Wednesday, February 21, 2007

Open mouth, insert foot

You know how we have these secret dreams that we'd never admit...things we wish we were, or did? There's lots of things I'd like to be in my heart of hearts....a writer, a speaker...I'd love to be up on the stage like Twila Paris, singing my heart out. Oh yeah. Those are things I want to be. But secretly more than all of those I want to be......

Funny.

Nothing pumps me up more than thinking I made someone laugh. To that end I frequently find myself sending a friend an email in the middle of the day...something to break up the boredom of the day...something to make me forget for just a few minutes the pile of work on my desk. Yesterday was just such a time. A friend across the hall had shared about going to the dentist at lunch and seeing a woman out walking her dog in the middle of the day. We both agreed that we really needed to be independently wealthy so we didn't have to work. My friend has never had the luxury of staying home. I have --- my kids were 20, 14 & 12 before I worked outside of the home. So I don't have any pie-in-the-sky illusions about staying home. I know well those days can be just as hard as working outside the home and being home doesn't necessarily mean everything is always clean and organized and homemade. But yesterday the email went like this:

Can you imagine? Wake up in the morning, make a lovely breakfast for the kids and then get them all off to school. Come home, sit down with your coffee and read the whole newspaper. Clean the house. Take a shower. Call a friend to 'do lunch'. Run by the mall and see what new stuff is out. Go home and start dinner, the kids come home and you are all relaxed, dinner is already cooking.

And then you go to bed to do it all over again the next day.

OR.....

Wake up in the morning and realize you've overslept. Scream like a witch at everyone to GET THE HECK UP! Stand in your closet and realize you have nothing to wear because you forgot the cleaning AGAIN.....or you stand in your closet and think "how many pairs of black pants does one person need and I am sick to death of black pants"....then put on the black pants and scream at the kids again to get in the car....toss them all a lovely nutritious pop tart and a juice box. Drive like a bat out of hell to get the kids to school on time, go to day care and drop the baby off only to realize you were supposed to bring snacks today. Screech out of the parking lot, scaring half the people there, run to the grocery store and buy some lovely, healthy prepackaged, artificially flavored, preservative laden block of sugar....drive back to daycare and fling it out the window as you slow down and then get here to work. To hear "um, are you busy? I can't figure out how to make my icons bigger on my desktop and by the way would you mind terribly running downstairs and getting me something to eat?"


That was my email to my friend. Her reply to me?????

OMG, I'm rolling over here. Guess what {child's name} had for breakfast this morning????? A Strawberry Pop Tart and a Big Bird juice box.

She did say she was laughing though.

Tuesday, February 20, 2007

Chill out!

I used to have a firmly held belief that things need to be acted on! Have a problem? We've got to find the solution...and NOW! Then, we have to fix it. NOW! The kids acting funny? Pulling away? Got to confront them...NOW. Get to the bottom of things ... that is what I thought was being responsible. I suppose in part because I grew up where we didn't talk at all about personal things and I didn't want to pass along that reticence. The only problem is I usually end up creating more problems for myself in my haste.

I was reading Exodus the other morning and have been pondering it since then. Exodus 14, beginning in verse 13. The Israelites were escaping Egypt. They had just lived through the 10 plagues - they had watched how the Lord had protected them from the horrible plagues that had fallen upon the Egyptians. Pharoah finally consents and lets them go...I imagine they marched out feeling quite victorious and free. Then God hardens Pharoah's heart and he sends his army to go get the Israelites. Immediately they panic "we've got to do something! NOW!!" And here is what I saw... Moses answered the people, "Do not be afraid. Stand firm and you will see the deliverance the LORD will bring you today. The Egyptians you see today you will never see again. The LORD will fight for you; you need only to be still." An army of cruel soldiers are coming after them and Moses says "Be still. God is going to fight your battle for you.

I wonder how many times I have gotten in God's way because I had to act....NOW? May I remind myself to be still.

Monday, February 19, 2007

Heroes

I'm sure there is some music that you listen to that you wouldn't want ANYONE to know you like. But on some level, it speaks to you and you just can't help it. For me....oh yikes.....I SWEAR this doesn't mean I'm old or anything. But, I love The Oak Ridge Boys. On my 26th birthday (which was just last week for whoever is counting) my sister sat in line for over 18 hours....camped out in the parking lot...to buy tickets to their concert. She got us front row center tickets. And I was hooked. I have to listen to them in private because my family goes into something resembling death throes if I dare to put it on in their hearing. This past week I got two CD's in the mail because I made a donation to Feed The Children (quite clever marketing for folks like me, huh?). One of them is their greatest hits, the other one is their newest release. There's this one song that keeps going through my mind...well actually more than one since I have listened to it about 347 times in the last 24 hours....

It's called Closer to Home. It's comparing the heroes he had as a child (Superman, Johnny Bench and then George Jones) with the heroes he has now -- Rescue Workers who put their lives on the line when the alarm goes off, the man who delivers his newspaper in the morning and then goes to his job at Wal-Mart because his grown daughter came home and left her two children with him to raise while she took off. It ends with looking at his sleeping children and realizing that his mom and dad sacrificed all they had for him. "Used to be Superman, Johnny Bench and then George Jones. But lately I've been finding all my heroes closer to home."

That makes me think of the heroes I have in my life. I couldn't write about all of them...but today I'm thinking of 3. I have to give credit to my sweet hubby. Not many men would have thought a woman with 3 kids was a catch -- but I think he wanted them as badly as he wanted me. I can't begin to enumerate the struggles of raising kids to be adults who had such deep scars caused by an absent father -- our life has been nothing if not interesting. He's sometimes worked 3 jobs to support us, given his all for all sorts of expenses we never dreamed we'd have. And the crazy guy has done it all for 14 years now with a grin bigger than Dallas...through it all. Maybe that is the secret!! He's crazy. My #2 hero is my oldest son. Certainly Matt has done more than his fair share at turning hubby's hair from brown to gray. (Mine is just turning loose.) He's made some wrong turns - ran smack into some dead ends -- but finally over 2 years ago he made a decision to turn his will and his life over to the care of God and what a testimony the boy has. Matt is going to school to become a teacher -- wow, won't he be able to relate to those fringe kids that every class has? His faith in our Lord is growing...and it is exactly that - his faith. He has made a tremendous impact on so many people at church. I'm so proud of him. And finally, I have to mention the man who more than anyone else I know embodies the spirit of Christ - and that would be one Frank P. He's a Panhandle Texas farmer, hat on his head, boots on his feet and callouses on his hands. But you aren't in Frank's presence longer than 5 minutes before you know for certain that you are in the presence of something holy. A man who loves with the love of Christ like no other I've known.


And so, this afternoon I'm finding my heroes Closer to Home.

Friday, February 16, 2007

The best laid plans.......

I have been SO excited about remodeling my kitchen. We've met with the designer who has drawn a preliminary plan. The guys are coming today to do the official measuring so that the designer can do the official drawings. I've picked out my cabinets. I've chosen my countertops. I've been looking at paint colors and fabric and thoroughly enjoying every single moment of it all. Then......

Last night #2 calls me and says "Mom? Can an adult get new molars? My jaw hurts so bad I can hardly stand it. It hurts like no other!"

Sounds like wisdom teeth to me. Here's the kick in the shins. The kid has no insurance. NO INSURANCE.

I wonder how he'll look in red toile?

Thursday, February 15, 2007

Being in.......

I've been reading a book -- Velvet Elvis-Repainting the Christian Faith by Rob Bell. It's one of those books that stretches me to breaking and I have to lay it aside and wrestle with it until I'm at peace and then I jump back into it only to repeat the cycle again. I find that painful. I'd prefer life to be a neat little package...no questions, only answers. Of course, I would have them all too (answers, that is). The only problem with my preference is - it ain't real life! I've discovered to my horror that life is not neat. It is not easy. It is all about questions and doubts and fears. Sometimes it brings laughter, sometimes it brings tears. It makes no earthly sense. And that is a tough reality for a legalistic gal to come to grips with. Rule keepers expect life to follow the rules. Do this, you get that. Here's your check list...make sure you follow it and you are going to have the results you want. It occurs to me that I used to think life was like MRE's. You know - those meals in the pouches that the soldiers in the field have. Open it up, add water and voila! you have dinner. Well, I've discovered---not so much.

One of the paragraphs that drew me in is close to the first of the book and it is about having the answers and being a people that insists on having it all right. He says "...the focus often becomes getting people to believe the right things so they can be " in". There is often a list of however many doctrines, and the goal is to get people to intellectually assent to these things being true. Once we believe the right things, then we're in. And once we're in, the goal often becomes learning how to get others in with us....it is possible...to be in, and to believe all of the correct things, and even to be effective at getting others in, and yet our hearts can remain unaffected. It's possible to believe all the right things and be miserable. It's possible to believe all the right doctrines and not live as Jesus teaches us to live..." That pretty well sums up how I've spent way too many of my years since I first surrendered my life to Jesus. I humbly ask God for forgiveness for that - I wonder how many people I hurt in my eagerness to get them "in"? "In" of course, to mean understanding the Bible the way I understood the Bible. Following the rules. I don't think I exhibited much of the love of Christ in those years but I could sure wield the sword.

Praise our glorious Lord! He's the God of second chances. Lord, forgive me when I fail to be your church. When being right is more important to me than being loving. Help me Father to understand your total acceptance of me and help me in turn be those hands of grace to everyone I meet...whether they are in or not.