Lipstick anyone?

I personally over the years have not felt connected to much, until I realized how appropriate it's entirety is to my whole life existence. SAY THAT TEN TIMES! Phew! It wasn't long after that, I knew I was surrounded by misery I figured out it's one main goal is "company". What was a girl to do when I had tapped out of my job description and wanted more out of the life? I had mustered up 7 years and 7 months time in the first salon I had gotten a job at. It was time I reevaluated the goals I set out before me, not only did I want to own my own salon, but I wanted to continue to learn new things about the hair industry itself. See nails and makeup I could continually practice on myself and teach myself new techniques or tricks. Hair on the other hand I only had myself so I tapped out of my growth there unless I could gain a new environment to push me. I know it must have felt to my coworkers that I was judging myself to be greater than they were......yeah...not an intellectual thought from them, considering they would also have to come from the mindset to continually push themselves to stimulate growth for themselves let alone another person. But alas my mindset was either I'm given more responsibility or I have to find something else. I wanted so badly(even now) to continue to learn and to push past where I was yesterday. I do not like it when surrounded by adults, miserable since birth, who want to wipe whatever bit of a dream you have left to achieve right out of your head!!! It wasn't long after I realized I need continual growth or stimulation to find myself happy and in bliss that I was walking through Kmart here in town and was approached by this young girl about my makeup. Who doesn't love a sweet beautiful young girl telling you that your makeup is fabulous????? She hooked me....don't give her too much credit. My mother had never told me that before, I was starving since birth to hear a positive feedback on my lip liner approach to life. She invited me to join her on an evening to learn about the Mary Kay business she worked at part time because she was a hairstylist! Ha! Shut the Front Door! We had so much in common right off the bat that I was interested in how she supplemented her work money, with her makeup business! You guessed it, I went to the fun little makeup night and was a goner before I even knew it. I signed on the dotted line and began my own Mary Kay business. I was never so excited, I was gonna be RiCh! with tons of lip gloss to boot!!! LIPSTICK for everyone...A ROUND OF BLUSH!!!!! Okay you get it.....I waaaaas on a high like never before because this was new and I needed someone to come along side of me and show me I could achieve something that no one else I knew had done before. Okay I'm going to stop you because right then and there I should have had someone take me aside and SLAP THE SHIT....right out of me. Why you ask?.....go back to the intellectual and emotional talks I've been having with you. Once you understand that home based business's are not solely funded on sales as much as they are led by serving others and recognizing hard work turns into love and service and persistence, someone like myself would not know what to do with more rejection from the world around me while they put me down as I try to climb the ladder of success. I held my head high when I returned to work after a long weekend of explaining it to my mother and family! I thought this is a no brainer- my mother buys Mary Kay and now she can buy from me! I'm an idiot. It isn't so easy to just get family to jump on board your new highway to riches. I should have known my own mother was going to stay loyal to her current lipliner lady. Geesh...hashing this up from my brain is simply depressing. Oh, I moved on...I only had one ridiculously uninterested mother, but the whole world was out there with everyone else's mothers to reach so here goes! So I walked through the salon doors to greet my boss's and tell them the idea I had and moved forward on to create an extra form of income into my pocket!!! Couldn't have gone any less enthusiastically than it did. Had I had anyone able to put a stamp on my forehead it would have said "DUH"......the reaction that I got from the women who barely wore lip stick that I was going to be selling my own, was like watching blades of grass grow. They couldn't have been more distant and bored, almost irritated that I was smiling and sporting the new shade of berry that I had mentioned was on sale and would change their lives forever. I saw no problem trying to get them to spring into action on how they approached their morning routine. Let's Line those lips Ladies! lol I do see now in my head how annoying my perky outlook everyday could have been a nagging sore in their lives, but give me a break, I was trying to make a difference in my life and those less fortunate lips around me. If you know Mary Kay at all, you know years ago they put out pink boxes to allow people to drop info in there to be contacted about skin care and makeup tips. Perfect! I had a small desk area where I was cutting hair everyday and painting nails, that I could sit one box near either area and produce business through people who were already coming into me. I asked them if I could sit one near their stations as well, and was told "No"...we don't solicit customers. Um....I was just in the other room and thought it was a great idea. although that was coming from me the one who wore lipstick...so.....anyway. I started to tell everyone what I was doing and when I was available to do parties outside of the salon hours that I was holding, while still getting to the gym to workout. It was almost impossible to do except for on the weekends and maybe one night a week. Standing all day really takes it out of you. So I didn't let it get me down, but everywhere I went I would put my best foot forward and put on any new makeup sample I had to make me feel beautiful. It worked! I started to generate sales and begin to book parties outside of the salon. Little did I know it was soon going to backfire on me. My age and naivety wasn't helping. I was being used to give free samples and makeup tips out without people actually buying anything at my party. My bubble had been burst. I was devastated. You would think I would get used to being mistreated by women but I don't and never want to. It didn't stop there, I would continue to call the people at work who had put their name in and get dead ends of people changing their minds or not returning my call. It is totally normal actually for all of this to happen. It was just at a time in my life where it was compounding to make it feel worse than it really was. I pushed on just being in the group who bought their makeup for half price and was able to order it for myself. You can't even imagine what it feels like when your local grocery clerk finally asks you to help her with her makeup colors. I was flying high. She was a client of the salon as well and remembered that I had gotten into teaching women how to wear makeup so she thought she ask me. It had been a few months now and I was starting to feel more secure in what I was doing with my small....very small makeup business. I knew where I was working wasn't a healthy place but right now this little side bit was keeping me busy trying to piece it all together. I started to book people on nights I could just walk down from my apartment to work on them instead of facing my one boss all the times she worked. She had started her downward health spiral about 2 years prior to this endeavor I was a part of. So the cosmos collided and one Friday night she cornered me in the back room and asked me why I was booking people earlier in the evening then marking out my book instead of staying later to cut more hair. I had had just about enough of her tough comb routine she was handin' out all over town....so I stood up for myself. I said because I work very hard, more days a week than she did, and wanted an opportunity to do other things. She proceeded to cuss me out (you know all the choice words) for taking advantage of the "system"....what is the "system" anyway? She made it seem as if I was plugging into some sci-fi ponzi scheme. I had decided when the conversation started I wasn't going to take anymore of her bad mommy routine, so now was my time to let her know that. I puffed my chest up like any real broad would have and told her ....I QUIT.

Emotions & their Dysfunction (The First Floor)

I see things in a design so perfect and connected to everything God has created and how we need to understand what to make of these things called "emotions". I've tried to let you in on some of my own emotions or feelings along the way and to get to you laugh and relate to me in those times in my life. To grasp how important this is we need to talk about the foundation of who we are or the basement of our lives. Why????!!! You ask? Must we talk about that to understand emotions? Because it is all tied together. Our foundation is the MOST important part actually, because it sheds light on the next decade or floor of our life. If you are a 3 story house or 30 years old....your first and second floor are completely reliant on the basement or foundation being sound and whole without failure. Now we as humans versus houses are never going to be perfect sound structures, but we are not on those kind of scales anyway, more importantly it's the picture I paint in your mind that the 3rd floor will crumble if the foundation is not attended to. If your foundation is okay, but your first floor is shaky then the 3rd floor crumbles anyway so it's so important for us to understand the basement or foundation is super important, but the close second is the first floor, or our emotions. Look at emotions as being the front door to the house, once you walk in you reveal the real issue. Let's shed light on what life was like for me as a little girl. I was like Mary Poppins..."practically perfect in every way"!! Ha...um no not quite. I can remember all the way back to about 5 or 6 years of age, like when I had my first Dolly. I remember the first house we lived in but not too much other than I was scared of the dark as a little girl. Who isn't a little scared of the dark when you're little? I thought something lived under my bed to eat my feet for years, I used to tuck my feet up into the blanket so my toes couldn't peak out under the bed. Laugh all you want, I realize now how the Spiritual world had a strong connection to me and the house we lived in. I was not so naive to think there wasn't a God, I knew without a doubt he was real, but it didn't take away the sting of the Dark(devil) and the fear of the unknown. I can remember a very pent up mother & workaholic father, without realism or the ability to be in tune to others in the room. I don't remember laughter coming from the home, but then again I was only 6 when we moved from there. I do remember the night I accepted Salvation. I had this little pillow person(actually it was a lime green dragon with pink scales and tail) REMEMBER THOSE THINGS?! They are basically a square pillow with a head or tail sewn on to create the image. I was in love with my girl dragon! She was fierce and could face the night with me and kill all things evil.....or so I thought as I clung to her. I asked Jesus to love me and take me to Heaven no matter what happens here on earth. I must have sounded hilarious as to request him to not renege on our deal. I don't remember sleeping more soundly then or anything, it wasn't like he zapped me free of all my 6 yr. old problems. I don't think that is always what happens to us as humans, but the point that I knew I was talking to him and believed that he existed and I KNEW HE HEARD ME. Until that day I had operated under the terms of my parents home and environment. NO ONE CAN GET TO HEAVEN ON THEIR PARENTS FAITH OR ADDRESS. We're talking about the most important day of my life! Get some enthusiasm here! Jump up and down once or twice, LAURA'S GOING TO HEAVEN! If we're honest at the age of 6, our innocence is what allows us to focus on him because we hold little to no responsibility. Just wiping our dirty behind was a daunting task seldom done with tact and fervor. How can anyone know in that moment that I was destined to see Jesus. You wouldn't if you didn't have a relationship with him and ask him questions and want to know more about the Bible and why he wrote it and left it for us. I understand many people read the Bible and get rules, regulations and shame where I find understanding, relation, intelligence, accountability, humanity , responsibility and, last but certainly not least, a map of human behavior. It is the same across the board without a love for Jesus and learning what it looks like to be living out his will in our lives, we will be destructive. My family and I moved across town to a new home that my parents built shortly after I had accepted salvation. We tried to begin the American dream of that perfect middle class family who throws barbecues on the weekends. It makes for a great picture, but it didn't pan out quite like that. I know we all went to church and we all said we knew Jesus, but how could we truly plug into what God wanted for us when we weren't asking any questions. We didn't seek to find answers by asking the people around us. We went solely on the emotions of what was acceptable in society and what we liked or wanted. THAT'S EMOTIONAL, NOT INTELLECTUAL. It's hard to understand that when I speak from that solid point it is to shed light on how much power our brains have to sift through the facade or crap that dominates human behavior. I'm not putting us down so much as speaking out to gain perspective on the enemy we fight. It wasn't a total family fail, it never is. No one person on the planet or family can fail at everything, every minute, every day. Even that is too hard to do. We are not a fail. GOD intended us to be great. How can we get there if we won't do the work in the brain to understand how powerful emotions are. THAT'S WHY THE DEVIL USES THEM AGAINST US. I know first hand how my emotions can get the best of me considering all three decades of my life are a map or timeline of dysfunction. It was spread out over three different ten year stretches, but all three have a tendency to mirror image one another. The triggers remained the same, and the relationships I was in or around remained similar, so therefore the outcomes or feelings, or toxic behavior continued. I had known for some time the top was going to blow, but there was nothing in my power to deal with it. You learn at each decade how important it is to be aware of what you CAN do, and be in control with your emotions. It wasn't long before those first 4 years past and I was ten years old with a baby brother and a sister. We lived inside a large home with plenty of yard and a lovely neighborhood. I remember it as if I was there. There was a coldness to that home that I just can not shake. I never liked my room that I had been given in the front 3rd floor room. I could never sleep. I was continuously afraid and irritated. I can see it in my head playing out before me the emotional train wreck that was our family. We couldn't communicate. We only had big blowouts, knock down drag em out character blood baths. It's all we knew how to do as one big group. It's true we cannot heal or change without a learning curve or time out to address issues that stem from self worth or ignorance to handling stress. It can sound almost cliche or too simplified, I'm here to tell you it's almost impossible for people to do the work it takes. My family's inabilities to see that our worth as a true unified team was so immeasurable and that we should have never given up on trying to ask the questions or learn to give answers. It wasn't applicable then. It's not applicable now. You can't give something to your children you don't have. My parents don't have the tools in the brain to break down scripture and hear God's word empowering them to see the ultimate plan. Their childhoods were so painful that walls built up inside to protect them are so great. We have taken the brain work out and the ability to ask why, what would happen or what can I do? We don't reach out to learn what can I do in this great big world to make a difference. For children to feel a difference at home it's going to need to come from mom and dad's plugging into their own brains and remembering the decades of their lives to relate to their children's wants and needs. I am thankful for the beginning that I did have, because it always helps me relate to what we all become without the Lord. We can not achieve the greatness he has waiting for us in our brains until we give everything over to him. Coming from the age I am now, I am certainly not done putting all the puzzles pieces down. What I do know for certain is my 34 year old self is a product of building on my ten year old self. I could never have achieved the age of 34 without it. I can't erase it and I can't discard it. I am the total sum of those years. In those tender years of my life, things happened to not allow the nurturing of my brain to develop. So in that case my brain went on and built up walls to deal with the inadequacies of tools to deal with stress. I didn't always understand my role in praying to the Lord to help. Our role is to be IN A RELATIONSHIP WITH GOD. You tell me how we have messed up families, businesses, towns, all across the world cause we're all in a relationship with God. I know better than to sit and buy that. It's not logical to think that people know who God is and how to plug into a relationship with him based on their current relationships. I know how painful it can be, to be totally lost in the twilight zone and to think not one person on the planet understands you. We have a lot of work to do to clean up the brain so it can function properly to heal and to move on, to become such a great tool in sifting through evil. I know with my own experience we are given everything we need to achieve and have lasting relationships once we realize our part. It isn't easy to do. I'd love to be your guide on this journey. Walk along side of me and learn how I tackled these demons one by one.....

Laying the foundation

I would assume if you asked one of my clients now if I was always talkative you would get a response that of course she was!!! In all fairness I chose an industry that needs you to help the client decide what style would look best on them, and then find out whether or not they can achieve that style! Hardest part of my job is empowering the person to love themselves enough to get up everyday and decide to look their best so that everyone can get the best from them. Maybe I have a rosy colored glasses approach on this, but I like to believe that every person created was given a beginning by God and he or she deserves our very best everyday. We as people do not accept less than stellar when it comes to calling on Him(God) whether in tragedy, or we just want something we haven't done the work for. I am no different than you when it comes to those thoughts, I just like to believe that was part of the reason God left us "Scripture" so we had something to relate our human behavior back to. Most of the people I have talked to over the years talk about scripture like a "shame game", or a cultish code of conduct that once deviated from causes sudden (spiritual) death. No exaggeration needed that's pretty on point. I'M SICK OF IT! What have we gotten from not reading the words in a metaphorical state (instead of literal legalism). Why couldn't we see why He had chosen those exact stories to share out of the millions of mistakes history has made? Not to mention a look at what Satan would do with the info to twist us up and to lay out our demise. It appears we wouldn't take the time to figure out what he could get from the ability to provoke us to use our freewill similarly to the way Eve did. We do remember how things ended for her don't we?? Yes, she was kicked out of paradise, but how many of us took the time to sift through all that info from God's perspective. He had given everything to the angels and Lucifer(Satan) decided he wanted more, (seriously?) ......He then gave Adam and Eve existence to live in a paradise he created for them. From my standpoint I have seen that the deciding factor here which could have been a real game changer was................wait for it.........COMMUNICATION!! Not one time did Eve decide to ask a question about whether or not there were 2 deaths? God had mentioned death if she ate of the Tree of Good and Evil, and Satan tells her no death if she eats of the Tree of Good and Evil. The logical approach to her just eating is that she would have asked questions to clarify, whether or not she had called in God's opinion on the matter, IF she had asked Satan a question he would have had to operate under God's terms. Yes, yes, he let her be approached by him, but remember we weren't in the garden. Most certainly before the fall, we operated under totally different pretenses. She was able to talk to this animal on legs, but didn't get alarmed THAT THIS SERPENT of all the creatures comes out of nowhere after she manages to leave the only man alive with her in the garden somewhere else, and there IS NO QUESTIONS ASKED??????? Two times death has been mentioned and never once does she ask "are there 2 different kinds of death"? She doesn't phone up God and ask him what the deal is with this "thing" talking her into the "NO NO fruit"?? HOW ARE WE ANY DIFFERENT THAN HER?(well I'm clothed for one thing), but more importantly how are we to learn to communicate well, if the angels and the first 2 humans chose not too??? I mean at what point do we read the scripture and begin to wonder what the backstory is, the underlying stage set to show the difference between a Sovereign God and his amazing creation? I don't think we give ourselves enough credit first of all. I believe that He intended for us to be awesome but not perfect like himself, not to mention use all of our instincts and all of emotions. It is just not done in society. HOW CONVENIENT! I've picked up on the fact that since I was a little girl the emotions we continually put away or lie about are "Anger" and "Fear". Anger is just a big old front for fear anyway so really just fear on steroids. Remember that God made sure we would have 365 times written down in the Bible for us that we are to "Fear Not". We seem to use that like a band-aid on a bullet wound.(thank you Taylor) We throw that line out so often to others so we don't need to try to understand their current situation and help them sift through the crap. Not all of us, but not enough of us for sure, use the experience in our own lives to uplift others to see through the storm. If we are to always see scripture as bumper lanes at a bowling alley then you don't ever get the opportunity to really believe your game. Similar to just walking through the church doors or Bible studies and never opening up about what's really going on in your life. I guess now is a good time as ever to share my bowling average is a whopping 16. I don't see it as a high score anyway, to me it's the whole experience ever since I walk through the door. From the plush carpet to the wretched striped shoe that never should have been invented (growing any number of viruses), to the stale pretzel bites and the ever continuing laughter coming from my lane as I meet new people and we all glare at how bad my game really is. See life is a bit of messy ups and downs. We don't get to have the bumpers up as Christians or we can not truly relate to another human being on the planet and how they need the Lord. We'd have to sit in total contemplation as to how the first two people who walked WITH him in the garden, didn't choose to ask for his opinion on the matter at hand, then how would we in a society which has to draw their source FROM the "Holy Spirit". IF we truly would put our trust in him, with REAL belief he created us intentionally along with intellect to understand our freewill. Freewill is continually misunderstood. It was so we could absolutely know him and just because He created us doesn't mean we have to choose him. That is no stab at our Creator rather a flashlight on what freewill is. It isn't going to be as easy as praying it away, once the damage is done to each one of us as children in our environments, the brain takes over and starts to build up walls against the logical mind. Just another major consequence for not choosing to understand God's love and applying it to our children. Our brains do not develop coping mechanisms/ tools to work through stress properly as we grow older. We can learn to work through those walls and tear them down for good, but it takes a lot of hard work and intellectual push from someone else who has gone through it. Some people believe a lot of the dysfunction in the brain comes from DNA gone rogue. There is some truth in that if you factor in water and food supplies along with drugs. But more importantly we are dealing with the way the human mind copes in a time where the body is starved of security in the Lord. Love is absolutely crucial to help each and every person on the planet develop an understanding of his Creator God and our purpose he set before us. This is a subject where I disagree with a lot of people, who like myself, call themselves a Christian. I have a very gritty past and am so thankful for any future I have left. I didn't do it all right, and I had to learn a lot of hard lessons when it came to making mistakes and being angry or out of control. I wouldn't change it for one minute. It was REAL LIFE. It's the difference between living in Heaven or waiting to be taken there. While on this earth, I am going to experience REAL things void of Love while I allow his Holy Spirit to reside in me. Our lives are the sum of time waiting til His return, but in the mean time while we are trudging through our childhood, teen years, young adult, elder lives we are going to experience freewill EVERY SINGLE DAY against a world continually fading away from our Creator. Had we thought at all how Satan would devour us while we had thought he wasn't around or really existed, we could have worked against him. I feel as if the media undertone in the Christian household was tainted long long ago with the unreal aspect of a perfect ride til death or Christ's return. If this doesn't pertain to you then skip this post, seriously don't want you wasting time relating to the other 99% of us out here. LOOK AROUND YOU! When is the last time you heard sin, temptation, mistakes, anger, fear, crimes being talked about as if we truly understood why it's out there working against us. We don't view the brotherhood as the ability to fight our enemy. More or less who we like in our small groups and who likes us back. I find less and less of an empathetic society ready to fight the enemy for anyone out there needing the encouragement to stand up against the Devil and his demise to the human existence. Can we beat this?? You better believe it baby! I'm living proof that you can take a stand against the aggressive brutal intellectual stabbings that the Devil continually dishes out. Who, you might ask, would he start with so that he could take down a whole society and so few would enter the kingdom of Heaven? Some of you out there might begin to say; well, he would hit up the wealthy or the government. Um......once again it would take deep intellectual thought as to why "government" would have ever been needed had people managed themselves properly to use their heads!!!!! Government comes out of the laziness of people to allow someone else control other than God for your immediate needs. I'm not saying all bad is in it, but it surely doesn't spawn sweet anything. Had we understood how powerful the Holy Spirit was living inside of us we could very well have never needed government to take control but rather the heeding of the Lord himself directly to us. Crazy thought I know, but let that sit in your mind a bit before writing me off as some crazy hairspray huffin' hussy. Like I was saying, I would hit up the church. Is that gasssssppping I hear??????? Really? You think the church is off limits??? Now I'm not talking the metaphorical church made up of the Christians all over the world tethered together by the BLOOD OF JESUS CHRIST, rather the brick and mortar building structure that would end up being more business than booming for Jesus. How can I say all of this and sleep at night? Easily, you learn to sit and understand your enemy when you believe in the whole story of the Bible. It wasn't long into my childhood the hand writing on the wall wasn't just the crayon markings I had left earlier in retaliation to the atmosphere. Rather the entity that is the Devil, I would try to understand as he takes down society one turtleneck at a time. So my journey continued in such a way that I could stand in the midst of evil places and see why people would bury their pain in a drink or a lady they didn't even know. The bigger question was why I could stand in the middle of a Church and feel the same thing, and it was as if the Devil had cloaked this just right. No one was the wiser as everyone standing around was one decision away from implosion.........

Moving On......

I hadn't factored in that everything I had done up until that point in my life stemmed from the "Truman Show' facade. We had come to believe was the path that we had to walk to understand Christ. No one knows how to talk about God in an open forum without sounding like an under paid pastor or some Jesus Freak who has waaaayyy too many bumper stickers on his car. I never saw us connecting to an understanding that we were going to have hard times on this journey but we'd have to find a way to work through it or there was no amount of ice cream and Hallmark that would touch what was left of us. The brain is a funny thing, we can't see it and don't refer to it much due to the idiosyncrasy of our society to put more emphasis on the "Heart". FOLKS WE'RE STILL TALKING ABOUT THE BRAIN! For most of my life we didn't have a clue what would happen if we had taken accountability and responsibility out of the equation. Sooo you mean to tell me we arrive at our truer better self along the highway to Heaven???? Where do we come up with this horse crap??? First of all it isn't logical, nor is it practical to find better behavior along some unknown path in your life and find self worth or self confidence based on not becoming that person rather picking them up along side the road. Let's put this into a different perspective...........you aren't a combination of absolute miracles from God himself, rather a freewill of decision making that he can penetrate whenever he feels. Stop taking the human responsibility of this walk called life out of the equation. If God had wanted little chubby drones walking around with their heads in their cell phones waiting on his miracles he's got it! I see it rather that we need to get in the game, fight the passive aggressive behavior with questions as to how that is going to be a forward movement or blessing to the whole community to stay away from a poor decision or to find the nearest counselor to ask how one might go about it differently. Oh no that would make to much sense and allow the whole human race to begin to see the use of their brain in a way like never before. How convenient! We would be too private of a community to ask someone a question as to what is going down in our lives. Do you really think you're the only person out there struggling with well....ANYTHING? Don't answer that. The truth is as I was walking this journey called life I was facing many sides of myself but finding myself in situations that mirror imaged that last bit of crap I just came out of. Is that nice? Well I don't really care if you think it's nice or not. There just isn't a whole lot of sweet sensitive words to describe whackjobs that love Jesus but can't hold on an intellectual conversation. lol Other than Christians.... Now NOw NOW! Settle down, it's not an attack on Christ or his glory or his sovereignty, this is strictly word play on titles given. Let's face it the description is just plain old people. End of discussion. Don't feel sorry for us as a people, we're exactly where any of us would be if we don't face the REAL difference between knowing God and speaking of him which comes from a conviction of action to accountability or a responsibility to take pride in making sure we are held to a standard of self will to open up. Who would have known in the moment I closed the door on one dysfunctional group of people, I let the flood gates open wide for a new group of dizzies. People who could creep up into the ghost pains that were there from the slight removal of my family. Oh yeah, I got rid of one meddling, over bearing controlling mother only to get boss's that would split the responsibilities of me down the middle. One took the nurturing friendly end, one took the "I own you, you are mine" end. I didn't see the fear or anger I had towards her attitude for a long time. The reality is I could genuinely function inside something difficult. It's all I knew really, whether it be at home, holidays or ANYWHERE ELSE. So I guess on some whacked out parallel, I thought if I could survive her wrath or miserable "I hate my life and where it's gone" undertone I might be able to move on with my life. NOPE. Whether wading in shit a mile high or a couple inches, you stink. I am not blaming her for how she began to show her true fear of never getting out of this tough industry. I mean put yourself in her shoes, she had already been working for years before I showed up on the scene. I was her ticket out, and for a number of years, as I was working on myself and just plain fooling around and wasting time, it appeared I would be her puppet as long as she could keep me down under her thumb. She had no clue I'd saw my own arm off before putting myself through all that again. I began to wise up year after year, eventually realizing that I wasn't being stimulated like I had been in the beginning. I had pushed myself right past the level of contentment that they were currently at. Please don't be alarmed, that's no different than every other human I've seen in the last 16 years!!! It isn't unheard of to sit back and watch the years creep by, while surviving the day and waking up to the same hum drum existence. If there is one underlying theme in all of this, it is , I WILL NOT PARTICIPATE IN THAT KIND OF LIFE. I refuse to believe in this martyr approach I see everyone put on. That we are some kind of spiritually incapable group of babbling idiots that cannot overcome pure evil. Not alone, but with the help of the Holy Spirit we can. Not by walking through the church doors or not swearing when you stub your toe on the end of the bed.....but rather an intense walk with the Lord that begins to pierce the darkness around you so vividly that people cannot do anything but ask you "What the Heck is different about you"....... Forgiveness, Jesus, True Understanding. Oh my goodness! Those 3 words just put chills down my spine, because no matter how easy they are to spell out, speak, and give to others you cannot begin to understand the intellectual freedom I have in walking this planet to help others see their full potential and then the road to recovery which will feel like sudden death. No joke. Did you really think there was some fabulous christian algorithm that I applied to all the dysfunction in my brain to clear up any road blocks???????!!!!!!! Um let me clear that up for you.....no. I had to do the hard work of living through the status quo of aggression that we all have to deal with the moment we step down off the porch. Lets come from the mindset that I began a journey 16 years ago that lead me through an emotional roller coaster only for me to step off the ride to understand it wasn't emotional at all. It was "INTELLECTUAL SPIRITUAL" . What is that??? Well, just everything.....it's everything we deal with in our lives, I believe based on my total life experience I can take each individual through a series of questions leading back to their childhoods, stemming from their birth, and beginning a deep look inside the brain to reveal the walls built up to keep the person from feeling overwhelmed, neglected, ignored, or abused. I see what beauty we have as a total sum of the people working for the common good of understanding Love and what we get when we don't have it. You can't expect your neighbor to possess what you do not also have. Or can you??? If you're honest about most of the thoughts we have as a society we continually expect our neighbor to have something we do not possess. Although not a logical approach to humans and how we operate, it hasn't stopped you yet.....