Step-By-Step

Tea Party at Grandmas

     I believe everything you want must begin in a vision first.  For instance, when I was a 5 or 6 year old little girl living in a big city where row after row of houses were constructed & the school yard had a playground made of concrete, I would pretend to live on a farm in the mountains.  I had a make believe husband & my dolls were my children.  We nestled together in our farmhouse (a make-shift tent from a blanket my mom gave me) & picked apples from our pretend apple tree.  As I got a little older, about 10 years old, my pretend family disappeared & my farmhouse back in the linen closet, but my vision lingered on & I expressed it on paper with a tray of water colors & a paint brush my dad bought me at the art store.  Against a pale blue sky I painted rolling hills dotted with tiny trees in different shapes & sizes and the largest tree adjacent to a house with a pitch roof, two windows and one door.  From the door of the house was a path that stretched out to nowhere.  By the time I was 15 my illustrations were replaced with stories that I'd write from the pictures in my mind.   As an adult I left the city in search of my dream & moved to a little town of Yucaipa - a place the Native Americans had named for it's beauty of the valley.  Yucaipa was a quiet, sleepy community that rolled the streets up at dusk & stores were closed on Sundays.  For sure, I thought, this is where I would meet my Farmer-Prince Charming & my dream would come true.

     Life has its twists & turns, for sure.  Who knows why we start off on one path & then spin off on another.  Perhaps its because what we want is too hard to obtain.  Or, maybe, just maybe, its because there's a spiritual plan already in place & what we want is not in that plan at that time.  For me, I believe the latter.   At 21 years old a tragic car accident in the middle of the night left me laying in a gully some 20 yards from the road, unconscious, alone & bleeding to death from multiple injuries including a fractured skull.  The accident changed my life forever.  I recovered, of course, but I was never quite the same, yet I never stopped dreaming of a farm life.  By the time I was 24 I found my Prince Charming & when I told him my dreams of a farm life he promised me he'd do everything he could to get it for me, but try as he might, we never quite fulfilled my dream.  For the next 16 years, and 5 beautiful children later, I made it my mission to try to create a country atmosphere where ever we lived.  My husband supported me in all I wanted as I raised chickens, planted a garden, canned peaches, apricots, tomatoes & jams, ground my own wheat & made my own bread, crocheted,  sewed & made the kids Halloween costumes.  

     It would be nice if the story ended here & I could say we all lived  happily ever after, but like I said, life has its twist & turns. Twenty years after the first accident (I was now 41) I was hit by a truck & my life began to spin out of control as a result from another brain injury.  Two years later, my husband & I divorced & my family unit shattered.  For the next 12 years I worked to make sense out of my life & to retrain my brain to do those things I knew I once knew, but couldn't remember how I knew them.  As I walked on my path, day by day leaning on three people that I trusted (my then Bishop Craig White, my wonderful Aunt Shirley & my psychologist, Dr. Connie Taylor) I began to trust in the Lord, teach myself my once forgotten homemaking skills & trusted my intuition learning to accept and appreciate my own self, because if I didn't have a mission on this earth my life may not have been spared those two instances where I defied the angel of death.
     My main goal, step-by-step, was to become what I used to be, only better, by teaching myself, re-teaching myself, listening, learning, praying, studying & never giving up.  Twelve years after the 2nd accident, a wonderful man walked into my life, professed his true love for me & ask me to marry him.  I said "I do" and just last month we celebrated our one year wedding anniversary.  

     Today, Barry & I are searching for that land to buy & that farmhouse to build while I work effortlessly in makeing my home a place where my heart lays & my wonderful children come to visit & grandchildren play.  My children are my life & to me, Barry is the icing on the cake!

     I believe everything you want must begin in a vision first.  And then, step by step, you can obtain your dream - even if it takes nearly a lifetime.  I started my young life with a tent, make believe husband & dolls.  Now I am blessed with a wonderful husband & ten grandchildren, a 2 bedroom apartment & garden that constantly needs weeding.  Who could ask for more?  We will get our land.  We will get our farmhouse & chickens.  The children & grandchildren will come to visit.  Step by step.