Comparisons

 Ive lost 83.5 lbs  I would like to lose a minimum of 6 more lbs.

 My doctor wants me to lose 20lbs more!

 I am in better shape but I do have lose skin on my thighs and belly.

I hate that. If I had the funds Id most definitely have plastic surgery.

 Below is me with my favorite jeans on! Seriously 1.5 years ago they were my favorites and I wore them (tightly) all the time and now this is what they look like on me!

Heres to losing weight and gaining self confidence! 

After I meet my goals for weight loss, I will work on the inside.

What is life teaching me (you)

Life is not always sunshine and daisies. Life is hard. Life hurts. Life is confusing. Life is painful. Once in awhile the sun shines through the rain and a daisy or two might pop up. 

My childhood was not the average way of growing up. There were times when it just was what it was and I moved along with it. There were times I looked at the lives of friends at school and wondered why I couldn't have that. 

I grew up being raised with a single dad. My sister and I were 3 and 1 when the journey with our 22 year old daddy began. I look at my son who is 24 and cannot imagine him raising two little girls alone. Even though my son has fought twice in Afghanistan, watched friends die, friends lose limbs and upon returning watch many many of those he fought along side of end their own lives because they cant take life anymore. He has lived a lifetime that most of us cannot imagine all in six years of being a Marine. 

When I was a little girl I remember sitting at my grandmas house in the "middle room"  of her house watching a news show about orphanages in Romania. It grabbed my heart, as a child, it struck a chord deep inside me. I still remember the sound of one little girl in that show singing in a room full of metal baby cribs. It was a room full of babies in cribs where none of them cried. How can that be? Because those babies learned quickly that crying didn't change anything. Whether you cried or didn't cry no one came to comfort you so they learned to be silent. How hard breaking. 

In 2006 I traveled with a church group to Romania to work with visually impaired orphans. During that trip I learned that THIS was one of the reasons I grew up the way I did. I spoke with an interpreter to a group of orphans and told them I knew how they felt. As a young  American girl I was also abandoned by my mother. It was a different situation as I didn't grown up in an orphanage but I felt some of the emotions that they felt and I let them know they were not alone, that I understand the feelings but that I loved them and God loves them and they have a purpose in life. 

Now I sit on my red couch on a rainy day as my daughter lies in bed very very sick typing on my computer wondering..... the pain I'm feeling right now,  what will I learn through this.  I'm feeling alot right now that I cannot talk about. Most of my kids are grown  with my youngest having only 1.5 years left in school (and at home) and Ive lived for the past 25 years for my kids.... now what? 

Ive been working on me lately....  Ive lost 83.5 lbs and I'm gaining self confidence. At the same time I'm having to deal with a lot of other things..... I'm afraid that life is taking me to a place I never imagined.  As my children grow up they are learning that their parents are people too. We are different than they thought we were. I worry about what they feel and yet for the first time in my life I feel I need to work on me... inside and out.   I need to figure out what these obstacles are going to teach me.

 

Heirlooms

 This precious baby above is my little southern bell. The bonnet she wore on her dedication day (above) is the hankie I carried on my wedding day 27 years ago. Last weekend, she carried that same hankie on her wedding day.

 She also wore the veil I wore on my wedding day. What special memories were made this weekend. I love this beautiful girl and its hard watching her grow up.

One day I hope I have a granddaughter that carries this hankie on her wedding day.