MEET SUSAN

Life always has challenges, questions, walls, hills to climb over.

I am blessed to have been placed into a family that has five known generations of Christian believers who have built a strong foundation under me.  Their wisdom and guidance have helped me make wise decisions and because of those teachings, I have become the woman I was meant to be.

I was born into a coal mining family in West Virginia, but was given up for adoption at the age of 3 when my biological family realized they did not have the ability to care for children.  At that time, I was adopted by a man and wife in Delaware and was raised by them.  I had the wonderful opportunity to be raised behind television cameras when my father became the director/ producer of the Christian Broadcasting Network.  Over  the years I did homework behind the TV cameras while watching entertainers such as Pat Boone, Dale Evans, Corrie ten Boom and many others.

When I grew up, I married a Christian naval member and when we followed his dream of moving to Colorado, I began an exciting journey.  We moved to a town in northern Colorado called Loveland after studying a map.  That is where I learned my first lesson from the butterflies.  We lived in the migratory path of Monarch butterflies and when I saw them place cocoons on my outside apartment walls, I felt obligated to help them hatch out.  After watching them hatch and die, I discovered that the process of birthing is something they had to do on their own without my help.

When I became a widow, I met my first large collection of challenges.  I no longer had a partner to figure out all of the answers to all of the life problems. The difficulties had to be met and figured out on my own.  I had no income except for my Social Security so all my searches had to be the bottom of the barrel as far as an apartment and associated costs.

When I found an apartment I could afford, I had nothing with me but two suitcases full of all of my clothes and life’s goods.  No furniture, no cooking materials, nothing.  I ate from bags of snack foods, I slept on the floor on piles of clothing.  When every payday went by, I purchased the things I needed, one step at a time,

As each opportunity came up, I added things to my room, beginning with a bed, pillow and blanket.  I am letting you see that when someone begins again, it starts with the absolute bare beginning. But beginning again IS possible if one is patient.  I did not have a lot of money, but I had time and I found all the sources that would help me to create a place to live.

I found the businesses that would give me the things I needed to create a comfortable place to live and I used my imagination to have a space where I could create a comfortable place.   I refused to entertain discouragement, I rejected negative thoughts.  I was finally able to sleep on a bed, cook small meals and gain information in order to decide which steps to take next.  If one will be content to start at the bottom, always maintaining  a good attitude, one can do anything.

You will never make a difference in the world by being like everyone else!