Tag: Emily (Me)

Counting Blessings · Emily (Me) · Girlfriends · God's Plan · Holy Spirit · LadyEm · Meaningful Friendships · Spirituality · Unsolicited Advice

What is Friendship ~

LadyEm632 Comments

… from my perspective…

I saw the below comment today… and after all the self-reflection I’ve done over the past several years… for some reason, this grated me. It was a Facebook status…. and at my age, I go back to a few thoughts with this…

1) I don’t know what this person is walking through, but I know that being taken advantage of stinks…
2) Did this person try to talk to whomever it was about how they were feeling, and try to work it out?
3) If you are kind to your friends, do you keep score? Is that what this is? hmmm…

More thoughts after the pic…

Last year we sent our son to college. I won’t go into detail on my blog, but we were accused of not being appreciative of the family hosting our son in Texas… He lived at the dorms but they stepped in for holidays and breaks, and made sure all was well. When I read some things that were said… I was so hurt by it, I couldn’t speak to the folks because I was just stunned. My point – I think some people need all the accolades and attention, and for everyone to do everything their way…. And if they don’t get it – they feel taken advantage of. And that’s NOT ok.

When I am accused of something, I assess and reassess. For sure, I help strangers, and I know I would do more for folks I love… And I have to say – in no way were these folks taken advantage of. Someone just didn’t get their way in a matter, and it didn’t go the way they wanted it… and now, friendships are lost.

Everyone walks through life thinking that others appreciate their actions or advice. We all want to believe that people mean what they say. No one expects a friend to offer kindness, and then tell you what you owe them or act like you are not thankful enough. That’s NOT kind. Period.

But – the good news is… and Dear Readers, there is always good news… It really made me reflect on friendship… and what it means to be a good friend. And why some friends come then go… why some are lifelong friends. And it occurred to me, that not everyone knows how to make friends… But I feel like I can help.

In order to make good friends, you have to be a good friend. At my age (seriously said it), you can tell who is worthy of your friendship. There is a difference between being friendly/kind and being FRIENDS. Moving from Texas to Italy, trying to navigate the MIL Spouse life after Marque had been retired nearly 19 years has been interesting.

In order to be a good friend – you must do the below and MORE:

  • For me: I prefer Catholic (Christian)/Conservative friends.
    • But believe me when I tell you I have friends from every walk of life. It’s challenging and teaches respect to befriend folks who believe differently.
  • Be there/show up and listen more than you talk.
  • Be kind (and yes, honest advise is kind).
  • Be ready to work.
    • As you are getting to know someone be patient and understanding.
  • Be honest and loyal.
    • This is not hard. The best kinds of people are honest and loyal.
  • Do for others what you want done for you.
    • Do they teach the Golden Rule anymore? You do know it’s NOT all about you, right?
  • Pray for those who hurt you.
    • This is so important. My mother was a violent alcoholic. The things she did and said… unspeakable. But I forgave and prayed for her. I still do. People I poured my heart into that later rejected me… I pray for them when I think of them. And I really purpose to remember the good.
  • Take responsibility for your thoughts and actions.
    • When the day is chaotic, sometimes you don’t mean to say or so the wrong thing, but you do. People who know and love you will accept a heartfelt apology… ok – maybe a glass of wine/coffee/spritz… whatever.
  • Don’t judge others unfairly.
    • Did you know that some people are perpetually late, have a messy house, yell at their children, and make all kinds of mistakes? And these people – are still great friends.
  • Be Kind Anyway.
  • Love your enemies.
    • Hard to do. But – through Prayer and Forgiveness – yes, even if you don’t continue your friendship, you still love them. Hurt feelings and severed relationships can also be repaired – IF you behave the right way (see below).
  • Lead with Love. Jesus taught us to lead with love. And y’all, He didn’t say Love only those you want to… be kind to only those you want to… He lead by an example we are expected to follow as Christians. We are to Love our Neighbors As Ourselves… really – more than ourselves.
  • Did I mention – BE KIND!

I have NOT always made the best choices in my life with friends and many other things, if I am being honest… And I have learned so much about myself over the years… One thing I know for sure is that the friends who encourage you in virtue and who you have faith in common with are the best friends ever. I have friends who aren’t Christians, and there are some things we can’t discuss. I cherish them, but it can be hard from time to time.

Friends do what they say they will do. They are reliable and they pick up the phone/pick up a child/send money/food, etc. when they can. And they expect NOTHING in return. Honest ~ Faith-filled ~ Loyal ~ Kind ~ Those people are YOUR people. Stick with them. But turn your back on no one… because others need to see your example.

Years ago in a Bible study, the leader was telling us to make sure our home isn’t spotless when folks come over for a casual Bible Study or cup of coffee – especially if they have small children. My OCD mind was racing y’all. I instantly judged this person… but then I listened to what she said. There are people who are in the thick of raising littles and their house won’t be spotless for decades… (you know what I mean)… I never realized that my idiotic perfection with that kind of thing made others uncomfortable. People just need other good people in their lives, they don’t need for your home to be a museum-quality clean.

True friends accept us for WHO we are and all of our flaws. Trust me. I’d have no friends if they didn’t. I’m blessed to have friends I’ve known 57 years or more… our parents and grandparents were friends, and besties I’ve known since HighSchool/College… you know? These people are treasures… and I know if there was a crisis, they would absolutely step up – because THAT IS WHAT WE DO!

People have said to me for years, “Why do you do volunteer?” or “Why do you help others that don’t seem to care for you?” But y’all, it’s not about me. It’s me, trying to do God’s work – as an imperfect human. I don’t pretend to do it all correctly.

To the person who wrote the statement at the top of this post, I say this… whether someone is taking advantage of you or not – you should always do the right thing. It’s none of my business what someone does with my advice, help or anything else. If I am doing the right thing… If I follow what God puts on my heart, I don’t have to get bogged down in other people’s issues… It then goes back to “Pray for them! Love them Anyway!”

Please know that everyone who comes into your life leaves an impression or teaches a lesson. Don’t be sad or beat yourself up. Learn and move on. God has bigger things for you – I promise you that.

And can I tell you one last thing – our youngest has always been a helper. Helped a lady change her tires the other day; paid for a man’s small purchase of water and coffee because the man’s card didn’t work…. and I was so proud. Proud of him. Proud of our example as parents… giving myself a good old pat on the back. But then, God said to me “he’s 19 and he is NOT of this world. He’s MY son.”

I deserved that reality… I can not take the credit y’all. It’s all God! And with that – I hope you learned a little today. I’d love to hear about what you think makes a good friend. Please leave a comment… and remember ~

Imperfect… but so kind. Talk soon.

Love, Hugs & Blessings,
LadyEm

Anxiety and Fear · Catholic Faith · Comfort Zone · Emily (Me) · Italy · LadyEm · Lent · Mental Health · Sacraments · Self Improvement

Underestimating God ~ Trust is a Process

LadyEm632 Comments

Comfort Zone – Post 1

Happy March 6th y’all. Happy Second Monday in Lent.

On February 16th, I posted the below on my FB Wall. Over the past several years the tragedy of my life – as a child, as a young woman, and even the past decade has weighed on me to the point it really broke me in many ways. And I am thankful.

In the broken, I have been able to handle the pieces of tragedy in a way more positive way. I prayed before I wrote this post because in so many ways, it’s like a broken record. Holding myself accountable and taking responsibility for my lack of focus – on God, on my health, on so many things. And Lent is my saving Grace this year. Learning to fully rely on and trust God – not in a way that I “thought” I was… but truly realizing me that I can not say “Yes God, I trust you. But I’m gonna do what I want!” Trust is hard for me. Anyway…. Read these two pictures, and I will give an update at the end!

The book this passage is from is the Magnificat. I placed the link on the word. If anything happens to the link, go to http://www.magnificat.net and you will find it (and about a zillion other books you may “need”).

Just like the Israelites, mentioned above, I don’t trust God enough to believe HE will do what HE says. So Lent, for me, is a succession of stepping out of my comfort zone moments… in which I let God, my Father, guide me. Imagine that?!

Update: When I spoke to the doc, he said he wanted me to up my BP Meds (because I have a hereditary high BP). And he also recommended that I wean myself off the Anxiety/Depression meds slowly. I went to 1/4 of the dose and after a week realized half the dose is my number for now. Sadly – due to all I’ve walked through, I may have to be on meds long-term. Doc says that’s ok. It’s nothing I am doing wrong. Sigh. I am thankful for friends and family, and for praying people who have bolstered me throughout this period.

I love my medical team here in Italy. Truly they care. They have been instrumental in my learning to care for myself. I’m so thankful. And now that I am headed back to a better relationship with the Catholic Church and God (oh yes, I was flailing/failing both)… things are really looking up.

I will share with you, that a few weeks before Lent started, I reached out to our new Priest about confession and discussion. I hadn’t been to confession in about 18 months or so – not a stellar show of faith. I’d really given up in many ways. Sigh. But when I was speaking to my son about what he needed to do to get back to faith… I clearly heard THE FATHER speaking to me, through me. Sigh.

Now, I am off to do my Italian homework, and make a few cards. I will share the cards on the blog. Soon, I will share about a woman’s retreat I went on to Assisi. Talk about stepping out of my comfort zone. LOL You’ll see. Until Then…

Love, Hugs & Blessings,
LadyEm

Davis Family · Italy · Teverola Home

Teverola Apartment – 3rd Place Is A Charm?!

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Dear Readers,

The weather here is cold and rainy. But – I kinda like the fact that I can get caught up on things. I meant to post this a week ago, but here we go.

So when we first moved to Italy we lived within a 5 minute walk to the beach. The views were endlessly beautiful but the house was “poop on a white shoe” poorly maintained. After nearly 3 years of the landlord acting like he was doing us a favor taking our money (and believe me when I tell you we paid 3x more than any Italian family would have for this awful place. So – we moved to a house with a yard. AND basically an apartment for bud since it was his Senior year of school – and we knew he’d be going back to the states. We thought it would be awesome. It was slightly more expensive – but it had a pool, fruit trees, and storage… and Marque decided it was “the one”. However, within a few months we found out it was even in worse shape. Plus the realtor was not an above-board kinda guy… and we just flat out needed to leave. As we were leaving, we knew we had to downsize… and since legitimately most of our storage had black mold. We knew we had made the right choice. So we barely lived there a year and we moved this Fall to a duplex in a different city. It’s not a duplex like in the states. We have a sweet couple that live in the apartment upstairs.

Let me go backwards a bit. Because we are good people – we made every excuse and gave every allowance. Planted things, paid for things, etc. I won’t go back over ever egregious/insulting/unhealthy situation in the first two places… Suffice to say – Italy can be difficult. Things work differently here. And standards/even visuals – are deceiving. LOL I will leave it there.

We now life in a building that used to be a store. The basement has dressing rooms in it and our apartment used to be a shop that apparently sold pizza because there is a pizza oven on our side porch. It’s about 1500 – 1600 square feet (we’re told – it may be smaller). But we do have huge living space outside on porches. One of the things I am most proud of is the kitchen. When we first saw the place, it was all opened up. BUT – we don’t go out to eat all the time, we cook… and I need my kitchen things and Pantry/Fridge/Freezer staples. In my previous post, I explained how I hid my pantry and made my kitchen organized by using my bookshelves, etc. Check out Pantry Challenge – Thawed Out for those pics.

Part of the Lemon Harvest This year. These are so wonderful AND did you know lemon tree leaves smell like lemons? Well they do. LOL
Laundry is different here. The ladies around me do laundry nearly daily. We hang things out to dry and fluff in the dryer. It’s actually nice. This is our side porch area, and the brown door at the end of the fist picture is our outdoor storage. In the winter, this area is not the one I choose, I choose the end of the courtyard where the sun lasts the longest. Also – I have stools everywhere – so I can reach the stuff on top of things (you’re welcome).
FIREPLACE AT THE END OF DINING AND BY FRONT DOOR.
VIEW FROM DINING
SECOND VIEW FROM DINING
DINING AREA IN KITCHEN
MASTER BEDROOM. THERE ARE WARDROBES, ETC.
GUEST BED FROM INSIDE (BED COMING)
GUEST BED, VIEW FROM DOOR. THERE IS A WARDROBE TO THE RIGHT.
BATHROOM WITH SHOWER AND LAUNDRY.
2ND BATH WITH TUB
CRAFT, OFFICE, ETC.
FRONT PORCH. STAIRS TO THE RIGHT LEAD TO NEIGHBOR’S UPSTAIRS.
SUNSET
VIEW FROM FRONT-MAIN PORCH
SIDE PORCH WITH PIZZA OVEN, ETC.
Various pics of our home. I don’t want to bore you to death or overwhelm. But I did promise to show folks, so here ya go. There is a bathroom on the pizza oven side porch. There is also outdoor space where Marque grills, etc. We really have plenty of room.

I will blog about our gardening projects soon… and take pics of the outside – including our Blessed Mother Statue we bought our first year here. So far, we love this house. And we are so thankful. Will also show you our basement and things as we improve stuff.

We will chat soon, dear ones, Praying for you all.

Love, Hugs & Blessings,
LadyEm

Fridge or Pantry · Good Cheap Eats · Homemaking · Pantry Challenge · Perseverance

Pantry Challenge – Thawed Out

LadyEm633 Comments

Happy New Year Y’all.
On New Year’s Day, I posted about the yearly Pantry Challenge. I had meal prepped, and menu prepped…and I was excited to get back to it and use what I have over the next couple months. If you don’t know Jessica of Good Cheap Eats, get to know her – she is amazing. Regular mom logic. AND here is her info about the Pantry Challenge. But as life does on occasion – we came home to a change of plans. Our electricity was off and we lost all our frozen/fridge food.

We cleaned up the mess, cleaned out both fridge/freezers, and then washed our pups (who were with a sitter whilst we were gone, who has other animals and watches lots of dogs) and finally got to bed about 2am. I have not given up though.

January 5th was my hubby’s 63rd birthday, and by this past weekend, we were semi stocked up and ready to participate again. We only replaced parts of what we lost and didn’t buy new pantry items… and though we won’t technically save money, we have pledged to eat at home for the next few weeks, and were creative with our purchases.

Speaking of Creative… I wanted to share with you how I made my kitchen bigger by extending/creating a wall. Here, I extended the living room wall with bookshelves and a hutch (it needs painting and was free):

These pics show the pantry (aka the backside of bookshelves) and the refrigerator behind the red piece. The meal calendar was what I’d done before I left.

Our Second fridge/freezer is on our enclosed porch. I will be contacting our insurance company today about how to recoup anything we can. And later on this evening, I will post pics of our apartment we moved into in September (not duplicating today’s pics). Other than power outages, we are really enjoying it.

Don’t let anything sway you from your plan. Regroup and get back to it.

Love, Hugs & Blessings,
LadyEm

Davis Family · Italy · Melvin & Maisie

Updates Abound…

LadyEm634 Comments

Dear Readers…
I feel like I should say – “Hi – My name is Emily, and it’s been five + months since I’ve posted.” And y’all should all say – “Emily Who?” HAHAHA

When I last posted, we were newly Empty Nesters. We still are. LOL But we are adjusting really well. When we got back from Texas, we packed and moved to a much smaller place. The last year has been an absolutely beautiful and crazy experience… full of so many emotions, and enlightening me on my journey for peace. I will talk about that journey next time.

It’s been a whirlwind y’all. I am happy to put 2022 behind us. The range of emotions was crazy y’all. I’m still adjusting to not having our youngest with us. He did not come home from the holidays. But rest assured – we kept busy, and are headed to the Netherlands to visit friends, for five days. Interesting fact about the Netherlands – New Years is the only time fireworks are allowed. So we got that going for us. HA

I thought I’d share a recent pic of me AND that Marque was Santa this year at the local NATO Celebration. HA. SANTA!!! I KNOW HIM!

Have you met Melvin? Almost a year ago, January 2022 – a friend found Melvin on the street in a local town, and we cleaned him up, brought him to the Vet, and he stole our hearts. We named him Melvin because my dad was a bossy (organized, funny, dude) and so are puppies. You’d have to know my dad to know I’m not putting him down and to know how funny it is. Melvin was about 4+ lbs when we got him and about 5 weeks old, and he’s full grown (they say) at about 15 lbs. He’s adorable. Anywaaaaay… Here he is:

We had a dog named Gianna, but in two years, she never bonded. She was too abused or lost when we got her even though she was only 8+ weeks old. She just never recovered from the trauma… not with training, not with meds, etc. And she became aggressive to us and others… so she went to live with a family in the UK. It was sad, but it’s also so nice to have a dog who greets you, loves you, shows emotion, etc. So just know, she is in a better place.

Also – Meet Maisie. Born around September 11th, Maisie came to us early November 2022. She was found with her siblings in a garbage bag, inside a garbage can. Suffering malnutrition, she weighed about 1 kilo or 2.5 pounds. But now, we know she will be bigger than Melvin. Maisie is a pet name for Margaret, and is Scotch/Irish in origin. It means Pearl and I can’t think of a better name for a beautiful Puppy who was plucked from the garbage and is transforming before our eyes. She is 3.5 months old and shares a birthday with my sister Jennifer. She weighs almost as much as Melvin (she is about 12 lbs). Her name is Maisie Rose.

We were going to foster her at first, because Melvin has a big personality. But the vet advised not to let her go before shots, but that we couldn’t do shots for a couple weeks to make sure she wasn’t exposed to Parvo or anything that may hurt her when getting vaccinated. Sigh. But the family decided they didn’t want her, so we kept her. But when we took her out one night (in the carrier) we met a little girl who asked to hold her. And I said, “sure honey, her name is Maisie.” The dad got all excited and said, “what did you say?” I said, “I told her the dogs name was Maisie.” And that was also the little girl’s name. Sigh it was meant to be. She’s such a love this one.

I wanted to wish you all a blessed Christmas Season. AND a very happy new year. 2023 is going to be blessed y’all.

Let me do a quick catch up. If you’re still with me – thanks…

  • I’m excited to turn 60 in October of 2023.
    • My 59th was a flu-ridden debacle. haha
  • Finally fitting into mediums (depending on maker) and even a few size 10 pants. My goal is a size 8 – maybe 6. We shall see.
  • My mental health is better. Not just saying it – but actually concentrating on ME!
    • Resigned from Board of women’s group.
    • Crafting again.
    • Reading.
    • Getting back to faith.
  • Marque and I both need to move more.
  • I’m not going to say his health is great, but I am prayerful he will work on it in 2023.
  • Chris is doing well (yes, he goes by Chris now – AACK!).
    • He has learned a lot in the past six months.
    • Unsure where he will go to college next year. Tarleton is not working out. He really wants Aeronautical/Aerospace instead of Mechanical Engineering. And I think the whole process of living without us and adjusting to the states again was rough. But he’s powering through. Maintained a 3.2GPA (he thinks one grade should be higher and is working with the professor).
    • He was with family/friends in Texas for the holidays.
    • He is in VA with his girlfriend now through New Years.
    • Working PT/Saving for a car.
    • I hesitate to say more on a public forum because it’s his story to tell as a budding adult.
    • We are super proud of him.

I have to close because I have a list of things to do.
May God bless you, and may you trust Him More.

Friends, 2023 is our year. Let’s make it a good one. Christmas Cards will come out first week of January – and arrive whenever the horrid base post office gets them to ya.

Love and Hugs,
LadyEm