Pray For Chattanooga

Today, my city made national news. There was a shooting at a military recruiting office. Five people were injured. Four military personnel are deceased, one police officer is in stable condition at the hospital.

This is one of those times where "It will never happen here." is ringing loud in my head. I always brush off these stories and think exactly that. Today I cannot do that. Today, my city was shaken. Today my city experienced what has happened in other places. Today, my city will come together as one - we will pray.

I will continue to pray in the days yet to come. I wish that we could get answers to all the questions we all have. Unfortunately, that cannot happen. Some questions will remain unanswered. While this is a sad and tragic event, we must be positive and move forward stronger than we were today before this took place.

I posted a Facebook status this morning that began like this:

My God's Not Dead

He is surely ALIVE.

I did not know that this was going to take place today. However, I feel it could not have been posted at no better time. He is not dead. He is alive right now, in this event. I am thankful I can rest in this peace.

#PrayForChattanooga

God Knows What Time It Is: Reaching Others Through Social Media

That's right friends! God knows what time it is. He knows that we live in in time of Facebook,Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest. He knows that we live in a fast-paced world where having a front porch chat with your neighbor is seemingly unheard of.

My last post here was my personal testimony about letting God take control of my life. He has!!

Friends, I gave up the party life to live for Him and I am rewarded daily. I have asked Him to use me. Let me be a light to others. He is!

How you say?

Right now, I am seeing it through my social media outlets. Likes, shares, comments, etc. It is a blessing to me to know that I am reaching YOU through these outlets, even this blog.

He gave me the gift of writing. I have blessed many with this talent over the last 3 years and I am thankful for that and will continue to do so with whatever comes to mind.  My blog posts may not get many comments, likes, or shares.. but that is okay because they reach someone.

If you are struggling today thinking He cannot use you or you feel like you are not doing enough for Him, ask Him to use you and let Him have control and do what He wants to do; not what YOU want to do.

God can use anyone and anything to reach His people. :)

I Let Go, I Let God - My Personal Testimony

We have all heard the phrase "Let Go and Let God." at some point in our lives. I know I have many a time in my life.

Today, I am going to take you on a brief journey of how I have come to know the meaning of this phrase in my own life.

I have always known who God was/is. My grandparents taught me about spirituality and I attended church with them growing up. I began to pray before I was ever saved. At 7 years of age I can remember lying in bed at night with a prayer cloth which had been given to me by a pastor; praying that by Jesus stripes I would be healed. At 9 years of age, I prayed what to me would be my first real, heartfelt prayer. I prayed that God would take care of me and guide my doctors during surgery before going back to the OR (03-10-1993). When I got back to the OR my doctor told me everything would be fine. I knew then that He had heard my prayer. It has been 22 years since I have been back in the OR for any kind of surgery pertaining to my having Cerebral Palsy. Thank you Jesus!

Two years later, the summer of 1995; I asked Jesus into my heart during VBS and was also baptized.

Fast forward to my early twenties. At this time, I had moved away from home and was a college student. Church was not a big part of my life, but this was the time when I began keeping a prayer journal as a means of how I pray. After coming back home, I didn't go to church much at all and was very busy living an ungodly life to be honest.

Now here I am in my early 30's. The last two years of my life have been full of many ups and downs, highs and lows and plenty of soul searching. While I relied on God to get me through this difficult time in my life, I was still looking for love in all the wrong places if you will. In mid April of this year, I decided I was done with that life. I knew that the kind of person I really want to spend the rest of my life with was not going to be found in the places I was hanging out. My sister bought me a Bible I had been looking at for a while and I've read almost every day since. I have started going back to church on a regular basis as well. I have learned so much from my own personal reading as well as church sermons in the last two months. I cannot get enough! It is amazing when you can truly understand what you are reading and what you are hearing. I have also started worshiping through music and sometimes all I can do is cry while I am listening or even writing. Feeling the Spirit and knowing that He is near is the most awesome feeling I have ever felt.

It may have taken me 20 years to get here, but I have no doubt that I am where I need to be. Where I am SUPPOSED to be. I had so much peace with this decision, peace like I've never felt before.

I am so glad to have this outlet, because maybe; just maybe someone will come to know their Savior through reading my testimony.

Hairdo Take 2

My hair didn't quite turn out the way I planned for it to when I got it cut last month. So, a couple weeks ago I had it cut again, and even let mom highlight it! I absolutely love it. Easy to fix. I can spike it or I can leave it flat!

What's your new hairdo for Summer 2015?

Summer Doo

Say "Hello!" to the new me...

That's my new doo for the summer ya'll! It is a whole lot cooler and much easier to maintain. I have had my hair short several times over the years. It seems to be something I always return to. I like my hair short for several reasons.

• It shows my face.
• Use less shampoo.
• Wash n' Go.
• Easy to fix.

The only con to having short hair is that mine grows very fast, so there's regular trips to the salon if I want to keep it short. I plan to do that for a while and am even going to go a little shorter on the top so that my salon trips do not have to be so frequent. 

I know my hair is very pretty when it is long, but for me it is a lot to keep up with and maintain. It's hard to brush and usually ends up in a messy bun of sorts on top of my head which gets boring to me after a while!

When Your Words Mean So Much - JoJo

Yes, that's JoJo again. This morning when I woke up, I checked Facebook like I always do...

I saw I had been tagged by Jo Jo in a status, which is not something that happens often. When it does, I know it's special. Today, he shared the blog post I had written about our friendship. You can read that here if you haven't read it. Above the post, he thanked me once again for writing, but after that he said something that I have kept with me all day. He said, "These words could not have come at any better time. You are my rock." I have been going through some difficult times of my own, which are written in the previous post. It seems like he and I always know when we need a pick me up. I'm so blessed to have him in my life and call him a friend.

When I wrote that blog, I thought... oh he will read it and say how much it means to him and he'll share it on his page to show support - which he did. However, I didn't expect it to have such a profound impact a year later. I do not know what he has been going through, I do not need to. What I do know is that my words have carried him through something he has been going through and I cannot express how much that means to me. I often feel like I write just because it is what I love to do and I do it well. Today, I learned that I do not just write because it is something I love to do. I write because whether I know it or not.. someone reads it and gets something out of it. Maybe, like JoJo my words carry them through a trying time, or what I read just lets them know they're not alone.

I can't express how I feel knowing my words mean so much. Knowing they are not just words threw out into cyberspace makes me want to keep writing even more. I have always enjoyed it and it is the best way I can express myself. I am so thankful to everyone who encourages me to keep writing. Aside from my family and friends here at home, JoJo is one of my biggest supporters and he always has been. He believes in my writing like I believe in his music and we'll never stop. I've got you buddy. Circles.Never.End.

Thank you, JoJo!

The Other Side of Me

Most of the time, what you see is what you get, a very happy and positive woman who doesn't let Cerebral Palsy get in her way of living. I do just about everything anyone else does from taking care of myself to keeping a house in order.

However,  there is a side of me that most do not see. A part of me that longs for understanding and consideration. A part of me, that is even difficult for me to accept.

If you know me on a personal level then you know I am a very social person. I love being the life of the party, the social butterfly who mingles well in a crowd. I greatly enjoy going to live music performances. Music is therapy. It is my escape from everyday life. I also enjoy having dinner or just chatting over a cup of coffee or glass of tea.

For me, this part of my life has been lacking for a while. I handle it fine, for the most part. But,  there are times when it gets to me, when I reach my breaking point and cannot take anymore. This is the part of me that no one sees. This is the part of me that screams from the inside and wants to be heard. I go through feelings of being forgotten by my peers and thinking that if I could just drive myself around it wouldn't be that way. I would be included and thought of more. I wouldn't feel like my attempts to make plans were void.

I am not saying any of this for pity.  I'm saying it to speak out. To be heard. I realize that times have changed and most people I know are busy with their lives. I know you have jobs, kids, husbands, and wives. All of that comes first as it should. Sometimes though, I want to be invited out to do things by my peers without having to be the first to make contact and suggest such.

This is not something that I just started dealing with. I have dealt with this issue since my teen years. Most of my time then was spent on AOL, that's where most of my social activity took place. Other than that I was with my cousin and her friends or my sister and her friends.  Their friends became mine. The friends I had at school were just that, friends at school. Today, while I know many people I do not get to see them as often as I would like for reasons mentioned above. I spend a lot of time on Facebook or watching TV. I am also a gamer which gives me another way to connect to to people. While this helps me pass the time that I spend alone,  this is not how I want to spend the rest of my life.

I have not dated for two years and this is certainly not a plea for a date, but we all know that Mr. or Mrs. Right does not just magically appear at your doorstep one day. You've got to have some kind of active social life to really meet people.

So, what I am saying is I would like help in building my social life again. Do you want to go out for a cup of coffee and not have to go alone? Call me. I will gladly join you. I also need you to understand that there are reasons why I do not drive and those should be respected, not questioned. As for my wheelchair, I cannot help how heavy it is. I am able to get in and out of a car on my own but anything other than that (SUV, truck, van) I have to be lifted in and out of it.

If you have read this far thank you. It is not often that I share these kind of feelings publicly, but I have reached a point where I am ok with it because I realize people do not understand what they do not know. I wanted you to realize that my life is not always what you see. I have bad days too and often they are mentally and emotionally exhausting, but I make the best of them just like any other day.