At the end of the last story I'd just had my 7th child, was living in the unfinished church house, and my husband and I had been running a construction company for the duration of our marriage.
It is during this next point of the story, that all of the hardships I'd previously encountered in life suddenly seemed easy when looking back from the new place I was in.
At the end of 2008 when our country's economy crashed, construction dried up overnight, which left us jobless and penniless. At the time, my husband had been working with a friend ( who is an amazing, amazing person) at designing a new product and bringing it to market. So now, with no work to do and no luck finding a job, we jumped in feet first and started working what seemed like 24 hours a day to launch this new product and start up a new company. Child number 7 was actually born just one week before our first big trade show.
For the next two years, this new business basically consumed our lives. My husband was gone traveling to promote the company for what accumulated to almost six months out of the year, and while he was on the road, I took care of all the day to day business by myself.
During this time, it was a constant scramble for us to stay afloat. The company was not at a place it could support us yet, and with all of the responsibilities it brought, (not to mention the seven children that needed caring for) neither my husband or I were able to take on another job. I cashed out a life insurance policy, and we did everything possible to stay afloat personally, but supporting a family of 9 on no income proved to be just as difficult as it would seem.
Any amount of pride that was left within my being was ripped out during this time, as I realized there was nothing that I would not do to feed my children, and be sure that we at least were able to keep the power on. We went through a period where our power and phones were constantly on the brink of being shut off, we had no money for food, and definitely couldn't afford to buy even the necessities for our children.
When we were hungry, I learned what the food bank was. When we were in need I prayed; I prayed for everything. I prayed for a new washer when ours broke (twice) and a working one showed up. I prayed for shoes for my kids and was blessed with just enough money to buy them. I prayed for everything from bunk beds that we desperately needed to food for our pets, and we always seemed to be blessed with just enough to get us through. There was never an abundance, and our needs were never met too late, but my prayers were almost always answered moments before it was too late.
I remember crying often, alone in my room where my kids could not know I was struggling to keep them warm, clothed, and fed: and I still remember specific points of desperation that ultimately changed who I am - removing any judgement, self righteousness, and criticism, I previously had towards other people. I learned that no matter how hard a person works, they can't always control the outcome of a situation. And I experienced miracle after miracle that provided for my family in what felt like the face of defeat.
One moment during this time stands out in my mind above the rest, and although it was not at all a miracle, it was a beautiful act of kindness from one of my children that made me realize how affected they were by the state of poverty we were living in, and in a good way.
Number 3 and 4 had worn holes in their only pair of shoes to the point that they were no longer adequate to wear. We didn't have a dime to our name, and were trying to find a solution to the no shoe problem. Our oldest daughter was aware of the situation at hand, and she approached me later in the day with $10 she had saved from her birthday. It was all she had, and she offered it to me to buy shoes for her younger brother and sister. You wouldn't think $10 would buy two new pairs of shoes, but I went to the right place and searched, finding only two pairs of shoes that were $5 each, and just happened to be the perfect size for the two in need. I am still touched by the compassion of my daughter, and have realized since then, that our children (and myself) learned so many valuable lessons of love while were were living in need, that it was worth the pain that we felt while going through it.
We became closer as a family, and more compassionate towards others. And I learned that happiness comes from within - not through things.
It was half way through this two year period of financial struggles that I suddenly ended up enrolled in school for film - with 7 children at home. It doesn't make any form of logical sense, but the way it all fell together at the time did. I can't say enough, how blessed I feel to be studying the art that I'm passionate about, in the hopes that I can enjoy a career in it that will not only provide for my family financially - but will show my children that where there is a will there is a way, and anything is possible if you set your mind to it.
At 29 years old with 7 children at home, and not a dime to my name (literally) I was attending college for the first time. My tuition was completely paid for that first year (and has continued to be) but the school was located 90 miles away and it was everything I could do to find the money needed to get there and back each week....which is where I'll pick up in part 5 of this story.
If you've missed the first few portions of "My Life as it Pertains to me" Here they are:
My Life as it Pertains to Me Part 1
My Life as it Pertains to Me Part 2
My Life as it Pertains to Me Part 3
I'd love to hear from you - whether you hate my life, love it, or have been touched by it, but mostly I just enjoy the therapy of writing about it.
For now,
Life is All Surreal. If you have a dream - seek it out, because it's not going to come calling your name.
Thursday, January 12, 2012
Sunday, January 8, 2012
My Life as it Pertains to Me Part 3: First Comes Love, Then Comes Marriage, Then Comes the Baby in The Baby Carriage.....
.....or seven to be exact. At least that's all the further we will be at the end of this blog.
So, we left off with me just returning home from working as a model in Tokyo - 18 years of age. I stepped of a plane into Oregon just two days before Christmas, 1998. The holiday, and New Year were a blurr of jet lag, and intense questions from every angle about my recent trips and my upcoming marriage. Being a VERY private person, this was basically torture.
I had had enough traveling for a while and was ready to be a homebody for a good long time - its a good thing, because although I didn't know it at the time, the next ten years would consist of cleaning house and having babies, mostly getting out only to visit family and do the grocery shopping.
In February I was married to the man I'd been in a relationship
with for three years. H
e was a bit older, 26 to be exact, and I'd met him at.....well, he was my youth pastor. Odd as that seems now, 
it seemed exactly the right step to take at the time, and I still believe it was.
Our marriage, like many, didn't start off to amazingly. We got pregnant on the honeymoon, and returned home to our one of a kind church of a house - which consisted of a rotten roof sitting on walls stripped down to the studs. There wasn't even a kitchen, but there was a tub - and that's where I did the dishes fo
r the first three months or so. The plan was to fix the place up into a house and sell it. (NOTE to reader: We still live there, and although it's still a work in progress, it is much more than a rotten roof on studs, and even has a decent kitchen :)
I, being young and in love, wanted to spend all of my time with my new husband - and he, being older and having grown accustomed to being single, was too busy working and doing the things he liked best to attend to my wants and needs. I was 18, pregnant, and alone, with nothing to do but sit at home and wish I were somewhere else.
And Then...
...Our Family Began to Grow
And Grow...
And Grow Some More...
Between November 1999 and December 2008, we had seven children - and for the first six years and five children of that, the old church house had no means of heat. So for 9 months out of the year we all lived in one unfinished bedroom, that we desperately tried to heat with a space heater. We did everything in there; sleep, live, and eat our meals.
Its amazing for me now, to think of what I went through then, to make a meal for our family. It consisted of me cooking in our unheated kitchen - which was so cold during the winter months that I could not feel my fingers by the time I'd finished the meal - upon which I returned to our bedroom, laid a blanket on what floor space was left between all of the beds and dressers, then sat on the floor with our family treating the blanket like a table, and we ate. Generally we ate right out of the pans, because the thought of carting all those dishes back and forth from bedroom to cold kitchen, and then washing them in the cold was unbearable. I'd like to say these were the hardest times of our lives, but being such a stubborn person, it was going to take even more to break the prideful person that I was (don't worry I'll tell you all about it in part 3 of this series.)
During these 10 years of marriage and babies my husband and I owned and operated a small construction company. At the time, I thought we were poor. But now, looking back, I realize we just didn't have nice things. We were able to pay the bills for the most part, and we always had food on the table. I would later learn what "poor" really meant.
I feel as if this portion of my story would not be complete if I did not share with you the motherly pain I experienced over my son Titus.
Titus was a beautiful baby, who at birth weighed 12 lbs (that's huge for those of you not versed in the typical weight of newborns). To me, he was perfect and normal. He had a few small issues in the hospital after his delivery, but nothing that wasn't quickly patched up through and IV and medication.
We brought him home, and loved him, and at 2 weeks of age, he got very ill, so he and I returned to the hospital where he was kept on IVs and respirators for the next 8 days. It was during that 8 day stay, that our pediatrician came to me and told me that he thought Titus h
ad a genetic disorder...something called Beckwith-Wiedemann. I'd never heard of the disease, but didn't really care, because all I could think of while he spoke was: My son is perfect, my son is perfect, I'm not going to cry, he will be fine. The doctor proceeded to tell me that children with Beckwith-Wiedemann often times suffer from mental retardation, and those with hemihyperplasia (which Titus had) had a very high risk of contracting cancer of the liver, or wilms tumor in the kidney. Both are cancers with no symptoms, and are very aggressive. Because of this, from the time he was born until the age of 4, he experienced a blood draw every 6 weeks, and from birth until 7, he was due for an ultrasound every 12 weeks.
For the duration of Titus's first 7 years of life, I refused to treat him as anything but a perfectly functioning little boy. I felt that if I treated him like he was perfectly normal then he would be perfectly normal. We made sure to give him every opportunity to do everything that our other children did, and at a very young age, he and Beth (our daughter who is 14 months his elder) became very close friends, which helped Titus to grow immensely.
Never once during this did I cry or whine or even worry that he may contract cancer, or be mentally slow, but then......
Titus turned 7.
The testing stopped.
And he was Perfect!
Suddenly all the emotions that I had refused to allow myself feel for so long surfaced. I became an emotional wreck any time I spoke about Titus - and I could commonly be caught crying uncontrollably in my car. I cried all the tears of fear that as a mother I should have cried when he was sick. The tears I refused to cry when I was hooking him up to respirators for months at home while he was an infant. The tears and fear I refused to experience when I carted 5, and 6, and 7 children with me to have his blood drawn and his ultrasounds done for seven years. And the tears of fear I should have cried to think that my child would likely be retarded, and possibly even die as a young boy.
That's a lot of tears to catch up on. But mostly I cried because my little boy was okay, and was going to be okay and that made me so happy. Titus is still doing great, and will be eight this coming March. :)
As many of you know, we now have 8 beautiful babies, but the eighth isn't born until the the third part of this story. For now this is where we'll end.
Life is All Surreal.
Trials and suffering build character in a person, they may be hard to experience, but the good things in life wouldn't be so pleasant if you'd never experienced any pain.
MJB
Find the rest of this series here:
Previous post: My Life as it Pertains to Me Part 2
Next Post: My Life as it Pertains to Me Part 4
So, we left off with me just returning home from working as a model in Tokyo - 18 years of age. I stepped of a plane into Oregon just two days before Christmas, 1998. The holiday, and New Year were a blurr of jet lag, and intense questions from every angle about my recent trips and my upcoming marriage. Being a VERY private person, this was basically torture.
I had had enough traveling for a while and was ready to be a homebody for a good long time - its a good thing, because although I didn't know it at the time, the next ten years would consist of cleaning house and having babies, mostly getting out only to visit family and do the grocery shopping.
In February I was married to the man I'd been in a relationship
with for three years. H
e was a bit older, 26 to be exact, and I'd met him at.....well, he was my youth pastor. Odd as that seems now, 
it seemed exactly the right step to take at the time, and I still believe it was.Our marriage, like many, didn't start off to amazingly. We got pregnant on the honeymoon, and returned home to our one of a kind church of a house - which consisted of a rotten roof sitting on walls stripped down to the studs. There wasn't even a kitchen, but there was a tub - and that's where I did the dishes fo
r the first three months or so. The plan was to fix the place up into a house and sell it. (NOTE to reader: We still live there, and although it's still a work in progress, it is much more than a rotten roof on studs, and even has a decent kitchen :)I, being young and in love, wanted to spend all of my time with my new husband - and he, being older and having grown accustomed to being single, was too busy working and doing the things he liked best to attend to my wants and needs. I was 18, pregnant, and alone, with nothing to do but sit at home and wish I were somewhere else.
(In all fairness to him - I was a bit of a spoiled brat at this point in my life, so I don't blame him for not wanting to be around much.)
And Then...
...Our Family Began to Grow
And Grow...
And Grow Some More...
Between November 1999 and December 2008, we had seven children - and for the first six years and five children of that, the old church house had no means of heat. So for 9 months out of the year we all lived in one unfinished bedroom, that we desperately tried to heat with a space heater. We did everything in there; sleep, live, and eat our meals.
Its amazing for me now, to think of what I went through then, to make a meal for our family. It consisted of me cooking in our unheated kitchen - which was so cold during the winter months that I could not feel my fingers by the time I'd finished the meal - upon which I returned to our bedroom, laid a blanket on what floor space was left between all of the beds and dressers, then sat on the floor with our family treating the blanket like a table, and we ate. Generally we ate right out of the pans, because the thought of carting all those dishes back and forth from bedroom to cold kitchen, and then washing them in the cold was unbearable. I'd like to say these were the hardest times of our lives, but being such a stubborn person, it was going to take even more to break the prideful person that I was (don't worry I'll tell you all about it in part 3 of this series.)
During these 10 years of marriage and babies my husband and I owned and operated a small construction company. At the time, I thought we were poor. But now, looking back, I realize we just didn't have nice things. We were able to pay the bills for the most part, and we always had food on the table. I would later learn what "poor" really meant.
I want to point out here, that I am not whining or complaining about the random paths of my life thus far - in actuality I am incredibly thankful for them, and wouldn't trade them for anything. I have become such a better person because of the things I've been through - and during the midst of it, I was never aware that it was not easy - because it was a challenge to overcome, and I live for overcoming challenges.
I feel as if this portion of my story would not be complete if I did not share with you the motherly pain I experienced over my son Titus.
Titus was a beautiful baby, who at birth weighed 12 lbs (that's huge for those of you not versed in the typical weight of newborns). To me, he was perfect and normal. He had a few small issues in the hospital after his delivery, but nothing that wasn't quickly patched up through and IV and medication.
We brought him home, and loved him, and at 2 weeks of age, he got very ill, so he and I returned to the hospital where he was kept on IVs and respirators for the next 8 days. It was during that 8 day stay, that our pediatrician came to me and told me that he thought Titus h
ad a genetic disorder...something called Beckwith-Wiedemann. I'd never heard of the disease, but didn't really care, because all I could think of while he spoke was: My son is perfect, my son is perfect, I'm not going to cry, he will be fine. The doctor proceeded to tell me that children with Beckwith-Wiedemann often times suffer from mental retardation, and those with hemihyperplasia (which Titus had) had a very high risk of contracting cancer of the liver, or wilms tumor in the kidney. Both are cancers with no symptoms, and are very aggressive. Because of this, from the time he was born until the age of 4, he experienced a blood draw every 6 weeks, and from birth until 7, he was due for an ultrasound every 12 weeks.
Now I know there are parents out there, that have gone through sooo much more with their children, and my heart truly goes out to them. I'm not looking for sympathy with my story - but rather trying to share the person I am because of what I've been through personally.
For the duration of Titus's first 7 years of life, I refused to treat him as anything but a perfectly functioning little boy. I felt that if I treated him like he was perfectly normal then he would be perfectly normal. We made sure to give him every opportunity to do everything that our other children did, and at a very young age, he and Beth (our daughter who is 14 months his elder) became very close friends, which helped Titus to grow immensely.
Never once during this did I cry or whine or even worry that he may contract cancer, or be mentally slow, but then......
Titus turned 7.
The testing stopped.
And he was Perfect!
Suddenly all the emotions that I had refused to allow myself feel for so long surfaced. I became an emotional wreck any time I spoke about Titus - and I could commonly be caught crying uncontrollably in my car. I cried all the tears of fear that as a mother I should have cried when he was sick. The tears I refused to cry when I was hooking him up to respirators for months at home while he was an infant. The tears and fear I refused to experience when I carted 5, and 6, and 7 children with me to have his blood drawn and his ultrasounds done for seven years. And the tears of fear I should have cried to think that my child would likely be retarded, and possibly even die as a young boy.
That's a lot of tears to catch up on. But mostly I cried because my little boy was okay, and was going to be okay and that made me so happy. Titus is still doing great, and will be eight this coming March. :)
As many of you know, we now have 8 beautiful babies, but the eighth isn't born until the the third part of this story. For now this is where we'll end.
Life is All Surreal.
Trials and suffering build character in a person, they may be hard to experience, but the good things in life wouldn't be so pleasant if you'd never experienced any pain.
MJB
Find the rest of this series here:
Previous post: My Life as it Pertains to Me Part 2
Next Post: My Life as it Pertains to Me Part 4
Friday, January 6, 2012
My life as it Pertains to Me Part 2: Elite Contests, Graduation, and Los Angeles
Knowing where one comes from gives understanding of who they are
and what they are going to be.
and what they are going to be.
My reasons for starting College at 29, and pursuing a degree in film stem from a much younger self just graduated from high school, so that's where I'll begin, but let me warn you, it's a 3 blog story.
When
I was 16 years old, I was standing outside a mall on a sidewalk and had a fashionably dressed woman walk up and hand me a business card telling me I had a lovely jaw-line, and should call her. I laughed about her comments the rest of the day with my friends, but rushed home that night to measure my height (you have to be 5'8" minimum as a fashion model) and called her within days) I had dreamed of modeling, and acting from the time I was a young child, but thought it an impossibility growing up in a tiny logging town Oregon.Soon I was testing, and being promoted by a "mother agent" to markets around the world, I took accelerated courses that fall as a Senior in High School, in case I was to get a placement with an agent elsewhere, and
entered "Elite Modeling Competition" a few months before graduation.I won the local competition, and went on to win the regional competition, and took a 1 week trip to Los Angeles in the spring to meet with my new agent "Elite Models," and attend several go-sees and castings. I returned home, graduated from high school at 17 years of age in 1998 (yes I'm that old), and two days later I moved to L.A. with a fellow model.
The first gig I ever booked was the cover of Teen Magazine, and all I have to say about that is hindsight's a b****. Two days before the shoot, I questioned my agent about the double booking, for there were two more rounds (national and world) of the Elite Modeling competition, and the first was on the same day as the Teen Magazine shoot.
They, of course, advised me to continue with their competition (the winner getting a $50,000 modeling contract) and so I did, but was only runner up, so would have fared much better with a magazine cover in my book, but such is life.
I worked in LA for a few months, for clients like K-mart, and The Beauty Handbook, nothing extravagant really. My then boyfriend made a trip to LA, during which he proposed, so I returned home for several months to prepare for a wedding.
That fall I was placed with an agency in Tokyo, I lived there for two months, made almost $20,000 working for clients like Shisheido, and Japanese Amway (yes, there is Amway in Japan), and other small catalog work I don't remember the names of. I filled my contract and came home with.... well not much of anything, as my agency took a 50% fee and the other half of my earnings paid all of my travel and living expenses for that time. I never could get my agency to send me tear pages, but below are some of my photos from Tokyo.
Then I got married, which is blog #3 of this story.
Life is All Surreal. When you look back at the tangled paths that have led to where you are, it all begins to make sense.
MJB
Find the rest of this series here:
My life as it pertains to me Part 3
My life as it pertains to me Part 4
My Life as it Pertains to Me: Part 1
Previous to making the decision to go to school in an attempt to get my Bachelor of Fine Arts in Digital Film and Video, I was a blogger. I blogged about the craziness of raising 7 kids, and was working on a social networking experiment (which I've since dropped).
After making the decision to go to school for Film I have blogged about.......well pretty much nothing. But I MISS BLOGGING.
Soooo.
I've decided to start anew, with a bit of a different twist to disprove the illusion that my peers have of me that I am "mysterious" and that "no on knows anything about me."
I am going to record the progress of my life since starting college - chronologically of course - and the steps I've made towards pursuing my passion. In reality this blog is for me, so that someday I can look back at where I began, and see how life has changed.
So we'll start with the past, and move quickly to the present. And hopefully finish with success.
For now...
Life is All Surreal. Take it by the horns, before it takes you.
MJB
Find the "Life as it Pertains to Me" series here:
My Life as it Pertains to Me Part 2
My Life as it Pertains to Me Part 3
My Life as it Pertains to Me Part 4
After making the decision to go to school for Film I have blogged about.......well pretty much nothing. But I MISS BLOGGING.
Soooo.
I've decided to start anew, with a bit of a different twist to disprove the illusion that my peers have of me that I am "mysterious" and that "no on knows anything about me."
I am going to record the progress of my life since starting college - chronologically of course - and the steps I've made towards pursuing my passion. In reality this blog is for me, so that someday I can look back at where I began, and see how life has changed.
So we'll start with the past, and move quickly to the present. And hopefully finish with success.
For now...
Life is All Surreal. Take it by the horns, before it takes you.
MJB
Find the "Life as it Pertains to Me" series here:
My Life as it Pertains to Me Part 2
My Life as it Pertains to Me Part 3
My Life as it Pertains to Me Part 4
Monday, December 5, 2011
Sunday, October 9, 2011
One Thing For Sure
While folding laundry this afternoon, a common thought began to pass through my mind, bringing an oh so familiar sadness.
-One thing in life is absolute for all of us. We're born, we live, and then we die. We take nothing with us, and leave only one thing behind that truly is a part of us, and that is our memory-
And for me, that is a big deal....So big in fact, that I've laid awake stressing at night since I was a little kid because I know that someday, I will no longer have the luxury of being around my loved ones because inevitably we all must go. And maybe that's why I try so hard not to connect with people, because goodbyes are something that I can't cope with.
I think about death often. I think about what I've done, what I'm doing, and what I still want to do before my time is up. Although this familiar sadness flooding my mind, should drive me to show those around me how I feel about them, it seems a rare moment that I actually allow myself the time to enjoy those things, those people that I hold dear to my heart. I pass them by, I meet their needs, I communicate with them often, but rarely ever do I really express my love and appreciation for them.
I realized today, that my baby will soon be one year old. I don't know where her life has gone, but one thing I do know is that I've missed so much of the joy and connection I should have had because of my drive to provide a better life for her. But is that better really? A parent who is never home in the hopes of keeping her children from suffering?
I don't know. But I do know that every day I'm alive, I want to try to be a better person than I was the day before. I want to take it all in, and I want to be a blessing, not a bother, to the people that are with me.
Life is All Surreal.
It passes to quickly, and nothing is absolute. Make your choices wisely because you're not the only one who is going to feel the effects of them - they become a part of you, and are left behind with your loved ones in your memory.
MJB
-One thing in life is absolute for all of us. We're born, we live, and then we die. We take nothing with us, and leave only one thing behind that truly is a part of us, and that is our memory-
And for me, that is a big deal....So big in fact, that I've laid awake stressing at night since I was a little kid because I know that someday, I will no longer have the luxury of being around my loved ones because inevitably we all must go. And maybe that's why I try so hard not to connect with people, because goodbyes are something that I can't cope with.
I think about death often. I think about what I've done, what I'm doing, and what I still want to do before my time is up. Although this familiar sadness flooding my mind, should drive me to show those around me how I feel about them, it seems a rare moment that I actually allow myself the time to enjoy those things, those people that I hold dear to my heart. I pass them by, I meet their needs, I communicate with them often, but rarely ever do I really express my love and appreciation for them.
I realized today, that my baby will soon be one year old. I don't know where her life has gone, but one thing I do know is that I've missed so much of the joy and connection I should have had because of my drive to provide a better life for her. But is that better really? A parent who is never home in the hopes of keeping her children from suffering?
I don't know. But I do know that every day I'm alive, I want to try to be a better person than I was the day before. I want to take it all in, and I want to be a blessing, not a bother, to the people that are with me.
Life is All Surreal.
It passes to quickly, and nothing is absolute. Make your choices wisely because you're not the only one who is going to feel the effects of them - they become a part of you, and are left behind with your loved ones in your memory.
MJB
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