Continued from “Are You There, God? Part 2″

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Many of my readers know me personally and are aware of what is going on in my life right now, but many of you don’t know about the biggest issue my family and I are facing in the near future. I haven’t really talked about it until now simply because there has been a lot of hope for a reversal of circumstances and also because the situation has deteriorated so quickly.

My father, 62 years young, a man in the utmost perfection of health all his life, strong, a man that everyone who met him said looked 10 years younger than he was, has been battling a chronic illness the last few months. This is a man who had most of his 8 children after the age of 45, a man who has never been anything but hard-working, strong, capable, a provider, energetic, hardly ever even came down with a cold. A man who did not drink, who stayed active, who ate healthy and took vitamin supplements religiously. This man has been battling liver disease, probably much longer than any of us realized, but we’ve only been aware of it for a little less than a year.

It started with an aggravating cyst behind his knee. My dad does not like to go to doctors unless he has to, part of his motivation to stay healthy. He has been a truck driver for years, so routine physicals were part of his job requirements, but he was always pronounced more than healthy and in the most recent years even his weight was great, something many truck drivers have trouble with. Of course, being sedentary for many hours at a time and sporadic sleep patterns are not the healthiest, so when my dad’s cyst lingered and became more and more bothersome, he went to the V.A. hospital to get it looked at. During that visit they took routine blood samples and ran routine tests for a man his age with his background. (He fought active duty in Vietnam the last 2 years of the war.)

What came back was surprising and a bit unsettling. My dad had Hepatitis C, they wanted to run more tests. (This came, most likely, from the immunization method back in the day when soldiers would be given their shots using the same needle, simply wiping it off with a towel before sticking the next man, back before blood born diseases were a big thing. This is what the doctor said. The disease can go undetected for years, especially in the case of my dad where he remains mostly healthy all his life and doesn’t go to the doctor very much.) This we found out about February of 2011, I can’t remember exactly.

They did run more tests, on his liver, and they found out his liver was in fairly bad shape. They wanted to do MORE tests. Long story short, as the situation unfolded, they found my dad had cirrhosis of the liver, he was in stage 3 of 4 stages of liver failure. As this information unfolded gradually over a few months of doctor’s visits and tests, my mom began to research liver disease too. She and my dad began to adjust their diets to help combat the disease and make things easier on his liver. They had never been drinkers, especially not the whole time I was growing up, but they cut out even the occasional beer or glass of wine. (We’re talking one every two weeks if that.) They began to eat more fresh fruits and vegetables, drink filtered, distilled water, cut back on coffee and drink more herb tea. By May 2011 my dad had dropped about 20 lbs. and he felt fantastic. He had passed a bunch of gall stones that the doctor was amazed he had been able to pass instead of having surgery. Things were great, he looked great.

However, somewhere around September he found himself filling up with fluid. He had a strange abdominal swelling and swelling in his legs, it was harder and harder for him to get in and out of his truck. For the first time in 62 years he realized he would have to quit working – indefinitely. The swelling was all fluid from his malfunctioning liver, the liver was unable to process toxins normally and an acidic fluid was leaching back out into his abdominal cavity and swelling his legs.

At first, being more active and getting adequate sleep improved his condition, but soon he went back on the decline. The first time he had to go in to the doctor’s to have the fluid drained with a needle was very upsetting and traumatic for him, but this has since become more and more frequent and is now a weekly routine. His weight has kept dropping and except for the weird swelling, he is very thin. You feel his bones when you touch his back even while he is wearing a heavy coat which he needs to stay warm since his temperature stays a couple of degrees below normal. His mind is beginning to be affected now, something the doctor said would happen. In fact everything he is experiencing is something the doctor warned us about and is part of this chronic disease at this stage, but nobody could prepare us for how quickly this has unfolded. Really, September, when Dad quit working, that is the first time where we all realized this was very serious. In less than 6 months it has just been a downward spiral and we are all left trying to catch our breath.

The person who is the most courageous in all this (in my opinion) is my mother. My mom met my dad when she was 16 and he was 30. They were together from that time until she married him at 18 years old. This September 11th (of all days) will make 30 years of marriage. That is a long time to be with one person. She has been a stay at home mom, wife, and homemaker almost completely during that time, save for a few short-term jobs here and there over the years to help with bills every now and then, but she mostly found work from home as a baby sitter or close to home taking care of a neighbor or cleaning a house. Later, once she had my five little sisters, totaling  8 of us, she was very busy taking care of them and also being a full-time teacher as she home schooled us all. My youngest sister is about to turn 9 years old, so that gives you a picture of how much my mom still does every day. The first three of us, myself and my 2 brothers, have moved out of the house and have life and families of our own, but my 5 sisters remain at home, 16, 15, 13, 10, and 8. And now she has my dad, too.

The man who has taken care of her and his family so well and always with so much strength and vision, so much definite leadership, this man is currently dependent on her for so much. Where she once rested knowing every day that “Chuck will handle it, ” or “Chuck will know what to do,” she now finds herself having to take over and make all the decisions not only for her and the girls, but also for my dad, more and more.

We have all come to terms very recently with the fact that my father is probably not going to be alive much longer, though we still don’t know how long he has. He has declined so much in such a short time, and while we all still hope for a miracle (because we believe miracles do happen) we are preparing for the worst.

So how does this tie in with my last 2 posts? Well…

I have asked God for 3 years now why my daughter had to die, not angrily, but just searching for His purpose because I believe that all things do work together for good for those that love God. None of us have really ever had to face something like this, not only the death of a loved one or someone you are so close to, but being the family that must make arrangements and carry on after the passing. Nobody in my family was directly responsible for caring for a sick loved one and then funeral arrangements, or had direct experience with deep grief, then I lost my daughter so suddenly and unexpectedly.

Because of that I am not only sensitive to and compassionate toward my mom and other family, but I am able to have valuable first hand insight into what we will all face and be able to help my family cope, physically, emotionally, mentally. Already I feel I have been able to help my mom and sisters especially just by understanding the myriad emotions and the roller coaster of feelings they are riding. Just for myself, I am able to cope much better with the prospect of losing my dad, not that it is easy by any means, but at least those feelings of the unknown don’t plague me and scare me the way they did with my daughter.

We are still in the midst of handling all of this, I am so far away from having all the answers or seeing all of the picture. I don’t think that will happen till I get to Heaven, honestly. Still, I feel I can absolutely say from my heart and believe with the core of my being, there is a God. He cares for each and every one of His children. Bad things do happen because of mortality, imperfection, and evil, but God cares and He is able to take the most wretched circumstances and make them into a beautiful tapestry. This is not something I say just to repeat something I was taught that I blindly and naively follow. I have tried and tested these things in my own life and they are truth for me.

Perhaps I am wrong. Perhaps there is nothing on the other side but darkness and ceasing to be, but living life with this thought, for me, is so horribly unbearable. With that thought, there is no hope, but with my belief, there is hope. Hope that this life has meaning, that even a tragedy has a purpose, that I will see my daughter and my father again where there is no more pain, loss, or tears. If I go to my grave a fool with hope at least I had hope and that is not foolish at all, we all need hope. Hope is why I can smile right now, in the face of  uncertainty and pain.

I am 26 years old. I am still young. I am a Christian. I believe Jesus Christ came to set the captive free. He did not come to condemn, He brought freedom. He has freed me, this I believe with all my heart. I am not perfect, I fall, I make mistakes, I don’t have all the answers, but I know the Man who does. This is my testimony, I pray each day that I be worthy of it.

Continued from “Are You There, God? Part 1″

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I am far from perfect. My record, both as a person and especially as a Christian, is far from perfect. I am no better than any other human being on this planet, but God has blessed me with honesty, not just with others, but honesty with myself. Because of this, I have rarely strayed far from general morality. My conscience has always gotten the best of me. However, as I entered young adulthood, I went through a period of “breaking out”. I had been raised in a fairly strict, sheltered home. I did not get my first kiss until I was 19, and I had to go out-of-state to even make that happen. By 20 I was my own woman, making my own decisions, being adventurous for the first time in my life and quickly gaining a new-found confidence. This was not always for the better, in fact I made many mistakes and did many things I’m not proud of.

I met and married my husband when I was 21. I had been out of my parents house a little over a year. I did not know it at the time, but this was one of the better things that would come from this time period of wild self-governing. I started to settle back down a little, at least, I was with one man and we were trying to be independent adults. We did not make the best long-term decisions for at least the first year of our marriage. Actually, I feel like this year, the beginning of our sixth year, is finding us finally starting to make good decisions when looking at the big, long-term picture. The first year, however, was pretty touch and go. I was a server, he was a chef, there was a lot of de-stressing with drinks at the bar late into the night, a little sleeping, and then starting another night shift at our restaurants to repeat the cycle.

We knew from the get go that we wanted a couple of kids, but we did have the presence of mind to wait a year before getting pregnant with our first child. Part one of this story shares the links that talk about Skye’s birth and death, but I will add here, for my readers who don’t know, that during my pregnancy, we also moved from Kentucky to Colorado to open our own restaurant. However, due to our over excitement, lack of reading the signs, and some naivety, we got involved with the wrong business partners and lost our business a few months after moving there. We had accumulated about $15,000 in debt from those few short months alone. To make matters worse, the only work Josh could get after closing our restaurant was over 100 miles away one way and gas was almost $5 a gallon in that area at that time. One more month and we were so broke, there was only one thing left to do. We sold almost everything we owned that we still had, furniture, tv, bed. We tried to sell other things like my much-loved and treasured piano that had been with me through my life crisis at 18 and had been fought for time after time when my dad and my husband had not wanted to move it on several occasions. Nobody cared though, nobody cared about the tears that had polished those keys as I wrote poetry in my old tattered note-book and poured my soul out in song there. Nobody valued my old, weathered friend, and in the end, we left it there with other odds and ends of personal treasures that nobody valued but me. We loaded the stuff that was essential, the stuff that could fit into the smallest trailer U-haul offered, pulled behind our little car. Most of it was stuff for our baby who I was due to deliver in 3 weeks. We drove back home to Kentucky to move in with my parents. We had no job, no house, we lived in one of the bedrooms that one of my five sisters vacated for us. We had lost everything, we had no money. We were about as destitute as we could be – then we lost our baby girl.

It is hard to convey these feelings that are conjured up at remembering this horrible time. What I had gone through before in life was so pale compared to this that it is transparent. There is not a term to describe what I felt as I attempted to begin living in the wake of these horrible events. I just know that it is exactly how Job must have felt.

Josh had gotten a job at a small town restaurant 2 days before I delivered. His employers were wonderful, upon hearing that he would be gone indefinitely to stay in Louisville at the Ronald McDonald House to be there for our angel in the NICU at Kosair, they said he could take whatever time he needed and his job would be there when he was ready to come back. Of course, we did not know that would be just a little over 17 days later, once the funerals were done. There were two, one for my family and friends in Willisburg, then another in Salem, Western Kentucky for his family. For almost every single one of his many family members, seeing Skye in her coffin was the first time they got to meet her. It was absolutely heart wrenching.

So, there is a lot of cloudiness. I have very little about the following months that I remember. I guess I have blocked them out as a coping mechanism. The initial time during the days following her death, the funerals, there was a lot of numbness. There was a lot of crying and numbness and more crying. When we got home to my parents house after the funeral in Salem, we both decided we needed our own place. Obviously, we had only money that wonderful family and church family gave us, so we moved into the cheapest place we could find, about 20 miles from my parents. It was an old, very small school building that had been converted into apartments.

If there is one word I could use to describe this apartment it would be “dank”. We might as well have lived in a cave. It was dark carpet, dark paneling, it had inadequate lighting for a place that had an all white interior, let alone the dark interior. It had 2 very small windows on one side of the apartment, the other side opened into the long hall. It came with an old broken down couch and chair, also in dark colors, that smelled badly. It would have been deeply depressing for a unicorn made of rainbows, let alone for two grieving young people who had nothing.

As the days passed, Josh went back to work. I also tried to work. I thought throwing myself into a job would be a good thing. I got a job serving at the little country place Josh worked. Long story short, there was very little traffic to that restaurant for reasons that became very obvious to Josh and I, and it seemed like every table I got was a young couple with a baby girl. Needless to say, I didn’t last too long. I was a mess.

I found myself with a lot of time, after I quit working, to sit alone in that horrid apartment. Winter had set in, it was so cold. I did a lot of sleeping. The only good thing about all that darkness was it fostered sleeping. Josh would get up at 7am to be to work by 8am and I would sleep. Sometimes I’d get up and eat something then go back to sleep until he got home around 9pm. I had set up all Skye’s things in the second bedroom of this apartment, I had put the blankets and fluffy animals in her crib, I had put up her few pictures, painful pictures of her wrapped in gauze, or the ones of her the day she was born, fire engine red with pieces of her skin coming off and wrapped in clear plastic. Her room was beautiful, one of the two windows lit it up quite well, ironically. There were hours where I would sit in there cradling her pictures and weep for her. My heart felt like it was being pulled out of my body through my throat and that feeling only went away when I would sleep.

And I talked with God. Yes, even here, even now, I still believed in my God. I still knew that my God was real. I finally understood why I had gone through those tortured years as a teen. I could not have survived this horrible thing had I not gone through those anguishing moments. Even still, it was all I could do to not rail at God and once again ask Him “Why?”

I was much older and much more mature at this point. Having gone through my crisis at 18 and surviving 5 years of complete Hell, I knew at least with my heart that this thing I was going through now also had a purpose and it too would pass. My brain refused to acknowledge the things that my heart said, however. My brain wanted very badly to convince my heart that these things were not true, because misery loves company I guess. But even when my brain would get close to convincing my heart that its belief was ridiculous, my heart would always counter that without hope, life really would become unbearable. Without the hope of one day seeing my daughter again, she would just be a tragedy with no closure. Without the hope of this being a tiny piece of a bigger picture filled with greater good, my life would just become one giant tragedy of loss and waste and pain.

Like I said, most of the time between my daughter’s moment of death and the moment I found out at 20 weeks of pregnancy that I was having another girl, that time is cloudy and gone. Most of you know I have since had the surprise joy of giving birth to my second beautiful girl, Christian Faith. Her very name was a life ring I clung to during that dark time after Skye died. I named my unborn child Christian Faith, not knowing if I would hold her or if like her sister, I would have her wrenched away from me way too soon. I began to read my Bible for the first time in forever. Josh and I hadn’t even gone to church regularly since we’d been married, but I just knew that my only hope of finding comfort and sanity was with The One who had given it to me many years before. Time and again I randomly stumbled upon verses that comforted me so beautifully, verses I had read before, some I had not, but they seemed to apply directly to me, as if that verse had been written to me personally. I read the story of David and Bathsheba and the loss of their baby. How I could relate to Bathsheba on many levels. Why did this happen? She’s not the one who lusted and committed murder, that was David’s fault, yet Bathsheba, the mother of that innocent baby, she suffered. Of course, the story focuses on David, but now I was able to take this story, this person from thousands of years ago and relate and find the humanity and imagine this mother’s anguish and turmoil. Perhaps one day I will get to hear her story, but I did take comfort in the verse where David rose and said, “I cannot bring the child back to me, but one day I will go to the child.”

I feel a bit like I am rambling. It is just so hard to describe and then condense grief into these few paragraphs. However, one thing I know, it is over 3 years later and while the pain is still there to some extent and always will be, my God helped me through this tragedy. Without hope in my God, without faith to believe He has a purpose, I would have been crushed under the weight of unthinkable hopelessness, under the thought that everything I have experienced is for nothing.

God does not create pain. The imperfection of man and humanity, the flaws of a mortal body, that creates pain, tragedy, loss, etc. God allows these things, however, because He knows that we need them to become stronger. You cannot help a baby bird hatch from its egg, it needs the pain, the struggle, to make it strong enough to live. God could not help me “hatch” from my “egg” because He knew that I too needed extra strength to face what life had for me.

So I have explained why my crisis at 18 was necessary to help me through the death of my daughter, but why did my daughter have to die? What is the purpose there? Well, I’ve again run out of time and will save more of my thoughts for another post.

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TO BE CONT.

I was recently asked, in a round about way, to give the testimony about how my relationship with God affected/stood up against the loss of my first daughter. I have not written in this blog for a while, definitely not a piece of my personal history, but I am going through some things right now with my family that tie in quite well with this subject and I have wanted to write a post for a while now, so here goes…

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First of all, I have given the history of Skye’s birth and death at various points in past posts. Those can be found here:

http://natasiachampion.wordpress.com/2010/09/01/wake-me-up-when-september-ends/

http://natasiachampion.wordpress.com/2010/02/12/maternal-instincts/

http://natasiachampion.wordpress.com/2010/02/16/when-the-honeymoon-is-over/

http://natasiachampion.wordpress.com/2010/08/18/my-happiest-moment/

To give this testimony, I have to begin a bit farther back.

I have always grown up with God and church in my life. My dad was raised Catholic, my mom got saved into the Baptist church when I was a baby and my dad soon started going to church with my mom. By the time I was 4 I had asked Jesus to come into my heart like I had learned in Sunday school. But how much does one really understand as a child barely out of toddlerhood? I won’t argue that point here, but I understood enough to know that Jesus died for my sins and I wanted him to live in my heart so I would go to Heaven one day. Perhaps it is the very faith of a child that we adults have trouble understanding that makes us question it.

Life progressed for me. A lot of my personal history can be found in the pages of this blog. Many of you have been reading and know already some of the places I’ve been, some of you are new to my story. If you are, feel free to dive into the other stories here, each one shows a piece of the me that has developed into what I am today.

My teen years, however, you will find noticeably absent here. Well, it is not because they were insignificant. It is because 1) I have found them so complicated to relay since they were so unusual by modern American standards that I have set them to the side, and 2) I have not yet felt comfortable as the adult me that they specifically had the largest part in shaping me into. However, over the past 2 years I have become more and more aware of my own individuality. See, I have struggled with that all my life, individuality. I’m the second of eight children and my maiden name is hard to say and remember, so I have been known most of my life as “one of those kids from the big family” or “the older girl in that big family”. I was a shy, creative child, which translated into “weird” and “unpopular” for my peers in elementary school. Of course, I didn’t have to worry about school stigma for long since I was homeschooled from 3rd grade forward, but that didn’t help the shyness or wierdness factor. As you can see, already my story is complicated and hard to explain due to so many facets.

This post alone will turn into a book if I let it, so let me just say that at 18 I found myself at a cross roads. Through a number of circumstances, including the loss of my first love to my best friend, my older brother leaving home and losing contact with him for several years, and living in a place I despised yet was reluctant to leave because of what my parents went through with my brother, I came to a breaking point with God. I had started to question whether God was real and if  He was, how could He possibly care for me at all and put me through what I was going through.

I can’t go into details, but my situation, where I was emotionally and mentally was bad. I battled suicidal thoughts, I had been battling anorexia, I (under my parents) was involved with a group of people who proclaimed they were Christians but were nothing at all like the Biblical picture of Christ. (That is putting it mildly.) The things being taught by this “preacher” were so off base and I was conflicted. If this was Christianity, I wanted no part of it.

I was struggling badly one hot summer day right after I turned 18. I lay on my bed shut into my room and God and I were about to have a show down. I, through my pain and confusion and tears, looked up at my ceiling and in an audible voice, challenged God. I said, “God, if you are real, you tell me right now, in a voice I can hear, in a way I can know, not this ridiculous interpretation of some other man, it’s just you and me God. If you are real, you tell me! Not my parents, not my preacher, you talk to me!” I was angry, I threw accusations at Him, I hurled questions about my present circumstances, my past hurts. Why did a 16-year-old girl have to bear the load that most adults did not have to bear? Why, at 16, and 17, and now 18 was I expected to hold on my shoulders the things that my parents had not even had to hold? While this sounds very much like a teen ager that thinks they know everything, even my mother will tell you that at the time, she prayed very similar prayers, albeit much more gently. Even she marvelled at some of the things I had faced in a few short years emotionally.

My battle with God went on, I’m not sure how long, several hours. I heard nothing but silence as I cried and my anger boiled over. I was fully determined to walk away an atheist. I began to feel hopelessness at talking to my ceiling. There was nothing on the other end. Finally, I fell quiet. I was exhausted. No answer…. that meant there was really no reason to not kill myself. There was no reason to stay around for my parents and be the good girl anymore, there was no God to see and care. There was no logical reason to stay here and be miserable.

As I remained quiet, pondering these realizations, something happened. I do not care what anybody says, what logical mind wants to explain it away, I heard God. It was not an audible sound, more like a sound that you feel, I felt a coolness blow over my torn soul and a calmness surround me and Love enveloped me. It was cooling and burning and soothing like Vick’s Vapor rub and it was applied to my soul. I started to weep, but these tears were different from the angry ones. I knew in that moment that God was real and He cared and He was my God, not the God of my parents, or the God of someone’s religion, but He was real to me in that moment.

I had been “saved” as a child after inviting Jesus into my heart, but at 18, Jesus consumed my heart and became real to me. In that moment I settled it with Him. I have never again questioned whether or not He is real or if He cares for me. It’s a good thing, because I had not yet faced the most difficult thing in my life.  All that pain and confusion at 18, the questions for God, “Why do I have to go through this, God?” Those questions would be answered down the road in a way I would have never dreamed.

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TO BE CONT.

I am an Etsy seller and several members of my family are Etsy sellers. There is a little activity on Etsy that has become fairly popular, the “Buy and stay” and “Buy and Replace” sales. These neat little promotional tools work thusly: A curator collects an item from several different shops to feature in a “treasury list”. She then invites her Etsy friends and associates as well as the featured shops to come look at the items, chat in the comment section, and see if there is anything they are interested in buying. The featured shops do the same with their friends and contacts and those friends and contacts can even invite their friends, etc. The incentive to buy for an Etsyan is you get to replace the shop you buy from with an item from your own shop, plus you support small business, PLUS there is some really neat stuff on Etsy that you just can’t find at Wally World.

This turns a lot of eyes onto the featured shops from people who might not normally come into contact with them, it helps a buyer sort through the mass of unknown Etsy shops to find a seller who they can chat with and ask questions in real-time, and it is just plain fun. It is much like the modern version of a Tupperware party.

So, now that my readers are more familiar with how these sales work, let me resume the purpose of this post: Avoiding the pitfalls of surprise Etsy packages.

French vanilla coffee soap by www.sweetturquoise.etsy.com smells absolutely heavenly, like a softly cinnamon coffee latte with undertones of vanilla. Yum!

Anyone even vaguely familiar with the world of hand-made knows that homemade soap is about as delectable as it gets. On Etsy you can find droves of soap makers, each with their own specialty, style, etc. There are vegan soaps, natural soaps, highly scented soaps, non scented soaps, colorful swirled soaps, soaps with names like cinnamon bun and chocolate toffee. There are soaps that look, smell, and sound good enough to eat. There are even soaps made to look exactly like different edibles.

Also by SweetTurqoise, cupcake soaps.

I was chatting with an Etsy friend the other day, during one of these BNS sales, who talked about getting a surprise goody in one of the packages she had ordered, a lovely hand towel from Mouse0403.

I love this coffee themed towel by www.Mouse0403.etsy.com

This seller and Mouse are pretty good Etsy friends and run in each others’ BNR/BNS circles a lot. They have ordered from each other multiple times and so when there was a little yummy surprise in with the towel Mouse sent, my friend did not think much other than, “Awww, so sweet!” It was labeled Chocolate Patchouli and looked to be a small sample of hand-made chocolate bar, wrapped up nice and cute with a hand written note from Mouse, “Enjoy this surprise sample!”

Now again, if you are at all familiar with Etsy, you know there are all kinds of creative chocolatiers and candy makers and bakeries on Etsy vending their wares, and it is not at all uncommon to see Chocolate Lavender truffles or Peppermint caramel, or other weird flavor combinations you would not have thought would taste good. So my friend thought nothing as she took a bite of her Chocolate Patchouli and was horrified to find out it was actually soap.

“Gosh! How silly she must be! ” I know that’s what you are thinking, but that isn’t all. As I laughed with her and everyone else, I knew I was going to have to share something that had happened to me that very morning.

I had gone to check my mailbox that morning. I had been participating in the BNS world all week and had several packages I was expecting. As I said before, I have some family members that are heavily involved with those type sales too and I had already received a wonderful box with hand crocheted face scrubbies, beautiful jewelry, some little boonie hats for Faith, and some other little goodies earlier that month. So, I was surprised when I found a little manilla envelope from CakeOrDeath5 that I wasn’t expecting. In retrospect I am vaguely recalling my Aunt Shannon of JunqueyardRoyalty ( www.junqueyardroyalty.etsy.com ) messaging me for my mailing address, but I spaced that out on this particular morning.

Hat by www.PeaceBabyBatiks.etsy.com necklace by www.DesertHippie642.etsy.com

Face scrubbies by www.WhimsyNeedles.etsy.com

I didn’t even wait till I got in the house, I started ripping it open excitedly as I walked up my drive way. Out tumbled a small package of clearish, brownish, coffee cup-shaped unidentifiable little objects that seemed bite sized. They were obviously coffee flavored from the smell, and I am an absolute fool for anything coffee (as you will see).

I was intrigued, yet wary. After all, I knew that Etsy has all kinds of treasures and just because it looks, smells, and seems edible does not mean that it is. I wondered if this delectable little bit was a candle tart, soap, gummy candy, hard candy, or just something else altogether. I was somewhat thrown off by the shop name, CakeOrDeath5, and I just couldn’t recall what it was that Cake sold. I looked for a note, but all she had in the package was a business card and a little hand written “Enjoy!” written on a little tag. I’m sure she assumed that Shannon had told me about my coming  package.

Well, those little coffee flavored something-or-others were so good-looking and smelling, and they most resembled a candy, what with being bite sized and clearish, and my mind flashed to a conversation not long ago about a fellow Etsyan’s coffee flavored taffy, so rather than wait to inquire or search Cake’s Etsy shop for what the item was, I decided to lick one of the little buggers.

Tell me these don't at least resemble candy.

Yes, I licked it, not knowing what it was. It was, in fact, kind of sweet, but I easily and quickly determined that is was not edible. It was soap, little individual soaps. This did not disappoint me, I love soap, and I loved that they were coffee flavored and shaped into little coffee cups. I just wish I had not been sucked in by their wonderful aroma and appearance to actually lick one.

So, the lesson of the day is: If you order from Etsy and send a surprise gift to someone, be sure to tell them not to taste the soap even if it looks edible.

Individual coffee soaps by www.CakeOrDeath5.etsy.com perfect for guest soaps.

Here are some other awesome and unique Etsy finds:

"A Break In The Lining" necklace by www.JunqueyardRoyalty.etsy.com

Chocolate sea shells by www.AndiesSpecialtySweets.etsy.com , do they not look totally real??

Fairy portal by www.ClayByKim.etsy.com

And I could post so many more! The best thing is for you to browse and discover Etsy for yourself. www.etsy.com

This post will be short, but I wanted to call attention to my fabulous Etsy team, Team Bluegrass! This is a group of wonderful artists and craftsmen that specialize in everything from soap, to pottery, to jewelry, to garden decor, and everything in between. There are currently 139 members throughout the state. Everything we make is crafted by hand. (With a smattering of vintage items here and there.)

Making a purchase on Etsy is as simple as any other online site for one of the megastores, except when you purchase from someone on Etsy, you are purchasing from a small business, and if they are a Team Bluegrass member, your dollars go right back into our local Kentucky economy! There is something for everyone and many items are surprisingly affordable. Why not stay at home and have an original, made-with-love item delivered to you instead of going through the hoopla of Wally World only to feel like just another number running your stuff through the self check line and wondering if the quality is really there? Think about it.

For those of you who have not yet discovered Etsy: www.etsy.com

You can browse without a profile, and if you find something you love (and I’m sure you will) the site will walk you through a very simple, free sign up so you can purchase items through PayPal with your credit card, or some vendors (such as myself) have a pay with money order option.

In the Etsy search bar, you can type in any search word to find exactly what you’re looking for, but type in teambluegrass (all one word, our team search tag) and you can browse literally hundreds of items made here in Kentucky. Birthdays, holidays, just because days, a treat for yourself, or just something you have been needing, they are all covered!

Team Bluegrass is on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/kentuckyhandmade

We recently decided to create a team coupon code good in many of the Team Bluegrass shops on Etsy. Using this code at checkout will take 10% off your purchase order. You just type BLUEGRASS10 into the coupon code box upon checkout and your order is automatically adjusted. This is our first team code and is expected to run quarterly. This particular code will be available to anyone on every order until July 1, 2011. Below is a list of the shops currently offering this code in their shop, but we expect this list to change and grow as our team grows and as we get feedback on the popularity of this endeavor.

I think I’ve said as much as I can say, I’d rather you just check out these awesome shops for yourself!

Wrong.

Since I started with a hobby in mind, I did not really research all the points I should have that regard marketing and the business side. This isn’t so bad, I find that many things in my life seem to start out backwards and they almost always turn themselves around the right way before it’s over. However, I’m at a point where I need to really start getting serious if I want to see serious results. This is good, this does not intimidate me, it exhilarates me because I finally know, at almost 26 years old,  just what I want to do in the way of job and income long-term.

I really want to accomplish so much more than just creating and selling art, though. I want to be that business where when you purchase something from me, you feel like you got a superior product for an amazing price. I want to connect with my customers and be more than just “an artists I bought a piece of art from”, I want to build relationships. I don’t want to be that annoying online business that sends out emails every other day and posts on their Facebook wall about their product until when you see their avatar you just automatically scan over them or worse, delete them.

That being said, I am trying really hard to find new and interesting ways to connect and market and promote. Since setting up shop on Etsy I have learned so much from other small businesses and online shoppers. I really admire all the unique and handmade items I’ve seen and I’m striving to be just as unique in my own field.

I will be taking some time out all this next month of April, mainly to move my household once more,( this time at least we’re getting a bigger house with more room to create and be productive) but also to work on my new business and give it some TLC. I want to be a little more organized, a little less all over the place, figure out my short-term and long-term goals, work out my exact costs to price tag ratio, and work on new items and new kinds of items. I’ll have my Etsy shop on vacation mode for all of April, but I’ll be back at the beginning of May, hopefully with a clearer vision and consistent direction.

Feel free to keep up with me on Facebook and leave any suggestions about what you’d like to see me do. I love feed back!

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Skye-Blue-by-Natasia-Champion/362725131270

"In Spite of the Pain" (SOLD)

What a concept! But is it true?

Here is what I know:

1. Man lives on a planet that is governed by the law of gravity and he does not posses natural wings, yet he has made it into the air countless times and even walked on the moon.

2. In spite of barriers such as trees, houses, oceans, mountains, etc., we are able to audibly hear another person speaking to us through a telephone.

3. We can flick a tiny nub of plastic on our wall and a room lights up.

4. A banana grown in South America can make it all the way to New York City, where such fruit cannot even generally be grown, within days, and still be perfectly fresh.

5. A baby can be born at 29 out of 40 weeks and have a fair (not even poor, but fairly promising) chance of survival.

6. Within less than 100 years the African-American has gone from not even being able to sit in the same room as “white people” to holding the office of President of the United States.

7. You can open your freezer in the dead of summer and find ice.

8. The distance it took early American settlers to travel in 8 or so months can now be traversed in 2 or 3 days.

9. Mt. Everest is summitted several times a year by many people.

10. I am going to hit the publish button at the end of this post and somehow people all over the world will be able to read the relatively insignificant ramblings of my mind.

Well, the list goes on, but I think I have made my point.

So, when I say that I believe great things are about to happen in my life, my bills are about to start diminishing, my quality of life will begin improving, I’ll find a house much cheaper and just as nice as the one I’m in – where I will also be able to grow a garden and keep a few farm animals – that we can RENT, I will be able to be with my baby and do something I’m passionate about while still bringing in an income, and we will all grow closer and healthier as a family in 2011, maybe I am just outrageous. Or maybe I’m outrageous ENOUGH.

I have already seen things begin to move into place in the last 2 months since I started this wacky idea of believing so outrageously.

I am home every day, caring for my child and my home after leaving my serving job, doing what I love which is painting and being creative, and wonderful people continue to find worth in my pieces (I never went to college by the way, never got a degree in art) and buy them.

Our landlord decides, almost on a whim, to mention to his realtor that he’d like to sell this house and days later somebody decides to buy it, in this economy no less. This enables us to be able to move into a cheaper place without breaking our lease and paying a bunch of money in fees. Moving to a more country setting will enable us to grow a garden and become more self-sufficient while also promoting a healthier, more active lifestyle.

I can only imagine what other doors will open in 2011. I only know that God will continue to open them, because outrageous belief is called faith. It’s what gets results when everyone around you is looking at you strangely with their arms crossed shaking their heads.`

 As I sat here for a moment this morning, wanting to write a little more about my life, I scanned through the files in my mind and came upon my teen years. The years between 13 and 19 are so chock full of rich history that makes me who I am today that it is impossible to truly know me without knowing all of that. However, it is also the most difficult part to tell, more difficult than my wild days as a young adult, more difficult than the loss of our business and the death of our daughter. Perhaps one day I will be able to put it into words, but that is not today.

 Instead, I’m going to call on a much earlier time frame, my childhood in Florida, and our recent vacation.

 All the memories of this happy time in my history came flooding back last summer when Josh and I went on the first real vacation of our married life and really since our childhood. He’d been to Florida on vacation several times with his parents and to visit friends long before he’d met me, but I had not been back to the state since my family left for Colorado when I was 9 years old. I had not seen the ocean at all since then, though I had been just a few hours away in  South Carolina, New York, and Texas at different points in time.

Me, my brothers Nick and Naaman, my mom, and our dog, Sandy. I think I was about 6 or 7 years old here

 My childhood in Florida ranks among the happiest years of my life. My family was all together in one state (my Gramma, Mom’s sisters, her brother, and their children.) and we were all close. We’d go to the beach together, go to the park, the mall, the flea market, hang out at my Gramma’s house and swim in the pool, there was almost not a day that went by that I didn’t spend time with my cousins, aunts, uncle, and grandmother.

 I remember cook outs by the pool, the grill fired up, chicken and corn on the cob and baked potatoes wrapped in shiny foil all laid across the grates, fresh fruit salad with kiwi and mangos and bananas and watermelon. (You could not have a cook out without watermelon.) All the kids would be splashing in the pool, my brothers and I, my cousins Jessica and Kaleb, sometimes cousins Jon and Greg, and later, Rebecca and little India. To this day, grilled chicken ranks among my favorite foods.

 We lived only fifteen minutes from the beach, so we went often. Back in the late ’80s and early ’90s there was very little environmental awareness connected to global warming and marine conservation. We would go to the Bathtub Beach and swim right out to the reef. When the tide was out it was very easy to access, sometimes you could even wade, you didn’t have to swim. We would climb right up on the reef and explore, searching for marine life and sea urchins, using our little snorkel sets to dip beneath the water and watch the fish and search for sand dollars. Today, this Beach is in danger of being shut down due to the deterioration of the reef. They started implementing a “no walking on the reef” regulation in 1994 as this problem began making itself apparent. I remember this because the very last time we went to the beach right before we left Florida the life guard was shouting for people to get off the reef and I was confused since we had always gone out there for as long as I can remember.

 In Florida’s hot, humid climate, knowing how to swim is all but a requirement. I learned at a very early age. I don’t think I can even remember as far back as when I didn’t know how, that’s how young I was when I learned. We might as well have been fish, that’s how much time we spent in the water. My Grandmother’s pool was an in-ground with a 7 foot deep end. I remember being very afraid of the suction cleaning system that rolled along the bottom of the pool when we weren’t using it, sucking up the debris that would fall in. My father had personally landscaped Gramma’s back yard while he was running his landscaping business when I was very little, and he had put in some big palm trees, nice and close to the concrete walkway around the pool. They made for some very nice shade, but they would also drop big round seeds, about twice the size of a marble. The pool system, nick-named “Creepy”, would suck them up when they would sink within reach of its submerged vacuum head. I remember frogs would fall into the pool too, eventually meeting the same fate, being sucked up through Creepy’s long hose and ending up in the filter basket. It was always fascinating to find them, in a gross sort of way, when we would clean the filter.

 Sometimes we would jump in the pool before Creepy could be taken out and coiled neatly out-of-the-way. I was always very careful to stay clear of “him”, but my brothers were not afraid of him at all. My older brother would often dive down and grab the vacuum head and chase me with it. It made a horrible, loud sucking noise when it reached the surface and started gulping air, helping to perpetuate its illusion of being alive. I was so terrified, I thought I would be sucked up through the hose and end up swirling in the filter, bloated and lifeless like one of those poor frogs. (I’ve always had a vivid, if rather unrealistic imagination.) I would swim for the nearest edge of the pool and bolt out, sometimes scraping my knees on the rough cement, and scream and cry until my mother or aunt or grandmother would come outside scolding, telling us we needed to take the vacuum out before we got in or we might break it. I would have gladly done this every time if I wasn’t so terrified of Creepy. I couldn’t even bear to touch him.

 Such carefree days those were! The year round warm weather made it seem like summer all year. There was no division of the seasons and time seemed to float by lazily. I was so young, my biggest worry was when lunch would arrive. (All the swimming and out doors play made us very hungry.) Even back then I had very few friends and while my brothers were hanging out with the neighborhood kids, I was hanging out with my mom and Gramma and Aunt Shanny at the bead table in the living room.

 Ah, beads! Yet another fond memory and love that carries into my life today. My grandmother and aunt Shannon had their own business, they created unique beaded jewelry and would sell it at the flea market and to area surf shops and high-end consignment stores. Their work was always in demand and my mom would often help. It was a great time for family bonding. Since I was the only girl and my brothers were always off doing their own thing, Gramma, Shanny, and Mom would often let me have my own corner of the big bead table set up in the living room. It was a big formal dining table, completely covered in plastic containers of beads, leaving just enough space for 4 or 5 people to work on a piece of jewelry. There were seed beads and clay beads, trade beads, polished stone beads, round, square, cubical, large, small, shiny, dull. Every kind of bead you could think of in every color of the rainbow. And not just on the table, but in boxes and bins and drawers under the table and around the table. It was an artist’s heaven.

 We would spend weekends just sitting and making jewelry. Necklaces, earrings, anklets, bracelets, whatever our creative juices would demand. I would usually have the job of making the coffee, you could not make jewelry with out a cup of coffee to stimulate your creativity, and the older ladies would talk and visit and I was allowed to be right there, feeling all grown up, if I promised not to get too chatty. (I was a very “talk your ear off” kind of kid once I was allowed to get going.) I think most of the jewelry I made was disassembled when I was done, but I remember some pieces were deemed good enough to put on the “sell” rack. I was so proud when this happened, and even prouder when I’d hear the news that one of my creations had sold. To this day, my grandmother and aunt Shannon make beaded jewelry and sell it. They live in Arizona now, and they have a few other irons in the fire in addition to beaded jewelry, but it is still a family passion.

One of my Grandmother's lastest creations for sale online in her Etsy store.

(Feel free to check out my grandmother’s Etsy store, it’s becoming quite popular in the short time she’s had it open, just since early 2010.

http://www.etsy.com/shop/DesertHippie642?ga_search_query=deserthippie642&ga_search_type=seller_usernames 

My aunt Shannon also has an online Etsy store she has been filling with her own line of creations and neat treasures she has picked up from here and there.

 http://www.etsy.com/shop/JunqueyardRoyalty?ref=pr_shop )

 All these wonderful memories and more were pulled out and dusted off on mine and Josh’s recent trip to Florida for a much-needed and long-awaited vacation. Granted, we stayed on Fort Walton Beach, and that is a long ways from where I grew up in Stuart on the East Coast, and very different, but it was Florida and it was ocean and beach. It was fantastic! The weather was beautiful the whole time and there were barely any people for the beginning of August. The oil spill in the gulf had scared a lot of vacationers away, but there wasn’t a trace of oil to be seen where we stayed. We left Faith home with her grandmothers and it was just me and him, very carefree and romantic.

 I’d never been to the Destin area, and could not believe the scenery. I now know why they call it the Emerald Coast and talk about the sugar white sand. It was so different from what I remember as a kid, yet comfortably familiar. The water was the color of green Listerine. I don’t really know how else to describe it. It was crystal clear, beautiful emerald-green.

Listerine Green!

 We were able to do a lot of activities that we hadn’t counted on because our condo came with discount offers and we didn’t have the baby to think about. We were very busy for being on vacation. We went snorkeling and road a giant speed boat called the Seablaster, and we went deep-sea fishing. (Josh caught fish, I did not, but we had loads of fun.) We got sunburned in spite of plenty of sunscreen, and we went sand crabbing well into the night every night. We didn’t do much sleeping because we tried to catch the sunrise on the beach, coffee in hand, almost every morning. It was glorious to be back in the sun and the sand after years of being away. We spent five days there, a rather generous amount of time for a vacation, but it still wasn’t even close to enough. We were like most people I’m sure, spending the whole drive home trying to figure out how we could move there permanently and not be excommunicated by our families. Of course, once we got home and settled back into normal life those thoughts were replaced by reality and common sense.

Destin's Harbour Village from the bay.

 Still, on cold days like this, with snow piling up outside my door, I think about Florida and relive the good times. I’m back in the sun with a really nice tan and there is water everywhere I go. Walks on the beach, fishing from the pier, salty ocean air, seagulls, and all the other sweet memories. Who knows, maybe one day I’ll figure out how to make a relocation work. (Not anytime soon, don’t worry.) For now, I’ll just treasure the recollections.

Taken on our deep-sea fishing trip.

Dawn

I’ve been busy working out in “the real world” for several months before and through Christmas. It was good, it gave us a little extra room in our budget to spend on the holiday and it taught me a lot about the current, evolved me. In short, I realized my priorities are far different from what they used to be, and my desires to be a mom and house keeper are a much better partner for my desires to be a better Christian than working in a restaurant as a server. I also realized how much I had enjoyed my reconnection with art and creativity because I couldn’t really find the time or drive to continue being creative when I was working.

So, with all these things figured out and the fact that my tips in Bowling Green are pitiful compared to the other places I have worked, Josh and I agreed that I would be better off taking care of my home, my baby, and working on building my home business. No more juggling the car and our schedules to make sure we both get to work on time and Faith is cared for!

Speaking of Faith…

Those of you who are Facebook friends know that she is growing way too fast for my liking. Walking, talking, potty training, full pony tails, and she’s only 17 months going on 5! I can hardly believe it. I knew they grew fast, but especially 2010 seemed to zoom by and now here we are in 2011. It’s enough to take my breath away.

Josh is doing well, his job with C-Worth as a restaurant equipment salesman/distributor is going well and it is fabulous to see him less stressed and with more time to spend with us. Now that I’m not working nights, we can resume treasured family moments like putting our Little Bit to bed together. She’s really good with bed time. When she’s tired (at 8:30 pm, like clock work) she announces that she wants to go night-night and starts to climb the stairs. I usually take her up first to brush her teeth and Daddy comes up a few minutes later, but she always gets half way up the stairs, looks back, and calls “Daddy! Dada!” until he answers that he’s coming. We brush teeth, then we go into her room to say good night to Winston, her sock monkey. (Yup, she’s still crazy about him, he’s her favorite stuffed animal.) Josh and I kiss him and hug him and say, “good night, Winston…” and then she grabs him and squeezes him and kisses him right on the red mouth. Lately she’ll hold him back a little ways, look him in the eye, and jabber something unrecognizable, then she’ll say, “night-night” and kiss him, then hand him to Daddy to put in her crib. It melts our hearts! Then she get’s kisses and hugs, tucked under the quilt Grammie made for her, and we say prayers. She always listens for Josh to say, “… in Jesus name…” and then she shouts “Amen!” It’s like she is racing to say it first. Then we put on her music in her cd player and she cuddles Winston and goes to sleep with out a whine or a whimper. Every time I dim her light and close the door all I can think is what a good baby she is and what on Earth will I have to endure down the road to make up for how good she has been up until now.

It’s moments like these that so many people take for granted. The little things, the sweet moments… they fade quickly and babies grow and before you know it, those moments are gone forever and you can never get them back. So we enjoy each one and I’m very happy that I don’t have to miss them while working a night shift anymore.

I have quite a few hopes and goals for 2011. I did not make any official resolutions, but I’m working every day to accomplish several things. Among them, the ever-present ”eat better and get fit”, house keeping goals, artistic goals, paying off debt and becoming more self-sufficient. Ultimately, we want to get back to our roots, have a little fam, some garden, and we hope that the end of this year will find us in a house of our own on a little patch of land big enough to have a few animals and do a little hunting, but it may be next year. We just have to wait and see how much debt our tax return can eliminate.

I want to write a little more frequently than I have been, create something to post on Skye Blue at least once a week, and possibly open an online store on Etsy in the next few months. For once, I know exactly what I want to do with my life as far as job and income are concerned, and I’m determined to make it happen. Where there’s a will, there is a way, and I have a will to work from home building my own business. So, be prepared to see a lot of my work floating around the Facebook feeds! And if you don’t mind, tell your friends about me the next time they mention ideas for a unique gift. I’d really appreciate it!

I am not complaining, I’m just stating facts. In fact, I am finding a new sensation flowing through me every time I look around to find one task done and another before me. It is actually joy and satisfaction. I’m not sure at what point these feelings replaced my overwhelming sense of tedium, I just know there is a change in me lately. I have a better attitude, or maybe more energy, or is it that once things are finally put together it is easier to stay on top of the mess. Perhaps a combination of all three. I just know that the little every day tasks don’t overwhelm me as much and the big tasks don’t seem so impenetrably daunting. Go figure.

I think a big factor is that I have lived in the same house for a full year now without moving. I know this sounds silly, but that is a huge milestone for me. This is the first time since I’ve been married that this has happened. I guess I feel like I can let my breath out because I’m still here. What’s more, despite Josh taking a new job recently, we are able to stay in Bowling Green. I can finally put down some roots and this has inspired my “nesting” instincts. It is hard to care about a nest you plan to fly away from in the near future. I know we won’t be at this house forever, but I’m fairly certain we’ll be here until we get a place of our own, one that we can call ours, and then it won’t matter because I already know how I want to decorate and paint and arrange. I’ll be able to nest to my heart’s content!

I’ve said before, I’m a firm believer in being faithful in the least, so I am working on keeping up with what I have because I have a feeling that getting our permanent place is not too far down the road. It is the next step in our life and we’ll be moving toward it from this point.

At any rate, I’m glad for this energy, or what ever it is, that is keeping me busy. That’s what life is all about, making the moments into days and the days into years until your time on earth is done and you can look back and see the impact your tiny life had on those of other people and the world in general. It’s all about occupying.