The Whole Package

I've Moved!

2011-11-21T08:48:00.004-05:00

I've moved to a new location. From now on, see me at

Pullen Out All the Stops.

"What Do You Say?"

2011-11-04T07:13:00.002-04:00

I received this mini-story in my email yesterday. I liked it so much I have to pass it on. As a wife and mother of three, and with the season of gratitude approaching, it made me smile knowingly.

One day a man came home and found his house a disaster. The kids were still in their pajamas outside playing in the mud. Empty food boxes and wrappers littered the house. Dishes were on the counter, dog food was all over the floor and a broken glass lay under the table. Toys and clothes cluttered the playroom and a lamp was lying on its side.

He headed up the stairs, stepping over toys, looking for his wife. He was worried that she was sick, or that something worse might have happened. He found her in the bedroom, still in bed with her pajamas on, reading a book.

She looked up at him, smiled, and asked, "How was your day?"

"What in the world happened here today?"

She again smiled and answered, "You know everyday when you come home from work and ask me what I did today?"

"Yes. . . ?"

"Well, today I didn't do it!"

See what I mean. Now go kiss your mom or your wife or whoever mops your kitchen floor, wipes the fingerprints off your TV screen, and cleans your dirty underwear, and thank them for the thankless job they do day in and day out--even when you don't acknowledge it.

Sitting Still in the Saferoom

2011-11-01T08:23:00.001-04:00

My youngest daughter is suddenly and explicably terrified that Florida will be hit by a tsunami. Now, short of her being an undiscovered modern-day Nostradamus, I tried to allay her fears that tsunamis don’t general hit Florida and that our greatest natural disaster is, of course, the hurricane, which in some ways is just as bad—ask anybody whose been through a category 4 or 5.

From Orlando, I survived the 2004 Hurricane Train of Charley, Frances, Ivan, and Jeanne, four storms that blew Florida and my roof apart. I also survived the Category 5 Hurricane Andrew in 1992, but the house we were living in was trashed including my beautiful three-month old bedroom set that was a wedding gift from my mother, a $250 boombox, and $600 in Mary Kay sales inventory.

Anyway, all this started me thinking about storms, especially hurricanes and tornadoes…and of course the “storms” in our lives. Some storms are like tornadoes, they sneak up on you when you’re unawares and railroad through the center of your life trashing some areas and leaving others untouched. On the other hand, hurricanes are storms that build over time. You can see them coming and even get yourself prepared. But you’re never ready for their destructive power and, depending on their strength, they often leave nothing standing in their wake.

Emotionally and spiritually, I’ve been hit by both of these kinds of storms. While any parent of a pubescent child can attest to the six-year hurricane (so named after their teenager) that ravishes their house, if you are over 30, you understand that high school was a sunshower compared to the storms of adulthood. And if you’ve had no one to huddle with in the worst of the storms, no “saferoom” to protect you from the onslaught of its battering, the emotional trauma you have sustained can leave you with open and festering wounds that everyone can see except you. Or maybe the wounds are contused, bleeding internally beneath the tough skin you pulled over them.

I am so grateful for the saferoom of friends that I have had over the years. They are scattered to the four winds now—Tampa, Atlanta, South Carolina, Texas—but no matter what I go through, they’re my lifeline to healing. They were there between the 16^th and 26^th week of my first pregnancy when I knew my son Aiden had congenital birth defects and wouldn’t survive. They were there when Tristan was diagnosed with autism. They were there when I went through some major marital challenges. They were there when my father was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and died six months later.

I hate pain. I gave birth to four babies and there is little that compares to labor (John is such a man when he says in 16:21 that a woman forgets her labor pain after her child is born—hah!). But I would gladly birth a dozen more children than relive some of the emotional pain I’ve suffered. Labor is relatively quick compared to emotional pain that can go on for months and years. Labor, while intensive, builds to a dramatic conclusion. There is no promising end to emotional pain. You can hope, plan, and dream, but there are no guarantees.

Sometimes, I think emotions are a curse. If I’m not really careful, they sweep me away and turn me into a blithering idiot. The Psalms are rife with promises of God’s sovereignty over nature, the seen, and the unseen. Habakkuk 3 states that if everything you know is collapsing around you—the fruit of your hands has withered, your plans are failing on all sides, and the things in which you put so much stock have become as insubstantial as vapor—you can still find joy in God.

This is a wonderful passage to read when all of your life is not falling apart. It is invigorating to imagine yourself as Frodo and Sam atop of Mt. Doom as the hot breath of life’s lava flows sear your face and you envision yourself standing strong awaiting the Great Eagles of Manwë to save you. But this is not Middle Earth and neither my son’s autism nor my personal struggles will be felled by a ring toss into a volcano. If they coulda been, Idda visited Mt. St. Helens long ago.

But in reality, finding peace in the midst of emotional turmoil is the hardest thing I have ever done in my life.

If you’ve ever been in a real hurricane, you know how suicidal it would be to walk out into the middle of it, how futile it would be to think you, a mere mortal, can actually do something about it. It is so much bigger than you.

You’d think after all the tornadoes that have hit me, I’d read the signs and hear the clarion screaming. I have a basement I can run to—my Bible. But instead I stand there dumbly and watch it approach. It engulfs me up, flings me around for a few hours or few days, and then throws me away like a soiled rag. And then I’m left wondering why didn’t I run for my saferoom when I felt the downdraft sweep over me.

So why do I do? Why do I repeatedly attempt to tame the wild winds? I can’t claim newbie ignorance. Not anymore. Arrogance, maybe, like those surfers who think they can ride the swell of a storm. Pride, like the reporters who stand in 70-mile-an-hour gale reporting how windy it is (duh). Folly, like the “experts” who fly their planes right through the hurricane’s eye wall so they can see how strong the winds are (I don’t even have an explicative for that kind of foolishness).

We’re supposed to learn from storms. My husband—a newbie to Florida in 1992—learned that hurricane parties are for morons. After Andrew and Charley and Frances, and the rest of their entourage, we’ve learned to board up the windows unless we want the neighbor’s boat to use our living room window for a dock (yes, that actually happened to a friend of ours).

Planning my hurricane supply list means getting my heart ready for the storms before they come as they always do. Boarding up my windows translates into turning my eyes to God in prayer when I first catch wind of the storm coming. Securing anything that isn’t tied down means avoiding the launching of emotional missiles that can take out my friends and neighbors when the wind kicks up. And moving into my saferoom and locking the doors means I open up the Word, lock out Satan and his constant barrage, and sit tight, waiting on God to deliver me from harm.

Man, that last one is hard. Sitting (while the wind rattles the windows). Waiting (while debris hammers your walls). Trusting (while rain pounds on your roof).

It takes…something to accept that you cannot hold back the drowning torrential rains with a $12 Wal-Mart umbrella. It takes something to accept that not even you, with your vast wisdom and insight, can alter the path of a savage cyclone. It takes something to admit that not even you, with your prodigious experience with whirlwinds, tempests, and monsoons, can stand in the heart of the storm and by sheer will bring it to its knees.

Oh, yeah. Only one person every did that and it sure wasn’t me.

Lists, Lessons, and Lyposuction

2011-10-18T07:10:00.000-04:00

I’d have made a good Pharisee. I love lists. Further, I love checking off my lists. I love looking at all that I’ve accomplished in a given period of time. It makes me feel productive. It makes me feel powerful and in control of something in my life (With three kids, I’ll take a little control anyway I can get it.)

Sure, there is some benefit to creating “To Do” lists (or if I’m delegating to my husband “Honey Do” lists). The six loads of laundry get reduced to three (check), at least for a day or so. The explosion of papers on my desk gets distributed into something resembling order (check) until tomorrow’s mail arrives or my son comes home from school with supply requests or field trip forms. And a friend or family member gets a birthday card (check). Eventually. The point is, things do get done. The problem comes when I start living for my lists.

My kids have a mantra for me in the car when we’re driving. I ask them to remind me frequently especially when we get stuck behind the tourist train of vehicles that parade around Orlando looking for anything remotely Mickey oblivious to those who live here and have somewhere to be. I think the only time I actually grind my teeth is when I’m stuck behind an out-of-state plate in a two-lane no passing zone going 25 in a 40. It almost always occurs when I’m running late for an appointment. Then I hear the melodic mantra from the back seat, “God’s in control, Mommy.” I close my eyes (briefly so I don’t kiss the tourist’s fender in front of me), try to implement my yoga breathing, and remind myself that being two minutes late for an appointment isn’t fatal.

Sometimes I think I live just to get through the next thing on my list. To check another thing off. I’m so busy trying to finish that I don’t enjoy the process. For example, some of you know that I homeschool my two girls. We just finished up a unit on Christopher Columbus. It was amazing. Did you know that Columbus never touched the shores of the U.S.? He never even knew there was a North America. And we have a national holiday for the guy! Plus, we learned about tradewinds in the Atlantic (they’re circular by the way and one of the reasons we get hurricaines in Florida from the African coast), and that Mars has two moons named Deimos and Phobos. But nothing stood out more winningly to me than when my 9-year-old, while doing the unit presentation for her daddy, said she wanted to be like Columbus because the Italian waited 10 years before getting his first commission to sail to the New World and that she too never wanted to give up on her dreams. (Pardon me while I grab a tissue.)

Now, if I had been wholey consumed on just checking off my homeschool curriculum list each day, I wonder if my daughter would have gotten that last point.

My own personal growth is what I think I want to hurry through the quickest. I hate the fact that it takes time to change habits. I’ve dropped about 28 pounds in the last three years because I changed my eating habits. Twenty-eight pounds in three years, you say? That’s nothing. It is when you keep it off. It is when you’re in better shape at 48 than you were at 18. But now that I’ve arrived, I forget how much work I had to put in to make that happen, how much mental and physical discipline it took.

I long to transfer that same concept to my spiritual growth. We all have spiritual “love handles”, areas of the heart that plague us. We know them better than anyone. Everytime we look in the mirror of God’s Word, they glare back at us. We long for spiritual lyposuction. We long for someone to staple our stomachs so we stop ingesting the audio and visual garbage that makes us spiritually weak and fat. We want the quick fix, the pill that will melt away all our temptations. But habits don’t change that way. We don’t change that way.

I want God to change me now. No, I want God to change me yesterday. But He tells me over and over, “Chill”. “Relax.” “Enjoy the ride.” So I’m trying to let time be my friend. It really is a love-hate relationship. Sometimes the sands of time squish between my toes like a walk on the beach. Other times they feel like tiny boulders in my shoes that I can’t stop to shake out. Either way, I’m working at it. I’m working on accepting it. Working on being resigned to the fact that it will take time for me to change unhealthy thinking and conceding that it will take time to alter compulsive behaviors.

I know I won’t ever stop making lists, but maybe I can limit them to the physical stuff--cleaning out my car, putting last year’s Christmas décor away, or picking up the week-old ferret droppings under my desk. ‘Cause one day, I’d like to stand before God doing my unit presentation and make him smile (or grab a tissue) because I didn’t focus on the fact that I finished the project he assigned me (check!), but that I learned the intrinsic and invaluable lessons he was trying to teach me along the way.

Dying of Thirst

2011-10-16T00:09:00.001-04:00

There’s a water wars going on out there. Zyphyrhills, Aquafina, Dasani, Nestle, Evian, Fiji, SmartWater, not to mention the countless other no-name brands. What’s the big deal? I mean, come on. It’s water!

In the fitness industry, one of the basics we talk to everyone about—because everyone seems to neglect it—is how much water they drink. Most people—and yes, that probably means you—never drink enough water. We drink tea, coffee, soda, juice, alcohol, and Monster™ (uck!). And because of that we are perpetually dehydrated.

I carry a bottled water everywhere. I drink extra water when I exercise. I keep a bottle on my bedside table because I always wake up thirsty. Inspite of all that and the fact that I’m a fitness professional and I know better, oftentimes I still don’t drink enough water. Truth is, if you wait until you are thirsty, you are already dehydrated. And since our brains are made up of 75% water, our blood 83% and our lungs 90%, it’s kinda important that we keep our tanks full.

But this blog isn’t about water, not the liquid kind anyway.

I’ve been going through some major life challenges. God is chipping away at the sculpture that he’s making of me and I feel every point of the chisel and every tap of the hammer. One of the revelations he’s made clear to me is how “dehydrated” I’ve been lately. Well, not lately. Really for a very long time. Since I was a kid actually.

Now I’m not going to make this a sob story, but a little backstory is necessary. Anyone who knows me well, knows I’m a notorious people-pleaser. I think it’s actually quite difficult to live in our present day society and not be a people-pleaser to some degree. Well, I’ve majored in it. A BA-S degree (Bachelor of Approval-Seeking) from the University of Dysfunctionality. I’m an actor, a writer, and a performer, for crying out loud. I know we all want to hear the applause. We live for it. It validates us.

But that kind of validation is like drinking a full-on 100%-sugar, old-fashioned, glass-bottled, ice-cold Coca-Cola. It’s heavenly on the tongue, but you’re thirsty again in like two minutes. So you gotta drink some more. And some more. You start drinking it whenever you can. For breakfast with your pancakes or late night with your ice cream. Always needing more because it taste so good. If you run out of it, you have to run to the store to get some more. You’ll charge it on a credit card (paying interest on it for the next five years) just to keep a ready supply. And then one day you wake up and you realize you’re addicted to it.

That was me--no, correction--that is me. I realized that I’m addicted to other people’s approval. I crave it like soda. Always needing more and always left wanting because it doesn’t completely satisfy.

As an athlete, I know only water really slackens my thirst and today, sitting in the library staring at the generic water bottle in my hand, it hit me that while the soda is like those pats on the back and that “great job” I receive from others, water--unsweetened, uncarbonated, and unaltered--is like God’s approval.

It’s so simple. So unadulterated. So easy. How did I miss it? Because I bought into all the marketing. I bought into all the lies. I bought into all the advertising that this was going to make me happy, this was going to fill me up even when my body and mind were telling me otherwise. It tasted so good. It felt so good going down. Why didn’t I see the constant need for more as a sign that something was wrong?

Now please don’t think I’m trying to equate the soda companies with Satan (well, maybe that comparison isn’t so far off), but in truth, that Chief Conniver has been trying to sell me a package of goods for years and I’ve been buying it lock-stock-and-barrel since I was a kid. He has made a living (and a killing) off of my need.

So what’s the solution? I don’t know. I’m just figuring all this out as I go.

But I think I know where I’m going to start. First, I’m going to listen to my body and soul, and recognize that the approval of others doesn’t satisfy me. Just the opposite--it only leaves me wanting more. And more. And more.

Second, I want to stop buying into the lies. Stop running after them. I’m spinning my wheels in the mud and going nowhere.

Third, I want to replace the drug that leaves me empty with the only thing that does quench my thirst for love, validation, and approval—water. Real water. Lasting water. Jesus said, “Anyone who comes to me…will never be thirsty.”

Why did God cover the earth with 70% water? Why does he call for water in baptism to spiritually cleanse us? Why do we equate water as a sign of life on other planets? I think God has been trying to get my attention my whole life. And it was right in front of me the whole time. Every time I turn on the tap to wash the dishes or take a shower or brush my teeth. It’s right there, just like he’s right there. It’s everywhere. He’s everywhere. It’s the only thing that quenches my thirst just as he’s the only one.

So now that I know, how do I change?

One sip at a time. Just like I carry a water bottle with me everywhere I go, I always have God’s attention (he’s a very attentive audience). I need to drink of his approval. He’s always waiting to give me a high-five or an “at-a-girl” or a “well-done, good and faithful servant”. And truth be told, that kind of drink tastes way better than Mountain Dew or Red Bull or (gag) Diet Coke.

As a friend recently said, there really is freedom in performing for an audience of One.

A Dog’s Tale (or Tail)

2011-10-12T08:37:00.005-04:00

Yes, it's been a few weeks...or months since my last entry. Sorry about that. It was, ah, life. You understand.

There’s nothing quite like waking up at 2:30AM to a raccoon making a late night snack of your kids’ mice farm 10 feet from your bedroom window. I’m sure it happens to you all the time.

Well, last night was my first when I woke up to my dog barking at something on our screened-in back porch. Now Tori is the kind of dog that barks if a frog croaks too loudly, chases dogs three times her size down the street, and challenges every passing car to a duel, but she’ll actually play tag with our two ferrets and doesn’t bother the wild rooster that’s taken up residence in our backyard. I don’t get it either. She’s a 20-pound cockapoo (half-cocker spaniel, half-poodle) so it’s not like she can defend our house from a band of robbers.

I originally got Tori for myself when she was a pup. Tristan was 7, Tirzah was 2, and Tia just a few months old (yes, we even gave the dog a “T” name. Pathetic). I wanted a dog that didn’t shed (it was hard enough picking up after three kids, I didn’t need another).

What on Earth was I thinking?! Getting a puppy with two kids in diapers? I’m sure I must have been suffering postpartum stupidity. Like I wasn’t already cleaning up enough poop with an infant and a toddler? But these kinds of fish you can’t throw back so after a year of toilet training—er, house training, repeatedly saving her from being crushed, eaten, and drowned by the kids, she promptly abandoned her disciplinarian mother and became Daddy’s little girl to my husband. Ungrateful mutt.

Yes, I’ll admit everytime I have to spend a small fortune on her at the vet or the groomers I have this guilty desire that she’ll get run over by one of the cars she plays chicken with in our cul-de-sac. I don’t think I could be that lucky.

Now before you pet lovers call Animal Control on me, let me finish my story.

As she’s gotten older, Tori has mellowed a bit. And so have I. She hasn’t chewed a single one of my leather shoes in quite some time. Now maybe that’s cause I leave my closet door closed after numerous costly lessons, the taste of my stinky feet sweat have become distasteful to her, or she’s learned to value her life a little better. Whatever the reason, we have begun to tolerate each other. Except when she rubs herself in something disgusting in the neighbors yard and then wants to rub up next to me on the couch—I don’t THINK so!

So, anyway, back to my 2:30am wake-up call. Dog barks, I wake up cursing her name because I’m sure she’s going to wake the kids, which will keep ME up another hour. I get up and she’s not standing by the front door where I expect her. No, she’s standing by the backporch door. So, I flip on the porchlight fearful I’ll find some vagrant sleeping on our hammock, and…nothing. Sure the back porch screen door is open again (darn kids!) but I can’t see anything threatening. But, the dog’s not letting up. So, I walk around to the guest bathroom door where you can see the three-tank mice farm we are “growing” for our two ball pythons and what do I see but a 20-pound raccoon INSIDE one of the glass tanks beating on half-dozen helpless mice and chewing off their heads. I yell at him to “Git!” and like a cartoon character, he jumps nearly out of his skin, stumbles out of the tank screaching like a banshee, and flees out the open screen door. I glanced over the damage (six dead mice) and think the snakes are NOT going to be happy about this since that was their dinner for the next day.

Then I get to lay in bed staring at the ceiling for the another hour thinking how in the world I’m going to break the news to my girls that one of their favorite mice, a “stud” male by the name of Chocolate, had become, well, raccoon-bait since they’d left the back door open. I could practically feel their hot tears burning into my chest. Sleep was a long time coming.

The kids took the news with dignity and—with Tori watching on like a sentry—we buried Chocolate next to Spike, a bearded-dragon that had died of osteoporosis three months before. In our overwrought grief, we heaved the rest of the dead mice over the backyard fence and into the woods for the raccoons to finish off. Then my husband, who is the true instigator of the small petting zoo we now have, decided it would be a good idea to move the mice farm into our garage. At least until we can make the backporch secure for our hapless rodents. Thoughtlessly I reply, “Sure. Why not!”

Now besides dealing with roaches trying to feast on the dog food we store in the garage, wild frogs under my feet chasing the fleeing roaches and mosquitoes, wasps wandering in through a tiny crack in the garage door to build nests, now I get to deal with the stench of three dozen mice when I need to do my all-time favorite chore—laundry!

I think I’ll blame the dog for it all. She was the start. The first pet. The beginning of the end. Sure, she’s better (and cheaper) than any ADT alarm system, she inhales iffy meats or cheeses faster than a garbage disposal, and she really does have those amazingly expressive eyebrows and the cutest little stub-tail. Still, I can’t help but wonder if I had just said “no” to the puppy all those years ago, I wouldn’t have to be standing over my washing machine illegally inhaling fabric softener sheets to block out the gaggible scent of mouse pee.

The Wet Feet of Faith

2011-07-08T08:52:00.001-04:00

My feet are finally firmly planted on the water’s surface. (Yes, you read that right.)

Six years ago, I stepped out of the boat and agreed with my husband to open our fitness studio. Last year, I let go of the edge of the boat and started homeschooling. This month, I’m stepping terrified across the surface of the water—my eyes on Jesus—as I surrender all of our business and personal finances over to my talented husband.

When I’ve told friends about my latest step of faith, the response has been…well, educational. Those women who are control freaks like myself have looked at me like I’ve relinquished the Holy Grail. Those who think I’ve secretly discovered how to successfully clone myself and have swimmingly carried it off for the last few years, are saying “It’s about time.”

Anyone who has ever spent more than five minutes with my husband knows that he is abath with talent—musical (is there a type of drum he doesn’t play?), vocal (not only can he sing, but he speaks English in twelve global dialects), physical (he defines the new “twelve-pack” abs), and creative (he has come up with more ways to torture our clients with an elastic band than a drill sergeant). And vigor? My wealth would rival that of J.K. Rowling if I could bottle his energy.

But truth be told, administrative stuff is really not his thing. It’s mine. That’s why I’ve pretty much done the bills since day one of our marriage. Plus, like I said, I’m a control freak. And, as my husband is a very wise man, he willingly agreed to let me do the finances while he patiently sat back and waited (for almost 20 years) for my manic need for management to run its course. And it has finally run me right into the ground.

Remember when I surrendered my Supermom cape (see February 12^th 2011 blog entry), that was like the modest tremor that ran across the bow of the Titanic when it struck the iceberg. It was the promise of a major need for abandon ship when instead everyone on the sinking hulk stuck around eating foie gras and listening to the string quartet while the bottom decks gorged on the Atlantic. In other words, if I was a wise woman, I should have seen this coming. But I’m not that wise, and I didn’t.

When I stopped writing—no, let me correct that—when my potential writing time was spent wading out of the mist of my overstressed brain, it should have been a sign. That I would rather watch re-runs of Gilligan’s Island than Lost was a clear sign that even prime-time television required too much thinking for my overtaxed mind.

So I came to my senses, I jumped ship, I sent up an S.O.S. on my deserted island shore using manilla file folders as tinder. And my husband willingly, even eagerly came to my rescue. I have committed to training him and he has committed to learning my anal ways until he can develop his own system, which he no doubt will do.

My personal deadline is July 31^st, only three weeks away. After that, I’ve commited to not thinking about the finances which includes not dislocating my neck to look over my husband’s shoulder while he pays the bills or setting my alarm clock for 3am so I can secretly peruse “the books”. In fact, the first thing I’ll do in the morning will be to scour my fuzzy teeth instead of floudering around the side of my bed for my laptop so I can check the nightly deposits. I am committing to actually making my bed every morning instead of making a list of all the bills that need to be paid that day. And I promise to check to see if my kids are breathing before I check on my emails.

It’s a difficult job, but someone has to do. No, I mean that. It will be a very difficult thing for me. It will be like an Italian sitting on his hands at a family dinner. Like a dentist studying the shoes and not the teeth of people in the grocery store line. Like a politician not passing the buck. Like a dog not scratching a flea.

I won’t just have an irritating tic. I’ll be an irritating tic. I have to learn a whole different way to think. I have to let go. I have to walk away from the edge of the boat and let God carry me across the water, wet feet and all.

Scary.

Don’t you hate it when you’re watching one of your favorite TV shows—the car with the protagonist goes over the cliff, plunging to the rocks below—and the picture goes black and the words TO BE CONTINUED flash over the screen? In the old days, the expressive narrator would come on and ask, “How will Kim make it through August? Will she be able to really surrender the control of the finances to her husband? And what about the taxes?”

I wouldn’t do that to you.

Oh, yes, I would.

Can you see what I see?

2011-06-23T08:12:00.000-04:00

Summer has arrived and for parents that can either be a blessing (kids are in camp or summer school ALL day with no homework in sight) or a curse ("I'm bored", "I'm hungry", "Can we go to Disney today?").

It's supposed to be a blessing for me as my kids are spending the first four weeks in either summer camp or summer school. I thought I would have all this time to get so much done while they were gone--a veritable vacation for a homeschooling mom, but we're almost a full two weeks in to the summer and I can't account for the last 10 days. I haven't read a single book, haven't taken a nap, certainly haven't caught up on any new TV shows. Maybe I passed through a local wormhole and warped into the future. What have I done for the last two weeks?

Oh, yeah, I paid bills, I changed my health insurance, I washed dishes, fixed dinner, did laundry. Who called this a vacation?

Anyway, apparantly with my recent memory wipe, I also haven't completed a new blog entry for you. And with my To-Do list growing ever larger, I don't anticipate a one or two-hour block of time magically materializing in order for me to accomplish that. So, I'm going to fudge a bit. I'm sending you something that takes less time to view than it does to read my blog and it's just as thought-provoking. At least it was for me. It shouts out, "Careful what you say". It exclaims, "The pen is mightier than the sword". It confirms that the tongue (and by extension, the written word) has the power to change the world.

Enjoy. CLICK to view.

Teach a Kid to Fish

2011-05-26T10:35:00.001-04:00

There’s a Christian proverb that most parents cling to like a lifeline: “Teach a child in the way he should go and when he is old, he will not turn from it.”

It sounds so simple. The burning question that every parent asks is, what is “old?” Is it 10, 20, or 50? And does “the way” also include keeping their entire wardrobe off their bedroom floor, closing the refrigerator door, and flushing the toilet after they use it?

Most of us have heard the old Chinese proverb: “Give a man a fish, feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, feed him for a lifetime.”

Ah, if all I had to do was teach my kids how to fish.

I’m about to celebrate completing my first year of homeschooling. That means I’m with my girls pretty much all day. I’ve see them in every conceivable situation in every room of the house. I’ve seen them agonize over their four times tables and figure out what an adverb is. I’ve watched them clean up drops of water on the kitchen floor and leave behind a puddle. I spend long hours each day dreaming about the day when they can do their own laundry, vacuum the floors, load the dishwasher, and—of their own accord—wipe the peanut butter off the kitchen counter. They’re only 8 and 9 years old so I’ve been thinking—based on God’s promise above—I have a long time to wait.

But actually, this week, I realized I…can’t wait. I mean what am I waiting for? The Merrymaids fairy to sprinkle pixie dust on them and voila they’ll be conscientious housekeepers? Who am I kidding? The only person on the planet that’s going to teach my kids how to clean a toilet is…well, me.

If only that were so easy. If only I had to teach them one time to properly clean the bathroom sink of extraneous toothpaste. If only I had to teach them one time how to hang up a damp towel to keep it from developing mold. If only I had to teach them one time how to sweep the kitchen floor and get every piece of confetti, dog hair, corn chip, stray thread, and grass into the dustpan.

But no, I’m at about number 212 with little or nothing to show for my labor. I’ve even considered sneaking Home Economics into our homeschool curriculum next year. Then I can actually grade them on how quickly they learn to dust the windowsills, sort the colors from the whites, and clean the sliding glass doors.

But first, I think I’m going to take them to the optometrist because I swear they are blind. I ask them to pick up their shoes in the living room, and they don’t just step over the mound of clothes they left next to the shoes, they actually kick it over like a pile of fall leaves. I mean how can they not see their bikes sprawled on the porch blocking the front door? How can they not see the neon glare of the unattended computer monitor left on, the empty bathroom-hallway-and-kitchen lights ablaze, and the dog’s bare food bowl and snakes’ bone-dry water dish (see my blog entry “Welcome to the Jungle…er, Zoo”)? How can they not see the ferret poop in the corner, the full set of bowling pins in the foyer I’ve tripped over a half-dozen times, the marbles I slipped on the other half-dozen, and the chlorinated wet towels drapped across the leather couch?

I’ve heard teenagers also develop a profound sense of deafness. I can’t wait.

For now, out of necessity, I’ve engineered a standard of cleanliness which my kids understand. There are two levels of clean in our house. Theirs and mine. I use it every time—and I do mean every time—they claim to have cleaned up their playroom: “Is it your clean or is it my clean?” I ask. Nine-times-out-of-ten, they don’t even answer but trudge straight back into the disaster zone like war-weary soldiers on their third tour of duty. As she disappears into the din, my youngest usually sounds like a commando caught behind enemy lines when she cries, “We need help!”

Most times I relent and wade back in with them. I mean, parents are supposed to model appropriate behavior, right? Haven’t our kids been imitating us since birth? It’s a proven fact that we learn better from watching others. But how many times do I need to point out the score of Littlest Pet Shop props, the hastely doffed penguin pajamas, the fraying cast-off dinosaur, or the mismatched hair clips littering the floor? I mean, I’m loosing my vision—yes, I now need reading glasses—and I can see the debris quite clearly.

But then I remember my own teen years (memory loss from the Three-Kids Syndrome has scattered all recollection of my earlier childhood). I recall my mother gave up on me and the condemned property that was my bedroom when I was about 14. Who knows how many times she asked me to clean it up before conceding defeat and just pulling closed my door with a sign that read “Danger! Scheduled for Demolition”.

But something must have took. Somehow the words took seed. The 18 years of “pick up your shoes”, “put your clothes in the hamper”, and “make your bed” must have gotten lodged somewhere in my brain because within a week of moving in with my first college roommate, she confronted me with the fantastic story that I was channeling my Marine Corp mother--my bathroom always smelled of bleach, my shoes lined my closet like a squad in formation, and you could bounce a penny off my freshly-made bed.

My mom—God blessed her—would never have believed it.

So now each time I remind the girls to clear off the coffee table, or put their dishes in the sink, or get their wet bathing suits off the bedroom floor and puh-lease hang them up, I remind myself that a foundation is being laid, God’s promise is being fulfilled, my words are not in vain, and eventually—Lord willing, yes!—eventually, they will put the cap back on the toothpaste.

Until that time, I will draw strength from God’s Word and the old Chinese proverb and be grateful that I don’t have to actually teach them how to fish. Can you imagine the mess I’d have to clean up then?

Boys Will Be Boys

2011-05-10T23:10:00.000-04:00

I gave in. Thirteen years, nine months, and 17 days from the birth of our first child, I told my adventure-starved husband, Russ, he could buy a motorcycle. I also gave him leave to go bungee-jumping, parasailing, and skydiving. Then I called my brother, an insurance broker, and purchased a $½ million life insurance policy. Just in case.

No, I haven’t lost my mind. In truth, I found something. Or better, found out something. About myself.

In previous blogs, I’ve shared with you that I have a thorn in my flesh. The Apostle Paul shares about his in 2 Corinthians 12. We don’t really know what his was. Mine is in my face everyday--it’s fear. I’m afraid of a lot of things. Not terrorists attacks or a sudden outbreak of the Ebola virus. No, I’m afraid of my business failing due to negligence or another sudden drop in the economy. I’m afraid that I’m not doing enough to raise my kids to be respectful and love God above all else. I’m afraid of what people think about me. I’m afraid I’ll never sell any of my novels. I’m afraid of…well, you get the point.

One of the fears that has ruled me since the day Tristan was born--and it has grown exponentially with the birth of each succeeding child--was that something would happen to Russ and I would be left alone to raise three kids. No mean feat when your kids are “normal”. A whole ‘nother ball game when two of your three kids have special needs. Hence, the forbidding of Russ’ participation in anything more dangerous than yoga.

But last month, at the recommendation of a friend, I picked up a book for Russ and I to read and it changed my life--literally. But what’s weird is that it’s a guy book--John Eldredge’s Wild at Heart--about the inner workings of men and how God designed them. I was reading it to better understand how my hubby ticks. But after reading the first chapter, I felt like someone had stuck a pair of kitchen shears in my chest. I realized that I had been slowly killing my warrior husband whom God had designed to love adventure and physical challenge. Because of my fear--which bottomline is a lack of faith in God--I had put the breaks on every major physical endeavor that Russ has wanted to do for the last 14 years, all because I was afraid.

But there’s more. In this book about men, I discovered something about women as well. Every wife knows that her husband is just a boy playing with bigger toys. But women, I think, can sometimes fail to see that we’re just little girls playing dressing-up like we’ve been since we were old enough to step into our mother’s high heels or get caught painting our faces with her lipstick.

Now me, I am practical and efficient to a fault. If it was up to me, I wouldn’t even wear my wedding ring, to say nothing of bracelets, necklaces, earrings, rings, and anklets. I wouldn’t bother with any more make-up than was required to hide a monthly zit. I’d keep my hair cut short. I’d be-deck myself in jeans, sneakers, and a T-shirt. Why? Because it’s more efficient and practical. The thought of spending money on clothes other than that which is absolutely necesssary is odious to me when I could be using that cash to pay off our credit card debt. Yes, as a woman, I know I am a freak of nature.

So what cataclysmic event could prompt me, the winner of the 2010 Frugal Shopper of the Year award, to buy five--count ‘em, five--pair of shoes in one day? I know what you are thinking, that surely since there are five members in my family that I must have purchased one pair for each family member. No. Not unless my 9-year-old decided to wear stilettos. Yes, I admit, all five pair of shoes were for me. As were the other $200 in clothes I spent the same day.

Maybe I was abducted by aliens. Maybe I have a multiple personality disorder. Maybe a US government covert operative had massive facial reconstructive surgery so they could take over my identity in the name of national security.

Or maybe I realized that God--my Daddy--wanted me to dress up for him just like I always wanted to for my physical father when I was five. What daughter doesn’t dream of hearing her daddy say, “You look beautiful”? That my heavenly father provided the financial means for me to shop (tax refund, yes!), a husband that likes when I dress up, and shoes in my impossible size made it pretty clear that this was His plan all along. He just needed me to be humble and trusting enough to see it…and admit there is a deeply ensconced part of me that loves shopping.

I also learned that God designed us a certain way, and when we are children, we are closest to that true nature than at any other time in our lives. Why do boys turn the most harmless household item into a bazooka? Why do they fearlessly bound from couch to couch like a caped superhero while pursued by a fretful mother? Why can girls make a baby doll from a ceramic frog, a hairbrush, or a 2-liter bottle of soda? Why do they wrap up Fido or a younger sibling like a mummy with First Aid tape? Truth is, we can resist these tendencies ourselves, burying them so deep we feel ashamed when they raise their feeble heads, or we can have them affectionately quashed by those who are only “looking out for our best interests”.

Am I advocating that war and guns and violence is okay for men of any age? Absolutely not. Am I saying that women should be kept barefoot and pregnant? Yeah, right.What I am saying is that we have God’s indelible imprint on our person and we should adventurously--and responsibly--discover what that is. Whether it’s leaping out of airplanes or leaping across a gymnastics floor. Whether it’s saving the whales or saving a hit-and-run in the E.R. Whether it’s building the foundation of skyscraper or building the foundation of a great family. Only when we’re fulfilling that part of us that makes us his little children all over again can we discover the part of Him that is otherwise hidden to us.

So if you see Russ cruising the Orlando streets on his new Harley, you’ll understand why. If you see me with a little more make-up, bangles on my wrists, and an outfit that doesn’t appear in Mountain Times, you’ll know why. And if you catch me walking out of Payless Shoes in heels that make me taller than my husband, you’ll get it.

After all, boys may be boys, but this girl is still frugal.

Riddle Me This, Mother

2011-05-01T23:14:00.000-04:00

A man was walking hurriedly through a dense wood, a satchel cradled gently in his arms, when he came upon a fearsome creature blocking his path—a great sphinx.

“Let me pass,” beseeched the man viewing his destination—a small building—over the massive shoulder of the mythic being. “I have urgent business to which I must attend.”

The golden-haired sphinx tossed its head. “Only if you answer my riddle. If you guess right, you may pass unscathed. But if you answer wrong, I will eat you where you stand.”

Realizing that seeking out an alternate path to his destination would further delay him, the man replied, “Ask me your question.”

Delighted, the sphinx smiled revealing a double row of razor sharp teeth. “Very well. What creature has the feet of the gazelle, the fierceness of the bear, the heart of the oak, and the vision of the chameleon?”

The man laughed, shifting the satchel in his arms, impatient to complete his task. “That’s it? That’s your difficult question?”

The great beast frowned, its wings bristling. “I have dined on many a-traveler using this very riddle. Do you mean to tell me you know the answer?”

“Any child would know the answer,” said the man.

Sensing a trick, the sphinx pulled itself up to its full height, golden eyes locking on the man. “Then tell me,” it said, “what is your reply?”

“A mother,” said the man. “Like the gazelle, her feet are swift to catch a falling child or rush to their aide. As with the bear, only a fool would stand between her and her offspring. Like the oak, her strong heart secures her family and as they grow, they find solace in her shade. And no matter what her age, like the chameleon she has eyes in the back of her head, as any of her children can attest.”

The sphinx fumed. “How did you know when so many others have failed?”

The man pulled out a bouquet of flowers from his satchel, making sure none of the blooms were damaged. “Don’t you know what day it is?”

The sphinx stared from the man to the flowers dumbfounded before its eyes widened in alarm. “She’s going to kill me,” it whispered.

“Yeah, she can have the constitution of a tempest when her day is forgotten,” said the man.

The sphinx paled and swallowed. Then it turned and fled up the path.

The man rechecked the bouquet, pulled his satchel over his shoulder, and strolled up the path toward his mother’s tiny house.

P.S. Have a great Mom's Day. Make yours feel special.

Welcome to the Jungle, er, Zoo

2011-04-22T09:44:00.002-04:00

My tranquil haven of a home has officially become a zoo.

To the one dog we got when my kids were small, we have recently added a sickly bearded dragon, two ball pythons, two mice, and this week we completed our collection with a pair of ferrets.

All these in a house of a woman who swore off animals for good as I have a hard enough time taking proper care of all the humans in my life. My one consolation in all this is that we haven’t added any more babies, human or otherwise. After three kids, two cats, and a puppy, I draw the line at potty-training or house-training anything every again.

Did I say three kids? Let me correct that as sometimes I believe my husband reverts back to being 12 again where animals are concerned. He’s been just as bad as the kids at badgering me to accumulate our menagerie. Our most recent edition is a great example.

Let me give you a little backstory: Before the bearded dragon, before the snakes, and before the mice, I’d promised my 9-year-old daughter she could get a ferret—one ferret—for her 10th birthday which is in October. She’s been asking me for one since she was 8. No, not asking. Pleading. Beseeching me with those big brown eyes. I’ve felt like Scrooge on more than one occasion. But nary did my resolve waver. Ten, I declared repeatedly. Not until you are 10. Why ten, you ask? Because that’s the minimum age encouraged on the ferret cages at Petco. Plus it put the dreaded date far enough away that I was hoping she would forget all about it. No luck. She really wanted a stoat, a distant relative of the ferret but as they’re a protected species, they’re illegal to own. Then she wanted a fennic fox—cute little thing with huge ears—but they’re like $1400. So we came back around to the ferret—one ferret.

About 3 months ago, I agreed to a single lizard. I’ve handled iguanas before and while they’re not my favorite animal (I don’t have a favorite animal), they don’t freak me out. My girls—with a little prompting from my hubby, I’m sure—wanted something a little more exotic. So they excitedly explored Craig’s List and found a bearded dragon, a very sedate lizard that’s actually quite cute—for a lizard.

Figuring that they had broken my resolve, the future zookeepers of my family, fueled by my 12-year-old husband, asked if they could get a snake—one snake—of which I generally have little or no fear as long as I’m not caught off-guard in the wild by a rattler. After another diligent search with our girls on Craig’s List, my husband came home with two snakes, one of which proceeded to escape after only a couple of weeks. We never found him. I kept waiting to smell his decaying corpse from behind the range or under the frig, but alas, I think he escaped to the wild through one of the doors my kids perpetually leave open.

Ah, I know what you are thinking. I was vindicated. God was with me. I had only wanted one snake and now, through some divine act of the Merciful Creator, we only had one snake.

But if you thought that, you’d be wrong. A week later they acquired a second snake—yes, on Craig’s List—another ball python to breed with the first. Think about this, we’ve now gone from one snake to not just two, but a potential family of snakes. Surely God was playing with me?

The one thing about snakes, our snakes anyway, is that they need to eat live mice about once a week. (It’s quite the National Geographic experience to watch a snake hunt down, suffocate, and then eat a little white mouse right there on your kitchen table.) So to save time and an extra trip to Petco, someone in the family decided to get four mice instead of two and just keep the uneaten ones in separate cage for a week. With two little girls already hankering for a furry rodent*, can you say “bad idea”? Now you know where the mice came from.

So now that you’re all caught up to this week, on Monday I came back from an appointment to pick up my girls from the studio where they were spending some quality time with Daddy. I walk in the door and am immediately bombarded with three pairs of big pleading brown eyes—two pairs from my girls and one, I’m sure you’re not surprised to hear, from my husband, all of them crying, “Please, Mommy, please.” Then Russ piped in, “It’s a hardship case.” Momma Scrooge reared her head. But out of courtesy, I had to listen to the story:

Once more my family was looking at the petnography on Craig’s List—yes, I believe it is just as addictive and dangerous to family values as the human version—when they found a family whose house had burned down only months earlier and were desperately looking for a home for the surviving ferrets. They were desperate because they were moving to Naples on Wednesday and needed to get the ferrets—two brothers they didn’t want separated—a new home by then. This was a like a pair of Tiny Tim’s and I was refusing to give them shelter. The guilt was unparalled.

But I was shrewd. Someone else surely would want such a furry treasured duo. The needy family didn’t even ask for a dollar amount although the animals were worth $175 a piece and their cage—which was obviously mandatory unless you wanted a pair of rampaging ferrets chewing up your computer cables and stealing your shoes—had cost them $300.

Because I’m the better typist, I actually keyed-in the email response to the advertisement myself while my eager family watched. I used my superb writing skills honed on blogs like this very one to write a response making us look like a worthy adopting family, offered them a “measily” $250 which we really didn’t have anyway, thinking, surely they wouldn’t choose us. Then just to make me seem like I was really being spiritual about the whole thing—because surely God would not do this to me—I asked us to pray about it as a family. And so we did. Just before I pressed the SEND button, we prayed that if it was truly God’s will for us to have these ferrets, that of all those people in world who responded to the email, we would be the chosen family. Then I went home confident that I still had six more months to prepare for a ferret in my house.

The ferret family had 50 responses to their ad. And, because you already know the rest of the story, you know they picked us. The betrayal of my God and Protector left me speechless—for about 30 seconds. And then I started writing this blog.

So once more, God has chosen to take me to new levels of faith and patience. This time with ferrets. Go figure. I surely didn’t.

But as you are all my witnesses here and now, we will not get that puppy one of my clients is trying to sell us—an adorable little chihuahua that fits in the palm of your hand—that my children are pleading for, and that even my husband is drooling over. No, absolutely not.

Someone, please, help me.

*To redeem them, and so you know I’ve done my research, ferrets are NOT rodents. They are actually in the weasel family (which I thought were rodents, too) and they are related to the sea otter. Who wouldn’t love an otter?

A Plethora of Planks

2011-03-23T12:34:00.001-04:00

We love to see repentance in others. It brings such joy to see someone change the way they were living, talking, thinking, or acting all because their transformation honors God. We admire that person for taking such radical steps to be conformed into the image of Christ.

But usually, the whole reason that person changed was because somebody put their sin in their face. Somebody showed them an area where their character was sorely lacking. And if you’ve ever been on the receiving end of that kind of talk—whether it’s done in love, anger, or frustration—you know it kinda feels like a quadruple root-canal.

If you’re married, dating someone, or even have a roommate or a close friend, I want you to take out a piece of paper, a pencil, a black magic marker, and some duct tape…Go on, I can wait.

Did you get them? Good.

Now, put the marker and duct tape aside for minute, we’ll use them in a minute. First, draw a line down the center of the paper. At the top of the first column write that person’s name—your spouse, beau, housemate or friend. At the top of the second column, write your name. Now go back to the first column and write down every single thing about that person that bugs you. Go ahead. It’s okay. Nobody’s going to see it but you. I promise it will self-destruct five seconds after you finish reading this blog.

Now’s your chance. Lay it out: Do they snore (even when they’re awake)? Do they leave toothpaste or globs of hair in the bathroom sink? Do they leave their dirty underwear all over the house? Do they drive like a maniac or a plow horse? Do they leave dirty dishes in the kitchen sink (for you to wash! Grrr!) Do they have a memory like a steel trap or a trap door? Can they get lost in their own bathroom? Do they have some bizarre tic that drives you insane whenever you’re around them?

Go ahead, get it all out. You’ve been dying to do this. Dying to put it all down so you can finally tell them what you’ve kept bottled up inside, the pressure building like a shaken soda can. Or if you’re brave, maybe you’ve hinted to them about it only to get the rolling of the eyes, the languid shrug, the frown of confusion, or my favorite, the blank stare.

Are you finished?

Okay, that’s enough.

No, really, I mean it.

Okay, one more.

Now, stop!

All right. Look at the list. Really look at it. Think of all the times that you have contained your rage over their failings, foibles, or freakiness. Think of all the times you have had to pick up behind them, cleaning up their messes, physical or otherwise. Go ahead, really feel how annoying that is. Imagine yourself telling them off, voicing every issue, quoting in detail each example. Imagine finally getting to tell them exactly how you feel so they would finally change.

Now. Get out the magic marker and put a big X through the whole list.

What? you ask. But…but… I’m finally going to tell them, and they’re finally going to change.

Truth. No, they’re not. Unless…

Look over in Column #2 where your name is. Now I want you to find that person—the one who you love but whom drives you nuts—and ask them what things you do that drive them crazy. What things have they hinted at or flat out begged you to change that you blew off for weeks, months, or even years? What things have they repeatedly said to you that have gone in one ear and out the other? Or better, what things did they ask you to change and you flat out refused because you felt like you knew better or because how they wanted you to be simply “wasn’t you”?

Now, before they answer, take out the duct tape, rip off a good long piece and put it over your mouth. Now let them talk and you write.

Let them get it all out. Yes, I know they seem a little too excited about this. Yes, this is stuff you’ve heard a hundred times before. No, you can’t poke them in the eye with your pencil. Just keep writing. Stop clenching your jaw. I know your hand is cramping, but you’ll survive.

Okay. Now, without removing the duct tape, say thank you in sign language. It looks like the box here. Now, go sit in a closet, bathroom, or other confined space where you can kick and scream and yell and nobody will overhear you and call the police once you’ve ripped the duct tape off your mouth along with your lips and any stray facial hair.

Are you calm yet? Well, take a few deep breaths then. I promise, we’re almost done. You ready?

Here’s my challenge to you. Change. You change first. You change and God will miraculously work to see that other person change.

“Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.” (Matthew 7:3-5)

The truth hurts. But it also works.

Now put your paper down before it explodes and you burn yourself, and then you have an attitude toward me. I’ve got my own list I’m already working on here, thank you very much.

What (I Think) I Missed

2011-03-18T01:36:00.000-04:00

I did something today that I haven’t done in almost 10 years.

I wept for my son. My lost son.

Not my firstborn, Aiden, who was stillborn. But for my second. Tristan, my second child who survived my erroneous gene pool only to be lambasted outside the womb with autism. Apparently it runs on my side of the family, but most of the boys who display any markers of it have what’s called Asperger’s. It’s the type of autism where you can function fairly normal in society. You can have friends. You can almost understand sarcasm. You can take a change in your schedule without too much difficulty. You can fall in love. You can know and love God. You can venture out into the world, leaving the loving and protective arms of your parents and turning them into reluctant—though in some cases, eager—empty nesters.

My boy doesn’t have Asperger’s. But nor is he severely autistic either. Yes, I’m fortunate because he doesn’t sit in a corner lost to this world, rocking himself endlessly, never acknowledging his parents as I know many other severely autistic children do.

My baby—now 13 and on the brink of entering high school—is in the netherworld between those two extremes. In some ways, he’s like any other young teenage boy. He loves video games, bowling, and pepperoni pizza, although maybe not in that order. Did I mention that he really likes pizza? But anyone who met him would pick up right away that he’s, well,…different. He doesn’t “get” what personal space is. He can’t seem to grasp the concept of inside voice. And sharing with his sisters is dead last in his list of priorities.

Well, maybe he’s not really that abnormal for 13. But still, people notice.

And most of the time, I’m okay with that. It’s my life. It’s his life. We don’t know any thing else. I worked through my mourning of his never having a normal life when he was diagnosed with his challenges at age 3.

But it snuck up on me today. I mourned the life he will never have. He’ll never walk in my door, shy and embarrassed about his first crush. He’ll never watch the news and ask me why there’s so much pain the world. He’ll never get nervous about taking his driver’s test. He’ll never tear open a college application response in anticipation. He’ll never ask a girl to marry him. Most likely he won’t ever get baptized because he doesn’t have the capacity—at this point, anyway—to grasp sin, repentence, grace, and the Cross.

He’ll go to heaven, though. Oh, yes. Aiden has a special place reserved just for his little brother. And that thought, of course, led me back to God and the loaded question: “WHY?”

First, I don’t believe God is some helpless old man in the sky watching our lives go by powerless to act. Nor do I believe he is some wrathful Zeus ready to strike us down when we make the tiniest mistake. I believe God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent. He’s not confined by time and space. That’s why he’s the great I AM. He exists in all times—past, present, and future—all at once. So he knows, really knows, what’s best for us. And if he gave up his most precious son just so we can know him, what else won’t he do for us (Romans 8:28-32)? He really is the perfect Father.

So why a Tristan with autism? (Don’t you know that will be my very first question when He gives me leave to ask.) Maybe because Tristan makes both my husband and I see what’s really important in life. Maybe because he has taught us patience, compassion, and self-denial. Maybe because he teaches us that love is pure. Maybe because without him as he is now, we would become enamored with the world. Maybe without him as he is now, we wouldn’t make it to heaven. Or maybe not. I don’t know. But God does.

And in 40 or 50 years when I’ve run my race, after I’ve cried a few more times over what I think Tristan missed—or more honestly, what I think I missed—maybe then I’ll understand and finally be grateful that God knew what he was doing all along.

It Ain't Just Me

2011-02-26T00:07:00.000-05:00

All right. I know you’ve heard me brag about my husband, Russ. And you’re probably thinking, “Ah, she’s still got her rose-colored glasses on.” But trust me--after 19 years of marriage, all illusions are gone. So what I’m left with is the real deal. Yes, he does have a few worts. Who doesn’t? But I have proof that I’m not the only one who thinks he’s pretty awesome.

Hence, this week’s blog is from our nine-year-old daughter who, when given a Social Studies assignment to write about someone who has helped a lot of people, chose to write about her dad.

Wow, kids really do say the darndest things.

.

The Retirement of Supermom

2011-02-12T22:39:00.002-05:00

That’s it. I’m turning in my cape, abandoning my tights, and surrendering my mask. Supermom has officially retired.

It has nothing to do with the fact that I recently turned 48 and the half-century mark is looming ever larger. Nor does it have to do with my gross lack of a 401K or money market piggy bank. I can’t even say it’s because I’m falling apart because, quite honestly, I haven’t been in this good of shape since high school.

No, my retirement from Mighty Momhood has more to do with the fact that like other mere mortals, I am subject to the temporal contraints of Earth—I only have 24 hours in my day, too. I have tried bending and shaping time to my will (Einstein would be proud of me), but no matter how Steven Hawking I get, I’ve come to the sad conclusion that Father Time--that subcelestial nazi--cannot be bought, bribed, or conned out of even a few measily minutes. He’s stingy, selfish, and inflexible.

It’s not like I want to rival Christopher Reeve’s feat to reverse the Earth’s rotation to right some terrible wrong (although removing the bleach stains from two of my brand new shirts would be a start). Maybe I’m not praying hard enough. Joshua convinced God to stop the Earth for a whole day while he hunted down some really bad guys. But alas, I think Joshua took up mankind’s quota on time displacement.

Wouldn’t it be cool to have Hero’s ability (from the TV show Heroes) to freeze time? I could clean the whole house, do all the laundry, vacuum out my car (now that would be a miracle), and take as much time as I wanted to write, then blink again and return everybody to that moment I stopped it. That would be way cool. My writing output could rival Barbara Cartland’s.

But other than Jesus, God didn’t grant me or anyone else with superpowers. And he didn’t even give Jesus the ability to stop time—not that we know of anyway. Jesus himself was subject to our temporal limitations.

So why, why, you ask, have I ceased my futile attempt to alter the unalterable laws of time and space? Because I’ve realized, quite simply, that I can’t do everything. I started homeschooling my kids in October because I was under the delusion that I would be swapping out equal amounts of time between morning prep and homework with full-time homeschooling. What a laugh. (But I’m not laughing at how amazing it is being able to spend so much time with my girls watching them grow and learn before my eyes.)

As I get older--and supposedly wiser--I realize how high I set the bar for myself, not just with homeschooling but with everything. My house should be spotless even with three kids (someone whack me in the head with a wet sponge, please), I should be able to complete all my business accounting, marketing, advertising, and payroll on schedule without a secretary (someone whack me in the head with a netbook, please), and I should be able to prepare gourmet organic meals for my entire family on a daily basis (someone please whack me in the head with a Whole Foods grocery bill). Yes, I know, I’m an insane superhero—correction, retired superhero.

So why does God limit us? Why does he allow us the ambition for perfection then restrict us from achieving it? Because, I think, quite simply, I need to be reminded that I’m not Him. In fact, I need the constant reminders—falling on my face, busting a lip, scraping my proverbial knees—so I don’t forget that all of this is temporary. Perfection—heaven—lies outside of time and space. With Him. Nothing in this life will be perfect. And certainly not me.

So off comes the cape. I’m unmasked, unman(tl)ed, and unmade. These weary bones are slower than a pop-gun bullet, these arms are lucky to have any locomotion, and these feet are too tired to leap over more than a load of laundry. Look, up in the sky. It may be a bird or a plane, but it ain’t me.

I’m the one—eye pillow and ear plugs in place—taking an afternoon nap.

Just Call Me St. Kim

2011-01-14T01:53:00.003-05:00

I believe I am well on my way to sainthood.

Wait. Before you castigate me, let me tell you. I’ve done my research and I’ve discovered the key to sainthood that all true Biblical saints possessed in abundance. It’s making yourself look as much like an idiot, a wretch, or a scumbag as is humanly possible.

Now I’m not talking about the countless saints that needed papal approval. You’d be hard-pressed to find any of those who even blew their noses too loud. No, I’m talking about the real saints, the ones God himself dubbed as worthy of praise. The ones who’ve not only had their few good deeds lauded, but their most selfish and ungodly thoughts and actions indelibly stamped in the most printed book of all time.

Look at David. Poets and painters immortalize him. Sculptors beautificate him (I’m not sure if that’s a real word, but it sounds eloquent). Filmmakers give him the hair of Brad Pitt, the grin of Tom Cruise, and the bod of--who was People’s most beautiful man last year?--uh, Jake Gyllenhaal. But people who’ve never read the Bible don’t know that David was a murderer. And I’m not talking about his sling-swinging head-bashing of Goliath for which won the Best New Soldier of the Year Award. No, not only was David a murderer, but he was also a dirty-dealing politician who systematically manipulated the death of his mistress’ faithful husband, a guy so clean and full of integrity that his sandals must have squeaked when he walked. Yes, King David, the very man after God’s own heart was also an adulterer.

Jacob, the third of the famous three Fathers of the Faith--Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob--was a conniving, manipulative swindler and a thief. He conned his brother out of his inheritance, tricked his blind and ailing father into handing over the family birthright, and then for years manipulated his uncle so he could retain for himself the best of the flocks he’d bred for the man while in his service. Is it any wonder Jacob’s own sons imitated their father’s character by lying and selling their own brother (Joseph) into Egyptian slavery?

And let’s not forget about Peter, the saint with perpetual foot-in-the-mouth disease. Yes, for three years Peter was Jesus' #1 Guy, but he also was the one who rebuked the Son of God when Jesus said he had to go to the cross, he was the one who wouldn’t let Jesus wash his feet, and he was the one who spent the last twenty years of his life haunted by dawn’s cockcrow because he was too cowardly to admit his association with Jesus even to a lowly servant girl.

And I’m just getting started. People who claim the Bible is a fabricated document haven’t looked very closely at it. Why in the world would anyone who wants to make their religion look so good make their heroes look so bad? Abraham was a liar, Solomon was a womanizer, Jonah was coward.

Nowadays we wouldn’t need the Bible to shout out our deplorable behavior and secret sins, we’ve got YouTube, cell phones, and Facebook. And once the Real You has hit the “www”, baby, there’s no bringing it back.

Me, well, my outing is not so grand as murder, deceit, or betrayal (thank heaven). Although with iPhones as common as oxygen, I’m not even safe in my own shower. We were fortunate enough to have some friends come into our fitness studio after Christmas and shoot a webisode (that’s internet lingo for a talkshow episode on the web). It was fast, it was fun, and best of all, it was FREE.

And it shed our studio in such a great light. But--and here comes my confession--it also made me look like I’m four months pregnant. Yes, I know it’s my vanity. But it was also glaring evidence of my over-indulgance in Christmas cookies, a major no-no for a fitness instructor. Worse, was my complete screw-up of demonstrating the difference between a salsa and a merengue--a Zumba instructor’s very, very, very basic dance steps. My only excuse that I must give my scandalized Latin friends, is quite simply, I’m white. As gringa as Shirley Temple (although Little Shirley, even at the age of five, could have tapped JLo under the table).

All right, so maybe the revelations of my holiday culinary indiscretions or my lack of dance education isn’t grounds for sainthood, but it certainly does wonders for my humility and my gagging need to always look good. We try so hard to hide what God sees so readily because we’re afraid of what people will think about us. I’m sure if we focused less on our deficiencies and more on God’s perfection, life would be a whole lot simpler and a whole lot less stressful.

I think many of us sometimes think we would love to have lived in Bible times and actually watch Jesus heal the blind or stand at the Red Sea when Moses parted the waters or witness Elijah’s humbling of the Baal priests on Mt. Carmel when he called down fire from heaven.

Me, uh-uh. No way. With my luck, the prolific scribes of our most sacred writings would have caught me with more than my hand in the cookie jar. And then every single person who could ever read would bear witness to my Tollhouse temptation.

No thanks. I’ll take my chances with YouTube.

Crochet and Cancer

2011-01-02T14:19:00.000-05:00

I stood in the dark at the end of New Years--the pop and fizz of fireworks long gone--hugging the crocheted blanket and sobbing for my daddy.

My father’s been dead for more than six years. Cancer. And while I don’t think of him everyday because quite frankly we really weren’t that close, the last two days I’ve thought about him a lot.

After I sanded my daughters’ bedroom doors in preparation for repainting, I was pressure cleaning my electric sander and I thought about my dad. He was ex-Marine. And he taught me how to put my stuff away where it belongs. As a kid I didn’t appreciate the fact that I could walk blindly into his immaculate tool shed and put my hand on any tool I needed when I needed it because, if it wasn’t being used, it was in its spot. It’s a treasured lesson I now try to instill in my own kids.

I was at a New Year Eve party sharing with a friend that when I was in high school my father offered to get me whatever drugs I wanted so I could try it under a controlled environment while he supervised. That may sound very unparent-like, but at the time drugs laced with poison had already killed a few kids in my town. I think it was his way of minimizing the chances he would have to identify me in a morgue. Regardless, it stripped away any mystery or allure that illicit drugs might have had on me.

My dad didn’t always run the right side of the law. It took him away from my brother and I as children and as adults. He didn’t get to walk me down the aisle. He wasn’t able to be there to comfort me when I lost my first child nor when we discovered our second child had autism. And but for a few short months before his death, the only time he spent with his grandchildren was in a corrections facility visiting room.

Unfortunately, my dad grew up under the impression that public displays of affection--even toward your children--were for the weak. And my father was anything but weak. Six-feet, four-inches, 230 pounds, and built like a tank. I only ever saw him cry once in my whole life and that was when his was coming to an end. But he never let me go to my childhood bed without kissing him goodnight.

When he got older, my dad mellowed a bit. He showed me love the best way he knew how. He crocheted. Initially, it for his own rehabilitation. He even taught the other inmates. For Christmas gifts, he made booties and sweaters for his granddaughters. He made a Winnie the Pooh and Piglet for his grandson. And for me, he made blankets. Lots of blankets. Blue ones, pink ones, some with flowers, some with tassels. One has become a sort of favorite of mine. I don’t get to use it much in Florida, of course. It’s not the prettiest thing either. It’s brown and white and doesn’t match any décor in my house.

This holiday we did some shifting around of furniture in our house and I went looking for my blanket. I checked every linen closet and storage bin. I checked the garage and under all the beds. I couldn’t find it. I got a little frantic. I finally found it at the bottom of a bedroom closet, its mismatched squares standing out. I grabbed it, hugged it to my chest, and imagined as I did so many other times, my father sitting in his cell, his crochet needle flashing, the skeins of yarn stretched out beside him on his bed, and my brown blanket slowly forming under his patient hands. And I started to sob.

God, I miss my dad.

Man, Myth, or iMagination

2010-12-25T13:47:00.000-05:00

I know I’ve blogged about movies a lot, but they make such an indelible impression. Holiday movies even more so. In fact, I have to watch my annual Christmas flicks with a box of tissues to go along with my popcorn. I’m such a sap.

Last night, I sat down with my 9-year-old daughter to watch “Miracle on 34th Street” (sorry, but I like the 1994 version with Elizabeth Perkins, Dylan McDermott, Mara Wilson, and Richard Attenborough as Santa). My daughter is right at the precarious age where she’s doubting the validity of St. Nick. This year brought a very unexpected dilemma for which I have another 360 days or so to figure out just what I’m going to say next year.

See, we have this big--and I mean BIG--deal in our house about lying. Our kids know we would grant mercy for grand theft auto before we would for deceit. So now I’m under the gun for why I’ve “lied” to my kids for the last 13 years as to my profound belief in the existance of Santa Claus.

Now, anticipating this revelation for my children, I have changed my tune a little bit since my daughter first asked, “Is there really a Santa Claus?” My response since then has been a safe, “He’s as real as you want him to be.”

For me, I wish there was a Santa Clause. Not only would it keep my bank account a little more pleasantly plump, but it would save me witnessing the fistfights that break out in Toys’R’Us each year. I mean really, you have to be suicidal to shop on Black Friday.

Not only that, but the whole embodiment of what Santa represents is something so far removed from the reality of everyday life. I think the miracle of a red-suited Santa, toy-making elves, flying reindeer, and the world’s fastest shop-n-drop delivery system is what makes even the scrouge-iest grown-up become a child again, even if it’s just for a few hours. We strive to be more indulgent of family who would normally drive us up the Christmas tree, we smile at our neighbors even if we can read the fine print of assembly instructions by the blaze of their Christmas lights, and we grin and bear it when the Christmas carolers off-tune rendition of “Silent Night” would make Franz Gruber roll over in his grave.

But, anyway, back to the movie. Mara Wilson plays a six-year-old going on 60. She’s as practical and pragmatic as her mother, who we come to find out had her dreams dashed as a new mom and now keeps everyone and everything at arm’s length including the charming Brian Bedford, the white-beared gentleman she hired for her department store, and any silly such nonsense about Santa Claus.

I thought back to times when I’ve had my dreams crushed either from cruelty or carelessness and remember wanting to cocoon my heart from the world, protect myself from pain ever hitting me in the same way again. In modern-day lingo, we call it self-preservation, but bottom line, it’s just hardening our hearts. The problem with doing this is you can’t selectively seal yourself off. It’s all or nothing.

I think God understands this more than we can possibly fathom. How many times have we carelessly crushed his heart, yet he became the epitome of vulnerability when he placed his most precious possession—his son—in our cruel and feeble hands?

Santa the person may not be real anymore (when alive, he was St. Nicholas of Myra, a 4th century Greek bishop), but his spirit lives on as it should, as should anything that calls us to be children again (Matthew 18:3), as anything that calls us to believe in something purely on faith.

Santa may not really ride the lines of latitude and longitude each Christmas Eve, but there is another who—at my humblest word—rides the wings of wind to be at my side. If we can all be transformed each December by the presence of someone long dead, why can’t we be daily transformed by someone who is alive and watching over us from someplace loftier than the North Pole? And if I can convince my daughter that someone as loving and giving as Santa exists, even if just in our hearts, then convincing her of a loving God that gives her gifts everyday of her life, should be cake. With red frosting and green sprinkles.

Call me naïve (and many of you parents-of-teens are doing so right now), but this is my crazy logic for the whole thing and hopefully how I’m going to approach the subject with my daughter.

Now all I need to do is figure out how I’m also going to tell her about the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy.

Sense, Shame, and Sensibility

2010-11-26T22:16:00.005-05:00

I’m a shameless artist. Not that I do any art that is shameful. Unfortunately, most professional artists nowadays tend to have such a bad rep and worse, they glory in it. The weirder, the better. Look at Lady Gaga.

I’m shameless as both a writer and an audience in that I unabashedly love the power of drama and the power of the hero to overcome all odds and finally stand, kneel, or barely lift his head in triumph.

Pictures, stories, and music move me in ways that little else can. They stir something in me that the Ultimate Artist wove uniquely into my DNA in the womb. Nobody--and I mean nobody--in my family is drawn to the arts like I am. Nobody likes to read or write. No siblings float in a dream state for weeks after seeing a film like Avatar or Serenity. No cousins slog through bogs of sobriety after seeing a film like Schindler’s List or Sophie’s Choice. No parents or grandparents feel like taking on the world after seeing films like Rudy or Dead Poet’s Society.

And while I think I’m a bit of a freak in my own family, I’m sure there are lots of people out there in the world just like me. If not, the entire film industry would have dramatically collapsed into a celluloid heap of rubble decades ago. What is it about drama that moves us? What is it that sweeps us away? Truth is, while we are sentient beings, we are also sensual beings.

Over the last 500 years or so, the term “sensual” has gotten a bad rap. It used to mean “of or pertaining to the senses”. Now it refers to the lewd and unchaste gratification of the senses. Just that definition brings a nasty tang to my mouth (sense of taste) and makes my skin crawl (sense of touch). Alas, we can’t escape it. Our senses are how we connect to the world. They make us feel either dead (like when we have the flu) or alive (like when we ride the Tilt-A-Whirl at a carnival).

Jesus understood the power of the senses. He touched the leper who hadn’t felt a compassionate hand in years (Mt 8:3). He changed water to wine at an event where most of the attendants wouldn’t have known the difference between Boone’s Farm and a 200-year-old Chardonnay (Jn 2:1-11). He gave the Three--Peter, James and John--a 3D HD Blueray vision of himself in all his glory and it stunned them into speechlessness, or in Peter’s case, Foot-in-the-Mouth disease (Lk 9:28-33).

The problem is when we let our senses lead us instead of our sense.

Jesus understood this wrestling for control better than anybody. As one of the Triune, he made us (Gen 1:26). He was God in the flesh. But he was also very, very human. As an infant, he grew into each of his senses like any of us--tasting, touching, and smelling--connecting with the world around him but miraculously keeping his purity intact through his teenage and young adult years, no mean feat in any era. As a prelude to his ministry, he let himself be led into a state of hunger-induced weakness so he could master his senses with his sense of right[eous]ness (Mk 1:13). And finally, he refused the gall, an analgesic, at the cross (Mt 27:34) so he wouldn’t be denied the suffering he’d promised to bear. And so he could keep his head about him.

We use our senses to allow us to escape reality. Jesus used his to cling to it. To cling to his purpose which, among other things, was to help empower us to say No.

No is not a term we are comfortable with. No makes us squirm. No makes us angry. No has set us off since we were two-years-old. “Have it Your Way” is not just Burger King’s stalwart motto, it’s ours. Mine. I always want things to go my way. I always want to be happy. I always want to feel good. But if God thought Jesus--the Prince of All Creation, the One and Only, the Word in Flesh--needed to deny himself to walk the walk, who am I to think that my life is going to be all about Yes?

Good films inspire me to be nobler, purer, courageous, and full of faith. Bad films are like junk food, poisoning the system and leaving a layer of filth--real or imagined--inside and outside. With food, I can just shower and empty my bowels, but you can’t rid yourself of the vicious power of a bad film. Its images are indelibly printed on your memory like sunspots on the back of your eyes.

I think I love to be inspired because it makes me feel good, right all the way to the bone. But I wouldn’t want to go through what many of my favorite main characters have experienced. Not really. I wouldn’t want to be Oskar Schindler, distraught over the one or two or ten lives that his last gold cuff-link could no longer buy. I wouldn’t want to be Sophie Zawistowski forced to choose which child I would keep and which child I would send to the gas chamber. And I certainly wouldn’t want to be Jesus wrestling on the cross, the fate of the whole world hanging in the balance.

I know myself. I’d have lost. And the world with me. That type of drama is too real. Too in your face.

Okay, enough of the heavy. I think I’ll go watch X-men.

My Husband, My Hero

2010-11-16T15:25:00.005-05:00

It’s pretty sad that in our modern, progressive society it’s cool to bash husbands and dads. The Simpsons now in its 35th season (okay, I exaggerated…a little) is a prime example. Homer is a laughable (and laughed at) illustration of what a dad and hubby should not be--obtuse, out-to-lunch, and unrespected. Yet middle America has continued to welcome this dysfunctional father and others like him into their homes each week: Peter Griffin of Family Guy, Al Bundy of Married With Children, Michael C. Hall’s Dexter. Need I go on?

Well I’m here to turn that trend on its head--I have one awesome husband and I believe my kids would say they have the coolest dad in town. And I have evidence to prove it. This weekend is a shining example why my hubby should be nominated Father of the Year.

This past weekend was the Florida Yoga Journal Conference, a huge event for those of us working in the yoga field (for those who don’t know, we own a yoga/fitness studio in the Orlando area). Russ was really psyched about it and had convinced me to invest a small fortune in our professional education by registering. And he was even going to send me a few days earlier to partipate in the two-day yoga business workshop Thursday and Friday. So I planned and schemed as any working, homeschooling mom would, making sure to keep my kids as healthy as possible so grandma could come to watch my charges.

The Wednesday before the conference, I was packed and ready to go. I hopped in the car with a friend who had volunteered to drive (thanks, Aida!) and we had just gotten on to the Turnpike with no exit for like 50 miles when I got a call from my mom that my son had stuck a tiny toy in his ear and she couldn’t get it out. I, of course, panicked for about ten minutes, but what could I do?

I prayed, of course. And God answered my prayer by sending Dr. Daddy to the rescue and voila! One less toy removed from my son’s ear.

I breathed a sigh of relief as Aida and I got to Hollywood (FL). On my first day of the business conference, I learned all the things I was doing wrong in my business, then I got a call from my mom saying that Tia, my youngest, was breathing funny and her heart rate seemed a little fast. I love my mom, but she can be a little over-protective so I just told her to have Russ check on Tia when he got home and bring her to the neighborhood after-hours pediatric clinic if she needed it.

Two hours later, I’m sitting in a Cuban restaurant in Miami eating fried plantains and I get a call from my husband that the pediatrician is calling an ambulance to rush my baby to the hospital. My plantains stuck in my throat and I burst into tears. By the time Aida and I got back to the hotel—I forgot how agonizing Miami traffic can be!—I was reassured by my super-hero husband that Tia had stabilized and was doing better. Aida offered to drive me home, but I felt so horrible ruining her vacation that I tried to find a rental car, only to learn that there wasn’t a single vehicle available in the entire Ft. Lauderdale Airport! So what could do? I prayed, of course.

And God answered my prayer again with Superdad. Russ reassured me that everything was fine and that he was there and I should stay at the conference. Hopefully, he said, they would discharge Tia the next day and he’d join me as we'd planned for the weekend. So I went to sleep a bit more at peace but with my cellphone glued to my ear.

The next morning, Russ declared that Tia was her “bright-eyed, bushy-tailed self”. So with an equal measure of relief and guilt, I headed off for my second day of the conference and learned even more about what I was doing wrong in my business (yes, I’m a failure as a present mom and a business-owner). I got to talk to Russ, sharing with him all I was learning (I had to find some justifiable reason why I didn’t hitchhike home the night before). And then Russ told me that the doctor wasn’t going to discharge Tia…

Remember I told you that it was Russ who had really wanted to go to this conference. So you’ll understand why I was really feeling guilty now. Russ was going to miss the whole conference because he was at home doing what I considered my job.

But did my hubby complain? Did he utter even a single word of protest? Did he make me feel in any way guilty (like I hadn’t created enough guilt of my own)?

Nada. Not a bit. Not a chance. He was his usual chipper, unflappable self. “No problem,” he said. “I got it here. You have a good time.” And he meant it.

So I enjoyed the massive bathtub in our hotel room, I let the sand squish between my toes as I walked on the beach, I strolled through the conference Marketplace and bought Russ some yoga toys (it was the least I could do). And I did yoga. Lots of yoga. It was bliss.

Now, I took off my rose-colored glasses in our marriage long ago so I know that Russ is by no means perfect (except that he’s perfect for me). But what he does have, he has down. Nailed down. I don’t know another man on the planet who will rise at 5am, personally train clients at dawn, perform 4-5 fitness classes in a row, do 2-3 massages, then do 2-3 more classes in the evening, and then come home and simply focus on loving-up on his kids.

Cliff Huxtable, Howard Cunningham, and Mike Brady may have been great husbands and dads in TV land, but I’ve got the real thing. And with six-pack abs to boot. Who’s the lucky one?

The Worms are Dead

2010-10-27T22:44:00.000-04:00

The worms are dead. And if they are any indication of my future as a homeschool mom, I’m in trouble.

I got up on Monday morning, walked into the kitchen to prepare breakfast for my sleepy army, and thought I caught the faint whiff of stink. At first I thought it was the garbage can. I bet none of you have ever thrown uncooked chicken into the trash and smelled it throughout your house two days later. That’s what I thought it was, too. So after emptying every garbage can in the house (in which I subsequently found a set of house keys, a past due library book, and an expired merchandise receipt for which I had scoured the house, sure I had left the thing right there), I thought I had done away with the rancid odor.

Alas, no. I kept smelling it…somewhere passed the kitchen trash can…somewhere around the corner. I’m sure I looked like a two-legged Fido, sniffing the air, following my nose and the putrid scent into my office. I turned and…there it was again. Just a whiff by the bookshelf. That was where it was strongest. I frowned, examining the bookshelf. It wasn’t my Complete Works of William Shakespeare. Nor was it my Stephen King collection (although rot is a regular visitor in his stories). Nor was it the vast array of miscellaneous items normally reserved for a junk drawer (matches, an eyeglass case, ankle weights, loose photos in dire need of an album).

Sniff. It was closer.

Sniff. Whoo! There it was. Wrapped in purple construction paper, THE jar. The jar we had placed our mixed-colored soil, Quaker oats (nightcrawlers eat oatmeal?), and the dozen or so worms that were SUPPOSED to crawl down into the soil and make merry with the dirt. Lazy buzzards. Instead of digging into the black, they’d camped out on the surface their slimy bodies twisted together in an orgy of death (Stephen and Will would both have been proud).

What can I say? My girls and I followed the directions for the little worm experiment to a tee. The squirmy rascals just didn’t want dig down into the potting soil and do their duty to science. Or so they thought. ‘Cause now, their decomposing corpses (heaved over my backyard fence into the woods) are evidence to my little scientists that The Circle of Life ain’t just a song. Good little worms.

My girls got so excited about watching something decompose that they decided to leave an apple and an orange on the kitchen counter to rot. The fruit oozes periodically but at least they aren’t perfuming my house with annelid malodor (worm stink).

As I promised them, we concluded the week with a fieldtrip to Gatorland. The girls enjoyed themselves. I was unnerved by just how many alligators and crocodiles the place housed. On island after island, the reptiles lay piled atop each other--hundreds it seemed--warming themselves in the sun (looking not much different from the worms in our jar, now that I think about it).

We rode the Gatorland train around the park at all of 3 mph, fed the turkeys who were more interested in pecking our hands than the food, watched a man wrestle a 10-foot alligator with his face ridiculously close to the reptile’s, and stayed for the jumping alligator contest. Yes, you read that right--jumping alligators. Now these babies can’t compete with the dolphins at Seaworld (for which we also have annual passes) but for lumbering relics of the dinosaur age, they got game. Plus, they’re jumping for the croc version of fillet mignon--bloody chicken parts. It was a little disturbing the way the whole crowd--prompted by a Gatorland employee--cheered on the competing gators like we were in a Roman gladitorial contest (the result of too much Dexter and CSI, I suppose).

All in all, it was a good week. Except for the dream I had Friday night where I found myself reading Hamlet while suspended over a quagmire of sharp-toothed nightcrawlers, all jumping for the oatmeal in my open hand.

I need a vacation.

I'm Still Here...With Worms No Less

2010-10-09T23:04:00.000-04:00

Okay, I survived my first week of homeschooling. But it was just the first week. And to best honest, it was actually, well,…fun.

I think science has become our favorite subject. Last week we did really cool stuff like make globes out of oranges, then cut the skins off and try to press them flat like a map. We roped off a square yard in the jungle that is our backyard and the girls used their Dollar Store magnifying glasses to scope out beetles, tiny moths, and Florida’s automotive bane—the lovebug. While discussing the community and population of an ecosystem, we watched a Swallowtail butterfly dance from morning glory to morning glory, lingering over each bud as it plied for nectar. And then we capped off the week creating a niche for earthworms (a jar with potting soil), my girls squirming and giggling as they pried apart the disgusting, slimy blob of Walmart brand nightcrawlers and dropped them one by one into the jar.

Now don’t get the idea that I thought up all this cool stuff. I just did everything word-for-word from the curriculum. I’m not that creative.

I did have a victory, though. By nature, I’m an anal controlling perfectionist. I’m not as bad as Monk, but I do make Sandra Bullock’s character from The Blind Side look a bit slothful. And I saw that with some chagrin. Sometimes it can be a blasted nuisance as I can’t just start something or do it on the fly. I have to make sure it’s defined, outlined, bibliographed, budgeted, blueprinted, edited, choreographed, spell-checked, and duplicated in triplicate before I concede it’s ready to be viewed by another living soul. Well, I’m learning that when homeschooling two girls--one of them with the attention span of a hummingbird on speed--perfecting anything is pointless and a complete waste of my valuable and quickly dwindling time.

So, while I previewed every lesson and went at each with gusto this week (I even accompanied the girls on our electric keyboard for “The Continent Song” to the tune "Yankee Doodle Dandee"—don’t ask), I had a victory in that I didn’t have everything perfectly orderly every single day. There were some lessons I actually had to fly by the seat of my pants. Me. The List Lady. The woman who actually organizes her plastic food storage containers by shape. My husband, the fly-by king, was beaming with pride because he thinks he’s finally rubbing off on me. I won’t burst his bubble just yet.

Ah, but this week I did get a glorious and in-depth look into my daughters’ characters and I have just one question to ask? Why, oh, why did God in his infinite wisdom endow little girls with such a preponderance of emotions? And my girls aren’t even pre-teens yet! I mean why cry over a page of helping verbs? Why breakdown over a list of single syllable short i vocabulary words? Sure I sometimes lose it over the odd T.V. commercial but I just chalk that up to hormones. I think my poor husband and son may drown themselves in our hot tub when my girls hit puberty and I simultaneously go into menopause.

Still, I count this week as a win for the Pullen team. Hey, we didn’t just survive, my kids actually learned something.

Next week is the real test though--we embark on our first field trip. And you wanna bet we won't get twenty minutes from our point of departure before one of them will throw me the classic line: “Are we there yet?”

I can’t wait.

Time, Time and More Time

2010-10-02T22:17:00.002-04:00

All right. You know I was already reluctant to get into this homeschooling thing. Hey, I got a rep to protect, ya know? The rep of a modern day, multi-tasking, professional working mother who secretly dreams about being a full-time writer, i.e., paying my bills with royalties.

But reputations and royalities are easily and voluntarily sacrificed on the altar of your children’s education especially when your child has a learning disability. So here I am, armed to the teeth with curricula (yes, there is actually a plural form of curriculum; I had to start homeschooling to find that out), a dozen spiral notebooks, enough sharpened #2 pencils to complete the human genome project, and two bright children ready to call me Mrs. Mom.

When I first contemplated homeschooling, i.e, when I peeled away the layers of panic, dread, and implausibility, my first concern was the time factor. I’m a female entreprenuer, the very definition of American capitalism. Most working people who work for someone else dream of being an entrepreneur because they have this vague notion that when you work for yourself, you can set your own schedule (4-hour work days in your pajamas) and vacations whenever you want (the other 20 hours in your bathing suit by a pool). Alas, what the American dream doesn’t tell you is that entrepreneurial freedom is another word for voluntary slavery. “If a man will not work, he will not eat” is the motto and mantra of every small business owner in US of A, especially in these lean economic times. I may only teach eight fitness classes a week in my studio, but I put in at least another fifty hours doing everything else to keep my doors open including sweeping floors and cleaning bathrooms especially since I refuse to pay someone $250 a month to scrub my toilets.

So that being said, how in the world am I supposed to homeschool my kids when I barely have time to work, sleep, do laundry, and write my blog (not always necessarily in that order)?

In truth, the more I looked at the reality of exactly what I was getting myself in to, the more excited I got.

Here it is: I spend up to 90 minutes each morning just trying to get my kids out of bed, dressed, fed, and loaded up in the car with all their required paraphernalia to drive them to school. So, if I don’t have to scavenge for lost shoes, pump the dog’s stomach for homework, and pack a couple of high-octane lunches, that cuts back my prep time to 30 minutes, 25 if I don’t comb my girls’ hair. So, one hour saved.

Next, the drive to school. Easily 45 minutes round trip and I didn’t have to wait in a mini-van line because my girls were going to private school. Then multiply that times two for the to-school and from-school trips, giving me an addition 90 minutes each day, not to mention the savings on gas, tolls, and road rage.

Lastly, I was already spending upwards of two full hours helping my girls with their homework each afternoon (nobody told me I would have to repeat elementary school when I had kids).

So let’s add it up: Before homeschool I was spending 4½ stressed hours each day helping my children achieve the state’s No Child Left Behind standards (Okay, I promise I will refrain from making some crack about the NCLB program. Who am I kidding? That’s the whole reason I’m homeschooling in the first place because my youngest was getting left in the dust). Now I get to daily spend 4 hours with my girls (the total number of hours recommended by the curricula creators) using a program I chose that was designed for the various learning styles of my children without Big Brother glaring over my shoulder, and because my husband was a former math teacher, I don’t have to teach my girls THAT subject. Wow, this is sounding better all the time.

What’s more, we get to turn down the stress level in our home. I don’t think I’ll understand the gravity of this bonus for some time yet. See, by nature, I’m a people pleaser at my core. If someone sets a standard for me or my kids (which in my view is indirectly for me anyway), I’ll kill myself to meet it especially where scholarship is concerned. I’ve found that I’m not above bribery (MickyDs addictive french fries) and threats (no Wii for a week) to see my children complete an assignment that makes me look like a good, responsible parent. With homeschooling, that people pleasing aspect is plucked away from our lives like a loose thread in the breeze or a 200-pound bar bell on my back. It’s gone. Bye-bye. The only one I’m accountable to, really, is God. And all he expects from me—or my kids—is our practical, heart-felt best.

So, time? Baby, I got time. I’ve got time to spend with my kids learning together. I’ve got time to devote to my time-sucking business that I really, honestly love. Maybe I’ll actually have time to go out on a date with my co-teaching hubby. And I’ve got time, albeit, a very little bit of time, to write my blog each week.

The clock starts on Monday when the homeschool bell rings. Hopefully, you’ll get another blog entry in your inbox next weekend, accompanied by animated chirping bluebirds and the Seven Dwarfs’ singing, “Whistle While You Work”. But if you don’t hear from me for a couple of weeks you’ll know I have completely deluded myself, am drowning in the sands of time, and have probably shot myself with a glue gun.

The Nefarious Conspiracy Against All Sick Mothers

2010-09-28T16:21:00.002-04:00

Okay, I’m going public. I’m spilling the beans. I’m blowing the whistle.

Here it is: There’s a nefarious conspiracy against all sick moms across the globe devised and executed by a consortium of gnomes, fairies, and gremlins. Yes, I know it sounds crazy. But the evidence has been mounting and I can’t keep quiet anymore.

I’ve suspected it for some time, but like most mothers, I laughed off my nagging fears as ridiculous. I would be in complete denial again if I hadn’t been struck down once more with a sore throat that put me out of commission for part of this past weekend.

Normally, I’m your typical working mom. Up at 6AM, make breakfast for three kids, make sure their teeth aren’t growing moss before they walk out the door for school, and then off to work where I spend the day serving others with a smile. Then it’s pick up the kids from school, dispense snacks, and homework, homework, and more homework (did I mention that I have three kids?), dinner, dishes, and laundry. Make sure the kids get bathed and they aren’t growing a garden behind their ears, have those memorable before bedtime talks (“Mom, what is ‘sex’?”), tuck them in, then clean up the house so I can start all over again tomorrow.

That’s the typical day. They don’t come then, when I’m well and have my full faculties, because they know I’d see them. I’m up and movin’ about my castle like her queen. But this past Friday, Queenie came down with a little something, and lo and behold, ole Mom needed to retreat to her bedroom for a little shut-eye.

That’s when the visitors came.

When I rose from my repose, toys, clothes, and shoes had magically appeared not in their rightful places, but all over the living room. I asked my three delightful children, who tend to be collectively glued to their Wii on the weekends, if they saw who had scattered the toys, clothes, and shoes about them. They turned dazed eyes upon me like they had just awaken from a spell, shook their heads, and looked about the house as if they were seeing it for the first time. “No,” they said, as their eyes s-l-i-d back to the T.V. screen and a blue hedgehog who looked like he’d gotten too liberal with the hair gel.

That nagging suspicion that I’d pushed to the recesses of my mind bloomed and loomed before me, and I backed my way toward their bedrooms.

I yanked open one of their doors only to find the room empty of inhabitants but transformed from the neat sleeping chambers it had been two hours previous to a child’s version of the invasion of Normandy. Dozens of school books had apparently sprung legs, found their way out of bookbags, and now lay littered all over the floor. The hamper was overflowing with laundry as if the clothes had been fighting each other to get in, and a full platoon of Pokemon, Littlest Pet Shoppers, and miscellaneous dinosaurs were having World War III at the threshold of the closet.

I staggered to each of my little darlings rooms. Each of them was the same. Hurricanes Andrew and Katrina combined could not have done such damage.

From the living room, I heard the Wii changing gears and Mario and Luigi began their mad battle for the animated baseball Hall of Fame.

With mounting fear, I turned to the kitchen, my haven (or prison depending on how you look at it). Every square inch of space was covered by dirty dishes or cups or half-full containers of milk or orange juice. Used Capri Sun pouches lay on the floor flattened and drained, their tiny straws sticking from their centers like stakes. The remnants of Doritos, Cheetos, and Lays snack bags lay across one counter their mouths gaping open in a silent scream of protest. Half-eaten sandwiches and pizza crusts lay cold and hard as if rigor mortis has set in.

I shook my head, vaguely aware that Mario had just hit a homerun. All my suspicions flooded my head till I thought it would explode.

They’ve come for me. The trolls, the fairies, the gremlins. They found out I was sick and they attacked. First, they hypnotized my angelic children with that—that—Wii thing. Then they systematically dumped clothes, toys, and shoes around their little feet. Then they moved to the bedrooms, laying siege there. And finally they had a house party in my kitchen toasting my illness with fruit punch, Nacho cheese chips, and Red Baron Pizza. All while I slept.

I backed from the kitchen, hearing Luigi offer one of his sickening guffaws of sporting triumph. Something must be done, I nearly cried aloud. Call the police! Call the Coast Guard! Call Frodo Baggins!

I froze when I remembered what the authorities do to people who imagine they see little green men. White straight jackets aren’t really my thing. I remembered Will Smith’s memory zapper from Men in Black and recalled that I really did like my mind just the way it was.

On second thought, hold on there. You know what? Forget it. Forget what I said about conspiracies. Forget what I said about…gnomes or fairies…or gremlins. Forget I said ANYTHING.

Must have had a little too much cough syrup before my nap. I’ll be just fine. A lingering dream, mayhap. See, in my state of sickly consciousness, I think I forgot the unwritten, unspoken rule that all mothers sooner or later discover: Mom’s aren’t allowed to be sick. (Or they get visits from…little friends).

Okay, okay. I’m just fine (cough-cough). Now if I could only find the dish soap.

Humbug & Homeschooling

2010-09-19T22:38:00.001-04:00

Don’t you just love it when you end up eating the words, “I will never…”

I used to proclaim that fateful statement about homeschooling. I’d heard about those weird homeschooled kids who were as socially dysfunctional as David Zellaby and his Aryan siblings from the classic film Village of the Damned. I’d seen the parents, nay, the moms whose cheerfulness was a creepy reminder of the Stepford Wives. I didn’t want my kids like that—mute and glassy-eyed—and I surely didn’t want to wake up one morning and find myself delighted about doing laundry and cooking my family a five-course breakfast.

Again, never say never…

I have been thrust into the necessary position of choosing to take the homeschooling path or let my youngest child suffer with a learning disability and hate school. God knows there’s only one thing on this planet that would make me—a former English teacher and bibliophile—even consider homeschooling and that’s having one of my children hate to read and write.

So we’re off. Or rather, we will be. The official start date is October 4th. I’ve notified our county’s Superintendent of Schools. I’ve researched and ordered my homeschooling curriculum. With my hubby's help, I’ve finagled through my schedule between work and home leaving the instruction of the four-letter word subject (M-A-T-H) to him. As a former math teacher and the sometimes-annoying but eternal optimist of the family, he's the perfect candidate for teaching that dreaded subject.

As I prepared for this new path, I found myself a little excited, kinda like how you feel before you jump out of an airplane with only a pack on your back that some stranger folded for you. I thought about all the extra time I would get to spend with my girls. And then I thought about all the extra time I would have to spend with my girls, i.e., time that I would be giving up for myself or work or whatever. And I almost choked on my own selfishness. I should be happy about the extra time I would have with my beautiful, rapidly growing daughters. I would be happy about it.

I began to realize that God’s up to his old tricks again. He leads me down a path under the guise I’m doing something for someone else and I find out along the way that his plans are to change me. To open my eyes and see the world in a whole different light.

So I’ve surrendered, and though I’m still choking on my words a bit, I thought it would be interesting to blog about this adventure and my new state of humility.

But I have another confession to make—I’m hoping you’ll follow me on this adventure so you can keep an eye on me. You know, look over my shoulder. Gaze into my eyes from time to time and make sure they’re not glazing over.

See, along this journey of self-discovery, I’m going to try real hard not to turn into my nightmare vision of a homeschool mom—smiling excessively, gushing about the 30 ways to re-use a naked toilet paper roll, and in general sounding a lot like Carol Brady.

So I implore you, if you’re up to the task to keep an eye on me, if I start looking like I’m enjoying myself too much, start baking cookies galore, or—heaven forbid—start scrapbooking, slap me and call a de-programmer. I’ve always believed that enjoying home schooling is a sure sign of cultic brain-washing and I’d appreciate my friends showing tough love and returning me to my original state of stressed-out paranoia.

Or at least reminding me that there are things more important than field trips and chocholate chip cookies.

Disclaimer: If you are a homeschooling mom, please don’t take offense at my ramblings. This is just my warped and bigoted view of a culture I’m clueless about. I’m sure, if you hang on long enough, you will have the supreme satisfaction of watching me eat my words. Again.

One Hand in the Darkness

2010-07-15T23:14:00.000-04:00

Sorry you haven't heard from me in a bit. The kids are off for the summer. Enough said.

To tide those over who have been wondering what I'm doing with all my "free" time, here's a short sort-of fictional piece. I hope it moves you to stretch out your hand to those within arm's reach in your life.

-K

One Hand in the Darkness

I could hear their crying, hear their moaning in the dark.

The light pouring down from overhead cast a gleaming, glowing circle all around me as I strained to peer passed the light and into the darkness. The light held me in a lover's embrace, soft and secure.

I could see her though. I could see all of them. Just barely. The darkness was so complete only the light over my head cast any shadows on their faces. They stumbled. Some crawled. Some just sat in a heap and cried. Their clothes were torn fragments hanging from their shoulders. Tears had carved deep lines down their faces.

I could see her too, her eyes abath with tears. Like so many of the others, she'd been crying her whole life.

"Terrie," I beckoned.

On bare feet she stumbled through the darkness, unhearing.

"Terrie," I called again.

Her head tilted ever so slightly, the flow of tears pausing.

"Mia?" she whispered, uncertainly.

"Yes," I sighed. "Come to me."

"Where are you? I can't see you."

"I'm here. Listen to my voice. Follow it. Come into the light."

She stepped toward me.

"That's it," I said. "Come on."

Her steps quickened to my voice.

"Yes!" I laughed. "Come on."

I reached one hand outside the protective circle of light and into the engulfing darkness.

The icy grip of the dark tasted me and tugged gently at my hand.

"Come on, Terrie," I urged, planting my feet firmly in the circle of light.

Her footfalls were coming faster, more confident.

I stretched to reach her, the blackness creeping up my arm.

She was almost to me.

A shadow loomed behind her. It lay a black restraining hand on her shoulder. "Where are you going, Terrie?" it whispered, its voice imitating comfort and security.

Terrie hesitated. "The light. I--I can't see."

"Oh, my poor darling," it cooed, gently stroking her hair with its dirty claws. "Would you leave me? Would you leave all of us here alone?"

Like whirlwind, a stream of voices echoed through the cavernous space—Terrie’s mother, her father, a childhood friend, a teacher, a girl friend, a lover—all of them calling Terrie’s name. The girl’s face contorted in confusion, "Mia...?"

"Don't listen to him, Terrie!" I said. "Move! Run! Run toward me!"

Terrie tore loose from the shadow, her tears falling again. But her feet had done little more than shuffle for some years and she stumbled, falling full to the black floor.

"Mia!"

"I'm here!" I arched to reach her, my elbow sinking fully into the dark.

The shadow moved behind Terrie with liquid fluidity. It danced around her, slithering under her arms and about her throat, careening my guiding voice in every direction.

"Mia...?" she cried, and I could see as she began to rock and sway that she was losing.

"No!" I cried. "Don't you dare give up! Get up, Terrie! Get up right now! Move!"

Blinded more by her tears now than the darkness, Terrie pushed to her feet, squirming away from the writing shadow.

"Come on!" I said.

"Stay, Terrie..." the voice sighed behind her, its liquid arms cradling her close.

"Don't listen to him! He's lying to you! He's kept you in the dark because he hates you! He wants to keep you here forever!"

"NO!" Terrie screamed, her own convictions thrusting her from the shadowy dance. "MIA!!"

"HERE!"

She ran at me.

"Take my hand!" I cried.

The shadow moved insidiously behind her again. Terrie felt it. She fumbled in the dark, "Where?!"

I was now up to my shoulder in icy blackness. "It's right in front of you!"

She took another step toward me as a shadowy claw slid around her ankle.

Her fingers grazed mine. I grabbed her hand and yanked--

But so did the hand at her ankle.

Terrie screamed.

The shadow laughed, locked its grip, and pulled.

I took one involuntary step into the darkness feeling it fix on me with a ravenous hunger.

I strained for the light. "Give me your other hand!"

Terrie swung her other hand toward me and our wrists locked.

She now hung like a live rope between the light and the dark, kicking and flaying against the clawed grip.

I didn't see the other black hand slither across the floor toward me.

"Now," the darkness chuckled throatily as it closed around my ankle, "you're both mine!"

"NO!!" Terrie and I screamed simultaneously, yanking with all our hearts.

Terrie flew at me, both of us tumbling out of the darkness and falling in a heap in the light.

Behind us, we heard a blistering scream and looked back to see two black hands--clawed fingers writhing--disappear back into the darkness, their scaly arms scalded by the light.

We stared after it.

Our breathing ravaged the air.

Slowly, Terrie turned and looked at me.

New tears began to fall, different tears.

I laughed as she flew into my arms, crying.

#

An Old Fish Swimming Upstream

2010-06-04T20:32:00.004-04:00

I got to watch The Curious Case of Benjamin Button the other night and I tell you, it turns our whole American obsession with youth on its head. It’s about a man who ages in reverse. He’s born old and grows young. That whole concept didn’t seem very appealing until a recent trip to the beach left me with an unexpected sunburn and subsequent wrinkles around--of all places--my bellybutton. Aging backward looked real good about then.

I started thinking about all the other movies that have come out—not to mention TV shows that have had special episodes—where the main character(s) go back to their youth in some supernatural way. It proves over and over again the Western world’s fear of aging and our obsession with outward beauty.

I have a very dear friend who has obsessed over her age for as long as I’ve known her (she’s WAY passed retirement and looks amazing). It breaks my heart because she’s fighting a losing battle.

Solomon says there are benefits to youth--fleetness, stamina, beauty. For some of us, we know we’ve left youth in the dust when hair coloring becomes a staple in the monthly budget. For all of us, it comes when the stamina has stayed, the fleetness has fled, and the external beauty makes way for the wrinkles of time. I’m fortunate, at 47, I still am a few years away from regular strands of gray hair marring my otherwise brunette head. But my years are a dead giveaway on the mornings after a late night of writing when the bags under my eyes look like a pair of lumpy pillows.

As a society (I’m talking mostly to Americans here), we have deified youth. Ask any popular actress of the last thirty years and they will tell you that age is the death of their careers. I’d be willing to bet that our recent obsession with the whole vampire theme in every medium is grounded in our longing for immortal youth. We hate growing old so much that we actually mock the aged. We shun growing old as if it were AIDS. We cover it, paint it, moisturize it, color it, fade it, cut it, and inject it with every conceivable means to stave off the inevitable.

I can’t tell you how many women I know who have had breast implants. Now after breast-feeding 2 ½ babies (I was done at two, but made a lame attempt with the third), I can’t lie and say the thought hasn’t crossed my mind. But God has kept me broke enough to where the temptation is far out of my reach anyway. But if I had the money, would it be vanity to give in to such a modification? Is it telling God he didn’t make me good enough—for every day of my life regardless of my age—so it’s up to me to fix what he got wrong?

What about braces? If God allowed my teeth to be crooked, is it vanity to get them straightened? Is it vanity for a woman to wear make-up? To curl her hair if it’s straight or straighten it if its curly? Is it vanity for a man to want a six-pack (ab muscles, not beer)? Where do you draw the line?

I think it lies somewhere between “Everything is permissible, but not everything is beneficial” (1 Cor 6:12; 10:23) and “Do not love the world or anything in the world” (John 2:15). I think it comes down to how honest we want to be with God and with ourselves. I think we have to constantly evaluate our motives why we do what we do.

It’s so easy for us to drift away from our pure motives in loving and serving God. Many of us have such a short-term spiritual memory that we’re drifting as soon as the alarm goes off in the morning. We drift when we hear a commercial for hair gel or see an advertisement for Calvin Klein Jeans. We drift when we check out at the grocery store and come face to face with the fabricated beauty of a few who are held up as the personification of perfection.

We drift when we forget that we are all--every single one of us--made in the image of the perfect Creator.

I’m not there yet, but I want to be able to welcome old age. First, it brings me that much closer to ‘going home’, second, I find out more and more each day just how smart my parents were, and third, I’ll save a TON of money in wrinkle cream. Most importantly, though, I want to be able to embrace old age because God says it is something to be revered. Age brings wisdom, or at least it’s supposed to. And in God’s book (Ecclesiastes, in particular), there are few things more valuable than wisdom.

We as Americans are notorious for putting away our parents when they as seniors can no longer care for themselves. We abandon our most value resource; we tuck it neatly away in a home. Granted, there are some very valid reasons for this--how can we care for our parents when we have to work full-time just to support ourselves? (We reluctantly put our children in daycare for the same reason.) My mother and I have a "I love her but I’m going to strangle her relationship" and I’m wondering how I will survive her living with me full-time when that moment eventually comes (they may have to put ME in a home after a few years). Maybe, somewhere deep down some of us don’t want our aged parents around because they remind us too much of what we’ll lose as we age or what we could become.

I have another friend who kept her sickly grandmother in her house until the needy woman just recently passed. It was a very real burden on the family for several years with everyone in the family taking turns being home with the grandmother. But how different is it than when we have children?

Benjamin Button was born old and like all of us, he needed to be cared for by his mother. He grew younger physically over the years while his mind grew old. And when he died, it was in his beloved’s arms as an infant. I admit I was sobbing at the end of the movie but it brought home just how very much alike youth and old age are if we but have eyes to see it. We come into this world needing people to care for us and we exit it needing people to care for us. It’s acceptable to need others as children. It’s embarrassing to need it as adults.

Maybe our desperate clinging to youth isn’t so much our fascination with it as our terror of it slipping through our fingers. Maybe it’s our pride in having to return to complete dependence on others after we’ve so completely achieved independence. As children, we don’t have enough pride yet to realize it’s “a sign of weakness” to need people. In that case, I think wisdom doesn’t come with age as much as it comes with surrendering to the inevitable and realizing we’d enjoy the ride a lot more if we didn’t fight the current quite so hard.

The Cost of Wealth

2010-05-25T09:31:00.000-04:00

I was sitting in the lobby of my kids’ occupational therapy office reading with abject horror and sorrow the highlights from the newest “US” magazine. On the front cover were two big celebrities’ daughters, both three years of age. I couldn’t read the gossip because just the photos and captions were so sad with their consuming fixation on clothes, shoes, and accessories. The toddler of another celebrity was wearing a $635 sundress. That would buy two months of groceries for my five-member family (and that’s splurging for name brands).

It made me think about the uncrowned royalty we have in America, i.e., movie stars. It also made me think of a friend who is a partner in a New York firm who is a multi-millionaire. These are people who live in a completely different world than the average American who--these days--are looking for sales at Walmart, to say nothing of those who live in third world countries around the world.

I’ve lived with money. My parents weren’t exactly wealthy when I was growing up but we did own quite a few “toys”: two small planes, a boat, a second home in the Keys, an RV, two cars, a truck, and a shed of motorcycles. (Wow, when you look at it that way, we were rich!)

My parents didn’t spoil us though. We didn’t always get the newest gizmos, and my dad made sure we took very good care of everything we did have. I have very unfond memories of scrubbing down every gleaming inch of our 28-foot cabin cruiser every time we took it out on the ocean or intercoastal. Or the hundreds of times I showered the caked-on muck from the fenders of my dirt bike and then cleaned the oil filter, the blackened oil oozing between my fingers. Or the number of layers I had to sand and varnish, sand and varnish, sand and varnish the wooden interior of our refurbished RV (I was the original Karate Kid). Apparently, we had money, but my dad was so thrifty, he wouldn’t even cough up the dough for a dishwasher. Why should he, he said, when he had two perfectly good ones at home—me and my brother?

My dad may have had some faults, but teaching me to be responsible with what I had definitely wasn’t one of them. Yes, we had stuff, but I remember how much work it was to take care of it all.

Flash-forward thirty years and I have my own mortgage, marriage, and kids. There is no boat, no RV, no second home (I can barely pay for and keep up with the one), both cars are at least eight years old, and I’ve threatened my husband with a house-cleaning strike if he ever brought home a motorcycle. Things are tight. Real tight sometimes. But I don’t feel like I’m lacking anything (although I wouldn’t be adverse to matching even five lotto numbers and getting MasterCard off my back).

I thought about those celebrity kids growing up with so much and wondered about (and prayed for) their parents. Will they be as wise as my dad and raise their kids to realize that there is a cost to wealth?

When God was giving direction to the Israelites on how they should select their king (Deuteronomy 17), one of the most important requirements was that the new ruler should not strive to accumulate wealth or power. God knew the hearts of man and he was especially concerned about their leader--what kind of example he would set, and where exactly he would lead them.

He also commanded that the king should write a copy of the law for himself and read it everyday so he would always revere God, follow his commands, and never think himself better than anyone else. Well, that convicted me. Shamed me. I’m no king (or queen) but I do lead or influence others—my children first and foremost, then my students, and even my regular readers. If it was important enough for the king to not just read, but write his own copy of the law everyday (talk about stamping it on your heart!), then how much more so me.

With so many distractions in this life, God knows how desperately we need to make sure we put it all in perspective every day. He knows how easy it is for us to allow the gifts he’s given us—home, work, family, friends, toys, clothes, entertainment, etc—to occupy our time and mind more than he, the giver, does. And the more we have, the greater the opportunity for distraction and derailment.

So when I become a famous writer on the NY Times Bestseller List, pay off my credit cards and both my mortgages, when I actually get to take our daughter on her promised trip to Hawaii, and when I consistently have money left in the bank at the end of the month, do me a BIG favor--be my friend and ask me if I’m reading my Bible everyday. I don’t ever want to pay the biggest cost of all for forgetting what’s really important.

Salvation in Stereo

2010-05-18T09:59:00.000-04:00

Lo-fi. Hi-fi. Wi-fi.

We were driving home from school the other day when my eight-year-old asked me what “hi-fi” was. Interesting, I thought. It shows just how different our generations are. Anyone from my generation knows what hi-fi is. Stereo, baby. As different from mono as FM is from AM.

But, then I had to answer the question, “What’s stereo?” I had to think for a minute. I knew what it was, but how do you explain it to an eight-year-old whose closest connection to sound engineering is an Ipod Shuffle? I pointed to my ears. “How many ears do we have?” She looked at me like I was addled. “Two,” she said. Duh. “That’s stereo. Listening with both ears.” It made sense to me, although I don’t think my daughter got it.

But then I started thinking some more, as I’m prone to do in Orlando traffic. I’ve been auditorially crippled lately in my Zumba class because our fitness studio sound system is handicapped with only one channel working. That’s mono or what I call lo-fi to you non-techies out there. In laymen’s terms it means that I don’t get the whole song through the speakers. I know what it’s supposed to sound like and it makes me crazy because you don’t get all the background vocals, and some of the cool riffs and seriously bonsai percussion are MIA. Essentially, you don’t hear the whole song the way the songwriter intended.

I’m still in O-town traffic so it made me think some more--isn’t this hi-fi/lo-fi thing kinda like how we hear the truth? God’s truth comes to us in stereo, if we have both ears open to hear it.

For example, a common argument in today’s religious circles is the balance between faith and deeds as necessary for salvation. In the early days, people wanted to kick the book of James out of the Bible (Martin Luther being the biggest proponent) because they thought James (2:20-24) contradicted Paul (Eph 2:8-9). But the blessed fathers of the canon were listening in stereo and they saw how these two passages and their concepts were a perfect blend for those willing to tune in.

And then, what about the long-standing dilemma over justice and mercy, law and grace? I grew up going to a hell, fire, and brimstone Bible church. I have vivid memories of our young minister screaming at me from the pulpit. I think I “prayed Jesus into my heart” about 30 times before I was 10 out of sheer terror. Later on in life, I heard sermons from other ministers that gave “apologetics” a whole new meaning, so quickly were they ready to make excuses for every firm stand the Bible took on sin.

Jesus presented a graphic example of God’s stand on this when he scattered the puffed-up Pharisees in John 8 (the adulterous woman) as thoroughly as he did the money-changers in John 2 (clearing the temple). And yet his approach in these two incidences was completely different. In John 2, he fashioned a whip and drove them out, so intense was his passion for obedience. In John 8, the whip was his tongue; it was as sharp and direct on the religious leaders’ ears as it was gentle and admonishing on the adulterous woman’s.

The sad reality is when it comes to listening and obeying the truth, we tend to favor one “channel” over the other, usually because of how we’re raised or in rebellion to how we’re raised. I’m a legalist by nature (I’m sure my well-intended childhood minister is partly to blame for that) and would have been very comfortable doing penance with the Pharisees. My husband is about as legalistic as The Grateful Dead, partly due to the light-handed approach his parents took to discipline.

Now neither of these mindsets is necessarily bad, just as neither channel of a sound system is wrong. But they are incomplete without each other. My husband and I have a fantastic marriage because we’ve learned how to listen to our life in hi-fi. If not for him in my life, I’d be institutionalized and on a boatload of anti-depressants; if not for me in his life, he’d probably be in jail. Like I said, stereo, baby.

It’s true we may tend toward one side or the other—either we’re accused (the Legalistic channel) or we’re deceived (the Grace channel). But the Bible and its grand plan of salvation are in stereo and God is the Composer, Conductor, and Master Mixer all in one (eat your heart out John Williams). He wrote it, directed it, and blended it to give us a perfect harmonic melody with a universal symphonic orchestra thrown in for good measure.

As Jesus said, he who has earS (plural) to hear, let him hear. Now if I can only find my ear buds.

A Fool in Tights

2010-05-11T00:00:00.011-04:00

Whether we want to or not, by default we measure everybody by our own standard. Anyone stupider than us is a fool, and anyone smarter than us is a sage. Now we would never admit this to anyone, not even to ourselves (of course, I’m saying it here so what kind of fool does that make me?)

How do we measure a wise man or a fool? I think most of us would say it really doesn’t have much to do with level of education. I know some people who can answer any Jeopardy question thrown at them, but who are as street-stupid as a squirrel (what other animal on the planet waits for a car to come before crossing the road?).

The Bible says that God’s foolishness is wiser than man’s wisdom (1 Cor 1:25). What does that mean? Does God have a foolish side? Not at all. Paul is just trying to make a point how ridiculous man’s “wisdom” is. We take so much pride in how much we know as a species--that we have figured out mathematics and physics, that we can cure diseases like cancer and AIDS, that we can create great works of art and architecture. But let’s get real--God invented mathematics and physics, he raised the dead, he fashions thousands of our perfectly designed bodies in their perfectly designed wombs every day. Our wisdom is amoebic compared to God’s.

Several years ago, the sisterhood of churches of which I count myself a member imploded. I think we thought we were so wise and God proved us to be fools. We’re humbler now and finding our way through the murk. But I think we’re seeing how completely far we swung out on the pendulum. Some of our members fled and ran straight back to the world (drugs, sex, and credit card debt). Others are clinging to the old ways like a Woodstock groupie to 8-tracks. My dearest friends are somewhere in between fighting to keep from being overrighteous and overwise or overwicked and overfoolish (Proverbs 7:16).

I certainly haven’t figured it out yet. These recitations are part of my attempt to do just that. I’m sure I could do a flotilla of things better. Read my Bible more. Pray more. Be more hospitable. Be more patient. Volunteer more. Meet more needs. But I exhausted myself doing all those before—and patted myself on the back for all my righteous deeds and how well I did them. Yeah, I know, a whole ‘nother kind of fool.

I think it is human nature to ride life at a full gallop hitting the highs and lows like a heart rate monitor on speed. But you can only do that for so long before you emotionally flatline. If your blessed enough to have someone counsel you in this or you are discerning enough to pick it up in your regular Bible reading, you’ll see that God never intends for us to be the ball that’s whacked back and forth between the racket of wisdom and the racket of foolishness. That would make even God dizzy.

Remember the “IF-THEN” mathematical corollary in pre algebra? If a = b and b = c, then a = c. Well IF the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom (Ps 111:10), and IF a man who fears God avoids all extremes (Ecc 7:18), THEN I think it’s safe to say that a wise man avoids all extremes.

In other words, we should all strive to not be so wise that our head is the size of a hot air balloon nor so foolish that we end up dead from stupidity. How does that translate to the real world? Don’t be so perfect at your job that you miss out on taking care of your family AND don’t be so focused on being the perfect parent that you’re too distracted to do your job. Don’t be so focused on being healthy that you can’t enjoy the sweets of life AND don’t be so undisciplined with your health such that exercise is an anathema. In other words, don’t get so caught up in ANYTHING such that you miss the big picture.

Man, this wisdom thing is HARD! I feel kinda like a tight rope walker (minus the tights, please) always striving to find the perfect balance. One minute I got it, the next minute a gentle breeze stirs and I’m sure I’m in for a nosedive. (Sure, God’s net of mercy is there to catch me, but that imagery is so clichéd). But then I look up from my single taut rope stretching out before me and see all the other ropes—your rope, his rope, her rope—and remember we’re all trying to do the same thing. Just get to the other side without making a complete fool of ourselves.

I guess in the long run, that’s wisdom.

Biblical Proof of Alien Life

2010-04-28T23:05:00.000-04:00

Who of us has not gazed upon the stars on a clear night and pondered the possibility of alien life? If they’re there, do these foreigners look like us? Do they walk and talk like us? Do they love like us? Do they care for their children like us?

I say an unequivocal “Yes”, only we don’t have to look to the stars for them. They’re right here on Earth living all around us. The Bible, in fact, has over 100 references to them.

Am I talking about some comic cosmic collection of xenomorphs reminiscent of Men in Black? Some X-file-ish semi-political multi-world conspiracy? Or a meandering squad of leathery botanical E.T. explorers? Not at all.

If we are striving to know and practice the Bible, then we are the aliens.

I just finished watching District 9, a low-budget independent South African film produced by Lord of the Rings creator Peter Jackson. Good film by the way, although a little rough with the language. Anyway, I had just finished watching the DVD when my husband came in. As we settled down to sleep, I gave him the Cliff Notes version of the plot. Then my words arrested me—it’s the story of a man who becomes more human as he is transformed into an alien.

Well, when I put it that way, who could sleep? If this isn’t a blog seed, I don’t know what is. So after a thorough biblical study of the word “alien” I came to the conclusion that there are two ways to look at this whole alien thing.

First, Abraham considered himself an alien in Canaan, the very land God sent him to. The Father of the Faith might as well have had green skin because his actions and who he worshipped were as freakish to those who already occupied the land as a UFO.

Moses felt so foreign in Midian that he named his son Gershom or “an alien there” (in Hebrew). In his misery, Job felt like an alien to his friends and family. David bemoans his alienation throughout the Psalms.

How could this be when these very men were some of the heroes of the faith? Because they saw themselves as aliens in this world. They didn’t belong. Whatever land they lived in, they were longing for a better country—a heavenly one (Col 1:21).

As a novice Bible student, I was under the misguided understanding that “the God of the Old Testament” didn’t like “aliens” or anyone who wasn’t an Israelite (he seems to change his mind about them by the time Jesus comes along). On every other page of the O.T. you read about this nation or that nation offering their babies into the fire to Molech or Baal and you think, well, yeah, I wouldn’t like them either.

But the truth is God himself said that he loved the alien (Dt 10:18) and he proves it time and again. In fact, aliens are treated on par with orphans and widows. I counted no less than 26 scriptures that specifically gave the Israelites direction on caring for the alien in their midst. Moreover, during the year of tithe, when the Israelites all gave their 10th to the Levites, the contribution was actually divided up between the Levites, the poor, the fatherless, and the alien (Dt 26:12-13). The Israelites were actually expected to help an alien if they became unable to support themselves. The alien is mentioned in the 4th commandment. And to show his acceptance of them especially as their families embraced their faith in Him, God gives a special dispensation to the third generation of aliens living in Israel that they should be admitted into the assembly of the temple just like those in Abraham’s line (23:7-8).

I think Jesus only magnified his father’s heart from the O.T. when he spoke of the Samaritans and other non-Jews in the N.T. I think it was because Jesus, more than any of those who preceded him knew what it felt like to be an alien. He was one of a kind. God in the flesh. There was nobody like him. And his alien-ness is seen no more powerfully than in the garden when he alone grasps the very overwhelming task before him (Mt 26). He was the ultimate ambassador from a foreign land, our future home. No one had more compassion on the alien than Jesus.

But there is a flip side to this coin, a tale for the head so-to-speak.

Recall how we are as children—innocent, pure, with a natural propensity for compassion, eager to learn, embracing difficulty and hardship as if they were an adventure. Jesus even challenged us in Matthews 18 that in order to enter the kingdom we must become like children. He could have said “re-become” because we were all children once. It is as children that we are most like God our Father, a being who himself is as alien to man as light is to dark.

I thought about how we as teenagers (especially when we hit middle school) feel not just like aliens to the world at large, we feel like aliens in our own skin. And in many ways we are, as we physically, mentally, and emotionally morph from childhood to adulthood. We’re not quite kids anymore. The simple things that brought us pleasure as children no longer have their appeal. But with years still to go before we can legally drink, drive, or have a mortgage, we feel caught in a netherworld in which we are the only inhabitants.

By the time we hit our early 20s, the metamorphosis to our new state is nearly complete. We’ve grown into a knowledgeable, savvy, experienced adult with years of experience in relationships, business, technology, and the arts. Maturity is ours.

Yeah, right. The truth is, somewhere between childhood and adulthood, we lose our way. We become aliens to the most important “person” in our life—God.

Then somewhere between 25 and 35 our real transformation commences. Our relationships crumble—repeatedly. Work is hard and long and unfulfilling. Technology satisfies us temporarily, but it’s unable to fill the yawning emptiness we feel when we can’t text, email, game, or chat. Even art (and music), the “soma” of the masses in which we greedily indulge, warps us in our brave new world so that reality falls far short of our expectations.

It’s then, when our outward beauty begins to fade, that our inward beauty begins to dawn. The things that at one time seemed so important, so absolutely necessary to our happiness—the newest gadget, beau, tuck, piercing, job, car—feel like shed skins as we outgrow our old “bodies”.

Youth has one type of beauty. But the beauty of an adult with a childlike spirit is like the love of a couple that celebrates 50 years of marriage. It is an unnatural beauty born by the soul in the way the rock submits to the chisel and the hand that wields it. It is the timeless beauty of a canyon cut from the fluid but relentless hand of the stream.

Like Wikus van de Merwe, the protagonist of District 9, we become more “human” and humane as he becomes more alien to this world. Our pain produces comfort we can give to others. Our suffering produces endurance. Conflict teaches us how to promote peace. If we do not move toward growth in this process, we die. We cannot stay fixed. One way or another we move. Either forward or back. It is our choice.

So if you feel alien, you’re not alone. That could be good. It all depends on where you phone or call “home”.

Pride and Duct Tape

2010-04-27T00:00:00.002-04:00

Next to public speakers, writers have the best opportunity to showing off how completely self-centered and arrogant they are. Uh-hum, sorry. We are.

Granted we can read our words back to ourselves (and to others if we’re smart) before they get broadcast to the world at large. But even then, we can make enemies of our friends as we make idiots of ourselves. Makes you wish for electronic duct tape right over our proverbial lips…or fingers.

I think humility is the absolute most difficult quality to master. In fact, I don’t think it can be mastered, except by the Master himself. Its antithesis—pride—is the very thing that got us chucked from the garden. And the Serpent hasn’t changed his tactics much since Adam and Eve because why should he bother when the original sin worked so well the first time?

My husband and I have been working hard on teaching my eldest daughter about pride. She’s 8 and quite mature for her age. And every so often, words will come flowing out of her mouth that match the “I’m so above this” look in her eyes. It makes me cringe. Mostly because I know kids only imitate what they see in the authority figures in their life and I can’t very well put that ball in anyone else’s court.

So we’ve taken to quoting James 4:6 to each other (“God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble”) and it’s made me do a lot of thinking about exactly what that scripture means as it’s a little challenging to explain the concept to an eight-year-old even if she is gifted. So I looked up the NIV’s footnote for James 4:6 and it pointed me to Matthew 23:12.

Now when any scripture reference points you to Matthew 23, you know it’s a bad sign. NOBODY wants to be on the receiving end of Jesus’ most scathing sermon. So I looked up the passage with one eye closed, somehow thinking it was going to ease the rebuke, but alas, no: “For whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.”

Ouch. Kinda feels like when the duct tape is ripped off your face taking your lips with it.

I read passages like this and wonder—maybe when I’m 80 I’ll be able to live life without bragging about myself. But then I think, are you kidding? Many of us get worse as we get older. As babies, we start bragging from the moment we learn how to take off our own loaded diaper (“Looky what I did?”) and we don’t stop until after we’ve had to don grown-up Pampers (not that that right of passage wouldn’t humble anybody).

Truth be told, we like to brag about ourselves. We like to be stroked and hear, “Good job”. Hey, if we don’t tell somebody what we did, nobody will know, right? And we really do have this burning need to be recognized by our peers, our friends, and our family. When people see what a great job we do, and they acknowledge it, we feel valuable and important.

But what about God? Doesn’t he see it even if nobody else does? Why isn’t that enough for us? Maybe it’s a sign that he’s not as present in our lives as he should be. Maybe we aren’t aware of him sitting across the table from us during breakfast, or beside us on our commute to work. Maybe we don’t remember that he’s standing beside us at our business meeting or in our kickboxing class. Maybe we forget that he’s walking beside us in the grocery store or sitting on the counter as we scrub the bathroom sink.

He’s right there. But his recognition of our deeds is not enough for us.

Matthew 6:1-4 talks about our attitude when we perform a noble act like giving to the poor, that bottom line, we’ll get all our “reward” (recognition) here if we’re doing it just to look good before men. I think God probably wants us to have the same attitude about any noble deed or action we perform, to keep it “a secret” so he can reward us. And who wouldn’t rather get rewarded by God than by their boss, their family, or a perfect stranger?

I guess it all comes down to whether we trust God to make us feel good about who we are or if we believe we have to do it for ourselves.

So next time you feel tempted to brag about what an awesome job you did on something, remember you can always borrow my duct tape—it works great on a flapping jaw.

My Suicidal Computer

2010-04-20T00:00:00.003-04:00

There is something downright maddening when your brand-new netbook, laptop, or PC spontaneously develops artificial intelligence. I say artificial because nobody with any real intelligence could have invented a computer that enjoys tasting, chewing up, and then ingesting my writing whole the way my new netbook does. Not only does it eat some of my best words, but no matter what I do, I can’t get the blasted thing to cough them back up again.

Forget a ghost in the machine, I swear Al-Quaeda has secretly infiltrated this computer company. You want to find a way to really hurt hard-working Americans—make us have to re-write our inspiration. We’re a microwave, drive-thru, mach-driven society. What better way to drive us crazy than to make us stop and have to start from scratch?

And when invisible fingers seem to be doing the walking over our keyboards, it can be worse than when our kids or the IRS does something out of left field. Who hasn’t accidentally grazed their fingers over a magical combination of keys and presto, their last hour of work (that was sure to be nominated for a Pulitzer) disappeared into the electronic ether?

You debate whether to throw your laptop against the wall or out the window. You struggle for the next 30 minutes to see if by some bizarre chance, some intelligent person (not the person who designed the keyboard) actually thought about you and that you might need to recover your document. So you scour Explorer looking for hidden files, reaching back into the bowels of your hard drive in the vain hope that maybe, MAYBE your perfect paragraphs are still somewhere in there awaiting rescue. But alas, no. They’ve gone the way of the transistor radio, Popeye, the VHS tape, and Leonardo DiCaprio’s character in Titanic. (I swear I can hear faint echoes of Celine Deon.)

You reflect on the last time you got a new laptop and how you went through a similar 6-month nightmare of keystroke catastrophes, mouse mis-steps, and file thievery. I mean this is SO much worse than socks disappearing into the black hole of the dryer.

You try to find something positive from this experience, and the only thing you can come up with is that you maybe have a new blog idea.

Hey, actually that’s not bad. A little slip of the wrist and a few more keystrokes and presto, two blogs instead of one!

Yes, I believe beyond all shadow of a doubt that there really is such a thing as an intelligent designer. But the knucklehead who invented my particular brand of netbook would not qualify.

Fireproof & the Film Critic in Us All

2010-04-13T00:01:00.009-04:00

I have "proof" that those who faithfully practice the Christian faith see the world—nature, relationships, business, art, etc—through very different eyes than those who shun any religious affiliation or even avoid a daily one-on-one with their Maker.

My husband and I watched the movie “Fireproof”. Now, I’ll admit I was a little reluctant. I majored in television production, minored in theatre, and have directed stage plays for years, so I don't think I'm bragging when I say I can feel bad acting coming before an actor or actress on camera or stage even opens their mouth. And spiritual films, for the most part, are not known for their Oscar-winning performances. So again, I was a little reluctant to watch “Fireproof”. But Netflix had it available, and it probably cost me all of $1 to rent. So, I thought, why not?

Well, my first mistake was starting the thing at 11pm—on a weeknight. I figured, I’ll stop it after only 30 minutes (because it won’t really be that good anyway). Well, my artistic nose smelled the amateur acting right away. But there was one bright spot—Kirk Cameron. He literally saved this film. While everyone else was straining to perform naturally, he got an A- in my book. This really impressed me because as an actress and a director, I know how hard it is to perform well with other actors who may not be as skilled, schooled, or talented (I’ve been on both sides of that challenge). Personally I think that speaks volumes as to Cameron’s personal character and integrity.

So after 30 minutes, I’m still watching this thing, cringing from time to time but drawn into the story nevertheless.

One hour in. Okay, now I really have to go to sleep.

Ninety minutes in. I can survive tomorrow on six hours sleep, right?

And then my husband came in and watched the last 30 minutes with me through which we both sobbed (softly and embarrassingly), holding each other’s hand.

So, yes, I'll humble out and admit it. I actually liked the film.

The next day, sleepy but curious, I looked up several reviews on the film. It was much as I expected. Every review from the secular press pretty much panned it saying, yes, the acting was bad, but more that it was “too religious”.

On the other side was the Christian media who hailed it as a remarkable achievement. But one writer—from a secular press, no less—really nailed it when he said that Christian viewers would love it for the very reasons that many “non-Christian” viewers hated it.

Bingo.

I imagined this was probably similar to the varying experiences two different of people would have sitting in the front row of a church service—the one drinking in every moment like a thirsty man in a desert, the other wondering what in the world he was doing there in the first place.

I was also reminded of the passage in 1 Corinthians 1:18 that says “the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God.” People who “get” the gospel see everything differently. Even a poorly acted film. They see the intentions behind the tragically bad performances. They forgive the poor direction. They overlook a somewhat flaky storyline because they see the heart behind every performance, every direction, and every word of the script.

And when you think about it, aren’t they just being like their Father anyway?

How many of our bad performances does He forgive every day? How many of our verbal blunders does He overlook? How much of our misguided direction does He discount?

Yes, I think the reason we can see the awesomeness in even a sub-par film is because¸ quite simply, we’re just imitating our Dad.

Amen. At least we’re getting something right.

The Invasion of Spring

2010-04-06T21:55:00.003-04:00

Ah, spring!

While everyone else is opening up their windows to welcome in the fresh scent of green earth and fragrant flowers, I’m duct taping my sills and doorframes to keep every spore of villainous pollen outside my castle walls.

While my friends are winding down their car windows and driving about the city, arms and faces open to the blue sky and dazzling sun, I’m making sure I still have plenty of freon for my air-filtering A/C and sweeping my car’s interior of the dozens of used tissues I’ve crumbled in an attempt to stem my constant nasal drip.

While my family is hitting the road on a 2-wheeled caravan of frolic and fun, I’m hiding out in my bedroom, the remnants of every antihistamine known to man useless on my nightstand and my Vicks vaporizer blowing full in my face.

Auch, SPRING!

If you’re one of the lucky ones who don’t get to enjoy this time of the year quite as much as I do, praise your merciful Father in heaven. For some reason, he has rained down this blessing on me, possibly to teach me to be grateful for the other ten months out of the year when I don’t have to carry a box of tissues with me everywhere I go.

However, in my attempt to obey the three points of 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18, I’ve discovered that there are some advantages to my seasonal disability.

Point #1: “Pray continually”. This is the easy one. God, please help me to sleep. God, please help me to breathe. God please help me not scratch out my eyes before spring comes to a close.

Point #2: “Be joyful always.” This is a little more challenging. I keeping checking different version of the Bible to see if there isn’t a footnote somewhere for this scripture that exempts me during allergy season. I’ll let you know if I find it.

Point #3: “Give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you.” Okay, this is the most difficult. I mean, why would God will this kind of torture on anybody? But in the past thirty years I’ve learned the best way to be thankful is to write a list of all the things you have to be grateful for.

So here’s my Top Ten List for why I’m grateful I have allergies (drum-roll, please):

10. I get a free graphic, Hollywood-quality, 3-D simulation each morning revealing how the crows feet will layer my eyes in about 20 years (talk about special effects!)

9. I receive a cost-efficient exfoliation of my nose every time I rip off my nasal strips.

8. I have a great excuse for not wearing eye make-up—I rub it off before breakfast.

7. I have a new appreciation for the glorious softness of a Kleenex tissue!

6. I discovered Neosporin does wonders for a Rudolph Reindeer nose.

5. I garner sympathy wherever I go because I look like someone in mourning.

4. Having a bag of cotton stuffed between your ears is a great, drug-free weight-loss alternative (who wants to eat when you can’t even breath?)

3. There is an advantage to completely losing your sense of smell—you really don’t mind taking out the trash.

2. I can watch countless re-runs of old TV shows due to my “can’t breathe, thus can’t sleep” nights.

…and the #1 reason why I love having seasonal allergies…

…I never have to do spring-cleaning!

So, yeah, I guess there are a few advantages to having violent sneezing attacks, scratchy watery eyes, unrelenting nasal congestion, and a constant dripping faucet of a nose.

Ooh, ooh, ooh! I thought of one more thing to be grateful for—that spring only comes once a year.

I'm Baa-aack!

2010-04-02T23:48:00.001-04:00

Okay, I'm back! And as promised, here's chapter one of the novella I've been working on. I have a publisher who read what you are about to read and wants to see the rest. It's an allegory of Jesus as a bridge builder. I would love to hear your thoughts on it. I'll return next week with my tongue-in-cheek blogs. Enjoy...and let me hear from you!

Chapter One

Chasm

Once upon a time there was a king.

He lived atop a great mountain in the middle of his kingdom, a beautiful valley lush with green grass, abundant trees, teeming wildlife, succulent fruit, and dozens of flowing streams that crisscrossed the land like a golden net. And while every field and hamlet, plain and dwelling in the valley was a berth of safety and contentment, there did exist in the valley one small, dark place, a glen in which lay a pool of water with no spring and no stream, and where the voices of the earth whispered in the wind.

The king had two sons whom he loved equally and with all his heart. The Eldest and heir had lived with his father many years, watching and learning so that one day he could reign as humbly and diligently as the king. Daily the Eldest rode with his father and monarch through the valley, over the dozens of bridges that connected the land. He cared for it and its inhabitants as lovingly as did his father.

The Younger son loved the land as well and roamed it on his own, enjoying the fruit and swimming in the dancing streams. He loved the inhabitants and would gladly accept their eager hospitality. There was no home, no farm, and no town where he wasn’t welcomed enthusiastically and served generously.

The father had warned both sons about the dark place, the pool, and the voices of the earth. “Do not go there,” he said, “for the day you drink of the waters of the pool with no spring and no stream, you will be cut off from me.”

One day, the Younger was out riding his mount through the land enjoying the fruit and generous gifts of the inhabitants of the kingdom. The sunlight gleamed in his hair and warmed his skin. He rode his mount light and swift and lithe, laughing at the breeze.

When he came to a stop, his brow wet with perspiration and his garments clinging to his skin, he was thirsty. He looked and listened for one of the abundant streams of the valley, but strangely, he neither saw nor heard one. He couldn’t recall the closest town but neither could he recollect any place in the valley where he could not see or smell a stream.

And then he heard voices calling to him, voices that mingled with the wind and vaguely sounded like playful, splashing waters.

The animal beneath him stirred warily.

His thirst teased by the distant sound of refreshment, the Younger prodded the mount to follow the voices deeper and deeper into a wood until the sun and the sky disappeared from the green canopy overhead. Ducking through a curtain of vines, the pair broke into a small opening in the wood where the mount stopped abruptly, shaking its head in protest and dancing backward through the curtain. Puzzled, the Younger spoke softly to the animal, but it continued to pull back, agitated.

The man dismounted and cast a calming hand on the animal’s twitching neck, trying to peer through the dense veil. The mount would not be dissuaded so the Younger released him and watched as the animal trotted a short distance away.

The man turned, lifted the tangle of vines that covered the opening, and walked into a shadowed glen where green seemed to have lost its love of life. The trees here were dark and unmoving like sentinels, and no birds made their homes in the tightly coiled branches. The ground beneath his booted feet was hard and grassless. The sweet and fluid voices continued to beckon him with their tempting melody toward what he quickly realized was a small pool.

He frowned for the sound was not coming from the water whose surface was still and dark, but rather it seemed to float and flow around him on a windless breeze, sighing with longing. As he approached the side of the pool, his nostrils flared at the scent of the water and he wondered if this sudden rush of anticipation was what his mount felt whenever he caught the aroma of refreshing waters on a hot day. The Younger licked his lips, yearning to slake his thirst, but he hesitated. The water was eerily still.

“You thirst,” said the voices, flowing over one another like a cascade. And he realized that they, like the sound of the water, came from everywhere and from nowhere.

“Yes,” he said.

“This is water. Drink.”

Still, he hesitated. The water looked dead, like a body whose life had been robbed of its breath. And then he knew where he was.

He started in fear. “My father warned me of this place. He said that on the day I drink of the waters of the pool with no spring and no stream, I would be cut off from him.”

“How could a simple sip of water cleave you from your father?” asked the waterfall of voices. “Surely you misheard him.”

“No,” said the Younger, but he didn’t move from the water’s edge.

“You thirst.”

And though the water lay dark and still, the Younger couldn’t help but be drawn to it.

“You said your father told you of this place.”

“Yes.”

“Did he tell you all?” There was a change in the rushing sound of the voices, as if they no longer danced playfully but now rushed headlong in some indeterminate direction.

“He told my brother and I if we drank from the waters of the pool with no spring and no stream, we would be cut off.”

“Ah,” said the voices, “of course. This brother, is he not your elder, the heir to your father’s throne?”

“He is.”

“Your future king.”

“Yes.”

“So you will have no kingdom.”

“I am not the heir.”

“What if…you could be?”

“I don’t understand.”

The voices whipped up the wind and shook the trees overhead. “The reason your father told you not to drink from the pool is because he knows that when you do, you will be king and he cut off. He does not want to be dethroned.”

“What of my brother? Has he never come here?”

“Why should he? He is heir. The throne and all the kingdom will be his someday. But for you, there is nothing.”

The Younger stared into the pool. His throat was arid, barren. He recalled all the flowing rivers he had passed that very morning and ached with longing. Why should he deny himself? He was the king’s son. Everything in the valley was his. The towns were his. The inhabitants were his. This pool was his. Was it true that one day when his brother took the throne that it would not be so? It was true, the Eldest never left their father’s side. Would he cut off the Younger? When his brother was king, would he the Younger be left with nothing?

But I could be king.

The voices, calm and confident, sighed like a caress through the dark trees. “Yes.”

What’s one drink when I’m so thirsty?

“So thirsty…” The voices echoed his thoughts.

The Younger leaned over the dark pool and stared at his reflection. A crown sat upon his head. His father’s crown. The king’s crown.

I could be king.

He dove both hands into the water, feeling it like ice on his skin, and created a smaller pool of his own hands. Just before he buried his face in his hands, he breathed deeply of the water. Its aroma was sweet beyond description, beyond any flowery scent he had breathed in his adventures over the valley, beyond any spring-fed stream from which he had partook. Why had his father denied him this? This of all places, of all things?

And he drank.

The taste of it on his tongue was like no water he’d ever drunk. It coursed over his tongue and down his throat like the caress of a beautiful woman. It dribbled down the side of his face, down his neck, and across his chest, painting icy cool fingers across his skin.

Twice he thrust his hands in and drank. Three times. And then, as if inspired, he plunged his head into the black depths. Hands as gentle as a breeze and as forceful as a gale lifted his body over the edge and threw the rest of him in. The iciness closed around him like a blanket, seeping into every pore. And he let it, let it ebb away the heat, the thirst, the doubt. When he resurfaced, he felt as if he’d been reborn as if every fiber of him had been scrubbed clean.

He moved to the side of the pool, hesitant to exit, but thought of his mount, still hot and thirsty just outside the glen. He hoisted himself from the water and sat on the pool’s edge, letting the water drain from his body. He watched curiously as the water evaporated almost instantly from his skin and was quickly replaced by a dull stinging. He frowned as the pain grew to an itching. He pulled at his shirt that had already dried on him and felt the burning. He ripped his shirt open and stared at the mottled skin on his once clean chest. He cried out desperately wiping at the hot, stained skin.

When the shaking started, he thought it was coming from inside him, but then he saw the leaves on the dark trees quiver. The ground shuddered and then it was as if all the sounds of world had been swept away. The earth began to quake and roil beneath his feet. He ran for the viney opening and plunged through the curtain. A tearing sound came from the pool behind him and he glanced back between the swaying vines to see an ugly crack in the pool and the black water that he had swam in, that he had drunk, that he had taken into his body, drain out onto the ground cutting through the earthen floor like acid.

He ran for his terrified mount. She screamed and skittered away from him as if she didn’t recognize him, her eyes rolling in her head. He spoke to her forcing his voice to calm. Then with one leap, he was on her, kicking his heels into her sides. The animal dove out of the wood as if trying to shake him from her back. He held on, hearing a huge ripping that echoed off the blackening sky and ricocheted in every direction of the valley.

He didn’t try to direct the animal. She ran instinctively, fleeing the menacing earth behind her. Only when the Younger recognized where they were did he try to stay her. She fought him until he pressed his legs deep into her sides, pulling on her tangled mane. Angrily she slowed, stomping her hooves in protest.

He glanced back in the direction they had come and gasped. The earth had begun to fall away as if into a great hole. In the distance, he watched as forests, bridges, and streams collapsed and disappeared out of sight. His eyes fixed on the mountain, and the firm ground between himself and his home. He had to get back to tell his father what he had done, to apologize.

He turned the animal and raced for the mountain, but it was as if the earth knew his path and crumbled before him disappearing into the growing chasm. Again, he sprinted on pushing his mount, racing the very earth for purchase. But again, she thwarted him dropping the ground out before him.

On and on he raced for what felt like hours, the drowning earth ever one step ahead stealing a path, a bridge, or a stream before him and sending it into the abyss.

With growing horror, he realized what was happening--he was being cut off.

His mount was heaving and foaming at the mouth. He kicked her forward begging her for one last run. Exhausted but still obedient, she responded, bolting forward again toward a bridge, the final span remaining to the base of the mountain. And then the last of the earth fell away from them, the bridge collapsing, the waters streaming down and down into the nothingness. The Younger pulled back on his ride to keep them both from pitching headlong into the fathomless moat that had formed around the mountain and his home.

The earth’s trembling began to ease like a storm moving off into the distance. The Younger stared at the new landscape before him, his breath coming in sharp gasps of disbelief. Slowly, he slid from the exhausted animal’s back. His legs, aching from their desperate hold on his mount, could not sustain him and he collapsed to his knees. Tears streaked clean lines down his dirty face and dripped onto the mottled oval stain on his exposed chest.

He gaped at the chasm that now stood between him and his father, between him and his home, the chasm that through his disobedience, he himself had created.

That's it for now. Stay tuned for news when the full novella will be available in print.

Kim

On Sabbatical, but...

2010-03-06T13:43:00.001-05:00

I neglected to notify you that I am on a brief sabbatical while I put the finishing touches on one of my novels that a publisher (Double Edge Press) is interested in. I should be back with my weekly blog sometime in April. I'll also make sure I give all of you a sneak peek at the first chapter of the novel. It's called "The Bridge Builder" and it is an allegory of Jesus as a bridge builder.

In the meantime, you might want to take a look at this encouraging video (http://bit.ly/a5dqWY) that a local middle school here in Orlando did. Oprah--yes, the Oprah--loved it and presented it on her show. The school won a library make-over with 2,000 new books and a whole new set of computers! The video brought me to tears to see so many kids engaged in promoting literacy. You go, Ocoee Middle School!

Talk to you in a few weeks.

Kim

“You sniveling coward!”

2010-02-09T09:23:00.000-05:00

“You sniveling coward!"

"You lily-livered, chicken-hearted milksop!”

“You gutless, spineless, yellow-bellied sissy!”

The thought of being on the end of such accusations can stir paralyzing fear, mortal shame, and/or wrathful anger. On the flip side, we would readily hurl such insults at anyone who refused to defend the weak, the powerless, or the innocent. In civilized societies, there are few things quite so vile as a fellow human being who seeks to protect his own hide to the detriment of others.

Yet we can all relate to doing it from time to time, skulking or slithering away from a situation where we thought we would surely end up with a dismissal notice from a belligerent boss, a black eye from the playground bully, or a knife in the throat from a purse-snatcher. Survival is instinctive for a reason. And even the survival instinct can be stronger than our own screaming conscience or the fear of familial or societal ostracism.

The reason we try to protect our own backsides and mind our own business is quite simply because we fear death or anything that rings of a near-death experience. Losing a job can provide as much stress as the unexpected loss of a family member. As a youth, who hasn’t felt that confronting our childhood tormentor wouldn’t put us in an early grave? And we would be insane if we looked forward to stepping between a villain and his victim whether in a bar or a backstreet.

As strange as it seems, this is why suicide bombers are so effective in fulfilling their mission. They don’t fear “crossing over”. Now, don’t get me wrong. I don’t think suicide bombers are courageous, I think they’re unfortunate fools who have been fed afterlife propaganda that Stalin would be proud of. And they’re faith is misplaced. For faith is what truly drives anyone to perform acts that put their heart, their mind, or their life in jeopardy.

Now most of us don’t live on the edge. Yes, a few of us (and I don’t mean me) have jobs where every day we put your life on the line--police officers, firemen, military personnel, kindergarten teachers. I know of at least one of you who works for homeland security. And I am SO grateful for each and every one of you and I salute you for your courage. But the closest the rest of us get to spilling our blood each day is a paper cut.

And while the closest I’ve ever gotten to living on the edge of anything is the edge of my yoga mat, I wonder if it might take more courage to stand up to a boss who wants you to lie to a client than it does to stand up to a mugger with a club. Maybe it takes more guts to stay with an unfaithful spouse than it does to stay in a room with an armed kidnapper. And I’m sure it takes more raw nerve to trust your kid with the car than it does to trust your employee with the same vehicle.

That’s because trust makes us vulnerable. We’ve all been hurt, burned, or deceived and we know how much fun that is, so we’re a little reluctant to stick our hand back in the fire. Some of us are so fearful of being vulnerable that we don’t trust anyone anymore. Sure, we may have a great partner, a loving family, and supportive circle of friends, but we cut mental notches into our forearm every time someone forgets our birthday or takes out their bad day on us, and the wounds are far from healed.

There should be a show entitled “Are You as Tough as a 2nd Grader?” My youngest child could star in it. She’s a tomboy with more scars on her legs than I had at her age. Yeah, she can scream louder than any kid on the block when she first gets hurt (usually because she wasn’t wearing shoes—again). And there is no end to her overwhelming joy when the new cut gets wet in the bathtub. But after that, the wound scabs over and she becomes more fascinated with the healing than the fact that she got hurt. And after awhile she doesn’t even remember how she got the new scar in the first place. She’s back outside racing around like a Tasmanian devil—without shoes—again.

But her random bloodletting is nothing compared to the way one of the neighborhood boys treats her. Too often he forgets she’s a girl and crushes her delicate feelings like rose petals beneath his Reeboks. And while she’s gotten wiser to his ways and is less likely to become fodder for his footprints, she still likes playing with him.

And while my child’s typical short-term memory issues can make me sound just like my mother—you really do have to say “Put your shoes away!” a thousand times—there is something glorious in her lightspeed absolution. Like every other parent on the planet, I lose my temper with her and my other kids from time to time, usually in the mornings when I’d swear my clock had legs instead of hands. But once I return to my senses and apologize for my egregious behavior, my baby-girl leaps into my arms like the infraction never happened. Her forgiveness is immediate and absolute.

I want to be like my daughter. I want to be so excited about life and the grand adventure of it all, that getting hurt is only a pit stop. I want to be so focused on the joy of the road ahead that pain is merely a passing blip on my GPS. I want to be so exhilarated about the prospect of any new ground to traverse, any new walls to climb, and any new chasms to cross, not because of the broken bones I might incur, but because of the potential signatures on my plaster cast, the cool new bruise I can brag about, or the distinctive scar that screams to the world I’m living life to the full.

Let it Rain!

2010-02-02T16:43:00.000-05:00

Florida is the Sunshine State. And we Floridians LOVE the sun. We love the warm temperatures ten months out of the year (sorry, you northerners but 50°F in January is considered freezing to us). We love having the beach within hours (or minutes) of our front door.

Even the rain ain’t bad here. We have what we call scattered showers. In other words, it could be raining on your front driveway where you just finished washing your car, while the sun is warming the rapidly growing bamboo in your backyard. It also means when it does rain, it doesn’t usually do it ALL day long like it does in other states.

But Floridians are spoiled. Unless you’re a homeowner with a monthly water bill, rain is a drag. Sometimes after grocery shopping, you have to wait an entire ten minutes in the store’s foyer with your cartful of groceries while the monsoon passes before you can exit. As I (a homeowner with a monthly water bill) stare out the store windows into the waterlogged parking lot along with the half-dozen other annoyed customers, I try not to think about the half-gallon of ice cream melting in my cart and instead fix my mind on the money I’m saving not having to use my sprinklers and how much my lawn loves the rain, how my grass is drinking it up like ambrosia. (If I’m feeling really pessimistic, I’ll remember that we have scattered showers in Florida and that it’s probably not even raining at my house.)

I stare at the bag of naval oranges peeking out at me from my cart and think, “Without the rain, I wouldn’t have my oranges.” There’s tomatoes in the bag too, and peppers, broccoli, asparagus, spinach, baby carrots, and lettuce (no, we don’t have a rabbit, just my husband). In fact, pretty much everything in my cart wouldn’t be there without the rain.

Okay, okay. I admit it, we need the rain or nothing grows.

And as I stand in the store’s foyer staring out at the sheets of rain, I ponder: Do I drink in the “rain” in my life as eagerly and effectively as the grass, and the oranges, and the carrots? How ridiculous would it be for the flora to actually resent the rain when the showers are essential to helping them grow?

For me, rain is financial struggle. Rain is communication problems with my husband. Rain is helping my son work through an autistic tantrum. It’s traffic. It’s the co-worker that seems to have some personal grudge against me. It’s the extra five or ten pounds that have a death grip on my hips. I HATE rain.

But my carrots don’t hate the rain, so why should I?

Why can’t I drink in the rain and see that it’s fuel for my growth? How would my faith in God’s ability to take care of me grow without financial struggle? How would my relationship with my husband grow if we didn’t fumble in learning each other’s love language? Working through my son’s tantrum helps me grow in my patience. I can use the extra time sitting in traffic and listen to another chapter in my audiobook. I can learn to effectively resolve conflict by confronting my co-worker. I can take a yoga class and feel better about myself no matter how much I weigh.

Or I can be bitter and resentful of these struggles and therefore “die on the vine.” Who likes a shriveled up tomato? Who wants to eat brown lettuce? And what homeowner proudly shows off their dead lawn?

As the rain begins to clear outside the grocery store, I stand up a little straighter. I take a deep breath, inhaling the crispness of the newly washed air seeping between the crack in the automatic doors. As the stampeding parade of waiting customers turns toward the exit, I hear mutterings of “Finally!” from the mob. I step out into the remains of the storm as the parting clouds reveal a hint of blue. I tilt back my head and catch the gleam of the sun as it throws off the clouds like a veil.

I smile. Ah, whatever. Let it rain!

FYI: The writer of the book of Hebrews pondered this concept way before me (6:7-8). Check it out.

My Choice: Getting my Head Around Haiti

2010-01-26T19:05:00.000-05:00

One of my readers asked me to blog about the tragedy of Haiti. While most of my blogs are usually laced with humor, there is nothing humorous about natural catastrophes. Nor of pain, or abuse, or death whether it’s natural or unnatural. So this blog will be a little different. I’m going to explore the question that every natural disaster brings to the forefront of society's proverbial mind—why does God allow pain in the world?

The frank answer is--I have no clue. Well, that’s not entirely true. Aside from passages like Romans 5:3-4 and James 1:2-3, I have an idea, but that conviction was bred, born, and nurtured from my own personal tragedies. Now before I go any further, please note the conclusions I’ve come to are solely my own. There are others who have been through far worse than I—Haiti, Rwanda, Katrina, 9/11, the 2007 Tsunami, the Holocaust, etcetera, etcetera—and their conclusions are between them and their maker. If you are one of those, I would be interested in hearing your comments on how you have reconciled this very challenging issue.

As for me, thirteen years ago, my husband and I celebrated our first pregnancy. In my 16th week, our joy turned to agony when I found out my baby—we called him Aiden—was diagnosed as Trisomy 18. It’s worse than Down’s Syndrome which is technically Trisomy 21. Bottom line, his genes were scrambled. I carried him for nine more weeks. My buddy just didn’t want to give up. And then I went into labor. He died during delivery and I wrote a little something to help me sort it all out (see "Letting Go" link below*).

But the most difficult time was not getting the news of his deformities, nor was it going through his stillbirth. The most challenging time for me was the nine weeks between those two moments.

I was assisting in a summer camp program at a local college and spent my thirty-minute commute to and from work sobbing into my steering wheel. I prayed fiercely. I read my Bible with the fervor to rival a new convert. Why was this happening to me? I was a devoted follower of God. What on earth had I done to earn this? I thought surely such pain would merit me a transfigural visit from the Almighty, but such was not the case. After weeks of emotionally stumbling around on my hands and knees in the dark, a light of understanding began to dawn. I accepted that, short of heaven, I would never have the answer as to WHY.

But what I discovered became an anchor that rooted me through all succeeding difficulties that assaulted me thereafter—I discovered a whole new depth to the cross of Christ.

Romans 8:32 says that God “who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?” Verses 35-39 finishes this thought and reveals that nothing can separate us from God’s love. Nothing. Not the tragedy of my poor Aiden, not the revelation of a second son with Autism, not living through the disaster that was Hurricane Andrew, and not the death of my father who suffered horribly until the cancer won.

Now think about it—if God would give up his own baby boy, his first born, his Aiden, so we can join his family, what wouldn’t he give up for us? If I view my life—all of life—through this lens—the lens of the cross—then everything has meaning. Everything has purpose—even if I don’t understand it. Even if nobody understands it. God has a purpose and a plan.

So here is where I blaspheme and disagree with the Bible. There is one thing that can separate us from the love of God. Us. When we choose bitterness over faith. We want to keep ourselves victims because it’s easier being mad at a God who we can’t see and whose motives we can’t understand. It’s easier to rant and rave internally at the Almighty who is supposed to be all-loving and all-compassionate when our situation reveals neither. It’s easier to rage at an unseen God when those we love suffer what we feel is needless pain, and we are powerless to stop it. I say these responses are easier--and more "natural"--because I've done them all. And for a time, they have a purpose as we cycle through the grieving process.

But bitterness is exhausting (and it also ages me beyond even Mary Kay's reach). So it came down to this—through which lens would I choose to view my life? Through the eyes of the world that either does not know or has forgotten about the God who used his own child as a sacrifice for me? Or through the stunning, speech-robbing lens of the cross? Jesus endured more pain than I can ever fathom while his Father literally braced himself from intervening even when Jesus cried out lost and alone, “Daddy, where are you?’ (Mark 15:34). I don’t think God was heartless for sacrificing his own son for me, so why would I think him heartless when I go through pain? The truth is, there is no one who understands better, no one who feels mine, yours, or anyone's pain more than God.

But just like with the cross, he allows the suffering because he sees the greater purpose on the other side of the pain.

Stephen Curtis Chapman and his family had a similar choice to make last year when their eldest child accidentally backed their car over their youngest child and killed her. What do you do with that?** Do you get bitter and angry at God and the world, or do you let it make you better. Better in your faith in an Almighty Father who works all things “for the good of those who love him, who are called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28).

A second thing I've learned is the power that comes in comforting others. Because of my own tragedies and the journeys they led me down, I have been able to share with others in similar circumstances and comfort them in their pain (2 Corinthians 1:2-7). If you have been through something devastating and found someone--a stranger even--who went through a similar experience, you know that their comfort is far more meaningful than even a best friend with the best intentions. This fellow warrior is like a shelter in the raining pain.

So, why Haiti? Why allow such a horrible catastrophe in one of the poorest nations in the world? Why is there war? Why terrorism? Why child abuse? Why do some suffer endlessly from chronic pain? Why do loved ones disappear never to be seen again?

I don’t know. But God does and—as I can’t claim any recent visitations from on high with some surpassingly great revelation—he apparently doesn’t think I need to. But I’m not powerless. I can do something. I can help those who are in pain, who haven’t gotten to the other side of it yet. I can choose to give my time, my money, and my heart to a people who need comfort whether they’re in Haiti, Afghanistan, or my own neighborhood.

We have the power. We have the choice. As for me and my house, we choose to trust in the God who witnessed the horrible murder of a loved one, experienced agony that only the separation of death can bring, and embraced the greater purpose of it all.

*Link for “Letting Go” – http://kkpullen.blogspot.com/2007/10/letting-go.html

**Steven Curtis Chapman’s newest single “Heaven is the Face” is a dedication to his daughter, i.e., his version of “Letting Go”.

I Swear

2010-01-19T18:02:00.002-05:00

Remember Hoss, Adam, and Little Joe, the three brothers from Bonanza that looked as much like siblings as the Three Stooges? How about Laura Ingles with her bouncy braids flying down a hill in the opening credits of Little House on the Prairie? Or the closing lines “Goodnight, Mary Ellen”, “Goodnight, Jim-Bob”, “Goodnight, John-boy” of The Waltons?

Ah, those were the days when life was simple and a man’s word was his bond. Or at least television drama portrayed it that way. I guess every generation looks back on its youth and ponders the same thought—things aren’t what they were when we were kids.

I don’t know. People have been killing each other since…well, since the first family. I don’t think man’s violence against himself has changed all that much except now we’ve learned to record it, digitize it, and send it via satellite across the globe so everyone can watch the genocide in Dafur from the comfort of their own living room.

One of the things I admired so much about the “old days”, or the televised version of them anyway, was the genuineness of the male role models--Ben Cartright (Lorne Greene), Charles Ingells (Michael Landon), and John Walton, Sr. (Ralph Waite). They were so trustworthy and solid. They were the walls that protected their family. When they called, everybody came. When they stepped into a fray, you knew everything was going to be okay. When they made a promise, you knew they’d die before they’d break it.

You gotta admire that especially nowadays when infidelity is as popular as Blackberries, copying (i.e., stealing) music and movies over the Internet is as common as Starbucks, and “pure” is the new four-letter word high school kids get stigmatized for.

What a breath of fresh air it is to find someone with character. Someone who says what they mean and means what they say. Someone who doesn’t have to “prove” they’ll keep their word by swearing by their Aunt Tillie’s grave, their great-grandfather’s Bible, or worse, God Almighty himself.

Jesus admonished his followers in Matthew 5:33-37 not to swear and not to make an oath, but to simply let their “yes” be “yes” and their “no” be “no”. Yet in Genesis 22:16, God himself swears he will keep a promise to Abraham. What’s up with that? Can there be a contradiction in the scriptures? Can the sun rise in the west?

I don’t think so.

Because we are weak, fallible, and reliably unreliable, we make commitments and then seal them with an oath (i.e., Aunt Tillie) so people will believe us. Does that mean when we say we’re going to do something and we don’t promise it in conjunction with the King James sitting on the coffee table, we really won’t do it? Or if we vow to our spouse or kids or boss that we will fulfill an obligation and we don’t add God’s name as a silent witness to the agreement, that we are not responsible for fulfilling it? If so, then NOTHING we say can be trusted.

Who wants to live like that? Or worse, who wants to live with a person like that?

I’m a self-confessed legalist. And while it can be ridiculous sometimes—I felt guilty for an entire year after not reporting the retail sale of a box of Double-Mint gum on my quarterly sales tax report—legalism has some merit. For example, as a legalist you will break your back to keep your word because quite frankly the subsequent guilt for not fulfilling it can make you feel like you’re a mile under the Atlantic without a submersible.

I have a few friends that are just the opposite; they’re floating a mile up in the clouds with only a thread of conscientiousness fixing them to the earth. Sometimes I envy them. They seem like such happy people. Things just don’t seem to bother them. They’re the ones who turn their taxes in just before midnight on April 15th. They always show up ten minutes late for the movies. They take all the toiletry samples from their hotel room, even the ones they’ll probably never use. But most of the time when they say they’re going to do something, they do to it…eventually.

I just don’t get that. That may be why I also have to practice yoga three times a week as well as practice my pranayamas (breathing exercises) whenever I do my bills. Seventy-four dollars here, breath-in. One hundred and twenty-seven dollars there, breath-out. Paying my bills on time—even when I have more month left at the end of my money—is akin to keeping the Ten Commandments or not leaving dirty dishes in the sink.

So if Jesus, the antithesis of legalism and God as flesh, said not to make oaths after God the Father did it in Genesis, does that mean that the two aren’t in sync? Naw. See, we erringly use oaths today to validate we’re speaking the truth because so many of us don’t. We swear on something greater than ourselves as a witness. But there is no one greater than God and he always tells the truth. His record is flawless. How ironic that we who “need” it as proof of our truthfulness are forbidden to swear while God who is perfect doesn’t need to and yet did it anyway.

Now, admittedly as I approach 50 with a memory that may not be what it was in the good ole days, I still don’t recall any of my favorite television patriarchs ever making a promise with anything more than a word and handshake.

I think Jesus would have liked that. Sitting down on a Sunday evening with the family and watching even fictional men of character. Then afterward, he and the rest of his brothers and sisters would have climbed the stairs before settling into their beds for the night. I can hear it…“Goodnight, James. Goodnight, Joseph. Goodnight, Jesus.”

Parachutes, Pollyanna, and Jody Picoult

2010-01-11T23:03:00.004-05:00

My husband is one of those people who can find something positive about gum stuck to the bottom of his shoe.

On the other hand, I can give you a list of the negatives starting with the five tools in my kitchen that I’ll have to use to dislodge the gunk (all of which I will have to sanitize afterward), exactly how long it will take me to remove it, and the three things on my To Do List that will now be impossible for me to accomplish that day because of this untimely and completely inconvenient incident. I’m not just an anal anti-optimist. I can be positively fatalistic.

Is it any wonder that I’m drawn to “self-help” books (although I admit that the very name of the genre makes me cringe. It’s like admitting you enjoy reality T.V.)? I like the motives of self-help authors—aside from trying to make a living (or a fortune) off of other people’s hang-ups—they try to empower people to overcome the very challenges the authors themselves may have struggled with their whole lives.

My big issue, challenge, or whatever you want to call it, is fear--fear of failure, fear of the future, fear of what you are thinking about me at this very moment. For as long as I can remember, fear has followed me around like a overeager Rottweiler dogging my heels at every turn. One of the books I’ve read lately, “Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway”, had some excellent points, and very practical and helpful exercises to help me overcome my irrational anxieties. But as I continued to listen to the author (most of my reading is done via audiobook), I realized that many of the points she made were vaguely familiar, like echoes reverberating in an empty house.

For example, in order to deal with fear, the author suggested we change how we think about both ourselves and our present situation, that we try to view our life differently.

A voice in my head abruptly spoke up. “That’s right”, it said. “Be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”

I blinked. I knew that. I had heard that phrase somewhere before.

The author’s next recommendation: Deal with your negative thinking.

As I said, I’m fatalistic. I can start with the fact that I paid my power bill two hours late and in 20 seconds create an entire scenario in my head that ends with my business collapsing into bankruptcy, my writing being rejected by every agent and publisher in America, and my homeless family camping out in a tent under the interstate using my kids’ Wii game nunchuks as a clothesline.

But before I could fall into an utter state of panic, the lingering voice returned to me: “Take captive every thought and make it obedient…”

Yeah. Yeah. That’s right. Where did I hear that?

Last--but by no means least--the author suggested I be around positive people and read positive things.

Okay, I’ve already worked on this area to some extent. I try to NOT read the news everyday. I mean seriously, a week of the front page of the Orlando Sentinel is enough to leave Pollyanna swimming in a bottle of anti-depressants.

This time, because I’m trying to avoid the latest celebrity scandal and flee the newest sports star’s dirty laundry, the voice is so much clearer now: “Whatever is true, whatever is right, noble, excellent, praiseworthy…think about such things” and just as audible “bad company corrupts good character”.

And then it hits me. I’ve heard all this before because somebody else said it before, WAY before all these wonderful self-help authors “discovered” it. And the reason that these concepts work when applied is because THE author of authors wrote THE how-to-get-OUT-of-your-Self manual long before self-help was cool.

Now don’t get me wrong. I think these books—many of them anyway—are amazing. Hey, I can Flow and Awaken the Giant, Eat that Frog so I can Win Friends and Influence People, Develop Seven Healthy Habits so I can find out the Color of my Parachute as I discover Man’s Search for Meaning, all as a One-Minute Manager. Through the power of personal experience and vulnerability, the authors of these books give vintage concepts a different twist. They shed light on areas that have become dull and powerless from repetition. They reveal old truths in new ways.

But let’s not be fooled. If all of civilization collapsed under the mantel of nuclear war, if South American Army Ants raged across the US wiping out entire cities, if everything that Dan Brown ever wrote was true--oops, sorry, I'm doing it again.

Bottom line, there’s only one book we really need for life and empowerment. And it was on the bestseller list long before there was one.

So, yes, when I’m not needing a sci-fi fix, when I’m not craving the pubescent exploits of Harry Potter, and when I’m not hankering for a Jody Picoult tragedy to make me feel better about my mundane life, I’ll continue to read these self-help books and they will always have a place on my bookshelf.

But only one book will stay lodged like a life preserver on my bedside table. And it ain’t Stephen King.

(These are the words that were whispered in my ear--Romans 12:2, 2 Corinthians 10:5, Philippians 4:8, 1 Corinthians 15:33)

A Hero in the Making

2010-01-04T15:14:00.002-05:00

I am a sucker for superhero movies--X-men, Ironman, Hulk, Batman, Superman, Spiderman, Daredevil. I still have a huge box of comic books I collected during my college days, each and every one sealed in its own protective plastic bag. (Can you say “geek”?)

I know. I know. But ANY of us would be lying if we said we didn’t want to be a superhero at some point in our life. To be faster or stronger, telekinetic, psychic, to be able to teleport at will, to be able to heal yourself or others with a thought. This desire is undeniably strong in us as youths, especially during our teen years when we feel like freaks anyway. We want our freakdom to mean something. We want it to make us not just different, but special, important, unique.

If the baby boomers out there are honest, I think that the desire to be extraordinary only gets stronger as we get older. We never REALLY outgrow our teenage insecurities, we just learn to dress them up. We look better in the newest runway fashions (even if most are incredibly uncomfortable). We feel cooler with the big-screen plasma TV (even though we don’t have time to watch it). We look successful in the newest SUV (even though filling up the tank empties our wallet). Somehow all these accoutrements make up for what we feel we lack.

So it’s no wonder that a movie like Avatar would reach $1 billion in world-wide revenue in less than 3 weeks. Jake Scully is a paraplegic soldier who is literally changed in everyway when his mind is put inside the body of a genetically-altered human-alien hybrid. He even refers to himself as being re-born. He looks like one of the Na’vi natives. He breathes their noxious air. Over the course of the film, he learns to be like them, talk like them, he even submits to their cultural training, all in the pursuit of completing the mission given to him by his superior.

Essentially, he has to be made like his “brothers” in every way so that he could become their leader in service to his commander. Sound like Somebody else we know? Jesus became the high priest, Jake the multi-tribe chieftain, the only Na’vi in generations to ride the dragon-like leonopteryx.

But Jake is a flawed savior, ready to sell out his new people to regain the use of his real legs. But so was Nathan Algren, the Tom Cruise character from The Last Samurai, who was willing to assist in the slaughter of thousands of Japanese villagers for a cushy retirement fund and alcoholic oblivion. And John Dunbar, Kevin Costner’s character from Dances with Wolves, whose suicide is mistaken for heroism catapulting him to the edge of the civilized world and into Native American arms. We LOVE these movies because they call to us as flawed examples of humanity, and reach out to us at a subliminal level to remind us that we too can be heroes, just like Jesus.

Unfortunately, we have more in common with Jake, John, and Nathan than we do with Jesus as we lost our opportunity to be perfect saviors at birth. We can, however, like these three champions, change the mark we make on the world of men. Jake became a Na’vi, John a Souix Indian, Nathan a samurai. They truly gave up who they were to become all things to their adopted people.

We, however, have one advantage over Jake, John, and Nathan. We are not soldiers in a man-made army. Our “general” has not sent us into battle for the rewards of money, real estate, or power. Our “spoils of war” are much more valuable--the purification of other broken men…just like ourselves.

Heroes all, in the making.

Mr. Jekyll and Mrs. Hyde

2009-12-29T23:26:00.003-05:00

It’s amazing the ferocity of a mother’s protective instinct. Hunters know the last place they want to be caught is between a momma bear and her cub. On the reverse, a human mother in Quebec actually fought off a full-sized polar bear to protect her three children. I must admit to rising to the size of a grizzly bear (in my own mind, anyway) in a Toys R Us when a man glared at my autistic son (who was in the middle of one of his throw-down moods) with that look in his eyes and asked me, “What's wrong with him?”

Oh, yes. The maternal instincts are fierce.

When I took my three-year-old son to his first safety swimming lesson, I had to sit on my hands for ten agonizing minutes as the instructor let my baby drop under the water again and again as she trained him how to surface and grab the edge of the pool. I knew that this was good for him, that it might in fact save him from drowning some day, but man, that first lesson was as painful as ripping off an acrylic nail. Especially when my little buddy kept screaming “Mommmyyyyy!” and coming out of the water again and again looking at me like some beastly traitor.

My baby’s twelve now and I have two girls (six years and nine years) and while I’ve learned over and over that “hurting” them is often mandatory for helping them, it really doesn’t get much easier. The ole protective instincts always kick in like a knife in the ribs.

I’d like to say I’m the model of patience with my children. I’d like to say I never yell at them. I’d like to say I always respond correctly to their every misdeed. I’d also like a say I invented the Internet. I’m sure my husband would like to say the same about himself. But for all our noble intentions of divine parenting, we can be so pitifully human.

Yet God is just the opposite. He responds perfectly to our rebellion. He parries our pride with flawless humility. He foils our foolishness with transcendent wisdom. His disapproving eyes are neither too soft nor too stern. His rebuking voice carries both authority and tenderness. His rod of discipline strikes with just the right amount of force to leave its impression upon our spiritual bottoms. He is, essentially, both mother and father (Isaiah 66:13, Hebrews 12:7-10).

So how can we live up to such a superior example? Ah, but you see, the First Dad took care of that as well. It’s called “parents”. With an “s”.

If you’re blessed enough to be able to live within a two-parent marriage, you’re already well-equipped. If, that is, you’re prepared to recognize and be flexible enough to play both “roles” of parent. In the movies, these roles can be akin to the good cop/bad cop partnership. One person plays the heavy hand, the other the gentle reassurer.

I recently recognized that my husband and I swing between these two roles like a pendulum, which isn’t surprising because like most couples we are as opposite as the North and South Poles. (If you have the extra challenge of being a single-parent, you’re going to have to work hard to play both roles--a healthy version of a multiple personality disorder.)

What I discovered was that when my husband reacts strongly to our children’s disobedience, I find myself being the mollifier. Desperate HouseMommy, I ain’t. I try not to ever usurp his authority or challenge it in front of the kids. In fact, I work very hard to support his discipline. But I also work to make sure the bridge of love and communication is restored between my husband and the admonished child. Doghouses are for dogs.

When I’m the Big Kahuna reacting to disobedience, my husband doesn’t challenge it. He is supportive as well, but then he is the one who steps in to smooth the path for my children and I to be reunited. It all happens instinctively.

Or so I thought.

And then I remembered that God designed us. He designed marriage and parenting. He put a small part of himself inside us all. But then, to be sure that we didn’t rely on ourselves--as I’m sure none of us ever would--he split his strengths between us so we had to work together as a team. Like Starsky and Hutch. Like Holmes and Watson. Like Jekyll and Hyde. And sometimes, yes, even like Abbott and Costello.

It’s brilliant. It’s perfect. It’s divine. Is there any wonder why it works?

The Exorcism of Mrs. Scrooge

2009-12-22T08:59:00.006-05:00

I hate the week before Christmas.

The stores are a zoo. The streets are a quagmire of traffic. You can’t even buy a carton of eggs at Publix without having to stand line for thirty minutes. I kick myself AGAIN for not getting my Christmas shopping done before Thanksgiving. To make matters worse, people I call my friends are giving me boxes of candy and cookies to sabotage my self-control.

I might actually have some Christmas spirit if I knew I wouldn’t have to be up until 3am Christmas Eve still wrapping presents. Especially when I know my kids are going to wrestling me out of bed at 6am on Christmas morning just to watch them shred all the work I did only hours before.

Wow, I really sounded like Mrs. Scrooge there for a second.

Yes, the holidays can be…challenging. Parties, school recitals, family visits, the kids on break from school for two LOONGGG weeks, and the regular visitation of the common cold, all contribute to the Christmas Chaos that can be December.

One of my biggest challenges is finding new hiding places in my house to store my kids Christmas gifts before or after they’ve been wrapped. I made the mistake last year of putting a few wrapped presents under the tree from “Santa” before Christmas Eve and had to do some quick thinking to explain it to my five- and seven-year-old daughters.

A smart parent though learns to have EVERYTHING ready for the kids to play BEFORE Christmas morning. Batteries are installed, bikes are assembled, and all those infuriating wire twist-ties and reams of packing tape are removed to let the toys pop right out of their plastic cases like Mexican Jumping Beans.

When you’re kids hit the age of acquiring serious electronics for Christmas gifts though, being prepared for THE morning is akin to planning for a presidential visit. What parent wants to have their kid hanging over their shoulder Christmas morning going, “Are you done yet? When’s it going to be ready? This is taking forever!” I’m sure even Mother Theresa--had she born children--couldn’t prevent the ghost of Momma Scrooge from possessing her body and soul then.

This year we got my oldest daughter an Ipod Shuffle (at $55 from Walmart, they’re a steal compared to most other electronics up for grabs this holiday). And like a smart parent, I’m getting prepared--I updated the Itunes software of my daughters’ computer (version 9.02.03 to the 10th power), completed the product registration and activation (no, you can’t give away my email address to your partner companies who want to spam me to death with Viagra), and got her favorite music downloaded and her playlists all ready (how many times do I have to listen to the Chipmunks soundtrack?).

And while my kids slept and dreamed of sugar cookies rather than sugarplums, and I was up waiting for the eternal download of the Itunes update, I started thinking--does God prepare this far ahead for us when he’s planning on giving us special things? What is he doing while we’re sleeping, or working, or doing the laundry to give us the desires of our heart? Or better, to give us the things we were never expecting.

For the things that we never would have dreamed up, those are really the best gifts of all--a job that not only pays more than the one we lost, but offers better benefits and hours. A neighbor offering to help fix our car when the local garage said they’d do it for the cost of our monthly mortgage or rent. An estranged friend or loved one coming to terms with their past and seeking us out to say “I’m sorry.” Our teen child choosing to spend time with us rather than their friends. A friend cooking and dropping off dinner for our family “just because”. A sister or brother offering to watch our kids so we can have a real, live date with our spouse.

I think God does scheme and plan our “Christmas gifts” way far in advance because he too likes seeing the joy we get from them. As a good parent, he has the insight to see just when we’re going to need something that we never anticipated or fathomed might be necessary. And voila, there it is, wrapped up with a bright red bow.

This week as you’re planning to make your kids’ Christmas day special, think about everyday that God has made yours. As you’re wrapping your kids’ presents, think about the perfect way God has offered his gifts to you. When you’re watching the wonder and joy in your children’s eyes as they rip back the colorful paper, think about God’s loving gaze on you. And when your little ones throw their arms around you in gratitude for something that, in the grand scheme of things, is really so very small, open your arms to your Father for the huge gifts that he has given you every single day of your life.

Merry Christmas!

The Great Chicken-Egg Debate

2009-12-17T23:18:00.002-05:00

Which came first, the chicken or the ed?

Y’ caught me. I meant “egg”, of course.

So which did come first? It’s a basic Philosophy 101 question, and one designed to stump people, to stop them in their transcendental tracks.

The theoretical question is so popular that it’s not surprising that someone would eventually try to make a buck out of it and who better to do that than Disney? In order to promote their 2006 release of Chicken Little on DVD, Disney organized a three-man team--a geneticist, a philosopher, and a chicken farmer--to discover the answer. (I’m not kidding.) And no, I’m not going to tell you their conclusion until the end of this entry.

What about this question--can God make a rock so big that he can’t lift it? Do you have any idea how many different websites actually try to answer this question? It’s absurd.

How about this one--which wing of the airplane would you rather not have? Duh. This one gives us a better clue that the problem with many of these unanswerable questions is not the answer, it’s the question.

I have a confession: I’m a hopeless romantic with a weakness for chivalry. There’s a fantasy series I catch on Netflix (Legend of the Seeker) that meets both of those qualifications. Based on Terry Goodkind’s, Wizard’s First Rule, the story involves The Seeker, a young man whose purpose--in the novel more than the TV series--is to seek the Truth in all its varying complexities. More often than not, his veridical pursuits cost him something but he isn’t seeking the truth for convenience or because it makes things easy, he’s seeking it quite simply because it is The Truth. And truth hurts sometimes.

The Samaritan Woman in John understood the dual pain/peace experience that often accompanies the truth. In her initial meeting with Jesus, her questions and suppositions weren’t just out of left field, they were all over the park and bouncing off the bleachers. Like the rest of us, she was just trying to look like she knew what the heck she was talking about. Jesus cleared the smoke when he told her the truth was all that mattered, and the woman embraced it.

On the other end of his ministry, and with a completely opposite response to the truth was Pilate. When Jesus challenged the governor that anyone who pursued the truth would see him for who he was, Pilate took the other fork in the road, the classic I-don’t-want-to-know response--“What is truth?” He might as well have joined Descartes in asking, “Do I think, therefore I am” or “I am, therefore I think”?

So why do we love to throw out those types of questions? Why do we love to chase our tales with controversy? I scanned a dozen articles in my research of this topic and I came away more confused then when I started. All those $10 words make writers sound intelligent and readers feel stupid.

Why do we do it? Simple--deflection. Sorry, let me dumb that down. We don’t like the truth. The truth exposes us. It forces us to make a choice. I don’t want to face the truth of the bathroom scale after the Thanksgiving holidays because there are still leftovers in the frig I want to enjoy. So I deflect and neglect to do my habitual scale-treading. If I don’t see the extra pounds the pecan pie added to my hips, then I can pretend they’re not there. I can deflect and neglect to go to the gym after work because, ah, shucks, I forgot my workout clothes.

It’s like those Chik-Fil-A cows, the ones who are always advertising how wonderful chicken is so they can keep their own flabby beef flanks intact. Let’s just cast the attention elsewhere so we don’t have to face the music.

It makes me all the more grateful that I didn’t live during the ages when the Bible was written. Our ancestors tried to deflect all over the place inventing ways to violate the Ten Commandments but were exposed and called on the carpet again and again by prophets or God himself. And with the Bible being the all-time bestseller in history, EVERYBODY still knows about it. Talk about getting your nose rubbed in it.

It makes me look at myself more closely and consider--what kind of questions do I ask others? What kind of questions do I lay before God? What do those questions say about me, about my love for the truth? When my husband points out my lack of patience with my mother, do I deflect? Do I throw it back at him so I don’t have to face the painful-then-peaceful truth? When my kids point out that I just had my fifth Christmas cookie of the batch, do I question their motives? (They did only get four cookies themselves.)

Why do we feel such pressure to twist the questions to make them work to our advantage? I’m sure if the Chik-Fil-A cows approached the hens in the Chik-Fil-A farms with the age old Chicken-Egg Dilemma, you gotta wonder what how the chickens would respond. Maybe, who got ate first, the chicken or the egg?

By the way, the answer that the Disney-funded “research team” came to of the original question was (drumroll)--the egg. I guess none of them ever read the original version of what happened on The Fifth Day.

The Jello Dilemma

2009-12-10T22:11:00.004-05:00

What would the world be like if I never existed?

That was George Bailey’s Christmas gift from Frank Capra’s enduring classic “It’s a Wonderful Life”, a movie I traditionally watch every year during the holidays, and every year I bawl my eyes out when George is standing there in his living room at the end of the film surrounded by all the people in his life that he’s impacted and his brother Harry the War Hero strides in, lifts a glass, and toasts, “To my big brother George, the richest man in town.”

Sob!

Okay, I’m better now. But I can’t begin to imagine a world in which I didn’t exist. Not because I think I’m so incomparably important, but because quite frankly, I’m not that imaginative. I mean who can really get their head around such a concept?

Sometimes I think the world is like a huge vat of Jello and we’re all just fruit floating around in it. A banana here, a strawberry there. If you pulled out a single piece of fruit from that vast pool, the rest of the goo would simply ooze in to fill the empty space with nary an air bubble as proof to the fancy fruit’s existence.

Now while some of us may be a bit fruit-y, I think our existence has a little more significance than an apple or a grape. And while I can’t really imagine the world without me here, I can begin to imagine what the world would be like if I had changed one major decision in my life.

For example, if I’d opted to go to University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill on a soccer scholarship, I never would have ended up a Journalism major at Broward Community College (BCC) in Ft. Lauderdale. If I had never ended up at BCC and later the University of Florida, I might never have become a writer.

Moreover, I’d never have met Ron, a friend who first invited me to church and through which I became a Christian. If I hadn’t been in the church at the time, I never would have met my husband. If I hadn’t met and married my husband, I wouldn’t have my children, live where I live, work where I work, etc., etc. And I’d never have started this blog, so you wouldn’t even be reading this. (Think of the tragedy!)

All of this turned on a single decision of where I would go to college. The possibilities or lack thereof spider away from me like cracks in a broken glass.

Either way, I would probably have had a completely different life, possibly as Steven Spielberg’s personal assistant, an Olympic speed skating medalist, a hula-dance instructor, or a sky diver.

Not on your life.

Which brings me to today. While I don’t want to hesitant making decisions for fear of future repercussions, i.e., becoming frozen fruit in the blob, I think a thoughtful pause--with lots of advice from friends and family--is vital before making any important or weighty decisions. “A wise man seeks advice.”

Which job should I take? Should I move? Should I pursue a relationship with this person? Are they good for me? Of course, a helicopter could drop out of the sky on top of your house while you’re sitting at your desk pondering your plethora of choices, making any decision that you might have otherwise made null and void. But we won’t hold our breath on that.

Bottom line, whether we want to see it or not, our decisions have weight. The advantage to being single with your choice options is that most of the time, the only person immediately or markedly affected is you. If you’re married, you and your spouse feel the weight. If you have a brood, well then it affects the whole tribe. And there is NOTHING worse than your decisions making everyone in the family miserable (see Steve Martin’s Cheaper by the Dozen).

So what if I had gone to college in North Carolina? I’d be a Tarheel. Oh, the shame.

If I had stayed in North Carolina, I’d have left sunny Florida for winter snow. Brrrrrrrrrr. I don’t think so.

If I had married someone from North Carolina, it would be just my luck that he would play ice hockey, which would mean raising kids who wanted to play ice hockey, which would mean me standing in an ice cold rink hours a week--numb Florida hands and numb Florida feet--supporting my husband and/or kids like a good wife and mother should.

Go Gators!

A Hundred Rabbits Out of a Hat

2009-12-06T19:50:00.002-05:00

Mankind is pretty impressive. The things that we have created in just the last 500 years, to say nothing of the first 5,000+.

From horse power to horsepower, from printing press to e-books, from air balloons to Ares rockets, from daguerreotype to digital photography, from Robbie the Robot to nanotechnology, from the great library of Alexandria to the electronic library you can fit on a three-inch stick. To say nothing of architecture (Stonehenge to the Atomium, see right), art (cave drawings to the Sistine Chapel), music (water organs to full orchestral electronic keyboards), and dance (Egyptian rain dance to Broadway’s Lion King).

One thing you can say--yes, we certainly take after Our Father.

But truth be told, we are amoeba bumbling around in a petri dish compared to the original creator.

In the December 7th issue of Time Magazine, there was an article about 17,000 new species of underwater sea creatures recently discovered. Yes, that’s right--17,000. Everything from a small sea cucumber to a six-foot octopod with earflaps that earned it the name “Dumbo”. There’s actually about 10,000 new species discovered every year so in 2009 we’re really on a roll.

Now while on some continents there seems to be a full-blown race to see who can kill OFF the most species of wildlife on any given day, i.e, the rainforest massacres, the Creator keeps pulling not just one new kind of rabbit out of his hat (i.e., the striped Annamite rabbit discovered in Laos in 1999) but thousands of rabbits…and lizards…and insects…and plants.

Now while admittedly the newly discovered fanged frog of the Mekong River has next to zero significant impact on my daily life, it does make me think.

Keep up with me here: Scientists think we’ve only discovered 10% of all life on earth or about two million organisms. Heck, that’s the population of Orlando in December including all the snowbirds (another species unto themselves). Scientists actually think a more accurate number may about 100 million. Each of these species has some thing or some many things that makes them completely unique. And the grand sculptor made them ALL.

How long did it take him to fashion the Duck-Billed Platypus, a mammal so bizarre that when discovered, some thought it an elaborate fraud? Or the Blobfish, a muscle-less gelatinous mass that floats inches from the ocean floor? Or the Proboscis Monkey, a sure-fire ancestor of Jimmy Durante? Or the Aye Aye, the world’s largest nocturnal primate that resembles a cross between a gremlin and a fetal alien? How long did he ponder such creatures? How long did he take to piece together their peculiar DNA? (Well, since the creator exists outside of time and space, I don’t think he set a stopwatch for himself.)

I know how long it takes me to work on a single blog entry or a short story or--heaven help me--a novel. And yet even the tiniest microscopic creature is vastly more complicated than any piece of literature that, say William Shakespeare, created. And I--a human being--am vastly more complicated than either a protozoa or a play (although I think I’m easier to read than Hamlet). So how special does that make me? And you? And you?

Scientists think that there have been roughly 100 billion people that have lived on our planet since, well, since there were people. So when someone says you are ”one in a million”, they’re really way, way off. You’re infinitely more special than that.

So whenever you get down on yourself, whenever you bounce a check, forget to pick the kids up from school, or back into a light pole, i.e, whenever you think you’re a complete idiot. Whenever others question your intelligence--your high school math teacher, your boss, the guy behind you in the grocery line. When even the ones you love--and those who are supposed to love you--think you have completely lost it.

Remember there is someone that understands you completely. He understands you purely and simply because he made you. Every last cell.

Thank (you) God.

Some cool websites:
Top Ten Architecture Marvels of the World - http://tiny.cc/topten113
162 new species of animals found in SE Asia, http://tiny.cc/species641.
350 species found in the Himalayas alone, http://tiny.cc/himalaya
25 Strangest Creatures, http://www.divaboo.info/

HIM

2009-12-01T22:41:00.003-05:00

Have you ever had the notion that you left the stove burner on or the water running in the tub? What about that pestering sensation that you forgot something but you can’t quite figure out what it is? Have you ever felt like you completely missed some important meeting or engagement? Sure you have, who hasn’t?

We go about our lives--work, family, activities, commitments, obligations, appointments, hanging out with friends, sporting events, school, entertainment--expecting to find fulfillment in this plethora of activities. Adventures with Heroes, romance in The Ugly Truth, escape while the Saints trounce the Pats, and humor in (what else?) The Last Symbol, or we can just spend an evening with the family and get it all.

And if we’re honest, these things DO feel good most of the time.

But have you ever had that nagging feeling in the pit of your stomach--usually it comes late at night when the kids have FINALLY fallen into blissful sleep and all is quiet, when your busy brain slows to a crawl, when you have nowhere to be and no appointments to keep--when you feel like you forgot something that day, that there’s something you still have to do. You turn on the TV hoping to feed the need with the latest episode of, well, you name it. You check your cellphone for messages. After waiting for your not-so-fast DSL to fire up, you check your Facebook page and your various email accounts thinking surely one of these activities will still that growing itch.

Sometimes those things keep you busy for a little longer, keep that nagging at bay, but then right before you crawl into bed--when you’re flossing your teeth, or checking the house to make sure someone didn’t leave the garage door standing wide open--the aching turns to a craving. You remember the last piece of Dutch Apple Pie in the frig and think maybe a late night stack will help. But no, this feeling is deeper, beyond food. Even beyond the accompanying scoop of vanilla ice cream.

But you…can’t…quite…put…your…finger…on…it.

And then you do. Or maybe you don’t.

I do. I remember that I didn’t spend time with the most important “person” in my life that day.

Yes, Him.

So I open my Bible, I take in his words, I talk with him, maybe I journal a bit.

The ache subsides, the gnawing ceases. I’m…full. And not with apple pie a la mode.

Let’s hope I remember to eat what really fills me up tomorrow. Breakfast is so much better with good company.

Just for Fun

2009-11-28T22:01:00.001-05:00

Okay, there are some things we do JUST for fun. This video came out just before Thanksgiving. If you don't know who the Muppets are, you'll still like it. If you grew up during the Muppets era as I did, it'll make you love Jim Henson all the more. Ladies and gentleman, may I present,

"The Bohemian Rhapsody"

Muppet-Style

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcEpdxsWZLA

“If Momma Ain’t Happy…”

2009-11-27T10:56:00.000-05:00

There are major advantages in parenting a special needs child: First, you have a ready-made excuse to beg off parties you really don’t want to go to anyway. Not that we ever did that. Second, with a little cajoling--and a lot of paperwork--the government is more than willing to pay for their medical expenses pretty much for life. And third, you find out that the behavior therapy that is supposed to help your 5’6” 130-pound autistic twelve-year-old to not freak out in the middle of Wal-Mart really isn’t for him at all. It’s for you--the parent.

The Meyer Syndrome

Before I move on here, I have a confession to make--I’m a Twilight fan. Yes, I know it’s pathetic that a 46-year-old businesswoman and mother of three would actually like such bizarre material, but hey, it’s escapist. If you happen to also be a follower of the Edward-Bella-Jacob trauma--pardon me--drama, you may remember another character by the name of Jasper who has the supernatural ability to change the emotion in a room whether there’s one person in it or hundreds. Now, let me tell you, as a parent of a special needs child, there is little I wouldn’t give for such a gift.

So it was a very pleasant but sobering surprise to learn that I already have that miraculous ability--sans the whole vampire thing.

Why Can’t You Control Your Kid?

There’s something called Behavior Therapy that many kids with autism need. It’s a type of therapy that helps them learn to function in an acceptable manner especially in public or social settings. That’s where we the parents tend to get the most embarrassed. Sure the meltdowns at home are tough, but it’s their thrashing around on the floor in the middle of the mall that makes people look at YOU with that “why can’t you control your kid?” expression. Some of these social issues our SN kids understand right away. More often than not it takes awhile, maybe even years, before certain things click with them.

What I discovered through the therapy was I was the one who needed the most help. I was the one who tended to lose my temper, I was the one who would bark a reply when I was interrupted, and I was the one who would bellow my frustrations to the rafters. I’m sure you’ve heard the saying that your kids minimize your strengths and maximize your weaknesses. That couldn’t be more true than with a special needs child. So, if my son started to get a little upset about something, I would get upset too, which of course only made him worse. If he raised his voice, I’d raise mine louder, and then we were in a shouting match. If he threw a temper tantrum, it would be a close contest over who would win the Biggest Brat award. So much for the mature parent modeling good behavior.

It’s All About Me
Then, I started to notice that if I changed the timber of my voice when he was freaking out, he would change with it. When I made his frustrations into a game rather than a chore, he followed me. When I hugged him instead of wrestling him to ground, he hugged right back.

Wow, I thought, this behavior therapy works.

It took a little time, but eventually the tantrums in the department stores grew to a minimum. I got fewer calls from his teacher at school. He didn’t attempt to choke his two younger sisters quite as often. All because I changed.

Then I thought: why couldn’t I apply the same principle outside my family? The results were extraordinary.

We Need More Jaspers in the World

I encourage you to try it. Smile at people when you walk into the grocery store. Smile at the clerk when you check out, ask her about her day. You’ll be amazed at her response. Help the vertically-challenged shopper get a can off the top shelf. Although some people may be too shocked to respond in kind to kindness, you'll notice something else--you'll feel happier. You’ll actually find yourself smiling when there’s nobody around.

When you go into work, greet everybody with a cheerful “Good morning!” Do it for a week. Now while some of your co-workers may request to have you drug-tested and your boss may think you're buttering him up for a raise, you’ll be amazed at the change in the office environment. You may actually get a few people smiling at you in return.

Now, try it with your family. Instead of screaming and wrestling to get your kids out of bed in the morning, tickle and kiss them awake. Make their favorite breakfast and wave the plate under their sleepy noses. Tell them how much you love them. Again, do it for a week. You’ll change the whole emotional atmosphere of your house. The old saying really is true, “If Momma ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy.” But it’s up to Momma (or Daddy) to get happy.

Duh!

Yes, I know. You’re thinking, how revolutionary. What amazing parenting advice! What awesome interpersonal insight! But before you get too excited about patting me on the back, I’ll remind you that it took me twelve years to get this. Twelve.

I guess they call that special needs parenting.

The Pot and the Pigeonhole

2009-11-24T10:23:00.001-05:00

Eureka! I’ve discovered it! The secret to all the complexities in the universe regarding male and female wiring.

It’s quite simple really. The theory is called the Pot and the Pigeonhole. And it’s the secret to understanding in the incomprehensible opposite-sex.

Women #101

Okay, guys. First, it’s your turn. Pay attention now. For women, life is one large Pot. Imagine a giant black caldron and your significant female standing beside it stirring. Every single event in her life, major or minor, is an ingredient that either goes into or out of that Pot.

PLOP!

On a routine day, one by one, every episode in her life gets thrown into the pot. First, the multiple challenges that accompany the average weekday morning scramble for work with or without children [plop], the dog or cat needs to be fed [plop], getting out of the door on time [plop], the drive through rush hour traffic [plop], the half-dozen errands before getting to work [plop-plop-plop], and then the typical intense workday [plop…plop…plop].

For most women, this is an average day, the pot is ¾ full and it’s simmering steadily all day long. And that’s good. Simmering is good. It’s functional. It’s handle-able. They come home [plop], fix dinner [plop], help the kids with homework [plop], make sure everyone gets to bed at a decent hour [plop] before emptying, cleaning, and setting their pot in the dish rack overnight.

Toxic Spill

Now, take the not-so-average day. The day you get a frantic call from your female partner and she’s threatening to turn into on-coming traffic on the interstate or hang herself with dental floss. That morning, the alarm didn’t go off on time [PLOP!], everyone else in the house moves like they’re catatonic [PLLLLOOOOOPPPP], the dog threw up on the carpet and the cat missed the litter box [PLOP! PLOP!], she’s 20 minutes late getting out the door [PLOP], there’s a nasty accident on the way to work leaving her playing Kiss the Bumper with the car in front of hers for 15 agonizing minutes [PLOP!], only to arrive at work to realize she didn’t pick up the bagels and doughnuts everyone was expecting for the weekly staff meeting [#*&PLOP%#@!]. Now, not only have the contents of her caldron run over the edges of her pot, but they’re pooling around her ankles on the floor like sewage.

It’s a Guy Thing

Women, now it’s your turn. I’ll explain why given the exact same day, your male partner can waltz through it like Fred Astaire. That’s because he sees everything in life as a series of pigeonholes. Imagine a panel with a series of small boxes where you can fit something small inside. This is how most men see the world. Everything in their life is in a series of little compartments. Most of the time, they only deal with any ONE thing at a time. (That’s why most men can’t cook dinner, help the kids with the homework, and do laundry at the same time. At least not without turning all the whites into pinks.)

For guys, getting ready for work in the morning has its own little compartment. They open that pigeonhole when they get up, mess around in it, and close it up. Then they move on to the next cubicle--say, getting to work. Once they arrive at work, they close that little cubby for the day. Each and every meeting, each and every situation at work has its own little compartment and while there may be a mess in one box, it has absolutely NOTHING to do with another box. So when they are done, they just close it and move on.

The Great Divide
So how do we bridge these two islands? What, oh, what was God thinking when he wired men and women SOOOO completely different? Actually, probably, that we would be a perfect match. Like day and night, hot and cold, yin and yang. Oreos and milk.

My Hero
Guys, how can you be the hero and bring peace to a situation when the females in your life are moping up the muck covering the floor? Easy. First, don’t head for your cave when you come home, not yet anyway. Do yourself a favor and take some of those ingredients out of your female’s pot. Ask them what you can do. Help them get that caldron down to simmer and aid them in keeping it there for a few days and you can pretty much guarantee they’ll be buying you a cape.

Straining Out the Gnats
Gals, if the men in your life can’t grasp how the pile of dirty dishes in the kitchen sink has everything to do with you breaking the heel of your favorite shoes, losing your yoga mat, and forgetting to pick up milk on the way home--it’s okay. Because they can compartmentalize, the men in our life can be like a filter that helps us strain the important from the urgent from the benign. And if we’re honest with ourselves, life really is easier if we can just handle things one at a time like our male companions.

Just don’t ask them to do the laundry.

Disclaimer--I understand that not ALL male-female relationships are like those mentioned above. Some men, like my hubby, do the laundry quite adeptly and with practice learn how to multi-task. I think I’ll keep him.

Zoned Out on the Edge with my Hair on Fire

2009-11-19T23:21:00.001-05:00

If aliens used my roof as a landing pad to invade the earth and I was in my home office writing, there’s a good chance I would completely miss the whole blooming thing.

That’s because when I’m writing a book or directing a play I go to THE Place--MY Place, some call it “The Zone”, and it’s as if Father Time took a coffee break and then forgot to clock back in. It’s not like an out-of-body experience; it’s more like a FULL body experience. I feel more alive and full of energy than if I’d wolfed down a half-dozen power bars and a pot of coffee. I thought I was a little weird in this experience (maybe aliens really had landed and abducted me!) so I was relieved to find out last week that I’m not the only person on the planet that would miss E.T.’s second coming.

YouTube Treasure

I was googling some news sites and stumbled upon a popular YouTube video by Sir Ken Robinson at the 2006 TED conference (www.ted.com), but I’m not going to give you the link to Mr. Robinson’s 20 minute presentation until AFTER you read this because if I tell you where it is now, you’ll go there, look at it, and I’ll never get you back here to finish what I wrote which is sort of the whole reason you’re here in the first place.

When you do watch the video, two things will happen to you--you’ll laugh your head off and you’ll get your mind blown. I was so wowed by the video that I went ahead and purchased Sir Robinson’s book, “The Element” in audiobook. I have already listened through it twice in the last week. It’s transformative. And it helped me to understand that EVERYONE has something that they were born to do. A gift, a talent, a thing. Something that when you are doing it, it’s like every planet in the solar system is in perfect alignment with YOU. Like every sound in the universe is in perfect harmony to a rhythm in your head. It is nothing short of amazing. What’s sad is that most people have never discovered this elemental place inside themselves and most people go their entire lives never having discovered it.

I Make No Money from This

First let me say that I am not trying to sell this book. I wouldn’t get a dime from it if you did buy it. I just loved it. It clicked with me on a sublime level and because I want my friends to experience this same thing--and now I believe that everyone can--I want them to. So, really, I’m not trying to sell anything. (But you would be smart to consider it.)

The Beatles Minus Paul?

Did you know that nobody in Paul McCartney’s life recognized him as having ANY musical talent until after he’d started his own band? Yeah, that band. All the way through college nobody in John Cleese’s life noted that he had any kind of sense of humor. It took Bart Conner walking around the house on his hands for 10 years as a kid before anyone thought of getting him into gymnastics. “The Element” is loaded with dozens of stories of these same kinds of people, some of them well-known, most of them not. But all of them have found their THING that takes them regularly to their Place.

Teachers and Tribes

If you are one of the lucky ones who have discovered your “thing”, you probably had a mentor or a teacher, someone that set your feet on a path that led you to where you are today. If you haven’t found it, the best thing you can do is explore the world around you--go find your tribe. Go mountain climbing, enroll in a drama workshop, take a painting class, join a chess club, or take saxophone lessons. Go where you can be around people doing things you’ve never done before. You never know--you may find the lifelong ambition you didn’t even know you had.

Public Enemy = Public Education?

The scariest thing was Sir Robinson’s proposal that public education is crushing the creativity out of our children and ultimately our future. Does this surprise any of us who are parents or teachers or both? Not likely. We have to bear with our kids enduring the No Kids Left Behind wave that has hit US public education like a tsunami where Math is king, Science is chief, and Language the Lead into creating a competitive workforce for the future. Arts, it seems, has become a four-letter word.

But What Will People Say?

What about you? Have you found your Element, your thing. If you’re not sure, ask yourself this question: If left to my own devices, if I didn’t have to worry about making a living or what others thought about me, what am I the most drawn to doing? Too often we can be afraid to answer that question because we’re afraid to be wrong.

Mr. Robinson loves to say: “If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original.” This stung me as I reluctantly admit I am a flagrant people-pleaser. I HATE being wrong about anything (yes, I know it’s my pride!). It can paralyze me unlike my husband who lets errors run off his back like water off a duck.

My kids on the other hand, aren’t afraid to be wrong. My autistic son actually thinks it’s a hoot to screw things up when he’s playing one of his Wii games. He keeps running those miniature monkeys off the ramps and laughs at them as they scream all the way down to the bottom of the cliff. It’s only as adults that we grow into our fears like a pair of uncomfortable shoes and limp through life thinking this is the way things are supposed to be. I guess, “we must become like little children” applies to more than just making it through the pearly gates.

On the Edge with My Hair on Fire

So, what were you born to do? What makes you feel “alive” when you do it? I know mine. I wish I could do it for a living. God willing that may happen someday. I just have to keep writing and you just have to keep reading my blogs, forwarding them to friends, and some day buy my published works.

So see, I told you, I’m really not trying to sell you anything. Not yet anyway.

You can pre-order your copy of Ken Robinson’s “The Element” from Amazon for $10. It’s available December 29th.

Now you can watch Mr. Robinson’s video: CLICK HERE

Confessions of an Addict

2009-11-16T22:01:00.004-05:00

#1. Okay, I admit it. At first it was all about the money.

The economy was going from bad to worse. I, the family finance keeper, was looking for creative ways to trim our monthly expenses to keep us from having to relocate to a tent under the interstate. The telephone was the first thing to go. I mean, we have cellphones. Who uses landlines anymore?

Next it was all the dining out expenses. McDonalds would just have to survive without us.

I delayed the final cut as long as possible--the Cable TV. I compared different companies to see who could give us a better deal. Nada. I tried making excuses--my autistic 12-year-old son LOVED the bowling tournaments on ESPN. What kind of mother would I be if I took that away from him? My 5- and 7-year-old daughters learned so much from all the educational channels. And I could just record shows they missed on the DVR the cable company provided--no more buying expensive kids DVDs. And how, oh, how on earth, would my hubby and I be able to keep up with American Idol, House, and Bones??

But when it came down to the choice of either eating or paying the cable bill, all the excuses went the way of our cable box.

Admission #2. It really was a little like coming off an addiction for the whole family. We all kinda wandered around the house for a few days with wide staring eyes at a complete loss as to what to do with ourselves. There were several moments we completely forgot--the kids would bound out of bed in the morning and plunk down in front of our 47” flat screen TV only to remember our newly imposed impoverishment when their remoted requests produced only snow.

It took about a month for us to start finding new avenues of entertainment--like talking to each other. The revolutionary concept of reading books. Playing sports outside. We actually played board games--yes, board games, that archaic activity that WE used to play as kids.

One enormous benefit (that deserves its own paragraph) is the time my husband and I actually began to spend in the evenings just talking. It’s like our marriage had been re-born. Sure most of our talk was about the kids and the house and the bills, but some of it was actually about how we were feeling about things that happened that day. (In case any of you wives get any grandiose expectation from your Mars hubbies, please note that my fitness instructor husband spends most of his workdays with women so he’s very connected with his “feminine” side and talking Venusian has become second-nature.)

Admission #3. While we have rid ourselves of the constant IV/TV drip into our home, we’re more electronics-savvy than ever. Especially the kids. DSs, DSis, Wiis and every other sort of gaming acronym have now infiltrated our house. But there’s one advantage to this new arena of entertainment--my husband and I have a greater opportunity and ability to monitor what our kids are spending much of their time playing because WE the adults buy the games.

Admission #4. It’s true. I didn’t give up my viewing habit all together. We got Netflix--or Net-Fix for us junkies--and besides getting “unlimited” DVDs mailed to my door each month for under $10 (take that Direct TV!), I got to instantly watch TV shows and movies on my laptop--in bed, no less--that I never had time to see before (Heroes, Jericho, Legend of the Seeker). And the best part of all--no bleeding commercials!

If there’s one overriding result that stands out most in this experiment we began rather reluctantly, it’s that our house has become a place of peace. Or as peaceful a home as you can have with three young children, a dog, and regularly visiting neighborhood children. We listen to the radio some--a positive music station--but mostly its quiet. And its amazing how addicted you can get to that as well.

It’s been a year now since we went Cable cold turkey. When friends talk about new shows on TV, I’m clueless, but it gives me an opportunity to bring up something meaningful like how things are going at their job, how their marriage is doing, and how their relationships are with their kids.

And while our finances haven’t changed all that much, I admit I have lingered overlong on advertisements for cable television that find their way into my mailbox daily. I stare at the “happy people” on these fliers laughing gaily at something they’re watching. I recall sitting in front of my TV and having a few of those same experiences. But then, I stop and listen to the peace and quiet in my house, I hear my husband and my kids sitting at the kitchen table playing Go Fish, and I toss the advertisement into the garbage along with the other junk mail. Ah, who needs it?

If you’ve had to go the way of Cable TV denial, I’d love to hear your story!