Dancing in the Living Room

Goodness, how do I start this? Let me first start by saying that I'm pretty much crazy and the woman that I live with (Michelle, hi!) is even crazier and brings out the craziness in me. My best friend Julie has the same effect and Michelle's best friend Mary is nutty as well. When the four (sometimes five when Mary's 18 year old daughter Sarah is present) of us get together the husbands of these women go into hiding. My husband has been in hiding for quite some time now. Actually he's never surfaced and is shaking with the realization that someday he's going to have to face me, but until then, he remains MIA. Poor guy. Pray for him okay?

Let me change the tone of this for a second. I haven't always acted this crazy, well at least not to my knowledge. In fact, I'm a pretty insecure person and if you've read prior blogs I'm sure you got that point. I can pretty much pinpoint the moment that my self-worth took a dive. I was in fifth grade when I really noticed that my parent's were raising me differently from everyone else. I grew up in a fairly strict household and my parents did everything that they could to keep me innocent and for that I thank them. Sometimes I feel it might have been a bit extreme but they really wanted me to become a Godly woman and to stay pure so they did what they thought was best. Unfortunately now I say really dirty things without having any clue as to what I'm saying. I'm pretty naive still.

So while I was in fifth grade, I noticed that I was more sheltered than the rest of the kids. At that time I had a cousin that was a model. She was on a LIFE cereal box, the front of the Sears Wishbook, and a bunch of other stuff. I thought that I could make friends with people because of my relation to her. This is not unusual for a child or unfortunately even adults to do. When I told the popular boy in class, Brandon Walsh, about my cousin, he said and I quote "I sure hope she doesn't look like you". This statement from a 10 year old boy has haunted me and has been a pain in the butt to overcome for the past 15 years.

I don't say any of this fishing for compliments. Please don't comment on my looks to try to make me feel better because I'm not playing that game. I'm not trying to get attention and with God's help, I'm trying not to play that girl game anymore...you know the one,
Girl: "I look fat."
Boy: "no you don't you look beautiful"

I’m writing this because I want you to know where I'm coming from.

I like everyone else in life, have developed my share of crap that has made my life, shall we say, interesting. The older I get, the more I realize how much baggage everyone has. You either let it control you and blame it for your failures or you embrace it and with God's help, it helps shape you into the person that God want's you to be. I fluctuate between both.

For the past few years God has put people in my life that have been able to help me realize my value. I always thought that God never spoke to me, but in reality he speaks to me through people everyday and the past couple years he's been really at it. Michelle has definitely been one of the most significant people to help me understand that I'm valuable. The whole Thompson family has been HUGE in helping me feel less insignificant and all this happened when dreams where taken away from me. The dream of doing music full time was torn away from me and the dream of a future with a certain guy vanished. I honestly think that the latter one would have gone away sooner but I had a death grip on it. Both of these plans temporarily made me feel important and valuable. They were my "cousin is a model" in my adult life and once they were gone I was broken. Here enter the Thompson’s. I could talk about this forever, but essentially, this was what I needed at this point in my life and slowly but surely I started coming out my shell because I was understanding that my self-worth wasn't based on what I was doing with my life or who I was with. I now live with the Thompson’s in a different state and I work for John. Moving to Nashville threw me out of whack for awhile. Before moving I was feeling pretty comfortable with who I was and who I was becoming, but as soon as I moved I felt as though I had to start over again.

Now I finally feel like I have a place here. God has placed people here in Nashville that have been so encouraging and have gone out of their way to make me feel valuable. I feel needed here which is a HUGE thing for me and I feel that I have a purpose here. I feel like this is a major step in my journey and I'm extremely excited to see where God is going to take me. I had no plan on my life taking place anywhere but Illinois, but here I am.

Last night I went to church. I sat in-between two boys that were both being rowdy and disruptive. I tried to get up and move and two times I was pushed back into my seat. Last night after church I went out to eat and I was teased and people remembered what was going on in my life. I knew everyone there and I'm starting to have history with them. Gosh I can't believe that like 6 or 7 months ago, Whitney and Peter asked me to go out to eat for the first time with their group after church. I felt so uncomfortable and didn't know anyone. I can't believe that there was a time when I didn't have anyone to sit with at church and I remember the first time that I sat with Peter and Whitney and felt so excited that I actually had people that I sort of knew to sit with.

Last night I was driving home thinking about this and just thanking God that this is happening. It feels so right. I feel like I'm where I should be and because of that I'm more confident than I have ever been. Please don't think that I'm super spiritual, because I'm not. I'm a horrible Christian most of the time. So I'm driving home in my car absolutely giddy and when I arrive home a spontaneous Christmas tree decorating party is going on in my house where more of my friends are decorating our Christmas tree with the Thompson’s. There's hokey Christmas music playing and everyone is singing bad harmonies in bad opera-like voices while decorating the living room and then a dance party breaks out. We all dance like idiots to my Rat Pack Christmas CD because we all know each other and we know that we are broken crazy people and the Thompson's house is an environment were every knows they're valuable and because of that you can dance like an idiot even though you're completely insecure about your dancing. It was amazing. Kelley you were missed.

This was really long and probably doesn't make any sense or flow and I applaud anyone that made it to the end.