Six and counting

The love of my life is 6. A full six years and still by my side. My baby my boo boo my vaeh.  Lil miss Nevaeh Abrianna is the star and the passion in my life.

Over the last two years her and I have gone through huge transitions together. The bigest transition has come ths last year.  With me getting a full time job and being back in school, I see her less than I would like.I know less than she would like. I struggle at feeling like a "good mother". She goes to school for a good part of the day, but I don't take her, and I can only get her 1 time a week. This year is the first time we have spent so much time apart. Before this, her first 5 years, she was able to go to work with me (thanks ma and pa) and school was not quite as intensive.

I struggle with this. I want to be with her more. To feel like a mom who is more involved. I get to be involved in the early moning when she is still grumpy and doesn't want to get ready for school and at nihgt when dinner, reading, and the fighting bed time occurs. I try to fill our weekends with adventures and "dates" so she knows how important she is to me. But if I am feeling it, the lack of time together, I worry endlessly over whether or not she is as well. 
Even though I feel like a poor mother. I know the truth is she is an amazing little person. She reads stories to me at night now, which took me by suprise. One day she is struggling to read, the next, she is mastering it.  She gossips with me about things that are important to her. Her gossip is the best. She talks about how much she loves her grandparents. How special her "sissy" is and how funny her cousins are and how much she "missing" them. She asks me about her birthdays. Suggesting that when she is 7 she "will be old enough for her own cell phone.. maybe". When I tell her she is a bit young to have a cell phone and that may not happen until shes a teen, she argues in her own silly way and says "I'm 6 and counting mom, I know how to use a phone."
On our dates weekly morning dates we go to starbucks and we chit chat over hot chocolate. She shares what her monster high barbies have been doing and fills me in on their lives.  She asks me questions about my vegetarianism and has shared that she "likes chicken and real milk" and "not your food mom". But she is so aware of the fact I eat differently. She makes sure the food I have been given "is ok for mommy to eat" and she has told me her favorite monster high barbie, Frankie, "eats weird like you mom. She doesn't like to eat animals". 
In her own way she too has learned to be compassionate for animals. She loves "her jersie" and "her kitties". She is very affectionate to them all when she comes home. She takes a moment right when she walks in the door to find each of them and pets them, kisses the, and tells them how much she loves them. It makes my heart soar to see how loving she is.
She not only shows awareness of my needs and things I feel are important, but she seems to have grown a huge heart for the homeless. When we get in the car she grabs gronola bars and puts them next to her seat "in case we see any homeless people mom, they might need something to eat".  I love it.
Again I am just a mother desperately in love with her amazing daughter. I am in awe of who she is and excited to watch her grow and evolve as a person.

Dreaming with a broken heart

When your dreaming with a  broken heart waking up is the hardest part~ John Mayer

Its true. I am a dreamer. A big one. I love easily. Cry easily. I am full of hope for things that are so unrealistic... And I find that being this silly creature is nothing but heart ache. Hope unmet is empty. It is sorrow. Love unrequited is a black hole. Dreams unfulfilled, laughable.

Its the in-between. The "Eeyore" I frequently find in me.

My job, is amazing. It is a blessing to do what I do. To have the skills bestowed upon me that I do. GOD made me this dreamer. He gave me this compassion to love, care, to lack judgment, and cry easily for everyone and everything. He made me full of hope. Yet these gifts can be overwhelming. At times too much to bear. Every day I go to work, I am given a wake up call. Just when I think my life is hard or impossible... I hear a story.. that is unimaginable to me.  I can't fathom surviving what some of my clients have survived. Its heart wrenching. After the weeks over, the days over, I turn off. It hurts to know how much pain truly exists.

In my life I have had so much pain. Mostly centered around "men".. and this pain has put a big fat  hole in my life.... yet... I feel stupid that I let this hole, this desire for a "man" .. be so painful. There is real pain out there. There are real needs that must be met and how on earth will compassion ever meet those needs.

My job wakes me up. Yes I want to bury my head in the sand. But I see whats real. Where Gods people are. I see the reality of his family. Its broken, its tired, its at the end of its rope.. much like I have felt. Then I  wonder..

I am at the end of my rope. I feel alone, I feel empty, I feel scared.. how .. oh how can I even help anyone I serve when I am this mess?

I don't.

 I often feel alone. Not many people have seen what I have. Not many people get to experience this rude awakening of the reality of our world.  I can't do it alone. I desperately want to go back to the days before I experienced all my clients pain, before I created my own. I want to forget, to sleep well at night... but no matter what I try... I am painfully aware. I wonder.. what good is a gift of compassion when real needs exist.


My mess truly helps me to relate.

I realize this every moment more and more. Its not my job to 'fix' my clients. My job is exactly what Gods gifts have been to me.. the gifts of compassion, lack of judgment, of love and hope. Its so easy for me to see it in my clients. To see their potential. As my friend Heather puts it.. I see the diamond in every piece of coal...& she is right.  Its true.. I have a gift .. for finding something amazing about every person I encounter. My job is to help the people I meet, find this in themselves. Their success, failures, wellness.. has nothing to do with me, it is with in them. All people really need is someone to believe in them so that it can become safe to believe in themselves.

I don't know what my future holds. I know I feel a sense of sadness from serving where God wants me. A sense of hopelessness about my future, the future of man.. yet... somewhere in me.. I hope. I hope for my clients. I hope for myself and my own future. Again.. my gifts from God.. stupidly hoping .. rooting for the best the impossible...

Feeling silly .. feeling alone...

I continue on... just needed to get it out.. to vent and to feel heard.