When I was pregnant with my youngest daughter, my husband and I had already talked about having more kids a few years down the road.  I just knew we’d have more.  Not that I didn’t enjoy my pregnancy with my youngest but I never thought of it like my last pregnancy and I do, in hindsight, feel like I took it for granted.  (Me issue)  Shortly after she was born, my husband made it clear that he really didn’t want anymore kids.  Now….at first, for a while, I felt cheated.  I felt like he just changed his mind and I had no say so whatsoever.  However, he had several factors that supported his changed mindset on the subject….the most vocal reason he had was the crying and up all night….even though that phase really didn’t last that long.  He also, though, didn’t want to go into debt and have the kids we currently had feel the effects of it.  Whatever his reasons were, he was very stern in them.  It took me so long to get past it.  I kept telling myself that his goals should not override mine, I am a person too, I have dreams too….which is true….However, what I wasn’t considering were the reasons behind my WANTING to have more kids.  I really didn’t know, I just knew that it wasn’t fair that HE got to change the path that I THOUGHT we were on!  We fought a lot about the subject for a few years, really.  Then one day, in the midst of my telling him we may just not work out, he said, simply, “maybe you’re right”.  And like a bi-polar light bulb, I said, “uh…no I am NOT!  You are NOT getting rid of me THAT easy!!!”.  Crazy women, I swear.  What really happened, in that moment, was I realized that my reasoning for wanting something that he did not want, was actually just my mind wanting to have “my way”.  I didn’t want to concede to a MAN!  Even my OWN!?!?  After that light bulb moment went off, I quickly realized…I have an amazing husband, who is the love of my life, I have 2 beautiful children, and we are happy!  Let’s move on to the next phase!!  Let’s keep writing our book but start the next chapter!!!  Not everyone is like me and I understand that and respect that.  I’m just telling you an example of when I had to decide if I was being STUBBORN or STRONG in my values!

I say this to say, if you and your spouse/significant other or you and your best friend or you and your co worker, whatever relationship is popping up in your brain right now, are having a major disagreement or difference of opinion, you need to ask yourself if you are being stubborn but just wanting to be right and wanting “your way”, or if your stance, your opinion, honors your core values as a person.  If it is honoring to your core values, then think about how you can explain that to your counter part.  Perhaps just hearing it explained in a different, passionate way, will help them to understand.  Perhaps they will never understand because, in essence, your core values are going against theirs, and it will not work out.  Dig deep though… what are YOUR reasons?  What are his/hers?  Communicate, explain things, have patience, and, most importantly, be true to yourself!!!  You don’t have to be right! You just have to be honest with yourself and hold true to your values.  If the final outcome is losing the relationship, then that’s what has to happen or, trust me, it won’t get better… it won’t change!  That’s why they are called CORE values!  They go all the way to a person’s CORE!  If the final outcome is that you humbly learned something about yourself, then GREAT!  Whatever the outcome, just know, it won’t change later on down the road so don’t prolong the inevitable.

Bye for now,
RR

She’s so wonderfully amazing.

She doesn’t even see.

She has touched the lives of many.

And she deserves to be happy.

For so long she thought

She didn’t know where to belong.

The woman had no idea

She could be so strong.

Through love and patience,

Through bravery and tears,

God held her and carried her

And still he does, after 48 years!

With much wear and tear on her heart,

An understatement is to say her life got hard,

She stays vulnerable and forgiving

And she finally can let down her guard.

She understands, now,

As she keeps steady in her pace,

The battles were never hers to fight!

Her victories were by God’s grace!

She DOES deserve her blessings

She’s deserved them all along

She took up her cross and she followed Him.

She learned that only He can right her wrongs!

Although the road has been rough

nothing compares to the gift that God gave.

With prayer and faith, she knows

Her life was never hers to save!

It’s ok to be tired and scared.

It’s ok to allow yourself to feel stressed.

But mom, never doubt your worth, your love…

And know that, with you, I AM BLESSED!

Happy Birthday Mom!  I love you!

Bye for now,

RR

I’m going to try to do this from my phone because the laptop is dead…

Children from the Worn….

If you are a parent, this can relate to you. You are worn,  you are torn, you have your past…and your present…you think you have no right to teach but you have EVERY right to teach…

Life is not easy. Look back on where you were and where you are now…it isn’t easy. That’s proven. Look at your children. Really look at them. It is so easy to get into the motion of the day-to-day. You feel successful if you can get in bed at night and everyone is alive. Great! Good job! Now, reflect. What did you learn today?. What did you teach your children today? Write it down. Even if you didn’t reach the end of a lesson, have you built towards the lesson?

We, as parents, have got to understand the level of magnitude of our responsibility as parents. We literally have control over something that happens in the next twenty years, forty years, seventy years…. Whether that be an important decision that our child makes, an impact our child has on another person, or a moment our child has, in their reflection time….WE have that control….RIGHT NOW! It matters what we do or say every single day! It matters how we discipline them or how we encourage them. It matters, every breath we breathe into their lives as to what happens when they mature into adulthood.

Don’t look at having children as the “thing we are supposed to do” or “what that next step was supposed to be”. In fact, I hear all the time of people not wanting to have children because of “what this world is becoming”…  YOU are their world. YOU have the authority and the privilege of raising them and educating them on how to deal with “the world”…”society” as I like to call it. Challenge them and educate them on how to do what is right and what is best for them REGARDLESS of what the world tells them to do. It’s an amazing worth that we have, as parents, to contribute to the next hundred years.

Leave your legacy and make it what you know it can be. We are the world!

Bye for now,
RR

Can we please address the ELEPHANT in the room?

I know you are, most likely, expecting me to specifically name said “ELEPHANT” in the room…

I’m not going to!  For one, because my elephant is different than yours.  For two, and most important of all, I don’t “know” your ELEPHANT!  We all have them.  We may not be faced with them everyday….but it’s because we avoid them!  As humans, we don’t want to “go there”.  We don’t want drama.  We don’t want conflict.  But…won’t it eventually happen?  Not the conflict, necessarily, but won’t the mention of our elephants eventually happen?

I don’t know about you, but 9 times out of 10, once it’s finally addressed, it really didn’t go as bad as our mind thought it was going to go!

I have an extremely large family.  My parents are divorced, remarried, and…in a sense…re-re-re-married.   I have a big important job at a big corporation.  I have two children.  I have a diverse group of friends…..I say all this to say, yes I am blessed, but I also have a LOT of ELEPHANTS!  Almost every circle I come in to, every function I attend, every event I host, I have ELEPHANTS!  We stress because we don’t want to face them.  It’s too much.   There’s too much risk.  But is there?  Really?  Once we finally address our elephants, and realize it wasn’t as bad as we pictured, don’t we all sigh in relief that it WASN’T as bad?   So why not address them the moment they present themselves?  Get it over with?

I recently received some advice from a very well known speaker, Doreen Rainey.  She said, “make the call!”.   I know that sounds so small compared to what we are faced with in our unique, specific situations.  I thought the same.  But, after almost a month, those words still pop into my head.  MAKE THE CALL.  Just DO it!  Address it!  Get it over with and move on!!!  You’ll get the same answer that you would have gotten an hour from now, a month from now, a YEAR from now.  It’ll be the same answer.

People think they want to give “them” time to get past certain things, to get over certain things, to change their mindset about certain things……but the majority of the time, it would have been the exact same answer TODAY as it was a year ago!!!  Make the call!  Make the call…

I’ve made a lot of confident, vocal decisions in my professional life in the past few weeks that I would NEVER…EVER!!!….have thought about making 4 years ago.  Decisions that I just knew would have gotten me FIRED!!!!….had I made them 4 years ago!!!  Now…now, I am confident in those decisions.  I’ve addressed the big FAT elephant in the room and it’s done!  NEXT…..

Please….just make the call!  You will feel, about yourself, SO MUCH better, just making the call!  You have your answer, and now you can take the necessary steps that need to take place having had your answer.  “Rip off the bandaid” as they say!  I could go on and on to my friends and family about things that are bothering me.  Their answer, to me, should be, “MAKE THE CALL!!!!”  So that’s the best advice I can give you!

Bye for now,

RR

What does it mean to be vulnerable?  Like, to TRULY be vulnerable?  Don’t look up the definition because that isn’t what I mean.  A few weeks ago, I was told to make myself completely vulnerable in my search for success.  I really didn’t get what it meant but the word has not escaped my thoughts ever since I heard it put that way.  I have looked up the definition.  It didn’t make sense to me, still.  I use the word when I give advice to others.  Still, not really understanding what it really means and how it is a good thing!

Growing up, I always tried to NOT make myself vulnerable because I was told it’s how you get hurt.  Suppress certain feelings and certain personality traits because you don’t want to be too vulnerable and have someone stomp on you.  So that’s what I’ve always done.  Have I been hurt, even while doing that?  YES!  I have been hurt by others and I have hurt myself.  All the while, suppressing certain emotions, while still getting hurt.  So what was the point?

Vulnerability can be and is a good thing.  To me, being vulnerable means being 100% true to yourself no matter what is happening around you.  It means not conforming to what someone wants you to be.  It means not holding back when you have something to say.  It means giving yourself permission to feel exactly how you feel and not be ashamed of it!  The trick to not allowing your vulnerability to open doors of hurt is, LOVE yourself!  When you truly, honestly love yourself, you don’t care much at all about other’s opinion of you.  That, in turn, permits you to be completely vulnerable, and not get hurt!

Things won’t always go your way.  There will always be obstacles and you will most likely always be able to over analyze an experience to the point that you can convince yourself, or someone else could convince you, that had you not been so vulnerable, the outcome may have been different.  Don’t over analyze.  Take the situation for what it is, what it was, find out what you can learn from it, and move on!  Don’t stop being true to yourself.  Don’t stop being vulnerable! The only one truly affected by whether or not you allow yourself to be vulnerable, is YOU!  However, if you DO hold back, you are most likely missing an opportunity to inspire or help someone that you cross paths with!  Most of us get great joy out of helping someone.  So why hold back to please a thousand people who truly won’t contribute to your happiness, when you can be real and help a few people, who DO contribute to your happiness, in a very positive, permanent way!?!?

A very smart person recently told me, “don’t try proving something to someone who isn’t even paying attention!”. That spoke so loudly to me because I did this EVERY.SINGLE.DAY!  I think most of us do!  What’s it all for?  At the end of the day, you are the only one in control of your happy!  So YOU BE YOU!  Be vulnerable-be TRUE!

Bye for now,

RR

We, too often, proclaim that we are working on projects because…. blah blah blah….

Our bosses are too busy to do it themselves, our husbands asked us to, our church asked us to, we felt compelled…..

But isn’t it really… an opportunity?  An opportunity to be more than they said we were going to be?  An opportunity to prove to others what we already know to be true? Not because we care what they think, but because the victory is apparent!

Opportunities tend to disguise themselves. And the enemy tends to validate our negative thoughts about ourselves to be true….

My sister has been having a hard time at work. The work is fine… she’s doing what she was taught to do… and what she is good at.  There are obstacles, as is true in any field of work/career.  Just because they may be “small” obstacles does not eliminate the fact that they are there.  They are in her way.  They are troublesome and frustrating.   She thinks, day and night, how can she get through them?   And then she does! In the most camouflaged way, she does!  She’s on a trip! It’s last minute… it’s inconvenient… it’s frustrating… but she’s on a trip.   To do what her boss couldn’t do… whatever his reasons… and she NAILS it.

It’s not a “society worthy NOTABLE win”… but she wins!  The client is happy, her boss is happy, her co-workers go on jealously happy (supposedly).  At the end of the week, she knows… she did it!  She DID it! 

Fast forward to the future…. does her boss’s boss notice her win?  Does her boss’s boss’s boss notice her win?  Who knows!?!?  SHE knows!!!! Her family knows!  Now SHE is taking the next level in HER success!  She has the motivation!  She now how the proof of her capabilities!   Not because someone noticed it.  Not because she just made 10 random people rich in her talents….. but because SHE knows that SHE is amazing!  She is amazing! And thus begins he next chapter.

There is opportunity around every corner, next to every decision.  It’s up to us to take advantage of what that opportunity can support while we strive to get to the next level!

Bye for now,

RR

As we awoke this morning, to begin our day, I noticed we had 20 minutes to get ready and out of the door.  This is much like most mornings.  Also, like most mornings, this is my fault.  Not theirs!  My girls need me to get them up and ready and get their day started.  So why do I wait so long to get up?  It’s a me issue, that’s for sure!  The question comes up, in my mind, often.  Am I failing as their mother?  It’s gut wrenching and heart breaking the moment the thought pops in my brain.  My struggle is, do I think reality and pick apart every little thing that I do and say to try to answer this question for myself?  Do I seek the advice of outsiders to validate what I may or may not think?  Or do I proclaim, right then and there, that the devil is looking for the main area of my life to try to give me doubts about?

I yell.  I yell way more than I should.  There is a calm, rational way of saying things, especially to children.  So why do I chose to raise my voice so much so that my oldest gives me a blank, disappointing stare, and my youngest wells up with tears?  No, I don’t curse them, no, I don’t put them down….but isn’t my typical go-to of yelling just as negative of a response as cursing?  What my kids need are parents that love them, raise them, and teach them.  What my kids do not need are parents that are constantly speaking negativity into their brains, cluttering their thoughts and emotions.  Worse, causing them to feel emotions they shouldn’t have to feel from their parents.

So, am I failing as a mother?

This morning, I didn’t wake up in the best mood. As mentioned, we woke up with very little time to get ourselves together and on the road. Me issue.  Once we were finally dressed and had our hair looking “half-way” decent, I told them to go get their backpacks, lunch boxes, and jackets.  I picked up some in the bedroom and got my purse.  As I walked into the kitchen I noticed, not only did they not get any of the things together that I’d told them to, but they were putting on their winter hats and gloves.  It was 61 degrees outside.  I got angry.  I reminded them, loudly, what I’d told them to do and asked them why they did not mind me.  Neither spoke.  They rushed to put their hats and gloves away.  As they were doing so, I saw where they’d made a huge mess the night before and did not pick up after themselves.  This is a constant battle.  They are kids.  So, thus begun the raising of mothers voice on THAT subject.  I’d worked myself up so much that my voice was trembling and sore.  They watched, silently.  I don’t know that they were listening.  Who would listen?  Yelling was unnecessary and counter-productive!  I said, after lowering my voice, “the bible says to OBEY your parents!”  My youngest responded, immediately (following several minutes of silently taking in my negative outbursts) “because you belong to the Lord”.  I was speechless.  In a selfish effort to ensure they knew that I was mad, I did not respond to her.  Less than 1 minute later, while I was grabbing my lunch out of the refrigerator, my youngest looked at me and said, “Mom, I know that bible verse you were talking about.”  I said, “good, baby!”

I did want them to know that what they’d done (and not done) was unacceptable but what I want them to know most is that I love them.  I am not perfect and will never claim to be.  I made mistakes and will likely make more.  However, I’m going to cling to this memory because if this morning was a reminder of ANYTHING, it’s that I am NOT failing as a mother!

Bye for now,

RR

I am struggling. I’m struggling to make sure that I am at peace with my Lord. I am on an amazing path to self discovery. I’m on a path to make sure that I’m fulfilling my purpose in life. I’m doing research, I’m reading books. I’m LISTENING to books. I’m changing my mindset. I’m calculating every thought, every action, every step…so that I can appeal to everyone. Regardless of your religion,  your circumstance,  your past…BUT I’m not being true to my faith! God help me keep my faith in you!

God is the ultimate healer. God is the ultimate strength. God is the ultimate saviour. God is the ultimate Purpose!

So much “bad” happens in this world. It causes us, as believers, the question our faith! My brother recently reminded me…to find my end goal and discover how it honors God. Those words were so powerful to me.

Faith! How does one get by without faith? I could never understand and I never even want to research what that would mean! I am not the judge! I cannot tell you what happens on each person’s judgement day.  But what I do know is that everyone has their judgement day. And it’s theirs and only theirs. God is great. He is forgiving. He is compassionate. He is mighty! Who am I to question that?

An amazing friend reminded me that the enemy is on guard at every second of every minute of every hour of every day. He wants to take the light that we have and turn it into darkness. It’s up to us, as believers in Christ, to cast out those demons and vocally and proudly proclaim that the enemy has no control over us. We can and will be prosperous while holding the hand of our God and THAT is what we need to teach our children, our husbands, our wives, our sisters, our brothers , and most importantly ourselves.

Surround yourself with people that know what you know, that have seen the love and the grace and the mercy of our God so that we may never,  EVER,  lose sight of the fact that God has brought us to it and only He can bring us through it.

Bye for now,

RR

I want to be clear that, I do not have it all figured out.  I am very new on this path to self-discovery and the identification of my happy!  However, one thing that I have learned, is that I am the ONLY one…THE ONLIEST one, that is in control of my happiness.  Regardless of circumstance, regardless of the past, regardless of what society tells me, regardless of what I learned growing up…I am the only one that can control if I’m happy.  You have got to put pen to paper to brainstorm and explore what makes you happy.  You have to make happiness action plans.  If you don’t, then YOU are the reason that you are unhappy.

If this stings, I will not apologize.  I am not going to be sorry or ashamed, any longer, for what I know is right.  We find ourselves judging others on their “high horses” because cockiness is unacceptable in today’s world.  But why?  Why is it not OK to be cocky?  If you are confident in what you do, what you feel, what you say….why is that a bad thing?

If you can help, but 1 person, understand how to be the best version of themselves according to THEIR terms, why is that not OK?

Screw society!  Screw what our “friends” think.  Screw what our “friends of friends” think!

If we are the only ones in control of our happiness (happy defined as feeling pleasure…FEELING…who FEEL’S? YOU!!!) then why give a durn about anyone else’s opinion of that?

Find your unconditional love for yourself in order to find your happiness. UNCONDITIONAL!  A friend recently reminded me of the fact that, sometimes, the love she feels has conditions.  These words broke my heart.  Mostly because I reflected on myself and related to what she was saying.  Those are powerful terms.  To think that love had conditions…Love is defined as an intense FEELING of deep affection… to think that a FEELING had CONDITIONS!?!? Erroneous!

Find your unconditional love for yourself, regardless of your past or what you’re told to feel.  Once you do that, that’s when you find your happy!

Bye for now,
RR