Sharing a letter that I wrote to my MawMaw a few years ago to remind her how incredible she was and what she had shared.  Was good to read it again last night to remind myself of all that she taught me, but realizing I've forgotten to take some of it to heart and to live it out.  Changes are on the way...especially for my health - something I have put on the back burner for too long.  Thanks for reminding me, before you left me - my sweet MawMaw.  May I live out the rest of my life honoring you and these life lessons.                                                                                                                          

 February 2011

My Dearest MawMaw,

     This letter is long overdue but has been a process to write.  I desperately wanted to give you something special for Valentine’s Day, something that spoke to you from my heart and not just some trivial trinket to clutter your room.  I wanted to take the time to tell you what you have meant to me, to tell you how very much I respect you, treasure and adore you.  I wanted to give you a piece of me to keep in your heart forever, even though I cannot be there in person to give it to you.  I’m so very sorry that I cannot share your special day with you, but you are so very present in my thoughts not just today, but every day.

      I wanted you to know that since reaching the age of 40, I guess I have spent a lot of time examining my life, the person I am today, how I got to this point in my life and what I want for my future.  I guess that is typical of most people who reach the “middle” of their life.  I have decided that I want to let go of anything and everything that has cluttered my heart and has kept me from being all that I am meant to be.  I am determined to be more than what I currently am.  I am determined to be better regarding every facet of my life and it takes a lot of retrospect in order to make a decision for a change, a conscious decision to take a new path…..a path that I hope will bring contentment, fulfillment and a desire to make an imprint on all whose lives I touch.

      You have made such an imprint in my life and I did not want another day to go by without acknowledging that to you.  I know that life may have dealt you more than your share of blows, but I learned strength from you.  By watching how you handled adversity and disappointment, I learned that a woman could be resilient and strong.  That a woman could stand on her own and depend on no one but herself, if needed.  From this lesson I learned two things…..people could hurt you and make you choose to either be bitter and resentful and allow anger to beat you down and tear you apart or you could choose to forgive and move forward….to continue expecting the best from humanity despite the fear and disappointment.  Certain challenges in your life have led you to take both these paths at different stages in your life and I want you to know that I was aware of your choices and how they affected you and those around you.  And from both choices – I learned from you.  I’ve learned that it is easy to give in and give up and choose the first path, but that path almost always leads to more deception and grief and turns the people you love the most away from you, usually when you need them the most….to lift you up.  But when you can find the strength to choose the second of the two paths, it leads to enlightenment and redemption and personal growth and strength…..even if it is a lot of work, causes a lot of heartache and tears….you find you come out a better person once you have reached the destination.

     In you, I have learned that God is incredible and is always present, even in times when I have turned away from him and have taken the wrong path.  He has never given up on me or anyone I love, even if they don’t know it or understand it.  I know God is the captain of my soul and always wants more for me.  Unfortunately, life lessons have to be taught and I know that it anguishes Him when, like any lost child, I disobey and choose worldly obstacles.  But He is always here and always brings me back into his loving embrace, forgives me and gives me the tools to move forward and make better choices.  In you, I learned God’s grace and love.

    In you, I have learned compassion and humanity.  I have learned that giving is always better than receiving and that when you give willingly and humbly, you are blessed two fold.  I have learned compassion for those less fortunate than myself and have learned the importance of mentally placing myself in someone else’s shoes to know that on the days life seems to beat me down – someone, somewhere is struggling with demons more powerful and hurtful than mine.  I’ve learned that self-pity is a demon that destroys a person’s self love and self worth and value and that there is no place in my life for it any longer.

     In you, I have learned patience and forgiveness.  I have learned that harboring pain inflicted intentionally or unintentionally by others, gets me no where in this life.  I have learned that I can’t make everything all right, all the time for everyone – no matter how bad I want to, some things are just out of my control.  I have learned that I have to recognize when things are not in my control and to lift those burdens up to God and push forward.  I have learned that if I expect God to forgive me of my sins and transgressions, then I have to forgive those who have hurt me.  I have learned incredible personal fortitude and resolve in surrendering past hurts and have felt the power in that surrender, I know instantly when I have given up being hurt and have “let it go” and have never felt such peace.

     In you, I have learned to appreciate the life I have been given, regardless of trials.  In you, I have learned that the glass is always half full, not half empty and that it is up to me to fill it up, not to expect anyone else to fulfill me.  I have learned to look around me and notice the beauty that surrounds me whether it be in nature, in animals, in man-made treasures or in people.  I have learned not to be judgemental by first impressions, to leave judgement out of the equation and base my feelings about others on who they are and what they have done with their life.  To know that everyone has good in them and to always strive to find it.  I have also learned that on some days, the unconditional love from a four legged creature can surpass any devotion from a two legged human.  I have learned that everything has value and worth and holds my interest.

    In you, I have learned to never stop learning….to never stop moving….to never stop being present in my own life.  I’ve learned not to take my health for granted and to appreciate myself more.  I’ve learned the desire to want to take better care of myself – not just to look better, but to feel better, to be better.  If I take care of myself then I can take better care of those I love.  I have learned to give in to aging and know that I can’t stop it…..that it is okay to work towards holding it at bay, but understanding at some point it is coming.  Therefore, there is no better time than now to take care of my physical and emotional health.  In you, I learned that grandmas should be able to do cartwheels later in life!!!

     In you, I have learned that there is no greater reward in life than sharing a genuine smile and belly shaking laughter with another person.  I have learned the power of a smile.  When I think of you, my face lights up.  My favorite picture of you is one that Daddy took of you visiting us here in Tennessee back in the 70’s.  You have a scarf headband, your hair is beautifully white and shiny and you are beautiful.  Your eyes literally twinkle in this picture and your entire personality comes through in your smile.  It is a beautiful picture and how I always see you in my mind when I close my eyes and think of you.  When I look at it, I see pure radiance.  You seem completely and wholly content – utterly joyful and grateful.  It reminds me that I want to be all of that.

     In you, I learned love.  You always had a way of making me feel that there is no one more special to you than me.  Even though I had to share you with 10 other grandchildren and countless other relatives, your face always lit up when you saw me and it always made me feel that I mattered to you and was loved by you.  I hope my face always said the same thing back to you.  I always wanted to be around you, your love and vibrance for life made you a life force….I didn’t always know what it was… but I wanted whatever it was internally that made you…you.  I was consumed by your energy.  You never allowed us to be bored, but you never just sent us on our way to find busyness, you took the time to do things for us and with us.  You spent more than just money on us, you invested your time in us.  You had a hand in molding each of us, in creating who we were and who we would be.  For that investment on your part, I am forever grateful.  In you, I learned the value of creativity.  I learned to be brave and to attempt anything I wanted.  I learned to put myself out there and to not be afraid of misunderstanding or rejection and that my ideas and my efforts were worthy.  I learned that I was valuable to other people.

     In reality, I could go on and on because the truth is I learned everything I needed to succeed in life…..from you.   I have never held another person in the esteem I hold for you.  I know you are not perfect and that you have made your share of mistakes and probably live with your own regrets, but good or bad, I wanted you to know that I watched, I learned, I was aware of you.  And no one has quite touched my life the way you have.  I am who I am today, greatly because of the love, the life lessons, the value and the effort you poured into my life.  And how do I say thank you for all of that?  How do I tell you how much I treasure having you in my life?  How do I thank God for delivering me into your life, to be your first grandchild?  I can’t ever repay you for all you have done for me other than to try to tell you ALL that you are to me and to tell you that I am grateful, my heart is FULL of gratitude that you are a part of me and that I was blessed to be yours.

     Whether you feel that your life was full and happy or that you were dealt more than your share of unfairness and heartache or maybe a mixture of both….I wanted you to know that your life mattered.  That when it is time for God to call you home to be with those you love that have gone before you and to wait for the rest of us that love you, that I know that you have not left this earthly life without knowing that you made a difference in my life and in the lives of countless other people.  You are an amazing woman and your life mattered and I will keep your life force with me always and will always challenge myself to be a better person because of it.

      I want you to know that if I have ever caused you a minute’s worth of unhappiness or disappointment or heartache for any bad choices I have made in my life, that I am truly sorry for ever having hurt you.  For every time that I have been too absorbed by my own life to take the time to be a part of yours, I am sorry.  I too am only human and have made my way the best way I could.  I know that I did not do everything gracefully or the way I should, but I can honestly say that anything I have done to hurt another was done unintentionally and done through humanness.  I’m at a place in my life where I want to ask everyone for forgiveness for any harm I ever caused and to grant them the same in return and to move forward as positively as possible. 

    The last 5 years have been some of my most challenging personally and recently I made the mistake of trying to step out and examine myself in a selfish way, thinking I was being beaten down on purpose and that God had abandoned me and that he was allowing other forces to give me more than my share of life’s disappointments.  I found it was easy to blame others for my lot in life and to try to focus on myself.  Strangely, I found that trying to make myself the center of my universe made things much worse, very unbalanced and that it made me angry at everyone for not taking my feelings, my time, my effort into great consideration.  I felt taken for granted and angry.  Then suddenly I realized that I can’t be my best by being selfish and self absorbed and that whining and complaining weren’t going to fix anything.  That I had to pull up my bootstraps and do it myself.  And in doing that, I realized that my focus had to be on everyone else that mattered to me.  So, I wanted to take the time to ask for your grace and forgiveness and to acknowledge the importance of your life in mine and to say thank you.  To say I love you.  To say that I want to be better because of you.  That even though I cannot be there with you every day, to wrap my arms around you as often as I would like, to share a smile and a hearty laugh or just lay next to you and feel your soothing touch as you scratch my back…..that I do feel your presence and your soul every day of my life and that I could not love you any more.

     So, thank you for being my MawMaw.  Thank you for being everything I ever needed in my life.  Thank you for being a person that mattered.  Thank you for loving me unconditionally and for truly teaching me what that means.

I love you my MawMaw, more than words can say, but I hope that through the words I chose to write here, from my heart that you feel at least a piece of all that you are to me.  I am forever grateful that you were chosen to be my grandmother.  Thank you for that life force – I know that I will feel that part of you every day of my life.

                              With the utmost respect and a heart full of gratitude….

                                          I'll love you always, my MawMaw

                

                                                                         

                Love, Laurie

The Christmas Family….A Tradition Continued

I was in Kindergarten when I met him.  This little boy whose eyes smiled long before his mouth did, but as soon as the feeling caught up with his lips it was the kind of smile that made you smile back.  He had the most infectious giggle and we were soon fast friends.  Sam was my first black friend.  Sam was the first person to teach me that the color of skin meant nothing to matters of the heart.  He was my favorite person in Kindergarten, the person I looked forward to seeing every morning, playing with all day long and hugging goodbye at the end of the day. 

When you are 6 years old and you love a person just for who they are and you have not been taught differently by the world yet, you don’t really even see all the differences.  I was a girl, Sam a boy.  I was white, Sam was not.  I was blessed to be raised in a home with more than I needed, Sam’s family by most measures was considered poor.  He and I didn’t notice any of that.  Luckily, my mother did not either, except at Christmas. 

My mother was fortunate to be a “stay at home” mom, which I now know meant she was never “home”.  She was the ultimate multi-tasker serving as room mom to my class, taxi driver to Brownies, softball practice and dance lessons, wife, cook (I use that word loosely…sorry Mom), maid and so much more.  She was devoted to her family and she LOVED Christmas.  She made Christmas an incredible spectacle and a magical experience in our home.  It was good to be me at Christmas time.  I was blessed beyond measure.  But the best part about my mother is her giving heart.  And Christmas in 1975 was about to take on a completely different meaning for our family.  Because of my love for Sam, my mother’s heart had “made up its mind” to bring that magic and spectacle of Christmas to Sam’s family as well.

One day before Christmas, Momma picked me and Sam up from school and took us shopping.  She had Sam pick out presents for his Mom and Dad and had him show her things in the store that he would like to have.  That day, she brought Sam home and taught him how to wrap the Christmas presents for his parents.  I still remember his face when he got out of the car and showed his mom that he had real gifts, with wrapping paper and bows, to put out for her and his dad.  He was beaming.  I remember feeling so happy for him until I went into his house and realized that he didn’t have a Christmas tree to put them under.

I was very quiet on the drive home (which for most people who know me, is unusual) and my mother asked me what I was thinking about.  I told her that my favorite part of Christmas in our house was our beautiful Christmas tree and how I loved sitting in the dark with only its twinkling lights on.  I was sad that Sam didn’t have a beautiful tree too.  And that was when my mother shared the secret of Christmas with me.  That was the day I learned that Christmas was not about me.  It was not about toys, it was not about things on a wish list and as much as I loved Santa Claus and other traditions, it was not about those either.  Christmas was about love and Christmas was about sacrifice and Christmas was about putting others before yourself.  But she didn’t just tell me the secret, she let me be involved and learn for myself what it meant to be the action behind the story.

That year, our family went to Sam’s house and showered them with love at Christmas time.  We brought them a Christmas tree and all the decorations.  We brought them Christmas dinner with all the trimmings and a few extra groceries to put in the pantry.  And we also brought gifts, for each of them, all wrapped up.  I remember the same sweet smile that graced Sam’s face that was now on his momma’s face, but with tears streaming down her cheeks.  I remember my dad putting up the Christmas tree and all of us decorating it together.  I remember the sheer joy radiating from Sam.  But mostly I remember the warm feeling that engulfed my body as I watched Sam hug my momma’s neck ever so tightly saying “Thank you Mrs. Tanner, thank you Mrs. Tanner, you must be my Christmas angel”.

By the time I graduated from high school the tradition of “The Christmas Family” had spread through our community.  The weeks before Christmas, you could hardly walk through our beautifully decorated house because everyone we knew, and even perfect strangers, were dropping off items at our house.  Even stores were making unbelievable donations to my mother’s “cause”.  My senior year, my mother provided Christmas for 26 families in need, with most of those families having more than 6 people living in their house.  Delivering Christmas became the most special day there was.  It was a day that changed me forever.  I will never be able to put into words or thank my mother enough for teaching me the greatest lesson I have ever learned.  I thank God for giving my mother a servant’s heart.  I thank God for giving me that same heart.  I thank God this year for carrying on the tradition and providing me with a Christmas family of my very own.  I hope God will help me instill the same true lesson of giving in my own children, that they too would be touched and forever changed by the incredible experience of putting someone else before themselves.

Merry Christmas Momma.  Merry Christmas Sam.  Merry Christmas to my new Christmas family.

Another Great Day at the Lake!

In June, we went back to Center Hill Lake and rented a pontoon boat.  Aunt Lori and Uncle Bill along with Aunt Karla and Uncle Mike joined us for this fun day.  Mr. Gary let us borrow his jet skis and boy did everyone have a good time flying around on those!  Uncle Mike even threw himself off doing a spin stunt!  Aunt Karla said there was no way she was riding with him!  The weather was perfect and we had a great time being together enjoying the sun, the water and lots of laughs.  We are so blessed to have days like this...and friends who share toys! 

 The kids feeding the turtles at Center Hill Lake.  Good thing we brought extra bread - they were hungry lil guys!

Danielle doesn't want to sit around - she's either jumping off the boad or zooming around on the jet ski.  Uncle Bill thought he should play it safe and go slow - Danielle had other things in mind....she grabbed the throttle, said "No, Uncle Bill - like this" and they took off towards 60mph!  Oooff....she's gonna be trouble!

John Tanner and Aunt Lori gettin' some rays on the boat!

Danielle on the jet ski with her aunts Lori and Karla.  WooHoo, watch those babes go fast!