This was me trying to look cool :) My children tell me it is a lost cause I will never be cool. Oh well, a girl can dream cant she. Haha

Do you ever feel like you have a little demon and the little angels on your shoulders each telling you the exact opposite things. You know the guys I am talking about they used to be in all those those old cartoons.

Finishing out my second year as a widow those little voices are screaming at me.

Angel: You are doing exactly what God has planned for you to be doing. 
Devil: You really must be stupid to think that you will EVER succeed at this writing thing. 

Angel: You are a strong woman handling this single mom thing wonderfully. 
Devil: Please you and your children are ticking time bombs ready to explode. 

Angel: God is going to move you into new areas in your life and re-fire dreams that you thought were long gone. 
Devil: You are insane to think the you will be or do anything other than what you are right now you will never amount to anything special. 


In the last two years everything in my life has gone into flux. I was perfectly content to be a stay at home mom and wife for the rest of my life and now I am in a place where that is really not an option anymore.

I have felt like God told me this is a time in my life when I need to step out in faith and take risks to accomplish new things. I want to accomplish new things, I want to figure out what makes Cindy, Cindy. I want to figure out who I am and who God wants me to be.


My time as someones caretaker is going to quickly be gone. My girls are growing up at warp speed, I will always be their Mom but there will come a day when Mom is not my sole identity. What will be left then.

I have tried to throw caution to the wind and put myself and my writing out there for all the world to see, thankfully the response I have gotten has mostly been positive, it worries me that the few bits of negative (they really weren't negative just not "gushy") feedback I have gotten, I find myself actually getting depressed over. I know I won't make it far in life if I let every negative thing make me cry.


As the world celebrated Valentines Day this past week, of course I felt alone. I miss the love of a good Godly man in my life so much. I thought for a moment, if God came down to earth and put me on some cosmic "Lets make a deal" and behind

      Box number 1: God would allow Gary himself to hand pick someone for me to have a                    relationship with and mary.

    Box number 2: You and your girls have the adventure of a lifetime, fulfilling the inner most dreams that I hid in your heart as a child. 

You know what the answer is? I think it would be box number 2. As much as it hurts to be lonely, I want to find out all that I personally could become even more.

Even though I do not want a relationship,  I did put kiss one man as a New Years goal this year. Don't Judge I have only ever kissed Gary and I am almost 40 years old I want to test drive a few other sets of lips ;)

I heard this line of a song on the radio this evening and I thought it summed up my inner struggle/rambling pretty well-

 I want to know a song can rise
From the ashes of a broken life
And all that's dead inside can be reborn
(10th avenue north Worn)


So I guess I need to focus on silencing the little devil on my shoulder the next couple of months. And listen only to the Angel. Stuff is about to take off in our life and I don't want to let fear or any nagging little devil to steal one moment of anything God has for us away.

I have all ready had my first published magazine article this year, I have published several articles on an Internet news site and  next month I will be working on my second published piece, by the end of the term, my teacher is going to help me piece together a collection of short stories so maybe by summer I will be ready to publish that book about our life I have been working half heartily on forever. I will also have my own website up by the end of this term with a  full portfolio of my work.

I remember right after Gary passed away God told me to just rest and make some new memories with the girls. He told me when things start moving they are going to move at light speed. Well things are starting to move and I am determined to silence the little devils in my life and throw my hands up and enjoy the ride come what may. No matter what happens with God and my three beauties it is sure to be an adventure :)

Progress Report

Last week the girls and I had our family pictures taken. We went to the cemetery where Gary is buried to get our photos taken. It seemed a tad macabre at first but after seeing how nice the pics turned out I was glad we went there. 

The term family pictures was hard to put on our photo shoot. It is still weird to consider us a family without Gary here with us. After 18 months you would have thought we would be okay with this new abnormal family unit we have, but we all miss Gary so much, every day. 

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My first term at UNF was definitely less than Stellar. I only earned half of the credits I tried for. That was really hard for me to deal with. Since I have been going back to school anything less than and A was unacceptable. 

I earned a C in my multimedia reporting class and I was dancing in the streets for that C. My teacher liked my writing style but he got so frustrated with my lack of polish in regards to grammar. 

Bottom line the fact that I could put together a descent story was the only thing that saved my bacon in that class. That gave me a ray of hope that maybe, I can do this and maybe it isn't completely insane me doing this college thing. 

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This term, I am doing four classes again. My friends tell me that is insane. The fact of the matter is I didn't want to mess up my student aide and it happened to work out to where I could take three classes online so I only had to go into school twice a week. 

At the end of last term I really wanted to just quit school and find a job, answering a telephone somewhere but I knew if I did that Gary would have kicked my fanny from heaven. 

So far I am doing better this term. I am retaking one of the classes that I made a D in, a nutrition class, Intro to fiction writing and Multi media reporting. 

The first two classes are pretty simple and straight forward. The second two have kept my hyper creative mind active. In fiction class, we will have a novel of short stories complete by the end of the term. I am working on fictionalizing the couple of months before Gary died till now. I am trying to capture the emotions and thoughts that I dealt with as a widow so one day I can publish it and when someone else goes through this pain they can read my book and realize they can survive. 

The second class is Multimedia reporting. This class goes at warp speed. This is the only class that I actually go to a class for. I am glad I do I cant imagine this class online. Every time we are with the professor he, for lack of a better analogy, barfs up so much knowledge to us. It all comes so fast and furious it almost makes my head spin. 

We have written internet new stories and created everything from tweets to glavatar's. He has really helped us all so much. I feel like after five weeks in his class that I am a better writer and I feel more confidant that I might be able to do this writing thing. 

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I am not sure what God would have me do with all this knowledge that these awesome professors are pouring into me. Most of the youngins that I take these classes with know exactly how they want to use their degree. I get asked what I want to do with my degree and I really cannot tell you for sure. To be honest I guess I still do not have enough confidence in myself to try for anything because I feel like I will probably fail. God is working on that attitude too. 

       
If I could snap my fingers and put myself into a career of my choosing, I would be writing faith based movies with the likes of Corbin Bernsen and The Kendrick brothers. What God does with my eventual career well that is still to be determined. I want what God wants for me. 

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I started 2013 in a good way. God has been giving me many opportunities to increase my confidence. I was published in a newspaper for the first time ever. Which was EPIC for my confidence. Over Christmas break I discovered the wonderful world of fan fictions and I have been writing fan fictions based on the television show Psych and have enjoyed some wonderful reviews for my work. I actually have fans who read all my work, me fans, go figure :). I was even given five stars on another fan fiction site. I know that as a writer I am going to be severely criticized and it is going to shake my confidence I am grateful that God has given me a time period to build up a base of confidence so I can go out there and face the criticism. 

You can ask my children, I cried over the one bad review I got. Sad I know but it is the truth. 

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God is continuing the process of recreating Cindy and He is working at light speed. So much continues to happen so fast. I am anxious to start my life in a career and I think the girls are anxious too. They want me to write for a television show so they can hang out on the set. I don't know we will see what God has in store for us. 

I guess the one thing that has changed dramatically over the last few months has been the progression from surviving to actually looking forward to the future and excited about where God is taking me. I still would give my right arm to have my sweet man with me and have the biggest worry in my day be how I am going to explain that McDonalds receipt to him.

I can't have my old life back and even if I could it would be weird because I am not the same person.  I think, I hope, Gary would be proud of me, he worked so hard the last few months of his life trying to get me ready to face the world without him. I strive to be the person that he thought I could be.