Recently Chris and I started meeting with financial advisers and decided we really need to try to refinance our home.  Part of that process required us to write a financial hardship letter.  I must admit, it seemed a bit dramatic  to lay out our situation in that way; we are blessed beyond measure and richer than so many people around the world – and yet, this is our story and recreating it for this process brought back a lot of painful memories.

Life was looking good in the fall of 2004 when we purchased our home on the north side of town.  Chris was a senior vice president at the credit union and they were in the midst of converting to a bank which would bring stock options and additional pay.  I was a year into my new career as a law office administrator and felt that this was a great fit for me and showed potential for increase in income as time went along.  We had our boys at a private Christian school in large part because the schools in the district we were living in were not where we wanted them to start their academic lives.  When we came across town to visit some friends we happened upon an open house and we fell in love with the neighborhood and the schools and felt certain we could afford the upgrade.  If nothing in our lives had changed – we would have been exactly right.  However, in January of 2009, amidst the financial recession and bank collapses around the country, Chris lost his job.  I remember naively thinking that the six months severance would be great because he would find a job quickly and then we could put the severance towards something else.  That’s pretty funny to me now.  Not only did we use that up to continue to pay the bills during that time, we had to get unemployment and tap into our retirement money.  Chris didn’t find a job for nine months and when he did, the job paid about a fourth of what he had been making.  About a year later – he lost that job.  We looked around us at people we knew and people on the news and we found some comfort knowing we were not alone, Chris had not done anything wrong to create this situation, and yet those facts didn’t change the truth of our reality and our need to figure out a plan. 

In February of 2009, the month after losing his job at the credit union, Chris decided to take a look at the big picture of his life and consider seriously what he would do if he could start over again.  He enrolled in a nine month, every week night, police academy in a neighboring town.  This meant that for those nine months we wouldn’t see one another except on the weekends!  (For more on that see post called One year ago…) It was so tough on us and was such a test of our resolve and our sanity!  Chris thrived in that environment – he was the class President and received the very prestigious Dale Green award at graduation.  He had found a place where he really could make a difference and now he just needed for someone to hire him!  Unfortunately, there were hiring freezes all over town and it wasn’t until August of 2011 that Chris was hired full-time by the Leon County Sheriff’s office.

So now here we are a little over a year later and we still aren’t back to where we started (hence the need to refinance), but maybe that was God’s whole point in this.  He didn’t want us to be where we were, he wanted us to be better.  He didn’t want us to coast along with no real sympathy or understanding of the stress and fear many of our friends, and certainly many around the country, are dealing with.  Maybe God didn’t like the direction our lives were taking, maybe (as I believe is always the case) he has much bigger things in mind for us!  I keep praying for the ultimate resolve – the one that allows a human to rest in the peace that “God’s got this”.  Honestly, I haven’t found it yet – I want to do the monthly budget and find that we have something left over, I want to buy my boys fun new things and I want to go on vacations more – but those are really just wants.  I truly do have everything I need.  I will continue to pray for that to be enough.  God’s got this!!!

I don’t know how it is for everyone with teens these days, but for me and my boys we like to text!  I’m not just referring to the texts that all parents with children who drive and are with friends likely require – the ones that tell us where they are and that they have arrived safely, I am also referring to the funny texts that allow me to laugh with them and really see the men they are becoming.  They have such different personalities.   I cherish everything about Conner’s easy going, witty personality; the fact that he never meets a stranger and hugs all my friends and makes everyone feel comfortable.  I admire Chase’s depth of feeling and his resolve to stick to his guns when something is important to him; he cares deeply about people and what is right and his jokes are smart and make me continue to laugh days later when I think of them.   Conner, Chase and I all have iphones now (a gift from us for the start of the school year) and so we can group itext and I started one of those the other day – this is how it went:

Me: You didn’t say where you are now

Conner: We are hiding from you!  You can just locate us.

Me: I don’t like to look – I like you to tell me.  Besides seeing a blip on a screen only tells me your general location.  For example, you could be in a church or at a crack dealers house if they were next door to one another and I wouldn’t acually know for sure which one you were at!  Love you guys.

Chase: haha – love you too.

Conner: Mmmm Hhmmmmmmmm

Me: So glad you guys knew that was intended to be funny since my last attempt at a joke flopped

Chase: Yeah it did!

Conner: Just a little. Ha that was a joke

Chase: Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahhahahahhahahahahahahahahaha

Chase: LOL

Chase: haha

Conner: Now that’s funny

Conner: Mom…

Conner: hahahaha

Me: Oh my! How are you doing that so fast (the messages were coming in like lightning)

Conner: We are beasts.  Wizards is the name we get often.

Conner: It’s like magic

Chase: You’re a wizard Harry!

Conner: I’m a whaaat?

Chase: A wizard. Harry.

Conner: I’m a whaaat?

Me: This is fun – but also making me dizzy (again, the messages are coming in soooo fast)

Chase: A muthafu—– wizard Harry!!!

Me: Is that from a movie?

Conner: Nothing like that helicopier simulator.  Haha you shoulda seen your face.  Ha, classic! (this is Conner’s reply to my comment about being dizzy)

Me: At least I didn’t throw up while we were spinning out of control.

Chase: Everybody in the museum wasn’t very happy!

Me: Oh the memories! I love that we have those stories!

It is hard to believe that one year ago Chris officially began working for the Leon County Sheriff’s office.  My feelings and attitude about the whole thing have changed drastically over the course of the past 365 days!  

In February of 2009 when Chris told me he wanted to enroll in the nine month (every night of the week plus every Saturday over the summer) police academy, I was so against it.  He had just lost his job at the credit union a few weeks prior to that but I was certain he would find something either in banking or IT.   I reasoned that those jobs should come close to the salary he was making and get us back on track before his severance package ran out.  In my wildest dreams I had never imagined being married to a law enforcement officer.  He was set on the idea though and argued that this would give him the days to continue to look for another job.  He also said that taking all he had learned about banking over the past ten years and adding law enforcement training should allow him to look for work in financial crimes or even internet crime with all his IT background.   I hoped and prayed he was right and that if he was going to do it hopefully he would have that kind of position so it would keep him off the streets fighting crime with a gun.

The nine months Chris was in the academy were the same nine months (almost exactly) that I was pregnant with twins as a gestational carrier for one of my dear friends (I’ll tell that story someday in another blog).  Needless to say it was a very emotional and trying time and I would have prefered to have him home at night to help me get through, but God has a way of taking the toughest times and turning them into good.  We gained so much strength and perspective during that year.  We didn’t know it then, but it was helping prepare us for our current schedule and all the time apart because Chris is working nights.

I remember the stage that the boys were in when Chris started in the academy and even when he first started his job.  They were struggling with pressures from friends and they were unfortunately not surrounded by the best of influences.  They were negative about the idea of their Dad going into law enforcement for very different reasons than I was negative about it.  Poor Chris – he was not getting nearly the kind of support and encouragement which he probably wanted and certainly deserved!  Since that time Conner and Chase have both been taking criminal justice classes at school and they have matured so much.  The anniversary of Chris’ first day on the job is also an anniversary for Conner and Chase of a very serious life lesson they had to learn the hard way.  I won’t say more about that here because it is their story to tell, not mine.   Suffice it to say they have grown up through consequences this year while Chris has been growing in his new profession.  It is wonderful to see how far we have all come in a year!

Dance has always been a part of my life and so celebrating the joy and fun of it with a room full of people today was so awesome.  I started dancing as a small child – I started as many children do by taking ballet, tap and jazz.  I did that for a few years before narrowing my focus on just ballet and later pointe.  I continued to study ballet and pointe all through high school and even in my first year of college.  There were many years when I hoped and dreamed that I would make a living through dance and it was wonderful to have those dreams.  In high school I started driving to Macon to take classes from a more challenging studio and with instructors whom I could learn more from.  I was in the high school drama productions each of my three years of high school and was named “Best Dancer” in the production each year!  My highlight was probably dancing as the white cat in our school production of Cats.  After I moved to Tallahassee at the end of my freshman year of college, I shifted my focus from the strict and precise study of ballet to the crazy world of aerobics at the end of the 80s!  Women were still wearing leg warmers (or at the very least big thick socks) and many of us wore those awful thong leotards with our tights!  Despite the fashion disaster (which of course I didn’t realize was a disaster at the time) I was having so much fun and quickly traded in my ballet shoes for tennis shoes and in my early 20’s became a certified aerobics instructor and was teaching a number of different classes at two gyms.  After a number of years of doing that I got hooked on clogging and had fun with that for a few years.  My favorite thing about clogging was getting to perform on stage again (although teaching classes was much like being on stage as well  – with a microphone no less!!)

Currently, I am enjoying life back in the gym taking group fitness classes and one of my favorite classes right now is Zumba.  It is so much fun and a wonderful workout and incorporates many of the dance moves I have learned over the years.  I love the feeling of looking in the class mirror and seeing so many bodies all doing the same thing together.  It feels like home to me.

National Day of Dance is something that is promoted on the t.v. show that I love called So You Think You Can Dance.  They promote the day of dance in part to get people up and moving but also to raise money for the Dizzy Feet foundation.  Premier Gym organized an event for Zumba dancers in Tallahassee and we had a bunch of great instructors come out and we danced hard for two hours straight!

Here are some photos from the event…

My very favorite Zumba instructor – Kelly!

These were our amazing instructors!

This is the group of us that was left at the bitter end – I would say this is only about half of the people that showed up!

On Saturday, July 7th we hosted a four family party at our house.  For this get together we decided to do a modifiation of the food tv show called Chopped.  Each family would get an ingredient and a course and they would have to put those things together to come up with something for everyone to enjoy!  The Brocketts didn’t fully participate because Jim was out of town, so for the families that were in we had Scott and Crista bringing an appetizer that contained lime juice, Cheri and Craig bringing a main course that contained coconut and we had to provide a dessert with chocolate (we got lucky with our pick!).  As always, the food was plentiful and the conversations were fun and never ceasing.  We ended this party with a serious BANG!  We had received from one of Conner’s friends at work some fireworks.  Let’s just say these were not the kind of fireworks you can buy at Wal-Mart!  They were AWESOME!  It was as if we had our very own fireworks show in the backyard.  There were a couple scary moments – when they shot into the trees for example – but no one got hurt, and everyone laughed, and we made memories that will last for a long time to come!

Here are some photos from the night (although I didn’t get any of the fireworks show!)

Lime, appetizers

We know how to eat!!

Thank you Chris for the yummy cocktails with lime and coconut

Chocolate, dessert!

The Moms!

Three of the Dads!

Only six of the ten kids were able to make it – one day soon we will get them all together again!

On the weekend before my 41st birthday I was blessed to be a part of something truly amazing.  Nearly 4,000 women from around the world gathered to celebrate Jesus and learn more about the gospel.  We were all hungry to know how to better apply the gospel to our lives and the lives of our families and friends and our local churches.  The event was put together by the Gospel Coalition and it was their first ever women’s retreat.  It was held at the Hilton Orlando on a rainy weekend in June.  I was there with over a hundred of my church friends from Four Oaks and was roomates with my sweet friends Ann Ross, Cindy Stockstill and Pam Post.  What a blessing to spend so much time with these three beautiful people.  The conference started on Friday afternoon and ended on Sunday at noon and nearly every hour in between (that we were not sleeping) we were learning from some of the most respected and well versed Christian scholars and teachers in the world.  We heard from Tim Keller and John Piper and Paige Benton Brown and had the Getties play amazing music to us all weekend.  The power of that many women singing hymns of praise together was awesome on so many levels. 

I am thankful that Four Oaks made the investment in the women of our chruch by paying for our transportation and hotel rooms! I am thankful to my family for taking care of everything on the home front so I could be there without worry.  I am thankful to God for the blessings he showers on me everyday but in particular for the blessing of women in my life who love me and pray for me and care deeply about my soul!

It was very hard to get a good picture of the entire group at one time – but this is the room we would all get together in

This isn’t everyone from Four Oaks – but not bad for putting together a group shot at the last minute.

Here we are being silly – what fun!

What wonderful roommates – Ann, Pam and Cindy

My sweet sister in Christ

I had an incredible opportunity to spend some time with one of my dearest friends recently.  Pepper Jo (P.J.) has been my friend since we were in 9th grade in junior high in Warner Robins, Georgia.  It was my first day of public school, having spent the first eight years of school at Sacred Heart Catholic School, and it was her first day of school in Warner Robins, having just moved there from the Azores.  I was so incredibly nervous but I recall walking in carrying my flute case (for some random reason I thought I would join the marching band) and there she sat all alone with her flute case on her desk!  I walked up, and asked if I could sit next to her.  I am certain in that moment neither of us could have imagined that 25 years later we would be sharing that story with friends on a beach in Santa Rosa Florida.

It’s hard to summarize all that P.J. means and represents to me.  I think the very first thing is that she taught me how to have fun – and what an incredible gift that is!  P.J.’s spirit is giving and happy and full of love and it is so contagious.  I am certain that my experience through high school would not have been nearly as wonderful had we not been best friends.  To this day she continues to be a light to her friends and family and it is an honor and a privilege to witness that.

The beach trip earlier this month (June, 2012) was a rare chance to sit inside her world and meet the women she spends her time with as an adult.  I loved all her friends and it made me a bit sad that we don’t live closer so that I could get to know them all better.

I have been blessed beyond measure with the women who have entered my life through the years but I am so glad that P.J. remains in my life as a constant and true friend.  There is something to be said (as I posted on Facebook) for the friends who have known you since before you started having your hair colored or your eyebrows waxed.  Those friends know your siblings and your parents and what the house you grew up in looks like.  They are often the ones you first broke the law with (you know, like not wearing a seatbelt) and they were there when your heart was broken that first time.

I hope to have many more adult adventures with P.J. and the crew from high school, but boy am I grateful for the ones we had together as girls!

Today is the last day of school for Conner and Chase and I just can’t believe it!  They have now completed their freshman and junior years in high school which means next year at this time we will be watching Conner walk across that stage and receive his diploma!  We went to the graduation ceremony last night to celebrate with several friends who finished up this year and it was exciting to see all the families full of pride and hope for these new adult people.  What will they become, where will life lead them? 

On this last day of school, I woke the boys up the way I always do, by softly saying their name and rubbing their arm or leg (depending on which way they are sleeping).  I remember my Dad waking me up in this gentle way when I was in school and I loved it – it got my day started in a peaceful and calm way that I think helped me carry calm throughout my morning.  I am blessed to have boys who do wake easy and don’t growl at me or refuse to get up.  I will miss seeing them each morning now that it is summer – I will be halfway through my work day by the time they get up for most of the next eleven weeks!

Eleven weeks – wow, so much can happen in that amount of time.  My prayer is that the days are full of fun and relaxation (when they aren’t working at Gordos) and that they make smart choices and surround themselves with friends who are also making smart choices.  What a fun time of life, to be 15 and 17 – but also, what a tough time of life, to be 15 and 17!

I feel nervous as I begin to tell this story – nervous mostly that my words won’t do the story justice.  My husband is in law enforcement and for more than ten years before he went into that profession he was a volunteer fire fighter.  I offer that tidbit because I want to make it clear that he has seen his fair share of car accidents and knows when he sees one where the passengers aren’t likely to have survived.  This was one of those accidents.  The teens driving the car had been drinking and unfortunately they didn’t see the telephone pole until it was too late.  They crashed into it headfirst at a very high rate of speed.  There was no evidence that they even put on the brakes (no skid marks on the ground).  The engine was transplanted into the front seat; the air bag on the passenger side looked as if it never deflated after impact – that’s because it was full of parts of the hood and engine!  When Chris arrived the boys had both gotten out of the car on their own and they were telling their version of the event on different sides of the car (where they were each being treated for injuries).  Independently, they kept telling of the girl in the car.  They described her the same – same height, same color hair but one key thing was different – they each said she was the other one’s friend.  Neither of the boys knew her name and they both indicated she was sitting in the passenger seat.  Chris said that it was virtually impossible to imagine anyone not being ejected if they had been sitting up front without a seatbelt and the vehicle didn’t have a backseat because there were sub-boxes (the big kind of boxes that hold speakers that go boom).  The boys went on to the hospital and the emergency personnel stayed on behind at the scene for about two hours, using dogs and heat seeking instruments to try and find the girl.  Chris works nights and typically gets home around 3:30 a.m., when he finally arrived home at 5:30 that morning he was really upset because they had not found her.  As he told me the story I immediately felt overwhelmed and convinced that the reason they didn’t find her is because she was an angel and she protected those boys at a time they need it most.  As soon as I said it, Chris totally agreed and we cried at the thought that he had been in the place where a miracle occurred, where an angel showed mercy on kids doing something dumb, and gave them a chance to make better choices next time.  For days after I couldn’t get the thought out of my head that I needed to go talk to the boys and make sure they knew what had happened.  What if knowing would shift the focus or direction of their lives?  Chris had to remind me it would be a serious HIPPA violation to go see them in the hospital (darn HIPPA) but one day – when all the charges are behind them and they are all healed, I might have to send them an anonymous letter to make sure they know there are angels all around!

We have a wonderful group of friends and we call ourselves the Four Families which is a truly original name seeing as how we are made up of just that – four families.  Each of us has at least two children, and for all of us our oldest child is going to be a senior in high school next year.  It is an incredible group of friends and one of the amazing things is we have each been married for over fifteen years and love our spouses as much (if not more) than the days we each got married.  Since sometime in 2008 we have been rotating houses and picking fun themes for our get togethers (and the kids are always a part of the fun – although the older they get, the less often they are all with us).  We have covered all the typical dinner themes – mexican, italian, appetizer meals, homemade pizzas, everything you can imagine on the grill and even a low country boil at the beach.  This past weekend we had a Memorial Day picnic themed get together and while we were not all there it was a blast.  After dinner the adults gravitated to the trampoline and because the stars were out and it was a clear night, we ended up laying there in a circle, with our loved one at our side and chatting the night away.  We started talking about fun games we all used to play in the car growing up and before we knew it we were having our own game of “Going on a Picnic”.  In this game you take turns naming random things you would bring on a picnic and you have to follow the alphabet.  Each person in succession names everything that came before them and then adds their item.  Let’s see if I can remember how it went:  I’m going on a picnic and I’m going to bring: artichoke salad, beer, celery, doughnuts, eggplant parmesan, funnel cakes, gorgonzola pipe cakes (pretty sure Scott made this up), hi-c, ice, ju-ju fruit, kalamata olives, lemon squares, moon pies, neapolitin ice cream, oranges, papaya, quinoa, raisins, shiitake mushrooms, t-bone steak, unicorn – fried (again Scott), Vicks vapor rub, Wellington – beef, X-lax, yellow rice and Zebra!  By the time Scott and I were done duking it out for bragging rights several of the others were nearly snoring – we are getting old, but not too old for games!!