Sleepless night.....

It was another sleepless night last night. I tried to go to bed at 10pm, and although I was tired and wanted to sleep, I couldn't fall asleep. I tossed and turned, flipped and flopped and looked at the clock about every half hour all night. I hate these kind of nights! I have been dealing with these since the surgery. I no longer sleep well, and it will build until I get to the point that I am so exhausted that I will finally sleep, the problem is it usually means that it comes to a day and I end up sleeping all day and night. This is not a good cycle.

After the whole doctor changed happened, the new doctor did a FULL blood workup, and I mean she really tested everything, we found that my cortisol levels were no normal, meaning I was really stressed by this, and that my magnesium levels were low, which can effect sleep. There were other hormone levels that needed addressed and finally I am on medication for those, and they are making a difference, but it still needs tweaked.

I guess this means that I should go ahead and call the doctors office and look into tweaking the medications, especially since the sleeplessness is causing me to be irritable and short with the kids.

I have been reading a book called, "It's My Ovaries, Stupid!", written by a doctor who has put her 25 years of research and what she sees in her practice into a book, explaining that hormones effect a whole lot more about our daily lives than we think. i just started the chapter on excitotoxins, and man is that a wake-up call.

Excitotoxins, or neurotoxicants are chemicals that cause damage or death to nerve cells. Basically, these chemicals stimulate such intense and rapid firing of the nerve endings that the cells run out of their chemical messengers, and then die a few hours later. The nerve cells in the hypothalamus, our master hormone regulator, are some of the neurons in our body most sensitive to this exciatory damage and death. So what are excitotoxins and where are they found, or more importantly how to avoid them? some of the excitotoxins are natural compounds that occur in plant and animals as amino acids: glutamate, aspartate and cysteine, which are the building blocks of proteins. Some are man-made chemicals and are even more potent. One is MSG, and MSG-induced damage to the brain has been studied and written about for at least 40 years!!

We all know that MSG is bad, but now I am learning that it is so much worse than I ever knew. Not only does it give you those headaches, it can cause over-eating and damage your reproductive organs! What?!?!? And yet most of the research on it is buried and not published. Did you know that MSG used to be added to baby food? Finally we wised up and got that banned, but msg baby food led to babies that were short in stature, obese and had difficulty reproducing as adults! So, now i am even more determined to keep MSG out of my diet, but what is worse is that now that people know about MSG, it has morphed into new additives that we don't recognize, so we are still getting the toxins just under a new name, such had hydrolyzed vegetable protein. Of course aspartate in the form of Nutrasweet is just as bad.

It's so hard to put what i am feeling into words without just copying the whole 440 page book!! I just keep looking at what is written and i am appealed and it makes so much sense in so many things that i have experienced in my life...what is up? how to counteract all this.

The book is "It's My Ovaries, stupid!" by Elizabeth Lee Vliet, MD. The copyright on it is 2003, but the book is hard to find, but Brad found excerpt of it online. she has two other books..."Screaming to Be Heard: Hormone Connections women Suspect and doctors Still ignore" and "Women, weight and hormones".

Drama

Lately there have been a number of Facebook status posts about Drama, and it got me to thinking.

Drama is a part of life, you can't avoid it because we live on a planet with other people, it is just how you perceive it and how you deal with it that defines you and defines how much drama you have in your life. Where one person sees drama, another sees normal life, where one sees complaining, another sees venting, where one sees nothing but the wrongs and troubles, another sees the chances to change and move on. Where one may think a post is about "new found faith" another may see it as 'overzealous religion", where one posts about "teenage daughters" another may see it as "drama", where one may post about "being overworked" another may see it as "venting' while another sees it as "complaining'. There are so many things that can be seen in so many different ways, and we tend to read into things based on our own point in life and experiences.

Drama comes in many shapes and forms. For me, i feel the most drama from extended family members that have not learned to deal very well with life, and they expect help from the rest of us. But at the same time, that drama is a blessing in that I have learned something that they feel can help them, so it's not really drama to me, its a life lesson.

I know for me that i tend to post about life, what it going on with the kids, the family and friends and stuff. Sometimes it might sound like I am complaining, but you know that i would never change anything in my life for anything. I love my kids and the hectics of life is fine with me, i don't mean to make it sound like drama, but i know to other people it might sound like I have too much drama or stress in my life. Life for me is about my faith, my family and my friends.

I was thinking about it as i lay in bed last night and i realized that it doesn't bother me when people post stressful or drama type things. It allows me to realize and be thankful for the things in my life, my kids, my husband and my family. I realize when I read the posts of those younger than me, that i am thankful to be this age, to have gone through and dealt with the drama of teenage years and the single years, and that i would not want to do that time period again. I know that where I am in my life, what I have been through and what i am focused on now in life colors or effects how i read what is posted, but you know, that is probably good, because it gives me my unique point of view.

Book Review: Tressed to Kill

Tressed to Kill by Lila Dare

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I picked this book up on a whim the other day at the library while the kids were looking for books to pick out for their summer reading.

I started reading it the other night, and finished it today while i was sitting out at the Radio merit Badge day.

I have a thing for series that revolve around a theme, the book shop mysteries, the knitting mysteries, the scrapbooking mysteries. So this was a natural to pick up off the shelf fast.

The main characters are Grace and her mother, Violetta who run a beauty salon in the front of their old Victorian house. There are other ladies that play great roles, Aletha, Violetta's best friend, Vonda, Grace's best friend, Stella and Rachel, who work at the salon.

The store starts with a town meeting, and the death of a business woman in town that had made more than her share of enemies. It twists and turns, going back in history about thirty years, to the sins of the father and husband. All these little things end up coming back together in the end, and twisting around to slowly come to conclusion in the reveal of the murderer.

I loved the friendship between the women, between three generations of women, and the small town appeal and lure of this book. It really felt like a warm glass of tea that you could curl up with and i found myself routing for certain characters and disliking others and feeling sorry for yet others.

It is a really good read, and I would recommend it to anyone, and as an added bonus there are three organic skin-care receipes in the back of the book.



View all my reviews

Getting my life back...

For the past two years, I have felt like i was living someone else's life. The first year was muddled in the pain that I was dealing with and the emotions of deciding to have the hysteroctomy. The second year was clouded in a fog after losing all those hormones and not knowing which way to turn to try to get things right.

I finally feel like things are headed in the right direction. I have a new doctor, I have a new pharmacist and new medications that are the total opposite direction of where they were going in the past. I haven't had to take a nap in the middle of the day in three weeks.

Brad even bought me this book that he had read some parts of online. It's called "It's My Ovaries, Stupid!" and is written by doctor who had devoted herself to research and cataloging how ovaries and female hormones effect all kins of things in our lives! i am loving the book, and I am finding so many things that make sense, it is just an amazing red and so eye-opening. It also helps that i find things she mentions as helping are some of the things that my doctor and pharmacist are already doing.

I was worried how the summer was going to go, but it is going better so far than I expected. Since I have not felt the need to nap, I am getting through the days and then I am working on projects. And although i am not finishing them in one day, and I working on them and that is feeling good. There for awhile i was so depressed and tired that i couldn't even crochet or do any crafts, and that was terrible for me since I live to craft and do things like that, so it is getting better if i am able to craft.

I'm even taking the time to write and release my feelings and that means alot to me, so I know that things are on the mend. It may take some tweaks and what not to get it all going the right way, but it is moving that way and that is what is important.

Church Camp

Since Tiernan has been old enough, we started sending him to church camp through the UMC (United Methodist church), since that is what we attend. I have always been happy with them, until this year.

When the camp brochure camp out this early Spring, the prices were up and all the special camps that Tiernan loved, horseback ridding and computer, were gone. It was just plain camp for a week. Funny thing was, the day I got a reply to my email asking where the other camps were, was I just missing them or were they really cancelled, we got a post card from Springhill Camps.

Springhill Camps does just that, they run church camps in MI, OH and IN, and they do nothing else but camps. I looked them up online, www.springhillcamps.com and I read about them, I checked their mission statement, their faith statement, and although we wouldn't be able to get any help paying for the camp, as we get help from our church to go to their camps, we felt it was the best alternative for the kids this year.

Springhill has a summer overnight camp close to us in Seymour, IN at what used to be Redbrush Park. During our camp tour, we learned that Springhill was started in 1969 in Everett, MI and that in 1998 they bought Redbrush from the Rust family, and transformed it into a church camp. The first overnight camp held at Redbrush was in 2001, so this year marked the 10th year of summer camps there. We could send all three kids, as they had camp starting with kids just finishing first grade, like Molly.

As i got ready to sign the kids up, Maeve made the choice to go back to the UMC camp this year with a friend, instead of going to Springhill, and we allowed her to. She wanted to be with a friend, and she was going to Camp Indi-Co-So, which is the first camp the UMC is working on updating to streamline their camp adventure. I know that the economy had alot to do with the changes, it has effected a number of people, and I understood what they were going for, at this point though, I have to say, they still have a long way to go.

On Sunday we drove over to Seymour to drop off Tiernan and Molly. The check-in was so smooth, and the camp was full of very excited camp counselors, and teen counselor trainees all over welcoming the kids to camp. The kids took off on an old firetruck to their campsites, and the parents followed on a tram, with a guide who explained a lot of information about camp and Springhill in general. We got off the tram first at the Wigwams, which is where Tiernan was staying. it was close to the dinning hall, and across the road from the smaller lake, where the kids would swim.

The Wigwams were great, Tiernan loved them, 8 boys and 1 counselor in each and then the lake. It was full of these great toys to play on and Tiernan was ready to go long before i was ready to let him go! Then we got back on the tram and rode down to the next campsite, called the Teepees. This is where Molly was staying. She had already made a new best friend in the five minutes it took us to get there. They had bunks and smaller bunk-like shelves above the beds to put all their stuff on. There were 8 girls, and 2 counselors for this age-group.

The entire time we are there, Maeve is rethinking her decision to go to Indi-Co-So, so she and her dad rode the Zipline while they were there, sort of to make her feel like she didn't miss everything by going to another camp. She said next year, i am coming her!

Another thing I liked about Springhill, I can go online anytime, and I can check Molly's store account and it will tell me if she bought anything at the store. The first day she went in and got some candy, the second day a pair of swim goggles, yesterday a stuffed animal and today a journal and pen set. I can also use that same site to send an email to Molly and check out photos posted each day of camp. I am also able to call down to camp anytime and the people there have been wonderful about checking on things and making me feel comfortable about everything. Not only can I check on Molly, but I can check on Tiernan the same as Molly, and I was even able to call and add money to his store account the other day, since he had bought some things and had his account a little low.

Tomorrow we go pick Molly and Tiernan up and i am excited to see how the closing programs go.

On Monday we took Maeve down to Camp indi-Co-So, and they seemed excited. They did talk about how they would again this year have daily Facebook updates and pictures online, and even that this year they were going to use this online service to allow us to buy the pictures as a fund-raiser for the camp. Maeve was happy to be with her friend, but she couldn't stop talking about Springhill.

Now, why am I disapppointed you ask, sounds great....well, it's not all lived up to the hype. So far, we have been lucky to get a once-a-day update on facebook from Indi-Co-So, and last year, before they were promoting this so much, we got three to four updates a year. The other is the pictures. So far this year, they have uploaded a whole 37 pictures from camp, 37 pictures covering four days, which has amounted to a whole 2 pictures of Maeve!! They even posted on Facebook, water games pictures, and there were all of 3 pictures uploaded, and two were of the same group of 8 kids. Really? How hard would it have been for the person with the camera to have turned around and made sure to get at least one shot of each group of kids, instead of taking 3 pictures and having 2 of them be almost identical!!

I'm sorry, but if you are promoting facebook updates and buying pictures as a fund-raiser, then you need to have someone who is responsible, and willing to do that job do it, take pictures making sure they are getting all the kids and updating often. Two pictures to tell you what happened for all of one day, and then having the same kids in both pictures just does not cut it with me. And before you say, well did you say something, yes I did!! I sent off a formal complaint to the camping minstries about this issue this morning. I know i am not the only parent feeling disappointed and frustrated, because they are posting all over facebook, as "worried parent" or "distracted parent".
Okay, you say, you are expecting too much. I don't think so. Last year, before they promoted this, we got daily updates on facebook, at least three to four times a day. As for pictures, each day, they uploaded at least 50 pictures. i mean, when it is pool time, how hard is it to have someone stand by the pool with the camera and take the picture of each kid in the pool? That alone would be better than the pictures we are getting right now. we got pictures from the pool the other day, there were all of 8 pictures!! Ok, there are 8 campers in each cabin, so one cabin's worth of kids got their pictures taken, what about the other 10 cabins? And over 75% of the pictures are of the boys, i don't have a boy at camp there, but you would think it was all boys if the pictures are any gauge.

Ok....so it is a minstry and maybe i need to expect less from them...maybe, or maybe I just need to find a church camp that can met my expectations of a church camp.

Truth in advertising...

If you have read any recent posts, you will know that I am dealing with alot of emotions, dealing with junk, and then we get to drop in my biological dad and his current divorce from the last wife...it's a mess, but I am muddling through. I do have a rant, and so I am climbing up on my soapbox now.

In the course of this recent divorce filing, my biological dad is needing to find someplace to live. She wants their place, and he is willing to give it to her in the divorce, but that means that he needs someplace. He is driving me nuts being extremely picky, and not wanting to take what is available...he wants a place in the country with room to roam and at a price he can afford. He refuses to budge on anything on that list. There is nothing in the county and then what there is to rent is over-priced.

The other day, I am looking through the Seymour paper and I spy an ad that says "1, 2, and 3 bedroom homes for rent, reasonable prices, must move in by June 30th", so I am thinking this might be the answer, so I call....

Me: Hello, I am wanting to get more information on the homes you have for rent

Her: They're apartments.

Me: I'm sorry, but the ad I am reading in the paper says 1, 2, and 3 bedroom homes for rent

Her: Yeah, they're apartment homes

Okay....so I just have to interject here...I am thinking that is the silliest thing I have ever heard. If you are advertising homes, it means a stand alone home, if you are advertising an apartment, that means a building with many units, and there is no such word as apartment homes, that is an oxymoron. It can't be both, it's either a home or an apartment! Please!!
But since the price was so good, I continued the conversation. I should have known better. I mean, really, if they can't figure out what they are actually renting out the rest can't get any better, right?

Her: When are you looking to move?

Me: Well, as soon as possible, and the ad says it has to be before the end of the month, and that would be fine.

her: We have a three month waiting list

Me: Excuse me??

Her: We have a two to three month waiting list on these right now.

Me: Then why do you have an ad in the paper saying you have homes available to move into before the end of the month if you do not in fact have homes or anything available before the end of the month?

her: Oh, the company just always runs that ad, they just change the date each month.

So I hang up the phone and it is all I can do to stay calm on the line with the lady. I get off the phone and I am like, what is the deal?? First off they advertise homes, when in fact they do not have any homes, second they advertise immediate move in, when in fact they have a waiting list. What happened to truth in advertising? Are they not subject to that or what?

I was livid! I thought I had heard it all. But guess what? It gets better.
You think prices in a college town are bad. A guy finally calls me back, he has a 2 bedroom home and he is wanting $625 a month for it, and I am thinking that is alot for one person to try to cover, well then he proceeds to tell me that with rent and utilities, it averages about $1000 a month! Okay...and in my mind I am really wanting to tell this guy he must be NUTS! Who is going to be able to afford that kind or rent? I mean really?! It's only 2 bedrooms, and if you think of it a rent by the bedroom, like a college town, that is $500 per bedroom. No single person could afford that, and i have no idea how a family could afford that either. And the guy wonders why he is having trouble renting this place out, and why when he does get it rented that people end up having trouble making the payments? I'm thinking maybe he needs to get a bit of education about the salaries that people in the area are making and what they can actually afford and then rethink his pricing schedule.

Okay, so now that I have ranted and raved about it, I am calmer, but it is still not making it any easier to find someplace to move him, but at least I am not ready to strangle these people on the other end of the phone.

Connections....

So yesterday at church, the sermon was based on Ezekiel 36: 25-26 "I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean. I will cleans your from ll your impurities and from all your idols. I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you, I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh."

So our Pastor talked about cleaning out the grunge from in our hearts that prevents us from loving the way we were designed to love, and cleaning out the grunge from our lives that prevents us from living the way we were designed to live. I turned to Bra and looked at him, and after service i asked..."Isn't that just what I talked with the doctor about on Wednesday?"

It is a never ending process, cleaning our hearts, our minds, our spirits from the grunge, or the fears, the scars and the cards that are preventing us from being the person want to be and that we were designed to be. The story our Pastor told was of a broken washing machine part, an clan out value and pump, and how at the service center he was told that this part needed to be cleaned out on a regular basis or the washing machine would have problems. Now our Pastor has drove around with this broken part in his car for awhile, thinking on it, and yesterday it made it's way into the sermon. As I think about it, we all have a clean out value on our hearts and minds, but how many of us regularly look at what we are letting build up, what are we wasting emotional energy on that really doesn't matter?

Reflecting on that question is hard, because for me, I have spent more time worrying about my own problems, my own concerns and not enough time carrying for other people. We had a tornado hit on the west side of town and in Bedford, and although I have driven through the tornado path every weekend to pick up my dad, have I done anything about it? have I stopped, or offered help or support, have I even prayed for those people....I am ashamed to say that I haven't.

As I am working on this process, the playing of the card in my hand, it is encouraging to hear a sermon on the same thing, even though no one knew that this is what I was going through. It is just another way that God proves to me that he is listening, and he knew I needed more encouragement to keep moving on this path, and Sunday's sermon was that encouragement. It was encouragement to everyone that we all need to look inward from time to time to see if we are letting things build up that are preventing us from loving the way we were deigned to loved, or from being the person that god has in mind for us to be.

I am still working on my hand of cards, and it feels like I might be working on that first card for a little while loner because I realized a number of things this weekend that my holding onto that card allowed me or caused me to do, and I need to own up to those things, ask forgiveness and move on. And i will, but that seems to be a entry for another day. This connection to the sermon is more important to think about an reflect on and build on today.

I can do this, and I see the encouragement from all sides, not in words, but in connections....things people say or do, without knowing what i am going through that just reinforce the idea that this is what i need to be doing, not just now but should have been doing before. But I am starting now, and I am moving on. It feels good, and in fact.....i haven't felt half the fatigue that I was feeling since I started being open and dealing with the cards! More encouragement that this is the right thing to be doing!

The Ace of Spades...

I've been dealt my hand, now it's time to deal with it.

First card, the "Ace of Spades", the divorce.....yeah, it's a pretty typical card anymore, but it can do more damage than anyone believes or gives it credit for. I always thought that i had dealt well with that card. I took my time, waited until later to get married, dated for four years before we got married and I was doing well.

I underestimated the power that it had, and it wasn't on the level i was thinking, but going down another level and we find the root, unworthy. When the divorce occurred, I was in 3rd grade going into 4th grade. I don't remember anything about 4th grade. Now I can tell you my teachers name from 3rd grade, my friends in 3rd and 5th grads, but I remember nothing of 4th grade. The divorce left me feeling unworthy, because my Dad was the one who walked out and moved on. He left so it had to be my fault, I had to have done something wrong. As I got older I realized it wasn't my fault, i did nothing to cause it, but the feelings of being unworthy of love lingered.

My Mom remarried, and I had a wonderful life. I have a step-father that i haven't called that in more years than I can remember. He loved me no matter what, I didn't have to prove myself to him to be worthy of his love, and I can never be worthy of God's love, but yet he loves me anyway.

For me, I dealt with the top layers, the most superficial hurts of the divorce the ones everyone thinks about, but I never lifted the layers, I never went down to the root of the problem, and so it has festered and grown and caused more and more problems.

I have done things that have made my husband mad, and I just expected him to leave because in reality I felt I wasn't worthy of his love. How could I be worthy of his love? I mean, I wasn't even worthy of my own father's love was I, because if I had been then surely he would have stayed around, he wouldn't have went looking for a new family somewhere else, right?

All these years I have pretended to be fine, to have dealt with the emotional scares of the divorce, but I was playing a game with myself. I was looking at the top layer and dealing with it, all the while knowing in the back that there was another layer without ever dealing with it. Th problems centered on my feeling unworthy....unworthy of being loved, unworthy of being happy, unworthy of anything good. How did I let it grow so big that I felt unworthy of everything? Because I chose not to deal with it.

I know this card is tied to some of the other cards, but this is going to be a long process, and so step one is this card only, this Ace of Spades that made me miserable. This card that I took to mean I was unworthy, and that I let grow until i let it color everything in my life. I am 43 years old, and only now do I feel capable or even ready to deal with this card. It gut deep, very deep!

The thing is, I will never be worthy of God's love, but then again, no one is. God give's his love unconditionally to us, we don't have to be worthy of it. I have my dad (step-dad)'s love and it was given unconditionally too, he didn't ask me to be worthy of his love, he loved me in spite of my flaws. I did nothing to be worthy of my husband's love, he has loved me through my flaws and seen me in my darkest times, and loved me anyway. My children have always given me their love, nevr asking me for anything in return, that is the beauty of children, their love knows no boundaries.

I was not to blame for my parent's divorce, that lays squarely on the shoulders of another card, but it was not me. My father' demon's are not my demon's and just because he took off to face them and fight them, losing alot of the time nd winning just enough to keep hope alive, had nothing to do with me. It didn't make me unworthy of love....but Satan slipped in and told me it was, and he planted the seeds of unworthiness, and i let it grow. I let it stay.

Today, I play the Ace of Spades, I lay it face up on the table for all to see, because if all can see it then there is nothing to hide anymore. I don't have to cover it in shame, it has been faced. And I am not going to sneak it back into my hand to grow in the darkness and become a problem again, I have layed if face up on the table, and I am going to slap this big old Bible of mine on top of it so that it has to stay on the table...because the Bible is what gives me the power to face it, because God loves me, he thinks I am worthy of his love, through nothing I have done...

I AM .....WORTHY
I AM .....SPECIAL
I AM .....BEAUTIFUL
I AM .....LOVED

I may have to say that each and every day, but I am, and I will say it until i believe it because I am worthy, I am not to blame and I can be happy!

One card played, the rest of the hand to go......

The hand your dealt

Throughout my life, there have come times when I have had to do some self-reflection and soul-searching to figure out why I have done some things or why things have happen. Recently this was speared on by the changes in my body over the years from fertility drugs and then the hysteroctomy. I thought everything would be wonderful after the surgery, and the past year of it not being anything clos to normal, let alone wonderful has encouraged even more searching and changing doctors and finally some answers of sorts.

I have come to a theology of my own. Each and every person is dealt a hand of cards. Now this isn't poker, this is a big old hand full of cards, but the dealer isn't dealing them blind, the Lord is the card dealer and he knows what he is dealing into every hand. They are not put there to test you or to make life hard but to make you the wonderful, beautiful person he has in store for you to be.

The hard cards are not tests, they are not punishments, they are not things that you can blame for the rest of your life...."Oh, I am overweight because that is the card I was dealt, there is no use trying to lose weight", you might have been dealt an overweight card, but it's not something to blame, it is something to use as a step, as a climbing tool. These hard cards are meant to make us look inward, to find our strengths, to embrace the challenge and to grow into the person we are suppose to be.

Maybe you were dealt a divorce card, well that is no reason to think you are unworthy of love, maybe it was dealt you to show you how strong you can be, maybe it was to show you that you have to put your faith and trust into God and not man for the love that you deserve.

I have struggled with my own parents divorce when I was young, I have struggled with my father's battles with alcohol, my own infertility problems and then my weight. Finally I have realized that I can't blame anything on those struggles. They were not cards dealt to allow me to blame them and just go on as if the struggles of the past should explain my issues now. As if you should accept me as I am and if I should be content to be overweight and insecure. The cards were dealt me to force me to turn to God, to ask for his help, to ask him to show me how to deal with them and how to use them to make me into the strong capable person I know i can be.

For so long I have let those cards lay there in the background. I have let them stop me from doing something I wanted or desired, or keep me from feeling worthy of the love that has been given me. For so long, I have not dealt with the card, I have just let them sit there, thinking I was doing what i needed to do, but never really facing them. Just allowing them to lay there in the background, to fester an grow was not dealing with them. Now i realize that I have to deal with the cards, I have to play those cards and change my life, my thoughts, my beliefs and my goals.

Today I start playing those rough cards. I start dealing with the struggles, but instead of hiding them back in my hand and letting them fester and cause problems again in a year or later, i am going to play them. Really play them, take them out of my hand an lay them on the table for all to see. I am going to completely take them out of my hand and let them go, never to rear their heads again, never to take away what i deserve again. I will not lie and say this is going to be easy, it is not, but it has to be done. Letting someone ls see your hard cards or your demons or your faults if you want is probably the hardest thing in the world, but if i don't play them, don't lay them on the table, don't admit to them and how they have effected me up to this point, then what good is it.

I am wonderfully and fearfully made in God's image. He has only the best in store for me, I am his and he loves me no matter what....it is time that I embraced that fully, and allowed him to love me in spite of my flaws and through my flaws, to mold me and make me the wonderful person he has had in mind for me from before I was born. Today i take charge and release those cards, they can no longer hurt me or allow me to feel unworthy....I am worthy of God's love! I am worthy of a full life, unimpended by those cards.

I am woman, hear me roar!