"Michelle's Great Escape"
Sitting here looking through pictures, trying to put them into words, simply in awe that I really did that…."Michelle's Great Escape"...
Something for me. Something I have wanted to do for so long. Money spent to heal and care for me for once instead of eternally saved for eternal caregiving provision and expenses........
For the 1st time in two decades, I went back home, to the place I call home, Barnegat Light, NJ. The place where I spent so many childhood summers. The place of memories. The place of family. The place of simpler times.
The above picture is one of the first pictures I took once finally back home... I smile at God in that through the lens of my sunglasses, you can see me holding a Seashell. This trip has made me want to rewrite a childhood short story I wrote, one that my teacher at the time read in front of the whole class and who encouraged me to submit it to a publisher. It was called, "Seashells in the Sand" - a story of my childhood in Barnegat Light with my Grandpa.
This story - is a sequel of sorts.
"What the Tide Brought In" -- a story of healing & HOPEISM.This trip was a God thing from the beginning. My total shutdown of sorts in realizing that I had to get away for a while or run away forever! I was that run down. Done being a wife, mother, caregiver. Sick of cooking, cleaning, caring. God & my Grandfishy were the threads keeping my frazzled self from totally falling apart! I'm not sure there was even a "me" at that point. I felt inhuman. A robot simply doing the motions of life, not actually a human living life. I lost my sense of, "What's the Point?" as far as my purpose was concerned. Not in a suicidal way, but in a way that made my HOPEISM look like the embers and last remnants of smoke fading away after a candle was blown out.
No, I don't get depressed, but I do get run down. I was actually feeling more run over!
Yes, I do believe in creating a life you don't need a vacation from. I have such a life. For the most part!
I didn't need to go "find myself" - I am a child of God secure in who I am and in my place in this world.
It wasn't any of that at all...
It was the relentless of "Life with Autism, Seizures, & a side of PANDAS".
It was the cruelty of having quarantined that already enprisoned life from a cell block relatively free to move around as allowed, to the solitary confinement of no Day Program and thus no ability to escape my 4 walls for 8 plus months.
That was the straw that broke the fish's back.
Once solitary confinement was over - it took far too long for my mind, body, & soul to heal from that cruelty...
So one day I simply decided to do it. "Michelle's Great Escape".
In my daily life of predictable, planned, & routine; I did something impulsively, spontaneously, & just a wee bit financially irresponsibly.
I mean, just the scandal of doing something for myself, spending a chunk of money on myself, when I have lifelong expenses in caring for my son, for my life - and his!
But oh, sitting here still basking in the glow of revival, renewal, & rejuvenation -- it was worth every penny I didn't have to spend! I knew I needed the escape, but I didn't know just how much until I got there.
I think God must have known I needed it because his provision was written all over it.
From the very nudge that made me finally decide to do it - in a fellow Facebook church friend sharing about her "Great Escape" that her family/friends coordinated for her... She chronicled each day and the absolute thankfulness and joy of such an escape to breathe, recenter, & refocus on God.
Seeing how much good it did for her soul - made me want that for mine!
I decided to go for it.
I knew I wanted to go back home to "Old Barney".
The Lighthouse in Barnegat Light, New Jersey.
The place I called home for so many summers of my childhood.
So I searched rental houses there. I think it was sometime April when I decided this, and, forgetaboutit.... Everything in the area I wanted to stay was rented already for the summer. Nothing popped up where I wanted to stay, at the end of Barnegat Light, - where the Bay meets the Ocean, divided by the South Jetty in it's various changing lengths and evolving forms over the years that I have walked up and down since, well, I could walk. I even looked for hotels, nothing.
Then on the last scroll, a rental house popped up where there were none. That the house would have exactly one week open in the entire summer, was simply a miracle to me. That the house was secluded on the beach, no houses in view for a full 180 degree panoramic view, well, a double-miracle. 
The house was nothing but nature, where you walked through nature to get to the beach. I saw a frog, a turtle, birds, and a rabbit down each walk to the ocean.
That the house was on 8th street - the very 8th street where my Grandpa's shorehouse resides that he built for our summers there, well, it was a triple miracle. As I shared on a FB post -- the number 7 may be Biblical - but for me - for this summer - the number 8 was magical. For the second week of my two week "Michelle's Great Escape" - my Uncle Joe has a shorehouse on - you guessed it - 8th street. As God (and my Grandpa in heaven) would have it - my Uncle's house wasn't rented for that next week! Where I was happy to have a one week escape - I was blessed by two weeks of escape! Scandalous, I tell you. Ocean-side one week where I watched the sun rise from the jetty - Bay-side the next week where I watched the sun set from the docks! It was the best of both worlds and I am so very thankful how that worked out.
The house I rented was even the same color as my Grandpa's Shorehouse we stayed at all those summers.
That I could walk a few yards down the path to the beach and see my beloved "Old Barney" Lighthouse - well - a quadruple miracle. Everything I wanted, in one location.
I sat at my computer crying - thanking God & my long-gone Grandpa for having my back in that treasure found!
I went for healing, for renewed HOPEISM.And I found it.In this story - and in the stories I will continue to tell through very specific pictures that were my "Lighthouse" moments with God...
And oh, did I have "Lighthouse Moments with God" on this trip...
Each its own story that I will share separately on my blog, "Where HOPEISM Blooms".
I found it in the instant bond to that house. The absolute joy of walking back to that house after each beach walk and thinking "that's my house!" in just how perfect it was for me, in just how I couldn't believe I actually did it, something exclusively, gloriously, unashamedly, for me!
Caregivers to the degree that I am one - are drained beyond drained. There isn't a service support system out there to help consistently ease our financial, emotional, mental, & physical burden. There just isn't. So we get drained. Beyond drained. So drained we are parched. If there was a level beyond parched, that would be how drained I felt for far too long.
I have been very good in recognizing that need in my husband - encouraging him to go, be, do - in visiting his family - in going trail-blazing on bikes with his brother - in going to Cali to visit our "other" son... I have encouraged him to go on bike rides to Galveston for the day... Make no mistake, I have visited my mom in Missouri, I have gone to Cali to see our son... but I've never done what I have longed to do -- go back home to my beloved Barnegat Light.
I'm not sure why I find such healing in that place.
Perhaps it's because before I even knew God, I knew that the Lighthouse stood for something significant. It was a beacon. A symbol of strength, endurance, guidance. Where no matter where a fisherman found himself lost at sea, (or at least the inlet), "Old Barney" would guide them safely between the jagged jetty's back home. Going back was the completion of a circle of sorts, for I now know God to be my Lighthouse - the "when I was lost, I have been found". God is my strong tower. My beacon. My guiding light.
But it was sure nice to actually be able to walk up to the Lighthouse and touch it...
Feel its strength.
Be back home.
And back home is where I longed to be, if just for a little while.
I very much booked that trip for solitude.
To just get to be me, not have to do or care for anyone but me.
But I couldn't do that.
I couldn't have a shore house and not fill it with family.
It's what Grandpa would have wanted. He built his shore house for family. For a place to all escape the responsibility of life and be together.....
Laughing, Loving, Living.
As a place for whoever needed it - to heal from the hurts of the world, broken relationships, lost loved ones.
So when the airline ticket was bought, the shorehouse booked, I called my Uncle George and said, "We're going to the Shore!"
I'm not sure who was more exited at the thought of it -- him ---
or me!
On "Michelle's Great Escape" what did the tide bring in?
Many things that I will share on my "Where HOPEISM Blooms" blog!
But for this story --
It brought in family.
It brought in healing.
And most of all, it brought in renewed, rekindled, & rejuvenated - HOPEISM!
I found healing & HOPEISM in the laughter of family that filled that house. Family I haven't seen in years, family that I have seen, but not all together at the shore, in years upon years.
The tide brought in the #Jerseygirls for our first of many more Barnegat-Light beach house reunions to come!
I will forever have a smile on my face when I think of how I went there for me, but found such joy in watching them! I invited my Uncle, his son, my Aunt, my mom, and a few other relatives who didn't want to go or who couldn't go. For a few days, my brother and his daughter flew in for a surprise to my mother and joined us!
With so many people it's easy to ask, "Where did everyone sleep!?"
My Uncle had the perfect time-tested answer to that --- "It's the Shore - you sleep wherever!"
You make room for any who want to come!
Oh, the joy of seeing the joy in my Uncle's eyes at having his sisters there with him! It had been 20 years since I have been back there - and I'm not even sure how many years it's been since my Uncle and his sisters were all together.
Having a Shorehouse full of family -- well -- Grandpa was surely smiling from heaven watching that.
The proverbial tide has taken many things in my life since my "Life with Autism, Seizures, & a side of PANDAS" -- but as this trip reminded me -- it has brought in so much more than it has taken. I am forever Thankful, Grateful, & Blessed to have had this magical time to be reminded of that.
In timing that only God could provide, while this time away was many things for me, it was above all the "Summer of Lost & Found" for me. Last year or so, I had pre-ordered the next book in the "Beach House" series I had been reading. The book chronicled my life it seems - in the setting, the titles, the characters., the storyline... Ahhh, I've never connected more to a book than that series! This book arrived a mere few days before my trip!
Where life was the focus - the demands of caregiving - of trying to be all, do all, and feeling like I was accomplishing nothing at all -- I was the blur in the background. This time away has allowed all that other stuff to fade away, if only for a few short weeks, so that I could focus on, well, as selfish as that sounds, --- me!
To be back in my childhood home as an adult has been such a gift. I walked the streets I walked as a child - but with a new perspective. A new appreciation, a new awe! I took pictures of all the places that have stood the test of time and that have weathered many storms, enduring, persevering. Those places ministered to me in my own life of weathering storms, enduring, persevering. Again those stories will all be shared on my "Where HOPEISM Blooms" blog hopefully in the days to come.
I had a bucket list of things to do and see, and I saw them all, did them all.
The one or two things that I didn't get to check off - as the pact we all made while there - Team Barnegat will be back next year to do those things -- and more! 
I'm just in awe too - that what the tide was able to bring in - thanks to a village of help - was my husband. Todd's parents, Team Guppy 1.0 - allowed Todd & I - Team Guppy 2.0 - to have one week out of the two weeks I was there - together. Because of them, the meal ministry of my church, Brandon's Day Program, and a caregiver extraordinaire in Jayson --- Todd was able to come experience my childhood home, my childhood family - this time of HOPEISM, with me. What an amazing time for us both to be together, footloose & fancyfree. To be Todd. Michelle. Married.
From the seashells in the sand collected and all that the tide brought in - to the multitude of memories with family made in between - lies a thankfulness I'll not soon forget or ever take for granted!
My tank is full.
In fact - as God has promised time and time again with each sunrise, sunset, & perpetual waves that crash upon the shore - it is exceedingly, abundantly, - overflowing.
God's Grace, Mercy, Faith, Love, & HOPEISM will always shine through the storms of life.
And "Old Barney will shine through as well.....
That reminder from my time in Barnegat Light, NJ -- is the very best of the best of what the tide brought in...
God's enduring promise to never leave us or forsake us.
His "old hallelujah with a new melody".
Sitting here looking through pictures, trying to put them into words, simply in awe that I really did that….
"Michelle's Great Escape"...
Something for me. Something I have wanted to do for so long. Money spent to heal and care for me for once instead of eternally saved for eternal caregiving provision and expenses........
For the 1st time in two decades, I went back home, to the place I call home, Barnegat Light, NJ. The place where I spent so many childhood summers. The place of memories. The place of family. The place of simpler times.
The above picture is one of the first pictures I took once finally back home... I smile at God in that through the lens of my sunglasses, you can see me holding a Seashell. This trip has made me want to rewrite a childhood short story I wrote, one that my teacher at the time read in front of the whole class and who encouraged me to submit it to a publisher. It was called, "Seashells in the Sand" - a story of my childhood in Barnegat Light with my Grandpa.
This story - is a sequel of sorts. "What the Tide Brought In" -- a story of healing & HOPEISM.
This story - is a sequel of sorts. "What the Tide Brought In" -- a story of healing & HOPEISM.
This trip was a God thing from the beginning.
My total shutdown of sorts in realizing that I had to get away for a while or run away forever! I was that run down. Done being a wife, mother, caregiver. Sick of cooking, cleaning, caring. God & my Grandfishy were the threads keeping my frazzled self from totally falling apart! I'm not sure there was even a "me" at that point. I felt inhuman. A robot simply doing the motions of life, not actually a human living life. I lost my sense of, "What's the Point?" as far as my purpose was concerned. Not in a suicidal way, but in a way that made my HOPEISM look like the embers and last remnants of smoke fading away after a candle was blown out.
No, I don't get depressed, but I do get run down. I was actually feeling more run over!
Yes, I do believe in creating a life you don't need a vacation from. I have such a life. For the most part!
I didn't need to go "find myself" - I am a child of God secure in who I am and in my place in this world.
It wasn't any of that at all...
It was the relentless of "Life with Autism, Seizures, & a side of PANDAS".
It was the cruelty of having quarantined that already enprisoned life from a cell block relatively free to move around as allowed, to the solitary confinement of no Day Program and thus no ability to escape my 4 walls for 8 plus months.
That was the straw that broke the fish's back.
Once solitary confinement was over - it took far too long for my mind, body, & soul to heal from that cruelty...
So one day I simply decided to do it.
"Michelle's Great Escape".
In my daily life of predictable, planned, & routine; I did something impulsively, spontaneously, & just a wee bit financially irresponsibly.
I mean, just the scandal of doing something for myself, spending a chunk of money on myself, when I have lifelong expenses in caring for my son, for my life - and his!
But oh, sitting here still basking in the glow of revival, renewal, & rejuvenation -- it was worth every penny I didn't have to spend! I knew I needed the escape, but I didn't know just how much until I got there.
I think God must have known I needed it because his provision was written all over it.
From the very nudge that made me finally decide to do it - in a fellow Facebook church friend sharing about her "Great Escape" that her family/friends coordinated for her... She chronicled each day and the absolute thankfulness and joy of such an escape to breathe, recenter, & refocus on God.
Seeing how much good it did for her soul - made me want that for mine!
I decided to go for it.
I knew I wanted to go back home to "Old Barney".
The Lighthouse in Barnegat Light, New Jersey.
The place I called home for so many summers of my childhood.
So I searched rental houses there. I think it was sometime April when I decided this, and, forgetaboutit.... Everything in the area I wanted to stay was rented already for the summer. Nothing popped up where I wanted to stay, at the end of Barnegat Light, - where the Bay meets the Ocean, divided by the South Jetty in it's various changing lengths and evolving forms over the years that I have walked up and down since, well, I could walk. I even looked for hotels, nothing.
Then on the last scroll, a rental house popped up where there were none. That the house would have exactly one week open in the entire summer, was simply a miracle to me. That the house was secluded on the beach, no houses in view for a full 180 degree panoramic view, well, a double-miracle.
The house was nothing but nature, where you walked through nature to get to the beach. I saw a frog, a turtle, birds, and a rabbit down each walk to the ocean.
That the house was on 8th street - the very 8th street where my Grandpa's shorehouse resides that he built for our summers there, well, it was a triple miracle. As I shared on a FB post -- the number 7 may be Biblical - but for me - for this summer - the number 8 was magical. For the second week of my two week "Michelle's Great Escape" - my Uncle Joe has a shorehouse on - you guessed it - 8th street. As God (and my Grandpa in heaven) would have it - my Uncle's house wasn't rented for that next week! Where I was happy to have a one week escape - I was blessed by two weeks of escape! Scandalous, I tell you. Ocean-side one week where I watched the sun rise from the jetty - Bay-side the next week where I watched the sun set from the docks! It was the best of both worlds and I am so very thankful how that worked out.
The house I rented was even the same color as my Grandpa's Shorehouse we stayed at all those summers.
That I could walk a few yards down the path to the beach and see my beloved "Old Barney" Lighthouse - well - a quadruple miracle. Everything I wanted, in one location.
I sat at my computer crying - thanking God & my long-gone Grandpa for having my back in that treasure found!
I went for healing, for renewed HOPEISM.
And I found it.
In this story - and in the stories I will continue to tell through very specific pictures that were my "Lighthouse" moments with God...
And oh, did I have "Lighthouse Moments with God" on this trip...
Each its own story that I will share separately on my blog, "Where HOPEISM Blooms".
I found it in the instant bond to that house. The absolute joy of walking back to that house after each beach walk and thinking "that's my house!" in just how perfect it was for me, in just how I couldn't believe I actually did it, something exclusively, gloriously, unashamedly, for me!
Caregivers to the degree that I am one - are drained beyond drained. There isn't a service support system out there to help consistently ease our financial, emotional, mental, & physical burden. There just isn't. So we get drained. Beyond drained. So drained we are parched. If there was a level beyond parched, that would be how drained I felt for far too long.
I have been very good in recognizing that need in my husband - encouraging him to go, be, do - in visiting his family - in going trail-blazing on bikes with his brother - in going to Cali to visit our "other" son... I have encouraged him to go on bike rides to Galveston for the day... Make no mistake, I have visited my mom in Missouri, I have gone to Cali to see our son... but I've never done what I have longed to do -- go back home to my beloved Barnegat Light.
I'm not sure why I find such healing in that place.
Perhaps it's because before I even knew God, I knew that the Lighthouse stood for something significant. It was a beacon. A symbol of strength, endurance, guidance. Where no matter where a fisherman found himself lost at sea, (or at least the inlet), "Old Barney" would guide them safely between the jagged jetty's back home. Going back was the completion of a circle of sorts, for I now know God to be my Lighthouse - the "when I was lost, I have been found". God is my strong tower. My beacon. My guiding light.
But it was sure nice to actually be able to walk up to the Lighthouse and touch it...
Feel its strength.
Be back home.
And back home is where I longed to be, if just for a little while.
I very much booked that trip for solitude.
To just get to be me, not have to do or care for anyone but me.
But I couldn't do that.
I couldn't have a shore house and not fill it with family.
It's what Grandpa would have wanted. He built his shore house for family. For a place to all escape the responsibility of life and be together.....
Laughing, Loving, Living.
As a place for whoever needed it - to heal from the hurts of the world, broken relationships, lost loved ones.
So when the airline ticket was bought, the shorehouse booked, I called my Uncle George and said, "We're going to the Shore!"
I'm not sure who was more exited at the thought of it -- him ---
or me!
On "Michelle's Great Escape" what did the tide bring in?
Many things that I will share on my "Where HOPEISM Blooms" blog!
But for this story --
It brought in family.
It brought in healing.
And most of all, it brought in renewed, rekindled, & rejuvenated - HOPEISM!
I found healing & HOPEISM in the laughter of family that filled that house. Family I haven't seen in years, family that I have seen, but not all together at the shore, in years upon years.
I will forever have a smile on my face when I think of how I went there for me, but found such joy in watching them! I invited my Uncle, his son, my Aunt, my mom, and a few other relatives who didn't want to go or who couldn't go. For a few days, my brother and his daughter flew in for a surprise to my mother and joined us!
With so many people it's easy to ask, "Where did everyone sleep!?"
My Uncle had the perfect time-tested answer to that --- "It's the Shore - you sleep wherever!"
You make room for any who want to come!
Oh, the joy of seeing the joy in my Uncle's eyes at having his sisters there with him! It had been 20 years since I have been back there - and I'm not even sure how many years it's been since my Uncle and his sisters were all together.
Having a Shorehouse full of family -- well -- Grandpa was surely smiling from heaven watching that.
The proverbial tide has taken many things in my life since my "Life with Autism, Seizures, & a side of PANDAS" -- but as this trip reminded me -- it has brought in so much more than it has taken. I am forever Thankful, Grateful, & Blessed to have had this magical time to be reminded of that.
In timing that only God could provide, while this time away was many things for me, it was above all the "Summer of Lost & Found" for me. Last year or so, I had pre-ordered the next book in the "Beach House" series I had been reading. The book chronicled my life it seems - in the setting, the titles, the characters., the storyline... Ahhh, I've never connected more to a book than that series! This book arrived a mere few days before my trip!
Where life was the focus - the demands of caregiving - of trying to be all, do all, and feeling like I was accomplishing nothing at all -- I was the blur in the background. This time away has allowed all that other stuff to fade away, if only for a few short weeks, so that I could focus on, well, as selfish as that sounds, --- me!
I'm just in awe too - that what the tide was able to bring in - thanks to a village of help - was my husband. Todd's parents, Team Guppy 1.0 - allowed Todd & I - Team Guppy 2.0 - to have one week out of the two weeks I was there - together. Because of them, the meal ministry of my church, Brandon's Day Program, and a caregiver extraordinaire in Jayson --- Todd was able to come experience my childhood home, my childhood family - this time of HOPEISM, with me. What an amazing time for us both to be together, footloose & fancyfree. To be Todd. Michelle. Married.
From the seashells in the sand collected and all that the tide brought in - to the multitude of memories with family made in between - lies a thankfulness I'll not soon forget or ever take for granted! My tank is full. In fact - as God has promised time and time again with each sunrise, sunset, & perpetual waves that crash upon the shore - it is exceedingly, abundantly, - overflowing.
God's Grace, Mercy, Faith, Love, & HOPEISM will always shine through the storms of life.
That reminder from my time in Barnegat Light, NJ -- is the very best of the best of what the tide brought in...
God's enduring promise to never leave us or forsake us.
His "old hallelujah with a new melody".
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