What are the odds? I’ve been thinking about coincidence. You may ask, What made you interested in coincidence? I will tell you:  Waking up in the middle of the night, thirsty, grabbing my cup of water and carefully trying to get a sip while still half-laying down, and then my husband takes that moment to turn over in his sleep and knocks my cup of water and I get a faceful of water…That is what made me think of coincidence. I mean really, what are the odds that he is going to choose that very moment in time to suddenly turn over in his sleep???

As I lay in bed, completely awake, now that I had been dosed with a cup of water, I started thinking about other coincidences, like when I get up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom and walk into the bathroom and find that a child has already beat me there. Or, when you have a newborn baby that wakes up multiple times a night and then one night the baby sleeps through the entire night! But the toddler is up in the night with a bad dream and the 8 year old is up in the night with a stomach virus. And you just sit there thinking, “Really?”

We can take this out to a wider scope too. What were the chances that we would sign up with a Boy Scout Troupe and the leader has a son named Judah just like you do, and both Judahs are the same age, and share the same birthday. And have the same middle initial.. Or when my husband spent the summer in remote Bethel, Alaska and while there ran into one of his childhood friends from Dexter, Maine. Or my daughter was in a play this summer and then when she went to college one of her co-cast members happened to have the dorm room right next to her. Or, and this one happens a lot, I decide that today I’m going on a low-carb diet and then my daughter shows up with 5 loaves of Panera Bread.

I googled around the internet, curious about Coincidence. I read some interesting articles but they all basically came up with the same conclusion…it’s a mystery. They also came up with some pretty cool stories of people relating Coincidences that happened to them.

Some coincidences I think are God ordained. The other day I was taking a walk with my two little ones. I passed an older woman on the sidewalk who eyed my two toddlers and then paused to launch into a little speech about how she knew all about Those Days, running after kids etc, and now she was a Mamaw and was still running after little kids.. Then she looked at me more carefully, noted my grey hair and tired eyes and said, well, now, you must be a mamaw too. (For those who need interpretation, Mamaw= Grandma). I gulped back any nasty retort that might have popped into my head and instead just smiled and said, No, just an old mom, and went on my way, feeling very depressed…and old. I kept walking and eventually got to the park where we were headed and took the kids to the public bathroom. While we were in there, a young woman came in who looked like she might have had Down Syndrome. She looked at me and the kids and she smiled a big smile and then she said, You are Very Pretty!! I was surprised, but was able to keep my wits about me enough to tell her that she was very pretty too. I went on my way feeling happier, and it occurred to me that God probably had something to do with that encounter, whether you want to call it a coincidence or not.

As I have been writing more about myself I am noticing a trend. I am very quick to point out my faults and failures. I can poke fun at my shortcomings, laugh at all my foibles. But, I have a really hard time saying anything positive about myself. It’s like there is a mental block. I have decided to be curious about that. Am I too afraid of getting prideful if I mention something that I’m good at? Or worse, am I so used to only looking at the negative that I can’t even come up with positive things to say about myself?

Let’s look at some of the things in which I poke fun of myself.. Housekeeping. I’m not a good housekeeper. I don’t dust. I rarely take care of the piles of clutter that accumulate. Mopping happens when my feet start sticking to the floor. But here’s the thing. I am so much better at keeping house than I was 19 years ago. I am now able to keep a tidy house. Not a clean house, but a tidy one. Considering where I started from, that is amazing. Let’s also look at the fact that I genuinely despise housekeeping. It does not give me happy feelings to clean. I feel like patting myself on the back and getting a sticker every time I clean because I dislike it so much. It’s like watching the kid who hates vegetables to the point of throwing up, eat a big salad every day. I really need to give myself credit for the amount of self-discipline and selflessness I exhibit every time I pick up the broom and start sweeping, or go and wash the dishes. I somehow make myself do the distasteful every day. (Ok, there are the occasional days when I give in to laziness and don’t clean at all, but then I have to pay for it the next day.)

I make fun of myself because I’m not a great cook. But here’s the thing. I am a fast and efficient cook. I can prepare a meal for 12 people in 30 minutes. I am creative. I can take whatever remnants I have in my pantry and fridge and somehow make a meal out of it. I am also a thrifty cook. I can take a very small amount of money and somehow stretch it so that everyone has been fed and no one is hungry. I am not a gourmet, but really, considering I’m feeding 12 people, I do alright.

I make fun of myself because I am absent-minded and not the most observant person on the block. I am rarely going to notice what shoes you are wearing. I’ll probably forget what outfit you were wearing as soon as I’m not looking at you. Forget about me noticing your haircut. But, I do notice people. I notice what kind of mood people are in. I notice who is feeling tense and out of place at a party. I notice what kind of vibes you give off: friendly, uncertain, scared, angry, aloof. I notice these things. I notice people. Just not the outer-layer of the person. I am simply tuned in to a different level of what’s going on.

I make fun of myself because I do not have any of the handyman/handcraft/do-it-yourself-project type skills. Don’t ask me to make things with my hands. But, I can make things with words. I can communicate very well. I’m good at taking thoughts and putting them into words so that other people understand exactly what I mean. I’m good at running interference in my home because I can see where there is a breakdown of communication between two people, and I can help them communicate their thoughts better and thus defuse the situation.

I could probably go on for a while about this. But I do have a point I want to make. I have a feeling that I am not the only person who’s inner-critic speaks a lot louder than their inner-encourager.  No one has ever been as mean to me as I am to myself when I start in on the self-criticisms. Usually I’m not even aware of this inner-critic. It’s just there, part of my thought life. I trip while walking down the sidewalk. My brain says, Well, of course you’d trip, you are so clumsy! You’ve always been so clumsy! You probably looked like an idiot. And I just nod and accept it. Yep, I’m a clumsy idiot.

How do we get this voice to stop? I am hashing this out as I write. I don’t have all the answers. But something comes to mind. When my children are afraid, I always tell them to speak truth over their fears. You’re afraid of the dark? Ok, let’s speak some truth over that. The dark is just absence of light. There is nothing in the dark. It’s just your bedroom. There are no monsters. There are no bad guys. It’s just your bedroom. Truth. It helps with fears. I wonder if truth would help with criticism? Let’s speak truth to that voice. Wait a minute. I’m not a clumsy idiot. There was an unexpected rise in the sidewalk and I wasn’t able to anticipate it and so I tripped. Nothing out of the ordinary here. Tripping does not automatically make me an idiot. It just means I am human and susceptible to the laws of gravity.

I think it’s hard to stop listening to that inner-critic because deep down, we think it’s right. We have not fully grasped truth yet. We still don’t quite believe that we are created in the image of God. We don’t quite believe that we are a unique wonderful person. We don’t quite believe that God loves us in a deep, passionate way that defies understanding. We don’t believe. And it’s easier to listen to that inner-critic than to fight it with truth.

I have for many years now had the belief that if I could ever truly understand the depths of God’s love for me, if I could truly embrace that and live in it fully…I would be invincible. Unstoppable. There would be no boundaries on the things I could do if I could fully live in that truth.

It’s a journey, I’m still reaching for that goal. Maybe the first step though is to stop listening to my inner-critic. Start confronting that voice with some truth. I think it would be a giant step in the right direction.

We live in Eastern Tennessee. I love the South. People are friendly. Yes, the South has just as many problems as any other region in the US, and maybe more, but I’m going to focus on the positive right now.  I love the fact that total strangers strike up conversations with me…regularly. Especially when I’m standing in line at the grocery store.

I just got back from the grocery store. The woman in front of me in the checkout line had unloaded her groceries and there was still room on the conveyor belt so I put up the little divider stick and started unloading my cart. The woman smiled at me and then pointed at the three Orange Crush Bundt Cakes she was buying. “These are the best bundt cakes EVER! Why, everyone down at the church was disappointed when I didn’t bring more last night!.” I smiled, nodded, and agreed that they were very good cakes. (I could say this with authority because someone from MY church had brought some to a church function. Orange Crush Bundt Cakes ARE good!) A bit later, after eyeing how loaded down my cart was, she made a comment on how many groceries I was buying. I told her I had 10 kids and I just hoped the groceries lasted through the weekend. Her response to that was that she had 2 boys which was the same as 10 kids and there was No Way my groceries were going to last through a weekend. She finished checking out and went on her merry way, I finished up my trip with a smile on my face. I was thinking to myself how much I enjoyed meeting friendly people at the store and then I started laughing to myself as I remembered my friend Peter’s trip to the store that he told us about a while back.

Peter and his wife Emily and all their children are some of our best friends. Peter is a tall, lanky guy, very gregarious, never met someone he didn’t like. Unlike me, who’s just doing good to respond to someone else’s friendliness, he has no problem striking up conversations with strangers. One time when he was over, he told us about his recent trip to Kroger, right down the road from our house. He said that he was standing in line and noticed that the woman in front of him was watching the register carefully as the clerk ran up her bill. Finally, she stopped the clerk and said that was all she could get, she didn’t have enough money to get the rest of the groceries still on the conveyor belt. Peter, who is always ready to lend a helping hand, stepped up to the woman and asked her if she would mind if he went ahead and paid for the remaining groceries. She was delighted and profusely thanked him. She went on for quite a bit about how much of a blessing he had been to her and then she said, “I want to bless you too! I’m a pastor and I’m going to pray a blessing on you right now!”

Now Peter is well-versed in the more charismatic side of church life. He was quite happy to take any blessing coming his way and so he said, thank you, that would be great. He then closed his eyes and in good charismatic fashion, raised his hands a bit in order to receive this blessing. The Pastor Lady, who was from a more energetic-type congregation, stretched out her hands and started praying a loud, excited prayer of blessing over him, right there in the Kroger check-out line. Peter is generally up for anything, but he couldn’t help feeling just a bit self-conscious and he slit his eyes a bit and looked around him. He looked at the clerk and there she was, hands outstretched, nodding in agreement as the pastor prayed on. He glanced behind him. No irritated customer there, the lady had her hands outstretched to him too, joining in the prayer. He looked behind the pastor and a random shopper had stopped her cart and stretched out her hand as well. At which point in time, Peter relaxed, went with the flow, and just took that blessing that was being poured out on him.

While I can’t say this story happened because Peter was in the South, I sure think it helped.

Writing is a form of therapy for me. It’s one of the big ways I deal with stress. This was from a couple days ago.

There are days when you just want to bang your head against a wall. Or a ceiling in this case. I was going about my business this morning, taking kids to school, feeding breakfast to the little boys who are now my sole companions during the day, washing dishes, starting laundry, trying to clean up at least the downstairs of my house (we’ll save upstairs for tomorrow) and I walk into my bedroom to put something away and I see this. (Ignore the unmade bed and the apple that some child apparently deposited there as well.)

 

My ceiling collapsed. In my bedroom. Randomly. Yes there was a crack in the sheetrock, but nothing that called for this!

Our bedroom is actually, technically, a sun room. It does not have a closet (one day my husband will build me a closet, when all the stars line up perfectly) and so I bought one of those freestanding clothes racks, put it in the corner of my room, and that was my closet. You’ll notice, from the picture, that the ceiling collapsed on my closet. It also collapsed on my dresser. Not Andy’s dresser. My dresser. And of course, I was in a hurry this morning, and was getting dressed in the dark and so I left half of my dresser drawers open. And it collapsed on my bed. You of course didn’t know this, but the ceiling collapsed on MY side of the bed. Not Andy’s. I’m feeling just a little bit picked on by whatever randomness caused this to happen.

Andy came home early from work to try and fix it, but two and half hours later, nothing has happened yet. I asked Andy what the plan was and he said the little kids invited him to sleep upstairs with them. Hmmm.

This is of course also the day that my son informed me that his pet ferrets had fleas and I have been trying to tackle the momentous task of de-flea-ing ferrets, and then de-flea-ing their bedroom. All of this involves laundry.

Now that I think about it, maybe it’s not as random as I thought. My room is in desperate need of paint and some kind of organized scheme that will properly house all of our belongings. I am not good at home-remodeling-type projects, but two days ago I was sitting in my chair staring at the walls of my bedroom and I decided. I’m just going to do it. I’m just going to go out and buy paint on my own. I’m just going to paint these walls without waiting for Andy’s superior skills to become available (his current to-do list is already a mile long). And then I looked around a bit closer. There was one space where the ceiling met the wall and there was a large crack. Andy had said that it just needed a piece of crown molding to go over it. Could I put up crown molding? Maybe…not. The ceiling had a big crack in it and I knew it was going to have to be repaired eventually and did it really make sense to paint the walls when the ceiling was going to have be repaired first and that big crack taken care of. Maybe I shouldn’t try to paint after all. (Did I mention that this house is over 100 years old and is only half-remodeled?) And so, I talked myself out of it. Now, two days later, ceiling laying on the floor, I’m starting to think…Maybe it’s a sign?? My ceiling is about to get repaired, how hard would it be for Andy to slap on a piece of trim to take care of the crack and then I’d be home-free to start painting!  

And now you can see how writing is therapeutic. I have just written myself out of a bad mood.

P.S. Not only did I get my ceiling fixed, but my dear husband put up crown molding and he’s talking about picking out paint… Hurray for collapsed ceilings!

This week we celebrated our 19th wedding anniversary.

I like to think of our marriage as an “arranged marriage”. God-arranged. That’s really the only way I can tell you how a girl going to school in Southern California hooked up with a guy who was living in Northern Florida. (No internet or dating sites were involved.) My marriage is all about that cliche “Opposites Attract”. In one corner you have renaissance man who can spin, knit, sew, bake, build houses, fix cars, and start a fire without matches. In the other corner you have the domestically challenged, absent-minded musician who takes great pleasure in reading copious amounts of books and then thinking about what she read and perhaps discussing some of the finer points. My shy, inhibited self was very attracted to his no-inhibitions, seize-life-by-the-horns style of living.  

As all opposites do, we at first relished each others differences and tried to share in those things. I went on a lot of camping trips. Andy bought me a baby grand piano and spent many evenings listening to me play. I thought it was fun to try new things with my husband like letting him teach me how to knit a hat (one of the ugliest hats you’ve ever seen)(Andy’s was perfect) and Andy indulged me by taking me to the bookstore regularly to update my pile of books I was reading. And then, slowly, the charm wore off and we had some hallelujah moments like, Look buddy, I’m not a sewer, I’ve never been a sewer, I don’t want to ever be a sewer- if you want hand-sewn curtains, do it yourself…And he suggested that maybe I should go to the library to find my books, and maybe I should put that book down and possibly help with the housework?

It’s called marriage. Two people learning how to stop putting themselves first and stop being so selfish and learning how to cooperate. Overall, we have managed to learn how to live with each other’s differences. I know better than to expect him to read anything besides Louis L’Amour or Clive Cussler and he doesn’t ask me to participate in handcrafts.

It’s been a good 19 years. Lots of laughter. Lots of shared smiles. Hand-holding. Snuggles on the couch. Shared  “secret” icecream that we sneak into the kitchen to eat and hide quickly whenever we hear a child approaching. Leaning into each for comfort at the end of a really hard day. Just sitting quietly together, no need to talk, just being in the same space with each other. Making eye contact across a crowded room and sharing an amused smile. Silly texts.

This is not to say our marriage has been a bed of roses and smiling unicorns and rainbows and whatever other analogy you like. We have had many moments where we still love each other but don’t really like each other too much. We’ve had a couple moments where we’ve had to call our pastors and say, Hey we need an emergency marriage counseling session. But, we keep overcoming and moving on and falling deeper in love with each other.

When Andy first asked me to marry him he told me that he was committed to me. He was committed to our marriage and being the best husband that he could be. This has meant a lot over the years. We have found that the emotion of “love” comes and goes. Some days you  wake up and you’re just not feeling it. Here’s the thing we’ve also learned though, love is a choice, not an emotion. We’re committed to this marriage and so we choose to love each other. The Bible says that love is patient, kind, long-suffering, never keeps track of wrongs, never gives up… So, we’ve made the choice to be patient and kind, long-suffering, not keep a list of wrongs, and we keep trying over and over again. Even when we are irritated or annoyed and we fail horribly, we apologize and then we keep trying. I would have to say that this quality of commitment is what I treasure most about my husband. I know that he’s willing to do whatever it takes to keep our marriage healthy.  

Every morning this past week my husband has awoken me with a kiss and a whisper in my ear Happy Anniversary Eve Eve Eve Eve…Each day one of the “eves” disappear. And every morning I’ve been  waking up with jolt of panic, Did he say happy anniversary? Did I miss it, did I forget? And then I smile when I register that he said “eve” and I haven’t missed it and he’s just being super-sweet and how did I get so blessed to be married to him? That is a mystery that’s right up there with the Bermuda Triangle, where do missing socks go, and why am I the only one who replaces the toilet paper roll?

My subtitle for this piece would be, “Me Telling Stories About My Kids That Probably Aren’t Interesting To Anyone Else, But I’m A Mom, And I Get To Do This Sometimes.” The Subtitle for the Subtitle would be: “She Ain’t Going To Win Any Awards For Photography.”

Last weekend we had the awesome experience of attending my nephew’s wedding. (Yay Malequi and Meredith!) It was a very large, family-friendly wedding and we had a wonderful time. During the reception they asked anyone who was related to bride or groom to come out in the hallway for a picture. There was a lot of family and the majority of them were little ones (and no, they were not all mine!) and so the picture took a while. Afterwards people were milling around everywhere, we could hear the dance music starting up in the ballroom and my husband Andy and I exchanged a look. Andy asked, “I wonder if we could find someone to watch the kids for a while so we could dance.” I nodded my agreement. That would be nice. Then I looked around a bit. Wait a minute. Where were the kids? Only Baby Noah, who was attached to me at the knee, was in sight. Andy picked up Noah and we started looking around. I walked over near the door to the ballroom and looked in. The dancing had started. It looked fun. Then I looked a bit closer. Wait a minute. Were those my kids? Yep. The 9 and 10 year old boys had taken to the dance floor and were having no problem keeping up with everyone else. The other younger kids were hopping around on the sidelines, clearly delighted that there was going to be dancing. I called for Andy to come see and we stood there open-mouthed as our boys danced all over the floor. Who taught them that?? Sure wasn’t me. My husband is an excellent dancer. I am not, but I enjoy dancing with him. He makes me look half-way decent. We don’t dance often though. Weddings, the Company Christmas Party, impromptu spins around the living room…that’s about it. We’re still not sure where our boys came up with this. Of course, by the second song I was thinking clearly enough to get out my phone and get some pictures.

Even the baby got into it.

Finally a slow dance came on. Andy handed Noah to the 10 year old and asked him to hold him for a couple minutes so we could dance. It was romantic, but I was distracted. I kept glancing around to see where the kids were, trying to make sure no one was getting into trouble. Andy laughed and said, “Don’t look! Just for a minute!” I was about to nod my agreement until I saw that Noah had freed himself from his brother, walked over to the cupcake table, grabbed a cupcake(with a plate!) and then settled on the floor to enjoy his treat.

Ah well, dancing time was over now. He certainly enjoyed his cupcake though. It fueled him up enough that he stayed awake for the rest of the party and was not the first child to fall asleep when we finally piled up in our van.

Thank you Malequi and Meredith for inviting us to your wedding and throwing a wonderful party!