I believed until I got to college.

Hmm, ok were does my story go from there. Well I went off to college still not happy with my parents. And being that way I went as far away as I could. Being the not so hot grades I had in HS i was somewhat limited. I ended up getting accepted and going to Mt Senario College. Um, don't bother looking it up. It went defunct within a few years of me leaving. Although it was not a super school, it did make me a better/different person.  The college was located in Ladysmith WI, about a five hour drive from were I lived, so there was no spur of the moment visits from the fam!  It was nice to live sorta on my own for that time.  I lived in the dorms with a roommate two of the three years.  Being that this was mega rural wisconsin, activities included drinking and drugs. Both of which I did not part take in, at least for the most part, I did go to a few drinking parties, but didn't really drink until I was 21 or almost 21.  Call me a goody two shoes or whatever. I am smarter than that. My first roomie regularly smoked pot in our room, needless to say I did not spend much time in my room.  In college I also met some people who I am still fairly close to to this day.  Two of these people took me to a different kind of church one day. It was a pentecostal church, very charismatic with their music.   I knew that was the church for me after that first sunday. I still had my catholic style of faith-or lack of. It took me a few more sundays to get the guts up to ask about how their faith is different than the Catholic faith.  The biggest thing that struck me was they have personal relationships with Christ. Really? What the heck? how is that possible I thought. I was used to the "the preacher was the only person who spoke to God" belief. So I asked more questions and thought about it more. I was about halfway through my freshman year in college when I begain to follow Jesus/acepted Christ/whatever you want to call it.  It took a little while longer for me to grow in my relationship with Him.  I am still learning, and realized something from a bible study group I went to that Christ still loves us even if we fail. Ok I know that should be a rather obvious thing, but I grew up with "your bad if you sin, you wont get to heaven" type of belief. So it was an aha moment, I had even heard it a few times, but I think the context of what was talked about struck home.  Ok so back to Living Faith CHurch (thats the name of the church i went to in college). When I went there I was very active. I went to the young adults bible study, taught the preschool sunday school, and generally enjoyed getting to know people there. I regularly was at church early because one of my friends was in the church band and he didnt have a car, so being the nice person, I went to church with him early alot.  So, if you have interest check out their webby!  http://www.livingfaithchurchwi.org/  This church will hold a special place in my heart. It was the place I got saved, got baptized as an adult, and the place were I met alot of great people.

After college I met a guy.... we grew up in the same city and actually went to the same church as kids. We met through yahoo personnals. We chatted for a few weeks, he came to visit me while I was working at Jewel Osco, during my break. The running joke is he caused me to miss my only lunch break!  Our first real date was to a movie theater in NB and lunch at Fazoli's.  I chose to do something, that looking back was stupid. I got in his van and we went together to fazoli's and then back to the theater together for the show.  Shortly after, met his mom and went to his house.  He grew up in a WAY different environment than I did.  He grew up with out having rules or really being told right from wrong, he learned it on his own. So any way our first many dates consisted of usually me going to his house and playing computer games and going out to eat somewhere.  We bonded and wanted to move our relationship further than just video games and food.  He wrote me lovely poems. I still have em to, and I still bug him for more!! We were out shopping one day and he asked if I wanted to go to a jewelry store. I said sure, and we looked at engagement rings. about a week later he bought one-a custom one at that! I am not a big blingy diamond girl so my main stone is a blue sapphire. Ok, so I guess I should take the not a blingy girl part back, we did recently (about a yearish ago) upgrade my wedding band, its got bling...!!  Ok, so he bought the ring, and being the Hubbs, he was SOO nervous. We went to cheesecake factory and he had a lovely little poem that he wrote and gave me the ring. He asked the question, I said yes, but because I had helped pick the ring out I knew it was coming...so it wasn't to much of a surprise.  Oh and he even asked my dad for permission! The one thing looking back which i wished he had done, was get on one knee, but that is just little details.  So we had told my parents that we were engaged and then the fun (ok, maybe not so much fun... but you get the idea) of planning the wedding.  Our biggie issue other than finding a hall and all that was actually finding a church or a hall that was ok with a visiting pastor. I had my heart set on having Pastor Tim (PT for short) come and perform our ceremony. I asked him right away after we got engaged, he said yes he would do it.  So then we had to find a hall with a nice chapel like area or a accessible church that would be willing to have PT do our service at their church. At the time Kev and I hadn't really found a home church. Partly due to the fact that Kev was/ is still questioning his faith and I didn't want to push to hard and the other fact that it is really hard for me to find a church that I like.  I have gone to a bunch in the area for a couple months each and found one reason or another that I didn't like it. A lot of it was of me not being open minded enough and comparing it to much to LFC. So any how I decided to check out a church that was somewhat close to us. It was small, had good music and a good service.  Those were the top three things I remember that I liked about it.  I think we went for a few months before we asked about using the church for our service, and the pastor said yes! We were pretty psyched. Then the fun of planning said service/wedding.  We ended up also taking a marriage class i guess you call it through one of the giant churches in the area, that was recommended by our Pastor and we also had a few marriage planning/counseling sessions with him before the big day!  An interesting thing that came out of planning for our wedding is the vast different tastes that my parents have to what we have. Kev and I look back and would have had a much more casual reception. Yes our wedding was pretty formal, but because I did most of the planning and choosing of things it was more our taste and low keyness.  My dress itself was not very fancy due to the fact I didn't want to be all showy. A simple dress with a little embroidery. My girls had really nice dresses-they picked the style themselves, I just chose the color.  My flowers were gorgeous, and my favorite Lilacs were in the bouquet (sp?) The reception was way formal, lovely hall, great food, open bar, great dancing.  I do have lots of fond memories from our wedding, although it being not exactly our style, it was nice.  Ok, I think thats enough about the wedding Sheesh Y'all!!

-Um, going back to our church, we have really enjoyed going there, erm... ok I have,  Kevin is a little still on the anti church end, but in his time I am sure he will be ok with it.   For a while I did think it was time to move on to a new church, especially after we bought our house. But then I thought, really do I want to go through the process of finding a new church home? I said no, so we still go there. I have chosen to get more involved-or at least more active. We had been doing the tech booth for a few years, and then I started to actively go to the women's group bible study and the women's retreat. I find them really enjoyable, although being the shy one that I am I have an aversion to praying out loud, which is usually ok unless we have a small group.. then I am asked to pray.  So I do it but I feel totally awkward, I am no good at praying... really got to work on that.  Ok so check out my church's webby! http://www.gocrossroads.net/

So I guess I have pretty much covered my story. I did leave a few minor details out, need to have some secrecy!! :)  So I am moving on to the next steps on what God has planned for us. Sometimes it is hard to give my life to Him, but I know it is the best.  I guess this kinda relates to letting God lead your life. When we started this whole journey towards starting a family I had originally totally thrown out the idea of going through the foster system. I wanted a baby, still do, but after our info sessions have felt more and more pulled toward F2A. I don't hear God talking to me, but certain situations I know are from God. It is hard for me to explain, I just feel like this is God's plan for us right now.