Storms

Last week was one week I wouldn't want to ever do over. It was stressful from beginning to end. There were days where I just wanted to open the cover of my Bible and wrap it tightly around me - like an infant in a blanket. I didn't want to teach the children, clean the house, cook the meals, wash the clothes, play taxi driver, etc., etc. Tax season is tough on us. Ryan is torn between his responsibilities at work vs his responsibilities here and struggles to find enough energy for both. I struggle with bouncing from leader to follower; leading in his absence - following in his prescence. The kids struggle with who's in charge and just the daily schedule. When the kids were younger, Ryan hated to hear my distressed call of "what time did you say you were coming home?" As the kids have gotten older, the call is different. It is more of a challenge to get them to all their activities as well as keep him in the loop of where we are, what is going on, etc. However, one thing I have learned this week is that there are somethings you should never take for granted. It is easy to get comfortable where we are and no longer notice the things around us or the people around us. During my distress calls to the Lord this week I came across this quote: "Those who abandon ship the first time it enters a storm miss the calm beyond. And the rougher the storms weathered together, the deeper and stronger real love grows." (Ruth Bell Graham) I think of how many things/blessings we may miss out on because we aren't willing to buckle down and weather the storm. I'll be honest, I don't like storms - especially big ones; I cannot control storms, I cannot predict storms. However, I am equipped with what I need to weather storms and to learn from them. This is my new favorite verse "Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me and know my anxious thoughts; and see if there be any hurtful way in me, and lead me in the everlasting way." (Psalm 139: 23-24)

Love

Okay, I feel another pessimistic blog coming on. I am not a lovey, mushy kind of girl. And, since being married to an accountant, I have given up on Valentine's Day. Although, truth be told, it has never been my favorite "holiday." I have been reading a book called One Month the Live: Thirty Days to a No-Regrets Life by Kerry and Chris Shook. It has been a very interesting book. I am on the chapter about Loving Completely. Here is what the first part says: "When it is all said and done, relationships are all that really matter. It doesn't matter how much money we have, where we live, or how many beautiful toys we have collected. None of these can comfort us, console us, cry with us, or love us. Our investment in the people we care about is the only legacy that has the power to endure beyond our lifetime." Ryan teases me because I am obsessed with my funeral. I know that sounds crazy but it totally made since to me when I read this passage. How many people come to my funeral, to me, equates the amount of people I invested in. Sometimes, in my world, I lose sight of the day to day people I invest in outside of my four walls. I know I have not invested in others as many as some but perhaps more than others. However, I can honestly say when I love, I love for life. I have never told someone I loved them on a whim; not even as a child. I was listening to a song from the Fireproof soundtrack the other day and it said this "Love is not a place to come and go as we please. It's a house we enter in and then commit to never leave." That is so me. So, when I begin to get onto myself about being off-standish I am going to remind myself that I strive for "quality not quantity"!

First Field Trip

Today, for the first time ever I took my two youngest children on a "field trip." Now, when my older two were younger we took TONS of field trips. We went to Lowe's Foods, Food Lion, Pizza Hut, Daylight Donuts, Subway (after this trip Emily was positive she was going to be a "sandwich artist" for years afterward), the Fire Station, the Police Station, every NC aquarium and nearly every Children's museum within a 300 mile radius. However, somehow that got lost in our day to day of living. As a Kindergarten teacher in my former life, this is something I have felt very guilty over for my youngest two children. So, a few weeks ago when I saw a field trip to Lowe's Foods I decided - "we're doing it." We were supposed to go last Tuesday but due to the snow, it was rescheduled for today. We had to be there at 10:00am. We pulled up at 9:58 - just in time for this group shot in front of the store. Alexa asks - "Mom, were you late with Emily and Owen too?" No, probably not.

We get into the store. We get hats and follow the balloon cart. The very nice lady takes us around the store looking for healthy snacks. Now, since this was our very first field trip and my older two had taken this trip years ago - they were prepping my younger on things to look for. "Be sure to touch the lobster, notice how cold the freezer it, watch the boxes get smashed, taste the kiwi, eat the cookie, scan your grocery, look at the meat grinder, etc." Well, let's just say the field trip has changed in the past 6 years. The only thing that was the same was the hat, the pencil, and looking/touching the lobster. Instead of tasting a cookie, they got an orange slice and a sandwich bag of shredded wheat.

Here is Alexa and Ian posing after the field trip. The kids had a great time going around the store with a few other kids. They enjoyed wearing the hats for the rest of the day and playing with the balloon. I did learn that they are not as bad off as I thought they were. Minus the hat, other kids and following the balloon cart, they have been on this field trip a zillion times. Over the years, I have become much more of the "everything is a field trip" kind of mom/teacher than I ever gave myself credit for. I mentioned to the lady the differences in our trips. She responded, "We have such codes and guidelines as to who can go where in the store due to safety regulations and health concerns." So, our sue happy, germophoic tendencies ruined our "behind the scenes" field trip. Oh well, taken Alexa and Ian on a field trip: CHECK!

Happy Birthday Alexa

This is Alexa the day she came home from the hospital. She was already looking at Owen with a "What!" type expression and she had only known him for s few days.

This was Alexa waiting to get her first haircut - just a bangs trim.

This is her getting ready to go to her very first friend party. It was a little boy of a sister in Owen's gymnastics class. Years later, they would be in the same TaeKwonDo classes. Who knew...

This was Alexa skating on her birthday. She has to make a fashion statement even at the skating rink!

I love this picture. This is Alexa. I am surprised she is not making an open mouthed expression. She probably was but I made her stop. Alexa is the most flamboyant, exuberant, sensitive, peculiar, walk to her own drummer kind of kid. She loves life to the fullest. When she was little, I worried she had a sleep problem because as soon as she was still and quiet - she was asleep. I have pictures of her asleep in most the most precarious positions and places.

This picture was obviously at Disney. The peculiarity I was mentioning coming out here. She desperately wanted her picture taken with the prince. Our table was in an odd place and we couldn't quite figure out the prince's table pattern so he got to our table quicker than we expected. Alexa refused her have her picture taken without her gloves. The young "prince" was very kind and gracious and was helping Alexa to put on her gloves. He couldn't quite get her fingers right and Alexa was insistent that they be on correctly AND pulled all the way up. So, Ryan reached over to help the poor fellow so that he could take the picture and move on to the the next table. I am saving this picture for Alexa's wedding so that she will always know that sometimes even "Prince Charming" may need her dad's help!

This was the final product after all the fuss. Pretty as a picture isn't she?

This is my girl. She squeals in delight when happy and cries like her heart is broken when sad. You always know where you stand with Alexa. She is so excited to be 8 because she gets to get out of a booster seat. A few weeks ago, we were sitting at the mall having lunch and Alexa was doing her usual eating very slow and watching all the people around her. Suddenly, out of the blue she says: "When will Obama become President?" "January" I answer. "Well," she replies,"he had better not think of raising the car seat age to 9 or I am going to send him a strong letter filled with words I am not allowed to say!" (Owen was affected when the current car seat law was changed - he was out of a booster but had to go back in one from Jan - March.) "Alexa," I say, exactly how are you going to know how to spell all these words you are not allowed to say?" She thinks for a moment and replies "Emily - I am sure SHE knows how to spell them!" Hmmm.... I've said all along that we must channel this girl's power for good!

christmas is overrated

Okay, hear me out: "Christ"mas is not overrated - christmas is overrated. I have decided that as a relational follower of Jesus Christ (as opposed to a religious follower) I get jipped at Christmas. The whole idea behind Christmas is to celebrate the birth of Christ. I do that most of the year through. I will not be so vain as to say I am thankful for His birth daily; however, I do verbally recognize and offer my thanksgiving for the birth of Christ often. As I have grown older in my role of motherhood, Mary's position and predicament burden my mind often. I love Christmas. I love that "ordinary" radio stations play music written about the birth of Christ. I love the silly ones and the meaniningful ones. I heard John 3:16 being quoted on 101.5! I love the lights and decorations. I love buying and giving gifts. I love trying to study a person and listen to find out little things that would show them I care. I love adopting a family - getting my children excited about giving something they often take for granted. I love sending and receiving Christmas cards to hang on my wall. I love Christmas. However, here is the part where I feel jipped; it takes me a LONG time to get all of these things done so that I can just sit and ponder, sit and marvel, sit and wonder. In fact, it takes me so long that by the time I am ready - all the world has stopped. The music is gone, the lights are out, trees down, gifts returned - no one cares about the good-will of others. The warm - fuzzy feeling is gone. Why? - is what I want to scream! Okay, I understand the music - (although I have to confess every now and again I slip that Christmas CD in just for a pick-me-up), I also understand the decorations and lights. As for gifts - people all around us still love gifts - I am not talking Xbox type gifts - a call to see how they are doing, taking an unused cart, speaking kindly to the wal-mart cashier, etc. And the cards - how long has it been since just sending a real card to someone you care about - a card you have to think about purchasing (or hand designing) and you have to actually go to a post office to mail it. And that adoptive family - they don't just have needs at Christmas. The family we helped out this year is a single mother of three young children. She has a full-time job, manages her money carefully, takes all of her responsibilities seriously yet she cannot pay her bills each month. Yes, this girl needs more financial income but she also needs prayer, an occasional free babysitter, a mentor. But I can't do those things - Christmas is over. According to the world, it abruptly stopped December 25 at midnight. The Cinderella world officially turned back into a pumpkin. I sure am glad I celebrate "Christ"mas and not christmas or I would officially be depressed.

Divorce

Divorce is a topic that has been bugging me lately. Recently, through facebook, I discovered an old friend who married his childhood sweetheart. I had even seen them and their two cute little boys in my hometown a few years ago. Well, imagine my surprise when I looked through this "friend's" pictures that the caption that read my heart, my life, my best friend, my wife was not the same girl I knew. I was terribly sad and heartbroken for them. Now, they are not really my "friends" and I know nothing about their life, their circumstances, nothing. However, I could not imagine watching my husband be married to another woman. I could not imagine passing him in the grocery store knowing he once knew every intimate detail about me.
This past Sunday, our lesson was on the Proverbs 31 woman. I teach 6th grade girls. We were discussing choices; choices in choosing our friends, choices in choosing our romantic interests; choices in who/what we want to be. We were discussing how in the passage King Lemuel's father had to have seen some of these qualities in his "girlfriend" before she became his wife and the mother of his children. Many of them started telling me the courtship of their mother and father. There was one girl who told of her parents courtship like she was watching a fairytale movie. Then she added, they were married 12 years. My mom got engaged to someone else last weekend. Poof, Cinderella gone Nightmare.
I know divorce happens. My parent's got divorced when I was 2. Ryan's parents divorced after 26 years. But why? Why is happily ever after so difficult? I was discussing this with my children, who have friends that are currently being torn through a terrible he said/she said battle of their parents. After a few moments Owen replied, "it's all Eve's fault." He hit the nail on the head. It is all about sin. Satan would love nothing more than to rip our families to shreds, to shatter our trust in other people, to destroy our faith. Satan can make "the grass on the other side" look so tempting. Marriage takes selflessness, sacrifice, determination, and hard work. Everyone wants to live "happily ever after." I guess the truth is in how you define "happier." If it's okay, I prefer to stay "happy, happier, happiest" with the one I've got! :)

Little gifts

I was going to show pictures of the kids at their Black belt graduation; but I am not. I was going to show you pictures of my beautiful Thanksgiving table; but I am not. I was going to tell you how overwhelmed I feel by my schedule, my calendar, my family, my Christmas-to-do lists; but I am not. Instead, I am going to tell you of a wonderful gift I received. Due to all the things above, I have not been sleeping well and for some reason, my filing cabinet has been bugging me. It is way too full of stuff I no longer need. So, I have been going through folder by folder getting rid of stuff I no longer need or duplicate pages. Every year when each of my children were in Kindergarten, we put up a huge turkey, cut out a million feathers and mailed them to friends and family of that child's choice with directions for them to write what they are thankful for and for them to mail it back to us. We get those feathers in the mail and tape them to our turkey. Since last year was my last Kindergarten turkey, I decided it would be fun to take the picture of every one's turkey and those feathers and put them in a scrap book. It is very cool to see how people's blessings changed from Emily to Ian. Well, I couldn't find Owen's feathers. I had a very distinct flash-back to sitting on the garage floor at my old house with the file folder of feathers in my hand. I put them in the trash, I took them out of the trash. When I couldn't find them, I assumed I must have left them in the trash. You see, I do not like junk. I am a junk a phobic. However, I am a sap for nostalgia. I was crushed that I let my state of overwhelmed with junk and a small house, persuade me throw out these precious feathers. I am sure the conversation went something like this: "I might want to do something with these one of these days" Only to which I would answer myself "Yeah, right, you are never going to do anything but let this pile up into more and more junk. Besides, you probably threw Emily's away too." Well, a few nights ago, I was going through my December folder and purging the things I no longer wanted. And there, in the December folder in a smaller folder labeled "foil names" were Owen's feathers. I was so glad to see them. You would have thought it would have been some long lost relative. I know this sounds crazy but I could have cried. I felt pure joy and relief at having these feathers in my hands. I didn't ponder (too long) or beat myself up as to why they were in the wrong folder under the wrong name and I didn't have anyone to tell (because they were all asleep) and even if they were up they would not have the same appreciation for these feathers that I have mourned over for the past 5 years. I would like to say I immediately made my scrapbook - I didn't. However, I did get out all 4 of our feather folders and read them and prayed over them and put them all together in ONE folder with each folder labeled correctly. I hope and pray that I never stop rejoicing and praising Him for the small, simple, pleasures of life He bestows upon me; and that I never come to the point where I don't recognize that they are from Him.

The Weekend!

Disciple Now was this weekend. We have been a host home for Disciple Now for 4 years, for Emily's group. Since this is the first year we have had two in the youth group, we decided to host Owen's group, sixth grade boys. Last year, we had 9th grade girls; needless to say, switching from 9th grade girls to 6th grade boys was quite a culture shock. I have to admit that I was a little nervous. We get college-aged small group leaders and they stay the weekend as well. Truth be told, I was even more nervous when I was given the list of said leaders. I didn't know either of them personally. However, they did a fabulous job. As you will see, they had no problems "connecting" with the boys.
This is a game of football on Saturday. We were so thankful that the rain stopped long enough for them to be outside for a while. There was ALOT of energy!
This is the mastermind "huddle."

In the middle of all of this, Owen and I had to go to Kernersville for his first gymnastics meet. He did very well. He came in 7th place overall and his team came in 3rd place. We left on Saturday around 2 and got back at almost midnight. The lady that so generously let us ride with her so that Ryan could keep the van, hit a deer on her way home. She was fine, the deer was fine, the van - not so much.

This is a prime example of the small group leader "connecting" with the boys. They were getting ready for bed, yeah right! :) One of the other major differences between the girls and boys was during the night (when all were sleeping) with girls you would hear a giggle here and there; with boys you hear laughing followed by a crash. At which, I get to elbow Ryan and send him downstairs.

This was their other favorite past time. I knew it was a perfect match when the boys were asking Owen on the way home what sort of gaming system he had. Ryan had connected the playstation to the projector so they could play the game on the wall. One of the small group leaders came with his own gaming system and games and controllers! One group was playing one game downstairs and another group was playing upstairs. Nope, you don't get that with girls.

They did branch out and play something other than football and video games. Ryan had gotten a big stack of games out (the girl's favorites) and the boys played this one over and over.

On Saturday the boys had to do a service project. We, with a little help from my friend Beth, decided to make care packages for soldiers. We were uncertain of the weather and couldn't see the boys being entranced by "baking cookies." They got into the soldier project. Ryan and the two small group leaders went to Wal-mart to buy needed supplies. I can only imagine the scene in wal-mart. Apparently, three boys decided to use their own money to buy a couple of Amp drinks they were trying to drink at 11:00 pm! The sleepy father figure in Ryan promptly took all the amps away.

Here is our group. We had a few that didn't show at all and one who had been assigned to the wrong grade. All in all, I thought it was a great weekend. I think the kids did too. One boy wanted to know if he could come back home with us when church was over. One boy commented that he thought it would be cool to have a Disciple Now month instead of Disciple Now Weekend. I think the powers that be are very wise to keep it to one weekend, once a year. Sign me up for next year!

A good laugh at myself

Okay, so tonight I was waiting for Owen to get out of gymnastics. He has his first meet of the season coming up this weekend and he has been very anxious over the fact that he does not feel as prepared as he would liketo be going into the first meet. The routines change every three years. He moved up a level last year; which was the last year with that routine. So, this is two years in a row he has had to learn a new routine. However, unlike last year, everyone is learning a new routine this year. Anyway, I went in to watch him work out. He doesn't like me to just "stare" so I picked up a magazine to wait and "watch." I was really just skimming the articles when I came across one that was in the connections section. The subtitle read: 'You are cordially invited to join our lovely hostess/columnist for her latest nervous breakdown...uh, we mean party. The article was about this lady that could not, despite her best efforts host a pleasant dinner party. When asking her significant other his opinion as to why she couldn't host a proper dinner party this was his reply: "The only thing you're doing wrong is constantly striving to do everything exactly right and you drive yourself and everybody else nuts trying to achieve it." She sits back and reflects on what he says. This is her conclusion: She says, "I know he's right. I am part geisha girl, part drill sergeant, with just a soupcon of control freak thrown in for good measure. I want everyone to relax and have a good time, but that has to start with me, and I am about as laid back as a caged hummingbird guzzling a can of Red Bull while awaiting biopsy results. You can keep your medication, your reflexology, your gin, your tonics - I'm just not the mellow type." For some odd reason, (certainly NOT because I could identify with it) this image struck me as hilariously funny; about as laid back as a caged humming bird guzzling a can of Red Bull.... I wonder if this lady has ever been at my house BEFORE a party! :)

Expectations

Expectations for some people is a heavy word. I,personally, buckle under expectations. I cannot handle the pressure. I have discovered a nasty fact about me these past few weeks. I am a people pleaser. Now don't get too excited, I am not an EVERYONE people pleaser. If I don't know you or don't like you - I don't care what you think - good, bad, ugly. However, if I care about you, I want to please. The closer you are to me, the worse it is. Ryan and I went to a marriage conference last weekend. It was a very good conference and we enjoyed the time together. One of the speakers said something that has affected me. He said the difference between who you are and who you want to be is a land called disappointment. Ouch. This is where my struggle comes in - how to you strive to be Christ-like in a dismal, fallen world without losing sight of the fact that we were all born a sinner. I am never going to be perfect, no matter how hard I try, no matter how much I want to be. How do you balance those "expectations" without going overboard? I have always thought it to be a pride issue and I know on some scale it is. Yet, I am now realizing that it is not pride that makes me push to succeed. I want to be a good steward of all the blessings God has given me. I want to be the best at all the things He has called me to be. (Un)Fortunately, He has called me to be a lot of things: wife, mother, teacher, friend, sister, daughter, maid, cook, taxi driver, etc, etc. Don't get me wrong, I am blessed beyond measure to be called and equipped to do/be all of these things. As I am getting older, I am seeing a direct correlation between my perfectionism and my procrastination. I procrastinate because I cannot do it "perfectly". Over time, I see that turning me into a quitter; giving up because I don't want to be a disappointment. For many years I have said that my tombstone was going to say "She tried" because I really do try. This week I was reading an article about Billy Graham in the paper and it said that Ruth Graham's headstone said: "End of Construction -- Thank you for your patience." I think that is beautiful. When I was in elementary school, I had a red notebook that said "Please be patient, God is not finished with me yet." I loved that notebook (obviously, I am blogging about it 30 years later:)). I guess that is the key, being willing to be patient and willing to be under construction and willing to step over all the mess and take all the detours that construction requires until we are at the "end of construction." How desperately I want to live this life so that I will hear "well done, thy good and faithful servant."