Tuesday, June 29, 2021

6-29-2021 Journal Entry, aka Songs

One Day by Cochren & Co.

One day there'll be no more lives taken too soon.  One day there'll be no more need for a hospital room.  One day every tear that falls will be wiped by His Hand.  We will see the promised land.  Mmm.  Hallelujah, there will be healing from this heartache we've been feeling.  We'll sing in the darkest night 'cause we know that the light will come and there will be healing, hallelujah.


Scars in Heaven by Casting Crowns (makes me cry every time)

If I had only known the last time would be the last time I would have put off all the things I had to do.  I would have stayed a little longer, held on a little tighter.  Now what I'd give for one more day with you.  'Cause there's a wound here in my heart where something's missing.  And they tell me that it's gonna heal with time.  But I know you're in a place where all your wounds have been erased and knowing yours are healed is healing mine.  The only scars in Heaven they won't belong to me and you.  There'll be no such thing as broken and all the old will be made new.  And the thought that makes me smile now, even as the tears fall down is that the only scars in Heaven are on the hands that hold you now.  I know the road you walked was anything but easy.  You picked up your share of scars along the way.  Oh, but now you're standing in the sun, you've fought your fight and your race is run.  The pain is all a million miles away.  There's not a day goes by that I don't see you.  You live on in all the better parts of me.  Until I'm standing with you in the sun, I'll fight this fight and this race I'll run until I finally see what you can see.

Saturday, June 26, 2021

6-26-21 Journal Entry, aka Jesse's Girl

Yesterday during PT, they were playing Jesse's Girl, which was a song Scott related to when I was married to Chris.  That's the whole reason he named his dog Jesse.

Monday, June 21, 2021

6-21-2021 Journal Entry, aka Father's Day

Yesterday was Father's Day and I went to put a "hero" wreath on Scott's grave.  I cried because I miss him and I'm overwhelmed with everything.  But also because I was alone when he was a father to my children.  He was there all the time and paid everything to raise my kids.  And he never had anyone call him "dad" and he'll never have his biggest dream: to walk one of the girls down the aisle.

Today I walked into PT and immediately the song  "Come and Get Your Love" by Redbone started playing.  He used to sing that to me to annoy me (from the movie The Guardians of the Galaxy).  I didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

Friday, June 18, 2021

6-18-2021 Journal Entry, aka Feeling Better


I bought a new car by myself!  It's a 2019 Nissan Kicks.

I think the doctor has finally got me on a regimen of meds that work.  I feel better.  I'm still tired, no energy, no creativity.

After Scott died, I couldn't listen to music--any music.  I even cried during worship.  Now I've been turning the radio back on and singing along.  When I was at PT for my back the other day, they played an old Chicago song.  Scott and I used to love listening to the band Chicago.  When we were teenagers, our song was "You're the Inspiration."  I was listening to the words "will you still love me for the rest of your life cause I can't go on...if I'm on my own," and thinking about Scott.

Tuesday, June 8, 2021

6-8-2021 Journal Entry aka How I got Lyme's disease

I bought a house today!  All by myself!  It's for my mom to move up to Kansas City.  My brother will too once he finds (or I find) a house here.  Then I'm going to sell Sue's house.

I had an appointment with a Lyme's nurse practitioner today.  The appointment lasted 3 hours and I brought home a big bag of test kits to do.  Plus 2 pages of labwork to be done.  She thinks in addition to Lyme's I also have Bartonella and Babesia.

I was telling Kimberly's boyfriend about ho I got Lyme's.  The kids hate the story but if I have to have a disease, at least the story should be good.  It reminded me of how Scott always had my back, so I want to share it.

I had an appointment at the GYN and there were doctor's buildings and a hospital all right together.  I had to park across the street in another medical building's parking lot because there was no room.  When I got upstairs and checked in, I couldn't find my phone.  I assumed I'd left it in the car, but it made me anxious the whole time.  It was around Kimberly's birthday and the 4th of July and the moms were in town visiting.  After I was done, I ran downstairs and the phone was not in my car!  I dumped out my purse in the seat, searched the whole car, but it wasn't there.  I began to panic. I retraced my steps, I went into the doctor buildings and the hospital to see if anyone had turned it in.  I went back to the GYN office and asked if I'd left it on the counter, I even rummaged the sofa I'd been sitting on.  I asked to use the phone and called Scott.  We had a tracking app on the phone and he said it appeared to be right where I was.  I had no idea where else to look.  I left my name at the doctor's office and the hospital.  When I left, I felt so lost without it.  When I got home, Scott said the phone had started to move through Overland Park, away from the way I go home, so he started calling it.  After a couple of calls, it started going straight to voicemail.  Someone had turned it off!  Someone had my phone!  Which was crazy because no one should even have wanted my phone!  It was an old model, a Galaxy 5, the screen was broken (something unknown happened to it in my purse), and it had a pink and rainbow zebra case on it.  It was only worth something to ME!  It was my brain and it had my pictures on it.  It was password protected, so useless to anyone.  We figured a kid had picked it up.  But I was dejected.

Later, I had been looking up ways to wipe it remotely and the tracking app showed it back on and at Longview Lake.  I was so mad!  I wanted my phone, so I said I was going down there.  Scott said if I insisted on going, he would drive me.  One of the moms asked what would happen if it wasn't a kid and the person was violent.  I was feeling pretty violent myself, so I grabbed a big pole we used to take the cover off the patio umbrella.  Scott went to the bedroom and I didn't know he'd gotten his gun out of his gun safe.  He said if things did get violent, he wanted to be prepared to back me up.  In my mind, I saw a crowd standing around at the lake and me using my laptop to set off the phone and catching someone's pocket ringing.  Then explain THAT to a crowd of onlookers!  As we got in the car and zoomed off, we didn't speak and I could hear "Bad Boys" playing in my head.

When we got there, it looked like it was in this brush behind a building.  Adrenaline was pumping and I jumped out with my pole, despite Scott's protest.  Adrenaline took me about halfway into the woods before I got tired and common sense started to ask, "What. Are. You. Doing?"  I fell in a small creek and had recently hurt my back, so I had to use the pole to get back up.  I pressed on in the mud, until I reached a wall of brush with no break in it.  At that point, I decided to call it quits.  I turned around to go back, but decided another route was easier.  It wasn't.  There were stickers so bad, it was like they were reaching out to me.  By the time I came out of the clearing, a little ways down the road from where I went in, I was scratched and cut and muddy.  Scott was gone!  He'd heard a commotion and thought maybe some kids were crashing out of the brush, scared that way by my thrashing, so he went searching.  We decided it was probably deer.  The tracker seemed to be moving, so we drove all over the area, looking.  We even flagged down a park ranger and told him what was going on.  Meanwhile I was sending messages to the phone, hoping to scare the kid: "We just want the phone.  Leave it somewhere and we won't call the police.  We know you're at Longview Lake and we're tracking you."  e could see the battery getting lower and lower, so I finally sent the command to remote wipe the phone before I lost the chance and we left.

That night, I found a tick on me, so Scott checked me and found 3.  The next day, I found another one, so he checked me again and found 3 more.  No idea where they'd been hiding!  One on the back of my thigh itched for a year.  That's when we went to the doctor because I had a bout of depression and extreme exhaustion, plus more symptoms that I never would have connected to ticks.

I miss having adventures with Scott.