So my last post was in 2011 and it is now 2013.. it is, in fact April of 2013. Easter was last Sunday. It was an amazing day.... Peaceful and relaxed.. with most of our extended family here with us. Alan's parents were still in Mexico so it was the Billingsley siblings and their families here to celebrate the greatest gift God has ever given.

It's kind of funny how when you start out raising your family and they are all little kids you want only the best for them. You try so hard to provide all the right things for them to grow up to be "good people", and then one day they are grown and they do not resemble anything you THOUGHT they were going to be like. God has His plans... they don't always look like our plans. It's true.

As I sat on the porch last weekend with my family I was looking out at the amazing way in which we(all the brothers and sisters in law) have come to the same places in life. I am a grandmother now, I have two beautiful little girls Hazel and Millihannah. Cheryl is also a grandmother, her grandson Michael is a beautiful, sweet little boy. Terry and Byron are not grand parents yet. Their kids are all on their own doing well. Becky and Rick have a teen and a forth grader.Not quite ready for the same place we are in yet.

At this point Cheryl and Pat have nursed both of his parents through lingering end of life illnesses buried both. I have had to put my mother into safe care at a dementia /Alzheimer's care facility.She seems pretty happy and not sad or angry. Terry is trying to convince her mother that she needs to move to a place she can get around by herself. These are challenges that life throws at us as our "right of passage" into one of our late stages of adulthood. These things are not so easy. However, God is good and we are supported no matter the circumstance.

Maybe with so much life happening I forget or cannot  bring myself ,to write about it. I am not sure. But I am sure, that when  I do write about what is going on, I feel like I can survive even the toughest of the challenges I face. It's like a prayer...and I know that God is taking care of it all.

Peace- When your plans do not coinside with God's plans

So, it is that dusty dried out part of Summer. Right before school starts, There are tomatoes that you keep cheering on hoping they will get ripe and be ready to eat befor they freeze. There a million things to be done in your classroom at school if you are a teacher. There is always that feeling of : where did my summer go? (When they close school on June 27th you do not get much summer to begin with!)

I AM wondering where did my summer go? I spent my three extra contracted days in th elibrary and didn't get very far. I then got some help for 18 hours and got a little further. The library is piled with reading materials and someone came in today to help figure out where to put it all. I am feeling like maybe I'll feel ready for September 7th..but who knows everything could change!

God is very good and Iam blessed beyond words. I truely believe that but i also know that I have these "plans" and that God keeps changing them.

I wanted to be able to "run away" for most of the summer. But God decided I needed to be around to take care of things when he took Uncle Don to be with him. We have been helping Patrick out with all the details of closing up the house and taking care of all the outstanding bills etc. 

I want to go back to church with a different outlook. I want it to be a fresh start.. We'll see what happens. My Husband is not so keen his last remark to me was "I think I am DONE with organized religon". Okay but does that mean I can't try this out???

AS I said this whole thing will be a "we shall see" situation.

I want Kate to have an easy birth of the Beebo unit... I hope it will go well! I want Isaiah and Kiesha to find some middle ground to work on a relationship.. (Please Lord let them find Pastor Dave!)

God make me an instument of your love and of your grace to someone in the next three weeks. Amen 

Peace - When you know that you have WAY too much to accomplish

So...today started early. I went to school to try to tackle the MOUNTAIN of work that needs to done. I have already out in my 3 extra days of contracted work. I have 4 pallets of books waiting to be processed. I have not finished the inventory for this year. I did not follow through with the overdue books. (Hmm.. sounds like a list I need to take to my principal!)  I go in and look around and think "How can I ever finish this? How do I even start this? Where do I start this??"

I crank up King -FM ( local classical music station) and start in...In three hours I finished the inventory on the Fiction section of books. I went out into the hall and cut the plastic wrap off the boxes of books and peeked into some of the boxes. (MORE BOOKS THAT NEED TO BE STAMPED!!!YIKES!)

I needed to leave to go get my hair cut and go to the doctor. So I have done my duty and then some today. I had some company and help on Thursday and Friday. My friend Leslie came and worked with me. I got some good things accomplished!! She suggested I call another mutual friend about coming to help. I called the friend she really wants the hours.YEA! She was happy I called! So God in his infinite wisom has blessed me once again with someone to help me. The mountain can be conquered!

Peace- When you have to face the next stage of becoming an adult

July 18,2011


I remember being about a month out of high school and being very afraid of "the next step"- college. My boyfriend was going to Seattle and I would be down here in Tacoma going to school. I hated it ! I cried ( it didn't really help much) and I was really sad about the whole thing but I just decided to buck up and head in full speed ahead. It worked out. Then the next major "growing up" was finding out I was pregnant. I wanted kids,  always had but.. I was scared to death!  I sat and cried on the bathroom f;loor for an hour! I was SOOOO scared! But once again I bucked up and took it full speed ahaed. Then teenagers scared me totally( so I took on youth group), then kids moving out  and then kids moving away...I keep getting these jolts of the next steps of my adulthood. They always scare me but I seem to pray harder and and tell God thank you for where I am more often., and things sort of work out,
I sat this morning and looked at a slide show that Alan made for my Auntie Leah’s memorial service. Leah is my mother’s one and only sister. She was the Auntie who was always there when I was little to do things like host my June birthday parties at her house with the swimming pool. She also has a much better sense of fashion than my mother, so I was always in favor of any clothes she purchased for me. I have mourned her leaving this earth some but not a lot. She was 88 years old and had been plagued all her life with medical troubles. She is totally free from all of that now. She is her young and adventuresome self with God.

I am concerned about my Uncle Don, her husband, though. Their youngest son Patrick has been taking care of both of them for the last three years and now Don has been really sick and had to go to the hospital and now is in rehab care at Lakewood Care Center. Patrick just can’t take his Dad home, the house is not safe for him. It would take A LOT to get the house ready for Don, and by the time it was finished it would not be long and Don would move on to be with Leah.

I was trying to explain to Uncle Don why Patrick just couldn’t take of him at home and he seemed to understand what I was talking about. He knew he had upset his son and told me so, but I reassured him that Pat was not upset with him but was more upset because he couldn’t keep his promise that Uncle Don could come home with Pat and stay at his house. Pat came in and they had a chance to talk about it too. I am kind of the sister Pat never had and the daughter Don never had. I have been a close part of their lives my whole life.

So now Pat is looking at adult care homes in Lakewood and I will be interested to find out what he has found out. I know there are good places out there with good people running them. It takes looking for them! I hope he does look hard and does not just "settle" with one.

I told Uncle Don that day I was feeling like we were in the same boat getting ready to move to the next phase of our lives. He was moving on to be with God and I was moving on up to being a Grandma. He agreed and as we talked he said he had the feeling there was someone he was supposed to see before he died but he wasn’t sure who it was. I quizzed him with names but he said “ No none of those” I don’t quite know who it is but I know it is someone”. I immediately wondered if it was the babies that are coming? I mentioned that and he said “Maybe! Maybe that’s why I am not sure who it is I'm supposed to see!” Well I for one, hope that is true and that we have him around to meet Beebo and his/her cousin! What a great way to make a full circle of life. Thank you God for Life here on earth!

Peace- When You Wonder What You did Wrong When You Were Raising Your Kids

July 16, 2011


Sometimes I wonder what in the world I did wrong when I was raising my children. I thought I was doing the right things. I tried to treat them fairly. I took them to church and when there was no Sunday school I helped create one. I took them places to “see the world” when they were younger and I really truly took them to see some Amazing and yet devastated parts of the world when they were older. I keep saying I when I really mean WE. Alan and I together. We have no illusions that we could not have done these things as single parents. And yet when your kids grow up, they make all the choices. You cannot call the shots.

How is it I can raise a daughter in the church and yet when she moves out she moves in with her boyfriend for 4 years before they get married? Her father and I don’t put a stamp of approval on it but what can we do if they are over 21 and making their own choices?

How is it I can raise my son in the church and drag him to you group until he is 18 then he decides that we have failed him as a family and rants and raves at all his siblings and us about how WE are the cause of all his troubles? I am shocked and deeply hurt by this, but maybe I have failed this child whom I adopted and whose skin color does not match mine.

These are all the misgivings you go through as you parent and you watch your child go through as they continue to grow up.

These things bother me some, but in retrospect I did the best I could at the time, with what I knew at the time. I believe that my kids will be able to appreciate and understand that one day. I know it was true for me. My mom did the best she could at the time, with what she knew at the time. But as I had kids of my own and I asked advice…She had good advice which I did listen to, and combined with the knowledge I had. I praise her and God for that.

I am excited about my new family members that will arrive in October and in January. I am praying for Ian and Kate that all will continue to go well. I am praying for Isaiah and Kiesha that they can find a place they see eye to eye and can have a relationship that will be good for their child. I cannot control any of this , It is all in God’s hands. All I can do at this time is pray. Won’t you pray for them too?

In Proverbs 22:6 it says: “Train up a child in the way he should go and he will not depart from it.”

Well, I have trained them up and from my perspective the path has been strayed from but I am not the one who makes that call, and probably, to make the call at this time would be foolish. I think perhaps there has been some straying over the centerline and self correction is happening. Who Knows? Only God!

Peace –When You Are At the Mid-Life Crossroads

July 14,,2011


So I have had some time for my life to slow down being out here on my boat. I remember being about 36 years old and feeling like I was in mid-life crises. That seems pretty funny to me now, because I feel like I am in mid-life crises now! Or maybe at the crossroads Parenting my parent and becoming a grandparent myself..Interesting place to in, I think.

At 36, I was facing the fact that my kids were now all in school and I needed to go back to school to do SOMETHING! I had an associate’s degree in technical arts for Respiratory Therapy. I had worked for 11 years at Lakewood General Hospital in that capacity. I quit to be with my kids and knew I would never return to the hospital. I had taken classes at Pierce College in Early Childhood Education, and had been a substitute teacher for their Cooperative Preschool programs. So I was thinking I’d finish my Associates in Early Childhood. I did that and then went on to Central Washington University (at South Seattle Community College every night for a year and a half and then daytime student teaching) and received my Bachelor’s degree in Early Childhood Education with a minor in Elementary Education. Mind you, this was a HUGE undertaking for me. I had to retake all my math courses (high school through college algebra to be able to pass the teacher entry exam.(the math part, I had to take 3 times to pass). I had prayed and prayed about what I needed to do. I journaled…a lot. I must have filled up three or four journals. But I knew without a doubt God was leading me.

So here I am again…..in a place where I am uncertain. I prayed about going to school for the library certificate. Seems like God was telling me that was what I needed to do. It has been amazingly helpful! Now I am trying to get through my next phase of “growing-up”. That is the part where I am the person responsible for what is happening to my mom. I am trying to duke it out with her long term care insurance company and get them to pay the person I have in there on the weekends taking care of her. It’s a struggle. Insurance companies don’t want to pay out and they have all kinds of “hidden” agendas waiting to take advantage of old people. I really, really do not like them! What A major stress!

Then I am at a new place that excites me! I am about to be a grandparent. This is exciting to me! I want to totally enjoy and celebrate this new little person! How amazing God is in his creations!! And Not just one grandchild..two! Ian and Isaiah are about to be fathers. That whole idea is pretty had to wrap my brain around. Actually in some ways not, Ian has always, always loved babies and kids. Isaiah has always had a compassionate heart of any creature small and incapable of defending and sticking up for itself. So maybe it is not so much of a stretch to imagine my boys as Daddies. It is mind boggling, but wonderful none the less. My prayer is that God will lead both of them in their career journeys and help them find their ways.

When I think about how planned out my life was when I was young and I look at these two boys and their surprise at becoming parents, I just try to keep in mind that whatever we try to plan does not have anything to do with God’s plans. My job is to continue to be their parent and to love them and to love my grandchildren. Also to pray continually and fervently that God will continue to bless our family.

Peace-Because you choose to “Stand By your Man”

July 13th, 2011


This idea of supporting my husband is one of my other “my problems” of not getting to church on Sunday. He is still trying to sort out where he fits in, and how to serve the church community now, just like me. He is a ship without a map and compass at the moment. He kind of bobs along in the water waiting. He does not like to be patient and I think God is telling him( both of us actually) to be patient. We are both sort of lost. There are no people at the church right now that we call “close friends”. Ian and Kate are the closest and they are family. Next would be Brad and Heather Epperson (We have been through some amazingly great and stressful times in youth ministry with them.) then Patsy and Dave Zofkie ( …mostly because we are still getting to know them,) and then we also have known the Macphersons, Alan and Jane for quite a while. Aside from Pastor Cheryl, and maybe ,just maybe Alan Macpherson, or Brad Epperson, I do not think there is anyone Alan would/could go talk to with a BIG problem. We both have people that we have known for quite some time, but not many people we would be on intimate terms with. ( I do on the other hand have several people I could talk with… I am pretty much a need to vent/ download kind of person.)

So this is where “small groups” come in right? How do I get a kind of shy guy like Alan* , to join a small group. The last time it was put together by someone else for us, we had little say in who was in it….. and was a total disaster!!!I mean TOTALLY! Wrong people combos ..oooh! not good!

*The first impression people have of Alan is that he is a very confident “guy’s guy”. But he isn’t. He’s really kind of shy and has a hard time meeting new people or going into totally new situations where knows no one.


Alan would like to be a small group leader for people of any age who love music. Maybe do a study of the old hymns. We have a book called “Then Sings My Soul” about some of the best loved old hymns and how RADICAL and scandalous they were thought to be in the 1800’s! Today they are the “oldies”’ that everyone knows and loves,(How Great Thou Art, for example) and that some musicians are now rewriting the music for(think David Crowder Band)…because those words cannot be rewritten in any way that is SO meaningful as that first way. Someone’s heart was crying out to God and it was a very, very powerful thing. It might be a great way to study God’s word that gets revealed to others through music, and a chance to play/sing and maybe even be able to have a chance to share in worship at some point in time ( either service!) Also a way for my husband to relate to some folks ..he has a harder time than I do opening up to people.

So these are some other things I have been thinking and praying about as I bob around on my sailboat. A lot of time to think and be able to write, makes for a healthier frame of mind for me!