Here's your sign..

I guess you could say I'm a bit superstitious, or at least that's how most people perceive it these days, but to me I feel like I am religiously aware. I take everything as a sign, because I genuinely believe everything happens for a reason. Bad things happen so eventually good things can come.

Remember in the bible God sent messages to his disciples in the form of dreams. Why wouldn't God still do that now? Whenever I have a dream that seems to stick with me more than others I take time to evaluate what it could mean. Because God doesn’t always come right out and say what he is trying to tell you. It’s kind of like when you can’t find the answer to a question in your book and you teacher says “Just keep looking, it’s in there.” Often times we can’t find what we are looking for because we are either looking too hard, or not looking hard enough. For me that is when God slaps me with a sign.

This week I got a big sign that came disguised as a letter. You see I’m one of those people that messed around and planned my whole life out without asking God how he felt about it, and now I’m paying for it. If you want to make God laugh tell him your plans. Every piece of my plan has fallen through, and if I was a quitter I would have already gave up on college and having a career. That’s just the pure honest truth.

I know I’ve told you all about my plans to go to college, get married, have children, and be a nurse, right? Ha. Talk about a hopeless plan. For one I have no intentions at the moment of ever getting married or having children. Granted that may change, I sincerely hope it doesn’t. But, this week I received a letter, remember the disguise for a sign from God, which informed me I wasn’t accepted into nursing school. Naturally you’d assume I got depressingly sad about the news since that was my plan after all. However, I haven’t felt sad at all. Actually I feel a bit relieved.

By now I’m sure you’re thinking “Man, this girl doesn’t know what she wants.” If so, then indeed you’re right. I don’t know what I want, which is a scary thought considering I am in my second year of college and I’m changing majors. I just don’t think I would be me if I didn’t go around changing my mind and making out of the blue decisions. I use to be a planner, but now I realize sometimes you just have to do what’s right for you at that time.

This is my advice to all kids graduating high school or who are in their first year of college, move out. Rather you’re going away to college or going to a local community college move out of your parents house. Moving out has really showed me who I am. When you don’t have anyone there telling you what to do and what not to do you can really see what kind of adult you’re going to be. I honestly believe being on my own has showed me a lot of signs about my career path. I’m going to continue looking for signs, and hopefully I’ll be on the right path soon.

First Impressions

First impressions have always been thought of as the most important key when meeting new people. I know you’ve all heard “make a good first impression, that’s what counts.” However, what I’ve been thinking about this week is that it is not first impression that count, it is how the person acts after they get comfortable with you.

I have met plenty of people who made a good first impression on me, but after getting to know them they turned out to be someone totally different. It’s like when you first meet someone you want to have a relationship with, each one will do nice things to reel in their catch. Once you’ve made your catch there is no motivation to do nice things. This is the time when a persons’ true personality shines through.

Red flags start dropping everywhere if you’ve made a bad catch. Once the person already knows that you’re theirs they will stop masking their true identity. You may notice that the person is actually a controlling, incompetent, psycho. A lot of people begin to notice a person’s personality changes, but do not want to admit it because they still think of them as the nice person they were in the beginning. The truth is if a person is genuinely nice, and cares about you they will continue to do what they did to get you, just so they can keep you.

I’ve noticed a lot of guys have what I like to call the “Momma’s boy syndrome”. Some guys rely on their mothers to do everything for them, and I have another name for the mothers that do that, it’s called an enabler. Their moms cook, clean, do their laundry, remind them of appointments, and anything else they may need. When a guy begins to spend more time with you than with his mother, he will assume you will take the place of the things she normally does for him. Instead of him taking care of you, you’ll be catering to him. This is something you should be aware of before you get in too deep, because you didn’t sign up to be someone’s fill in mother.

On a lighter note you may begin to realize that you caught a real winner. The person may exemplify everything you thought that they were from the beginning. My dad is the best example of this. He still does sweet things for my mom, just to show he cares. If he feels like my mom may be having a bad day he will find any way to cheer her up. Even if it’s just picking up a candy bar for her on the way home, it’s the thought he put into thinking of her, picking the kind he knows she likes, and bringing it to her without her asking.

The important thing is to know your own self worth; everyone deserves someone who will treat them with the importance they gave them before the relationship. It is not okay or normal for someone to start being controlling and vindictive.

You don't know what you've got until...

Have you ever heard that saying, you don't know what you've got until it's gone? That's one of the truest statements I've ever heard. We take for granted the people we have in our lives, and all the little things those people do for us.

I have a huge family on my mom’s side. My mom is 1 of 9. She has 6 sisters and 2 brothers. Each one of my mom’s brothers and sisters has at least 2 children, and my mom and her younger sister are the only ones without grandchildren. We’ve recently counted all of the kids and grandkids; I think it was roughly around 50.
(I just realized that sounds like a complicated math problem, but don't worry I wont make you all do the math!)

It can be easy to take that many people for granted. Sometimes I don’t realize how lucky I am to be blessed with so many family members. Not only do I have that many cousins, but most of us stay in contact with each other, even if it’s just on the internet.

Family is the absolute most important thing to us.

My grandpa always reminded us that we couldn’t pick our family, but when all else failed you always had your family. My grandpa was the heart of our family. He was the most handsome man I’ve ever met. He was well into his seventies with a full head of blonde hair. He never spared an opportunity to remind us that our good looks came from him. I think a lot of us took his wit and charm for granted, I know I did. He passed away last January unexpectedly. About a week after his passing my uncle lost his wife unexpectedly as well. It was a hard time for our family, but we all stuck together.

I think that situations like those make us more appreciative of each other. But, isn’t it a shame that as humans something bad has to happen before we realize what we have? We have to lose someone or something just to realize that it was one of the most vital things to us. This was on my mind a lot this week, especially since my granny was airlifted to Little Rock and put on a ventilator. Luckily she seems to be doing better. However I know this opened my families eyes that we need to visit more often, and let her know we care while we still can.

When I worked in the nursing home it broke my heart when residents’ children only came to visit every few months. Things change in the blink of an eye, and you have to use your time wisely.

Don’t wait until it’s too late to realize that you have someone in your life that needs to be shown they’re appreciated. Use every day to show the people in your life how much they mean to you.