He asked. I said yes.

See that ring pop? That was my first engagement ring. No, really.

I was maybe 12 or 13 and this crazy, handsome, blue eyed boy slipped it on my finger and asked me to marry him. Of course I said yes because he was one of my very best friends. Our teacher married us after recess.

I'd like to say we lived happily ever after.....but that's not quite how life works.

That cute blue eyed boy may have been one of my best friends, but he loved all the girls:) .....and all the girls loved him too. He spent a few years chasing my affection before I finally agreed to go on a date with him. We dated for almost 4 years before we got engaged and waited another year to get married. I was 20. I was a hopeless romantic (still am) and believed in prince charming and fairy tales......

Well, I didn't ever think that Prince Charming would need time to grow up and become a man. You see, we married when we were babies. However, girls mature faster than boys and I already knew everything (or so I thought) so I had to wait on him to grow up a little.

I prayed all the time that my prince charming would grow into a Godly man. That he would look for God first, me second, and our eventual family third. Don't get me wrong. We were both saved at a young age....but at that point in our lives we both still had a lot of spiritual and emotional growth to conquer.

Fast forward a few years and we found ourselves as parents. Our first baby was the definition of perfect. Steven was beautiful, sweet, smart....just absolutely PERFECT. He slept through the night within a couple of weeks. He walked and talked early and he could light up an entire room with his smile and contagious laugh!

A couple of years later we had our second child. Another sweet, beautiful baby boy. However, this time God taught us more about patience. Chancelor cried all the time! He walked early, but I worried about his speech. At age 3, he still had only a few words in his vocabulary. However, his receptive language was pretty impressive...and the words he did choose to use, well they weren't common everyday words for 3 year olds....but it still concerned me. By the time he started kindergarten though he had quite the speaking vocabulary. So I chalked it up to being the baby and his introverted personality. He still amazes me with some of the things he says.

Our family was complete.

....or so I thought......

From the outside looking in we always appeared to have the perfect life....and to be honest because we built upon our friendship from the very beginning, we really were quite a pair. Our friends always commented on how perfect our relationship was.......

I think we arrogantly believed it was perfect too.... We never argued and rarely disagreed. Who wouldn't think that was pretty perfect?

Fast forward a few more years..... life seemed pretty good. We both worked hard and lived a nice life with our perfect children. The boys and I spent summers at the beach and Stevie would visit while maintaining his busy work life....

I felt empty. Incomplete.

I felt like something was missing. My life was perfect from the outside..... I enjoyed my life but yet something seemed to be lacking....

Its strange, but looking back now I realize sometimes when the boys and I got in the car I would make sure they were both with me, but I had this nagging feeling I was always leaving something behind....like I was scared I was gonna leave a kid or something.....Something was missing....

During that same time I began spending more time outside of the home with my friends. Stevie's hectic work schedule and golf hobby had him gone most of the time so in my head I felt it was my time. I felt like there was something I was missing in life, but I still couldn't find it.

This started to stir some trouble in our marriage. I started to feel resentment for everything I thought Stevie had done wrong in the early part of our marriage and I wasn't slow to tell him about it either.



Well, you can call this weird or think what you might, but my whole family can attest to what I'm about to tell you.

One night we were at the beach with my parents and my sister and her husband. My sister was pregnant.

I had a very vivid dream that I was also pregnant.....or rather that I had a new child....I never saw the child in my dream, but it was a girl.....and it was like I was always chasing this child trying to see her face....She had little blonde curls and I could hear her laugh but I could never see her face. Something was different about this child.... It wasn't that something was wrong....just different....

I announced my dream to everyone the next morning and we all laughed. No way I was having any more children!!!!

Be careful what you say you're not gonna do!!! You hear people say that all the time....well I'm a firm believer. Within a month, I found out I was pregnant....

....and I'll just tell you - Stevie and I were not excited.... I've said many times, you would have thought we were unwed teen parents....that's how scared or nervous we were.....simply because it was not something either of us had planned.....

Granted, my feelings of emptiness and trying to figure out what was missing in my life got pushed way aside because this unexpected pregnancy came filled with surprises galore.

One of the first things we were told is that there was something wrong with the pregnancy....this was followed by nearly 37 weeks of intense medical visits, many tears and lots of uncertainty.

Zeta came into the world with even more surprises. She weighed a pound more than what they were expecting. There were concerns around 28 weeks that she had stopped growing.....She came into the world breathing on her own....which I didn't realize at the time, but delighted the doctor more than I would have thought....

However, within a few hours our world came crashing down and the surprises never stopped.

Diagnosis upon diagnosis. Hospitalization after hospitalization. So many questions. So few answers.

One thing I did find during all of the turmoil was what I needed to feel the emptiness that had been plaguing me so....

I figured out how to talk to God.....

Not in my rhetorical, let's say our prayers, kind of way.....but in a real way...I talked to God constantly...If I was breathing and sitting by a hospital bed you can bet I was talking to God a majority of that time. I thanked God. I praised him, I questioned him......

I figured out how to let God take control......

I mean in a way that I don't think can be fully understood until you have nothing left to stand on....like the earth around you is fading away fast and there's just no stopping....like you're drowning and gasping for air and God has the only breath to give....giving God control made my life complete and whole and dare I say peaceful during the most intense and toughest years of my life. God held me.....but more important than that....I chose to let him....

I guess until that point, I believed in God. I went to church. I went through the motions.....but I never felt the connection I guess.

At that point in my life though I found the connection. I found a true relationship with Him....and though the world and everybody looking in could easily say I should give up, there was no reason for my hope and no reason to believe...I still chose to believe....I had no choice....Actually, yes I did....We're all given the choice to follow or deny Him....I chose because I saw no other alternative.... I needed help and there wasn't a single person on Earth that could help me....and I certainly couldn't help myself .....and I, nor anyone else could help Zeta.

I spent a long time telling people about this peace I'd found.... about how I was able to make it through the toughest moments in my life because God was there. He saw me through.

I've known that peace. Experienced it firsthand....

Thing is....I've had a hard time finding that peace again.....

.....but I have been blessed beyond measure with people who continue to fight for me.....people who fight for my soul and for what they know I want....

I began this post a few weeks go.....through all we've been through, I've been blessed with an awesome man in my life...he came home the other day and told me he had a surprise for me....

He held out his hand and he handed me a ring pop ----- just like the one gave me 25 years ago..... He reminded me that he was the one that would love me unconditionally......he reminded me that good men still exist in this world. He reminded me that he believes in me even when I don't.....

He reminded me that true love does exist.