It's All About MeMeMe Today

I want to thank you all for your wonderful, touching comments to me and to Kevin about this latest, most intense chapter in our journey to deliverance. Someone mentioned not knowing how I survived this time. I believe it was a combination of several things:

1. Ignorance - in the very beginning, we didn't know.
2. Denial - we couldn't believe it was really happening, and still didn't really know. There's a lot of hiding and lying and manipulation going on in this kind of situation.
3. HOPE - I remember the day that hope entered the picture. I don't remember when or why - maybe it was during a sermon or a Sunday School lesson, or a devotional time, but I remember that it arrived. HOPE is a wonderful thing. It was the only thing for quite awhile. Job talks a lot about HOPE - what better role model would we have for hanging onto HOPE??

HOPE is defined in the Random House College Dictionary as "the feeling that what is desired is also possible, or that events may turn out for the best." We were at the point of HOPE AGAINST HOPE, which is defined as "to continue to hope, although the situation does not warrant it." There's not much faith in that last definition, but that was the other piece of the puzzle:

4. Faith. What would we do without faith? Faith that God hears. Faith that God cares. Faith that we haven't been forgotten. Faith that He understands what we need and how we feel. Faith that He can work the miracle we needed to see.

So many people have been playing tag this week that it reminds me of elementary school recess! I have been tagged by c.h. green at Beneath the Ivy Wreath for 8 random facts about myself, and by Kim at Can You Hear Me Now? for 7. Since I could not possibly come up with 15 interesting things about myself, I am opting for 8, which will cover both. Now if I can only think of 8! I feel like I've shared so much already in the past 11 months that I will be repeating myself. So be it. Here goes:

1. I type in my head when I am thinking, or reading, or someone is talking to me. It's annoying, it slows my reading speed, but it sure keeps my typing speed up! I also add and subtract in my head - such as adding the numbers on license plates ahead of me at a stop light or sign - after I have typed them! When I was in college, the typing was getting in the way of my studying, because it was slowing down my reading. I went to a speed reading specialist on campus, who was also a psychologist. When I told him about my problem with typing while I read, he asked me to become his secretary. The irony of that situation blew me away!

2. When I was in second grade in Arkansas, the first cool morning of fall, I came into the kitchen to tell my mom something and automatically sat on the space heater we had been using as a chair all summer. OUCH!!

3. I'll never forget that it was that same week of the burned legs that Mom and Dad told me they had bought me a piano so that I could begin lessons. I was so excited that it helped ease the pain of the burns.

4. I began playing the piano for church at age 8, with my legs swinging from the bench. My dad gave the piano teacher the songs for Sunday and they were part of my lesson. She got me a little offertory book for little fingers.

5. I have double jointed toes, which partially explains my very large shoe size. It also explains the problems I have finding comfortable shoes. It also explains why I didn't wear sandals until I got to the point in my life that I didn't care who saw my ugly toes.

6. I'm the oldest of five and have the least gray hair. That really irritates my younger siblings.

7. I met Richard Nixon when I was in high school, and still plan to write about that experience one of these days.

8. I read while I walk and while I exercise at the gym. I have scars from several falls, and mended bones, but none of those falls has happened while I was walking. Go figure!

Now that I'm finished, I will probably think of many more interesting and/or weird things than the ones I listed.

As I said above, there's been so much tag being played recently that I doubt there's anyone left to be "it", so I'll just call it good.

Part 9 coming soon, I hope, since Kev will be gone for 2 weeks - one week on a work trip for the university in West Virginia, and one for an actual well-deserved, much-needed vacation with his wife - the first in a very long time.