I used to be so much different, I used to have so much faith…

The title of this are song lyrics. With that said, I feel like I can really relate to them. I use this site to share my feelings. It’s a form of therapy. So hopefully I’m not crucified for posting my thoughts and feelings… but the song lyrics do have a special meaning to me. If you know me, you know my story. If you don’t, I’ll explain. Grab a coffee, sit back and relax. I’m about to share the story of Timmy Tabor.

Growing up, I had a good life, but with a twist. I had a biological father and the Tabor side of my family that wanted nothing to do with me. I was blessed with an incredible step-dad (who I call Pops) who did everything to provide for his family. A man that truly looked at me like his son. With that said, it never changed the fact that there was a huge part of me that felt rejected. How would I not feel that way? I mean, think about it, my biological father took off when I was a couple months old and left my mother and me with nothing. But this talk of my father is a topic for another time. Right now I want to talk about growing up in the church.

My parents believed in God. We went to a few churches on and off when I was little. When I was 14yrs old I was asked to go to a youth group with a friend of mine. I said yes and went. I fell in love with the group. There were teenagers there that welcomed me with open arms. I felt accepted. I was hooked. While there, I found my first love. A fun church and a girl to love.. how much better could it get? Within a year, my mother and little brother were coming to church. A few months later, my Pops started coming to church with us as well. It was great, my entire family going to a charismatic, non-denominational, spirit filled church. Then my late teens hit. My first love and I split after being together for 4 years. I found a new girl who didn’t go to church. She was the first girl I ever slept with. She got pregnant. She started coming to church with me. I wasn’t viewed the same way in the church after that. They accepted me, but there were people within the church that had serious issues with me. I could feel the negative energy coming from them all. I eventually left the church because I couldn’t take it any longer. I spent years away from that church. In that time, all the people who “loved” me stopped reaching out. Rejection once again. So much for leaving the 99 to find the 1.

I started to resent the church. I didn’t hate God, but I was starting to hate the church. If they loved me so much, how could they turn their backs on me the way they did? I couldn’t figure it out. Why wouldn’t they reach out? My youth Pastor would reach out sporadically but even that would be less and less as time went on. I’ll give him credit though, if I ever needed him, I could call him no matter the time of night, and boy did I take advantage of that benefit. After a couple of years being with my daughters mother, we split up. It was an incredibly hard split. It was nasty. It ended up in family court. I went down a very dark path. I began partying my face off. I moved into a party house with a few friends. We would party literally every night. I was sleeping around with anyone that would help me feel good, even for a night. I surrounded myself with people that I thought were my true friends. I felt accepted again… and so my life was all about being THE life of the party.

After a couple of years of this, I stepped away from the party scene and surprisingly all of those “friends” disappeared. Once again I felt rejected. All the nights I spent with these people making memories. People telling me they loved me like a brother. The girls that told me they loved me. All of them, gone. When I say they were all gone, I mean, gone. Not a single one stayed in contact with me after I stepped away from the party scene.

Eventually I moved back in with my parents and started going back to church. I started playing drums for the church again. I got involved with teen ministry… and then my friend, the bassist of the worship team asked me to get an apartment with him. It seemed like a great idea. I would have a christian roommate. We could enjoy the single life and be around a positive influence. Very quickly, we both started drinking. Drinking turned into partying. The same trap that I was into before turned into the same trap I had fallen back into. Once again I was THE life of the party… I knew it was wrong, but I was accepted. People loved me again… and so I partied my face off again… for close to a year… and then my roommate decided he couldn’t do it anymore. He decided he needed to rededicate his life to God and to the church. Without a warning, he moved out one day when I was at my parents house spending time with my daughter. I came home to an empty house. He was just gone. Once again I felt rejected. This time it was by one of my best friends. Someone who was closer than a brother. I was crushed, but there was a silver lining.

I met a girl. She was much younger than me, but had an old soul… and so we got together. I moved out of the apartment and moved back in with my parents. I focused on being a better father. I focused on being a better human being. Things got serious between this girl and me… and so after a while we got an apartment together. We started going to church together. We ended up getting married. My life was good again. Better than it had ever been. Six months, six days later and my wife left me for another guy. A guy she worked with. I was broken. The night she left, I had a few friends come get me and we went to the bar. There I met a wonderful older woman who worked at the bar. Little did I know she would be the mom of my future best friend.

I spent years, and I mean years partying my life away. I got into another serious relationship. It was toxic… but also beautiful in ways. I was a great father at this point. My daughter was my world… but when I didn’t have her I’d work and then drink. Sometimes at the same time. Then July 29th, 2009 my life changed when I injured my back on a job site. It was the second time I had injured my back. I had been very close to my co-workers, or so I thought. When I went out with a back injury, I didn’t hear a peep from a single one of them. Rejection.

After hurting my back I went back to college. I was determined to graduate with my associates. My doctor at the time told me if I didn’t find a new career I’d be in a wheel chair by the time I was 40. So I left the construction world and went into being a full time college student at Fulton Montgomery Community College. Here, I’d have some of the greatest times of my life. Here I’d find my wife. The relationship I was in didn’t work out. Meanwhile, I met Desiree, my wife. We were friends for many months before we ever went on a date. Once I got to know her and took her on a date, I knew she was something special… and so we got married… and bought a home… and had babies… and made an incredible life together.

Desi wanted to go to church. I kept telling her that one day we’d go. But the truth is, I didn’t have any desire to go to church. I had felt burned out by the church in the past. Did I really want to go back to a church and have them all tell me they loved me once again? I had some serious trust issues… but I felt like if my wife really wanted to go, I should be a supportive husband and go with her. And so we went. We went to the church I grew up in… and like when I was a child, I was welcomed with open arms. I felt accepted again. I dove in and got really involved in the church. I started playing drums again for their worship team. I started preaching at the church. Eventually Desi and I took over the teen ministry. We really felt like things were perfect there… until they weren’t.

Now I won’t get into details because I don’t believe in gossip, but after some hurtful things were said and done by a couple of people in the church, we decided it was time for us to step away. Once again, we were gone from a church and there was only one person who reached out, my old youth Pastor who had become one of my very close friends (more like a brother)… other than that, we heard nothing. No phone calls. No text messages. Nothing. That rejection that I felt from the church so many years ago came rushing back. And so once again we were without a church. No hatred toward anyone, just extreme disappointment.

We spent a little time away from church. Meanwhile, my old roommate, (the old bass player from church), had come back from California and took over a thriving church in the area. His wife had left him and he was hurting. We’d get together once or twice a week and have coffee and talk. I’d minister to him, he’d minister to me. He asked me to come to his church. He said he needed us there as support while he went through this hard time of life. It took a little bit, but we agreed. So once again we had a church. We spent three years there. I worked for the church doing all their social media postings. We felt like we had a home. It felt great. Once again I felt accepted. Everything was great… until it wasn’t. Once again, I won’t get into details because I’m not one for gossip… but things fell apart at the seams and after a meeting with my Pastor (old roommate), Desiree and I decided it was time for us to leave… and once again we barely heard from anyone. All the people that hugged us every single Sunday and told us how much they loved us… gone. So much for leaving the 99 to find the 1.

And so I mean what I said… I used to be so much different, I used to have so much faith. My faith in God is still very much there… but the faith I had in churches and in church people has changed. Will we ever find another church? Who knows. Maybe… maybe not… but I know it’ll be really hard for me to tell people we love them again. It’ll be hard to hear people tell me they love me again… because I’ll be questioning it every step of the way. I love you gets tossed around so often, and I love that… but if you love someone, show it… show it when they’re there, show it when they’re not there. If someone leaves your church, do better. Reach out to them. Show them the love of Christ like you’ve been taught. That’s what they need. They need to be loved on… they need to feel truly loved by people. If you’re going to love people to life, then do exactly that… love them to life, especially when they’re hurting and lost. Don’t just love them enough to get them into your church and giving you their money. Show them you love them no matter what… especially if they leave. That’s when you should be loving them the most.

So like I said… I don’t know if we will ever get involved in a church again. There’s a chance we would. There’s a nice church Pastored by a great guy, but it’s like 25 minutes away and honestly, I don’t know if I want to make the drive every Sunday. The fact is, I need a heart change if I’m going to put forth any effort into a church. I know it would be good for my kids to go to church. They love Jesus, and I love that. So I know it’s important for them, but I just don’t know if I can do it again. I’d like to say I will, but I’m just not sure… and that’s okay.

Until next time,

What You Do Matters.

July 29th, 2015… Oh how you changed my life forever…

I found an old WordPress account that I had. There was only one post. It was about how on July 29th, 2015 my life changed forever. It’s crazy to think that my life still isn’t the same after this. The amount of health issues that have come up since this post… wow… still, even with all the health stuff (mental and physical) I feel blessed. I have the amazing support of my wife and the amazing support of my four kids (and my son in law)… I have added that post about 2015 if you’d like to read it. Don’t take a year for granted. You never know how different your life can look from one year to the next. What you do matters.

July 29, 2015… I sat at my place of employment, The Resource Center for Independent Living. I was in the middle of a “Launch” meeting. There was a new lady that had started working and she needed help. I was asked to sit in on the meeting and help where needed. As we went through the tedious amount of paperwork, I couldn’t help but think about how close to the end of the day it was. Suddenly, as I was sitting there, I started to get this unbearable stabbing pain in the left side of my head. The stabbing pain was right in the area of my temple. The sharp, stabbing pain came out of no where and was so severe that it actually caused me to lose my train of thought. I pulled it together and finished up the meeting. As soon as it was done, I went into my site directors office and started to tell him about the pain I experienced. As I stood there in front of his desk, another stabbing pain hit, out of no where… He could see I was in a lot of pain and suggested that I go home and get it checked out. I left work that day, having no idea it would be my last day working for the agency that I had worked so hard for.

You see, when I started my job at “RCIL”, I worked in the field. I worked with individuals that had developmental disabilities. Some had mental health disabilities as well. My job was Per Diem, meaning there was never guaranteed work. Being that there wasn’t any guaranteed work, I took all the cases I could… while most people had one or two cases on their caseload, I had 6 or 7. I had a desire to make my way into their office. I wanted the Mon-Fri salaried job. So I worked and worked and worked in the field. I went above and beyond, and after being with the agency for a little over a  year, I was offered a position within the company as a Community Habilitation Coordinator/At Home Respite Coordinator. I loved the job. I loved the agency. I hated the pay.

Lets be honest here… if you work with people, you’ll never be rich. It’s a sad truth, but it is THE truth nonetheless. In very rare situations do you make a lot of money working for people. After being in my new position for about a year, I was offered a job as a manager at Lexington Center. I was so torn about what to do, but the fact is, Lexington was offering more money. So foolishly, I left my position at RCIL and took a new job with Lexington.  While all of this was going on, my wife, Desiree and I had a six month old baby. We also had my oldest daughter with us Tuesday’s, Thursday’s and every other weekend. While I was very appreciative for my opportunity with Lexington Center, the fact is, it wasn’t the job for me… I was averaging about 100-110 hours every two weeks. I was salaried, so when I figured out my hourly wage, I was actually making about $1.50 less per hour than I was while working at RCIL. I was never home. My wife missed me. I missed my wife. I missed my kids. Something needed to change.

The entire time I was at Lexington, RCIL kept offering me to come back. Sadly though, I could not come back to my position that I previously held. Instead, I would be a Self-Direction Coordinator/Fiscal Intermediary. I took the job excited to work with one of my best friends. I also took it for the simple fact that I wanted to be back in the agency. The job was high stress, low reward. I enjoyed it, but not as much as my other position.

July 29, 2015… little did I know that when I went out of work that day, that my life would completely change. I ended up being hospitalized. I had every test under the sun done. They thought at one point that I was having mini-seizures. They almost took my license from me for 6 months… I fought with them about that and they agreed to let me keep it. They even began talking to me about permanent disability. Two weeks before I was scheduled to go back to work, I received an email from my director. She informed me that my position was relocated to their main office in Utica and that I no longer had a job in the Amsterdam office. I was devastated. At that moment, my wife, who had been so supportive, and I sat down and started coming up with a new plan. We knew we needed to make changes. Big changes. So we wrote out all our bills and started to figure out what we needed vs. what we wanted. It was amazing to us that we had very little “needs” bills, but we had a lot of “wants” bills. So we cut out a lot of the wants… and quickly we lowered our bills to right around $850.00 a month. Yes, $850.00 a month.

How many people can say their monthly bills are that low? Desiree and I have never been materialistic people. In fact, we hate money and what it does to this world. I fell into the “money trap” when I took the job at Lexington. It’s so easy to be persuaded into something by simply dangling a little extra money in front of someone. We’ve all done it… but this time, we weren’t falling for it. This time we were making a lifestyle change… and although we loved what we were doing, there were a lot of people that thought we were crazy. Very crazy!

This past year has been insane. I’ve dealt with a lot of health issues. The Tabor’s, as a family, have been tested multiple times. Every single time, we stayed strong, got through it together and came out even stronger. We’ve lost friends over our lifestyle change. People suddenly think “oh my Gosh, they’re so poor now.” … when the truth is, we’ve never felt so rich. There’s a huge difference between being “poor” or choosing to live a more simplistic lifestyle. Our bills are paid. We have gas in our vehicle and there are groceries in the cabinets/refrigerator… not that we need to defend ourselves. While the rest of the world is struggling to pay their bills, or while they’re busy “keeping up with the Jones’s”, we have what we have… we’ve downsized… we eliminated a lot of bills… we started homesteading more… and we have some very exciting plans for our future… and although it’s sad that through this past year we’ve lost some friends and others think we’re poor and crazy… the fact is, this has been such an awesome year for us… has it been a little chaotic? Yes. Has it been a little stressful at times? Yes. Has it been a little heartbreaking at times? Definitely… but like every other time, we’ve succeeded. With love, and faith, humility and integrity, we’ve succeeded. We’ve grown… as individuals… as husband and wife… and as a family! We’ve really learned what’s important. We appreciate the things we have. We appreciate free will. We appreciate our family that has been supportive. We appreciate the friends that have stayed by our side through thick and thin. We appreciate God giving us the strength to get through the things we’ve been through and the things we will continually get through as this next year comes along.

At the end of this day, I look back on the year that was so crazy. On the year that attacked my health in so many ways… and while I do not have all the answers and while I do not understand the lesson I’m going to learn through it all, the fact is, we’re still way more blessed than most… and for that, I am forever grateful. The good Lord has blessed me with an amazing wife and amazing kids. I couldn’t have gotten through this past year without them. I love you girls more than you’ll ever know… and although we have no idea where this next year will take us, the fact remains that I’m so thankful for you girls. I love you all with all of me… forever!

Where ya been, Tabor?

It’s almost been a year since I’ve written anything here. At first when I realized this, I felt bad… but then I stopped and thought about the fact that it’s my page and I can write as often or as little as I’d like lol… but with that said, where the heck have I been? This past year has been crazy. So we had another baby. Yes, you read that right, at 43 years old, I’m a father once again. Oh my goodness. To say the least, we were not expecting this one. Desi had gotten Covid and was feeling some nausea. After getting over Covid she couldn’t get rid of the nausea so I jokingly said “go take a pregnancy test.” Well, a few moments later Desiree called me into the bathroom to show me a pregnancy test that had lit up brighter than her Covid test lol… and so we started to prepare for our life to change once again. On November 12th, 2022 (11-12-22) baby Josephine arrived. Josephine Leslie Anne Tabor. We call her Joey. 

To say life has changed a lot is an understatement. Without Joey, life was a bit hectic. As a lot of you know, I’m a stay at home dad. I homeschool our two kids, Charlie Girl and Beauie Boy. Life before Joey has its tendencies of being hectic and busy. With Joey, it’s all out chaotic. Before Joey we had schedules. After Joey, there’s no such thing as a schedule. Our schedule is Joey’s schedule… and it changes day to day. It’s a lot sometimes. Oh yeah, I almost forgot the best part… Joey is VERY colicky… yeah, two kids I’m homeschooling all while trying to take care of a colicky newborn. Like I said, it’s a lot sometimes.

Now recently I’ve started having terrible cases of insomnia. I’m not getting much sleep at all, which takes its toll on your mind and body. I’m exhausted all day long. I try going to sleep at night, but my brain just doesn’t allow it. I’ve had some great people offering up suggestions on things to do or take that’ll help me sleep. Last night I took some local honey and organic tart cherry juice. I also added a video of meditation. It’s very soothing and if you’re paying attention to what she’s saying, it helps you fall asleep. I didn’t get a lot of sleep last night, but definitely more than I have been getting, so I take that as a win. Here’s hoping that tonight is even better than last night.

So what else has been going on over this past year? We have a Kia Sorento that sucks. It just hit 100,000 miles. Should have a lot of life left… but man, we’ve put so much money into this vehicle. We may trade it in for something else, but I just don’t see how we get as low payments as we have now. If we can, I’ll trade it in. If the payments are going to be more, no thank you. I’m not a huge fan of the Kia regardless, but it fits our family, so I should be more thankful for it… but when you’re constantly putting money into the vehicle it gets disheartening. 

Desi took a job within the county. It was hard for her to leave the law firm but the county job is 12 minutes from our house compared to 40ish minutes. The pay is more, and she gets more hours. She really had no choice but to take the job. She’s doing a great job and there’s a lot of potential for her to make some really good cash there. I know she misses the law firm terribly but I also know she’s excited for possible promotions within the county. I still wish she could work from home like she used to, but it doesn’t look as though that’s going to be a possibility at this point. We’ll see where life takes us.

We no longer attend a church. As I type that, part of me feels sad… but there’s also a part of me that feels that huge weight lifted off my chest, and I enjoy it. I won’t get into any dirty laundry, but it was time for us to leave. I wish the church nothing but success. It’s funny though, I always said “if you want to know who your friends are, start going to church”… and now, I say “if you want to know who your friends are, stop going to church”… sadly, you find out that you have just as many fake friends on both sides of the fence. When we started going back to church we had friends think we were crazy. We had some people unfriend us on Facebook. Leaving the church, we’ve had friends who think we’re crazy… and while they haven’t unfriended us on Facebook, they have stopped talking to us. I’m not mad at anyone anymore. It is what it is… but it was a sad pill to swallow. One thing it’s taught me is that I’m very careful with the word “love”… all the people that said they loved us on a weekly basis, but didn’t even reach out once when we left. Yeah, that’s not the kind of love I want to experience. There’s a reason my circle is so small.

My family is great. My oldest daughter, (Kalle) is kicking butt. She’s married to an incredible human being named Jason. We love him. They both have great jobs. They have a great home… and they have great kitties that they adore. Honestly, I couldn’t ask for more when it comes to Kalle (I call her Lu)… she’s made me so proud to call her my daughter.

Other than that, it’s just been my health. Mental health is no joke. It’s a daily battle for me. I’m thankful I have meds that have helped balance out my brain, but that doesn’t mean it’s still not a battle every single day. My body is still shot. My back hurts every single day. I battle sciatic pain every single day. It’s pretty sad when you’re just used to being in pain. I have this Central Sensitization that bothers me. I have degenerative disc disease. The fact is, I should have taken better care of my back when I was younger. 

So that’s some stuff about me and where I’ve been this past year. My plan is to write more. I love it. It’s therapeutic… but I also know how hard it is to have any free time with a newborn. I’m only writing all this because she’s been napping. With that said, she’s waking up which means it’s time for me to end this. Until next time… What you do matters!