pouring out my heart

(WARNING: BAD GRAMMAR AND RUN ON SENTENCES- this is just me speaking openly)

Today for my blog i just want to say that I just feel extremely grateful at this point in my life, at least today and like the last week or so i've just been really grateful for a lot of things.

For one, i'm grateful for the talent God gave me to make things for other people, to help sew anything for other people, just in general, to create with my hands to be able to others in that way. Because he gave me a passion to want to help other people and he also gave me a passion to be creative and i love that i get to use a sewing machine and beads and hand sew things and take a yard of material and create something new out of it, and take old things and make something new out of them. I'm just very grateful for that gift that He's given me.. both of those gifts, being helpful and being creative.

Next i am grateful for the parent that He is making me. i'm grateful for the children that He has entrusted me with. My oldest daughter, Jazmine, has been sick all week with different things and I'm just grateful that He gave her to me to take care of for a couple of reasons. she is an amazing child.. she has a heart of gold, she's very sensitive emotionally. she is also creative but in a different way.. for an example, she likes to use her pottery wheel (which ironically, i had one and used it when i was young). another example, she likes to use mixed mediums to create art. for instance i picked up a free picture frame with just glass in it, no photo, at a garage sale and she took the glass and she painted the glass. so instead of just taking a piece of cardboard and drawing something on it and painting the item, she took glass, totally blank clear canvas, nothing at all as a background, and she just created like this rainbow of color on it with paint, and it's like textured so it's really cool.
another reason i'm glad I'm her mom is because something i've been learning over the last year about myself is about my health. i've been digging more into why things work the way they work, the human body and why my body is working the way it's working, and not working the way it should be, and mental health and why sometimes i think the way i think and feel the way i feel, and with Jazmine, i'm finding a lot of that in her as well. so i'm grateful that i'm her mother because i can take these things that i'm learning about my health and apply them in certain ways to learning about HER health. so with her being home sick a lot this week, i'm grateful that i know sort of where it's coming from.

Another reason that i'm grateful.. this house that we have owned for now the past year and a half, it may seem small for a family of 5, but i just absolutely adore this house. i just adore it. it's just.. i can't really put that into words. it's just so perfect for us, it's crazy. it's a simple older home and it's just amazing.

Another thing i am grateful for is my husband. he and i have both gone through counseling separately over the last couple years and we've been learning things about ourselves personally separately and that's been helping us together emotionally and in the family and with work and just in general. it's really been great to see the changes in myself, to see the changes in him and to really see it start impacting our family and our work and everything for the better.

Another thing i'm super grateful for right now is my Other best friend. There's Brian and then there is Beth. she lives in Colorado, i have known her since high school and for a few years we were detached from each other and i didn't know why we weren't talking. i feel like i forgot about her at some point and maybe she forgot about me at some point and there was a lot that happened in those few years and in the last year and a half we've reconnected. there's been a lot of discussion about what happened when we were disconnected and she as well has been having some similar health problems that i have. she's been talking to me about it and doing some similar research and come to find out, a little bit of back story, she and i have lived very similar parallel lives. she got married a month before i did, we used to go to church together, we used to worship together, and now she and i have both been married for 13 years, she had 2 daughters, i have 3 daughters. her oldest is the same age as my oldest, and now she having the same health problems i'm having, her oldest is having the same problems Jaz is having. it's been really interesting seeing the differences and the similarities still between me and her, and even though i felt back in high school when we were best friends, kindred spirits and there was really nothing that we couldn't keep from each other.. blah blah blah.. i've really been feeling since we've reconnected that it's still so valid. we still are just so similar and i really feel that we are very kindred spirits even though things have changed over the last 13 years and we don't necessarily believe the same ways we used to or have the same relationships we used to, we're still very connected and it's that relationship where you can tell each other anything and i'm just very grateful for that. not everybody gets that kind of relationship.

another thing that i have found myself very grateful for in the last year.. because of my work history.. i've held a lot of different positions since i started working back in high school. for a couple years when Brian and i were first married, we had kids, we had a house (that got foreclosed on), and i was basically grabbing any job i could just because we had no income and we had to make ends meet. so i've had a lot of different jobs and i worked at kohl for 5.5 years and that job was fantastic! but i've had a lot of negative in the small jobs that i've had, the ones that i've tried to do because we needed something. like people having let me go for certain reasons, like jobs that were temp jobs so in 3 months you're not gonna have a job anymore, so i've had bad experience with just not fitting where i feel like i need to fit, or just being somewhere and knowing that it's really not working for me but i need it. so over the last year i've actually had 4 different jobs and finally where i am now i really am so grateful for the position that i am in because i have wanted and felt called to be there for a while now. when i finally got that connection saying "yes, we've accepted into this new position and we can't wait for you to start" and all of this, God has really just opened that door and physically, emotionally, spiritually, family wise, monetarily, just everything i feel has led up to where i am working now and it's just such a good feeling to know that when i go into work, if i'm having a bad day someone's gonna cheer me up, if i really don't feel like what i'm doing there is enough there's always something that happens that cements that for me that says "you know what, this is why you're here". it's just been really really great just know that where i am now is exactly where i should be. and i'm so grateful that God has just been a guide for us and a light for us.

in the end, even though life is never gonna be perfect.. i'm gonna tell you right now.. life is good.