What Do I Have to be Depressed About?

     Yesterday Robin Williams was found dead. He suffered many years from depression. I wonder how many times he had someone say the words, "what do you have to be depressed about?".
      I suffer from Major Depressive Disorder. Three words that boils down to one thing I have depression. This means that sometimes I can't tell you why I don't feel like talking or going out of the house. This means that sometimes it is impossible for me to be in a crowd of people. It also means that I suffer from major attacks of anxiety. When I am in a crowd sometimes I have to just get away from everyone for a few minutes. It makes it hard to go out in public to grocery shop, buy clothes, attend family functions, visit with friends or go to church. I fight with this problem every day, hour, minute and second of my life. I take medication that helps me get through the day to day things that most people take for granted. Yes, you will see me out smiling, laughing and it seems that I am having a really good time shopping and visiting with a crowd of friends. I do like to see my friends and family. But inside I am sometimes screaming that I need to get away and be alone. I spend somedays crying for no reason while putting up dishes or washing clothes. There are times when I need to go to the store or the doctor that I will look for reasons not to go. Can I explain to you why I feel this way? No. I can't explain it and most doctors can't explain it. I wasn't always this way and no one knows what really triggered it. It started many years ago and has gotten so bad I am unable to hold a job. I also get angry and have very little patience.
     The most upsetting question I ever get when I tell someone I suffer from depression is the one above. What do I have to be depressed about? Believe me if I knew what I was depressed about I would be jumping up and down to fix it. This is not a fun way to live. I have asked myself many times why? I mean I have a wonderful husband and family. I have amazing friends. I love where I live. We have plenty to eat and clothes to wear, cars to drive. What do I have to be depressed about? There are many people that struggle and suffer everyday. I give God thanks for the many blessings He has given me. What do I have to be depressed about? I have given everything to God to handle because this is bigger than me, bigger than medication, bigger than oils, bigger than anything I can do  or my doctors can do to fix.
     I have kept this hidden for many years, from many people. I hope if you leave a comment it will be kind or please don't leave one. I have heard all of it before. I have been told I am just lazy, that there is no reason to cry, there is no reason to be afraid to go out of the house or to get upset in crowds. I promise if you can come up with a cure there are thousands of people just like me that would like you to contact the media and get attention for the cure. So far there is no cure. We all live day to day mostly in silence and hope when the day comes to an end it wasn't wasted worrying, crying or missing out on something important because we couldn't stand to walk out the door. I'm tired most days because it takes so much out of me just to function day to day. I try to lead a normal life.
     If any of this sounds like you, please tell someone. Get help. There are so many resources and all you have to do is reach out. It isn't easy but life is worth living even on the hard days. Those days will pass and good days will come around again.

Be Blessed,
Tammy

Hosting an Exchange Student

We have recently decided to host an exchange student from Norway. We will call her "S". This has already been a very good experience even though she only arrived here on Aug 2nd. We love her already. Did you have any idea that hosting an exchange student can make you look at your life differently? You have to go through interviews and background checks before you can even meet the family online. Then of course you try to get your home in order so that this person that has never met you won't walk in the door on their first day in America and run away screaming. Believe me that was a possibility since we had just finished having a massive yard sale and you know that will destroy any house. Just as a side note here that you all for letting me vent on the Take My Junk Please Post. It must have worked though because most of my junk was bought. Everyone that supports this now raise both hands, pump them up and down and say yaaaay!

Now back to being a host family. Our new Norwegian daughter "S" has really started to fit in around here. We are so very happy to have her. She is now getting her schedule ready for school and we will officially, again, be the parents of a senior in high school. This time I think I will handle it better because I already know sort of what to expect. It does take some adjustment and I am sure that she has a little fear of the unknown, but that is one thing we are here to help her with. I hope we can make this a fun learning year and that she will go home with very happy memories. I'm sure I will find a lot of things to write about now that we have started something new around here. So I hope that each of you reading this will keep up to date and enjoy this experience right along with us. I promise not to start writing Norwegian words because with this southern accent they don't sound anything like they are suppose to so I know writing them couldn't be much better.

This is a very short post just to let you know what to expect in the future. Hang on tight this is going to be a fun year of learning and experiencing America through new eyes and ideas. Hope you will join us.

Be Blessed,
Tammy

Is There A Sign on My Head?

     All of my life I have had strangers come up to me and start conversations. I really don't mind and I have learned that it is just a fact of life for me. My family and I have always gotten a kick out of the way I attract strangers. I have often asked if I have a sign on my head or back that says something like, tell me your troubles I care, or free therapy just start talking, that one is my favorite. But one thing they all have in common is that they seem to walk away feeling better and I walk away feeling confused. Now that I have given my life to God I have questioned whether it was His design to put these people in my path for a reason. After all He is the one that made me to listen and hear what these people need to say to someone. Sometimes I wish he would give me the words to say to them, but so far it has just been enough for me to listen and then let them walk away leaving me standing there wondering what it was all about. Like I said I really don't mind listening but when they start to do my shopping for me I do get a little flustered. I have had one woman come up to me when I was shopping for new things for the kitchen and start taking things out of my buggy and replacing them with items she thought I would like more. How could she know what I would like more? She had never met me and had never seen my kitchen! Still I continued to let her and listen to her story as she did this and when she walked away I put everything back and bought what "I" liked.
     I once had an elderly man come up to me and start to tell me about his wife of 60 years passing away a year before and helped me pick out paint colors for the inside of my house. Again had never met this man and here he was telling me about a very personal and painful time in his life and helping me pick out colors, without my asking, for my home.
     Friends would call me and ask advice about relationships or tell me details that I did NOT need to know. Did this ever get old? Oh yeah! You bet it did, but they were my friends. I will admit sometimes I would just give the standard answer that went something like this. "If you are so miserable why would you keep dating _______?" Fill in name of person in question. Or, "You knew he/she was like that before you got married so live with it."
     Ok, so I'm not so good in the advice business, but the people that come up to me now just want company and a way to vent. If it helps them and they aren't holding me a gunpoint to listen what is the harm? Oh, and I don't give these people advice. For goodness sakes I don't know them. Haha

I should have become a psychologist.

Have a blessed day,
Tammy

Buy MY Junk PLEASE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I have lost my mind again. You would think after having had yard sales in the past that would be more work than they were worth I would never do it again. Well every time I have one I always say, never again but here I am.
I work pulling stuff from the attic all day long yesterday and it looks like I haven't made a dent. That is why this is going to be the largest sale yet. Not to mention I have taken on a new mentality. If we don't just love it, don't keep it out to use it and it has no real value, get rid of it. It's true. I spend more time either looking for something I know I have but don't remember its hiding spot, or cleaning all the things I have. Face it, when your time comes to go home and meet the Lord I don't think the first thing he will say to you is, did you ever find that hammer you put under the sink? Or worse, did you know I saw all that dust that built up on your family photos, glad you kept your bible busy. Hopefully He will tell me well done, because without all the distractions of the stuff I will have more time to spend in His word.
We always want to accumulate stuff. Stuff to leave behind for our kids when we pass away. From personal experience I can tell you it is not going to be whether or not they left you anything, it will all be about the fact that they are gone. Nothing can take away memories
I was raised in a clutter free house. I have no idea if that may have led to the fact that I have enough pictures of my kids that if I decided to turn them into wallpaper you would never see the same picture twice. I also have knick knacks, let me just say here that these little things are dirt demons. I don't care what you dust them with in 5 minutes the dirt demons have taken over.
Life has just gotten way to busy to have to sweat the small stuff. I am working on a business blog, trying to market my Young Living oils and still run the house. They may find me laying in the floor with a broom in one hand, bottle of oil in the other and my EOPR guide just a few feet away.  I'm still going to give it my best.

BTW do you know anyone that could do a yard sale intervention. It could make a good reality series. Yard Sale Junkies. Remember that name, someone will use it.
Till next time...

Be Blessed.
Tammy

Life'-s Little Lessons

Life's little lessons

by Tammy Hall Parker on Friday, December 17, 2010 at 5:11am

Wash clothes, buy groceries, clean house, run errands, make appointments, keep appointments, work around kids schedule, cook dinner, wash dishes, clean closets, put up decorations, cook huge dinner for family, take down decorations, water plants before they start to droop, answer the 15th phone call today,make 15 more to fit in more appointments, get mail sift through the junk to the important stuff, take garbage out before it overflows,send out Christmas cards,check those all important lists,answer questions,listen to problems, listen to the latest drama, everybody family meeting time to co-ordinate schedules, whoops booked over one that can't be changed, go back and reschedule original appointment, calendar is full start making notes in the margin, brain has overloaded start putting things to do on white board on fridge, white board is full start checking the notebook for updates and changes, keep things in perspective, don't sweat the small stuff, imagine the worst, hope for the best and pray you get through it all with your sanity intact. That's being a mom today.
Had an uncle once that always would look at any problem, think on it for just a minute if that long. Said out loud that either it would work itself out or it wouldn't he couldn't change the outcome. Never worried about politics or watched the news. Lived happily for 96 years, always smiled, still had perfect eyesight and a good mind. Drove himself to and from the doctor once a year for a physical where the doctor found nothing wrong. Always treated others the way he wanted to be treated. Always said he hoped that when his time came he would just fall asleep and not wake up. He called his grandson and said he was going to take a nap in his favorite recliner...never woke up.
Maybe we should all take a lesson from our ancestors. If you look back they worked harder than most of us in worse conditions. Lived with less money. Never worried about tomorrow but lived for today. Always treated people they met with kindness. Helped their neighbors in good times and through the bad times. Some of them lived before indoor plumbing and pulled water from a well. Grew their own food or went hungry. Pulled together as a family and counted on one another to pull their own weight. And yet they never complained and they lived longer than those of us today. Maybe they were on to something...you think?

When I Get Old

I always wondered what I would be like when I got old. When I was very young I thought by the time I got out of school, got married and had a couple of children I would be old. I mean everyone around me was old. They were all housewives, mothers and grandmothers.Then when I became a teenager old changed. My siblings started having children, (don't be shocked, I'm 13 years behind my mother's 3rd child) and they weren't old. They didn't stay home and keep house, do laundry and cook. They were active, went to the pool with the kids, went shopping, visited with their friends and still talked on the phone. This getting old thing needed more thought. By the time I got married, (way to young at 18) old was becoming a grandmother to more than just one child. Old was groaning when you had to get up from sitting to long, having trouble getting out of the floor and you no longer ran to answer the phone, you walked. Side note here: I come from a time when the phone stayed where it was and you had to go to it, it did not go with you and no caller ID. After I reached my 30's and 40's old was listening to my mother talk about surviving the depression. It was listening to her tell me how her and my dad raised 4 children and bought a house on 100.00 a week pay. I am now looking my 50's coming up fast and old has taken on new meaning. I asked my mom once how it felt to be 70 years old. She said it didn't feel any different than being in her 30's. Of course my mom was still sitting in the floor and getting up by herself and doing pretty much anything she wanted at 70.
Old is not a time you can define or something you can assign a year. I know an 87 year young lady that says she still feels 30 and acts like she is 20 most of the time. Today I have decided to enjoy my life and not worry about getting old. I don't want anyone else to worry about getting old either. When I get old...I'll let you know when that happens, but I wouldn't hold my breath.

Be Blessed and Be Young. ;)

Losing Loved Ones is Always Hard

Yesterday my youngest daughter and I walked familiar hallways in a hospital we know only to well. We were there to visit a dear sweet friend that we never spent as much time with as we wished we could have in the last few years. My daughter was able to go into the ICU and see her and hold her hand, but when I thought I had built up the courage to go through those doors at the last second I couldn't go all the way in. I knew this may be the last time I would ever see the person that I had spent a large part of my adult life with and loved as though we had been together forever.

I guess in a way I have been luckier than most. I have lost people I worked with and people I spent time growing up with but we drifted apart. I have lost very few people in my life that have made huge impacts on me. I lost my best friend from childhood at 16 years old, my ex mother-in-law that I loved dearly when I was only 19 and my mother when I was 45. These were the deaths that hit me the hardest. Now at 49 to have a woman that I spent most of my children's lives with suddenly pass away feels like a giant piece of my heart is being squeezed out of my chest.

I met Billie when we bought our first home. By then she had an oldest daughter Tracy and a son Scott that was a prankster, then her youngest daughter Mitzi that was still in high school. You never knew what you might see out of our front window because Scott loved nothing more than picking on Mitzi and pulling pranks to try to scare her. It was always laughter to watch what would go on and yes there was once Scott and I even teamed up to pull a prank on one of the neighbors. Billie would always fuss at Scott for scaring Mitzi but you knew by the laughter in her eyes she was just doing what a mother was expected to do, but she found it as funny as the rest of us.

My oldest daughter was only 3 when we moved in and fell instantly in love with Billie and her family. I was pregnant with my youngest when we moved in and even though my daughter Alyssa had eaten her breakfast when Thomas came home from the night shift she would stand at the mailbox and ask him to walk her across the street to visit. If I ever started missing one of the girls you could bet the first place to look would be at Billie's. Her and Thomas both worked the night shift and we would sit in the front yard swing and drink coffee until time for them to go to bed in the mornings. Then repeat this in the afternoons. When my youngest daughter Kelcy was born they were the first ones to welcome her home. Billie and Thomas spoiled both of my girls and they ate it up like most kids will do.

When I first got the call that we had lost one of the sweetest people I have ever had the pleasure of having in my life, my mind went instantly to the unique laugh that she had. It lit up her entire face and was loud and genuine. It always started with a kind of look of surprise and then she would throw back her head and just laugh. No one has ever had a laugh of true joy like Billie and I know I won't ever see another one like it. She even laughed, although it was a few weeks after the fact, when we sat outside in the swing talking and Thomas drove up in the driveway to find smoke coming from the kitchen. We had gotten so caught up in talking she had forgotten she had supper on the stove and set the kitchen on fire. Mostly smoke damage and everyone was ok except for the supper. But leave it to Billie to even find the humor in that situation.

My youngest daughter Kelcy spent as much time at Billie's as she did at home, sometimes more. Her first sleep over was at Billie's because she had to be able to see the house from where she was staying. The hardest thing for all of us when we decided to move from that neighborhood was knowing we were moving away from the best family we had ever met. There is no way you can ever find friends like that anymore.

Billie was a one of a kind person with a heart of gold. She was beside me when I lost my mother and my father. She was the type of person when the entire house came down with the flu went to the store and left soup and crackers and tylenol just outside the door. She was there for every birthday and any other important day in our lives. She was my first real adult friend and even though in later years my life has taken turns that hasn't left us with the time to visit like we should have, I always knew if I needed a good laugh or a shoulder she would always be there. We have all felt losses in our lives when a friend passes but losing Billie feels deeper than that. She falls into the category of the deep hurt you feel when you lose someone that you are related to by blood. In 19 years this dear sweet lady let my family join her family. She took us in like we had known each other forever. She treated me like a daughter and my girls like her grandchildren. People just don't do that anymore.

I know Billie is celebrating with our Lord and Savior today and is with all of the family members that have went before her. I will miss not sitting on the swing in the front yard and just talking and having coffee. I will miss not ever hearing that laugh again, but she gave me memories that I can share and hold dear to my heart for the rest of my life. She also gave me her family that I love like my own. She never met a stranger and everyone that ever met her loved her. If there are yard swings and pecan trees in heaven I hope Billie is saving me a seat. She is forever in my heart and never forgotten.

I Am Essentially Hooked

My new phrase is, there is an oil for that. Yep I have jumped with both feet into the world of essential oils. My youngest daughter gave me the kit for Christmas and I have always got something going in the diffuser or in my water bottle. I have been able to come off of some of my prescription medicines and feel better all the way around. I have a pain cream for my knees, a capsule of lemon and peppermint I take for weight loss, a capsule of cedarwood I take for sleep and I diffuse Thieves to keep away the germs and orange at night to help me sleep. I have started doctoring everyone I come in contact with using my oils. If you have a runny nose, I have an oil for that. If you have a cough, I have an oil for that. If you snore, I have an oil for that too. People laugh and say that I am dabbling in witchcraft. No way...these are oils that you can find talked about in the Bible. There are something like 150 different oils. I would rather tell people that I use Bible Brew. LOL. But seriously, I'm not going hippy crazy about using oils but I am happy that I can stop using some of the really harsh chemicals that I have been putting in my body all of these years. I only wish I had known about them a long time ago.

Life has really been a lot of fun in the last couple of months. Thank goodness Christmas has come and gone and all the mess is cleaned up. I had really started to get carried away with decorating this year. If Christmas hadn't of come around so fast I'm afraid I would have blown the house up. We even had to add electrical outlets outside and new breakers to cover some of the things I had put up. Just imagine the look I got when I told my husband I needed to have outlets added to the outside. It was priceless. He is used to me telling him that I have started a project, but usually I do it myself and don't involve him in the process. We had lights everywhere. I have to say though I did enjoy looking at my decorations more this year than I have in a long time. I thought it was just the right balance and turned out pretty good even if I do say so myself.

The days have gotten cold, the nights have gotten colder. I think there have been more days with rain than without in the last year. I feel like I never got to enjoy summer last year because it was so wet. I am sitting here covered in my essential oils thinking about what to cook for supper. I know this post has rambled a bit, but if you read the header you will see that it tells you these are my daily ramblings. Here comes the part where I ask you to try something. Find something that brings you happiness, brings back a memory or just makes you feel better and give it a try. You might find out that even when the days are shorter and the weather turns bleak you can still find a smile hiding somewhere. Find something simple that makes you smile and get hooked. If you have trouble figuring it out, contact me, there is probably an oil for that.

Be Blessed

2014 New Beginnings

Another year has come and gone. There have been so many changes. People have come and gone from our lives and there have been opportunities taken and missed. I have decided to make 2014 a year that I look into opportunities with my eyes wide open and consider things that I may not have considered before. I will make a commitment to become even closer to God than I have been in the past, I will reach out to people and reconnect with those that I haven't seen or talked to for a long time. I have spent the day making connections with family that I haven't seen except for funerals since I was a child. It has always saddened me as I get older when I see families that have stayed connected all their lives and know that I have family members that my children will never know. For that matter there are family members that I haven't met yet. At one time these are people my family would make a point to visit or talk to on a regular basis, but now it has been left to us, the children, to make these connections last and we have failed. I hope to make a change in this because we all need family. I found out today that I have lost loved ones that I had always intended to keep in touch with as I grew older, but life always seemed to get in the way. If you want to have people reach out to you and make an effort to stay in touch you have to make that effort yourself.

I not only want to reach out to family I also want to reach out to those people that I haven't met yet. A stranger that starts a conversation in the store, someone that looks like they may just need a smile or kind word in a doctors office. I want to tell more people what God has done in my life and how He can make such a huge difference in their life also. I want everyone to know that there is someone that loves them more than anyone here on earth can love them. Someone that gave His son so that they may have everlasting life. I want the joy that has been given to me to spread like wild fire through everyone I meet and leave a smoldering ember that will grow larger and larger with a need to hear more about God's abundant love. A fire that can never be extinguished by water, but only fed by the word of God.

2013 a year that has passed, memories that will last a lifetime. 2014 a year of new beginnings, new outlooks and old family and friends reunited. Wouldn't it be nice to go through a year without any plans for tomorrow but just to wake up and see what happens? We don't live in a world where we can do that, but I can try to wake up everyday with an outlook that leads me to be more flexible in the plans I do have for the day. I hope if you read this you have made a commitment to put God first in your life and let Him show you the road to travel. It may be a road full of ups and downs, but in the end what better driver could you have?

May God Bless You with more than you can imagine in this new year.
Tammy