Bible Study

Is God taking you to the next level?

Before God takes you to the next level, he needs to separate you! Do you ever wonder why you “don’t fit in” or “why you were put in a situation you never ask for”? God is calling you to do something great. I know it doesn’t look like it right now, but he needs you to be focused on him and not the noise around you. He needs you to rely solely on him. He needs you to hear his voice and not the voice of everyone around you. God separates us for three reasons! (Isaiah 41:10) He wants to give us the tools for our destiny. 1. You’re not alone, you’ve been separated! 2. He wants you to clearly know his voice. (Proverbs 3:5-6) He wants to put us in a season where he can teach us now to know his voice and hear it. 3. To mold us in his image. When you make wine, you first need to crush the grapes. You crush those grapes and press them, but by doing so you are changing them into something totally different than what they started out as. God does that to us. He will press us and send us into intense situations to mold us into his image. Paul tells in Romans 5:1-5 that, “we also rejoice in our sufferings because we know that suffering produces perseverance. Perserverance builds character, and character builds hope. , character; and character, hope.”

Some of us have lost touch with the Fruit’s of the Holy Spirit. In Galatians 5:22-23 there is a list of 9 Fruit’s of the Holy Spirit that each of us were given:

Fruit of the Spirit list:

  1. Love
  2. Joy
  3. Peace
  4. Patience
  5. Kindness
  6. Goodness
  7. Faithfulness
  8. Gentleness
  9. Self-control

When I was sent to prison, I learned that I needed to work on a few of these on the list. Other items on the list, I was able to show other’s and what it looked like to be kind, gentle and have joy and love in their lives. I had a roommate once tell me that she was jealous because I had so many people that truly loved and cared about me. She didn’t know what that felt like. It made me so sad because that is the same sentiment that many people in prison have. They are so far detached from their family, friends and loved ones that people have stopped caring all together once they end up in a place like that. People would ask me why I was always so happy. I heard the expression before that “sometimes people don’t like you because your gifts and calling agitate their demons.” I can say I believe that to be 100% true. People will purposely try to tick you off or rain on your parade to see you miserable. Rebuke that noise in Jesus name and send it back where it came from! You have every right to be happy and at peace. As God starts to elevate you, you will start to see these fruits grow inside of you. You’re going to want to spend more time with him, you’re going to want to please him. You are going to start to see your interests change. There are going to be friends that you’ve had for years that are no longer going to be able to be in this new season of your life. There is a song by Hillsong that explains about the grapes to wine and how God will press us into something better. Are you willing to allow God to use you and make new wine out of you?

New Wine

Words and Music by Brooke Ligertwood

VERSE 1:
In the crushing
In the pressing
You are making new wine
In the soil I now surrender
You are breaking new ground

PRE-CHORUS:
So I yield to You and to Your careful hand
When I trust You I don’t need to understand

CHORUS:
Make me Your vessel
Make me an offering
Make me whatever You want me to be
I came here with nothing
But all You have given me
Jesus bring new wine out of me

VERSE 2:
In the crushing
In the pressing
You are making new wine
In the soil I now surrender
You are breaking new ground

VERSE TAG:
You are breaking new ground

BRIDGE:
Where there is new wine
There is new power
There is new freedom
The Kingdom is here
I lay down my old flames
To carry Your new fire today

@HillsongWorship

#Hillsong, #HillsongWorship, #NewWine, #Trials, #TrustinGod, #Pressure

Advertisement
Journey of Faith

Vision

I recall when it was about to become the year 2020, everyone was saying that was the year for vision. As in seeing. 20/20. I can’t even recall the last time I was able to actually see that well, lol. Spiritually, however my vision has become a lot clearer. It’s been a rough couple of months since having to have two eye surgeries and not being able to properly see to read my bible. I don’t know that my corrected vision will ever be the same unfortunately. When we stay in God’s word and focus on him, the Holy Spirit leads us on the right path that we need to be taking. Psalm 119:105 tell us that “the word is a lamp onto my feet and a light onto my path.” When we stay in God’s word, it definitely keeps us on the right path and away from the devil.

The most recent eye surgery that I had, has left the vision in my right eye blurring but manageable. I’m very disappointed in the outcome and feel that I wasn’t told everything that could possibly happen. Otherwise, I may have chosen a different type of surgery to undergo to fix it. Before Thanksgiving, I had the oil removed in my eye that was inserted to fix the retinal detachment. I noticed immediately that things appeared to be hazy. I could see what looked like bubbles still floating around. I mentioned this several times to my surgeon, but he didn’t seem to be concerned. I finally took it upon myself to google, “hazy vision after oil removed from vitrectomy”. Wow, I was shocked to see a few things actually pop up. According to the website that I found, it all made perfect sense. Years ago, when I had my first retinal detachment, I had to then have cataract surgery. They implanted a lens. My guess is that they implanted a silicon lens, but I am not sure about that. What happens when they injected the oil into my eye for this last surgery, there is no guarantee to remove 100% of it. On top of this, the oil is known to adhere to the lens in cataract patients. Essentially, I am now walking around with a dirty lens. I saw the regular eye doctor 2 weeks ago and he confirmed my suspicions. I went back to re-read the article I read because he wasn’t sure what the plan of action would be to fix it. It was disheartening to read that they could “possibly” flush the eye, or I could end up having to have a lens replacement. The problem though is that if they don’t get the oil out 100%, this would just happen again. My eye Dr’s fear was that no other doctor would be willing to even try to replace the lens because of my history. I too think that it would be risky because if they removed the oil, there could be a displacement of fluid and then cause the retina to pull away again because of shrinkage. Lovely huh? Currently the best he was able to get my vision was 20/40. Even then, I struggle with very small print, and also some details. Certain letters, I mistake for another. For example, D look like O’s, R’s and P’s can be tricky. I now have to learn how to adjust my world around my new vision. I’m thankful to the Lord that I can still see and I’m not 100% blind. Had this all occurred in prison, I can assure you that I would be blind. Again, praise the Lord for bringing me home.

I can rely on the doctors to guide me to what happens next in my physical vision journey, I trust in the true healer and physician for my sight.

Photo by Pixabay: https://www.pexels.com/photo/accessory-close-up-computer-desk-265686/

#SpiritualVision, #Vision, #EyeSurgery, #TrustInTheLord, #TheHealer

Bible Study

The Devil’s Gateway

I have been sickened the last few weeks watching highlights of the Grammy’s, the Super Bowl half time show, as well as other highlights from various concerts and shows. I shouldn’t be surprised, but then again, I wasn’t as mature in my faith before as I am today in order to understand what I am seeing. Let me explain.

Our bodies are a fortress and belong to God. Like any fortress, we need to put gates up to close access to the enemy (or Satan) from being able to gain access. A gate protects. So what entrance ways am I referring to? There are the eyes, nose, mouth, touch, ears. We can do simple things to protect these areas like, walking away from gossip, choosing to not watch a certain show or listen to a certain broadcast, etc. These seem easy enough, but Satan knows that, so he finds ways to infiltrate in a way that we don’t easily notice. I’m going to refer you to another site: https://stonetablet.org/protecting-the-gates-the-ear-gates-part-3/ where you can read more about what I’m trying to explain here. I strongly encourage you to do your own research as well to be better informed.

When I was in prison, I had a roommate start to tell me about how many of the stars, actors, actresses and musicians belong to the Illuminati. I thought she was joking. I had heard about them before, in the news, on the History Channel and after reading Angels and Demons by Dan Brown. Now that I’m home, this is all that I am hearing about. These people are coming out on stage to accept awards, sing and perform and the first thing they do is make this triangle sign with their two hands lifting it up above their heads. (You can see some more demonic symbolism here: https://www.themystica.com/satanic-symbols/). I had not watched the Grammy’s this year but was horrified to see people I enjoy listening to dressed like demons and just being blatant about it. If you don’t know what I’m referring to, Sam Smith’s performance was nuts. (https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/sam-smith-demonic-performance-leaves-many-grammy-viewers-horrified). I have recently seen videos of a concert by The Weeknd subliminally flashed the word SATAN during a concert in 2017. So, Rhianna’s Super Bowl half time show didn’t surprise me when she came out decked in all red and flashed the illuminating sign prior to signing. Even her eye looked filled with evil. I like Rhianna’s music and the Holy Spirit convicted me so much that I couldn’t watch it. Perhaps people either chose to not see what’s happening now, or maybe as a society we have grown callus and insensitive. Why has this become so normal that they can just waltz out on stage and perform a satanic ritual in front of the world? Ironically, there was a commercial that playing during the Super Bowl that was in reference to Jesus. That received a LOT of backlash. (ps://www.huffpost.com/entry/jesus-super-bowl-ads-backlash_n_63ea6463e4b022eb3e31aabb). So, if we want to believe that everyone can worship who they want, then why the fuss about this ad? Why the acceptance of these performers worshiping Satan? You can’t have it both ways!

We as a society have pushed God so far out of our lives, out of everything we do that we can’t be surprised when he doesn’t rush to our aid. We have made him second fiddle and only call on him when we need him. Our country was founded on trusting in him, and yet we’ve allowed him to be removed from everything. It only seems fitting that Satan would use music to entice us to him. Many don’t realize that Lucifer was the angel of music.

Photo by Mo Eid: https://www.pexels.com/photo/person-in-black-shirt-walking-on-sand-8347501/

#Satan, #SatanicWorship, #2023SuperBowl, #Grammys

Journey of Faith

Thank you

Sorry, that I haven’t posted as often as I should be. This next piece is very difficult for me, so I need to make sure that the words that I write, express the right things. I can’t tell you how overwhelmed I’ve been with all of the support that I’ve received from my blog. I’ve known who has supported me through this entire ordeal, but to see people I don’t know has been uplifting. As I continue to post and provide the story in my own words to you, the reader I need you to know something. I’m worried and afraid. From the time that all of this came out after the arrest, the victim’s families have been relentless. They have contacted the DA, probation, now parole, and anyone they can to spew lies to hoping for someone to believe them. Unfortunately for someone like me, victims have a lot of sway due to law in Pennsylvania giving them a “Bill of Rights”. (https://www.pccd.pa.gov/Victim-Services/Documents/Bill%20of%20Rights.pdf#:~:text=Passed%20by%20the%20Pennsylvania%20Legislature%20in%201976%2Cthe%20Pennsylvania,of%20crime%20support%20a%20program%20to%20benefittheir%20victims.) I completely get it, and if I was on that side of the fence, I would want protection and rights too. The problem occurs when some take advantage of it for their own gain. So much so that my attorney at the time had to send a letter to the DA’s office asking for the one mother to be investigated for infringing on my due process by not allowing witnesses to talk be questioned. Also, by threatening them in various ways if they did. I have the letter my attorney sent; however, nothing was ever done about it. She went on to then purchase roundtrip airfare for DG’s sister to fly home. When he was questioned about it in court, he got irate with my lawyer stating, “it was none of his damn business”. Until the Judge told him he had to respond, to which he said, “yes”. The two mother’s purchased lavish gifts for some, including engraved watches and paid for graduation parties for at least two of them. That was laughed off by the DA/Judge because they didn’t’ get to do this with their own children. No! That’s not ok, they were witnesses in a criminal investigation. NO ONE should have been able to have access to witnesses let alone buy them off. (This was all recorded in court by the court stenographer). They were all hanging out, exchanging stories I’m sure, and attending gatherings together. When I was originally arraigned. I was told to not have ANY contact with the victim’s, their families, directly or indirectly. The only information the lawyer was given at the time was a paper with initials on it. No names. So, some of the people I had no idea who they actually were. (The DA will claim that I did and basically make it seem like i was playing dumb). I honestly didn’t know who some of them were, even after receiving actual names. Remember CS, how I told you the guys stopped hanging around him because he was smoking weed? Well, I was friends well most all of these people on Facebook. Most either by this point blocked me or I blocked them. However, since there were some, I wasn’t sure if I did miss one or two. One of the boy’s parents posted a picture on Facebook and I commented on it. I then started chatting with her on messenger. I don’t recall the exact conversation, but it eventually ended with me asking if they’d be willing to talk to my lawyer. I was wrong about this person 1000% and the entire thing was bait. Dummy me took it. Next thing I know we were back in court to have to now report to pretrial probation. Unfortunately for my husband, he did too even though he did nothing wrong. I was the one that conversed with her. The argument however was that we had no idea WHO the victims were because we never received a list from the DA’s office. They didn’t care. So, when we reported to the probation office, they asked what happened. She asked me who the victims were so they could update their system. I explained to them that we didn’t know. She asked if we had the list, they gave us. We said, that’s the problem. We never received it. She looked online and through the paperwork. She said, you are correct. There is NOT a list anywhere. She said how where you supposed to know who not to talk to? EXACTLY!!! Nevertheless, we both stayed on pre-trial probation until the actual trial/sentencing. This then opened the door for the one mother to find anything possible to snag me on, hoping I’d end up in jail pre-trial. I closed down my social media pages so there would be no issues there. I provided proof of doing so to my probation officer. I’m sitting at work one day and get a call from my PO that I need to come in asap. There’s a problem. She knew it was BS. I still had to leave work and go in to address the problem though. Someone from my lawyer’s office met me there. Apparently, in messenger there was an email chain that included this one mom. At one time, I was part of this chain as well since back then were all friends. Another person used this old message chain and somehow tagged this mom with it. Well, she said I was contacting her. You could clearly see the message didn’t come from me. We have no idea how or why it occurred, but it was resolved that IT WAS NOT ME. That evidently ticked her off, because then not long after I get called again. This time by my PO’s supervisor. I have to come in for an administrative hearing. This was in front of the Judge. Someone went to great lengths to actually set up another Facebook account with my name. The problem was that it wasn’t spelled correctly, there was no photos and no friends attached to it. My Facebook was still showing as turned off. I had several people go in and try to look to see if I was showing up on their friends lists etc. I wasn’t. They had no proof where this new page came from. Again, my PO knew that it was garbage because heck someone with my same name in another state could have started setting up a page. I would have gotten no benefit from opening another page. You can’t see much if people have their privacy set to certain things. My lawyer and PO even said that I could have had better luck just using someone else’s page to go on and be nosey. The Judge ignored it. What we did find out though is that the other victim’s family has a relative that works in the probation office. I immediately brought that to my PO’s attention and my lawyers. Technically in my opinion my probation then should have been transferred to somewhere else to be handled. No one cared. When I was finally sentenced and sent to jail to start my prison sentence, they no longer had access to me. They weren’t satisfied with the fact that I was already behind bars. Instead, they decided to now go after my oldest son. It started by stating that he showed up at some address where her son was at this particular day. She said that my son pulled up and got out of the car and threatened her son that if his mom didn’t back off that he would hurt or kill him. (I can’t recall which, but she claimed he threatened to harm her son). She filed a protection order against my son to stay away from the entire family, not be within so many feet, etc. Of course, she then made sure that it was published in the paper by her news reporter friend at the time. My husband and son showed up to court and was told to basically accept it and move on. She had no proof he said this, no witnesses, no proof her son was at this house or that my son showed up at this house. We had proof that in fact it was impossible for my son to be there because he was with my husband and my in-law’s eating crabs. Prior to that he was working. After receiving his PFA, a few weeks or so later he went to a high school football game. Next thing he knew, he received a call from the High School resource officer that she was claiming he followed her son around the stadium, stalking him, harassing him, etc. She was trying to get him arrested for violating the PFA. The resource officer called us because he wanted us to know that he already contacted the DA’s office. Why? he went in and pulled the video footage for the entire evening. He said that our son arrived at the stadium, walked over to the bleachers, sat down, talked to some friends and left. Her son was nowhere in sight! She would never be held accountable for filing false reports. They didn’t care. Just take the lumps and move on. The paper wouldn’t rescind the story because, “people don’t want to know the truth.” Remember, I told you that before? Well, here it is. They eventually stopped bothering us. The PFA ended when her kids graduated school. My best friend, who WAS her sister made sure that the Judge, DA and anyone who listens knows that this lady is NO LONGER her sister. She wanted to be sure that her and her family weren’t somehow included in that PFA. My best friend has stood by us even to this day. She even made sure to call my current parole officer to let him know who she was and filled him in on some of the details she felt they needed to know. Every day, I would pray for everyone involved in this entire situation. Why? When you let stuff like this fester in you, and you don’t forgive people, you are the one that suffers. You forgive for yourself, so that you can have peace. Otherwise, not forgiving is like getting up and drinking poison hoping that someone else gets sick from it.

Journey of Faith

Back to work

Our cruise was over after 7 beautiful days aboard a Carnival cruise ship. We went to Cape Canaveral, Nassau Bahamas, and to Freeport Bahamas. My husband and I had been to Nassau several times before, but Freeport was a first for all of us. The boys had never been out of the country let alone the Bahamas. The day leaving a cruise is always tiring. There’s a debarking process, that seems to have actually sped up since the first cruise we ever took. It still seemed to take forever though just to get off the thing. We then went through customs in Baltimore, then had to sit and wait for our ride to take us home. I have the cutest picture of my youngest son leaning against the suitcases with his straw hat he bought. He looks exhausted, but it’s adorable. I called it “the weary traveler”. My husband and I both had to return to work the next day, Monday. So, we were all anxious to get home, changed and unwind to prepare for the week ahead. Our oldest son had been asked to join the competition cheerleading team as a lifter. He and 2 other boys that he hung out and played football with joined the squad. Also, his new girlfriend at the time was on the team as well as one of the other boy’s girlfriends. They ended up enjoying it more than they expected. When we got home on June 14th, our son had to prepare to leave for a weeklong cheer camp leaving bright and early on Tuesday June 16th. The other two boys ended up not being able to go to this camp because the one was leaving to go on a week’s vacation with his family June 17th, and the other boy’s parents didn’t want to pay the expensive fee for the camp plus the $300 for the required clothing. I admit, we weren’t excited about it either. They were able to raise some of the money through fundraisers. My youngest son was out of school for the summer. We were just starting to allow him to be able to stay home alone. I worked about 10 minutes from home at the time and he knew he could call with anything he needed. Honestly, he was and still is one of those kids that would sleep most of the day, so I didn’t have much concern of him getting into trouble. When he was awake, at the time he was playing video games. He knew how to microwave himself certain things, I would buy him lunchables or he’d eat cereal. All things he really liked. I remember going into work that Monday and so excited to see my friend Jess. We’re still friends to this day! I showed her some pictures from our trip, she filled me in on the latest and greatest gossip from work while I was gone. There wasn’t much her and I didn’t share with each other. I think it made some people mad how well her and I got along. Over time of getting to know each other, we discovered that our stepdads were work partners at their job, she knew my cousin and his wife through a side hustle she’s done since she was a kid and where her dad works. Then years later, we found out that my nephew and her brother were friends all through high school. So yeah, we were meant to be friends and in each other’s lives. She would become one of my supporters through this ordeal. She was one of the ones that saw the entire thing unfold the day it happened. She told me recently that she still remembers that day like it was yesterday. How wrong the police and DA got it. To hear the media make it seem like I didn’t care or wasn’t remorseful. She is the one that saw me come to work and bawl my eyes out at my desk. She was the one that helped pull me together while at work. The days that I called out because it was too hard to get up and come in. Was I worried about me? NO! Remember they never filed charges until almost 1.5+ years later. I can never thank her enough for her love then and now. For her families love and support of all of us. I’m stalling to tell you what took place next. It’s hard. It hurts and sucks a lot. It makes me feel sick to think about it again. Everyone keeps telling me it’s WAY overdue to tell my story. I pray they are right. I pray that you are ready to hear it with an open heart.

Photo by mododeolhar: https://www.pexels.com/photo/anonymous-female-friends-embracing-on-spacious-meadow-5241772/

#FriendsForever #FriendSupport #WeAllNeedFriend #Friends #FemaleFriends

Journey of Faith

Big Girl Panties

I’ve been struggling the last few days. I’ve had a lot going on since I got home in June, good and well stuff that’s a pain. Not long after I got home my retina detached in my right eye AGAIN. I had two retinal detachments in the past. One in each eye. When this occurs, you eventually then need to have cataract surgery because of the trauma to the lenses in your eyes. I had that done back when I had the original retinal detachments. After the one in my left eye occurred, I developed scar tissue that needed to be removed. When you have cataract surgery, you develop a film eventually over the eye that needs to be zapped off with a laser. That’s NOT fun. It’s like someone snapping a rubber band in your eye. Luckily, I guess you could say that when I had the scar tissue removed, they took care of the film in that eye too. So, I didn’t need to be “aware” when that was being done to that eye. The surgery that I’ve had in my right eye this time has been upsetting to me. It’s not what I expected at all, and I’m frustrated. When you have a detachment, they go in and fix it a few different ways. One of the ways can end up with a gas bubble which is what I had before or an oil bubble which is what I had this time. There are definitely differences to both. Gas, I had to lay face down and it took months to absorb to go away. You also can’t see through it. The oil, you can see through it. You need to then have another surgery though to have the oil removed. Apparently, they will NEVER be able to get 100% of the oil out. I have been fighting constant eye pressure issues ever since the original surgery in June. I went to see my family in November and ended up getting sick on the plane because my pressure went crazy. It also seems that my hip and knees want to act up. They have been hurting constantly. I’m sorry, I’m complaining to all of you. It all just hit me yesterday and I was depressed. I’ve been through ALOT, and it just never seems to end. I’m not sure what the secret is to just not having one problem after another. I finally went and laid down on the sofa after working and fell asleep for a while. Today, I put on my big girl panties and I’m giving it another go. Wish me luck!

Photo by Roy Reyna: https://www.pexels.com/photo/wonder-woman-illustration-3180273/

#SuperWoman #Depressed #StrongWoman

Journey of Faith

The Cruise

Mother’s Day long passed, and we were getting excited as a family to go away. We decided to take the boys on a cruise to the Bahamas. I was also excited, because one of the stops was in Cape Canaveral, FL which meant that while others would be rushing off the boat to shop, I was going to see my friend Chris. Her and I have known each other before my husband, and I were a couple. We lost touch for a while, but then when I was working on the other side of Lancaster County, I ended up finding out that she was living close by. We met up for lunch and haven’t lost touch since. Our Cruise was going to be out of Baltimore for 7 days, June 7-14th. School was going to be out; we took off work. Everything was planned. We had another friend taking us to the airport and had arranged to make sure the dogs were taken care of. While we were on this trip, one of the many conversations we had with our older son was the fact that when we got back things were going to be changing regarding his friends coming over. Again, if you remember we went from the occasional sleepover and stop in, to them stopping by whenever they wanted. I would come out of my bedroom and there would be a kid lurking around with my son. I just didn’t like not knowing that someone was in my house without me knowing about it. I mean, what if I was half dressed? I didn’t make a habit of that, since we had sons, but you understand what I mean. We explained to him that, “this has got to stop”. Enough was enough. We felt taken advantage of and couldn’t figure out why they were clamoring to come over so often. I also, didn’t care for the fact that NM’s mom wanted to blow up my phone looking for her son that she couldn’t find. I had asked my son several times about this, because something just wasn’t sitting right with me. I had this feeling in my gut that something wasn’t right, but Stephen just said I was being overly dramatic. What I later found out was that this poor boy was afraid to go home. He was bouncing between our home and his aunt’s home, so he didn’t have to face his step father. From what I was told by family members, firsthand was that a few nights before this incident that I’ll get to later happened, his stepfather beat him with a 2×4. I don’t see anything wrong with spanking a child on the rear end but beating a kid with a 2×4 isn’t punishment. NM confided in my son and told him this. He tried to bring it up when he was on the stand but of course the DA shut it down immediately. No one wanted to paint the parents in any sort of bad light in front of the jury. Unfortunately, had we all known that this was one of many reasons that he didn’t want to go home and liked staying where he was loved, could laugh and feel safe, well There was even a time after we were arrested that two of NM’s sisters were not speaking to their mother. They went in front of the original judge and told him that they were not associated with her and were going to be testifying on our behalf. Some of the evidence that we received came from both of them during that time. The evidence that they provided to us, I will disclose later. Right before we went on this beautiful vacation, our oldest son fell in love. It just so happened that this girl’s father and SH’s father were cousins. NM’s aunt and I are best friends. This is a fact that no one ever knew and would barely come out. He spent a lot of our cruise trying to Facebook message or Facebook call her. We seemed to become instant friends with her parents and remain friends with them to this day. If I did something so terrible, would the family members like the cousin, great aunt/uncle of one boy and the aunt/uncle/cousin and numerous other relatives want to even talk to me? From the day that this all happened, instead all of them rallied around us and tore the case apart. Uncovering the lies, defending us when we didn’t even know about it. There was a time when I recall being at this girl’s graduation party. (My son’s new girlfriend). One of her dad’s aunts came up to him and apologized to him. She said, and I overheard it, so I know I wasn’t hearing incorrectly, she said, “I have found out a lot more about this case that I knew before and I’m sorry for the way I acted. I wish I would have known all of this before it was too late.” I don’t know who told her, how she found out, but someone set her record straight. This has happened continuously for us. I just wish that everyone that could see between the lies and crack were one of the twelve on the jury.

Photo by Pixabay: https://www.pexels.com/photo/sea-holiday-vacation-blue-69122/

#Teens #Teenagers #Parenting #ParentingMistakes #Parenting101 #TeenDrinking #Lies #NarcissisticPerson #Friendship

Bible Study

The Quiz

I thought this was an appropriate post for the beginning of the new year. Over the holiday, I heard this from someone one else. I can’t claim it as my own. A teacher walked into her classroom and passed out a paper to each of her students. On the paper was a small black dot. The rest of the paper was blank. She said, this is a quiz. I’d like each of you to write about what you see. After the quiz was over, she read the papers and what each student had written. She addressed the class. She said, “I gave each of you the same task. All of you wrote about the black dot on the page, but no one wrote about the white paper. We do this in life. We tend to focus on the blemish only and not the good that comes from it or all of the positive things that our life has provided. We only focus on what went wrong.” This struck me to want to tell you the good things. The things that no one seemed to want to talk about. I did share a great deal of the good things that happened to me while I was incarcerated. Aside from that, my life has always been pretty good because I have a great family, wonderful husband, I was blessed with beautiful sons and friends that love and believe in me. One of the things that would occur when these boys would stay over, was in the mornings we would make breakfast. I remember this one day in particular with NM woke up and asked if he could cook everyone toads in the hole. I think everyone calls them something different, but it’s basically toast with a hole in the middle of it and an egg cracked in the hole. You cook it until the eggs cooked and then serve them. This gave him so much joy to be able to cook for everyone and show off his cooking skills. DG never seemed to have a girlfriend. One time, he showed up at the house with a blow-up doll. I was embarrassed for him. I didn’t think it was appropriate to bring this, but then it was funny. It was DG. Always the jokester and trying to make everyone laugh. One of the things that SH would do every single time he left was he would stop and say to my husband and I, “thanks for having me over”. This phrase still lingers with me to this day. One of the other things that the DA wanted to try to make an issue out of, was the fact that they all called me “Momma Jods”. I didn’t ask them to, but I suppose it was better than the alternative that NM called his mom which was “The Warden”. When I went to jail/prison anyone younger than me automatically called me Mom, Mommy (which seemed to be a Spanish thing), Momma T, etc. So, this was obviously more a sign of respect rather than calling me Mrs. X. I wasn’t any different to those there than I was with these young gentlemen. I wasn’t serving them alcohol either obviously. One example that occurred while I was at Cambridge was my roommate came in and said that a young girl was looking for me that she had a question. My roommate was shocked because she said, “am I finding out something new about you?” I said, “I’m not sure, it depends on what she wants.” I went out and here she wanted to know who the artist was that sang a particular song. Apparently, It got out that I had a wide genre of music on my tablet. Also, that I was pretty good at naming the title of the song and the artist. I’m sorry if that shocked anyone, but I got this honestly from my parents. They both have/had a love of music. My dad used to get frustrated with me because I knew the words to songs more than my math homework. It was silly things like this though that helped me develop a rapport with other inmates and not get my ass kicked. I believe that these young men also respected me because I respected them and treated them respectfully and didn’t treat them like children. If this is the black dot on my white paper. I’m sorry.

#Teens #Teenagers #TeenDrinking #TeenAlcohol #Parenting #ParentingMistakes #Parenting101

Journey of Faith

The Party Mom

I hope that you are starting to create a visual image in your mind as to what was going on up until this time in April. According to the opening arguments of the DA, he wants you to believe that I was the ultimate party mom! If any of you know me, this is laughable. I remember back to a time when I was young and carefree. My uncle used to DJ at a local bar where I would go and dance on most weekends. I would go in, order a pitcher of beer because it was fairly cheap. People started commenting on why I even bothered to order it because it would sit on the table and get warm. I just never really drank it. I was still like that later; it just didn’t appeal to me. He also would want you to believe that we were sitting on the sofa, allowing these teens to walk in carrying cases of beer right past us. Can you imagine? They come walking in and just wave at us, “What’s up?” That just even sounds ridiculous. The problem again was that evidence we had tried to present was dismissed as rubbish. He didn’t want to allow us to explain that they were sneaking it in because when you aren’t allowed to do something that’s what you do. You sneak. You don’t hide it in window wells to sneak in later, or hide in backpacks to sneak in. If it’s allowed, you walk right past us waving with it thrown over your shoulder. That wasn’t happening and even every single one of them testified to that effect. That much I can say. Also, during this time one of the other boys ended up being involved in a separate incident of underage drinking. I have a copy of where it appeared on the magistrate’s docket. They were overheard talking about it during lunch one day and how this other mom provided the alcohol. Of course, they didn’t implicate her and somehow, she avoided any charges. This was on a recording that was obtained by someone sitting close by and given to me. I turned it over to the lawyer and a few other people listened to it because I was having a hard time deciphering what was being said. I don’t have a copy of the recording anymore, but it was turned over to the lawyer’s office. No one cared. Magically, a few weeks later the charges for this one teen disappeared. Like they never existed. He was one of the main one’s again testifying against me. One of the charges that was brought against me was “corruption of minors”. These minors were corrupt long before and after I ever met them, and if you ask anyone involved that knows me will tell you that they corrupted my son and almost destroyed by younger son emotionally. The lawyer tried to bring up how the charges for DG and CH disappeared and an objection was thrown out immediately. I think the majority of my trial was discussed sidebar. Something else that was brought up and just ticked me off was one of the mothers who we felt we were fairly close to got on the stand to explain how she came to our house once. She decided to talk about a 5-gallon jug of wine that was sitting on the counter. This mom and most people who were our friends, knew that at the time I was experimenting with making wine. Anyone who would ask, I would explain the process to them. This was not drinkable wine at this point and if you tried you would probably get sick or at least feel ill. Wine making is a process where you have to let it go through stages of settling and fermenting even before you can bottle it. This 5-gallon jug she was talking about was in the process of allowing sediment to fall so that it would become clear. There was one occasion when I was trying to lift this monstrosity on the counter when a friend of my sons (not involved in the case) asked if he could help me. When we lifted it, some splashed out and got on his shirt. I immediately called his mom and explained to her what happened. Her and I are still friendly to this day, she knew I was trying to be responsible by telling her. It was asked several times if when the guys came over if I would take their keys from them? No, I didn’t. I didn’t because they weren’t drinking to my knowledge. Remember, they were sneaking things in backpacks and into cellar windows because that’s what you do when you’re allowed apparently. (I’m being sarcastic). We later found out through a family member that during a family get together they had; they were informed that the one boy SH was purchasing alcohol with a fake ID. He was going to an establishment close to his house across in another county. We found out that kids from the school knew that if you went there with a certain amount of money that it was a signal to whoever was working to not ask for ID. I heard that from a few kids that knew he purchased there. This individual, SH was one time coming out of the beer place and was caught by a relative. The relative told his parents and nothing was really done. There was mention that they decided to put a tracker on his phone because they shared phone accounts. I asked several times about this phone tracker as well as the person that told me about it and it was ignored. I wanted them to subpoena records to see where they were that day and if they had stopped off after they left our home this one day. (I’ll get to that later). If you trust your kids, why do you put a tracker on them? If your family caught him, why wasn’t something done then to the stop the beer store from selling to minors? Why wasn’t something done to stop him then? We were told that he had stashes of booze hidden throughout the fields and different spots near his house. DG told us this when we were all still talking. Another reason we wanted to see gps and where they might have gone. We had kids telling our son that they used to ride to school with this boy to school and stopped because he’d drink on the way to school and on the way home sometimes. He would drive while playing on his phone, texting, snapchatting, drive with his knee. The parents all testified that they didn’t allow this and didn’t know it was happening. They lied under oath and lied to an officer, an officer of the court and a judge. We wanted to call people as witnesses to then cross examine these statements, my lawyer told me that we had to be careful to not appear too harsh with the families to the jury because it could backfire on us. WELL, WHAT ABOUT DEFENDING ME? Yes, it is all about me in this instance because it’s my freedom that was on the line. I saw a lady on twitter poking fun because it was all about me. I wonder what her feelings would be if she actually knew the other side? Unfortunately, most will never know. I mean does it matter at this point? I was convicted, I served 3.5 years. Time I will never get back. If only I had known some of these things before, maybe I could have prevented what happened in the next two months ahead.

Young women pulling cheeks of senior man in nightclub

#Teens #TeenDrnking #UnderageDrinking #ParentingMistakes #Parenting

Journey of Faith

Being too Nice!

I had a very hard time sleeping last night. I didn’t realize how hard this was going to be for me to tell until I started telling it. I had been able to tuck all these little details away for almost 4 years and now bringing them back to the surface is triggering. I want to go back and fill in some gaps and to do a recap up to this point in the story. Again, all of this started the end of December 2014. This was what the police stated was when I we started allowing my son’s friends to come over on a “regular basis”. This entire timeline runs from December 24, 2014, to June 16, 2015, according to the complaint. That’s approximately 24 weekends. Out of those 24 weekends, depending on who you asked and when you asked, when questioned by the police, the DA and my lawyer during hearings, or how many times they wanted to change their answer for whom it suited. They stated that out of those 24 weekends that they came to our house maybe 6,7,8 times. Would you say then that the average of 7 times is a lot? (This includes the trip to the cabin). I’m going to shorten those 7 days down even further for you, something that I was unable to do since I didn’t testify, and therefore I’m not sure why my lawyer didn’t or wasn’t able to show this evidence during his questioning. I went back through my Facebook at the time and my pocket calendar. I have to go through the items that I saved (I have an entire one side of my desk full of evidence, paperwork, etc. regarding my case.) Out of these 7 or 8 days, I was able to trim that down even further to the number of times that my husband or I were home. I know that I have it written down if anyone wants an exact number, but for conversation purposes here, I’m going to say it was 3-4. The other times, I had posts on Facebook that I was either tagged in or tagged others as being in Baltimore with friends or a few times we took a trip up the cabin with our younger son. Last time I checked, you can’t be 2 places at once as much as sometimes we wish we could be. There was so much stuff that came out during trial that I found out sitting at the defense table that I had NO idea about. You think you know your kids; you think you have control over situations and well, that “I trust you until you give me a reason” philosophy went way out the window. What we found out was that when we would go to our cabin with our younger son, my oldest would finagle his way to stay home. My mom told me this was not a good idea, but I was trying to be trusting and explained how he was working, and how we had asked our neighbors to keep an eye on the house for cars or anything suspicious. Remember all of that? Yeah, boy was I wrong! I don’t know if I want to say here that he was having his friends over without permission or if I want to say that they bamboozled him into having them over. Again, if you recall before I brought up the dynamics of age and rank according to him being in the varsity football team and only being in 10th grade. Another item that we had in my discovery was a slew of text messages to my son from these boys in a group chat. One of the chats went something to the effect of, “We’re coming over”. To which my son replied, “You aren’t allowed, my mom said that no one is allowed over when they aren’t home.” To which NM replied, “I called your mom, and she said it was ok”. My son, “no you didn’t!”. NM said, “Nah, but we can just park somewhere else and sneak in the back and no one will know we were there”. So, whether they actually came this night, I’m not sure but they did on several other occasions. Again, I have these text messages, but kept being told that certain items we couldn’t present because of it being heresy or I don’t know but it was frustrating for me to sit there and be unable to defend myself with clear cut evidence that I possessed. The things that were taking place during these times when they unwelcomely entered our home was shocking. I’m confused how the DA could bring all of this into play and display it for the jury and all to see but yet I was unable to counter it showing that they came into the home uninvited, peer pressuring my son to let them in. This is one of the points when I feel that I just had a crappy lawyer! I want to tell you the good, the bad and ugly. I want to be 100% honest with you because I want you to understand how the DA and the police drew their conclusion to file these charges. (The beginning was the damn photo from the cabin, and the lies told by DG that the friends of his didn’t exist and they brought a tote of beer to the cabin in the back of the truck that I helped them pack-HUH? yeah, that part never happened but in his world it did). Prior to all of this taking place at the cabin, I recall a morning when I was sitting in our living room watching tv. The guys had just spent the night and were sleeping in the basement. My youngest son was the informant. He would go down there and come up and report to us what was happening. I think it was mostly because he wasn’t “allowed” down there according to my oldest. You know how it is, younger siblings are pains and embarrassing. This morning in particular, he comes up and reports to me that there is an open can of beer sitting downstairs. WHAT! I told him to go downstairs and wake them all up and to get their asses upstairs pronto! I can’t recall exactly who all was there this particular day. I know for sure that it was DG, my son and CH. They all come upstairs, scared to death and I started the line of questioning. Where it came from, who brought it, is there more…. DG fessed up and said that it was only 1 can (a pounder), that he stole from his house and brought over for them to share. They wanted to taste it and see what it was like. I said it tastes like shit doesn’t it! Should I have called their parents at this point? Looking back on everything and if I knew then what I know now, I would have most definitely called them. Instead, I gave them a talking to about it, told them that this was not acceptable and that I wasn’t happy about them bringing it into our home. I was mad! We did confirm that it was only 1 and of that can less than half had been consumed. We dumped it and threw it away. I told them that I would not discuss this with their parents if they promised they would never try something like this again. Thinking back to some of the dumb stuff you did as a kid, I think that you can understand why I chose this route. As a parent and again knowing what I know now, I’m angry that me then didn’t tell them. The real question though is, “would it have made a difference?” I don’t think so and I’ll tell you why. Along with them coming to our home the few times I was aware of, along with the other times we were unaware, these boys were doing this at up to 12-13 other locations. I was floored when my lawyer did bring this up during the trial. What were the locations you ask? They included a room above a store that one of their friend’s parents or grandparents owned, the basement of one of the other boys (a photo was shone to the mom, and she said she didn’t know-I guess it was ok for her to not know but not ok for me to not know. Also, this was only one photo that we had-how many other times?). There were going to some parks or outdoor areas. It was clear that this was something they did on a regular basis. What I wasn’t aware of was they were documenting their shenanigans on snapchat. I am not on snapchat, I’ve tried it and don’t understand it and chose not to use it to this day. It still seems to be a big social media outlet for the younger generation. My sons still use it. I don’t know if these other boys’ parents were friends with them on this platform. How many people that were friends with them on this platform saw their posts and said/did nothing? Again, the silence is deafening.

Photo by RODNAE Productions: https://www.pexels.com/photo/photos-of-evidence-on-the-white-table-6069247/

#Teens #TeenDrinking #Teenagers #Parenting #ParentingTeens #Evidence #CriminalJustice #BradyvMaryland #CriminalTrial #CriminalDefense #CriminalJusticeReform