A Little About My Faith And Questioning Why

Growing up, I was from a divorced family. My father and mother divorced when I was five and I lived with my mother and her parents from that point forward on ten acres in Oklahoma. By the time I was old enough to see over the kitchen counter I had specific chores that I was responsible for. My grandparents would watch me at night while my mom worked at the local Air Force base on the night shift. This is where I eventually met and married my husband who was in the Air Force stationed at the same base. I grew up learning how to garden, raise animals, and play outside until it was dark, unlike the kids of today.

Being from a small town in the bible belt of the country, it was just a given that on Sunday mornings you would be in church. If you went out the night before, didn’t matter, you were in church on Sunday. Our faith was based on the Methodist Church in our small town in Oklahoma where my mother and I both graduated from the same school. I grew up going to church on Sundays both in the mornings for service and for church youth group (which my mom was a leader of with a couple of other parents) in the evenings. Since it was a small town the kids my age grew up together through the years in the church. We all went through confirmation together and we all graduated together. I always knew that I had to know Jesus to be able to go to heaven, it was just known that is how it was. You have to ask Jesus into your heart and ask for forgiveness of your sins to be saved. As we went through confirmation classes this was all gone over again.

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When Reality Started To Set In

Before I get too far into my journey with you here on this blog, I need to explain our family a bit more. My husband and I have always been very open and honest with our children about everything from our oldest being my husbands step son to the realities of life and death. I also want to say that I know there are millions of blogs, websites, books, etc on grief so I know this blog isn’t especially different than others out there. If it can help me through this time in my life that’s a plus, if it helps others along the way then its a bonus for me to have helped someone who needed reassurance they aren’t walking this path alone, both in losing a child this way and losing the faith thought to be there since you were born.

Big Bubby as he will be known here, chose to join the Army when he graduated from high school as he was not the college type. Coming from a military family, my husband and I were very proud of him for his decision to join  the military. We hoped it would help him grow up a bit and let him see some of the world that I have never seen. So, graduation came and my baby boy left for boot camp and came back a soldier. He was deployed to Afghanistan for a year of his term in the Army. Before he left we discussed what would happen if something should happen to him, we made me power of attorney and he completed a  will in the event he didn’t come home. I tell you this  because of two reasons; 1) everyone should  have a will and life insurance both for you and your children and  2) someone in your family should know your wishes should something happen to you. The other reason for telling you this is because on November 6th my husband and I sat at a restaurant and discussed getting the call no parent ever wants to get. We were now 8 and 14 hours from our kids and that call would be paralyzing to receive so far from where they were. My initial reaction to the call we received five days later is that it was our fault for discussing it out loud (yes, I know that was a crazy thought but so I thought it).

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The Day My World Stood Still

November 10, 2015, just another day in my life. It was a Tuesday morning and my husband had just moved to New Orleans two weeks prior to live with me from Dallas where we had lived for 17 years with our children. We have a 25-year-old, Big Bubby, 21-year-old, Million Dollar Brother, and 17-year-old Baby Sis.

It was early, sometime around 7AM, and my husband’s phone either beeped with a text or actually he received a call. I can’t remember at this point. It was our oldest boys best friend asking if we had heard from him that morning, my son’s Foreman was looking for him because he hadn’t shown up for work. His Foreman had seen an accident on the way in with a truck that looked like our son’s but it didn’t look like a bad wreck so he didn’t stop.

That was unusual for our son because living in Dallas, he worked in the Sprinkler Fitters Union, and would work at different job sites around Dallas and Fort Worth. He drove a lifted truck with ranch hand bumpers on the front and the back, his baby as he called it. He would leave from his home on the north side of Dallas to get to work early to get a good place to park then sleep until it was time to go to work. We all started calling his cell phone trying to get a hold of him. I was slightly frustrated with him because I know him (lived with him 20 something years) and know that he can sleep hard and not hear things but for him to miss being at work, that bothered me.

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