The Devil’s in the Details

September 17, 2012 By

My very wrinkled sheets, hanging on the line

—

There’s so much chatter about making time for God.  Devotionals for the busy mom surround us like a thick hazy fog.  If you don’t have time to dedicate toward [the reason for your entire existence], nataproblem.  God can be compartmentalized for the overworked and overscheduled.  The frazzled and hectic.  Five minutes a day is all it takes to develop a long-lasting relationship and to start to see real change in your life.  Come on!  It comes with an audio CD!

The fact is that middle-class Americans just aren’t that damn busy.  I seriously know zero women who are strapped to the plow, or spend their days scrubbing shirts on a washboard and stripping cotton.

The other day I began to run down “all I do around here,” like I’ve been keeping up some chore scorecard.  There’s the laundry and the dishes and the cleaning.  The errands and pick-up and dental appointments.  I change sheets and answer work calls and put kids to bed every single night.  I was practically seething at the vision of poor little ol me doing all those horrible, wretched things all by my lonesome.  What kind of husband leaves his wife at home and runs off to earn a solid paycheck leaving her with THIS? I most certainly needed to wait through eleven cars at Starbucks and flip through the sale rack at Nordstrom.  I was so busy I thought I’d check facebook, and make apple muffins, and wander around cyberspace reading poetry.  Don’t ask me to pray, or seek truth, or devote time to prayer.  Don’t ask me to be grateful for the small things.  A house to clean.  A family to love.  A warm bubble bath to melt into.  Don’t ask me to verbalize thanks for a life filled with joy and second chances.

To be honest, I’m just too busy.

It’s struck me lately that my priorities are in the wrong places.  I was reminded by Sandra Heska King that thirty bucks spent on your daughter’s flashy Hello Kitty shoes is a month of Compassion ministries wasted.  And every thirty minutes spent on trashy television is time we don’t dedicate to something that really matters.  Like prayer.  Not for unknown people.  Not for generalities like world peace.  This kind of fluff creates a void whereby your brain starts wondering if you’re out of Oregano: you are making meatballs for dinner, right?  Did you use up that leftover chicken?

I’m starting to think of my life as one big Hoarder’s episode.   I’m asking God to start cutting out the fluff.  I want to see the waste around me like trash on the side of the highway.  Only then can I start pruning, and weeding, and getting those thorns out of my fertile soil.   Only then will God reveal the relationship that’s meant to flourish.

I am ripped open with shame that my husband works so hard and never complains.   I want to avert my eyes to that woman who is wrapped up in her own selfishness.  I don’t deserve mercy. I don’t deserve clean sheets.  I don’t do anything but fill up my life with static and yet I feel blessings pour down like warm summer rain when I am so dirty and ugly and don’t deserve the washing.

We all have time.  But the devil’s in the details.

Today is what is laid out before us. Today I will love, and forgive, and spend time being grateful.  Today is the day I start working harder, and pushing farther, and complaining less.   Today, I purge.   And tomorrow, when the sun comes up and light begins to emerge on the horizon, I’ll shed this mask of shame.  I will breathe in the soft smell of the after-rain.

Filed Under: Inspirational, My life, Religion Tagged With: , , ,

A letter to my former self

September 14, 2012 By

Amanda,

This is so odd writing to you, a tall clunky fourteen-year-old, with the benefit of knowing your future.  Here I sit at 37 after going to law school and birthing babies and drinking an Americano with three raw sugars, all wise and sage and dolling out advice.

And yet nothing I say about treasuring the moment and “you are beautiful even though you don’t know it yet” and all other forms of motherly wisdom will mean much to you now. The reality for you is today, not tomorrow, and no one heeds advice to treasure today.

So I’ll say this instead:

(1) Lose the damn Coca-Cola shirt.  I know they’re popular.  I know you begged for one.  I know that everyone is wearing it.  Well girlfriend, trust me they are the dorkiest thing that hit that century and you don’t want pictures loitering around in thirty years that will forever be hitting facebook.  Wear it for pajamas, if you must.  But no photos.  Got it?

(2) What is facebook, you ask?  Well the minute you hear that word in your future you invest gobs of money into it and screw the haters.

(3) Please for the love of bacon don’t get bangs.  If you ignore me on this and do get the wretched things, don’t hairspray them up five layers.  Can’t you just leave them alone? And when you end up at a cosmetology school because “it’s cheaper” and “no one will notice,” trust me.  They will.  Use your best negotiation skills to get your hair cut at a real salon.

(4) And speaking of salons, you march in this very minute and tell your mother that home permanents are unacceptable.

(5) Save your jewelry.  All those fun James Avery pieces will forever be lost and you’ll miss them someday.  Put that jewelry in a safe.  I’m pointing my finger at you from your future.

(6) Letter jackets are irrelevant and useless and ugly.  When you hit college no one ever cares about them, so don’t stress about whether it’s a varsity jacket or whether it has patches.  Seriously – waste-o-time.

(7)  Read more classics. If you take nothing else away from this little lecture, you at least need to spend more time buried in literature.  Jane Eyre aside, you are behind, girl.  In the future you’ll have to play catch up, but then you’ll have kids and a mortgage and would rather be at the beach.  Read like a crazy person.

(8)  Someday your prince will come.  He will be tall and handsome and will take your breath away.  Take comfort in it.

(9) When you think your mother is old-fashioned and ridiculously strict and is the most evil and naive person on the planet, you will someday turn into her. So you might want to bring her flowers once in a while.  She ain’t that bad.

(10) You will soon have the urge to sew a Guess jeans label onto a pair of Levi’s in an attempt to fit in with the cool crowd.  You will be very impressed with yourself in coming up with this strategy and feel no one will notice.  But the label will come unraveled and cause a certain girl to point at you when you stand up in class and you’ll forever be stained with the humiliation of this day.  So spare yourself.  Just rock the Levi’s.

So yes, yes.  You’re secretly beautiful and you make really smart decisions moving forward.  Treasure today and soak in the youth and blahbitty blah.  But I swear you need to start plucking your eyebrows and quit wearing gobs of mascara.  And those warts on your legs?  Sister, they will go away.

What remains after the warts and the letter jacket is a really happy person all these years later.  You will go through trials of many kinds, but you’ll be prepared.  Thank God every day.  You’ll need it for tomorrow.

Love,

Mwah

Filed Under: Inspirational, My life Tagged With: , ,

Odd and Curious Thoughts of the Week

September 11, 2012 By

(1) My daughter asked why baby teeth fell out and I told her that the big grown-up teeth are underneath pushing them.  She said that wasn’t true because she doesn’t feel those big teeth yet and if they were pushing wouldn’t she see evidence of it?  I sighed and said that baby teeth must just have good timing.  Teeth don’t have brains, she says. She’s already surpassing me in logic and she’s only six.

(2) I love rap so much and it annoys me that they keep talking about clubs and drugs and money.   Let’s quit degrading women and start using this incredibly emotional forum to discuss rising from poverty and struggling past the racial divide.  Because when I hear Eminem’s Lose Yourself after all these years I’m still so powerfully moved. 

(3)  I made a chicken black-bean casserole tonight.  I used refried black beans instead of whole.  I added sour cream.  I threw in some cream and cumin and added bell peppers.  I smeared it into the pan and topped it with sharp cheddar.  It turned out looking like a large platter of smashed up dog poo. My cousin is a chef and says we eat with our eyes. She speaks the truth.

(4)  Sometimes I get annoyed that my daughter’s private school is so strict and rigid and her homework consists of reading and more reading and math worksheets.  But then I think of how awesome it would be to be forced to do all that reading and it makes me feel better.  This weekend I’m going to have her draw all the animals she can muster so we can add glitter and sparkles and create a mud pie masterpiece.  We’ll shake out all the sillies and dance to Elvis and on Monday we’ll go back to math worksheets again.  A few drops of glitter may or may not fall out of her backpack Monday.  I’m denying any knowledge therein.

(5) I spoke poorly of someone long ago and it got back to him through a tangled web of connections.  Although I don’t remember what I said it was something related to our tense working relationship at the time.  Vitriolic speech comes back to haunt you.   It’s a reminder to not speak with a forked tongue.

(6) I tried to explain to my daughter the other day what it means to speak with a forked tongue as we were looking at my son’s book of reptiles. She just looked at me and nodded in that way you nod to senile people.  I think she secretly believes I’m a toad trapped in a mother’s body and most of what comes out of my mouth is pure drivel.

(7) My son cried for almost an hour after his nap today because I wouldn’t drop everything I was doing, hold him in my arms, rock him back and forth while standing, and tell him it would all be okay.  Well I have things to do, buddy, and I can’t just pacify you at your every whim.  I’m over thirty and you’re only two and I can’t go around caving in to your ridiculous demands.  I ain’t raising no sissy, I told myself as I stood firm by the sink rinsing vegetables for dinner.  Keep crying if you want to because it has absolutely no effect on me.

(8) This afternoon, after rinsing vegetables, I sat down on the chair and held my sweet baby boy in my arms.  I rocked his little body back and forth. It’s okay, I whispered to his tear-stained face.  Mama’s here.  You’re safe.  There is no hope for him, I tell you.

(9) When Adele has her child that poor little thing will be so spoiled because her mom will sing Over the Rainbow and Amazing Grace and will catch herself humming Rolling in the Deep in the Burger King drive-in.  The kid will forever cringe at church when the choir starts and there’s just no living with a music snob.

(10)               Today I talked to one of my best friends and we laughed about farts, fans, and how we weren’t buying our kids smart phones until they were old enough to earn them.  We are so turning into old people.  The only thing left to go is our hearing and cute underpants.  Lord help us.

(11)               Sometimes I sit and stare at the blank page like a devil that laughs at my face and tells me there’s nothing more to say.  I start writing anyway.

Filed Under: Humor, Inspirational, Motherhood Tagged With: , , , ,

BUSY, a Guest Post by Melanie Haney

September 10, 2012 By

Hey guys!

I’m honored today to introduce you to my wonderful writer friend, Melanie Haney, who writes over at A Frozen Moon.  Go check it out and read her lovely words.  Although we live in different parts of the country, we still struggle with the same issues: motherhood, faith, joy, and living the best life we can right where we are.  I love her honesty, her flowing style, and let’s not even go there with her amazing photographs.  Her pictures capture the essence of childhood, love, and fleeting moments that we often don’t capture.

We both wrote a back-to-school post and shared it with each other, so to read mine just mosey on over to her blog and check it out.  Have a great week!

Busy

by Melanie Haney

The final damp breaths of August have exhaled and here we are.

We are back to school. We are pencils and backpacks and looking out for the first falling leaves, when really, we are still shaking the sand from our flip flops and sweating by each afternoon in our new school clothes.

We are morning routines that start too early and buses that are never on time.

And me? I am one week in and torn between my love for autumn in New England, and my hesitance to push my family forward another year so soon. I am another year older myself and feeling the middleness of it all, how if my life is a ladder with years for rungs, I am quite possibly approaching the center. Enough behind me to be steady on my course, enough ahead of me to keep me looking forward.

But mostly, I am tired.

Tonight, I am sweating, crawling under the table and sweeping every little unwanted bite from dinner into my palms – partially chewed hot dog, mushy canned peas, sweet potato fries with the ketchup sucked off – and while doing so, I am making my best attempt to meditate on goodness. To focus on the goodness of a meal that can nourish my children, the gift of having a floor to clean, the blessing of a body that can get down on hands and knees and that I am able to be the one home to do this (most evenings.)

All good things, wrapped up into this little life of mine, and I am thankful.

And then, Evie throws up in the bath tub.

While she stands, naked and dripping on the bathmat, I let the water from the tub and find myself (again) chasing partially chewed hot dogs, but this time down the drain in waves of warm soap and other unsavory bits. As I do this, the phone rings and my husband tells me he is just on his way home now. Yes, great, thanks, handful of sopping paper towels and toddler puke, k-bye.

Meanwhile, Alex is poking his head in and asking if I have had a chance to read his school paperwork yet. It’s a story about he and his friends and how one of them used to have brown hair, but the summer sun has turned it blond. It is not Shakespeare and I worry, while handing it back to him with an encouraging smile, that his new teacher won’t encourage him or praise him or guide him as well as his first grade teacher had.

It all just seems so fragile at the moment with him – approaching eight, losing teeth, asking each night if he can stay up later, the disappointment on his face whenever there isn’t time for just one game of UNO or SKIP-BO before bed.

I re-wash Evaline and Lila and wrap them in towels and remember that I am trying to slow down and focus. Right. Focus. I unplug the drain and I am thankful for water – for hot water, even – and enough to fill the tub twice. I am thankful for this wriggling baby girl in my arms who I don’t yet need to send off into the world to be assessed or judged or bothered by things like lunchboxes with her least favorite sandwich or who she is going to sit next to on the bus.

I am thankful for the time I have been given, with her and with all of my children. Towel-swaddled Evie and I stand in the mirror and kiss cheeks and touch noses.  What a gift.

And then, she pees on me.

I kid you not.

Deep breaths. Focus. For this fall season, this is my life. And I will be thankful, be present, notice the good all around.

It’s one in the morning and I should be sleeping, but I am typing. Evaline stirs and comes to our bed. Of course, she did not wake in the hours between putting her to bed and when we went to bed. Of course, she did not disturb us while Vinnie was still awake and I was editing pictures while a slow documentary on the history of a board game (Monopoly) played in the background. No, she waited for this moment, for this quiet bedroom and my empty arms.

I put the laptop down and let her crawl all over me.

It’s two in the morning and she is still here, twisting and snuggling some, but mostly kicking. I nudge Vinnie awake to try and take her back to her room.

It’s six in the morning and Alex comes to our bedroom. Evie is here too, again. I think I might have slept an hour or two, maybe.

Lila bounces to the bedroom and informs me that I still need to pack their snacks. And that she likes chips. I blink at her and she quickly adds, but whatever you give us is good because all the food in our house is good!

Yes. All the food in our house is good. I pull the blankets back and here we go again. Four children, three bus stops to wait through, two snacks and lunches to pack, one house to clean, one wedding to shoot (tonight, another tomorrow). But in it all – in all this new routine, this autumn, this back to school madness, you are here and you are good and I will focus on blessings not nuisances.

I walk to the kitchen.

Asher greets me with a sheepish smile and two donuts hidden behind his back.

Oh, and wet pants and a wet bed.

At the bus stop, I sip coffee and people watch while my kids run around the lot with their friends. I notice the absence of our neighbor and his daughter and for a moment, I feel the wisp of death, curling itself back into my thoughts.

But then the bus pulls around the bend and the children all bolt to line up. I smile at the enormity of Lila’s pink backpack on her little girl frame. Alex turns from his place in line to send me a big smile and a goodbye wave. I drive home to poopy diapers and laundry loads and charging camera batteries and client emails and a text from a friend are we still on for a walk (in twenty minutes)? and busy-busy-busy.

Yet, in it all, goodness. In it all, a life, my life, written over seasons and chapters and papers that are scribbled on in cursive, in Crayola, in eloquence and in gibberish – with pages torn, spilled on, scattered on the floor and somehow shoved back into sequence.

And I am thankful. Folding laundry. Changing diapers. Muttering over the damp sheets on Asher’s bed, the spilled Cheerio’s on our kitchen floor. I am thankful for it all, every little thing that keeps me focused on the this place, this page, this season here on this middle-ladder rung moment of my life.

Filed Under: Motherhood, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , ,

A mix tape for my daughter

September 8, 2012 By

One of the reasons I have been drawn to music is the power it has to take you from flat-out normal to exceedingly sad, or from bored to overwhelmingly happy, in less than four minutes.  And when listening to longer, more complicated pieces, like Bach or Puccini or Durufle, you sit in a concert hall feeling arias building and cadences growing, and your heart starts racing.  You find yourself residing in another dimension, and suddenly you can’t even breathe.  And then one day when you are diagnosed with cancer, you are in a Dunlap’s parking lot in Waco, Texas, listening to a scratchy rendition of Eva Cassidy singing People Get Ready live at Blues Ally.  You sob and rock like a child and you think you heart just fell out in front of you.

Music makes all time and space melt around you like butter, and you are suddenly very far away, peering into the very realms of heaven.  Maybe I find the addiction to music fascinating because it puts one face-to-face with strong emotion, and only when you work through the pain and fear and passion that it evokes can you really heal.

So when I peek inside my daughter’s room and see her sitting alone listening to music, it makes me smile.  I want her to have the same elated cries, and find joy in certain phrases, and think she can make through this life.  I want her to have hope, and be confident, and find the joy in all things.

Then she asks me to buy Party in the USA on my ipod.  Ugh.  I’m suddenly thrown back into reality of her 6-year-oldness.  We’ll work on her taste a bit.  But the yearning’s there.  And that’s a good thing.  She already owns The Best of John Denver, so at least there’s that.

So I put together a little mix CD for her of songs that are joyful, and express my love of life, and of her, and the south.  These are songs I don’t mind being etched into her little brain, for her to recall in her later years.  They are but a few of great inspiring songs to come.  What a lifetime of music lies ahead.

  • Strip Me, by Natasha Bedingfield
  • Come To Jesus, by Mindy Smith
  • The One I Love, by David Gray
  • Summer Dance, a flamenco guitar piece
  • Dreams, by Fleetwood Mac
  • This Old Porch, by Lyle Lovett
  • You Know I Love You Baby, by Mindy Smith
  • Southern Kind Of Life, by Kasey Chambers
  • Bridge Over Troubled Water, by Eva Cassidy
  • Grace, by Saving Jane
  • I Know You By Heart, by Eva Cassidy
  • Over the Rainbow, by Ingrid Michaelson
  • Shake It Out, by Florence + The Machine
  • The Way I Am, by Ingrid Michaelson

What songs have you always wanted your daughter to know?

Filed Under: Motherhood, Music, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , ,

Slaying the dragon

September 6, 2012 By

I think of death more than most people.  It’s only natural when you come face-to-face with it so often. My cardiologist can’t explain why my heart rate plummets dangerously low.  My oncologist tells me I’m in the clear now, ten years since melanoma cropped up like a nuclear bomb in my eyeball.  It’s been six years since I was in the hospital with a raging abdominal infection and two years since my heart flat-lined on the table.  I’m good, considering.  But the collateral damage that results is that I’m always pondering the blackness, leaving little notes for my children, and love letters to my husband.  I can’t ever leave enough, like I need to stockpile memories and words and tiny little charms.

Imagining my own death is hardly painful – I trust in God and believe there is a better place looming.  But I am utterly paralyzed when imagining it all happening in a different order, that the offspring might pass before the maker.  The thought of burying my own is too heavy a cross to bear, and I cannot place myself in the position of the one viewing the wreckage.

For whatever reason lately I keep stumbling across stories involving this particular tragedy. It’s not like I sought out to read them.  I was looking for a new website designer and found Anna See’s blog, An Inch of Gray, and was immersed in her story of her lost son, and grief, and hope.  A high school friend of mine died before she reached her 40th birthday and her mother still posts little thoughts on her facebook page.  I am spending the weekend with your boys. I miss your smile. And my dear writer friend Melanie Haney wrote a wonderful post on life and loss this week in her blog, A Frozen Moon.

I wonder if it’s good to think such horrid thoughts.  Maybe one just shouldn’t go around borrowing trouble.   And yet it seems as if this topic is pushed in front of me, against my best efforts and my own will.  The other night I was so consumed with sadness that I fell on my knees and begged God to never let this come to pass.  I am not as strong as Job: I would be unable to simply pick up the pieces.  I am not Abraham, who walked his own son to the alter.   I’m not Jesus who can say forgive them, Father, they know not what they do.  I am afraid I could never forgive.  I am so utterly weak.  I can do great things, but not this.  Please dear Lord not this.

So I tried thinking of happy things.  I loaded the dishwasher, read my daughter a book, cleared my head.  But last night I had fitful dreams.  I tossed and turned and kept saying no to some imaginary dragon.  I was fighting all night long and I can’t exactly remember why.  I woke up exhausted and overwhelmed.  Maybe I was fighting the devil himself.

Today, when I picked my son up from preschool, I swept him up in my arms and held him like he had been restored from death.  I stood right there in the little room, crowded in blocks and caterpillars and mothers busy picking up their children, and sobbed.  I peppered his cheeks with kisses and squeezed his body tight.  I walked out fast so the teachers wouldn’t notice, but I’m sure it was futile.  As I put him in the car, he looked at me and said simply, “I sorry, mama.”  Because his beautiful two-year-old heart is filled with compassion, and he didn’t understand my tears.  It’s okay, son.  I just love you so.

I wonder if Satan and God have been having a discussion about me, like they did with Job.  She’ll crumble like a house of cards.  She won’t stay faithful.  Without those two children, she’ll falter.  Let me test her, I beg you. I wonder if God would have faith in me, as he did in Job.

Because honestly, I just don’t know how God could see his only son suffer.  I would die in his place.  I would run and scream and not be able to bear the weight of it.  I would pull out my hair and rip my clothes and crumble to nothing. And yet I am weak, and can’t see the rising.  For in Christ there is always rising.  Through the blackness and cries of disbelief and anger and sorrow, there is light burning.  God knew of this.  It’s okay, son.  I just love you so.

Despite my own weaknesses, the rooster crowing thrice at dawn, and my utter ridiculous failures, I will rest in that hope.   I pray that certain things never come to pass, but I cannot guarantee such a future. My husband is the beam to which I’m tethered.  My children are the brightness and lightness of my very being.  But God is my strength, and without him it all crumbles like a deck of cards.

Tonight in my dreams, I’ll slay that dragon.  I’ll plant kisses and seeds of joy and fight fire with fire.  I will love my family through the tantrums and the screaming.  I’ll keep loving when we don’t speak and when life is all stressed out and messy.  I will show the devil that he cannot take away this love, no matter hard he tries.  So if it’s ever ripped from me too soon, I can say with my whole heart that I did enough.  I loved enough.

God is enough.

Filed Under: Inspirational, Love, Motherhood, My life, Religion Tagged With: , , ,

Cluttered and clean

September 2, 2012 By

Our front porch is sacred.  It’s a place where we sneak off to in the mornings for coffee and hope the kids don’t notice.  It’s a place where we drink beer on Friday nights and watch the setting sun.  Our porch is peppered with a red tractor or a plastic fire truck or a plate of chopped up mint leaves and rosemary. My husband wants to screen it in due to all those nasty mosquitoes, but they live on this earth too and I just hate to have any barrier at all between me and the oak branches, or the sound of the cicadas, or the breezes that blow in from the west.

Our porch is where I cry, laugh on the phone with girlfriends, and pray.  It’s where I watch my children haul rocks around in wagons and listen for their sweet voices in the distance.  I wave at neighbors and watch horses and peer up at the sky for rain.  I wonder now how I ever lived in a house with only a door.  Or a portico.  Or a small entry not big enough for our large white rocking chairs.

This porch is becoming a part of my soul, big and open, sometimes cluttered and sometimes clean. Oh, my dear friend, please always be my refuge.

—

Joining others today for a link-up at:

Filed Under: My life, Uncategorized Tagged With: ,

Ten Things I Shouldn’t Admit

September 2, 2012 By

(1) I create very extensive stand-up comedy routines in my car while driving places.  The words “please stop doing that” and “leave funny to the professionals” just might have been uttered by some very tall man-person in my home on multiple occasions.

(2) I love to iron, in the wistful sense that once a year or so I’ll pull out some cloth napkins and slowly press them during the changing of the seasons as the Autumn wind is blowing through the windows and I’m listening to an Adele album while drinking chai tea.  Aside from that one particular set of circumstances, ironing’s just meh.

(3) My two-year-old has decided that he has immunity from all bad deeds as long as he says I’m sorry and offers a hug.  Today he sprinkled baby powder over his entire room, squirted lotion on my wood floors, ate nothing for dinner but demanded bars for an hour, marked on the furniture, and hit his sister.  Sorry, momma?  Hug?  It’s not a magic eraser, kid.  I ain’t fallin for it.

(4) I made homemade play dough this afternoon because I am that cool mom that does fantastic crafty things with her children that they damn well better remember.  My son spilled salt all over the floor, I had to cook the concoction and dirty up several pans, I ended up getting green food coloring on my hand for the rest of the day that doesn’t come off even with sandpaper, only to end up with two tiny lumps that my children rolled into snakes and made into hearts for seven entire minutes.  Then they declared play-dough dull and boring in comparison to afternoon cartoons and ran out of the kitchen muttering about juice boxes.  Save yourself the trouble.  Buy it instead.

(5) I’m going to buy a new Burberry coat and when my husband casually asks how much it costs I’ll just say Sorry? Hug?

(6) I let my dog out to pee this morning before I even had my first cup of coffee and our neighborhood dog walkers stopped in their tracks at the sight of an unbound, leash-free animal.  Like my 14-year-old spaniel is going to attack them in a wild crazy old-dog vengeance.  I don’t even think he saw them given his poor eyesight and general inability to move fast or care much. He sauntered slowly toward the mailbox and began eating some other animal’s poo.  The dog walkers stared in disgust and one said “just keep going, Muffy.  It’s just none of your business.” I just waved.  “Have a great morning, ya’ll!” I called out.

(7) I have a thing for Jennifer Garner because I loved Season One of Alias so much and I secretly believe that if we were placed in a room together we’d become BFFs and would agree on all childrearing techniques and would bond over tea and scones.  But now that I’m putting it out there on paper it sounds weird and stalkerish and perhaps it’s strange that I always click on her picture in celebrity websites as she’s coming out of Starbucks.  I’m all “hey, Jen.  Is that your double frap with no foam? I know you love em. check it.”

(8) I am not ever going to make sandwiches in my kid’s lunch box that look like a tropical beach with coconut and palm trees or make vegetables look like monkey ears.  My knives aren’t that sharp and they won’t eat anything green anyway and I just can’t go around setting the standard that high.  I’ve decided that pinterest is evil and exists to make mothers feel like pond scum.  What happened to the simple lunch note that reads “have a great day in wonderland, sucka”?

(9) I honestly don’t know what Jennifer Garner drinks at Starbucks.  And I don’t say “check it” in real life because I don’t know exactly what that means.  I do, however, periodically watch movie previews in which she stars.  Maybe weird. Not as weird, however, as saying “check-it.”

(10)               I get winded sometimes when climbing stairs, but I’m too embarrassed to admit I’m out of shape so I say things like  (sigh) I’m so bummed that Heidi Klum cheated on Seal or (sigh) I really need to go the grocery store for toothpaste or (sigh) I really hope my daughter likes those new socks I bought.  Basically anything I can sigh about that brings more air into my oxygen-starved and bloated lungs.  Maybe I should just work out instead so I don’t have to sound like such a ninny.

Filed Under: Embarrassing Moments, Humor, Motherhood, My life Tagged With: , , ,

broken mirrors

August 31, 2012 By

The other night, I spent hours writing an article on inward beauty, and how a gentle spirit matters more than True Religion jeans.  We place so much importance on our appearance that we let the true elegance of our spirit go both unnoticed and unrecognized.  I stayed up late editing the piece, and was happy with how it turned out, and hoped that the national magazine where I submitted it would publish it.

The next day, my six-year-old had a play date.  I had been slumming around all week in workout attire, so I finally fixed my hair, put on a frilly top, and wore a necklace.  I sat poolside and shared with another mom how sad it was that someone I know seemed to stop caring about herself, and how she is just too pretty to let herself go like that.  The vitriol speech flowed like warm honey out of my mouth.  I didn’t even bat an eye.

Let me recap.

  1. I wrote an article on how outward beauty is overrated.
  2. I felt all slap-happy proud of myself for writing it.
  3. I dolled up for a bunch of moms who didn’t really care how I looked
  4. I totally slammed on some poor hapless victim about her lack of outward beauty
  5. I went home singing show tunes and eating popsicles

Sometimes I want to poke my own eyes out like one of the Three Stooges.  How can I possibly be such a screw-up?  Can I not go 24 hours without being so downright hypocritical?  I texted the mom I was talking to and apologized for my words, but it fell flat.  I lowered my head to ask for forgiveness.  I realized how flawed I am as a human being, and I wondered why God keeps giving me second chances.

Peter promised Jesus he wouldn’t betray him.  He felt with every fiber of his being that he wouldn’t. And yet he did.  Because left to our own devices, we say one thing and do another. We fall asleep and say hurtful words and fill our lives with vanity.  We give to the church but ignore the poor.  We pray for hours, and then walk out spewing vinegar from our mouths.  It’s a disgrace to our Creator.  It’s a disgrace to others who see us as examples.  It’s a disgrace to ourselves.  Our lives are but a broken mirror with past mistakes and shattered weaknesses strewn around on the floor.

But God repairs, and cuts heal.  I’ll regroup as the new day dawns, as Peter did.  Not due not to my own strength, but of His.

—

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/matte0ne/6328100019/

Filed Under: Inspirational, Religion, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , ,

Odd and Curious Thoughts of the Week

August 27, 2012 By

(1) I made Indian food this week and my daughter told me it was the best thing she has ever eaten.  She also wondered if we ate it every night of our lives whether we might still be Americans.  Yes, love. We’d still be Americans.  Pass the dal.

(2) The other night my son got up ten thousand times. I scolded him every time and told him to return to bed, and he would go sauntering back with his arms dragging by his sides.  Finally, I just sat in a chair in his room and he fell asleep immediately.  Funny how someone’s presence can be so soothing.

(3) My dog’s presence is full of insanely high-octane gas that reminds me of rotten, salty hay.  I could do without that.

(4) At a stoplight yesterday, I sat behind an Elantra.  Am I the only one who thinks that name sounds like a prescription drug?  Take ten milligrams of Elantra twice daily and come back to see me in three months. At least Trailblazer sounds adventurous.  I then went on an obsessed tirade of reading all the car names around me.  Rav 4? Equinox? Are we traveling to space in that Chevy, for heaven’s sake?

(5) Jesus renamed one of his disciples from the original name, Simon, to a new name, Peter.  I find it fascinating that you can walk around all your life being Amanda and then suddenly you’re Susan.  I get that Peter truly was a new person in Christ, but I secretly wonder if Peter liked the name.  And how did that make his mom feel?  After naming her sweet baby after great uncle Simon?  Did his wife have to keep correcting herself in the bedroom?

(6) I got a babysitter for my toddler this past week to take my daughter to a cooking demonstration at a local restaurant.  She begged to stay home because she was reading and didn’t want to change out of her pajamas, but I forced her to go since I had made reservations.  Since Monday is bread-baking day at my house, I had to hurry and get the dough to rise, and into the pans, and out of the oven before we left.  When we arrived, they announced that today was a special demonstration on bread baking.  My daughter looked at me like honestly, mom? We came for this?

(7) As it turns out, my daughter did have fun baking French bread.  She got home to show the babysitter, set the bread on the table to show her father when he got home, and the loaf was promptly eaten by the dog.  I’m really hating on him right now.

(8) I bought a futon for our upstairs play room.  It’s been described by my husband as “cheap,” “cracked,” and “rickety.”  However, my six-year-old has described it as “super fun,” “comfy,” and “very cool.”  Six-year-old wins.

(9)  Our two-year-old came into our room at 4:30 am this morning with a wet shirt and told me that he “washed his hands.”  That’s never good.

(10)               “Did you throw away that Toys-R-Us catalog?” my daughter asked me after looking all the over the house for it.  What?  You mean that tattered seven-page spread that you’ve been obsessed with for days and is causing you to ignore reality so you can memorize names and prices of various toys and remind me at every opportunity that the Lego Friends is on sale for $39.99?  Huh.  I just have no idea what happened to that thing.

(11)               Please let the school year come because I’m tired of hearing “don’t rush me” and “ it’s only 8:30 and in the summer I can stay up until 9.”  The juice and the popsicles and all that packing up and sunscreen application really wears a mom out.  And then there’s the boredom and “it’s too hot” and driving constantly to grandma’s.  Movie nights and play dates and nights without baths – my life would be much better if we could only get back to routine and consistency.

(12)               Please, Lord, never let this summer end.  My children are adorable,  my son won’t take a squeezable fruit without demanding one for his sister, and my daughter lost her front two teeth.  My sweet girl reads and draws and my son carefully places rocks in buckets and waters flowers.  We take turns hauling vegetables in from the garden and everyone is all giddy to get smoothies at 3 pm on a random Tuesday.  We swim and drink juice and make videos of ourselves dancing on the porch singing songs. It’s the best time of year and I want to cherish it forever.

Filed Under: Humor, Motherhood, My life Tagged With: , , ,

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