Month: August 2021

I had the opportunity and privilege to volunteer this year with Boots on the Ground, a ministry at my church.  This ministry builds ramps at houses for those in need to be able to get in and out of their homes, installs grab bars in the homes of elderly, and helps in many other physical ways within our community.  After volunteering last year for my Helpers of People Leave with Boots on the Ground, I wanted to reach out this again year and see if I could be of service.  They again were pleased and welcomed the opportunity for me to serve in an administrative capacity.  My week started by sitting with the BOG staff and watching/listening/learning about the processes and procedures they regularly perform.  While going through this, I heard a couple phrases of “it would be nice to…” and “I wish we could…” regarding the workflow.  My ears obviously perked up at this as I zeroed in to see how we could improve the efficiency of various processes and help meet their desires.  At first, I created a few reporting capabilities that would quickly provide staff with feedback on the status of projects as well as their next steps for to dos, in addition to a quick breakdown of the location of various projects.  This seemed to be a big help, but I wanted a bigger project to tackle.  As I pressed in more, I learned the process of inputting projects into their tracking system was entirely manual.  Since I love efficiency, hearing the words “manual process” generally makes me cringe.  So, I spent a good deal of time creating a way to automatically have Excel enter new projects from a raw data dump file into their main project-tracking database.  This new process can be run at the user’s desire and only adds new projects to the master list.  Previously, this was a manual check to see what new requests for projects needed to be added, then manually typing in the relevant info for the new request in the master list.  The new process drastically reduces time required of staff in addition to reducing the possibility for errors.  This will allow the staff to spend time in better ways, such as speaking with those in need and getting things in the workflow quicker to solve practical needs in our community.  I’m blessed to have worked with Boots on the Ground again this year.  It’s incredible to use my giftings and have the opportunity to take time away from work to give back and serve in unique ways that help others (and will continue to for a long time)!  I appreciate management for this opportunity as well as my co-workers who picked up the slack so I could be away for this meaningful time.  I am truly blessed and thank Jesus for this opportunity and this company who supports such endeavors.

I will start by saying my 2 weeks did not go anything like I had planned, but they went exactly as they needed to.

My original plan was to spend my first week for my vacation, and my second week working on my relationship with my Grandmother, but knowing her I had contingencies in place if she wasn’t willing to cooperate. Her 70th birthday was July 20th so we left Abilene Friday the 16th to go spend the week with my family celebrating. While we did do that the original plan was to have her come back to Abilene with us and help clean and paint the new house in preparation of the baby on the way. When I originally set this up with her she only tentatively agreed, thus the contingencies. Only a day in to being there I realized she was not going to be coming and helping in any way so I made the effort to spend all the time I could sitting and talking with her.

That sounds like a very small thing, but in fact before that week I could not tell you the last time I ever was alone in a room with her let alone had a full conversation with her. For as long as I can remember she was a constant presence of emotional abuse, from forcing me at 10 years old to drink from a baby bottle saying that all I was was a baby so that’s all I deserved, to making me eat dog biscuits and always calling me inappropriate names saying that I must be pregnant because I didn’t meet her standards in my outward appearance. So for me to just sit down with her was a struggle.

Each time I forced myself to sit with her just a little longer. It started off with a measly five minutes but we worked up to sitting and talking for hours. I just talked to her about her childhood, and how she grew up, which gave me a lot of insight to who she is as a person. She is the youngest of 9, and yet she was the one who held the most responsibilities. She was put in charge of the cleaning and the cooking for the household. She then ended up pregnant with my mother when she was 17. To this day no one will talk about what happened, all I know is that when she found out she told the father leave and never come back. I’m honestly not even sure if he even knew about my mother at the time.

So she found her self raising a baby at 17 in a time when it was extremely frowned upon to have children while unmarried. She eventually found her first husband Rick, got married and had my aunt and uncle. Then when they were still little Rick died in a motorcycle accident, leaving my grandmother again to be a single parent this time to raise 3 children not just one.

Needless to say she went through a lot in her life time. It in no way forgives how she treated me as a child, but it helped me move through my hurt and anger to get to a point where I could forgive her. She’s just like my mother and cannot admit her wrong doings, but this time I spent was not for her it was for me. In the beginning I can honestly say that I would never have felt comfortable letting her hold my daughter, let alone leave her alone in a room with her, but after the week was up and we headed back to Abilene I can say I don’t see any overnight stays happening any time soon, but I would be comfortable letting her babysit her great grand daughter for a few hours.

We returned to Abilene where we found ourselves preparing for our big move. I was originally hoping to have my grandmother’s help with cleaning and painting, but that did not happen so me and Joseph tackled that ourselves. We got moved in with the help of Taylor, Sam, Beth, David and my brother. It ended up being a blessing that my grandmother didn’t come because the entire week I was having to take care of issues with trying to close on the house, from power not being turned on to people not getting a hold of the appraiser and a constant change in the closing date. On top of those issues I had multiple labs I had to keep coming into Abilene for which ultimately resulted in us finding out I have gestational diabetes. Even though I didn’t get very much actual vacation time in I was still able to really dedicate time to working on my relationship with my grandmother as well as get several labs taken care of without interfering with work.

My aunt, me, my grandmother, my sister, my mom

Things never go as planned but they go exactly as they should even when it doesn’t feel like it at the time.