Tag: refocus

Well this last week has been quite challenging. It started off with working 5am shifts on little sleep. Working on my fixer upper every day after work until bed time. Three days in a row of that wore on me and I wasn’t even close to done. My muscle help was not readily available so things took me a bit longer than I anticipated so I took Thur/Fri off work to just work on it to alleviate at least that stress and just get it done. Plus my job is stressing me out so I needed a couple days away before I snapped. So I tore apart the engine, pulled the knock sensor, and put it all back together. I cleaned all the parts up, replaced both the lower & upper intake gaskets, both valve cover gaskets, spark plugs & wires, re-loomed some wiring, tightened everything up, had to replace a few bolts and hoses, and had to get crafty with creating my own fuel injector “insulator” aka the grommet that the injectors sit on because one was damaged and it was a spendy special order part from Nissan! I learned a lot of patience with this vehicle. I worked on it in complete silence for about 11 hours on Thursday before I called it quits for the night. Got back to it first thing Friday morning. By noon I had everything back together! I relocated the knock sensor so it wouldn’t be so darn difficult to replace again if necessary. Fired it up and it started the first try! It started smoking right away from the engine compartment and the exhaust so I turned it off immediately. I was not about to have it catch fire or cause more damage. I had my fire extinguisher on standby just in case. Later I remembered that I had got coolant in the fuel by accident when I released the cooling system so it had to burn off. Phew! Started it again and let it burn off. I test drove it around the neighborhood and found that I had fixed the original issue of the exhaust leak and lack of compression going up hills. Buuuuuuuuuut, now I have a hiss coming from under the upper intake thats likely causing my cylinder 2 misfire and rough idle. Myself and my mechanic friend verified all the hoses are good and clamped tight, gaskets are in place properly, and the spark plugs and wires are all good. we both think the grommets need to just be replaced. I’ll find out more on Sunday. At least I got SOMEWHERE with it and it RUNS!! I’m pretty proud of myself. I saved myself a few hundred dollars in labor costs for a mechanic by doing the work myself. Lucky for me, both my dad and one of my best friends taught me a lot about mechanics and I really did pay attention! Still more to do but for now its running. Anyways, I got that taken care of so went about working Saturday to get caught up on my day job uninterrupted. Afterwards, I decided to go to the fair with one of my best friends! It was him, his coworker and myself. We went and walked around for a bit before we were gonna ride rides! Well lucky for us we didnt head straight for rides because my friend started getting winded from walking around so we sat down for him to rest. As we were resting, I realized this situation was worse than just shortness of breath from walking around, he was having chest pains and couldn’t even speak! So I sent his coworker to get a paramedic I had seen just around the corner. He pulled pills out of his pocket so I gave him one not even knowing what they were for. I later found out it was nitro for this exact moment. He took it and then the paramedics came, took his vitals, gave him oxygen and called for help. Backup came quick! Within minutes he was on a gurney and headed to the hospital so I raced down there. His coworker and I got there before the ambulance did. I asked them to update us right away. Well within minutes of their arrival they called a Code Blue!!! I was a mess!! One of my best friends was in there and I had no clue what was happening… completely helpless. All I could do was pray. I prayed so hard. After about 10 minutes someone came to grab us to update us on his condition. He was stable and they were sending him to another hospital because he had a heart attack in the front of his heart… what they call the Widowmaker. There’s a reason they call it that. How scary. His heart stopped twice. Once in the ambulance and again at the hospital. I am so thankful that he is alive! Of course I called him and told him he can’t die on me lol An experience like that really puts things into perspective. The first thing he told me was that this heart attack was a good reminder to never go to bed angry. You never know when your last moment will be. I hope my family, my loved ones, know how much I love them. Which I guess brings me to why I wanted to share this trying week with you.

These last few years have been some of the hardest years I’ve ever had. I mean really hard. And lately things have been extra difficult. There have been many days I didn’t want tomorrow to come because it was just too hard. And yet they still came. All I can do is push through it. I don’t have a choice. I have a family to live for. I have a son to live for. And lucky for me, every time I hit my breaking point, something happens that gives me strength to go on. For instance, how I got started with this whole candle thing in the first place. My family has been affected by alcoholism. In the blink of an eye, without warning, everything changed. That has been one of the hardest things I’ve ever experienced. A family that loves each other unconditionally, just lost. It’s devastating for it to just be over without warning when you know the love is there. Alcoholism is a terrible thing. The day I realized what was happening is the day I said my first prayer… February 2nd, 2016. It’s also the day I went to my first meeting. A day I’ll never forget. For the next couple of years when times were hard and when I was so heartbroken that I didn’t want to go on, I did everything I could to stay busy and take my mind off of the easy way out but prayer wasn’t yet something I quite understood and it wasn’t something I did often. I sang, played guitar, worked long hours, played music constantly to distract myself… I crafted, scrubbed my house until there was nothing left to scrub, got out in the garage and built stuff, worked on my car, mowed my lawn, drove for miles and miles, tried to move on, you name it. Nothing was working. Well one day when I was just about to give up, I turned to prayer out of desperation. I prayed for something, anything to help me. It was then that I saw something I just had to try. I got my hands on a DIY candle making kit. When I made my first candle, I knew that was it. That was what I could pour my love into. My heart break into. And it all just came together. However, starting this business has been one of the most trying experiences. Everytime I think I can finally move forward, something else tries to stand in my way. And each time I’ve wanted to just give up. What’s the point right? Yet somehow everytime I hit that point something magical happens and in my darkest of moments, I am given the strength to take another step forward. How it’s been possible is something I didn’t understand at first but now I realize it’s because in those moments, I pray. Every time I want to give up because times are just too difficult to handle and I just want everything to end already, I pray. When I am faced with the most trying of times, I pray. Im finally starting to realize that prayer is powerful. I pray for Serenity. I pray for Courage. I pray for Wisdom. And I pray for Strength. Most of the time I don’t think about praying. I need to figure out how to remind myself to pray more often because without it… well those are definitely my hardest and darkest times. I tend to lose focus on the big picture when all these things happen that keep making everything more challenging. Last time I prayed as hard as I did Saturday was almost two months ago. Two months ago I wanted to give up. I wanted my life to end. I thought that everyone would be better off without me. I thought that I was a failure. I thought that things would just continue to get worse and worse so whats the point. So… I prayed. Nothing happened. I prayed again, nothing happened. And then I thought an awful thought that I convinced myself to not act on and I prayed one last time… desperately. The next day something happened that I wasn’t expecting. Something that I didn’t understand. Something that meant so much to me but yet I was so confused at the same time. And in that moment I was given the strength I needed to survive another day. So, that following Friday night when the work week was over and I could finally breathe, I turned off my phone, locked myself in my house and prayed from Friday to Sunday! I was so thankful that all I could do was pray some more! Praying gave me the strength to trust that everything will be okay and make it through another day. It gave me the strength to get through some of the most challenging obstacles since then. It gave me the courage to stand tall when all I wanted to do was crumble. I have overcame situations that would have normally turned me into a big mess but I persevered and now I am stronger. Saturday I prayed. It helped me hold myself together long enough to save one of my best friends lives! I had no idea about the power of prayer until the day I lost my family to alcoholism. This last couple of years have been by far my hardest and yet I have held myself together enough to gain the strength so I can handle and overcome what’s still to come. Everything truly does happen for a reason, even if I don’t understand. I pray that everything will be okay. I just have to have faith that it will be. I hope and pray that one day I am given the opportunity to tell my loved ones how much I love and care about them. Sometimes things are still really hard and I just want to give up. When I remember, I pray. I just really need to remember more often that when things take a turn, I should pray. This business means a lot to me. It represents the love one has for family and friends. It represents the power of prayer. It represents the trials and tribulations of alcoholism. It represents more than anyone truly knows. I look forward to the day that I can finally kick off and share this experience with the people who matter most to me. So even though things are slow moving, I will do what I can to make this successful because of what it represents.