Ok I know this second entry is WAY overdue. Apparently I am supposed to be offering delicious nuggets of sage wisdom each month for all of you wonderful people to feast upon, thereby altering lives & destinies & making the world a better place. If it weren't for my dear husband I probably wouldn't even have a music website, so thanks to all of you for your patience with this crazy musician! I said something to my husband (Garrett) just now & he literally pointed to the computer & ordered me to sit down & enter it as a blog. I always have a lot to say, I just forget to write it down. I'm going to be very vulnerable with all of you. I think a lot about the past thirty years of my life here in Nashville, most of which has been very disappointing & painful. I try to fit the worst of what I've endured into Bible outlines & sermon notes, but most of the time there are really only just a few verses I hang onto for dear life. The warfare has finally let up after thirty years & I can breathe. I still can't believe it. Two - not one but two - heartbreaking marriages & divorces, the difficulty & strain of being a single mother of three little children for four years in between them, expensive court cases, visitation, miserable summers my children spent with their biological father, my only brother a cocaine addict (he's sober now!), seeing both parents to their dying breaths, single-handedly dismantling & selling the Atlanta home I grew up in, losing my two best childhood friends to cancer, the list goes on. I'm always the strong one, the reliable one, the consistent one. I really don't mind because I've gotten so used to it, but sometimes I just get tired, don't you? Many times I used to lie in bed in the dark staring at the ceiling with tears streaming into my ears saying, "But Lord, I thought You liked me." These long, challenging years have been very confusing for me. And I think the main reason is because I really tried to do everything right. I thought through my decisions, prayed, sought good counsel, was careful, but the marriages were still a disaster, some investments I made with my inheritance turned out to be a disaster, & honestly, if it weren't for the promises of Yahweh & my faith in Him, I would feel like my life was a total failure, just one stupid decision after another. But you know what I'm discovering? Even if I do everything right, other people sometimes don't. I can make 100 right decisions, but one angry, insecure, or dishonest person can sabotage them all in less than a minute. Does that mean I'M a failure? No. It also doesn't mean Yahweh throws up His hands & says, "Well, that's the end of that! I had big plans for you, but so-n-so just ruined them, so we'll just have to institute Plan B!" (Remember those sermons about Perfect Will, Permissive Will & all that?). I'm redefining what "God's will" is. I'm redefining what a "good day" is. I've redefined "happy." You know what? It was a "good day" for Yahshua/Jesus when He died on a cross, because that's where He was supposed to be. It's still a good day, even when everything we plan "goes wrong," if we truly did our best, we allowed God to lead us, our reactions were godly, & we stood up for what was right. Sometimes that means being patient in an abusive situation, sometimes it means being strong enough to get the heck out of it. I'm just now beginning to understand that Yahweh is so much bigger than what we've been taught in western Christianity & even Judaism. We are part of a HUGE, HUGE plan! A plan that involves the weaving of thousands of years & thousands of lives together. We have to keep moving! We can't lose hope! Everything we do is important. It matters. And God sees. I'm preaching to myself. I hope this has helped some of you too.