What does getting my Hope On, Rainbows and Publisher’s Clearing House all have in common in my last Quarter Century?

What does getting my Hope On, Rainbows and Publisher’s Clearing House all have in common in my last Quarter Century?

Today is Wednesday, September 11, 2013.
Today this will be my Hope….

This is the Story of how and when got my first HopeOn aka Veronica McGuire back then, around Oct/Nov 1988. My 12 step Recovery sponsor was on me, daily, about praying….. I was too Rage~filled at the God that I thought I understood, or so I thought at the time; to even bother to try. This was a day, like one I had just last week….and like last week; this God I refused to pray to, due to my own anger at my lot as it seemed in life… I refused to pray…why bother? So I got up one morning with it pouring like it can only pour on the coast of North Carolina, ‘buckets n buckets’ and then the ‘cats n dogs’ come. {Laughing out loud… this is my story I can laugh if I wanna!}

I had mid-terms or maybe it was finals and I was taking computer sciences at Carteret Community College. So to be honest, I woke up frantic to start with. Yet I still had four small kids to dress as a newly single mom. Then get them to school and daycare before I got myself to College for this test. I was living in a house at the time I could not pay rent on (thank you Dana O., wherever you may be!) and my electric bill; like all the rest of my bill had not been paid since I had not worked since April 1988 as a civilian mess manager for MCAS Cherry Point…another story another day…Yet somehow my electric was still on!

Someone else was loaning me the use of an old car that had been sitting in their driveway. But still, I woke up angry at the whole dang world,  if you want me to be really honest. Dang it, it was pouring out! I did not feel like even getting out of bed but by then I was so used to pushing myself till I dropped…it like many other things had just become habit. Like my anger!
So I get 4 small children into the car that is borrowed, leaving a house I am not and have not been able to pay rent for and drive two children to the little elementary school in Newport, N.C.  Then took the other two babies to daycare/preschool and go take my own exam.

Dang can it possibly pour ANY HARDER?  I dropped off first two children and was heading into Morehead City, NC when about 1 mile from the daycare and about 2 miles from the college and  DANG IT IT IS FLIPPIN’ POURING OUT!
*BAM*  *THUMP*  *THUMP*. Crap. I JUST GOT A FLAT TIRE!
NOW if you think I was not already pissed…..and it is POURIN’ N POURIN’ and I got a flat. REALLY!?!?!?!?

Now, there is no way that I can make it in time for my test! To boot; I now have to get out in this down pour and change this flat because I can’t call any one..(predates cell phones)….heck, I couldn’t even afford a phone back then. There was no lifeline for help with phone or safelink. Not in 1988/89!

I wasn’t working and the dad wasn’t paying child support either! I was mad, I tell you; at the whole dang world….and now I am soaked and of course my luck being; WELL  My luck….I could not even get the tire off. It is still pouring when Cliff rode by and promptly, did a U turn to came back to where he had seen the vehicle in the road. He took me and 2 younger children to the daycare; then took Him and I off to the college since we both had tests that day.    Was I grateful that  someone stopped and did that? I am ashamed to tell you No, I wasn’t ….(Cliff, wado for your patience back then)
I run thru the rain, only thinking of myself, left poor Cliff locking up his truck in the rain. I ran to the college elevators to get upstairs to my exam room. I ran down the hall…and that was back when I could still run, barely. I reach for the doorknob and Double Dog Dang It the dang handle is Locked!  It is now 9:05am and I was just locked out of an exam that I needed to take to continue getting my F.A.S.F.A. aid to educate myself; mainly  to better Our lives. Now I am beyond Angry, I am in high gear and teetering RAGE! I have no clue how I am going to get home from the college; let alone pick 4 kids from two different locations. Not to mention that I still had a flat tire to deal with on someone else’s car loaned to me. But could I find a mustard seed of gratitude to even pray….nope! This bull had dug her heals in!  It’s now 10 am and here comes Cliff to the student lounge with two cups of coffee; not only  offering me a ride but  help with all of those other issues. He then proceeded to tell me I would have to wait till he took one more exam but then he was free to help. I was still too busy wasting my energy being angry, I couldn’t even thank him for offering. But I did wait and Cliff drove me home after we could not get the tire off he pull the car. He pulled the car into the Auto Zone parking lot and went inside to speak to the manager for me; while I sat in his truck, just being angry and spinning in it! I am still in soaked clothes and now it is around Noonish. We head back towards where I lived in Newport. dang it it is still POURIN’
I never did thank Cliff that day. I ran from his truck to my door…and now I am so mad I am crying. Most women will admit that crying at this point, just makes us even madder; but now, at our self for showing weakness.

I slam the steel security door with just a peep hole in it. I lean back against that door after I had slammed it shut and very loud and angrily proceeded to yell at the God I thought I understood and I at that time believe had damned me to this thing call Life and I called Hell. I won’t go into what I said exactly because I am fairly certain if you are still reading this…you get the drift. But the jist of it was, “God if you are there, then I Need a little sunshine someplace in my life…anyplace.” Oh yes I was even being sarcastic…ask some of my cousins I used to have a knife for a tongue.
Hark! What is that noise I hear while I am leaning on the door yelling at God? Why it is the mailman! Can you imagine what I must have been thinking? Well, I can tell you it was close to something like ‘ ya thanks God more bad news and more bills I can’t pay and all my 12 step sponsor will say is until I am willing to at least try and pray…this is how things in my life will stay! Now that was an even more unpleasant thought! But figured, in that moment, “May as well go get the mail while I am still soaking WET and before my hot bath.” I opened the door.

What I found shocked and amazed me so much that to this very day it brings me to a place of humility that I still cry. {actually, I need to go take a cry break; out in my garage, so the rainbow above is from last hump-day, (September 11, 2013) which I got to witness last Wednesday, outside my garage door} be right back to finish this story…..

At opening the door…. (September 14, 2013) with my CryOn still occurring in real time I found this :}

I open the door….back that day in 1988, I thought to myself, “Well, let’s get the rest of the bad news over with. OH MY GOD; is this day ever gonna end? It is not even 1 pm yet! Dang!”

Wiping the tears from my eyes I slowly open my steel door….forget wiping tears! That is gonna be a NO GO now! Before my very eyes; there is a 3 to 4 foot wide pathway! Oh My God, IT IS STILL POURING; BUT…. there is this small pathway from my front door to my mailbox across the street! You know; the door that I was just leaning on, on the other side of it; ranting at?  Throwing a temper tantrum, at what I thought I believed about God and my relationship or non relationship; to be more accurate. Ranting and stomping my feet like one of my small children would do. Demanding sunshine someplace in my day; any place. To open that door and see (What I still will tell everyone; I know was, ‘Just for me’) that there was a Pathway of Sunshine with NO RAIN from the door to the mailbox across the street.

OK!  I am now paying attention; to what my 12 step sponsor had said to me about the fact  that she really did not care how angry I was at God but I needed to pray in order to open those lines of communication again. That is, if I wanted Real Recovery in my life and to give my own children something different, I would have to be willing to DO something different, first.

I balled, like a baby, all the way from my door to my mailbox and I still expected bad news and more bills which I could not pay unless I got a miracle. I had given up on those. I didn’t believe in them anymore; those were for other people, not me! I walked all the way back to the house; shut the door and for the first time in eight months; I opened my heavy drapes in my living room to look out upon the FLIPPIN’ Pouring rain! Mainly, to see if that path really was’ just for me.’

I opened the drapes….I watch my pathway slowly disappear and it starts raining where I just walked; where it was dry and sunny just moments before. My pea brain just could not absorb all this. I was overwhelmed now and my mind is going a 1,000 miles an hour. Finally, I see my very first rainbow just past where I had so very recently walked in a path of sunshine THAT to this day I will swear Creator sent ‘just for me’. Oh yeah, I got a handful of mail but now I think I can,’ at least, open it and do my dread list (another story, another day).
Once that first rainbow disappeared, I start opening my mail. This is  when I noticed they are from a few states ago, from  a few years back even; by looking at the envelopes. Now I am getting worried again…OK, breathe, and breathe, trying to talk myself into opening these envelopes. What I found was all except for one envelope, was a check! A security deposit check on an old utility bill being returned; finally. (Not always easy to locate a military family that moves on demand) I am so shocked to see that collectively these returned deposits will pay my 8 month past due electric bill, and at least the water&sewer and trash too and left me enough to have 20 bucks {back when 20 bucks filled up all gas guzzlers….laughing…told ya, my story…I can laugh if I wanna!} to put in the gas tank when I went back later today to pick up my kids, I could offer it to Cliff, for all the gas he had used to help my ungrateful, angry butt out; today. He was returning at 3 pm to pick me up, to go to pick up all the kids. He had said that maybe, we would see about the car at that time, if it had stopped raining by then. Now, I am in just total amazement and thinking maybe there is something to this prayer thing. Maybe, I just didn’t fit in the places I had looked. Just a thought.

*(for the really curious ones, Cliff did not accept the money, even though he did take me at 3 pm that day to gather all of my children and tried to get the tire off the rim in the rain again. But that will resurface amongst another story. I know all things COME FULL CIRCLE, but that is another story, for another day. I have recently, in September 2013, been told I talk in Circles ….laughing… I HOPE &PRAY, I do reflect well amongst the world, why circles and living in them is so very Important. That it is reflected ‘in a good way’ and that Creator gets all the Credit. That what i have been taught is what is reflected and not me, I am merely an example)

Oh yes, so I bet you’re wondering how any of this ties into Publisher’s Clearing House and the Prize Patrol…the last piece of mail I had received that day was a Publisher’s Clearing House entry in the mailbox too. By now it is 1:30pm or so and I decided right then; if I can find one stamp in this house, I did not dare not mail in my  PCH entry.  Not after receiving a pathway of sunshine, almost on demand, plus exactly how much I needed plus 20 bucks. I needed  to at least be humble enough to try to hunt the house down for a stamp. I did  do the right thing when Cliff gets back and offer it to him for his trouble. Not to mention his patience of listening to my rantings thru the day and trying to be the Positive One in My day, that day. I am searching drawers all over the house that is filled with ‘given to me furniture’ and thinking about what Cliff told me, ” That I could change how I thought and how I feel about anything in my life” and thus change my Perceptions. Still searching for a stamp; but now in a different room and still thinking that maybe I could try prayer. She said I just had to pick something or someone I felt was a power greater than myself even if that was a doorknob or a tree. Rolling all these thoughts around my pea brain and searching….Bingo, I finally found one stamp. I did my first mail in entry under the name I was living by then Veronica McGuire. Today I can tell you it took me on a Search that brought me back to my Irish and Cherokee roots….I practice old native ways today; by chioce and have Creator, God of my own misunderstanding as only I say… BECAUSE I don’t have to figure it out…do not even ask ‘why’ any more. I know my part is the footwork and the footwork to win PCH is you got to enter…For Life it means suit up with some HOPE FIRST then get dressed.
Now I want you to know….I have continued with many of the same struggles as then, only my children are grown, heck even some of my grandchildren have children and are grown. But I choose my perspective each morning when I wake up.

I make one decision only:          Am I going to live and walk in my fears or Live and Walk in my Faith…..?

So far, what I can report is, it truly is a miracle that I am able to be here to even write this story today. Feel Blessed to share it with y’all, anyway.
There is MY story of when I got my 1st rainbow and my first HopeOn and How it all ties into Prize Patrol because what I learned was how to live in the faith each day; that I wake up.

This was my GiveBack to Todd,  Danielle and Dave and the many that work PCH Prize Patrol, much love and respect to All Y’all, just sayin’
Today I have something money can’t buy and know how to ‘live with abandon’ do my part of the footwork (which with PCH, is that you gotta be In It To Win It ) and leave the result to the right dept….today, it is with the Creator, God of my own MIS-understanding… that way; the ends always come out so much sweeter…..somehow. Can’t explain it and no longer even ask Why…I do my part the footwork…so have I left anyone with some HopeOn ? Today, I go by my legal native name : That too is another story for another day….just sayin’ Ah- ho Mitakye Oyasin’ (in all my relations)

Congratulations Publisher’s Clearing House on celebrating 60 yrs and Congrats to everyone on the front lines and behind the lines for 25 years of the Prize Patrol. All Y’all have left ripples of HOPE and done business ‘in a good way’ for a very very long time. That says alot in this day and age.
by one woman walkin’ in faith