When?

When did I accept God?  It’s difficult to put a specific date on it, but off and on through my life I’ve hated God, blamed God, hoped that He was there, prayed for my wishes to come true, and even completely ignored Him.  I didn’t have parents who went to church and to be honest I grew up not knowing much about God.  I would occasionally attend with my grandmother and later, when I met my husband, would go with his parents.  For the most part I was indifferent to God.  I have been through a lot of hardships and struggles in my life and thought if He is known as a “loving God”, He must hate me.  He has shed a bright light on why I went through what I did, (those stories will come later), and I am who I am because of them.  I sometimes still question why I have to endure situations or deal with terrible life issues, but now I know that He will show me later.  I have learned that I must have faith in Him and trust Him to see me through it.  All of it is for Him.  Now stop and think about that: “All of it is for Him”.  What am I crazy?!!?  I have to go through all the hurt, all the pain, and it’s all for Him.  How does that make any sense?  Well, in today’s world that is one of the most difficult things to understand and accept.  I hope to shed His light through my writings and show why I have faith.

For Him

I have sat here and racked my brain trying to figure out the worst thing I’ve been through and I came to this conclusion: there are too many to pick just one.  I decided to just pick one and write, so here it is:

When I was 18 years old I tried to kill myself.  Luckily I did not succeed, obviously as I am writing about it.  I had many things that contributed to my suicide attempt, but most of it came from not feeling loved and having low self-esteem. A few weeks prior to my attempt, my boyfriend of almost a year broke up with me.  That hurt and hurt bad, but I found out one evening that he had cheated on me.  He was sleeping with someone else while we were still a couple.  That more than hurt, it was devastating.  We all know the expression “getting your heart broke”; well that is not a joke.  My chest hurt and it felt like my heart was physically being ripped from my chest.  At times I thought it would either stop beating or explode from beating to fast.  It was a dreadfully horrible feeling and it completely took over my being.  I could think of nothing else but ending my life to end this pain.  I went into the closet just outside my bedroom door and grabbed every prescription bottle I could get my hands on.  I didn’t look to see what was in any of them.  I put them in my room and then walked down the hallway to my parents’ bar (it’s a real old west saloon-looking bar) and went into the fridge where I grabbed a couple of beers to help down the pills.  I remember not feeling much at this point, numbness has settled in.  I went back to my room, opened a beer and drank half of it.  Then I opened up each pill bottle one by one and took all of the contents with a huge gulp of beer.  After every bottle was empty, I thought to myself, “The pain is almost gone for good.”  For a reason I did not know at the time, I picked up the phone and called one of my good friends to tell her I loved her and goodbye.  I could hear the panic in her voice so I told her it would be okay and I hung up the phone.  I lay on my floor waiting for me to pass on.  I was quite drowsy from the booze and medicines, but I distinctly heard sirens.  I knew they were for me and I pleaded with God to take me before they came.  A loud pounding on the front door woke my parents and I could hear a man demanding to know where their daughter was.  The rest happened so fast it was a blur.  I had not hid any of the pill bottles or beer cans, so one of the many men standing around me asked me if that was all I took and if I knew how much I had taken.  I didn’t know how much, I didn’t count.  Then he made me drink something (later found out it was Syrup of Ipecac) and insisted I drink lots of water.  I remember being in the ambulance and then being in the hospital, but I don’t remember much else. 

How?

I’m sure at one time you have wondered how on Earth You got somewhere.  I had that thought one day while waiting to attend a Great Banquet.  “Wait a minute, what am I doing here?  What was I thinking?  Why did I agree to this?”  I started feeling my face get hot and I had this urge to bolt. I felt it best to stay put and not draw any attention to myself and besides my husband and neighbor were sitting right next to me.  I am usually a person who follows through; if I say I will do something I give it my best to make sure I see it through to the end.  I had agreed to attend this 72-hour retreat with no phones, no concept of time, no children, no husband, and in a room with 74 other women that I did not know.  How did I get myself in this situation, completely and totally out of my comfort zone?  I can’t divulge too much about the banquet as it is a unique and spiritually uplifting experience and I would hate if I biased someone or set unreal expectations.  Every person who attends one of these weekends will have a completely different experience.  So if you haven’t gone to one, GO!  (By the way these weekends go by different names depending where you live and what church you attend.  (ie: Great Banquet, Walk to Emmaus, Cursillo, Disciple Walk, Journey, and Tres Dias just to name a few.)

So imagine if you will, I am a new Christian (I’ll tell that story later) and I am now thrown into a weekend with a bunch of other women and I’m thinking, “I’m a fraud.  They’re going to figure out I don’t belong here.”  I stayed.  Had no idea why, but I would later.  I can tell you that they have speakers that give real, personal, and soul-bearing testimonies about God’s grace, God’s love, and God’s forgiveness.  One of the talks spoke directly to my heart.  She spoke about postpartum depression and how she didn’t want to even hold her son.  She questioned why she became a mother.  My heart broke as I experienced the same thing after my son was born.  At that time he was almost 14 and I had not forgiven myself for it.  She spoke about being in a pit and that if we let Him, God will reach down and take us out of that pit and He will show us His grace, His love, and His forgiveness.  I cried so much I couldn’t see anymore and that weekend I realized after listening to all of the women who told their stories that He loves me and He forgives me.  I couldn’t understand why and surely did not feel worthy of any of it, yet I knew it was true.  A lot of my issues were brought into the light that weekend and I’m forever grateful that He invited me to come and I accepted.

Who?

Who am I?  A perplexing question for me; who am I?  I thought I knew at one time.  I was a daughter, a sister, a wife, a mother, a friend, and I a career woman as well.  Things started to change and I decided I didn’t want to have a “career”.  I just wanted to be a wife and mother, a homemaker (can’t stand that word).  Then we moved across the country and I was thrown for a loop.  I could now make friends and they didn’t have to know anything about my past, they would have no preconceived notions of whom I am.  This was freeing or so I thought.  I even dyed my blonde hair a dark brown, just to get rid of the old me.  Funny, the old me didn’t go away.  I still had my insecurities, my faults, my anger, my unforgiving nature, and my middle name was still WORRY.  How did this happen? I was sure I left all my baggage in California, somewhere between the Pacific Ocean and the Sierra Nevada Mountains. 

I decided that I needed to go back to school and get my bachelor’s degree, so I did.  I went to an online school and graduated with all A’s and one B, (I despised Sociology).  That was remarkable for me as I barely made B’s and C’s for most of my academic career.  I was sure that since I obtained a “higher” education, I could finally fulfill my dream of being a teacher.  Well, somewhere along my path I became a germaphobe.  I cringed at the thought of all those runny-nosed, coughing, breathing my air children and quickly let that dream go.  Who am I if a career, or being the best mom, or being a super wife does not define me?  My answer came to me in what I consider a very unlikely place. 

I was not raised in a church, although I was baptized as a child and would occasionally attend with my grandmother and later with my in-laws.  I never saw the point.  It seemed all about tradition and in no way did that relate to my life and me.  My husband and I did have our children baptized, I think mainly out of respect for my in-laws and just in case.  If something happened to our babies I didn’t want them not go to heaven because I didn’t baptize them.  When we got to Indiana we met a neighbor and after several months we decided to attend a non-denominational Christian church with her. (The story is much longer, but I’ll save it for another entry.)  She also invited us to attend a Great Banquet, which we said, “OK, why not.”  We had no idea how it would change us……..

Where?

I was born in the beautiful city of San Francisco, so by default I'm a California girl.  What's strange is that I never felt like I belonged in California.  Don't get me wrong, it's a beautiful place to live and I grew up in a very nice area; I just didn't fit in well with the people there.  I was very lucky to grow up around my family, my mom comes from six kids and needless to say I have lots of cousins.  My parents still live in the same house that they moved into in 1975, which seems to be rare these days.  I finished high school and went on to a community college, where I met a wonderful man, who would turn out to be even a more wonderful husband.  We moved around a bit, but still within an hour of my parents, until April of 2007.  His employer offered us an opportunity to get out of California and head for the Midwest.  There was no hesitation and we were off to Indiana. 


We have two children, a boy and a girl, and we knew this was a door opening for them to have a much better education and a safe place to grow up. I was also hoping that they would develop a social life.  Where we lived was like living in a compound, I never felt safe to let the kids anywhere but the yard or out front with supervision.  Most of their classmates’ parents worked and as a result of that were “latch key kids”.  It made it difficult to have friends over to play.  It was very sad.


One of the first things I noticed about the neighborhood where we were going to live is that hardly anyone had a fence.  You could walk through everyone’s yard, how bizarre.  Within a couple of hours of arriving in Indiana to our rental home, we met a neighbor with two children in the same grade as ours and two younger children.  You could tell she was meant to be a mom.  God makes these wonderful nurturing women who just ooze kindness, patience, and love.  I don’t feel I’m one of them.  Don’t get me wrong, I love being a mom and would not trade it for anything, but I am not one of those moms. 


 Something that I noticed right away is that there are many different "critters" in these parts.  We have a resident chipmunk that loves to climb the pole and get into the birdseed, regardless of the obstacles we put in its way.  We have rabbits that leave their prints in the snow, so adorable.  In fact one baby rabbit fell into the basement well window and my daughter had to pick it up and let him back into the yard.  I’ve seen all kinds of birds from big, plump robins, cardinals, and hawks.  We also have these disgusting bugs called Cicadas; they give me the heebee geebees.  During the summer it sounds like a horror movie with those bugs.  Oh, we are lucky to have fireflies out here too. 


I’ve really enjoyed the change of scenery here and I especially like that we have four seasons.  The biggest change didn’t come from the meeting the people here, or the critters, or the seasons; something changed my heart forever…

Why?

I think deep down inside me there is a writer aching to get out.  I have started many books and yet none are complete.  I hope that keeping a blog will inspire me to finish a book or two.  I lack the confidence that I could actually write something worth reading.  I have to overcome my fears and "just go for it".  Yah, that's so not who I am.  So the question may be: "Who am I?"  I hope this blog will give me insight to who I am and who I was meant to be.

Why did I call my blog "Come Home Running"?  That's an easy one to answer.  It's a song I heard at church.  It was one of the first times I went to church by my own choosing.  The preacher spoke of how God loves us and how He wants us to love Him.  God always has a home for us.  I have been looking for a home for all of my life.  I grew up in a house, a very nice house in fact, but there was something missing.  I got married and we moved into our own house, well houses, and not one felt like home.  We moved across the country and rented a very nice house, but again, it wasn't home.  This baffled me, I had a loving husband, two beautiful children, a car, all the "stuff" anyone could need and there was still something missing.  I discovered it was God.  Sounds silly I know, but it's true.  He can make a house feel like a home.  He gave me peace about so much in my life.  When that happened, I finally felt like I had a home.  And home is where my story begins...