a daughter's journey to forgiveness and peace...

Well, the time has come that I am feeling pushed to head in a new direction on my journey with our Father.  Lately, I have been feeling more and more pulled to begin a blog for all the different "trades" that I have been embracing lately.  "Trades" that I feel I was taught by my mother.  Today I want to share with you the journey that God sent me on to heal after losing the mom that I was just beginning to see how to truly appreciate.

2012 was a very difficult and exhausting year for myself and our family.  We spent the first 7 months treating my mother for her terminal Breast Cancer and she lost that battle in July.  During that time we tried to come together as a family and grieve and find closure for so many different things that come with having a very headstrong group of females on one family tree.  I had personally never went through anything like fighting Cancer or any terminal illness.  This particular diagnosis was shocking even to her wonderful doctor.  There were a whirlwind of emotions that swarmed through my body that I just began to feel so overwhelmed and weighed down by.  My days and nights ran together as if it were just a dream.  I didn't have the most ideal relationship with my mother either so the pain that came with trying to come to peace with this was undeniably excruciating on multiple occasions. 

The last weeks of her life though I will cherish forever.  They were the most difficult for myself, but they brought the most healing. Throughout my life I saw my mother as too emotionally driven, difficult to handle, and violent with her words.  In the end of her life, God showed me how He saw her.  He created his daughter, my mom, to be passion driven, a vibrant personality that was never scared to be herself, a friend who knew no boundaries with her love for them, and a mother who in the end truly loved her children to the best of her ability.  My mom taught me so many amazing qualities and talents.  These are things I know God blessed me with in having her be specifically my mom.  I may have had a very hard time seeing the good when she was with us, but as I have healed and grown through this trial I have realized that without her in my life I would not be the woman I have turned into today.  I learned so much from both the hard times and the good times we both went through the past 29 years.  We need to learn to take the good with the bad and focus on the things that really matter.  She brought so much joy to other people that I know her life here served a deep purpose. 

Forgiveness is healing.  Healing brings peace.  Peace brings joy.  Joy brings a lasting impression to your life that you can share with everyone when you choose to find it. 

Have a blast spending eternity with Jesus, Mama.  I will miss you tremendously until the day I get to see you again... 
I love you 2 boo-Aimee Kono 

The beginning of my journey with "blogging"

This picture says it all. This journey I call my life has been nothing short of 'eventful'. Bumps, bruises, tears, laughter, yelling, more laughing, fights, making up, and so on and so on and so on. All of it has been worth every second though.

So hello world, if you read my profile then you know my name is Aimee and I am starting my first 'real' blog. What I will talk about is going to be the interesting thing being at the moment I have no clue what to type now! I have titled this blog (i'm not sure if it is always going to be the same title or not, bare with me/i am learning more every second) 'daily battles leave me fulfilled'. It's funny because I created this profile back in July this last year and never had the patience to really keep it going. I read the title now and I can remember the reasoning then and I am glad that I chose it because I think it will serve as an amazing reminder of how I should choose to look at the that day when it's over.

Well, let's get started. There are many different areas in my life that could be talked about, but today has been an exhausting one. The fact that this blogging thing was the hardest thing ever for me to set up because my dang page kept shutting off and I had to retype my profile 3 times (sorry but the 1st one was the best, yall are getting a lame 3rd version of me) was just the start to this long day. My sister in law is at this very moment SUPPOSED to be packing because she is moving all the way to Australia tomorrow to go to college at the Hillsong United College there. As of right now though she is currently getting 'guilt trips' from all directions (hahaha) for not talking to all of us before she leaves. We love her dearly and it's gonna be crazy not getting to talk to her on the phone or getting to see her this summer! The delays on Skype are not nearly as fulfilling as the real deal (like that audge? we just hung up with eachother). On top of that emotional stuff, I have been chasing little crazy girls all over the place all day and they still are in their beds squirming at this very moment. Oh the joys of being 'mama' gotta love it! :)

I am currently one of the leaders of a ministry called Mothers With Grace with one of my best friends Jessica. She has been a leader for the 3 years it has been around and I am just on year 2. The craziness that goes in to constructing one meeting has been hard to get used to, but I think we have learned it pretty well. We have learned so much from eachother and the mamas that come and there are days when you just feel like you want to walk away because it's so hard to be a 'leader'. It's funny though, because everytime we get to that point God has intervened and showed us just exactly why we are still there. It has been nothing short of amazing.

Being a co-leader is just one thing in my life I have to focus on daily on top of wife and mom. Another huge thing that has changed in my life the last year is my health. March of last year I noticed a hard bump on my leg that hurt like a small bruise. Then a month later another one popped up. Then came another, until there were in between 18-21 depending on the day. The were these painful benign tumors that no one could explain why I was getting them. We tried seeing a doctor here, but when my only option was stripping my veins of all of them we went the homeopathic route. July I had to start a long deep detoxing diet. Boy, I had no clue how hard that would be or how long it would take or how sick I was about to find out I really was. I detoxed till the end of December and have been tumor free since August! Now I am trying to continue that same diet minus the detox pills with herbal supplements added and I am feeling great. Do I cheat on my diet??? Um. Yes. But that's another blog.

Tomorrow will be Day 2 of the new blogging thing. What will it bring us? I have no clue, hopefully something will come to me. I am going to go volunteer up at the church for childcare in the morning, because apparently I can not get enough of my own 3 kids that I am going to take on even more! hahaha... So off to bed because 7 am comes early with rushing Karyss onto the bus and feeding all these lil mouths. Goodnight to all and I will talk to you all soon and thanks for reading!