Everyone got here safe and sound...stop worrying Mama!

All the chilluns are in the house as Mama would have said or was that the chickens have come home to roost? Does a Mother ever stop worrying about her children? I don't know about other Moms but I haven't and don't plan to. I have worked over the years to be more "rational" about worrying and make myself not worry excessively. It took a lot of research, soul-searching, praying and application to finally master it. My spiritual Mother (who is also my older sister's spiritual Mother) identified the worry trait in me many, many years ago. This is a picture of my sister, my spiritual Mom and me when we visited her in Eden in 2004. When my dear hubby was away for Navy "stuff", I would stay with different family members until he returned. When he was home for more than a few months, we would get a little place to live.

One of those times, we rented a pretty little trailer for a few months on Lynn Road and it will always stand out in my mind because it was while we were living there that we got our first pet - a rabbit we called Baby. We knew nothing about how to house-train a rabbit so didn't. One night dear hubby put Baby in a cardboard box to "contain" him. In the middle of the night, I heard "Baby" ripping that box to pieces and had visions the rest of the night of him ripping my throat open. Baby had to go outside.

It was also while living here that I started going to some of the meetings and talked to my close friend Eileen about what I was learning. She was very interested, started studying right away and made rapid progress which was a lifesaver later.

My anxiety level escalated quite a bit while we were living in that trailer also. My dear hubby of just a little over a year let me know he wasn't interested in what I was learning at all. I felt quite alone sometimes in that trailer and one time my spiritual Mom came over and spent some special time with me. She talked to me about worrying too much and how it wasn't going to change anything except to make me sick but that moving forward would get me somewhere I needed to be.

It took awhile but I'll never forget her coming that night and talking with me like a real Mom - I think that is the night I started looking at her in that light. I am a very straight-forward kind of person - have no secrets and don't want any. The few I do have aren't my own alone so I just forget those and move on. She said this quality made it easy for her to know how to talk to me about the various things that concerned me. She was and still is one of the most remarkable women I have ever known and I treasure her every day of my life. Love you Cathy......