Hello dear ones. Thank you 2HP, tiredtonite, JerryF, Posies and Puppies, and Temple for sharing your experiences and strengths with me. Each touched me deeply and brought me comfort. Aloha and thank you JerryF for helping me feel not so alone in my hour of need through your sharing. I think 'Posies and Puppies' that you make a good point in helping me to see how the grip can loosen from the 'safe' and, as I shall share below, I can see through your words that when there is a crack like there is for me presently in my life and mind, my peace is threatened. Temple, thank you for your concern for me. Please be assured I am in a safe, new environment where love abides. 

My God's timing is perfect...He is nearly early and rarely late but I believe He has my best interests at heart and perhaps He is saying to me, 'it's time'.

In my reference to His timing, I made a momentous life change at the end of last year. I ended my teaching role at a school I had been with for eight years. I had no work/life balance. I rarely saw my beloved family, my youngest daughter would say to me 'Mum, I know when I have you and when I don't'. and all my family have told me how worried they were for me as they felt powerless to help me. They didn't know how to. 

I would take a day off to travel the two hours to see her and the little ones and her husband and work all day the next day upon my return to get ready for my teaching week ahead and no matter how hard I worked, no matter how much I did, there was always much more sitting there waiting to be done. 

This beautiful daughter had been pregnant two years before when she and her husband found out he had cancer. They had two small boys and our world collapsed with that phone call. She is always going to be my hero for how she managed that time of their lives. With blessing, he beat cancer and is well and happy that his beard has returned as well as his hair.

Their third little boy waited for his daddy to be through his treatment before he decided to come into our world by being 11 days late (Chemo prevents any contact with the bodily fluid so it meant that his daddy could not be at his birth if he was not past the safety point).  We were worried that the baby would have picked up on his mum's anxiety and worry but a sweeter, happier, more contented, serene, blessed child you could ever hope for came into our family. He is a true miracle for we know now that his dad had cancer when he was conceived. As my daughter says, 'he is ''delicious'' and great joy and our little angel.

I add that story because it is relative to my decision to leave my work last year. I learned that people are so much more important than things and while I love what I do so very much and the children I teach, I loved Me and my family more. I know cancer - it is the thief, just like the alcoholism that stole my childhood and threatened our sanity was. It shows mercy but it also says no to others. It showed mercy to us with the miracle we have which is two-fold - three little boys have a daddy as well as a mummy. 

My family is with me in my decision. My beautiful, two adult daughters said, 'mum, you jump and we will jump with you'. They are supporting me, offering me encouragement, grateful that I made the decision and helping me keep the faith that 'it will all be okay'. I love them for it all but lately, anxiety has crept in for my uncertain future.  I have grown anxious and although I know for Me I made the wrong decision, I have also grown scared for I am a single person.  

I thought perhaps the invasion was God showing me that although I have an unknown future, it is far, far better than where I was back over my shoulder. God is showing me, through my dreams, what I once denied within the relationship, 'the ugly'. I kept seeing two different people in my husband and wanted him to be the good. He wasn't. The good side was the fake and the beast was the true.  Basically I ignored the ugly. I had no worth, no sense of esteem, value or care and but for my family, would have faded away, my spirit was dying. (gosh, it makes me feel terribly sad to see myself as that person right now as I get the image but I thank my God every day for saving me. (He did for me what I could not do for myself).

It's taken me years to become weller and I have so much hope for myself. My mum, who is a program person says "I am in the hallway with windows, to see the sunsets and the birds. She says that when one door closes, another will open but at the moment, I am in the hallway with the windows and maybe this is time for me to enjoy doing things for me that is life things rather than the continuous work I did all the time". I love her for that faith.

Sometimes I tell her I am hanging onto her faith because I am low in mine because the doubts creep in...' did I do the right thing?.... I return to the same answer when I contemplate this question - Yes. I know the stress I was going through last year. I know the time I wasn't with my people. I had no life other than work and I could not find my life. It Has to matter, I Have to matter. (These statements have taken so long to verbalise because I have had to learn the difference of 'loving yourself' and 'Love Of Self'...for me, one is vanity, the other is LOVE and my God Loves Me as I do as others do. 

I am able to have quiet times now where once just the thought was an impossible concept to fathom. I like to think it is a meditation for me. It is usually always with nature. 

Blessed 2HP, thank you for sharing your treasured words - I shall be using them as another sentence on mirror-in-the-bathroom  - ''the disease is just trying to steal your joy'' and then I might ask my mum how she does what she says sometimes, "give the disease a good kick up the guts". 

I have learned to have a deep respect for the disease I have been affected by. I do not believe it wants us to be well, to heal or to be happy.

I still carry an image of myself, like I am now with 2HP's helpful words. I see ....'I am in a boxing ring with two of me. In one corner, the recovering, one day/moment at a time Me and in the other corner, the old, angry, resentful, sick Me. I have coaches in the recovering corner - My God, My Program Philosophies and teachings, my loved ones, the other corner has the disease in all its glory and darkness for a coach and its mean, spiteful, cruel and wants to suck the soul out of me..to destroy me, my life, my relationships, and my hope, my faith, my love. 

I think the bell just donged for round two. Wish me luck'. 

Have a blessed day and may your God be with you today.

Kez