Notes in my pocket. 2016 Thank you amazing ladies.

As 2015 comes to an end and I reflect on the year I am reminded how short life is. My mum is not perfect but has a heart of Gold and is in my eyes an amazing woman who no matter what has kept on going. With little money in her pocket, she has still had the courage to face each day. She and I may have knocked our heads together and disliked each other but she is a woman who has the courage when the world turned against her not to give up and for that I am so grateful. I am beyond thankful for being able to look after Carole this year to hear her play her piano to learn to love someone even when they repeated themselves a lot of times and to feel love given back to me. She is and will always be an amazing woman of faith and love. Penny a woman who comes through my line a smile on her face and love in her heart a woman like no other. Patricia a British lady with an attitude "Don't mess with me" she is amazing I find strength in her attitude and in her amazing love she has shown me. Many women who have spoken to me who have shared their lives even if it was for just a moment in time. For the Buddhist lady who allowed me to shine some love into her mother's life. To a dear child Caroline who I will love and remember for eternity her and her little red coat. My amazing girls who have battled through life, giving me wings to fly when I wanted to give up and a heart to love when life was falling to pieces. They are amazing young women who press on regardless of what others think and have given me my life and a reason to know that God is indeed a God of miracles. LeaAnn dear and faithful a friend like no other what words can express such a friend other than God I am blessed. My amazing friends in England Eunice and Sharon women who love me no matter what. Just a few woman who have changed and touched my life this year. No one knows what 2016 holds but I encourage you to be a woman who looks beyond yourself and one that dreams big, embraces that you are amazing and holds on to the fact that you can do great things. I have struggled for years and still struggle with what I have just written but I know one thing if you just keep on going forward believing Anything can happen then Miracles indeed happen all around you and you indeed change your future for a brighter one. Thank you for sharing in my journey and life. Happy 2016

Notes in my pocket: It is not what we see with just our eyes that counts!

Notes in my pocket. Today's thought is have you looked around you, looked at people, and taken note of what they wear? I have looked at times in my life and judged people on how they were at that moment or how they looked. The older I get I realize we can all clean up really good but what matters is not what we wear so to speak but what is in our heart. In the passed year, I have taken the time to say to people that looked down how beautiful they looked, to look for a way to make someone smile. I have found that kindness comes from people you do not think it will come from. I know a lady who is a Buddhist and I used to always talk to her mom. She did not talk very good English but my goal was to make her smile. She stopped coming to where I work and I found out she died. Today her daughter found me and handed me a card with a note of how her mom liked coming to see me and how the gift inside, her mom would have wanted me to have. If I look through my own eyes, I see imperfection all around and I become very critical, but as I learn to take a step back and look through grace and God's eyes, I see that there are wonderful people just wanting to be loved, just wanting to hear a kind word. Are we really too busy to care, too busy to pass a light of hope onto another? As 2015 closes I ask you to carry in your heart a light that daily can be passed onto another to shine hope, a smile and love. If we can all do this each day and try at least try one act of kindness, the darkness in this world does not appear to be so dark and the light shines brighter. There is a story I made up for my children: this little girl was scared of the dark and her mummy said that the darkness wanted to come in from outside because it was lonely. See once the darkness came in, it could see the light and then darkness was no longer alone and it was transformed from dark to light and so it is with us. If we give a little hope, then the despair in our lives starts to go and we find hope in a new tomorrow. 2016 a year of darkness or light, of despair or hope: the choice is yours.

Christmas 2015 and The Angel

As Christmas Day 2015 comes to an end and I congratulate myself in not giving my family food poisoning or making them sick for another Christmas meal, I would like to reflect on some things. Christmas Day and all its glory does not have to be about ourselves and me, myself, and I: it can in fact be about reaching out to people we know who are in need of love. This year is probably our fourth or fifth year of driving to our local pharmacist and singing rather loudly Merry Christmas as we hand these hard working people a pie. It is not forgetting those people who are forced to work or have to work. When we woke up, I told my girls let's call people who it would really count to have someone call and say, "Merry Christmas" and so we did to a lady who is ill, a woman with cancer and who is divorced, an old lady who is not always easy to get along with and in a home. It was amazing their responses and how touched they were. The old lady got me by saying, "Thank you for taking the time out of your Christmas" nothing but a few moments to care for someone. See I know so many people who are so bitter and will not forgive and just think beyond that hurt. As a child, I hated Christmas. It was not a time of joy: my family argued a lot and Christmas meant another day to argue. I could just stay in that and feel hurt, or choose to forgive and live. It is a decision only I can make and it might be very hard for some. I always say better to not live in regret and it is true. I have many regrets but each day I can try to move on from the hurt I have often felt. The other day someone said something about my brother and it really bothered me so that night I had a dream and my brother was in that dream. I had forgotten his voice I hate that but his voice was loud and clear. It is not for us to question when someone should die and when someone should go home but rest in knowing that God is in control. My brother told me to move this metal angel I had and to put it in my kitchen window and told me to tell my mum to put an angel in her window. She drew a little angel that night, and I put angel drawings in every window of my house. There was such a peace. It is knowing that God does not want us to sit here condemning ourselves but for us to trust him and know that there is peace when we rest in Him. I am not very good at doing that to be honest but at least I am trying so 2015 Christmas thank you for allowing me to be guided by an angel, to reach out to others, and learn that God and God alone can give me peace. Merry Christmas!

Grinches/Dementia/Christmas

Grinches/Dementia/Christmas you may ask what these have in common. Every Christmas since I have lived in America I have found that I get bills saying that medical is going up and often car Insurance, this year I was hit with not just these two but the house taxes and getting laid off from a job I loved. I have found for so many years here where I live stores and often people push buying so much and play wimpy Christmas music which you cannot hear as they do not want to offend anyone or as we say now Holiday music. We must not offend people by saying Christmas it is a Holiday where stores make tones of money off the poor innocent people. This year like many others I have got swept into it all. I find myself the older I get yearning for a simple life. The life I had in England was a little Christmas tree Charlie Brown one might say. But singing Carols at a local church and been bloody freezing now brings back happy memories of people I love and a time when life was not so commercialized. Dementia is not just for the old it is all around in people saying one thing and doing another it is like my amazing Sunday school teacher says " Many talk the Christian talk, but there is nothing solid in there life to say they actually live it" not exact words. But it has got me her words. So many times I speak with people who say I am praying for you and act like mere jerks, I am drawn into their nice words and then jabbed in the back by their actions. This sadly is not God at all by the dementia of a wicked and sinful world. I have worked with people with dementia and surprisingly enough they are sharper than some people, they are not as dumb as some make out they actually know how it is to love and actually want to be loved sadly they are often forgotten. Where dementia in the world abounds of been rude to people and lying to people abounds it is a sad fact that people ignore this as been normal. You either truly believe in Christ or you are deceiving yourself you cannot be lukewarm yet many of us play this very dangerous game I call this the New dementia of our time. Christmas is a time of reflecting on our lives to evaluate what truly means something to us. My trip home this year was a time to realize that true value is not found in things but in loving and caring about the people who matter the most. It was a time for me to be me. This Christmas don't become the new dementia be the true person God would have you be one that cares to be

true to yourself because been yourself is an amazing God gift and He loves you and values you like no one else. May God bless you this coming year and allow you to focus on the true meaning of Christmas do not be pulled into the new dementia but be pulled into God's amazing grace and Love Merry Christmas

Just a cashier

Five years ago I could not find any job which would hire a mum with no degree. It amazed me how different America was to England. In England job shares were common and a degree did not matter,but not so in America. It is a cold fact that reality hits when you are a single mum trying to find a job with little education. I was offered a cashier position at a grocery store forty minutes from my house. I took my time doing all the required tests online to be honest I was dead scared, I remember my supervisor asking if I was done. I did not lie, I wasn't done but I sure did not want to go out into a big store and mess up on a register. Little me big store. She was and still is an amazing woman although she has moved on to another store along with some amazing others that I have known. They all made me a better person. A job where you stand for hours with little breaks and often ignorant people not allowing you to get a drink or go to the toilet. However I viewed that this job was given to me by God and I would do my best. I started becoming friends with the customers, laughing, singing and even crying. I prayed with them as they came through my line with customers saying we were hoping you were here. One woman lost a child and was trying to adopt her glowing face the day she adopted two children and merrily came and told me. The woman whose husband was dying and needed a transplant he was seriously ill and it was near Christmas I will never ever forget her coming up to me after Christmas telling me "he came home on Christmas day they say it was a miracle we had so many people at the house it's because of you and your prayers". The little girl who hated wearing her red coat I stood there telling her "no you got to wear that coat," little did she know it brought back memories of my mum and the little red coat my mum made me. Caroline made my world a better place her smile her laugh, her handing me her coat. The person who fell in the store and her son and I kept running back to make sure she was fine, her gratitude because of simple kindness. The man who calls me Mary Poppins and I him Dick Van Dyke. The man who had a heart transplant and his smile as I prayed for him. The woman who I prayed for and her husband died just holding them caring for one moment making them feel like that they mattered. The man yesterday who said he had cancer and my heart wanted to cry his joy that he was going to beat it made my world such a brighter place. A woman with a turban who had cancer. I smiling and saying she looked beautiful and the little girl with an eye patch whom I told her that she was amazing. People just in a store a woman whose mum lived through world war II and another who was a child in WWII and remembered sitting under tables as she heard the bombing of England above. A simple smile from ordinary people who in the eyes of management were just customers but to me they became family. It is not the posts on the wall and the amount you scan that matter in my world. It is praying and loving people where they are at caring that they actually matter. I decided a long time ago if I was going to get sacked because I prayed then God would watch my back. It is in the unseen messages that matters not to anyone in this world but to my Heavenly father. See I am just a cashier but not to the many I have prayed for cried with and loved. I am more than that I am woman who stood in the gap for a moment in time. Low paying it is but high paying in the Realm of Heaven. I assure you what you do in Christ's name is truly seen and will not be forgotten. Don't look for the praises of man because it is not eternal. Go pray, go reach the people that people just think are customers or in whatever you do don't let anyone say you are just.... you are an ambassador for Christ and that is a high paying job in His Kingdom Merry Christmas to you all and God bless us little people for we are so much more than the world sees us as.

Christmas past, present, change the future your choice

Ever watched something that made you stop and think I saw a video posted on Facebook today it was extremely touching and made me cry. I have not spent a Christmas with my Dad since I was fifteen, I beat he would be surprised if I said that amount of years, my mum the last Christmas I believe I spent with her I was eighteen. I am now forty eight you do the maths that's a lot of years. Yet Christmas to me as a child was often people arguing over the tellie yet there were so many good memories too. Second weekend in December go and get the Christmas tree from Felbrigg Hall, or when we lived in Norwich go window shopping in the city. Carol singing at Cromer church for the school Christmas carol service, or least we forget caroling at Aylmerton local Parrish church where the minister blew his nose rather loudly with Hark the Herald Angel causing my Dad, brother and myself to be in fits of laughter and the minister stopping the whole church to say " when you three have stopped we will continue". Let's not forget the many pantomimes we saw in Norwich and the silly jokes that were read from the Christmas crackers that were pulled during the Christmas holidays. Thursford freezing cold nights to hear the Christmas performance, buying food in Cromer and then my mum she made the best Christmas meal. Salt beef was ordered in from the Thank you Thank you very much grocery bless that ladies heart she said thank you so much we called her that very name. Dad brought his sherry etc and placed it in the globe which housed the alcohol and glasses so many pretty glasses there was there so dainty. Going to Norwich and walking through the Cathedral and down Elm Hill. Mum made a feast for royalties, making mince meat in the summer and making Christmas cake and Christmas pudding she would fed the cake rum or brandy from October onwards. Turkey smell filled the house on Christmas morning, she was amazing at roast potatoes and such it was awesome. I sit here seeing the feast she was truly the Julia Childs or Mrs Beeton in our house. My Dad and I would often sit singing songs or listening to the old familiar record that gran had given us. I have a copy of that today and wonder how on earth I listened to it but it was my Christmas. The carriage Christmas lights the pillow cases with our names on that we had made as children to house our gifts and open on Mum and dad's bed and Christmas tree gifts on the tree. such silly things as paint brushes and socks. Each of our rooms decorated when I use to share a room with my sister she would make a tree or a father Christmas house from crepe paper all items had been copied from Blue Peter a show we watched as children. All distant memories yet as I sit here and type I remember the towns and the villages of North Norfolk the smells of home fires and the wet soggy leaves under my feet as I walked home down the twirling drive of Silver Firs. This was my life and one I never cared to think what would Christmas be like to share it with mum and Dad when I grew older. I did not care after their divorce I tried with my mum but when I moved to the States my life was oh so far away. Now I wished I could be there a single mum watching a video and knowing that there is nothing I can do to get me and my girls home for Christmas other than jack up the credit card and not pay bills and then listen to people say how incompetent I was. I would love to show up on their doors hug them tight make them a Christmas meal like they so many times did me. Sing carols and feel the cold damp leaves under my feet hear the carols sung in the cathedrals and churches for once be Home for Christmas. I will have to say Christmas is always hard for me, it is not the same in the states. If you can be home for Christmas or if you have odds against your family make a new beginning change the future. It is the greatest gift a human can ever give another. http://m.omeleto.com/218504/ http://www.newfrontierchronicle.org/reconnecting-with-dad/ Love you Mum and Dad I wish we were home for Christmas. Praying that God allows us one day to spend just one more with you both.