Random cuteness....

....Kisses from my girl are the BEST!

Faith learning all about the car...

Faith working, in therapy, on a cars study...part of our homeschooling unit study in January.

Yes, Faith you CAN be a ballerina.

Yes, folks we had SNOW in SC, this year...hard to believe but quite true. Snow was on the ground for over 11 days. We had over 8 inches in our yard...a record in the 17 years I've been here! Our super sweet neighbor showed up on the doorstep after three days of isolation to help me get Faith outside in the wagon to build a snow GIRL! She helped me dress Faith and load her in the wagon and push her up and down the hills. Faith had soo much fun! Thanks, Marti, we love you!

Today IS the day!!!!!!!!!!!! God's day!

Hello? Is anyone out there? Hello?

Tell all your friends to come to THIS blog.....today!

Today....a miracle happened....

Something that so many doctors said would never happen!

Something I was afraid to hope for.....

Something that I waited seven long years for....

Are you ready?

Today....

Faith walked!

Yes you heard it hear folks!

She walked six....count them six steps ALL by herself!

No hands or walkers to help her!

SIX PERFECT STEPS!

To the chair, twice!

Alllllllllll by herself!

I must say it was a lack of faith on my part...to allow myself to hope that one day she would do it without any help...just too much.
But TODAY...GOD showed everyone!

Thank you Father for Your perfect timing!

Thank you for showing me that I need to have more faith in YOU and in Faith!

Please join me today in thanking GOD for our miracles....each and every one!

Tell everyone you know about this miracle, please!

Did you ever just KNOW?

Did you ever have the feeling like You KNEW that you were doing the thing that GOD wanted you to do?

That unexplainable KNOWLEDGE....the PEACE..? The knowledge that you were born to do something? That no matter what bad stuff happened you could do that thing for the rest of your life and never get penny for it? That every morning you wake up looking forward to that thing?

I have had that peace for seven years now...almost eight...ever since I found out about this life inside me.

Even through all this turmoil...GOD himself has given me the unwavering peace that comes with a calling that I was born to do. I have talked my head off about this in the past but I feel it needs to be reiterated, TODAY! With every day that passes, I am more sure that THIS is what GOD wants me to be doing with my life. I can't really explain it very well. And I don't know if I will one day in the near future be asked to lay this calling down for a season while He works on this mess. I pray that is not the case but I am trying to listen for HIS words.
But for TODAY....today was another confirmation from my DADDY...

We made a trip up to the NC nature center for a field trip. I took her chair just in case she needed it but with the intention of letting her do some walking. Well, she walked the entire zoo! And let me say, it was no small feat! She walked for two hrs and ten minutes! And this place was built on a mountain! Holding my hand, my little storm trooper marched down those paths like she owned the place! She totally owned it, waving at people and blowing kisses to babies! Even a making two new family friends who had s.n. kids! People were cheering her on and encouraging her.

Let me say...I had not allowed myself to believe that one day...I might walk through a zoo holding hands with my daughter. It is a fault in faith that I have to admit to God. I was afraid to get my hopes up. I thought maybe one day she would be able to go to the store and use her walker but I wouldn't let myself believe that she could do more...that GOD could do more. FEAR...people. I try hard to be her #1 fan and cheerleader but sometimes it's hard to see that possibility that seems so....impossible.

Maybe I will never have a college degree or become president or make millions of dollars.

But what's a million dollars anyway?

I have witnessed so many miracles in my life...how can I question or doubt GODS wisdom or capacity? People, believe me when I say....
GOD is STILL in the business of performing miracles right here in little ole South Carolina! What wonders I have witnessed.

I am humbled.

I have seen the face of my Redeemer...in the face of my little girl every day, in the faces of so many perfect strangers who reach out to us, in the faces of family and friends who have shored me up in the last eight months, in the kind words of my friends here and in the miracles HE has shown me in Faith's life.

Some days It has been all I can do to drag myself out of bed one more day...and when I feel like my head is going under and I won't make it out alive HE lifts me up and draws me closer to HIM. Some people have something uncanny happen to them and they just say it was a fluke or randomness. But the things that have happened to us in the last eight months....cannot be dismissed! Only a perfect and mighty GOD of the universe could organize such unquestionable events.

Praise GOD...for his wisdom and kindness and unfailing love...even when I stumble and doubt and refuse to give it up to HIM.
Thank you Father, for giving me the chance to see my daughter walk and hold my hand after seven long years..forgive me for my doubts and fears. Something so small...so tiny to everyone else....can be such a wondrous miracle!

I wish I had the words...

Some new pics of me and my girl

Ok, so we finally got some time at the library to download some pics....finally!

Let me just say that through all this disaster I have lost a tremendous amount of weight. Not intentionally, but when I get under severe stress I stop eating. And believe me...with ALL the responsibility now on my shoulders...well food is at the bottom of my totem pole! Some days, I get to ten at night and I realize that I haven't eaten all day. So, I have dropped about 4 pant sizes! At least I will come out of this looking better...just kidding by the way.I had Faith's care aid make some good pictures of me and my girl to hang in the house to replace all the ones I had to take down. So here is a mix of those and several others in the last few months of all the stuff Faith has been doing..

Faith operating a remote control train..

Faith walking with her new friend, the skeleton, who needs a trip to the prosthetics lab...

These are pics at the Marble's kid's museum in Raleigh NC, Faith had so much fun that I had to drag her out crying!

Faith and one of her best friends at girl scouts, making valentine cards.

These are from the rec basketball games. I love this one of her friends walking her across the court.

.

Ok, now for some good news...

Sorry to all my dear friends for my miserable rants lately. There have been lots of really good things happening to Faith over the last months.
I am just gonna make a list since my prose is still struggling...

She is talking more everyday...attempting new words every single day.

She can now recognize when we go to visit family..when we go to my dad's house she gets excited as soon as we turn on his road and she starts pointing in the direction of his house. Super cute!

She is pulling up slowly but surely daily getting closer to standing independently every day.

She is can help get into my new van, stepping up with some support and even turning around to sit down.

She can now reliably recognize letters A,B and C when presented in fields of two. This is huge because my goal was for her to do it over a year but she is doing it now with 3 months to go!

She is, of course, walking holding my hand or a shopping cart.

This one is great, guys.....there is a commercial on GMC for a show called " Sue Thomas FBI" about a deaf woman who reads lips and signs...Faith recognizes that she is signing on the commercial and points it out to me every time she sees it, showing me signs with her own hands! Freaking darling!

She is beginning to understand counting...when I present several of the same objects and ask her to count them she will touch each one in sequence as I say the numbers out loud. You can tell she understands some of it b/c she will sometimes back up to see what number I will say.

She know all about the library now, her favorite place in the world, and gets soooo excited when we arrive there.

This is just a small example of the things she has been doing. She has made so much progress, it is amazing! I am so humbled to be her mom and to bear witness to God's miracles. It has given me so much hope and encouragement that He will provide for us and continue to protect us. I have lost my Internet connection so I haven't been able to upload any pictures yet but I have some neat ones when I get the chance.

Please keep us in your prayers.

Giving it up....

I know that this blog is supposed to be all about Faith and life with her but "life" has over run us....

I have struggled with a LOT of really brutal things over the last 8 months. Things I NEVER thought I would face or be forced to face...
Things that I cannot change or fix or bring back. I have been forced to see terrible things and witness dramatic changes that are too awful to ever get out of my head. Part of the realization is that our lives are forever changed. For me this is a really hard thing to face.

How can your life be so demolished by another person and you have no control over it? It's really frustrating...

Things that meant so much before...our home, our social circle, family...are all slipped down into a dark bottomless hole. Before all this I wanted to stay in our home for the rest of my life...I remember telling him that I wanted to be buried on our property...but now I am miserable here, it seems so empty and bad here.

I know we will have to give up a lot. My car is on the way out, being downsized for a ten yr old minivan. I try to remember that it's only stuff that as long as me and Faith are together that's all that matters but losing everything is hard when your life is destroyed too! I just think what could possibly be worth all this devastation?

My identity as a woman has been shaken to the core...what is left of me? Everything I thought I knew...a lie. How do I come back from that? My friends tell me to move on, forget him, forget our old life, to "get over it", but how do you do that after sixteen years? How do you do that when you don't even have the truth? Some nights i wake with a lump in my throat, sure that it was all a bad dream. I try...I really do...but how do I make sense of half of my life being lied to and never knowing it? I thought we had a Christian home, that we were united, that our family was safe. I don't know how to trust anyone anymore. I can't make sense of things that used to seem so clear. I feel like I am constantly looking over my shoulder, waiting for another terrible thing to happen to us.

I keep praying for wisdom...but I am struggling....

Father, I need your help, please lift me up....

So now what?

So after some of the shock has worn off.......just a little.

I need advice and help setting up a plan. I really need a way to earn some money but a regular job is out of the question.
I have a small idea dealing with a craft that has been stewing around in my head but I don't know how to try it out...fear... Being the operative word here.

I am open to other ideas I am just so overwhelmed I don't know where to turn. I have been praying for a long time that God would make a way to allow me to continue to home school Faith, so that is another monkey wrench in the mix.

All that matters to me anymore is to be able to care for my daughter so I know I have to get on top of things but......it sure is a beast!

So if any of my super smart, helpful, creative, ingenious bloggie friends have some ideas to shoot my way....I would be ever so grateful!

If you would rather email me at faithann04@att.net feel free.


Faith update:
she walked into therapy just holding my hand for the first time! Over to moon, I was! Could it be possible that once again my little iron girl will disprove all the professionals who cast doubt on her? One more huge deal she can walk in the stores now pushing a shopping cart by herself with just a little guiding!

Sorting out the mess...

The reality of it all...

My heart breaks...
Missing my husband, my life, my family...

How do I pick up the pieces?

What happens to us now?
All the hopes, dreams, lives....destroyed.

How am I supposed to do this alone?
How do explain where daddy is?
What do I even want for US now?

What happened?
I don't even understand and I don't even get the truth.

How do I recover? Heal? Forgive?

I don't have the answers...I keep praying for understanding, for healing,
for wisdom, for strength and most of all not to become bitter....
To learn something from this terrible tragedy....

But sometimes...
The answers, the healing, the wisdom and strength sure do take their sweet time finding me.


Please take a moment and pray for me specifically TODAY for my strength and for GOD'S comforting hand on my shoulder as I am weak and my heart is heavy.

Lost.....found....

Hello all my dear blog friends....
We are actually still living and breathing, believe it or not!
I know my post have been cryptic and few over the last seven or eight months but I guess the truth is now pretty public. I ask you all to pray for me and for Faith and for that matter...Carl too.

In July, Carl left us. There...I said it. It was a shock and my heart is truly broken.

I won't go into all the gory details in such a public domain but to say the least.... it has been brutal. Faith and I have been in a tough limbo land with a tremendous amount of changes and uncertainty in our Iives. I have struggled with intense emotions and overwhelm so blogging has been at the bottom of my totem pole. Anyway, I am going to try to get back into this and maybe get some therapy from it. I never expected to become a statistic but I guess there are a lot of things that are just out of our control.

To change the subject to a happier note...Faith is doing really well with her development. She just started walking holding someone's hand in the last few weeks and she is on top of the world! Balance is still a big issue but she is doing tremendously well. She can now identify letters a b and c by pointing and is working on numbest 1 2 and 3. I am so proud and humbled by her drive and determination! She can also get herself off the couch and is even talking more. She was made the honorary captain of the girls 10 and under basketball team complete with her own jersey! She is also being featured on our local hospital's website for the therapy center she attends.

My post will be brief but I will be doing more soon. Please keep us in your thoughts and prayers as we are under intense fire from the enemy and I need God's protection.