Today is the day of remembrance.  I go back to December 21st, 1995.  This was the night the world became too heavy for me to carry the burdens anymore.

My family life was horrible – my mother had just delivered my little sister premature, returned home with many problems after a prolonged stay in the hospital.  She blamed me for my sister’s sickness telling me that I had caused her stress leading to the miscarriage.  It was heartbreaking to think I was the reason this tiny little angel had to undergo heart surgery and live in an incubator for 6 weeks.  I believed my mother’s accusation and hated myself for it.  My stepdad was full-blown alcoholic watching his marriage slip away as my mother spent more time away in private jets and in big meetings with her oil giant job than at home with him.  Meanwhile I was in love with a boy at school who was a lot like me – popular and joyous on the outside but dying a slow death inside.  I hoped we could heal each other but he couldn’t seem to stop screwing me over. He just didn’t want a girlfriend or to be tied down he said.

That night, I took 28 valium and 12 elavil. I died. But God lifted me into the Heavens where I met the council and was shown the book of my life. Then I was sent back into my body and nothing changed – other than my desire to research spirituality.

A year later however, everything changed. A series of events led me to a place of deep anxiety and I nearly ended up homeless after driving to Tennessee with a plan to live there alone at work at Hooters a thousand miles away from everyone and everything I’d ever known. I was terrified and I told my mom I didn’t want to stay – I wanted to come home. She said, “You have no choice, you’re not living with me.” So in this rejection I called Josh and a week later we were living together in an apartment. Six months after that we own our own home, had 2 new cars and a few months after that we were engaged with a beautiful babygirl on the way.

Everything that was wrong in my life on that night I tried to take my own life was not only changed but God gave me even more than I ever could’ve hoped for or imagined. I got the guy who held my heart, a stable life and home and even two beautiful and healthy children. My dreams truly did get granted to me. The only thing I lost was my relationship with my mother but that seemed to be her dream at the time. So I guess we all got what we wanted and prayed for.

I guess back then I never really thought about the process of losing to gain or that God sends replacements when seasons end and we lose love. He knew my mother was going to remarry and move away and he made sure that I had a home and someone to love me and care for me. I guess somewhere in my internal heartspace I knew all along Josh was in my life for a big reason; hence why I couldn’t seem to shake him no matter how hard I tried to move on. He was to be my family for the next twenty years.

In 2016 when I lost him my mother had just moved back to Texas (literally a month prior to his accident), directly in the home behind ours. It’s as if God sent her so that she’d be in place when I needed to go back to my beginning – alone and made childlike in deep loss. I was so excited to have my mom back in my life and even thought we might have a happily ever after reunion granting me the mother I’d always dreamed of having; loving, unselfish and compassionate.

In 2019, it seemed that I was living inside of constant dejavu – all things happening triggered moments from my past that were very hard and hurtful to deal with. I lost my mom again and everything else of stability then moved away to California to be near a man who I’d fallen head over heels in love with (just like when I had first met Josh). And just like with Josh, this guy was emotionally unavailable, didn’t want a relationships and pushed me away in the exact same ways.

It’s amazing the crazy things that have tied me back to those days when I was at a crossroad with Tennessee and Texas choosing between the Brian guy and my home where Josh was in Texas. As I type this I’m realizing it may just be a simulation that repeats. Like riding a ride and then getting off and riding it again. It’s still happening and you feel the drops and the wind and the excitement and the highs and the lows but you know what to expect after the first go round.

So there are new characters now but the same kind of story it seems. And if God is the author of this story then he’s already written it and it’s already going to turn out exactly as last time.

Here I am now – I survived near death, I love my son and my dog in Texas and feel it’s my home but my mother has tried to keep me away and tells me to not come back there because I’m not welcome around her. And yet I’m in California with nothing but Dave and a job I hate (similar to Hooters – with no future) and I’m trying to make that phone call. But Josh my ex-husband is now seemingly Josh my son. We’re talking about making that long drive back to Texas to get an apartment together.

The plot twist I’m curious about is what happens to Dave? Does he fade away into a distant memory like Brian did when I left Tennessee? Or might God do something spontaneous and shocking like send him on a job hunt in Houston where love chases after the one that got away? Imagine how God might give me all the things I lost and even more – a beautiful home, a great career, my dog back and a new puppy, both of my kids with a huge happy Christmas celebration and surprise visit by the return of the Mac on my front door.

I believe he will because I’ve seen him do it before.

This is exciting to see what God is about to do.