When all came crashing down around me several months ago there were some who turned their backs on me, in blog life and real life and I suffered great loss.

There were also those who rallied around me though and stood strong for me, prayed for me in a way that I never had had assurance that anyone ever did, and held me up, much like Aaron did for Moses, with their strong arms of faith and love. Some of the ones I expected would stand with me didn't.....some who I expected to reject me didn't. Like I quoted a couple of posts ago....adversity certainly helps you know who really loves you and who your true friends are.

You all know who you are, so I won't go about mentioning names, but I just want to say thank you so much for everything. I couldn't have asked for a better bunch of friends. Belle did a post recently that I just saw taken from a sermon that my man Bishop Jakes did. This is part of it:

LET IT GO ~
By T.D. Jakes

There are people who can walk away from you.
When people can walk away from you: let them walk. You don't want to try to talk another person into staying with you, loving you, calling you, caring about you, coming to see you, staying attached to you. Hang up the phone.

When people can walk away from you, LET THEM WALK. Your destiny is never tied to anybody that left.

The Bible said that, they came out from us that it might be made manifest that they were not for us. For had they been of us, no doubt they would have continued with us. ~1 John 2:19

People leave you because they are not joined to you. If they aren't joined to you, you can't make them stay.

And it doesn't mean that they are a bad person. It just means that their part in the story is over. And you've got to know when people's part in your story is over ... So that you don't keep trying to raise the dead.

You've got to know, you've got to know when it's over. Let me tell you something. I've got the gift of good-bye. It's the tenth spiritual gift, I believe in good-bye. It's not that I'm hateful, it's that I'm faithful, and I know whatever God means for me to have He'll give it to me. If you are holding on to something that doesn't belong to you and was never intended for your life, then you need to ..

LET IT GO

Thank you for that Belle. I lifted it from your blog without permission (I heard you were in the hospital so I didn't want to bother you) but I was certain you wouldn't mind. When I read it I cried. In case you didn't know, I don't like goodbyes. This was hard, hard, hard. I am going to keep this word in my mind and in my heart. I need to hear it often.

I love you all,

POH

We live in deeds, not years; in thoughts, not breaths;
In feelings, not in figures on a dial.
We should count time by heart-throbs. He most lives
Who thinks most, feels the noblest, acts the best.
And he whose heart beats quickest lives the longest:
Lives in one hour more than in years do some
Whose fat blood sleeps as it slips along their veins.
Life's but a means unto an end; that end,
Beginning, mean, and end to all things -- God.
The dead have all the glory of the world.

Philip James Bailey

God has given you one face, and you make yourself another.  ~William Shakespeare


We are so accustomed to disguise ourselves to others that in the end we become disguised to ourselves.  ~François Duc de La Rochefoucauld



The great majority of us are required to live a life of constant duplicity.  Your health is bound to be affected if, day after day, you say the opposite of what you feel, if you grovel before what you dislike, and rejoice at what brings you nothing but misfortune.  ~Boris Pasternak


It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.  ~e.e. cummings



Hateful to me as the gates of Hades is that man who hides one thing in his heart and speaks another.  ~Homer

It's time for me to take a new direction in my life. I have waited and waited for someone to contact me and they are refusing to do so. Alrighty then. I am going to let go and let God. I need to preserve my self-esteem, my faith in God, and my life. Thinking about the past, without any resolution, is not helping me do that. I don't know the 'why' to some things but that is going to have to be okay. I am going to keep on keeping on and trust God in the midst of it.

If anyone wants to contact me I can be found at this blog, my e-mail, and my phone. Other than that I am moving on and will not be discussing anything about the past again in this space. It is not doing me any good to rehash things that have happened without the advantage of discussion. Be assured that I love you all and that won't change. It's not in me to 'unlove' anyone that I have loved.

I truly have become 'a common housewife in the fast lane'. I have traveled to states I never dreamed I'd ever see in my entire life. Alot of it has been alone with no one but Bob Segar by my side. I have learned to take care of myself in a way that I have never had to do before and always wondered if I would be able to do. I have run out of gas in the middle of an interstate and prayed my way, the car limping along, to the exit where it died within a few steps from a large truck stop. I've slept, more than once, in a Wal-Mart parking lot, quilts pulled over me so that stray policeman or parking lot security did not see me. Campers are allowed to park over night. People in cars are looked at as vagrants and are arrested. I've taken showers at the local YMCA. I've gone without eating even when I had money because I was afraid to spend it. I've worked my butt off, bought myself a really nice used car, paid the bills myself and even taken care of all the DMV stuff myself. In the midst of that I realized how ignorant of real life things I really was, and as Caleb's sister said to me when I stayed with her a couple of months ago, "You are the most naive woman (of any age) that I have ever met". She was right. It's funny because in my intelligence, faith and experience I have been called very 'wise'. What she meant though was in, as Caleb termed it, 'infrastructure' things. Yeah. That's where I wasn't good and it's not hard for me to admit that because I knew it. I've always known it. I used to beg to be shown the finances and I was pushed away at every turn. This experience has forced me, more than anything I've ever gone through, to grow up. I'm still silly, sassy, crazy POH, and I've always had a kind of sad side to me too, but I have a brokenness now and a distrust of people that I have never had before. Never. That's okay though because there is a verse that says that Jesus trusted NO man because He knew their hearts. That's kind of me now. I love everyone. I don't fully trust anyone. Lookin's song "Broken Wing" meant so much to me because the girl in the song had many of the same fears that I did. Over the past 2 1/2 years on the blogstream I have mentioned at times how I had dreams that I have given up on. Lots of them. Just like the song girl. I can't say for sure what dreams I should revive now and I admit to some fear of bringing them up out of the circular file of my brain for the fear of hoping again. But my name is not prisoneroffear, is it? It is prisonerofhope. I don't want to lose my hope. When all is gone faith, hope and love remain. All three are still intact in me, and I would like to keep it that way.

You can check out my newly remodeled blogs "The Truth According to POH", and "POH Revived" if you would like. I haven't added to "The Windemere Chronicles" recently but I am planning to continue that.

Love you all,

POH
"Never apologize for showing feeling. When you do so, you apologize for the truth." ~Benjamin Disraeli

"Adversity does teach who your real friends are."

Lois McMaster Bujold, A Civil Campaign, 1999

Word for the day

impregnable
(adjective) [im-PREG-nah-bahl]

1. impossible to take by force; 'an impregnable fortress': "This impregnable canister will keep your food safe from bears and discourage them from entering the campsites."

2. able to withstand challenge and attack; 'an impregnable argument'; 'impregnable faith'