Well once again I've been keeping busy. A key ingredient for anyone moving on in life after a tragic event. I have recently started a new hobby...making cakes for my friends birthday. I'm not sure it is a full out hobby seeing as how two of them happened to be in one week and you can't make one friend a cake and not the other. My first cake: double chocolate fudge with peanut butter filling between cake layers SMOTHERED in peanut butter frosting covered with crushed Reese Pieces. YUM! Cake 2: crushed Oreo crust layered with hot fudge, homemade ice cream, peanut butter pie filling, and crushed oreo's. YUMMMY. I felt real great about myself when I left Hy-vee tonight with a box of oreo's, hot fudge, whip cream, and a bottle of margarita's. The high school girl working asked if it was a rough day....YIKES. I guess my basket of items looked as if I was 'dumped' and was going home to self loath with margartias and chocolate. Anyways, the cakes I think were a huge hit...who doesn't love peanut butter and chocolate...I DO, I DO.
Nothing exciting is on tap this weekend, I usually stumble upon something however.
My parents took off for the weekend to celebrate my Aunt's life. She passed away on Thursday morning after a long battle with head, neck and throat cancer. I know she had a very hard road and am thankful she now rests comfortably. When I look at her fight and the fight others have all I can do is pray for thanks that Brian and I did not have to experience that. I'm so blessed that Brian had a relatively painless fight even though it was a hard and difficult battle.
When hear about people who pass due to cancer you think "wow that is sad, how horrible" but then a minute later you carry on with life as normal. I know I did before this and I know I would always think, "that would never happen to me." But it did, cancer doesn't discriminate. When you hear about someone being diagnosed or losing their battle who have a new perspective on it after being in that position. Your heart aches for them because you understand the road ahead, you know exactly what the nights after chemo are like, you know what the fear of the unknown is like. In the past year I can count on both hands and both feet the number of people we have known that have passed away from cancer...I can count on one hand the people that went into remission. That is pretty scary. It makes you think, makes you wonder why that is? Why is there nothing more for treatments. It makes you scared in case you are the next person because the odds are stacked pretty high against you. You have to hope when you battle and you try to find positives to hang your hat on with success stories...but one thing Brian and I hated was having people tell us stories of people they knew who were told they weren't going to make it and then the treatments worked. We weren't math majors and we knew the statistics...we knew that if it worked for that person that mean the odds were it wasn't going to work for us. You don't want to be negative but that is the reality...you can't hide it. It was hard fighting so hard to beat cancer but then receive tons of letters and emails with success stories but yet no treatments were working. It gives you sometimes false hope and when you get knocked down with the latest scan it was that much harder to be positive. The last thing you want to hear is how it worked, for what seemed like everyone, but you, however in reality that is not the case. If you want to give a cancer patient hope, show them faith. Faith will get them much further on the journey then stories of a friend you knew who had some cancer who survived. Faith gets them through doctor's appointments, faith soothes them after chemo, faith keeps them positive that there is greater things in the world. That is priceless.
Friday, April 29, 2011
Monday, April 25, 2011
EASTER..."lights will guide you home"
Well it is already Easter time. Can you believe it? I can't. Is this year in fast forward? I feel like life is passing me by to fast. Maybe because one life has already passed before me and all I can feel is that life is to short and it is to easy to get stuck in a mundane routine. I like routines, but after this past year, I've opened my eyes to spontaneity. It is easy to let life pass you by because you are comfortable in your set routine. Brian and I were pretty set in our routine...until shell shocked. I don't want to be stuck again, I want to live, I want to experience the world.
So I will no longer promise to be current on posting...perhaps because I have nothing to post on and majority of the reason...as time goes on things fade. Some days I wake up and feel like the past five years have been nothing then a mere dream. I look back and see how things were too good to be true. Truly I feel that. Brian was too good, he was too special, I always told him "how in the heck did God chose me to have you." ( please no comments on how I'm special, I know why God chose me for him, I know why we were together). He was to good to be had for a lifetime. Everything has happened so fast, literally a flash of time, I feel like at times I wake up in the morning thinking that 5 years together were nothing more then a mere 30 minute dream. (do you ever have dreams that feel like hours but you wake up to see you have only been asleep for like 10 min). I fee like that now. Sometimes I look at pictures and think 'who is that', I think this is because I physically haven't seen or spoken to Brian. I guess your mind automatically creates an 'out of sight out of mind' ideation. Some pictures I look at, especially on the walls, I think it is the couple that comes in the frame...the picture doesn't seem real, Brian and I don't seem real in it.
Well I knocked out the first big holiday without Brian. It didn't really bother me, I think because I've moved on. Some days are hard but you can't sit around and feel sorry for yourself, you have to move on. I think people around me figured it would be hard...I see it however as, I celebrated 20 years of holidays without him, I can celebrate them again without him. I don't like when people make things a big deal, I don't like attention to the fact he is gone. I don't understand why life can't continue on as normal. Easter church brought back memories. Last year we celebrated Easter with our family early so Brian and I celebrated real 'Easter' on our own in Des Moines. At our Church in Des Moines they had this 'skit' where the played Cold Play's: FIX YOU and then had members of the church stand on stage with signs sharing what they struggled with in life and then as the song went on they flipped over the sign to show how they 'let go and let God FIX THEM." It was about 4 minutes of pure tears. I remember sitting in that service with Brian holding his hand and both of us crying....like Kleenex box crying. We knew God brought this fight to us for a reason. We knew God was speaking to us, he was telling us we had some work to do in our lives, he opened our eyes to what was missing in life. PLEASE WATCH THE ABOVE VIDEO (link)....you will have no choice but to reflect on your own life, honestly, this is the BEST SONG EVER FOR THAT! If you can watch it, reflect, and not cry then as Brian would say, " you need to find some Jesus," because you need to be 'fixed'. In the spirit of Easter... this song speaks. No person is perfect, NO ONE! There is always something that we need to fix. That is why God is there. He forgives us, he fixes us.
This weekend I spent time with family and friends. Saturday I was blessed to be able to watch the sweetest 8 y.o. play soccer, and I even witnessed a GOAL! I miss my two boys a lot so it was nice to see them. After the soccer game we went for brunch and while I was there...8hours....I ran into some old friends from college and high school. So I could catch up with everyone. The rest of the weekend my best friend from college and I hung out with my parents. Sunday we had a nice meal prepared by my mommy and then we had our traditional egg hunt. YEP, not only am I 25 and going to Vegas with the rents...I also participate in Easter egg hunts...is that an E Harmony check box on the application? My mom's rule is you can't get out of the hunt till you have a kid to replace you. I was SO CLOSE to being out! Thankfully, egg hunts have become more interesting since in college we had to request the 'easter bunny' to replace chocolate with quarters for laundry. Since I'm incomeless I took the egg hunt seriously this year...and dominated! Actually, I've never lost an egg hunt, well perhaps one. Otherwise, Brian's egg winnings were 'My winnings' (but my winnings were not his...that is how it works right ladies!) so I always crushed my other siblings, in the spirit of Christ of course :).
A start of a new week...a week hopefully filled with nothing then good surprises and nothing routine, maybe a slow down in speed.
I did try to swap my 'blue bomber' '94 buick for my parents Audi....they didn't take the trade, but they did give me a picture of me in the car.
So I will no longer promise to be current on posting...perhaps because I have nothing to post on and majority of the reason...as time goes on things fade. Some days I wake up and feel like the past five years have been nothing then a mere dream. I look back and see how things were too good to be true. Truly I feel that. Brian was too good, he was too special, I always told him "how in the heck did God chose me to have you." ( please no comments on how I'm special, I know why God chose me for him, I know why we were together). He was to good to be had for a lifetime. Everything has happened so fast, literally a flash of time, I feel like at times I wake up in the morning thinking that 5 years together were nothing more then a mere 30 minute dream. (do you ever have dreams that feel like hours but you wake up to see you have only been asleep for like 10 min). I fee like that now. Sometimes I look at pictures and think 'who is that', I think this is because I physically haven't seen or spoken to Brian. I guess your mind automatically creates an 'out of sight out of mind' ideation. Some pictures I look at, especially on the walls, I think it is the couple that comes in the frame...the picture doesn't seem real, Brian and I don't seem real in it.
Well I knocked out the first big holiday without Brian. It didn't really bother me, I think because I've moved on. Some days are hard but you can't sit around and feel sorry for yourself, you have to move on. I think people around me figured it would be hard...I see it however as, I celebrated 20 years of holidays without him, I can celebrate them again without him. I don't like when people make things a big deal, I don't like attention to the fact he is gone. I don't understand why life can't continue on as normal. Easter church brought back memories. Last year we celebrated Easter with our family early so Brian and I celebrated real 'Easter' on our own in Des Moines. At our Church in Des Moines they had this 'skit' where the played Cold Play's: FIX YOU and then had members of the church stand on stage with signs sharing what they struggled with in life and then as the song went on they flipped over the sign to show how they 'let go and let God FIX THEM." It was about 4 minutes of pure tears. I remember sitting in that service with Brian holding his hand and both of us crying....like Kleenex box crying. We knew God brought this fight to us for a reason. We knew God was speaking to us, he was telling us we had some work to do in our lives, he opened our eyes to what was missing in life. PLEASE WATCH THE ABOVE VIDEO (link)....you will have no choice but to reflect on your own life, honestly, this is the BEST SONG EVER FOR THAT! If you can watch it, reflect, and not cry then as Brian would say, " you need to find some Jesus," because you need to be 'fixed'. In the spirit of Easter... this song speaks. No person is perfect, NO ONE! There is always something that we need to fix. That is why God is there. He forgives us, he fixes us.
This weekend I spent time with family and friends. Saturday I was blessed to be able to watch the sweetest 8 y.o. play soccer, and I even witnessed a GOAL! I miss my two boys a lot so it was nice to see them. After the soccer game we went for brunch and while I was there...8hours....I ran into some old friends from college and high school. So I could catch up with everyone. The rest of the weekend my best friend from college and I hung out with my parents. Sunday we had a nice meal prepared by my mommy and then we had our traditional egg hunt. YEP, not only am I 25 and going to Vegas with the rents...I also participate in Easter egg hunts...is that an E Harmony check box on the application? My mom's rule is you can't get out of the hunt till you have a kid to replace you. I was SO CLOSE to being out! Thankfully, egg hunts have become more interesting since in college we had to request the 'easter bunny' to replace chocolate with quarters for laundry. Since I'm incomeless I took the egg hunt seriously this year...and dominated! Actually, I've never lost an egg hunt, well perhaps one. Otherwise, Brian's egg winnings were 'My winnings' (but my winnings were not his...that is how it works right ladies!) so I always crushed my other siblings, in the spirit of Christ of course :).
A start of a new week...a week hopefully filled with nothing then good surprises and nothing routine, maybe a slow down in speed.
I did try to swap my 'blue bomber' '94 buick for my parents Audi....they didn't take the trade, but they did give me a picture of me in the car.
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