Learning To Splash! Conquering The Life You Have Been Given

By Monica Sturdivant Ray

Learning To Splash: Conquering the Life You Have Been Given takes you on an intimate, decades long journey of one woman’s battle with watching her only child confront debilitating, chronic illness, while dealing with feelings of inadequacy, guilt, depression, and helplessness.Monica Ray unabashedly opens her turbulent life to share the journey and lessons she’s learned in overcoming her personal turmoil. Based upon the demonstration of God’s providence, instead of staying consumed by personal storms, Monica shares how she learned to “splash,” or fully enjoy and embrace her unique life – despite losing her faith and way, time and time again. Written with hauntingly, realistic detail, this true story will encourage and challenge you to conquer your unique set of circumstances, whether they be spiritual, physical, situational or emotional. Become inspired by realistic, practical tools and genuine, heartfelt tidbits specially designed for you.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Monica Sturdivant Ray
• Release date: Nov 8, 2019
• ISBN: 9780578568669

Monica Sturdivant Ray

Committed to the Lord’s purpose, Monica Ray is a passionate advocate for “the rest of us” and those traveling the path toward their best life. She has inspired thousands of teens, young people and adult audiences through classes, mentoring activities, retreats and workshops in several states. Pointing the way toward a better life, starting with the heart and mind, she has been published by "Essence Magazine" and had developed troves of study/support guides covering a large swarth of topics. With extensive leadership experience, Monica carved out a career in higher education administration and has taught at both the community college and university level. Destined to be an advocate for ordinary people facing extraordinary circumstances, Monica earned a BS degree in Consumer Affairs from Murray State University and an MBA from the University of Memphis. She is the founder of thebestyou.site, a professional development company which focuses on life-enhancing themes: reflective metamorphosis; life-long encouragement – starting with our inside; embracing self-worth, building communities, everywhere – not just where we happen to live; and goal setting throughout life. She is also the exuberant author of one book, so far: "Learning to Splash: Conquering The Life You Have Been Given." Happily married 36 years to her high school sweetheart, Lee, they are blessed with one amazing, adult child. Monica believes everyone she meets teaches her something and that genuine, hard conversations help us move forward. She enjoys nature (especially the sky), her great extended family, writing, wonderful conversation, travel, new experiences and most anything chocolate.

Book preview

LEARNING TO SPLASH!

Conquering the Life

You Have Been Given

by

Monica Sturdivant Ray

©2019 Monica Sturdivant Ray. All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Smashwords Edition

Table of Contents

Introduction: Wanna Say, Gotta Say

Section I: Ferocious, Fierce

Chapter 1: The First F-5 Tornado

Chapter 2: Strapped Into a Slow Moving Hurricane

Chapter 3: The Broken Bond – Now My Moma Is Stricken

Chapter 4: Bittersweet

Section II: The Storms Won

Chapter 5: Moma, She Made It

Chapter 6: No Yellow Brick Road

Chapter 7: Aroshu?

Section III: Learning to Splash

Chapter 8: Baby, You Worked Too Hard, So Live!

Chapter 9: How God Can Use You

Chapter 10: Love Letters - Upon Mighty Shoulders

Chapter 11: Don’t Trip Over Tomorrow Looking Back to Yesterday

About The Author

Introduction

Wanna Say, Gotta Say

"… My grace is sufficient for you, for my power

is made perfect in weakness."

2 Corinthians 12:9

Storms Are Incredibly Personal

Has your life, in just one instant, changed from a typical, ordinary day to a terrible nightmare you could never have imagined, never to return to what came before?

Do your individual personal storms keep brewing, just off in the distance, becoming more turbulent, larger every day while you do your very best to not keep glancing at them, hoping they don’t consume you in their path?

Is your personal storm the defeat you are forced to live with due to self-loathing, dysfunctional personal relationships while trying to keep all the balls in the air for everyone else? What about problems with your children, grandchildren, other young people? What about the person you want to be with - has that relationship brought you disappointment, regret, anger, lack of support? Is drama all around you with no relief in sight? Is your personal storm due to lack of opportunity, one step forward – five steps back, time after time?

What about financial woes which won’t let you pass simple survival? Did your personal storm attack you when trauma, neglect, different forms of unfairness found out where you live?

Has your life been taken over by incredible challenges, forcing you to walk through rivers of encounters, conquering one just in time to be overwhelmed by another? Have you been paralyzed by this moment and made afraid of the next?

Is your personal storm facing your life sentence: to LIVE with disaster, realizing nothing will change what you are going through? Are your storms – individual and personal - like being locked outside on a frigid January day - feeling every sensation all over at once?

Do you feel like you are living someone else’s life because this could not possibly be your own?

Is your storm, like mine, medical, mental, deadly, financial: having to helplessly watch both your sweet baby and your precious mother from hospital intensive care units AT THE SAME TIME, unable to help either of them?

Was your storm, like mine, struggling to survive decades of medical challenges, treatment across the country, going thousands of miles, the experience now approaching two million dollars, spending thousands of dollars of your own money, often receiving no firm answers? Was your storm like mine, dealing with my own stress-induced medical complications?

Are your storms a combination of many nefarious things - dealing with many issues - many excruciating, all exhausting?

How would you respond if I shared that even with our most heart-wrenching hurts - there is hope - not an absence of suffering; I don’t want to mislead you, but hope, especially when all you can see is the debris from hurricane-force winds or funnel clouds barreling toward you. That hope will enable you to find elation, to splash, to live far beyond your circumstances - triumphant, even able to improve other people’s lives in the process.

Learning To Splash: Conquering The Life You Have Been Given is divided into three sections. In Section I, Ferocious, Fierce, an unexpected storm ravishes my life and consumes it. While smack dab in the middle of this unexpected storm, another terrifying storm brewed over the horizon, and there was nothing to do but deal with the storm elements. Despite a brief, calm, foreboding eye-of the storm, Section II, The Storms Won, details how torrential downpours completely turned my world upside down, destroying any semblance of normal I thought I had attained. Thankfully, without torrential storms, there could be no splashing. Drenching wet, but still standing, Section III, Learning to Splash, is the final triumphant section, celebrating lessons learned only BECAUSE of my divine tempests.

Most chapters end with three reflective sections intended to provide proverbial umbrellas for your storms: Meeting You Where You Are, Providence Provided, and Learning to Splash: Practical Tools to Hold Your Hand. I often start with Meeting You Where You Are because having an emotional anchor, or support, to climb the obstacle-filled ladder of life-dissolving circumstances gave me an immeasurable sense of being understood.  I realize more than ever that many of you have been shoved into the same space. These anchors helped me survive many dreadful moments. I pray it does the same for you. Providence Provided emphasizes how God’s providence always guided me (and us), no matter if I was aware of it or not, whereas, Learning to Splash: Practical Tools to Hold Your Hand gives real suggestions on how to weather any storm you may be facing.

Learning to Splash underpins your hope with a warrior’s instinct when storms rip your future right out of your arms. Hope lets you look beyond the putrid ashes that are left to become the amazing person you were intended to be. Learning to Splash accepts the reality that you are wounded and afraid, but more importantly, you can find the sustaining peace and amazing courage to live a vibrant, unconquerable life.

Section I: Ferocious, Fierce

Chapter 1

The First F-5 Tornado

I’ll be right back. The clinic can work me in now, but I’ll be back, I mentioned to a coworker as I grabbed my coat and purse, scurrying out the office door. I’d be back in a couple of hours max, I thought as I headed to my OB/GYN’S office. I don’t think I even logged off my desktop.

Lying on the exam table, naked from the waist down, I could not take in the doctor’s words. We are admitting you to the hospital, he said in a practiced, calm voice I did not trust. Your cervix is opening; the amniotic sac is falling through.

His words fell flat, like unsteady building blocks falling over, not piercing my understanding. He is talking to someone else, I thought. He can’t be speaking to me. This was my first pregnancy. I am not having labor, just some extra wetness, so how could the baby be coming?

The cold paper sheet covering me immediately felt colder, thinner, almost icy. I felt exposed, vulnerable, not just like any woman during a GYN exam with her feet in the stirrups, but also as if my shortcomings of even being in this situation were exposed to the world. Exposed internally and externally.

You won’t be able to drive yourself to the hospital. Do you have someone who can take you? the doctor said, interrupting my thoughts. I didn’t panic at first because the water coming out of my eyes was not real tears. This was not real. You can’t be serious!

As soon as he could get there, my sweet husband, Lee, accompanied me to a hospital labor and delivery room, as nurses whizzed around me, starting IV’s and hooking me to monitors. Surfactant, a miracle drug to mature the baby’s lungs since she may have needed to be delivered prematurely, was started. The medical personnel patiently explained, If it comes now, it has a 15% chance of survival. We will have the neonatologist come talk with you.

It? It! What? Wait! A crack head can have a full-term baby, but you tell me this? Have you lost your freaking mind, referring to my baby as an it!

I had tried to do everything right, trying to be so careful; I didn’t even perm my hair fearing the chemicals could penetrate my scalp and somehow hurt the baby!

You can have other children, one doctor suggested, trying to offer comfort, but failing miserably.

No! Lee and I pleaded almost in unison. We don’t care what you have to do. Save this one. Perhaps our vehement reaction triggered something within the doctor, since Lee remembered the doctor’s unusual reaction: tears in his eyes.

-----------------------------------

Babies did not mean gender reveal parties and baby showers to me. I was raised by a single mom who knew what not being prepared for children could do to my life. In fact, she often warned me how the trajectory of becoming a mother would alter my path.

I did not know if I would ever want children and shared my feelings with Lee while we were dating. I felt I owed the truth to him so he could decide whether or not I was the one he wanted to share his life with. I proudly had other plans…college! Travel! The freedom to do what I wanted when I wanted! Growing up, poverty did not allow me access to some things many folks take for granted --- a car in