Life Happens: Enjoy the Ride

By Tonya Strahan

Life Happens-Enjoy the ride. Life Happens is full of impactful moments that shaped the life of one woman. She has experienced the loss of family, friends, and her own childhood memories. She will take you on a journey through her life experiences and share what she learned along the way. She shares her greatest joys and her struggles through her most traumatic experiences. There were times she felt God was over estimating how much she could handle, but she never lost her faith. She did stray away from God; there were times she even ran away, but deep down she always felt his presence in her life. You will get to know Tonya Strahan as you enjoy the ride-the ride she calls Life. She lived a life that was normal to her, but as she grew, she realized that life could be better. She learned that although struggles may come her way, how she reacted to it was the key to happiness. She has lived, experienced, and overcame with faith, hope, and love. She hopes her reflections, throughout her life, inspire and encourage you to press on and fight the good fight with faith and more self-love. Being misunderstood drove her to try harder, to be better for those around her until she realized it's not about them. It's not about how others perceive you or what they think about you. They can think you're a purple polka-dotted dinosaur, but it doesn't make you a purple polka-dotted dinosaur. She had to learn that the hard way, but in the end, she learned to love others where they are, but most importantly, to love herself. That is the key to learning how to enjoy the ride. For more information please visit: www.tonyastrahan.com

• Language: English
• Publisher: Covenant Books, Inc.
• Release date: Dec 11, 2019
• ISBN: 9781645597667

Book preview

This is for you.

Encouragement

I’m sharing my life with you all to encourage you to never give up. No matter where you grew up or what trials you’ve experienced throughout your life, there is hope. You are not alone. God’s grace will see you through to the other side, the side to a better you. You are a diamond in the rough being polished through the ups and downs you face in this life.

Why am I writing the stories that I call life? I want to make a difference. I want to help you. Yes, you, if you are reading this, you are why I wrote my joys and pains, to help you through whatever valley you may be in or mountain you may be standing on.

I’ve shared stories of my life with others, trying to encourage them through trials in their own lives. Each one of them asked, Why haven’t you written a book? This happened to me for years, but I thought it would be too sad. I’ve had a lot of struggles in my life. I’ve always come out on top and better for it, but it hasn’t been easy. I didn’t want people to feel sorry for me, but encouraged. More and more people continued to come to me from all directions, explaining that my stories would help others to never give up. I decided to start writing after an event that happened during a vacation. This vacation was going to be awesome; we had counted down for 163 days. We were going to celebrate what would have been my mother’s eightieth birthday. This would be my second year without her. The second day at sea was her birthday, and it started out great; we got up to watch the sunrise as we walked the track, but after breakfast, it seemed that everyone forgot about me and no one understood. No one could understand. When I returned to work the following Monday, they had packed my office and let me go, with no warning and no reason. As crazy as it sounds, this is exactly what I needed; this gave me the time I needed to start writing, so I did. Over the next few pages, I hope my life experiences help you smile through the hard times and become a stronger and better you in spite of the valleys you may have to travel. My hope is that these stories help you to realize you are never alone.

I dedicate this book to you and all the people that are misunderstood. The people that try so hard but life continues to kick them. The ones that feel like there is always something happening that is out of their control. The people who have been judged when others haven’t taken the time to get to know them or the daily struggles they face.

To you, the misfits: Always remember, no one has walked in your shoes. They don’t know the things that happen in your life that motivate you to make the choices you make. These are words I live by. I’ve never walked in your shoes, so who am I to judge the decisions you make? I don’t know what happened in your life to motivate you to make those choices.

Your life and choices are yours and yours alone. No one, I repeat, no one has the right to judge you. Keep your head up and look toward the heavens. God made you in his perfect image. You are a King’s Kid! You are fearfully and wonderfully made. Believe in yourself. I do.

The Greatest of These Is Love

Special thanks

I want to give a special thank you to a few people that are dear to my heart. First and foremost, I want to thank God, without whom I wouldn’t be where or who I am. His mercies and grace have seen me through and help me to face tomorrow. It’s only by the Grace of God that I am the person I am today. His mercies have seen me through it all.

To my loving husband, Terry: You have shown me what unconditional love truly is, through good times and bad. You have been my best friend through some crazy times. I thank you for not only putting up with me in the midst of writing this book but for living most of it with me. You knew me, yet you didn’t leave; you asked me to share your life. Thank you for never giving up on me, when so many others would have and some did. You never did. You loved me though it. You are a wonderful man. You are the man I thought was only in my dreams. I love you, T!

To Dustin: I’m so proud to be your mom. The bond between us has always been special to me. I love how you know when something is wrong and I need prayer. I thank you for being willing to pray for me when I feel like no one else is. Thank you for picking me up when I was literally on the floor with no one to help me stand. You were there to make me fight. You showed me I was better than what I believed, and for that, I am forever grateful.

To Ginni: I couldn’t have made it without you. You have loved me and seen me at my lowest, on more than one occasion. Your love gave me the strength to breath when my world was failing apart. You were by my side as I learned to be me again, and through that we built a bond few have experienced. I thank God for allowing me to be your mom. Your unconditional love, your friendship, and the honor of being your mom are enough to make my life complete.

To Summer: You didn’t listen to what others had to say about me but you took the time to get to know me. You saw my heart. I can’t thank you enough for your encouragement. When you read my first draft, you read it the way it was intended, and pushed me to give you more. You saw when I was holding back and encouraged me to share those moments. Your love and support has helped me overcome the fear of sharing my life with the world. I love you and I’m so proud of the woman you’ve become.

I love you all more than words can express. You all have been my compass when the storms of life hit me, whether it was loving me, crying with me, kicking me in the butt, or just being there. God has given me more than enough.

Early Years

Where to Begin

What better place to start my story than at the beginning? I’m the youngest daughter of a farmer/welder. My daddy has worked hard his whole life, from the multiple-acre family farm in Marthaville, Louisiana, to being one of the best tank fitters in the industry. There isn’t a time, even in retirement, that he hasn’t been moving and doing something productive. My mother was a stay-at-home mom, until I was grown and married. She worked as a secretary in many fields, such as CPA offices and even funeral homes. This woman was even a private investigator. She loved deeply but was a very strong-willed woman.

My daddy was the youngest of three boys. He grew up in Marthaville, working on the family farm. Marthaville is a very small town in Louisiana, and back then, it was made up of only dirt roads with the closest neighbor being at least a half a mile away. They had acres of land where they raised cattle, chickens, pigs, and goats. They farmed all types of produce such as potatoes, peas, okra, corn, watermelons, tomatoes, onions, and much more. They lived off the land! What a great experience as a kid to spend time there. I learned to gather the eggs and milk the cows. I swam in the ponds and drank out of the water hose. I did cartwheels and caught lighting bugs. I’ve made my fair share of mud pies and played in the garden as they dug up the potatoes and picked the peas.

My mother was raised in Shreveport, Louisiana. She was the oldest daughter, with three siblings: an older brother, a younger brother, and a sister. She grew up in a Christian yet abusive home. My Pawpaw physically abused my grandmother (Nanny) and the two older kids. When he started to turn his anger on the younger two children, Nanny did the unthinkable and left him. In that day and time, there was no talk of divorce, and in the Pentecostal faith, you just didn’t do it. When momma was a young girl she made herself a promise, she would never treat her children the way her father treated her. She told me about a time she was in trouble. Pawpaw was so angry at her that he chased her under a barbed-wire fence into a neighbor’s house, where they hid her in the cupboard. She wore those scars on her back for many years. She kept that promise she made to herself. She did discipline us but not the way her father did her. When I was a child, I felt she was aggressive but she never hurt us like her dad hurt her.

Tonya

I have an older sister, who was born almost nine years before me. I have a brother who was born four years after my sister and died before his first birthday. He was lovingly called Little Brother. He was born with an enlarged heart and lived a life full of pain. I was told about how he would cry for hours and hours, but they didn’t know how to comfort him. This painful cry would take its toll on them all, and their hearts were breaking for this baby boy. There wasn’t much they could do, in the early ’60s, medicine wasn’t what it is today. He left this earth on the Fourth of July. It’s sad that I don’t know his birthday but the day he died was engraved in me. Momma grieved every year on the Fourth of July, so we were never allowed to celebrate just the opposite that was a day that was always full of grief.

I was born on my daddy’s thirtieth birthday. I love sharing my day with him. It’s a day I look forward to every year. This is partly because I share it with my daddy and mostly because Momma always made our day special, and to this day, my birthday is a big deal to me. I celebrated my fiftieth birthday last October, but I’m young at heart. Being born on his birthday was a double-edged sword. There was jealousy from my mom and my sister. For nine years, my sister had been the apple of their eyes. Now, there was a new baby in the house. Everyone was making a fuss over the dark ringlets and big bright blue eyes of the baby. Momma had prayed for my blue eyes. All three of us kids look like our daddy. My sister and brother both had beautiful brown eyes like Daddy. Momma asked God to give this baby blue eyes like her and he did. When I look in the mirror, I see Momma’s eyes.

I heard stories of how my sister would roller-skate down the hall with me and drop me, just because. She said there were times I would bounce so high I would hit the ceiling and the floor. I wore cloth diapers held together with pins, when she would change my diaper she would poke me with the pin. She said I would cry so hard and she liked watching me turn colors. She called me little rainbow. I would love to say we got closer as I grew up, but we didn’t. I’ll share more about that later.

I grew up in a small three bedroom, one bathroom trailer in a small neighborhood. We knew our neighbors but there wasn’t a lot of children, so I played in my yard alone a lot or in the house under foot. Our trailer was a three-bedroom one-bath that was turned into a two-bedroom when my daddy knocked out a wall to combine the middle two rooms into one big room that my sister and I shared. As soon as our rooms were joined together I was told to never touch her stuff and to stay on my side of the room. We shared a bunk bed, which I called dibs on the top bunk. I’ve always slept with a fan so I had to get creative to hang a fan above my bed. I started with a little shelf and attached the fan to it with a big clip. Her bed rolled under mine, like to form an L shape. There was a big dresser on the end, with a closet. It was amazing. I remember how excited I was when we got it.

Before I can remember, my daddy built the back room. He cut out a window and made it into a door and built this room you had to step down into where we had a wood-burning stove and our washroom. There was also a little porch off it. The back room was my room when I was a teenager and later became a junk room.

Tonya (nickname Charlie Brown)

I was maybe nine years old when a tree died in our front yard, close to the house. My daddy cut wood on his off days, for fun and extra money so he got his chainsaw, climbed the tree and started cutting. I was right inside my momma’s room playing Barbies when I heard a crash! It was so loud, I screamed and looked up. This huge limb had fallen through the roof and stopped an arm’s length from hitting me. I could literally reach up and touch it. Momma came running and rushed me out of the house. Daddy nearly killed her baby, so to say he was in trouble was an understatement.

My childhood wasn’t easy. I smiled a lot although life was a struggle. I lived in a home full of contention and strife, along with alcohol abuse, but I’ve always been someone to look for the bright side even in the darkest of times.

My childhood wasn’t the happiest of childhoods.

Reflection

No matter where you grew up or started in life, you can choose to rise above it and be better for it. Or you can blame the situation and environment and stay right where you are. Don’t just strive to be better. Take action and make it happen.

My Best Friend

Cindy

I don’t remember a lot of my early years. Actually, I don’t remember any of my early years. I somehow blocked out all my memories from birth until eight years old, until the last day in May of 1977 to be exact. Why would a child block out and completely lose all their childhood memories? Well, after my Nanny left my Pawpaw, he remarried and had a daughter. This daughter changed him; at least, it did where she and I were concerned. I’ve heard he was a mean man to most but not to us. He was a great Pawpaw. His daughter was my aunt. She was a year older than me, and she was my best friend. We were opposite in so many ways. She was blonde and I was brunette. She was outgoing and I was reserved. She was the peanut butter to my jelly. She was Cindy!

Cindy and me

It was late May in 1977; she had spent the night with me, and we went to the park. We fed the ducks while running and giggling like little girls do. I don’t have the memory of this day; my mother shared it with me. I did have the trinkets Cindy left at my house that day, items I would come to cherish for many, many years to come.

Momma told me we had the best day laughing and playing. We went back to Cindy’s house, and I was staying the night with her. Something wasn’t right; my first memory was a horrible feeling that something bad was going to happen. This feeling was so strong that I couldn’t control my emotions. I was only eight years old at the time, but I knew this was bad. I knew I had to get out of the house. The feeling hit me around midnight. I called and begged my momma to come get me. She tried to comfort me and tell me I was okay, I was with Cindy. I pleaded with