Me and Her

A year ago , we had been in Arizona for a little over a month. Well, exactly a month. In that short amount of time, we had found out that the guy that we had bought "our future" from had lied about our investment and we had no choice but to enter into a large legal battle with him to get our investment (or a small part of it) back.

We had moved away from family, friends, and made a big sacrifice to be "on our own" and "doing our own thing." We had calculated and prayed before we signed on all the lines but, it wasn't enough. Sometimes you just can't control what OTHER people are doing. Like, forging documents.

I was pregnant. Newly pregnant and frustrated. Frustrated that I was pregnant. I mean, the timing was not great. The economy was going into a major recession. Our "new business" was floundering. We were in a law suit with the man who mis-lead us and it looked like we were going to have to completely re-invent the wheel. Peter was going to have to find work and it was unclear if we would ever recover our losses. Not the greatest time to be pregnant . . for emotional reasons. Losing all of your financial stability is a lot to take on as a general stress level when you are newly pregnant.

I struggled daily with our new position. For the most part, our hopes were high. We hoped things would work out. We felt like we were here for a "reason", even though that "reason" was completely unclear. It was a Sunday night, and I was laying on my couch reading blogs. I was reading Cjane. Which is a blog that I came across after asking a few people about their favorite blogs to read. It quickly became a favorite, but that night, a year ago today, I was reading her blog in complete and total shock. An extreme accident had happened. I clicked over to the accident victim's blog, her sister, Nie Nie. I read, and I read, and I read. I had never read her blog before. But I sat and read for probably 3 or more hours (it was after the kids had gone to bed) and suddenly, I realized that my problems were very, very, very small.

Over the next year, I followed Stephanie's progress, as many of you did and I watched in awe as she recovered, came back to life and even started blogging again! When Peter and I would come up to hurdles in our law suit, or in finding work, being a completely sleep deprived mother of a new born who was packing up her boxes for her 9th move in 9 years or in having the same guy STOP making his settlement payments to us, I would think of her and I would try to remember that there were others out there who suffered more than we did.

Today, Nie Nie showed the WORLD just how brave she really is, and it is far, far, far more brave than I ever have been, or maybe ever would be. You can see why HERE.

I am sure she will never read this blog, but I just would like to thank her personally. Thank you for being so strong. Thank you for being a wonderful example of hope. Thank you for enduring happily, or as happily as you can. Thank you for showing us all what it means to be strong. Thank you. I hope to be more like you.

Lindsey