What I learned in the Raspberry Patch

Sooo, I was out picking Raspberries and it was as the sun was setting and I was ever so grateful to be on my feet (after 14 or so weeks in bed). I was thinking as the bugs were flying around my head and my arms were being prickled with the raspberry prickles how grateful I am to have learned from my Grandpa how to care for Raspberries. Seriously. Think how much we learn that we never realize we didn't learn? My Grandpa Tall taught me soo much but he taught me about how to water them, when to prune them, what time of year to pick them and that if you pick them you will get a better crop, He was in his late 80's and still walking every day and making sure that when I visited him I knew about his fruit trees, and his raspberries . I am so grateful for my Grandpa and all that he did and shared with me. I miss him. Now it is my turn to write and make sure that my heritage has and knows what I know because of my great heritage!!!

there is a lot to learn out in the raspberry patch

What if . . . you almost died?

OK, here is my thought process stay with me for just a minute. The other day someone in Utah died, an actor. There was a lot of press. A few weeks ago there was a 'Rock' star that had a 'close call' with a brain bleed and he is getting a lot and I mean A L O T of press. If I died, someone would read the obituary and say 'oh that's too bad' pass the potatoes, please don't take this wrong I do not say this to evoke a pitty party, for me - it is truth. People are busy and they would pause take a breath maybe even bring my kids some nice dinners but then they have to go back on to life. I want to share something here and I have chosen this forum because I feel like rather than writing a book I can put myself out to the world people can read, or not, but this is just me, the whole, real ME. I have almost died twice, I have had the whole 'near' death experience and everything does it change my life? Sadly not forever because we must live and live richly. By that I mean that we must not live in fear, I believe that fear will hold one back. I have been in intensive care with problems related to my MS and at night when you hear the nurses and the machines and life creaps into my head and I think about my children, my parents, my loved ones, I wonder what was the last thing that I said to them? Have I done enough? Have you done enough? Now I never want people to read this and feel guilt release that like a balloon going up into the air, in fact, pick your favorite color, really imagine that. Back to the what would you do if you were dying? Funny thing I am the one with MS, I am the one that has lived through these experiences and I still get frustrated with my kids. I guess the message that I want to share is that What if . . . you knew that you were dying? I do know I am dying...newsflash...you are too. We are born to die. So my motto still stands, LOVE YOUR KIDS, LOVE YOUR GOD, AND LOVE EACH OTHER! Life - live it.

Rachel - Go For IT - Release your FEARS

What If . . . you think your losing your mind?

Sooo, let me just say after my incredibly heavy entry last time I wanted to keep it a little lighter this time. I have been thinking about my life lately and I wonder if any of you think like I do? I am 43 and I sometimes think I am well slipping - one could say in many areas :). (the body is not the same as it was in my twenties, my energy is certainly not what it was, my home is thank goodness the same as it was when I was 20, but this issue is well What if? Are any of you losing your mind? For instance do you walk into a room and wonder why you are there? Do you set your keys down and wonder if you ever had keys? Even if you have one drawer that they always go to? And when it comes to paying bills wellllll I could right a book about this issue - I used to be so neurotic they were mailed out 3 to 5 days ahead of when they were due ALWAYS! Now that I think I am losing my mind (let me know if you find it somewhere?) I am not sure that I even have bills? I am 90 percent certain that I have set up 80 percent of my bills on auto pay and yet they continue to say that they are due? Really I am losing my mind or I have lost my mind! I have a somewhat organized filing system and so I can pull the file to see if I did pay the said bill and yet I cannot fully read the bill to understand what the Hell it means, really does the cell phone company need 15 pages of crap to tell me what I owe them? I think they do it just so that we will give in and pay them, it is clearly working. Here I sit late on a Sunday night trying to plan out my week and yet, there is . . . nothing . . . that comes to mind and if I wait for just a few moments . . . a lot comes flooding to my mind that I have to do. I may be going on the 13th week of being in my home re-learning to walk and not driving my own car, watching my 16 year old daughter drive off in it. (can one tell that I have issues?) But I try to plan my day and keep busy - that is how I do not lose my mind, yet because I am losing my mind it can take a wee bit of time to plan my day . . . how about you?

What IF . . . you almost died?

WHAT IF . . . Would you know?

Would you know? I watch a lot of t.v. having MS and not being in the best health and I see a lot of television shows that women find out that their husbands have had an affair and they are in shock and awe and the audience cannot believe that they had absolutely NO idea that this thing could be happening. DO YOU THINK YOU WOULD KNOW? No let's pretend for just a moment that you really loved your husband, and with that love comes complete trust, and with that trust comes a no questions ask policy. If he says that he needs to work late - you believe him - right? If he says that he needs to travel for work - you believe him - right? If he says that he - well you get the drift - right? Now I share this deeply personal story not to make you feel sorry for me, nor do I share it so that hopefully you will think me a fool for not knowing. I do not want to be considered a Maury Pauvich show. I am simply sharing my truth as I have lived it I hope that it might help someone out there in this vast universe of the internet that I do not totally understand. My husband had more than one affair and I am still breathing and I want anyone who reads this to know that you can survive. I do not know what anyone else considers to be an affair if I could go back in time and change things I actually might in that there were signs that I did not recognize because I trusted and loved my husband. The first experience was when he went to visit his old high school girlfriend for lunch and invited me to come along. I refused. Perhaps I should have gone? I told him I thought it was wrong to go that the past is the past. When he returned a few days later he told me that he had paid for her lunch, with some prying he also told me that they had kissed and talked about what if? I freaked out, I do not yell and scream perhaps I should have? I did ask that he and I go and speak with our local clergy because it was the first time that he had lied to me in our marriage and he had kissed another woman. The clergy laughed and said "Is that all?" Looking back I should have listened to myself and gone to counseling I did not. I realize now that once that door has been opened to WHAT IF I could never ever have lived up to what I consider to be the dream. Imagine when the times are tough he had that to think about, me I just though we were having a rough patch the ups and downs of life, he had someone else to fill his thoughts with. It was a short 2 years later that they had a full blown affair in which they created a baby at the time I was pregnant and in bed with our child. I had been in bed for 3 months carrying our third child a girl how excited I was I could not understand why he was never wanting to touch my tummy and feel the baby move? He missed my Dr.s appointments which he had never done with our two boys. He had to work late but that was not something new but the difference was that I could not always reach him by phone, he had very good excuses like he had a headache and had run to get some food. I would call his brother and express my concerns and people would laugh I would call my sister you see my husband was amazing a great man fantastic with my children and very stoic in the church. He never ever missed church he never ate out on Sunday as to not break the sabbath. He always helped out around the house almost too much. Now looking back I see why I missed any of the signs because I was very busy growing a baby, I was busy trying to entertain a 2 and 5 year old little boys from my bed. Really how many puzzles and coloring and videos and reading of books can keep little boys happy? Remember 3 count them THREE months in bed because my pelvic bone was seperating (so I can't even spell it it was so traumatic) and yes it was very, very, and very painful! I had a lot of help from my church family but it was crazy hard and I did not take any pain killers so I was very pre-occupied. When you ask how did I not know that is part of how! After a while though his dis-connect from me became apparent so apparent that 2 weeks from delivery I just flat out asked him what, what was wrong? Then I asked the unthinkable question . . . WAS HE HAVING AN AFFAIR. . . I remember we were at the kitchen table (why is it so much of life happens at the kitchen table?) he put his head down he would not look at me. My heart sank and I knew in an instant. Then I started to scream not at him but at my God really from a place deep inside myself almost a gutteral horrible scream, WHO, WHO, WHO? He looked me in the eye and said you know. WHAT WHAT ARE YOU SAYING? It took me what felt like an eternity to connect the dots but I know it was just a few seconds and I yelled still, NO, NO, NO, ------- I said her name. He nodded and confirmed her name. Then I asked when, where, how many times, how long. Let me give a word of advice to anyone who may ever have to live this horror. DON'T, JUST DON'T! This while it may seem like you may want to know, or that it might help you to feel better at the time in the long run it will NEVER help you. It is something that comes back to your mind like what I imagine HELL would be like it comes back when you least expect it to and you cannot get it out. There are times that I want to tip my head to the side and beat it out like when you have water in your ear but sadly it does not fall out. At first he said you do not want that but I insisted and so he gave me some of the details but that was first then he waited to tell me that she was PREGNANT! Long pause also to spare me the hassle and because he was sure that I would kick him out they had an apartment together and he had been secretly moving things out of the house ohh and another detail that I did not find out until my sister went to the bank he had taken half of our savings (to set up there home). I am so lucky that he had only taken half. Well where did I go from here? I was still sitting at the kitchen table because I could not walk, my options were to sit at the table, on the couch or in bed, hmmm. What I wanted to do was run screaming from the room or hit him or I don't know throw up in fact I think I did throw up. My parents were out of the country serving a mission for our church so I could not reach them in fact they were in OUTER MONGOLIA (did you know that there is an inner and an outer Mongolia?). My sister had just adopted a baby after waiting 6 years of infertility literally 3 weeks before this how could I ask her for help? I was alone. I wanted him out of my home, my life, my sight, he sickened me. The people that were renting the basement had my boys and they walked in right in the middle of this thankfully they got the drift and took them out for a bit longer. To say that I had entered HELL was an understatement. I did not know where to start. I told him to leave. I did not realize that meant right into her arms she had all ready left her husband and was living in their apartment they had shopped for food together, gone to movies together, established their love nest - ick. I weighed my options stay in my home or ask him to leave, I could not have him in my sight I asked him to leave he did not kiss me goodbye. I called my sister then it all hit I well she thought that someone had died - to me someone had - my marriage. I did not know where to start, thankfully she did. Her husband called my parents in Outer Mongolia and actually reached them at that time getting through was very sketchy and so I called that one of the many miracles of this entire situation. They (my parents) then called me and actually got through they asked me if they should come home I told them I could not make that decision I left that up to them. My sister asked if she should come, again I told her I could not make that decision to leave her little baby she had waited so long for. She came Thank God! My little boys came home and Daddy was gone I don't remember what I told them I do remember that they cried, I remember they cried a lot, every day. I cried a lot every day. I also remember that one of my husbands explanations for not telling me about the affair is that "they" did not want to send me into early labor or hurt the baby. How very kind of them. I really cannot remember all of the emotions of that time it was 16 years ago. I can tell you that time does help heal. I feel like when I tell this story that I am listing statistics rather than a story. I would have to go to my journal to really re-live it and I if you have noticed am not doing that. We went through quit a lot back and forth in the end we/I decided to stay married. That meant well I remember telling him that if he was coming home for the boys DON'T that if I was not enough for him stay with her. I would still be cranky and I would still be happy but I would still be ME! I found it very weird that I still loved him, I relate it to this that love cannot be turned on and off like a faucet. I wished at the time that it could. At the time that this happened we had only been married for 7 years. We did go to counseling in retrospect we should have gone to more than we did. I do not regret that I stayed married. I was married for 23 years total he had another affair on year 22 and I am now divorced (it took almost a year to get the divorce) the affair was with the same women. Can one predict the future? NEVER. Was it the right decision I believe so. When I ask WHAT IF . . . your husband had an affair . . .