A Year, a Tear, and a Tractor Pull

The Three of these have nothing in common, except maybe if you cry after winning your class at the Tractor pull. That's just my redneck brand of logic! I was able to go to a tractor pull this weekend in Colinwood, Tennessee with my in-laws. I finally got my days off to line up to where I could go to one this year. While I was there I couldn't help but notice people who brought their youngsters out to it. There were some that were as old as Eli would've been if he was here. If he was here alive with us we wouldn't have brought him out, but still it brings a tear to my eye seeing what could've been. It's been over a year since we lost our little Eli Weston. I can look at our family picture with Eli in the hospital and I still go back to that scene, just like it was yesterday. I guess it'll always be that way, I hope it will so that I can have a memory of seeing him here with us for the short time that we could hold his little body. I hope that image stays in my mind to go with me. We have pictures of him from the hospital and from the funeral home in his little casket. I can't believe that it's been a year now. I don't know where the time has gone to, it was just 4 months ago that our big deal was buying our house. I remember how rapped up in it that I became. Day in and day out asking Jenna if she had heard ANYTHING from our lender about it. However, that was only four months, that doesn't account for the other 8 months of the year. All that I can figure is that between work, worry, stress and other mundane things and just getting through everyday with Jenna and Zoey is what took up the rest of the time. This has made me appreciate day-to-day life alot more! I was thankful for our first of two blessings before, even more sooooo now! As I have said before, my perspective went from can't wait to get to tomorrow to just living for today. Even though it might be a contradiction in terms, the new age phrase "new normal" seems to sum up life very well! Well a year has come and gone. To borrow a line from a great move "...And That's all I have to say about that."

Time Well Spent

As adults, we want to spend what free time that we have that ain't took up with work or sleep as good as we can. This ain't about how i spend my free time. We see all around how our time is spent, you look at how old that you yourself are. You can go back a pretty good ways in your memory and remember how you spent your years of life. I'm about to be 27 years old this may, it don't seem to me like i should be 27. I can look back and see what i've come through in my almost 27 years. When i was in school it didn't ever seem to me like i would ever graduate from high school, but every day going to class and taking tests eventually led to me recieving my diploma in may of 2004. For all of my memorable life, i never would've pictured me getting married. I didn't think that i would find anybody on this earth that i could love. Then, that special woman came along and here i go taking the plunge into the holy covenant of marriage. I wouldn't have ever have thought that i would have kids. Now i couldn't imagine my life without my wonderful, beautiful wife and my little Zoey! With all that said, i can remember what my life has been like for the past 27 years. The time and space that seems now to be just a hole in my memory is the 9 months or so from December of 2010 to August 19, 2011. I guess that the grief just burnt that hole in my memory or maybe my psychological has tried to block it out so much that it created a vacuum or started the fire that burned the hole. Somehow, if i try to go back in my memory to that specific time period, there is only a blank spot. anyways that was just some thoughts that have been running through my head. I just wanted to get it out so it doesn't drive me crazier than i already am! 

Write your hurts in the sand...

Write your hurts in the sand, carve your blessings in stone. This is the sign that the church down the road from where i work has on their sign now. It's a great saying and one of the most original church signs! Even daily hurts get washed away with just simply going to bed, washing away the sand as water does on  a beach. This life has it's hurts, pains, dissapointments and so forth. We as adults find out that as you grow up and enter adulthood, with all the wonderful things that come with it that, we find out that life gets harder. As you are growing up and going through school, the difficulty level gets turned up slowly. When you enter the work force or go off to college, it seems like the dial gets turned up by leaps and bounds sometimes. That's not even including the stress and worries of life. it's when life turns up the heat to high and the stress level hits the maximum level, it's then that you realize that you need to lean on God and the promises that he gives us in his Word. Especially the verse that says that He won't put more on you than you can bear. Sometimes it feels like that line is fixed to where you think the limit is, then you go through things in life and it seems like God has alot more confidence in my strength than I have in myself. It's hard sometimes to hold onto that one promise of many. The Lord gets me through each day. I can't live a day without him getting me through them.

Looking back

As i sit here, i can't help but look back at the year that our calendar says is 2011. It feels like this year has been a whole lot longer than just 12 calendar months. if i were to put on a calendar how long it felt like to me, this year would be about 18 months long. At the start of this year, i started out as i had ended 2010 still being on 2nd shift at my job, hoping to maybe someday get to transfer to first shift! I was overjoyed that we were expecting another little bundle of joy. Come around april or so, we found out that our little bundle was gonna be a boy! Thankfully, I finally got to transfer to 1st shift in July. Then, a month later, my whole world changed. I got the horrible news that my little boy had went to heaven to become an angel. Then, fast forward about four months later and it still don't seem real or right! I hold on to the bible verse that says that God won't put more on us than we can bear! I'm not gonna say that i understand why Eli was taken from us, but i can't wait until i get to see and hold Eli in heaven!

What a journey..... so far

It's been a good while since i wrote on here. Between working 10 hour days for 7 days straight for 21 days or so at a time between off days, when we r lucky enough to get an off day! anyways, not to complain i'm very thankful for my job and that I'm very blessed to have a job and to be making a living for me and my family. It has been close to 3 months since our little eli went to heaven. It has been an interesting journey since then. It seems like it has been a year crammed into these last 3 months time. I have experienced my personality change for about a few weeks or a month or so after it. Then my personality changed back to what it usually is, not the exact same one as before Aug. 19th. That may sound like an insane notion, but it happened. I've read that grief ebbs and flows in books that we got from the funeral home, but i have figured out in this journey that my griefs comes in like the tides. All can be quiet and calm on the beach and then all of a sudden here comes the wave and then it goes back out to the ocean again. There was one day that i thought about something and got me to thinking about eli and just 2 hours after that i couldn't even remember what the thought process was that got me all stirred up. God bless!

A Guide to Life

The title of this post sounds sort of odd and there might already be a book somewhere with this title. This was just an idea that was rattling around in my head today at work. What if there was a manual for all things in life that you might or might not go through and how to deal with it? Would you follow the advice word-for-word or just kinda pick it up every now and then for a few hints? This is a ludacris idea and some insane questions to follow. There is not a real book or manual like this, not one that I know of! However there is one book or a collection of books that is a real good guide to life and how to live it. It's a great reference book, history book and contains the greatest love story of all time in it!! Wanna know what it is?  The Bible! It is God's Inspired word, written by mortal men's hands! It's infailable, noncontradictory and is such a wonderful breath of life! It may have been written over 2,000+ years ago, but it is still very, very relative to our date and time, no matter how much our culture changes over the years! Anyways, that was just something that i've been thinking on all today. I hope it might get you to thinking about things, or maybe, just maybe it might inspire you to pick up your copy of the holy scriptures that's been sitting on a bookshelf just collecting dust and crack it open and take in some of God's word and keep it in your heart and carry it with you wherever you might go!  Well, gotta go! God Bless!

This week

We all have those kind of days that are bad no matter what. Whether it's a bad day at work when you don't have what you need at hand and have to go and get it. I know that feeling first hand, those days and weeks sometimes get real old when you try your hardest to work and keep things running the way they should, all the while you feel like you are getting miles behind on other lines or things! Don't get me wrong, i'm content with my job and where i work and i'm still so very thankful that i got to move from 2nd to first shift at work! This week has been kind of a wash out, one to be crumpled up and threw away! Our lives feel like they have been turned upside down, as some who know us could tell u! This week has been so long and drawn out, it feels like you could have fit two regular weeks in the same space as the last 5 days! Sometimes throughout this week i wondered how in the world i would get through the rest of life from here on! All that has happened has really served to put everything in perspective! I pray that God uses this situation that is tragic and turns it into something sooo gooood! Right now, the thought of having anymore kids is the furthest thing from my mind and don't know how that decision can be made from here on. Since we lost our little boy at full term, if we decide to have anymore children, then that thought would be at the forefront of both of our minds! well anyways, i've done deviated from what i started out to write about. I hope things can get better!