As I'm typing this, my 11 year old shih tzu, Selah is breathing rapidly. She is sound asleep so more than likely, she is just having a dream. I wake her up and pet her and her breathing slows down. I stop and her breathing starts to rapidly increase. I realize that she is mimicking me. The last few months, I have been forgetting to breathe...to come up for air. I admit that life has been a challenge for me but I'm still here, somewhere, hiding beneath the busyness and stress. I love being who God has called me to be...a wife, a mommy, a stepmom, a pastor's wife but there are challenges that have left me wondering how I'm going to survive the storms. Being a wife has come easily. J is such an easy man to love. He looks at me, knowing that what he sees in me is a treasure. He protects me, loves me, soothes me and gives me strength. Being a mom has been pure excitement. My girls always know that seeing them and having them close by makes me smile non-stop. ...

It all started while watching Vin and Greg here  on Superchill.tv . The episode was of them discussing how some people resemble the snack that they like to eat. (Sorta like how people look like their pets.) Greg loves Junior Mints (even sings his own jingle about his love for Junior Mints). Vin holds up a Junior Mint and tell him that he looks just like a Junior Mint. Then, Greg asks Vin what snack he likes and he replies, "a corn nut". Greg tells him that he always thought he looked like a corn nut. So, I  thought long and hard about the snack that I look like. Finally, I have to say that because of my love for caramel, I look like a caramel apple. In fact, if I had to choose a go to snack, it would be caramel - hold the apple. I asked J what snack he looked like and his expression said it all. His thoughts were screaming, "She's lost her mind!" I decided (since he didn't want to play along) that J looked just like a Pringles potato chip, sea salt and p...

I try not to be a "doom and gloom" kind of person. I do admit that the world we live in is so different from the way it used to be. I used to close my eyes to it, thinking that it would get better but times "they are getting hard". Last Friday, I talked a man off of the ledge. He was suicidal and somehow, called my number at work, by mistake. I spent over 30 minutes convincing him that there was hope. I told him that if he chose to end his life, then it would be on my shoulders for not helping him to see that there was hope. I spoke to him today and he is getting help. (I will continue to check on him.) We need to stand up to all that is going on in our homes, in our families, our friends and in our neighborhoods. We need to say, "This isn't going to happen in my house." It's so easy to dismiss things as "Not a big deal" but it is...a big deal, that is.  My bonus baby is almost 15 (in a couple of more weeks). I have forgotten ...

When my twin sis and I were kids, we would play, "Girl". Girl wasn't necessarily a game but just like you'd play "house" or "teacher", we played "Girl". We'd pretend to go camping with our teddy bears or walking around in our mom's high heels, going to a party. We'd call each other on our pretend phones and talk like we were miles away, when actually, we were just a few feet apart. We never had a moment to get bored of "Girl". I'd say, "Girl, what are you doing?" She would reply, "Going to Disneyland, me and honey and kids." Then, I'd pretend that "my honey and I and kids were going on a picnic." I laugh now when I think of how serious and innocent life was when my sister and I were growing up. The biggest worry for me was wetting the bed at night. Even then, my twin, never made me feel like a pee pot. She never ridiculed me but encouraged me to wake up dry the next morning...