Once upon a time

Danielle and Kendra

Once upon a time I was a young girl and had dreams of marrying my Prince Charming and having a family and living happily ever after.  As I grew older my dreams changed a bit but not my dream of wanting a family.  I did meet my Prince Charming, lol, and we got married when we were young, the ripe old age of 20!  We decided to wait awhile on starting our family and just enjoyed being married for 5 years.

Kendra holding her new baby sister, Stephani

We welcomed our first daughter, Danielle just before Christmas in 1993 and we were overjoyed to be parents.  Then a few years later, Kendra joined our family and we became 4.  W really thought our family was complete and decided we were finished having babies.  But God had other ideas and I'm so glad he did.   We were shocked to find out I was pregnant when the girls were 6 and 10! It took a bit but by the time Stephani arrived, we were excited to be adding to our family.  Danielle was not very happy about this big change but as soon as she laid eyes on her baby sister it was instant love and she became her second mother and still is to this day.   She came to the hospital and brought her new sister a baby troll doll and a card to me.  It said "Mom, I'm sorry I said I didn't want a baby sister, I did not know how stinking cute she was going to be".   I still laugh and I still have that note.

On family vacation

I really enjoyed being the mom of three girls. When Dad went hunting on weekends, we had what we called girl time, which could be shopping, going to the movies or just hanging out at home having fun. Sure, we had squabbles, argued and fighting just like any family.  Not one of them was perfect and there were some groundings and losing privileges.  But we had a good time being a family.  Dad always made sure we had a great vacation every year and we sure had some good times and good memories.  We went in a motor home to Colorado and Wyoming, where we fished, swam, white water rafted and lots of campfires. While there we toured Yellowstone which was so awesome and we had the best time.  We went to California every other year because our families still lived there. We would enjoy spending time with family and going to Monterey and go to the beach and eat lots of clam chowder and fly kites. We went to Alaska and had the best time salmon fishing and doing a fly in on a sea plane and seeing bears. We had tons of salmon flown home and enjoyed eating it for the next year. Then we went to Disney World for a week and then a week at Clearwater Beach.  We stayed at a hotel on Disney property and went around the parks for a week and enjoyed every minute. Stephani made her goal of getting a picture and a signature from every Disney character and I think her sisters enjoyed getting their pictures with them too! 

Then followed graduations from high school, then college, then marriages.  I hated when each girl left for college and would cry a little bit every time they would come home and then leave on Sunday night. For a while all three girls lived in Springfield, only a little over an hour away.  Then in the blink of an eye, my whole world, my whole idea of how my life would go, was shattered in the time span of two months.  

First, Danielle announced that she and her husband were moving to South Carolina, her husband had accepted a job offer and they loved the beach. I already knew that Stephani was getting married in October and moving to St. Louis and I thought at the time that was going to be the biggest change.  Then Kendra said that they were moving to Kansas City, thank the Lord, he intervened before they actually made the move, even though they were all packed up and ready to go.  

Finding out that Kendra was suffering with a drug addiction threw our world for a loop again, but after much crying, praying and forgiving, she wanted to go to rehab and get her life back on track. We took Ethan in with us so he could go to school and Gia stayed with her other grandparents and we were just waiting on Kendra to get out of rehab.  Little did we ever think that it wouldn't be drug addiction that would kill her but a car accident.  

I don't know if I will ever truly get over losing Kendra, in fact, I'm pretty sure I won't . I often think of our family and the girls growing up and I can still get bowled over by the grief. I am so grateful for my faith and for God's continuing grace and comfort, but I still miss her so badly. 

Once upon a time, I thought I knew the story of my life and how it would go and how it would all turn out, but I would never have wrote these last few chapters in my book, things like this would never happen. I now know that God is the author of our stories and I have come to rely more fully on him and trust him, because He is the only one who knows what the rest of my story looks like. I do know the ending, I will be joining Him, Kendra, my mom and so many others someday in my Heavenly Home.  That is really all I need to know anyway and that is the best ending of all.