It’s been one of those days I didn’t accomplish ANYTHING that I wanted to accomplish. *sighs*  All my plans gave way to other things.  Oh well, I will have to kick it into high gear tomorrow. After all, “G” and Elizabeth will be here around 5:00!  And yes, I am SO excited for them to come!  Even if it will be a short visit.

I slept way too late.  8:30am , but I did feel a whole lot better today than the last few days.  And I moved slowly this morning, thinking I’ll catch up this afternoon.  But it didn’t happen.

Dell was back at his old store here in town for the first time today. He feels rather bittersweet about this, as do I.  It’s good for him because he doesn’t have the approx. 2.5 hour per day drive time he did at his store in the city, but he liked his own store in the city so much better.  For me it was a way to move on beyond here.  Sell the property, move to the city, experience a new life of sorts.  But it didn’t happen. And I’m right back where I started.  I’d grumble, like George Baily did (of famed “It’s A Wonderful Life), but I won’t.  Disappointed as I may feel I totally trust that God sees into the future and there must be a reason I am still here and we backtracked and didn’t move forward.  Sometimes tho it is hard to trust and have faith.  But back to this being his first day back.  He had lunch with Jane and I today. I invited him as I knew he’d be feeling out of sorts.  I think he appreciated it.  He’s heard rumors of “lunch with Jane day” now since I quit my job at the school and could finally have lunch with old friends again.  Now he’s experienced it.

After lunch Jane and I took off for our favorite craft store.  I shouldn’t have. As I handed my debit card to pay I shouldn’t have.  But I did………*sighs*

I headed home, thinking I needed to head home, then go see my Banker for some financial advice on where to head from here.  I still have tons of money that will be going out on the trashed out house, and am trying to figure out the best way to manipulate funds to pay for it.  But once home Elizabeth was needing some assistance with her computer in Toledo.  So I spent a couple hours on the phone trying to help. In the end I don’t think I was that much help, but for awhile, I thought it’d work what I was suggesting. She ended up getting the best advice from the Geek Squad, via telephone assistance which came from India.  What a global society we live in these days! Gesh!  We laughed tonight when she told me about the language barrier in trying to get her computer up and going.  A light-hearted conversation for sure!

I wonder if I continue to be in denial about this whole soul mate story thing I am living? Or the journey I am walking?  Thoughts today went to the craziest story to think of.  Prince Charles, and Princess Diana, and of course, let’s not forget about Camille.  I don’t think there can be any doubt that Prince Charles was madly in love with Camille.  Was it from the time they first met? I don’t have the answer to that as I’ve never really studied too much about the prince, but I do know that when he married Princess Diana he only did it because she fit the criteria a princess must meet to marry the prince.  Camille was NOT “throne” worthy, or so according to the queen.  So the prince married someone else.  It made her life miserable!  Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely adored Princess Diana!  I also believed she tried to be all that the position required her to be.  But when you live with someone who is longing for someone else, especially when in the public eye, and that someone else can’t stay away from where his heart longs to be………….well, Princess Diana was pretty miserable.  Everyone knows the story, as eventually the prince did end up with what I would deem more-than-likely his twin soul.  If I’m not mistaken they are together now, and living life together, finally.  But think how many lives were messed up because he wasn’t allowed to be with her from the beginning?  Or is that just the way destiny works?  Do we all have a destiny that is set in stone?

Some people believe we do.  Some believe we create our own destiny, and some people believe there is a pre-destined course for us, but we have free will to choose whether or not we will follow it.  So I thought a lot about this today. I still believe that we do have a destiny.  We begin at point A, and there is ONLY one ending, which is point C.  But where free will comes in is point B which can be traveled anyway we choose.  Some choose the straight and narrow, thus a much easier journey, and then some of us *points finger at self* chooses lots of mountains and valleys and side roads!  All sorts of twists and turns and lots of crossroads and “Ts” in the road! And when I finally reach point C, which one day I will, I will have had ONE HECK of a journey!    So I guess in a way Prince Charles chose not the straight and narrow either.  And Princess Diana must not of either…….it gets really deep doesn’t it?

I got an email from my friend Vicki today after I had emailed her and asked her how psychic she was feeling these days.  My friend Vicki tends to have some spiritual insight like I do sometimes.  She wrote back and told me that with the latest chapter of this journey I am walking, surely this story will one day be a BEST SELLER!!!  “But be sure to write how you really feel about Chris getting married.”  Her email made me laugh at first, but like everything else I started thinking about what she was really saying.  I thought I had written how I felt about it, but perhaps I didn’t?

If I had to describe how I felt about it, I really had to think.  The second I found out for sure he was married,  I think I felt sick to my stomach.  Like a huge let down or something. Like someone had just punched me.  But I kept an upper stiff lip.  “Okay, so that is it.  It was never him that was reading the journal and sharing with me.  I have been some STUPID delusional person the past 8 years!  And now what do I do?”  Those were my first thoughts.  Actually, I think I was numb.  But Dell was outside waiting for me to rake some more leaves.  I had only come into the house to check email and take a 5-minute break. I just happened to go to his site in that 5-minute break looking for something. It was actually odd how I was re-directed then to a different site where I found the truth.  Now, I had to go outside, and be normal.  It was a sort of nice day, the sun was out. It was cold, but raking leaves the cold didn’t bother me that much because of the sun.  Except now, I felt real chilled. I had lived so long believing he and I had this special connection and now, it was like someone had just unplugged this light that shined on it and it was all dark.  He was with someone else.

I then began to try to convince myself it was okay! I was free!!  I didn’t have this huge responsibility on my shoulders anymore of sharing love and light with the world. I could just disappear into the shadows and become a faded memory.  I would go back to who I was 8 years ago. I’d start spending all my free time of not writing in praying/meditating, writing private journals, and becoming a loner. Yeah, I was feeling pretty sorry for myself as I raked those leaves, Dell yelling at me because I just wasn’t doing it right.  At first I didn’t mind him yelling, as I know he tends to be a very frustrated type person.

As the night wore on, I think the shock began to wear off a bit.  Ouch.  I just couldn’t think about this, I couldn’t!  Dell was by now working on the new hutch for my TV cabinet.  I happened to mention to him, “I think I’ll put the Christmas tree up.”  Notice I said, “I think.”  When I did he went OFF on me!  Yelling, screaming how he’d have to go get everything out, that I needed to make my mind up what it is I wanted!  That was the proverbial straw let me tell you!  “Never mind, I didn’t say I was going to do it, I said, “I was thinking about it!”  And all that had been held inside those past few hours caught up with me.  I burst out crying!  “I’m SO tired of you treating me like this.  Like I’m stupid or something!  I’m human too you know!”  And I ran to my bedroom and began sobbing.  When I look back over it, it was probably unfair that I made him believe I had the break down because he was yelling at me, however, I really do get tired of that.  When he realized he had hurt me, he came and apologized, telling me not to take it personal.  He gets frustrated too easily and he’d try to watch it.  I just reminded him that I was human and perhaps I had my own issues I was trying to deal with.  It’s as close to the truth as I came.

The rest of the night I was alone.  In the hot tub, sipping that new wine I love, and praying.  A lot.

Falling to sleep that night I tried not to think about it.  It was over, I had been deceived, I had to go back to being who I was before the journey began and I didn’t know how.  Can we ever really go back?

Awakening the next morning was heartbreaking.  It’s one of those you want the pain to go away and believe it was some nightmare you had.  I had written the night before what I was feeling, but it was going to be a private journal!  No way was I going to share it, after all, I had sworn off the journal on-line FOREVER!  And I began my day.  It was one of those “going through the motions, stiff upper lip, type days, but just underneath the surface is that sick feeling of loss.  Sometime early that morning Dell did it again!  He snapped at me and once again the tears just flowed.  He apologized, I cried for awhile anyway, and he promised me he was trying hard not to be so impatient. It probably wouldn’t have mattered to me so much had I of not been so broken hearted.

I couldn’t help but notice every time I checked my STAT button Sunday he, or at least the hit I had come to know for well over 3 years as him, had been there during the middle of the night, and once again later in the day looking for me.  How could this be he? I would ask myself.  Why?  All I wanted to know at this point was IS IT HE or ISN’T it?  Did I demand an answer from God at this point?  Yeah, maybe?  Even tho I KNOW we don’t demand anything from God, I just really wanted to solve the mystery now. It was the one thing keeping me from moving on because I TRULY had come to believe this was he!

Next emotion, I was really thinking about his life, Chris’s.  Perhaps I am just stuck in some comfort zone of everything I know, but what would life with him be like?  All of this probably comes from the realization that when it comes down to it, I DON’T KNOW HIM!  Yes, we spent 3 evenings together over a 4-year period, tried to have phone conversations, did a lot of “leaving messages” for one another in a playful way, I sent him quarterly letters *laughs* of which he assured me he got and read them all, but the truth is, I had never spent ANY sort of time with him what-so-ever!  Oh, it wasn’t that we didn’t try to find time to spend together, but it seemed anytime we did, “SOMETHING” got in the way.  Something always stopped it!  Our relationship, which you couldn’t really even call it that, was simply this incredible draw to one another, so intense, neither of us usually could get two words out without stuttering!  But what we could and did get right was a lot of holding one another, and feeling as if the whole world was complete, and as the stars were aligned perfectly in those few moments surely we had achieved this place of nirvana.  But what would his life be like?  He’d be on the road for months at a time, the women that would always throw themselves at him, and if the truth be told, I probably lacked the confidence to believe I had anything to offer him.  He had found someone that obviously did.  So now I was angry.

That lasted for about half of the day.  I called my friend Lise.  Unsure where to turn at the moment I called her that day.  She wasn’t home. I have since come to believe she wasn’t meant to be there. This was a part of the journey only I and God could walk out.

By late that afternoon, I finally surrendered to the fact that all I have told others that hurt so bad in their own journeys, I needed to apply in my life.  “Sunshine, practice what you preach.”  In that moment, God said, “Are you ready to begin again?”  And I was.

I can’t say He answered me for sure whether or not who I thought was he here reading is in fact really he, but what he did answer me was that things are not always what they seem, and that this is a journey not a destination.  I always forget that part!

And I sat down and wrote that night for the on-line journal as God had once again led me to do.  I happen to believe that was the 2^nd best journal I have done,  the first best journal was the one I wrote on Skylar’s first birthday eve, which would be August 28, 2006. 

I still sometimes find myself drifting off to wondering where he is right now and what his life is like with his wife.  Does she get the best of him?  Does he look in her eyes like he did mine those oh too few of times?  Does he stutter his words with her like he did me, and get all confused and act goofy because he doesn’t know what to say?  Is it magical like we had?  Does he feel complete in her arms, as I did his?  Does he feel at home with her?  She gets to live what I could only dream of for so long.  And then I stop my drifting to realize I have to stop thinking about it.  I just have to, but it is probably one of the hardest things I have done my whole life NOT to wonder about it.

And that is how I am feeling and what I felt, and what the past almost week has been. (I discovered the truth last Saturday late afternoon.  Seems fitting as I met him on a late Saturday afternoon.)

On a side note to the Dell thing.  Since last Sunday he hasn’t once been harsh with me, lost his temper, nor snapped at me.  As a matter of fact I have noticed he is trying SUPER hard to be overly loving, kind, gentle, and respecting.  It’s almost bizarre!  I sometimes wonder if spiritually, or on some higher level he isn’t sensing I have a broken heart and as a best friend would do, he is trying to make it all better for me.  We’ve never talked about it, it’s just a feeling.

And this journal is WAY too long tonight!  I want to thank Vicki tho for the challenge to write it out, the honest truth.  And I sense that tonight’s journal will probably become a part of the “story” part of, “On The Journey of Faith.”  I just have to remember it’s just another chapter, and apparently, there are MANY more to come because my heart just knows, there IS more to come. I guess I just have to walk it out through those mountain ranges, valleys, the twists the turns, the ups, the downs, with the greatest faith God will give me along the way.

As the faith, love, and light lead me on.

Goodnight,

Sunshine

Goodnight Chris:   So, is it you?  Knock three times?  Although, I think you did do that one day not too long ago.  The road is long, with many a winding turns, that leads us to who knows where?  Out of nowhere that song came to mind so apparently there is meaning in the words, and apparently, I will need to make that tonight’s song.  And you will be my brother, at least for tonight because I am strong enough to carry……………….I just didn’t know I was until now.  And that strength isn’t my own, it comes from above and a promise once made so very long ago…………………not of this place, but that place, and a memory I once lost that was reawakened the moment I looked in your eyes.  Nope, not romance this time, just reaching out to someone I greatly care for, always will, and will never have expectations of.  My special someone who now is with another, and I respect that.  Still, love is huge and sometimes allows us to hold others in our hearts in a different sort of way than romance.  When I think of it, perhaps that is the place we are.  I send you love and light…………….goodnight,  Love, Sunshine