Love is a choice - A letter to a friend

I’m a deep thinker, I have conversations in my head about what I think is right or wrong or the way things should be. I think about people and their actions and wonder why they do the things they do, what is their motivation for doing this or that. I consider others words and compare them with what their body is saying because our bodies speak a language all its own and sometimes what we say isn’t truly what we feel. Sometimes someone’s words will affect me so deeply that I will think about everything they’ve said and I find myself analyzing them, hoping against hope that they are doing what is in their best interest. It’s funny that I can totally screw up my whole life but then worry so much about the actions someone may be taking in their own lives when I am not so sure it is in their best interest. The truth is I really don’t know what in anyone’s best interest least of all my own but in my heart I don’t want to see anyone make the same mistakes I have.

Most of you will read this and say, “what the heck is she talking about now?” lol Those of you who know me, know that I tend to ramble aimlessly so just disregard this as I am really just speaking to one person and they know who they are. This is for someone who will talk to anyone in hopes that they will answer the questions they are so desperately seeking. When we are constantly questioning things and keep asking the same questions over and over again but of different people it is because we don’t want to rely on what our own answer to the questions are. Sometimes we just want to want something and even if it’s not exactly what we want we will settle rather than having to stop now and start over again.

So we keep hearing that love is a choice and yes even I have said the same….love IS a choice, it really is. Consider this;

In the beginning love is all consuming but in reality love is a choice we make once the flames begin to die down.

Love doesn’t begin as a choice and if it does then we must really be screwed up to look at it that way.

Love sustains life - Love is what gets us through when everything else seems to fail around us.

Love becomes a choice when it would be easier to walk away or when the rose colored glasses break and we see the reality of what life is truly like.

Choosing to love means that regardless of person or thing that we will act in a manor of love. Acting in a manor of love means that even if we hate something, we choose instead to respond not in kind but in love knowing that to do so, makes “US” better people.

The reason we choose to love is because we are not God and we cannot love unconditionally like God does. God is love and the best we can hope for is to be Christ-like but in truth we still live in a human body and no matter how hard we try we will fail because to succeed would mean that we never needed a Savior to begin with. Jesus died on the cross because no matter how hard we try we remain in a human body unable to help ourselves from our own corruption. Accepting Jesus means that we realize that no matter what, we will always remain corrupt but through Him, God can see us as perfected. BUT we are still man and we still sin and we still live in human form and will continue to be this sinner until Jesus returns to take us home. No matter what we choose in life we still will remain this person who cannot be perfect in God’s eyes, the only difference is that “Jesus” overshadows us in Heaven so God can no longer see our sinful selves. In simple terms, you can continue to “work” hard at washing the dirt from your skin but tomorrow it will be back again so instead of “working” to wash it off, why not rest in knowing that you have chosen to cover the dirt with the cloth of Jesus? Why do people continue to punish themselves when they have already been forgiven? Why make yourself follow all these rules and then beat yourself up when you fail not realizing that Jesus took the rules to the cross with Him so that you don’t have to beat yourself up every day when you fail to live according to something you were not perfected for to begin with? Jesus is freedom from sin, freedom from rules!!

Ok, so I got off on a tangent there and didn’t mean to do that…so are you still with me at this point? Now what was I talking about? Oh yeah, Love, or rather – choosing to love. I think I’m ADHD so you will have to bear with me because I just get all confused with all these thoughts, I mean you’d think that I’d have a head the size of Texas with all these thoughts getting lost swarming around in here but there is a point to this or a method to my madness…hehe

The more I have thought about this and I have, I have thought about this every day since we first talked about it, I realize that maybe I don’t agree with this idea that love is a choice. Yes, I can say that love is a choice but heck I’ve been married for awhile now and staying in love is a choice, we really do have to choose to love whenever everything else is crazy because sometimes it’s hard to love someone after the newness wears off. Yes, the newness will wear off so realize that now.

But at first, should there ever be in your mind a decision to love someone? I don’t think so. I mean you just know… there is a passion and a desire when you are in love, you wake up thinking about the object of your desire and you can’t wait to see them each day. Their nearness causes you to feel breathless; I mean they literally have the ability to almost take your breath away. They are the first person you want to share your good news with, the last person you ever want to hurt, they are the person who you can sit with and be content without saying nothing at all, when you are around other people you immediately find some trait no matter how minute that is similar to that person and it makes you feel good about the person you love. You compare everything and everyone to that person and know just how lucky you are, you are so in tune with that person that even when your alone, you are still together in mind because it’s not just about “you” anymore but it’s about “us”, you are not attracted to others and if you are it is only in the sense that they totally remind you of the person you are in love with but you immediately recognize this and smile at the thought of the one that you love, you don’t doubt it, question it, or run from it, you run towards it knowing that this is what is right for you. You realize that you are willing to compromise for this person and you can take much more than you ever thought you could but you also realize that the compromises you make do not alter the morals and values you have but enhance them, and together you both become better people. You also learn that what your fairytale thoughts of love were are not always true and that we each must come together in love to form one person with the extension of two lives and learn to blend them together.

I just want to say that the choice to love also has to do with accepting each person for their imperfect self. You cannot expect your fairytale of what love and life should be to mold with someone else’s expectation especially when there are other variables involved. Take kids for instance….you fall in love with someone who has kids and this changes everything, no matter where you think your place in this equation should be you have got to understand that kids come first. If the person you love loves you more than their children what kind of person do you think they are? Would you want someone to love you more than they love themselves? Look at the world around us, is there not someone you know who is in an abusive relationship because they don’t love themselves? Haven’t you ever thought that if they loved themselves just a little more then they wouldn’t or couldn’t allow this person to abuse them? What if they allowed this person to hurt their children, would you have respect for them?

You cannot truly love another person until you learn to accept yourself and love yourself for the person God made you to be. You also cannot be happy with someone else until you learn to be happy with yourself so if you are tired of being alone then how do you expect someone to be with you if even you don’t want to be with yourself? I know maybe that doesn’t make sense but think about it. If you love yourself then you know what it is to love yourself enough to know you don’t have to be number 1 all the time. Love God first, then yourself, then someone else but remember that God said to love the little children too. I am not saying that a person should put their children above everything else I am just saying that a person who made a commitment and brought a child into this world should be ready to lay their life down for that child, should be willing to protect that child at all costs, and should put their child’s needs above their own or anyone else’s. I am not saying idolize the children, I am saying take care of what God has given you….God gave a person this life and it is that person’s responsibility to care for and raise that life until they are old enough to take care of themselves and that is their purpose in life.

I don’t know if you can make sense of any of this. Please know that I am not saying you are making a mistake I am just saying that you have to look at everything and know what it is within your heart, your answers have got to come from you. The minute we decide to include another person into our lives and we make an official commitment to that person we will forever change that person’s life by our decisions. If our decisions are selfish or unrealistic then in the end not only will we hurt ourselves but the person or persons who we made the commitment to. I do want to say that in the last couple times I have seen you, you seem more content and at ease with your decision and since we have not talked about this much lately you may have already found the answers within yourself. I also want to say that I can look back over my own life and say to you that I wish I had not done this or I could have done that differently. The truth is everything in my life lead up to something else and if each event had not occurred then the next one may not have happened either so how can I say I wish I had changed this when what was good may not have happened if I had? Life is about taking chances and if we sit on the sidelines of life questioning our options one day we may look back and realize that life passed us by because we never took the chance to get involved. So maybe you just need to stop asking questions and live life…I think you deserve to do that now, you have sat on the sidelines long enough don’t ya think?????

Dear Reader, if you are still with me at this point even though you know this message was not meant for you I hope that something I said will help you in your journey through life. I hope that if you disagree with anything I say here you will post a comment because I am always open to seeing things from another’s perspective. I also want to say that I don’t think I know everything or anything for that matter, I’m just a thinker and sometimes I feel led to put my thoughts to words, maybe for myself or maybe because they may help someone someday. I totally welcome your comments and thank you for reading my blog. To the person I wrote this to: No one knows who you are or why I am writing this, I know lots of people all over the world so the only reason you even know it is to you is because I am telling you beforehand where to find this. I wrote this here because I didn’t want to type a letter to you for someone else to get a hold of and worry about. I don’t ever, ever want to hurt another person intentionally or unintentionally. I only wish the best life has to offer for you both. I know that God will bless you in your decision and if you will follow His lead and understand that Jesus already did the work for you, you will live a life full of blessings in the knowledge that you don’t have to make it about works to gain entrance to Heaven but just love as you have been loved.

Peace out

Sierra's Back Pictures

My daughter had 2 spine surgeries recently to fix her scoliosis and she is doing well...it's still a long recovery but each day I see improvements. I wanted to share with you all the side by side pictures of her spine before and after for comparison.

This first one is her back before surgery and then one after.


Big difference huh? Of course she has lost about 20lbs. since the first pic was taken but look at the shoulders, she actually has shoulders. And she has the v look instead of the curved, pinched look now.

These next ones are xrays before and after:


This last one is just a picture of the scar she has on the side. They went in through her front side to take out a rib and a disc and then the following week they went in through her back to do the big surgery. This is why she had two surgeries.

A wonderful Gift

As many of you know I am on Youtube where I have met so many wondeful people. One of the people is an awesome singer and her band, PedroBand, has a CD out which I have. Sierra loves the cd so much that she borrowed it and I can't seem to get it back from her...lol Anyway, Taunia the friend from Youtube, took the time to record a video on youtube of a song she dedicated to Sierra, actually I feel gifted from this as well. She is an amazing talent and the song nearly brought me to tears which is amazing since I don't cry much!

Taunia had just had surgery herself a few days ago so this was a very special treat. Here is the video:



If you'd like to hear more of her work you can go to this website: http://www.divataunia.com/

Finally a date for Sierra's Surgery

Well we officially have a date for surgery. She will be having 2 surgeries instead of one because her back is so curved to one side they will need to go into the front and then again into her back to put the rod in her back. She will be having the first surgery on April 28th and the 2nd one will be on May 5th. Due to the length between surgeries she will probably be in the hospital for 2 weeks or longer and she will be at Kosair.

She went to Dr. Boone's(cardiologist) office today to do a check up prior to surgery and he said her heart was doing great so this is one last thing to think about. She also got her braces off today which was the highlight of her day! This isn't something I want to see happen, I wish I could change it somehow take it all away so she never had to go through surgery again but its not in my hands but in God's. I am terrified but yet I know that God has always taken care of her.....somehow we will get through this. It's a time such as this that I find myself taking stock of my life and praying that what terrible things I have done He will forgive me for so that it doesn't cause her to have a bad time of it. Yet, I also know that it doesn't work that way and I guess my wrongs don't cause her life to be in turmoil but I am only human and cannot help think that way!

She is very adamant about her desire to go down to our future home and stay during her recovery...actually it wouldn't be just for her recovery I would imagine her and I would just go ahead and move but I fear being so far away from Kosair so I dunno what to do. I cannot see her going down there until she is at least on the mend but we will just wait and see. Of course this means she has less than 3 wks left of school now so she is always excited to get out of school..haha

Well that's it for now I will write more later. Take care! Kellie

Time seems to always being flying by!

I am such a slacker! I need to update this more but I seem to have too many projects going at once and never enough time to tend to them all....somewhere something is always getting left out of the loop as is the case with my blog.

So what's been up? I've been spending alot of time on my youtube videos for one thing, I also started another blog which seems to be woefully lacking in my attention, and then of course theres life. Life is good I'd say. Lucy is almost 2 months old and doing great and her parents have decided to make it official. On Saturday March 15, 2008 John Daniel and Tori will be getting married in a very small ceremony. I know they wanted to do it big but now isn't the time and they felt like it was more important to get married instead...I agree. It's hard to believe that my son is old enough to get married, let alone have a child but he is. He recently found him a good job and I hope that he truly loves it. They are good parents and I am so proud of both of them. I am not the best of granny so far as I have been sick and not spent much time with Lucy. I need to take her for a day and give them some alone time but my gosh it's been so long since I took care of a babykins that I worry about that.

Sierra goes to her spine doctor next week and we plan on him setting a date for surgery for April. She has to get it done now so that she won't be starting in a new school next year late...I don't want that for her because it makes it harder to start off late in the year in a new school. She has been going to therapy for 3 weeks now and has lost 2 additional pounds for a total of 12lbs. gone so far. She is beginning to have a shapely figure and is happy with that. The therapy will help to make the rest of her muscles stronger while she will not be able to rely on her back muscles during recovery. I know that this is something she doesn't want to go through but I am very proud of her for stepping up to the plate and being strong about all that she will have to endure. She is a very strong girl.

I am at a total lose of 66 lbs. now and my body is really beginning to show the lose, my skin is saggy and my boobs are getting pretty flat...thank God for plastic surgery cuz I am going to need it when I am all done:) I'm still struggling with my food and sometimes I still think I have a stricture but I am not sure. I was suppose to go to the doctor yesterday but I didn't make it. One thing that is crazy is my sleep pattern, I tend to sleep for a couple hours and then pull an all nighter...it's not that I want to but it's that I can't seem to sleep even with medicinal help.

Jeff and Todd will be 19 yrs. old on Friday and Sue will have a birthday on Saturday, the same day the kids are getting married. We are planning on getting Todd and spending a couple days with him, we have not had him since December so it will be good to have him home. Jeff and Cody broke up so he is single again and needs to find a hobby...gosh we love him but it has taken a toll on us and our alone time, I miss my time with Bobby and we are in a time where we really need to focus on our relationship because of all the changes and stress we have been under. Come July I will be in Bardstown full time and he will be in Louisville full time finishing up the house getting it ready to rent out so its crucial for us to devote some time to ourselves as the following months will be so difficult.

Well I guess that is it for now, I am making a new dish so I need to go finish it up. Please be sure to check out my new blog.... http://losingtolive.blogspot.com and also check out my 50 videos I have on youtube as well I have some pretty silly stuff up there...I guess my silly side is beginning to show now that I am not so worried about what people will think of this fat girl being silly. http://youtube.com/users/bakersbazaar

Peace Out!

Kellie