I truly was leaving, I was walking out of here and not returning, but then as your comments came, I felt friendship, and then guilt. This was not meant for Drama, I am so not the type. This was not a ploy to play on sympathy and rally support; this was because I felt I owed you a last post before I was gone for good.
You truly are wonderful friends.
I will stay. It’s funny how life works, I was going to just return sentiments in your comments, and help you understand why I needed to go and the reversal has happened, I learned why I need to stay.
I have forged friendships here, good ones at that. I let the evil get bigger than the good. The waters had gotten muddy and I couldn’t see the bottom. I still hurt for the ones who were harmed with evil words. I am so sorry for the tears the victims of the stream shed.
I am annoyed that there are people here with multiple blogs, not lumped under one email, using it to rally their other blog’s support, or putting twice the attack upon another. It’s lying folks, even when you admit it down the road, you were being deceptive. There are more than one of you doing this, I am quite aware of your existence.
Even today there are the bullies that are still crying against deactivated blogs, still calling them drama queens and mocking them. What a shame, what a sad display of immaturity.
And yes, while I am still shocked and dismayed by the ones who are spewing their vile, I forgot I was standing with friends watching this, not alone.
I enjoy sharing and reading. This has become a place for me to medley my words and play it out here for you to decipher and I gleaned from your blogs, we are an orchestra together.
What can I say? You convinced me. I believe in you.
Your comments were wonderful and heartfelt and I am grateful.
*quotes like a pledge*
You all are wonderful, you are true blue, loyal through and through.
*grins and can’t resist*
I almost went for the scarf Chey!



*runs up her crows nest and hollers*

"POH, Lucy, Please come back!"

*Sits down with a cup of tea and a saddened heart*

Yesterday I recommended this place to a friend, and today I am leaving.
To you who are wonderful to me, I will miss you.
But I am done.

See, I watched a tightly knit scarf unravel. It was awesome, this tight community. We accepted everyone. We included everyone. We believed in each other's good, it is not here that the bad should come out. It is not here that wrongs should be aired. This was a place to journal and debate.

I never hid who I am; who I believed in, Christ is real to me. He resides in my heart and he is the strength to my days. God helps me carry these burdens that I have and I never needed to defend that to you. I avoided doing so, because I am here to answer questions, to give advice but not to explain over and over why I believe, to come to your house and be lumped in continually with a generalization.
Why am I going? It’s a simple decision, because I don't believe in the stream anymore. The fishing hole has dried up.

Oh there are some of you that will remain in my heart and thoughts. There are some of you that may be angered at my leaving and some of you that will smirk and dismiss me without thought or maybe a snide, ‘good riddance’. But I never attacked you and I never made you feel uncomfortable. If I did it was completely unintentionally.

I know many of you don't believe as I do, and vise versa, but I never attacked your beliefs. It wasn't necessary. There are many things I don't support, yet I loved you for who you are, for your warm thoughts and great strengths. It was never my place to judge.

I stated my peace about a man called Squash, he disappointed me, I don't fear him, and I don't desire to protect him. He admitted something out loud that makes me sad and angry. It was not the place to give it, despite those of you that are rallying behind him believe. I don't share my sins on here for you to carry, why did I need to carry his? Why was he asking me to love him and to know every time I wrote to him I would have to recall that he had harmed a child; a baby who he should have been protecting. I hope he is sorry and repentant, I hope he has rehabilitated himself, but why is he asking me to hold his loaded bomb and deal with it? If he wants forgiveness, he doesn't need it from me. He needs it from within, he needs to place it at the foot of the cross to understand that Christ will cleanse him and make him whole and will cast it far from the East as from the West.
Not you. Not me.

I went to a blog I rarely visit at a request. I seen blog ‘friends’ crucify and drag out and reenact their anger on another blogger. They generalized Christians and demeaned them. The applauded each others attack and name calling, all under the protest of protecting another. This is a peaceful demonstration?

We are rowing with one oar here folks and all it is doing is making the clear waters muddy and making me wonder at what is left.
There are wonderful ‘yous’ here, and I believe you are true and delightful, but I have shed tears today for the ones of you I have wrote to and shared with, the same ones who have claimed to believe as I do and yet attack another so harshly, whether you agreed or not with her confrontation, you decided to attack. It is a war zone here. I am tired of attacks. I am tired of putting out fires; I am tired of being Switzerland when you are now bringing your war into my beautiful lands, my sweet valleys and my blue skies.

Funny, these warmongers are the same ones who run to blogs and protest the war. Yet this, yes, this, is exactly why the US is fighting car bombers and self detonators, leaving in their wake bleeding civilians. You who declared stupidity on our government and cried foul play are now participators. You have muddied these waters. You have outlived your protests and driven your own loaded cars into buildings.

You will eventually calm down, this meanness will ease and the topics will change but I felt the sting of your words, the impact of your blows and you will say your aim was not at me. And yes, I recall your screams of Peace, your rants about Civilians dieing in wars, casualties should never be the innocent. That was what you ranted, but you lied. You let the evil fill your veins, the cruelty spill forth and you destroyed my peace here.

*notes her cold tea and sits back with a sigh*

I was never on the popular list, never wanted to be, and I guess, never will be.

I consider the internet an extension of this world. The capabilities of having this type of information at my fingertips has helped me save time and glean information that would have taken much longer or be nearly impossible to know. It also has opened my world in many facets, some wonderfully and some not so good.
I have met and married my husband from here, he is a good and loving man and it still is amazing to us that we met off of a game site. Prior to Matthew, I was part of an internet chat and role play community that swallowed me whole. I hated my life and created one here for a couple of years. I was ‘myself’, I never posed differently, but I also learned people were not who they said they were, the more you played the more you understood.
The environment here on the blog stream is a bit different here because it is not an open chat forum, and things are in a controlled setting. (Except for the chat forum of course) We take for granted that any information in this typed form is truth, and for the most part I believe it as well, but I am skeptical. I stand a bit back from the stream; I hang on the edge and only trust those that have proven time worthy. Even then, my husband says, “you think.” Whenever I mention a friend from here and describe ‘you’ to him. There are some of you that I wonder and there are many here that I truly believe are authentic and have no doubts; but we must acknowledge that Life here is only what we give each other, and then it is still on a basis of trust. Any one of us could be giving false or misguiding information.
Because this life is so fragile, when someone lies or befriends us and we learn the ulterior motive or personality, a portion of our trust is robbed. We feel attacked in a sense. We nurtured a relationship based on the information we trade and trust that all disclosures are given in good faith, we even acknowledge each other by placing them as a 'bookmark' and we watch and we protect our friends by standing up for their with our comments; we validate.
Truly it goes deeper than that, in a chat room you throw out one line antidotes and pounce to get something out before another. Here we take time, we essay our work and feed our audience substance that will whet their appetite and make them return to the buffet. We desire to walk through posts and comment to let them know we had been there. It has come to the point where we rejoice over happy events, post pictures of them so we have albums to open, give prayer and encouragement in trying times and have developed into a diverse block party.
Sunday I logged on to catch up with you all and found a bad note in our band of friends. The blogs and comments that were being spoken about at Lucy’s had been deleted but by reading the comments I understood what had happened, and one of our bloggers had come to commit a horrendous thing and brought it here for us. My first thought was, when I role played, and your character was eliminated, the first thing you did was create a new one and bring yourself back, I believe some of that happens here.
My voice to you is this. You need to keep in mind that we are all word artists here and we only know what we are given. We need to form bookmarks and generate friends, but remember it’s 2 demensional here. We need to learn and remember that there is more to know than what you ‘see’ here, in order to fully trust in a friendship. Also, never, never neglect your family and friends for me, I will be here waiting, that is the joy of our life here. Just floating along the Stream.

" If you're a cowboy, and you're dragging a guy behind your horse, I bet it would really make you mad if you looked back and the guy was reading a magazine." ~ Jack Handy with Deep Thoughts

Top Friday five for this week:

1. Kayleen, my youngest daughter had her hamster, Sir Waffle, escape his cage. I explained that they were nocturnal and we will keep an eye out for him at night. Little did I realize that the rodent found his way to my room and under my computer desk and yes, came out in the middle of this blogging session, sending me head-over-teacup when he brushed against my bare foot.

2. My girlfriend informs me that if she were to go on the Amazing Race, she would not choose her husband or me, but her friend Greg as a partner. I took this bit of information hard(ly) and she said her husband did too. So, in turn I informed her that I would team up with her husband Mike and make sure we beat them.

3. The items I have that need to be charged in the evenings all glow a light blue, this includes my cell phone, palm pilot and blue tooth. Okay, I noticed this tonight when I clicked out the bedroom light.

4. Tonight the girls and I baked sugar cookies and decorated them to take with lunch tomorrow. They wanted a few extras to take to school in case friends wanted one, we indicated the friends’ cookies by writing the word ‘yours’ across them. That way when they asked for one, they could say, “that one is yours.”

5. A few years ago, I took an astronomy college class. We were sent out to find Venus in the skyline in the back of the college. I thought I had located the sneaky planet had everyone else looking there as well, until the Professor showed up and related that we were settled in on the Rochester Airport in the far distance.

Since I lived out in the country growing up, I have a definite need for nature in my life. I love walks in wooded areas and I so enjoy streams and lakes. It also was a creative place for me to go as a child to read, to write and to draw.
Below my childhood home was a creek, and if you followed it long enough it took you into a woods where different shades of green intermixed with brown and golds. This is where the woods became lush and the foliage rich in color and design. Alongside of the water was moss thick as carpet and ferns trying to reach their fingertips to the sky.
Life here was simplistic. There were simple joys of slipping off your shoes and walking in the shallow parts of the creek where the smooth stones had no sharp edges for the water eroded all the pains.
Sometimes the waters grew deep enough that I would be challenged to find larger rocks to step across on or even fallen logs. It always seemed there was a way, even when the path looked impossible.
When I tired or when the spot seemed ideal for inspiration, I would sit on the thick moss and withdraw my paper and pen, or the latest book I had in possession.
Many of my books during this time were old. Libraries and bookstores were not close by and were never thought of as a book resource, so I would glean the tables at yard and estate sales. My money was always tucked in the back pocket of my wranglers just in case I happed across one. I toted bags of books home on my bike, balanced on my knee and a thrill of unknown places running wildly in my thoughts.
I got to know quite a few authors to look for from this type of shopping; Agatha Christie, Victoria Holt, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Oscar Wilde and Ralph Waldo Emerson, to name a few. I also gathered old National Geographic’s and studied the wide vast array of creation throughout the world. I would spend hours thinking how I would survive on each face of the globe.
I would tote my books in a denim bag I sewed my first year in 4-H. Everything I did was to provide me with a way for another book and another discovery.
When I opened the pages or lay down my tablet, the woods would sprinkle an array of dancing lights and shadows and whisper adjectives in my ear. I would feel no hurt or mockery here, the woods was kind and embraced me as its own.
I felt the peace I sought in life here, within the envelope of these old trees.
I knew I was unique for the others my age would speak of ways they spent their time and I would have no response. This would create a space between them and me, for I never shared what I did for fear of their hot laughter upon my face or their desire to invade my haven.
The squirrels and chipmunks regarded me as part of the elements and didn’t seemed to be disturbed, birds scattered and warned others but soon came back when they seen my instruments were not raised against them. It was here that I developed my tongue in writing. It was here that my intimidation and fear dissolved into rational thoughts and melted into my writings and I no longer felt silly and childish. I felt part of something grand and ancient.
I never brought anyone to this woody cathedral; it was a sacred place for a timid little girl to grow into a strong woman. Although I recently went to revisit it with my husband, hand in hand we walked down only to discover the woods were a part of a grand scheme to a family of beavers and the creek was now a pond. I was slightly disappointed at this discovery, but yet I couldn’t help but think how we both have changed to find our own place in this world.