Early on when I was raising my children, I lived. I went to work. I kept up with the house and the property mowed. I worked late into the night to make sure the family vehicle was ready for school and errands the next day, after all I couldn’t afford to take time off from work. I loved my wife. I loved my children and I loved my life, hard or as easy as it was. Don’t get me wrong God had blessed me over the years, considering I just drifted along aimlessly with no game plan. No goals. I have to hand it to my wife, she was right there beside me the whole way. It wasn’t till after the loss of our daughter and the flooding of our house of 27 years, twice, that my eyes were open. Two of those events happened three weeks apart June 3rd, 2012, my daughter Hollee was killed. June 26th our house flooded from tropical storm Debbie. The emotions from that time are another story. I remodeled the house, never really completing it, only to have it flood again five years later and four feet higher from Hurricane Irma. Ok, someone or something was trying to get my attention. The county informed us that our house was “out of compliance and would have to be torn down”. I rented the equipment and did it myself as we couldn’t afford to have someone take care of it for us. It was a very surreal week for me. Ghosts from the past and hope for the future fought for control of my mind. Things would happen at the most unexpected and yet perfect time. While I was crushing the home that I had raised my family in. Putting it in dumpsters to be hauled away as trash. Dealing with every emotion that it brought. I looked down on the pile of rubble and there was my Father’s bible. I hadn’t seen it for years and to this day couldn’t tell you where it was in the house. But there it was rising like the phoenix out of the ashes. I put it in the trunk of my car. The creek had flooded it and the house had crumbled on top of it, but there it was. I continued my grizzly task. A couple more days of destroying everything I had spent decades building and the ghosts and demons were back. Tears would come and go, but the job had to be completed. It was during one of the sessions of tears that I looked out the window of the track machine. On a broken 2×4, stuck on a protruding nail like a flag, I saw it. Hollee’s bandana that she always wore around her forehead and had tied it to her backpack the night she was killed so she could wear a braided leather band with feathers instead. I had cherished that bandana after she was killed…. It smelled like her. When the smell had faded, I put it in a safe place. Safe from all, all but a devastating flood. Yet once again, at a perfect time, a time alone, and overwhelmed with uncertainty of the future. There was my Hollee giving me hope.
I would like to say that all that has happened since, was my doing. It was not. Call it God, call it laws of nature, call it what you will. All I know is that something changed. First and foremost it was my attitude toward life. No longer was I going to go through life as a bystander. Someone watching from the sidelines. Taking what life decided to give me. I was going to take life, throttle it and get every once of joy and living it could give. A conscious choice. I have learned that if you bargain with life for a dollar that is exactly what it will give you. If you bargain for more, it has no choice but to give you what you demand.
I have chosen to be among the truly living and not just alive. It’s not easy, but oh how rewarding it is. It takes work, but it is a labor of love and joy. The coolest thing about it, is, the more people you bring with you the sweeter it is. I hope you choose to come along with me for the ride. We can learn, and begin “living” together. There is so much I haven’t figured out. Though I can promise you this, if you give it everything you’ve got….the journey is gonna be INCREDIBLE!