Tag: children

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Little Person. Big Words.

Yesterday was Thursday. Thursday at my house is like the witching hour. “In folklore, the witching hour or devil’s hour is a time of night associated with supernatural events. Creatures such as witches, demons and ghosts are thought to appear and to be at their most powerful.” (Thanks, Wikipedia.)

Image result for witching hour

Last night was unique because of the long holiday weekend last week, which meant I had to do a grocery store run on a random Thursday night because of the jumbled schedules.

Thursday is always a mad rush to pick up someone from sports and someone else from Grandma’s house and make sure that the other someone finished her homework and has her library book for Friday library walk at school. It’s also the day when I’ve spent a whole week packing lunches, moving around Elves on Shelves in a clandestine and creative manner, and making sure Mass uniforms are washed for Friday church and by 8:00 at night, I. Am. Done.

Now, it gets dark about 5:00 in Northeast Ohio in December, and the barometer on my car’s dashboard said it was a balmy 28 degrees as I’m struggling to carry in groceries – still in my professional work clothes and shoes, no less – while my 10-year-old is asking me repeatedly to read through his science fair packet that came home today, although the science fair doesn’t take place till February, and my other child is insisting that HER Elf on the Shelf has mysteriously moved around during the day because when we left the house 12 hours prior, the Elf’s feet were in a different pose.

You get the idea.

Cue the frustration, and enter my youngest son. Out of the house he comes, wearing only socks and a t-shirt and begins to help me with the groceries, no questions asked. As I’m tossing items in the freezer that we keep in the garage, he looks at me and says, “You know, Mom, there is a season for everything.” And he took his bags in the house. I literally stopped in my tracks and thought about what he said, and how a little person could say so much with so few words.

In one of her books, author/blogger Tricia Lott Williford talks about how she dealt with being overwhelmed with too many tasks at once and realized the key is that we only have to do the next thing. That’s all, just the next thing.

(As an aside, I actually attended grade school with Tricia and she is now an accomplished author and motivational speaker. Her blog is phenomenal. A link to Tricia’s site can be found here.)

After my son made his announcement, I thought of Tricia and how maybe this is the season of doing just that – the next thing.

  • Put the groceries in the freezer.
  • Hang up my coat.
  • Find a hair tie.
  • Stop my son from plowing through the Moose Tracks that we just bought and getting chocolate syrup all over the kitchen, himself, and the living room floor.
  • Whatever the next thing is, this is a good time to do only that.

Last night, the voice of God sounded an awful lot like that of my sweet seven-year-old boy. In this season of rushing and gift-buying and holiday parties, don’t forget to slow down and celebrate the season of your life, wherever it may be.

Most importantly, never underestimate the power of God’s voice — in whatever form it comes to you.

~Amy

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But I don’t want to.

As I’m writing this, I’m dealing with all sorts of emotions.

Anger. Hurt. Betrayal. Sadness. Confusion. Worry.

In a nutshell, someone said something about me.  Not TO me, but ABOUT me to someone else.  My first reaction was anger.

Why wouldn’t you just come tell me to my face?  Why would you feel it’s okay to take the coward’s way out and say it behind my back?

My second reaction was sadness.  I feel sadness that we live in a society where people can make poor choices and then find ways to justify those choices.  I feel hurt, because I am always the one to go above and beyond for others, yet it’s clear that not everyone feels the same way as I do.

I turned to the Word for some guidance, and this verse came to mind.  Matthew 5:44 reads like this:  “But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you.”

No, I don’t want to. Nope.  Why should I?  I don’t want to pray for this turd. I want to find them and say exactly what I think.

I won’t, of course, but it feels good to think about it.

I broke down the words of Jesus in this verse.  He tells me to pray for those who “spitefully” use me.  The dictionary definition of spiteful is, “vengeful, mean, cruel, rancorous. Spiteful, revengeful, vindictive refer to a desire to inflict a wrong or injury on someone, usually in return for one received. Spiteful implies a mean or malicious desire for (often petty) revenge.”  https://www.dictionary.com › browse › spiteful

If I ever knew someone who needed prayer, it is for sure someone who gets pleasure by making others unhappy.  Jesus Himself prayed for those who persecuted Him, and was blessed by doing so.

I prayed for this person last night, and this morning, and even as I’m writing this.  That’s not to say it’s easy, because it’s not, or that I WANT to, because part of me doesn’t.

Watch me do it anyway.

 

Expert or exasperated?

ex·pert
/ˈekˌspərt/
Learn to pronounce
noun
  1. a person who has a comprehensive and authoritative knowledge of or skill in a particular area.
    “a financial expert”
    synonyms: specialist, authority, pundit, oracle, resource person; More
adjective
  1. having or involving authoritative knowledge.
    “he had received expert academic advice”
    synonyms: skillful, skilled, adept, accomplished, talented, fine; More

I began this blog as an assignment for one of my classes.  I am going to continue the blog as an assignment for…another one of my classes.  The professor was specific in his instructions about the assignment:  We need to write a blog that is interesting and not-too-broad.  In other words, spend the next 12 weeks blogging about something that I have direct knowledge of that others will find captivating and enthralling.  For example, one student a few semesters ago set up a blog all about knitting.  Another student blogged about his extracurricular life of coaching youth sports.

Okay.  Got it.  I don’t know how to knit and I don’t care much for children’s sports (a fact I discovered AFTER I had three children who each participate simultaneously in various sports and activities), so I have zero to blog about there, which got me thinking…what AM I good at?  What type of knowledge and uncanny abilities do I possess?

Let’s see here…I show up for work on time and I like to think I do an above-average job in the workplace; however, I have a hard time believing that there’s a huge amount of avid readers out in the blogosphere anxiously foaming at the mouth to hear the latest tale of how I spent my day clearing a jam from the office copy machine or stocking K-cups for the coffeemaker.  All vital skills, sure, but hardly titillating material for the masses to consume.

Well, what else can I contribute?  In no particular order, here are some things I consider myself somewhat of an “expert” on:

  • Going to Target with an itemized list and leaving with a $200 receipt and a cart full of things, none of which were actually on the original list;
  • Sneaking out of my bathroom at night without making a sound to avoid my children hearing me and asking me for another snack when it’s 11:00 and they should be sleeping;
  • Finding ways to combine coupons at Bath and Body Works in order to score lotions and hand soaps for bargain-basement prices;
  • And finally, making sure all the children make it to the aforementioned sports practices while maintaining an inner monologue of profanities that would make a sailor blush, simultaneously ensuring my daughter is wearing panties, as she tends to “forget” to put them on.

It was during my thought process that I realized, maybe the insight I possess isn’t anything special.  I’m just another single mom, navigating the waters of my forties.  I’m blunt, honest, non-judgmental, and I keep it real.  You can expect to hear my random thoughts on religion, friendship, parenting, and leisure time.  You may also hear about the time my son asked me to take him to buy an athletic cup for sports, or how my second-oldest son once referred to his bedroom as a “shit brick,” a story that emphasizes clear enunciation and grammar usage.

Welcome back, friends.  I’m glad to be here.

 

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let me bake you a cake.

Imagine the dinner guest of your dreams is coming to your house, and you want to make a perfect meal for them.  What is an amazing meal without a delicious dessert, full of peanut butter and chocolate and sprinkles?  In my opinion, dessert is the cherry on top of a great meal (pun intended).  You’d work for hours to make sure that dessert was worthy of being presented to the guest of honor.  Not only would it be pleasing to the eye — like a photo right out of a book — but it would be all gooey deliciousness inside, too.  Your guests would oooh and ahhh over the pure delight they took in partaking of such an amazing treat.  They would surely be very impressed with all the time you took in creating such a treasure, with all the hard work and love you poured into making it just right.

…but what if the dessert more closely resembled the Jello mold that Aunt Bethany brings to the Griswold’s house for Christmas, complete with cat food as a crunchy topper?  What if all you had to serve your guests was last year’s fruitcake?

How would that change their opinion of you?

More importantly, how would that change your opinion of yourself?  If your cake wasn’t picture perfect, would you beat yourself up? I mean, how could you be so inept to present such an esteemed guest with store-bought cookies from Aldi, for heaven’s sake?

There are many ways in which life delivers us desserts.  Not all of them are picture-perfect, either.

For example, if marriage was a cake, mine would be like the one in “Great Expectations,” full of maggots and crumbling apart.  The layers would not be icing and fondant; instead, they would be regret and tears and guilt.

Three years ago, I got divorced.  There were a lot of factors that contributed to the demise of my 11-year marriage, but the end result was the same.  And although both of us added, both knowingly and unknowingly, to the the pile of straws that broke the camel’s back, it was me who finally sent the camel to pasture.  I ended my marriage.  Me.  This is a fact that I have always owned up to.   This is the first layer of my cake.  This is the layer of failure.

The divorce wasn’t messy, per se.  I stayed in my house with the children, the same house they had always lived in.  I found someone new to love, and so did my ex-husband.  He’s been remarried two years now.  He always loved the idea of marriage.  He loved being a husband.  He once told me that the hardest part of us separating was the fact that he lost his friend, too, and not just his wife.  Add a layer of guilt to the cake.

My children were younger when it happened — five and three — and while my oldest has lots of memories of us as an intact family unit, my youngest do not.  The life that they now have is really the only one they remember.  They don’t remember Christmases with Mom and Dad together, or family vacations, except in photographs.  This is the layer of sadness.

I have been in a relationship with my current partner for nearly four years, but that relationship has not been without struggles of its own.  It was two people coming from failed marriages, each bringing truckloads of baggage, both literally and figuratively; two people who had to learn how to navigate the nuances of a new relationship with six children underfoot; two people who may have been labeled adults according to their birth dates, but were newborns in the life of single parenthood. This layer would be the one of uncertainty.

I always wonder what life would be like if only I had tried harder…if my ex-husband had agreed to go to counseling when I begged him to…if I myself had agreed to counseling at the end when I told him it was too late…if we had planned more date nights…if he didn’t change jobs so much…if I didn’t think the grass was greener…if only he had helped out more around the house.  These feelings add the layer of regret to my cake.

I stand back and look at what my life — my cake — has become.  It started out white and perfect, just like a wedding cake from a bridal magazine.  It was beautiful and full of hope.  It was something I could be proud of.  It was a dessert worthy of the most honored dinner guests.

The cake I have now would impress no one.  If I served this decimated cake to my guests, they would shake their heads and laugh and whisper to each other, “Look at that horrendous creation!”  It is nothing to be proud of.

Wrong.

The first cake, the picture-perfect cake, had not been touched.  It was brand-new and shiny, exactly the way it came from the bakery.   It hadn’t experienced life or love or heartache.  In a word, it wasn’t REAL.

Friends, don’t allow the picture you have in your mind of what is “perfect” or “expected” to permeate your heart and distort what you know to be true.  My second cake, the cake that is now my own life, is far from perfect.  It was built with layers of learning and failures and attempts and tears, but it’s MINE.  It’s my very own, very real cake.  And it’s missing a very vital part to any fancy cake…you see, this cake is unfinished.  There is no icing or swan-shaped sculpture on top.  The layers have all been put together, but the cake is not complete.  There is still more work to do to build my cake….and I’m proud of that…and you should be, too.

So come on in, y’all, and pull up a seat at my dinner table.  Tell me your stories.  Let’s share some dessert.