Americas Next Top Mommy

Why I Won't Be Sending Christmas Cards This Year

noreply@blogger.com (America's Next Top Mommy) — Sat, 06 Dec 2014 17:03:00 +0000

Well, here it is...the 6th of December and I've yet to order Christmas cards. As a matter of fact, I have yet to even take a picture for our family cards. I'm doing the math in my head. If I manage to get through the necessary steps to get them taken, ordered, received and mailed, I might get them out somewhere around 2015!

I love getting cards. I especially love getting the picture kind and seeing how families are growing but if I'm honest, I find Christmas cards to be kind of impersonal. Most people make a list, print out labels, stuff them and put them in the mail. I know I do! Cards become more about something to check off my list rather than something personal. I know this because I sent one to my chiropractor last year. I love the guy but c'mon.

I never know what to do with the cards either. Once I open them and enjoy them, I hang them up for display until after the holidays but then I always hate tossing them out. I usually keep them for at least a year because I just can't bear the thought of someone spending time and money to send them just for me to throw them in the garbage.

The idea of a Christmas card (for me) is to send holiday greetings to family and friends, to connect with people that I may not have seen much of in the past year. And so, in the spirit of this, I am going to do something a little wacky, a little crazy, a little old fashioned.

I'm going to make a list of all of the people to whom I'd send a card and I'm going to pick up the phone and CALL THEM.

Each and every one. Well, maybe not my chiropractor.

This is mainly because I'm terrible at picking up the phone during the year. Introverts don't tend to enjoy phone calls much. We prefer text messages. And the slow, non-invasive socialization to be had via pony express.

But this year I will take some medication and dive deep into some small talk that I will undoubtedly twist and knead and mold into large talk. Be prepared to tell me about the dreams you've yet to fulfill and how you want to do that in 2015.

I will say, "Hello there! Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! Tell me what's going on in your life!" I'm betting that I will be much more fulfilled for having spent some time to reach out to the people I love and I'm also betting that people will appreciate the call.

I want to hear their voices. I want to hear their laughter. I want to tell them that I love them. If I could, I'd try to see them all face to face but I know that's not possible. A phone call will do just fine.

So, if you know me personally, you can expect your phone call at any moment. I've got quite the list! I look forward to hearing your funny stories and telling you all about our shenanigans. I think next year I may get my picture taken in October! And then maybe I can send a card AND give a call as well!

How about you? Do you love Christmas cards? Do you send any?

Wanderer Come Home

noreply@blogger.com (America's Next Top Mommy) — Wed, 03 Dec 2014 11:00:00 +0000

My mother-in-law started losing her sight when she was a child. By the time she was in her 30's the world went completely dark. She's now 65 years old and is pretty adept at being blind. She's done amazing things. She ran a business on her own, she raised a son. She's amazing but still, there are challenges to being blind.

Not long ago, she went outside to take out her garbage. The dumpster is a short walk from her front door across a parking lot, a walk that she's taken countless times. This walk takes less than 30 seconds to complete but on this particular day, she got lost.

Somehow she got twisted around, confused and no matter how hard she tried, she couldn't get her bearings. She ended up wandering around outside for quite a while until someone saw her standing lost in the parking lot, mere steps from the door to her building. They rescued her and led her inside.

"It felt like I was miles from home," she later remarked. She was lost but she was still so close to home. She'd not gone far enough to be irrevocably astray.

I thought of this, later, as I pondered how often I get astray from God. There are days when I feel like I've wandered miles- no... light years away from him. It feels like I'm lost, like I can't get my bearings, like I'm too far from home to even think about going back. It's like one minute I'm right there next to him and then I blink and I feel so far away and I don't even know where to start to make my way home. Before I know it I'm standing alone in the dark, waving my hands and tapping my cane around the pavement.

But the truth is, I cannot ever wander too far. Just like my mother-in-law was just out of reach of her front door, what may feel like a deep abyssal space between me and God is merely a breath away. It takes such a short distance to walk back, sometimes not even that. Most times it simply takes a bow of my head and there I am, back at the steps that lead to the throne.

There is lyric from a Crowder song that goes like this:

Oh wanderer come home
You’re not too far
So lay down your hurt
Lay down your heart
Come as you are

I still get lost on my way to places I've been a thousand times. I'm drawn to familiar, yet treacherous roads and I detour frequently. I'm a wanderer. I'm almost always feel like I'm going in circles but I suppose so long as I'm striving to get back on track, I'm on the right track. There is comfort in knowing that no matter how far I wander, I'm never out of reach and no matter how many times I get lost, I will always be welcomed back.

There’s hope for the hopeless
And all those who’ve strayed
Come sit at the table
Come taste the grace
There’s rest for the weary
Rest that endures
Earth has no sorrow
That heaven can’t cure

A Recipe For Happiness

noreply@blogger.com (America's Next Top Mommy) — Tue, 02 Dec 2014 15:00:00 +0000

Thanksgiving was awesome. The days that have followed...not so much. I hit a hellish trifecta. I got a cold, my period and the anniversary of my mom's death all in the same week. It's like the universe cornered me in the school yard and has been giving me wedgies for five straight days.

It's been unnecessarily cruel.

Also, I'm a terrible sick person. I'm strong for like, oh, two days and after that I become absolutely certain that death is imminent. I know, this is terrible. I recently read this tumblr about a man who recently passed away after a courageous battle with brain cancer. He did it with grace and without fear or complaining. I read this while I was cuddled in bed sneezing out the contents of my sinus cavity. And suddenly, I felt like a real schmuck.

I mean, where do I get off complaining about my head ache when he graciously walked through BRAIN CANCER!

Still, I often wonder if berating myself for feeling pain or needing support is the opposite of loving myself. Sure, going down a spiral of self-pity does me no good but also, bullying myself by saying, "Get over it and put on your big girl panties", doesn't exactly do me any good either.

I'm far too hard on myself. Sometimes I see myself in the mirror and think, "What are you looking at!?" I'm trying really hard to look at myself and smile and say, "I love you THIS much!" as I stretch out my arms as far as they'll go. I am trying to wink at myself, to be happy to see me. This is tough to do when my eyes are swollen shut and my uterus is punching me from the inside and my heart hurts.

The world is a harsh place. It's filled with terrible people or awesome people who are broken and will hurt us and it's important to be able to love myself completely, unconditionally. That unconditional love comes from the inside out. I don't think it's possible to love someone else unconditionally until we love ourselves that way. Anything short of unconditional self-love breeds expectations of others, expectations that they can fulfill us or make us happy or worse- that they SHOULD. How can we be kind to others if we can't be kind to ourselves? How can we forgive others if we can't forgive ourselves? How can we be gentle with others, empathetic of their pain, if we can't do that for ourselves?

Nobody will make me happy. I alone can choose to be happy. Anything more is just icing on the cake, excess happiness. For those of you who don't know how to be happy, here's a tip. Happiness is the side effect of gratitude. So the recipe for happiness is this:

Happiness Cake
Ingr: gratitude, prayer

Preheat your oven at 350 degrees. Place gratitude into a large bowl. Mix in all of the things that are going well in your life. Every cake is different. Some have blessed morsels of home, family and friends, others of health, love and good fortune). Put everything that isn't going well down the garbage disposal. Add a prayer of thanks (said out loud) and mix until smooth. Bake until golden brown. Eat a slice every chance you get.

So, my eyes are puffy and instead of telling myself that I look terrible, I'm going to say, "You poor thing. Go and get a cup of tea and take a nap." My hair is in desperate need of a cut. It's riddled with split ends. And instead of saying, "You shouldn't be spending money on yourself", I'm going to say, "It's okay to take care of yourself. You're important and necessary and worth it." Instead of calling myself "bloated", I'm going to say, "You are absolutely beautiful." Instead of saying, "It's been seven years that your moms been gone, it's time to move on!" I'm going to say, "It's okay to cry. It's okay to call your cousin Alyne and let her regale you with all the crazy stories she remembers about good ol' Jinken Bells (my mom's nickname) and laugh and then cry some more.

Chances are I will become far less whiny if I'm loving myself, if I feast on gratitude and I am bursting at the seams with happiness, if I allow myself to writhe on the bed with cramps and to let my husband bring me soup and rub my back and cry a little bit in the shower and think about what this Christmas might have looked like if mom was here. What would I buy her? What crazy, useless, and ridiculous present would she buy me?

She once bought me a gaudy statue of a bird with outstretched, bedazzled wings. It was hysterically terrible. I still have it in my basement. This year she'd have most likely bought me a gift certificate for a mammogram as a throwback to that one Christmas when I got an envelope with a certificate for Gerber Life Insurance.

The kids would get gifts that were wrapped in taped paper, inside a taped box, inside of a double taped cardboard shell wrapped in triple taped wrapping paper. It always took forty minutes to open a present from Nora.

Our advent calendar says that today we should wrap presents together. Today I'm going to wrap up the gifts of gratitude and loving myself. I'm going to carefully tuck in the folds, lovingly tape it together and gift them to myself every single morning.

Comparison Is The Opposite Of Thanksgiving

noreply@blogger.com (America's Next Top Mommy) — Wed, 19 Nov 2014 12:34:00 +0000

Not long ago (and against my better judgment) I took my kids to an arcade. I'm not keen on these kinds of places. To me they are a little too much like a childhood casino. You are going to lose your money. Sure, you may have a little fun in the process but ultimately, those machines are rigged against you and the odds of winning are astronomical.

We may as well go out to the backyard and roast some smores over a fire made from dollar bills. We might save a little money that way.

So we go and the kids are having a wonderful time. I played several rounds of air hockey, my all time favorite game evah! I consider it my sport. If they had it in the Olympics I might consider a career in it.

The place we went to has games that spit out tickets based on how well you played. The idea is that you can collect the tickets and at the end of your visit, you can trade them in for things. Of course, to win a tootsie roll you need like 50 tickets. A pencil is 100 tickets. As far as I can tell, this system is in place for two reasons:

1) To give parents and children the allusion that they didn't just get robbed blind. When people leave empty handed they tend to feel that way but stuff those hands with jolly ranchers and something magical seems to happen and all seems right with the world.

2) To torture parents, who have already been waiting patiently for several hours while their child plays games, into having to now stand in a long line of children crowded around a glass case. These children are taking approximately forty hours to decide if they want a rubber ball or some rock candy.

When all the money was gone and it was time to go, the kids came running to me with their wads of tickets. My son was first. His cup was overflowing with tickets and his face was lit up like the Griswold family Christmas house. "I got this many!! Look!! I got SOOOOO many tickets!"

He cradled his tickets like a baby and then started feeding them into the counter. He had well over 200. Meanwhile, his older sister had already been to the feeder with her reams of tickets and was standing in line at the glass counter.

When my son got his ticket with the number "209" printed on it, he hurriedly ran over to his older sister with the intention of bragging. But before he had a chance to say anything she turned and said, "Look! I got over 410 tickets!!"

His face dropped. The light drained from his eyes and tears started to well up in the corners of them. He threw his little piece of paper with the 209 on it to the ground and stormed off, wailing like someone had cut off one of his arms.

I let him cool down for a bit and then consoled him. He had been so happy about what he had, about standing at the counter to use his 209 but that was immediately taken away when he realized someone had more than him.

As I sat with my arm around him, trying to use the circumstances as a learning opportunity, it dawned on me that while the whole situation seemed very childish and immature, this happens to grown ups all the time.

I so often have my joy stolen when I look around and see that someone else has more than me. And while I'm better now at being happy with what I have, I still struggle with these feelings when I look around and someone around me seems to be doing better than me.

If I see someone who looks to me like they are doing a better job parenting, it steals some of my joy. If someone has more friends or is a better writer or has a cleaner house or a better sense of humor or is kinder or whatever, I look inward and say to myself, "What I have is not enough."

I count out my blessings and then look at the person next to me and make comparisons.

While this may be human nature, nothing good comes of it. Mark Twain said, "Comparison is the death of joy." For when we look and see someone else's blessings, we suddenly have no appreciation of our own.

Gratitude is where it's at, my friends. A great scripture about this is this: “Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.” Did you catch that? Give thanks in all circumstances.

There have been so many times that life has been unfair to me and I'm sure you've experienced the same. It's part of being alive. But being thankful for what we have always seems to take the edge off, somehow makes our hearts fill up instead of empty out. One way I look at it is that when all is said and done, we will have nothing except for God and we all have an equal part of him. He invites us all, includes us all, welcomes us all. And nothing can take him away from me and with that I find some contentment.

Naturally this didn't feel comforting for my son. It doesn't always feel comforting to me either, that God is with me. Somehow I still feel cheated out of my stuff but seeing things this way requires practice and seeing as how this is the season of Thanksgiving, I'm trying to practice as much as possible so that it becomes second nature, so that I will never lose my joy, so that for me, Thanksgiving doesn't come one day a year but every day of the year.

Quick and Easy Snowflake Craft

noreply@blogger.com (America's Next Top Mommy) — Tue, 18 Nov 2014 18:38:00 +0000

Remember when I said that I only do crafts that can be accomplished in 30 minutes or less? Well, I have one I want to share with you!!

I'm serious about that 30 minute business. Anything that takes longer than 30 minutes is a disaster for me. It took me SEVEN YEARS to complete my youngest daughter's "first year of life" scrapbook. Maybe when she's 21 I'll be finished putting pictures into a family album.

Do people even do that anymore? Albums, I mean? It used to be where we would take our 35 mm film down to the kiosks, have it developed, excitedly open the envelope, sift out the invariably 2-5 black/overexposed ones and then slip the good ones into an album and share with our people. Nowadays I just whip out my phone. Or share online.

If my grandma were alive, this is where she'd shake her head and say, "It's all going to shit in a hand basket."

Yes my grandma used the word "shit." She also had an arm tattoo. My grandma was a badass.

Anyhoo, back to the craft. I totally saw this somewhere online so I can't take credit for it. The kids and I made these adorable snowflakes that can stick to glass. We made them in under 30 minutes! I should write a book a la Rachel Ray. I'll call it "30 Minute Crafts."

Step One: Buy some puff paint. You can buy it in any color but seeing as how you so rarely see green snowflakes, I'd recommend sticking to silver or white. Still, what you do with your snowflakes is your business. I used silver glitter. I got this one at Wal-mart but you can find them at any craft store.

Step Two: Print out a snowflake pattern online. There are oodles. I'd post a link but then I'd be robbing you of the opportunity to pick it yourself. I'm trying to foster efficiency here, not laziness, people.

Step Three: Dig through your kitchen for some wax paper. Or buy some.

Step Four: Cut said wax paper, place on top of printed pattern.

Step Five: Trace the pattern with the puffy paint. Make sure it is thick and connects in all places. You may have to squeeze hard. The kids complained of finger cramps, like kids do. Their lives are so horrible that their mother forces them to partake in activities that cause muscular phalanges pain. I'm such a monster.

Step Six: Place them somewhere that they can dry safely. This means I placed mine high up on a shelf, where my dog couldn't lick the paint off the wax paper. Yes she'd totally do that. She's was dropped as a puppy.

Step 7: Walk away and eat a piece of carrot cake. At least that's what I did. I allowed the snowflakes to dry overnight.

Step 8: I peeled them carefully from the wax paper and prepped them for their photo shoot. You know the drill: hair, make-up and nails. They are seen here on top of some construction paper. That's just so that they stand out a little better.

I plan on sticking them to our glass sliding door...to add to the wintery ambiance. And there you have it. Quick, easy, fun, under 30 minutes, not messy, cute and did I mention they take less than 30 minutes?

My Attempt At An Advent Calendar

noreply@blogger.com (America's Next Top Mommy) — Mon, 17 Nov 2014 14:11:00 +0000

I am going to make an attempt at an advent calendar this year. I've heard of them before but never understood what they were about and therefore felt intimidated by them. Apparently advent calendars are just another way for amazing moms to make me feel like a completely inadequate failure as a mother.

At least that's how I used to see it. I'm trying to be better at this, at feeling secure 99.9% of the time about how I'm doing at this motherhood gig. The other day someone gave me a compliment about my kids and it was like they gave me that gold ring from Tolkien's books. I carry it around in my pocket and whenever I feel like a failure, I pull it out and stroke it gently and say, "my precious."

We have to do what we have to do.

The truth is, I'm a good mom whether I do this advent calendar or not. And so are you. I'm just here sharing ideas so take them or leave them. Take them and put your own spin on them. Take them and share them with someone else. Or leave them. It won't hurt my feelings. Whatever you do, don't think the following thought: "If I don't do this I'm not a good mom."

I've lived that lie and it's totally useless. The voice in your head that says things like that is not your friend. My bestie Sally says that voices like that are shouted at us when we are in dark places...when (metaphorically speaking) we are walking down a dark back alley that is flanked by tall buildings where mean people stick their shadowy heads through unlit windows and shout ugly lies at us. She says it's best to simply run out of that place into the light and ignore the words. Sally is wise. What can I say?

Run to the light, mothers!!

Anyway, so here's what I'm thinking...

An advent calendar is a calendar (big surprise) with numbers on it (thank you captain obvious) that you can open daily and find something relevant inside. People take a variety of spins on this. Some put gifts inside. I'm too cheap for that. Some put craft activities inside. I'm too lazy for that.

So Licha's version will look like this. I found a picture floating around the internets with the idea of a paper bag advent calendar. It looks like this.

Seeing as how I already have twine and paper bags and clothes pins, this was a no-brainer for me. But I've seen people use envelopes and a variety of other things as well that are super easy and affordable.

Just google "Creative Advent Calendars" and try not to be sucked into the black hole.

So, I'm sticking to the paper bag idea and inside I'm going to utilize two ideas. First, is a Christmasy activity. I will share my list below. Second will be a scripture, most likely the story of Christ's birth according to Luke.

The angel answered, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God. Luke 1:35

My goal is to keep the kids in a Christmas spirit that is focused on Christ, not commercialism. And if I can add in some fun family traditions into the mix, even better! This will keep me focused and will allow me to do things in bite sized chunks that won't overwhelm me. Also, I plan on making this thing happen in under 30 minutes. Anything more is too much for me. I do all things in 30 minute increments. Workouts? House cleaning? Oil changes? If it can't be done in 30 minutes or less, chances are I'm not going to do it!

Here is my list of fun Christmas activities:

1. Make a gingerbread house
2. Go to a tree lighting ceremony
3. Make a birthday cake for Jesus
4. Homemade decorations
5. Watch a Christmas movie...or twelve
6. Go ice skating
7. Make a Christmas craft
8. Wear a santa hat and take treats to a dog shelter
9. Make a snowman
10. Read a Christmas book...or twelve
11. Write Christmas cards together
12. Make hot chocolate
13. Wrap presents together
14. Write letters to Santa
15. Go gift shopping
16. String popcorn garland
17. Sing Christmas carols
18. Decorate cookies
19. Volunteer somewhere
20. Get our picture taken with Santa
21. Eat reindeer droppings (chocolate donut holes)
22. Attend a candlelight church service
23. Go to a Christmas concert
24. Collect items for donations to a food bank
25. Sponsor a family
26. Put up a Christmas tree
27. Help dad put up lights in the yard
28. Drive around and look at lights

There are a few extras in there as Advent this year is 22 days (November 30th- December 21st) but I figure we will most likely do a couple in a day every once in a while. I mean, who wants to drink hot chocolate without reindeer droppings!? Only crazy people!

I'm simply going to write these down on a piece of paper (nothing fancy) and have the kids open them each day along with a scripture that is also written on a piece of paper. I thought perhaps we could incorporate a prayer with them as well. Here's a list of things we will pray for:

1. Our sponsor children in Ethiopia and Mozambique
2.Our missionaries in Ecuador, Ethiopia and El Salvador
3. Our family
4. Our friends
5. The child we made a shoebox for through Samaritan's purse
6. Someone who is sick
7. Someone who loves us
8. Someone we doesn't love us
9. Our church
10. Ourselves
11. A prayer of thanks
12. People who don't have a home
13. People who don't have a friend
14. People who are suffering
15. People who are hungry
16. Our neighbors
17. Our pastor
18. Our town
19. Our schools
20. Our government

I already have some dates for certain things. For example, our town parade and tree lighting is on a specific date so I will make sure that goes on the right day for the advent calendar. I may have to do some pre-planning like making sure I have a gingerbread house ready for that day, having cake mix for Jesus's cake, hot chocolate in the cupboard and some craft ideas sort of floating around in my head just so that I'm not caught off guard but otherwise I think it should be pretty low maintenance.

I'll share some pictures with you, of us enjoying (or maybe complaining about) our advent activities. I was also thinking of adding a few treats in the bags, like maybe some gum or stickers and really inexpensive things like jacks, cards and paper games. But that's just a thought. I may get to that part...or not. :)

I'm so excited. Christmas is my favorite holiday of the year and while I steadfastly refuse to start celebrating it until the day after Thanksgiving, there's nothing wrong with a little planning ahead, right?! And who cares if there are Christmas carols playing in the background as I type! Don't judge! xoxo

The Epidemic of "Busy"

noreply@blogger.com (America's Next Top Mommy) — Mon, 03 Nov 2014 12:02:00 +0000

Have you noticed that nearly every time you have a conversation with someone these days, the following word almost always enters the conversation: BUSY.

"I'm so sorry I haven't called. I've been so busy!"
"My week has been busy, I'm so stressed out!"
"Let's get together when it's not so busy!"
"You know, the busy season is coming up."

That busy season one cracks me up because I have friends whose "busy season" lasts from January through December.

I think we all have good intentions with this busy thing. I mean, we don't want to be lazy, we want to be productive. We want to contribute and use our time wisely. But it's so easy to cross over from being productive into being overwhelmed.

I have a friend named Kelly who jokingly says that these days she doesn't have too much on her plate, she has too much on her platter. Her husband now says she doesn't have a platter anymore, she has a buffet table.

I don't think she's alone in that feeling of being completely overly scheduled. She shared a story with me yesterday about how on a particularly busy day she drove by my co-op and desperately wanted to stop and give me a hug but she was on one of those minute-to minute days where every single second was scheduled. She looked like she wanted to cry when she said this to me, feeling trapped by her to-do list. I completely understand because I've been there too, days when I wanted to sit and talk with a friend but couldn't, days when I knew I should call someone and failed to do so because there wasn't a second to spare.

I personally bought into the super mom lie. You know the one. It says that we can keep a perfectly clean house, juggle perfectly behaved and clean kids, make chef-style meals, create pinterest-worthy crafts, pay bills, do laundry, go shopping, keep fit, spearhead fundraisers, volunteer and be a wonderful wife all while working full-time and going to school full time and without breaking a nail.

Here's the truth: You can do all of the above...but it will cost us something. The lie is not that we can't do it, the lie is that there isn't a cost associated with it. It will cost us precious time with our families. We will miss some fun times, inside jokes and special moments that are difficult to cultivate when our focus is elsewhere.

Do you remember that Al Pacino movie, "The Scent of A Woman?" In it he said, "Some people live a lifetime in a minute." How many lifetimes did I miss while being so busy? How many lifetimes were lived in my daughter's eyes? How many opportunities to hold my husbands hand? How many kisses went un-given?

"People can't multitask very well, and when people say they can, they're deluding themselves," said neuroscientist Earl Miller. And, he said, "The brain is very good at deluding itself." Miller, a Picower professor of neuroscience at MIT, says that for the most part, we simply can't focus on more than one thing at a time. What we can do, he said, is shift our focus from one thing to the next with astonishing speed. "Switching from task to task, you think you're actually paying attention to everything around you at the same time. But you're actually not," Miller said. "You're not paying attention to one or two things simultaneously, but switching between them very rapidly." All this means is that we are missing things, things that add up to the meat and potatoes of life, to lifetimes within our lifetime.

We are in a rat race but I'm not so sure if there is a goal. Is it when I'm older, when the kids are grown up, when the holidays are over? There is definitely a sense of feeling important that feeds our need for being busy. We are getting a payoff from all of it or else we wouldn't do it but it's a matter of finding what that payoff is and then taking a hard look at it to see if it's really worth all the time, effort and stress.

Is it worth missing dinners with my family? Is it worth missing time with friends? Is it worth losing sleep? Is it worth not taking a long walk with my kids? Is it worth giving up things that I truly love? Is it making me happy?

I've never heard anyone say, "I've been so busy, it's been the happiest time of my life!" That's because when we have a lot on our plates, platters and buffet tables, we have so much on our minds that we forget to choose to be happy. We forget to take care of ourselves. We forget to be happy. We don't have time for it.

This, in part, was one of the reasons we chose homeschool. Because I felt like my life was spinning out of control with so much busy-ness. It was a desperate move, I admit. But it was birthed out of desperation, the need to take the rein and direct the speed in which I was living. I wanted to slow down.

I'm now less busy than I've every been in my life but what's ironic is that people project the busy on to me. "You must be so busy!" That's not the case. Last night I spent an hour crocheting a hat for a stuffed owl. AN OWL, people. Clearly I have time to burn.

It's still a struggle. I sometimes feel idle and get squirmy at having extra time. I'm tempted every single day to get busy again. It's painful to say "no." I often feel like I'm letting people down and that hurts. Of course I don't want to hurt anyone but at some point I have to take care of myself and my family. I have to draw lines in the sand and put up some boundaries. Some days I am still busy but overall, I've called a time out and have left some space for myself. I've been able to paint, read, exercise, spend individual time with my kids, talk to friends, slip my green tea slowly without burning my throat.

I've learned so many painful times that our lives are way shorter than we think. And I wondered, if today was my last day, how would I live it? Would everything be as imperative and important as it is right now or would it all seem useless? Who would I choose to spend my time with? What would I do? I'm trying, if ever so slowly and imperfectly, to live this way. I want to live in a way that if tonight I find out it is my last day, I would be able to say, "I enjoyed every single minute of it!"

What about you? Are you busy? Do you enjoy being busy? Does it make you happy? If not, what makes you happy?

Ghost Hunt For Silent Consonants

noreply@blogger.com (America's Next Top Mommy) — Thu, 23 Oct 2014 16:22:00 +0000

It's almost Halloween and what better way to celebrate than with a good old fashioned ghost hunt...for ghostly letters of course!!

My third grader sometimes struggles to spell words that have silent consonants and so we came up with a fun and festive way to clear the cobwebs from our brains and practice these menacing words.

First, I printed out five copies of some happy, decorative ghosts. You can find the printable here. I cut them out and then wrote a silent letter on each ghost and hid them throughout our house.

Then I made up a weekly spelling list for my daughter that included the letters I'd written on the ghosts. For a list of words with silent letters, click here. I wrote her spelling list on the blackboard and had her copy down the words and spell them out loud. We discussed definitions and put the words in alphabetical order.

Next, we discussed how certain words have silent "ghost" letters and identified each of those letters in our list of spelling words.

At last came the fun part! Using a clipboard, she went on a ghost hunt and matched the missing silent letter to the appropriate word. Lots of fun was had and she made some serious headway in understanding silent words. She's already planning next week's spelling list!

We're going to use Halloween words with silent letters next week. Examples: rattling, thrills, mummy, and ghoul. I might even hide them in harder places and play the "Ghost Busters" them song in the background for extra effect. :)

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Feeling Overwhlemed?

noreply@blogger.com (America's Next Top Mommy) — Mon, 20 Oct 2014 11:27:00 +0000

As a parent, it's so easy to become overwhelmed. If you are a dad you probably work full time and then come home and (hopefully) help your spouse and spend time with your kids and have meetings and deadlines and all the stresses of work on your shoulders.

If you are a mom who works outside of the home or even from home, you have a boss to contend with and co-workers that don't always pull their weight and all the responsibility of doing your job at work and then all of the home stuff like errands and cooking and laundry and remembering doctor's appointments and paying bills.

If you're a stay-at-home mom you are most likely the primary caretaker and have children gnawing at your ankles all day long, ripping you limb from limb...at least that's what it feels like most of the time. Plus there's all that glamorous daily grind sort of stuff like dishes and dog's bowls filled with moldy food.

The other day I made cookies and accidentally dropped a bit of flour onto the floor and was so overwhelmed with everything else that needed done that day that I stood there and looked at the flour and was all, "I just don't have it in me to bend over and clean that up right now." And it stayed there for THREE DAYS! The work never seems to end for any of us. It's a rat race amiright?

And in all of that madness it's so easy to forget our calling. What are our gifts?

Mine get stuffed at the bottom of my entryway closet, behind the vacuum attachments, random flip flops and dust bunnies. Where is my gift? I don't know...in a box in the basement somewhere perhaps. I can't find it at the moment. I don't have time. I'm busy putting on the breathing equipment that will help me climb to the top of the laundry pile in the bathroom, where the altitude is so high that the air is thin.

Add to that my struggle to say "No" when people ask me to do stuff and you've got a recipe for disaster. Like, a recipe that leaves flour, sugar and eggs not only on your floors but on your cabinet doors and caked to my backsplash. We're talking explosive mess here.

I mentioned this explosive disaster of a situation to my friend Sally who, bless her heart, has four children under double digits and who is intimately acquainted with the feeling of being overwhelmed. I knew she would pat my head gently and sing me a lovely song in her southern sweet-tea accent and make me feel all better.

Sally is a therapist by profession and so I often weasel my way into cheap therapy by making her feel sorry for me. But don't tell her cause then she'll catch on!

And so after Sally listened to my plight she took her squirming baby into her arms, offered him her boob, took a deep breath and told me a story.

She said, "I once went to a women's thing where they acted out this little story. It was about a girl who had a gift that God had given to her. Her gift was dancing. And God told her to share her gift with everyone so she was on her way to a place in town where she was going to dance in front of some people and share her gift. On her way there, someone saw her and they handed her a box and said, 'Hey! Since you're going that way, I was going to give this to the poor, could you drop this off on your way?' She said sure and went on her way.

A little bit later she came upon someone else who asked her where she was going and she told them she was off to share her gift of dancing. They smiled and handed her another box and said, "Great! Since you're headed that way do you mind dropping this off to the poor?" She hesitated because she already had a box in her hands but she agreed and took the second box.

This happened to the girl a couple of more times until she was completely weighed down. She dropped everything off and headed to share the gift of dance that God had given to her but by the time she got there, she was too exhausted to do anything. She couldn't even move and therefore could not fulfill God's request and didn't share her gift with anyone.

Then Sally sat back and smiled and that was all that needed said. I totally understood what she was telling me. I am laden with packages for so many people and I'm not always diligent in sharing my gift because I'm so exhausted from everything else that needs carried. In the moment, taking on another thing seems like the right to do. I mean, the girl couldn't say "no" because the people where trying to give to the poor and what would that mean if she wasn't willing to help!?

It's a hard lesson because it feels like the right thing to do is to help people, to give and give and give until there is nothing more but I've done that it doesn't work. I end up letting everyone down in the process, including God. And my gift sits unused, buried.

It's okay to say "No." It's okay to not be able to finish everything and help everyone. It's not selfish to take care of myself and to invest my time where God leads. My hope is that if you are feeling overwhelmed with everything that needs done and have said, "Yes" so many times that your gifts are buried in a dusty heap in the back of a closet, that you might be inspired to put down some of your boxes, dig out your gifts, blow the cobwebs off of them and go and share them today.

Oh October

noreply@blogger.com (America's Next Top Mommy) — Thu, 09 Oct 2014 16:15:00 +0000

I have a beautiful friend named Sheryl who shares my apprehension of October. This month seems to be particularly rough on us. For me, October often feels like a summer hangover, like all those days of sunshine have caught up with me and a cloud of darkness descends and a base drum of pain starts pounding through my whole body.

Last October totally sucked.

But the other day Sheryl and I were sitting together in a cold, artsy warehouse of sorts. I was being swallowed up by the couch they have there, an enormous, red thing that always grabs a hold of my body and never wants to let go, not that I put up much of a fight. Sheryl was curled up in a corduroy chair and we started talking about October and how we're sort of just waiting for it to rear it's ugly head but it's not and we're overjoyed about that.

This October is proving to be different, better.

Here we are, October 9th and sure, we're only a little more than a week in but by this time last year I was curling my toes and begging for November to rescue me. This time around it's been different somehow; peaceful and unexplained, sort of like a miracle. It's like when you show up to pay your taxes and you find out that you're due a refund, a happy surprise.

It's a beautiful fall here in Connecticut and because of my lack of allergies and the absence of my cloud, I've been able to fully appreciate it; the boundless blue skies peppered with a palate of orange, red and yellow, the sunshine...oh the sunshine, the stuff of dreams. It's the kind of sunshine that people write about in epic poems, the backdrop to love stories and the warmth of God himself. We've taken countless walks in the woods and admired the sheer beauty of it all.

It's strange, really....this feeling of complete contentment that surrounds me like a bubble. It's surely welcome but still strange. It is so because my mother-in-law is dealing with cancer and by default, so are we. It's surely not glamorous. We speak of words now like pathology and radiation; surgery, infection, rehabilitation and prognosis. So far we are surviving on prayers and you know what? They are working! I thought for sure that dealing with this in October would be my un-doing but to the contrary. We're crowdsurfing on a mosh pit of prayer warriors.

Her surgery went well and while we have more to come and other worries on our shoulders, there is still the sunshine and the crisp, fall air and I still can't get sad or angry no matter how much I think I ought to be.

I've also been missing Ruben a great deal. He's my friend who passed away in April. We used to speak every few months as we did for the past 20 years, it was just the nature of our friendship and enough months have passed that it would have been time for a call, for a connection and there is none, just silence and dreams and longings. I wish I would have kept his phone messages so I could hear him say, "Hey, que paso!?" just one more time. Or many more times, over and over again until it made me not miss him so much. And I do miss him...but still, happiness. Happiness because the last time I talked to him I told him how sunny it was and he said, "that's because I'm smiling" and ever since then I think of him when the sun shines brightly. Last year, the grief of this would have sent me running, out of breath, to the Alprazolam. But not today.

I pray for Sheryl and I, for us to glide through this October and change the momentum of our Octobers forevermore. While the peace that finds us is not our doing, we'd be silly to say that there is no reason. We are both clinging to the cloak of Jesus, like eager, bleeding women, desperate to touch just a seam of his power. And naturally what we are finding is how much healing is in that reach, that the act of desperate faith leads to a miraculous change of course in our lives.

Oh October, we may finally have you beat, not by our own power but by His.

Are You Happy?

noreply@blogger.com (America's Next Top Mommy) — Mon, 29 Sep 2014 13:35:00 +0000

I was recently contacted by an organization called TCS who helps counseling students with resources in order to pursue their degrees and they shared an article they had recently posted to their site. You can check out the article HERE.

It's a statistical analysis on happiness in the United States and I have to say, I wasn't surprised but it made me very sad to see it all in numbers. In the study, they used five categories to measure happiness: Purpose, Social, Financial, Community and Physical. And sadly, nearly half of all Americans described themselves as "Struggling."

On top of that, only 1 in three people in the survey rated their overall lives as "happy." Only half are satisfied with their jobs, over 130 million people are dealing with a chronic disease, over 6% are unemployed and 3.5 million people are homeless. That's up significantly from a study conducted in 2009 by fas.org that showed our homelessness at 2.5 million.

While we still rank as some of the happiest people in the world, it's startling to think that on a scale of 1-10, most Americans ranked their happiness as 7 and most people in Nigeria ranked their happiness at 5.5. Interesting, no?

So are you happy?

I believe the pitfall I often fall into is that somehow my situation is tied to my happiness...which is a complete lie. Happiness can be found in the midst of pain and suffering, in struggle and conflict and even despair. We have tremendous power over our happiness. Our situations are what they are and many times we are powerless over them but our happiness is definitely in our control! Don't believe me? Try it!

Choose to be happy. Choose to focus on the good instead of the bad. Choose to let go and let God. Also, check out this article that shows there is now scientific proof that shows we have tremendous power over our happiness!!

A Mid Semester Progress Report

noreply@blogger.com (America's Next Top Mommy) — Sat, 27 Sep 2014 12:17:00 +0000

Well, I've officially become a blog slacker!! I'm sorry, ever so sorry! I've been terrible at consistency these past couple of years. The big change? Homeschool!

The kids and I have such a good routine going and we are constantly going somewhere or learning something so every ounce of my energy is poured into my family and close friends and so the blog has sort of fallen by the wayside until I muster up time to sit and write it. Plus, if I don't really feel I have anything important to say, I don't say anything which I guess is sort of stupid because the blog is supposed to be the place I go to vent.

On the plus side, the kids are THRIVING! Last year was great but it was definitely a test of endurance and fear because homeschool was totally new to us and so it was all we could do to keep our heads above water. This year is much more relaxed and it's sort of ironic that despite the more relaxed tone, the kids seem to be accomplishing more. Weird. It's a paradox but I'm not going to question it, I'm just gonna roll with it.

My 7th grader has already finished two of her curriculum books this month. I had to upgrade her from the 6-8th grade to the 7-12th grade books to challenge her and she's doing spectacularly. Along with that, she's taking courses in woodworking, crocheting, freshwater ecology, singing, piano, writing, animation and improv. Mostly these are through co-ops but there are a couple of extracurriculars.

She's shown quite a dramatic interest and talent for drawing and so she sits for hours (when she's not on the phone of course) and just draws and draws. She's made a connection with a local cartoonist and is excited to work with him on some upcoming projects. She's even joined a talent show at a nearby middleschool and will be performing in November!

On top of that, her social circle has nearly tripled! She met a best friend this past summer. She's always had good friends but we all know what that's like when you meet that one person who gets you and how it changes your whole world. And that just set off a chain reaction over the past few months and she kept making connections and the girls all loved each other so now there is a group of six of them who are in that middle school tight group of girls where they all start to look and sound the same so that you can't tell them apart. It's all giggles and hysterics and singing at the top of their lungs.

Every single day she bounds out of bed completely filled with joy and this of course makes me incredibly happy for her and I can't help but feel relieved that she's home and having this kind of experience because I know middle school can be tough on girls! I love that she's building good self esteem, that she's adored by so many peers, that she's feeling confident. I mean seriously, if you can marinate a teenage girl in love, self-esteem, confidence, acceptance and understanding, I can't help but think that she will turn out tender and delightful. She also has the benefits of continued friendships that keep growing and deepening which is of course, such a blessing.

My son has also tripled his friendships and has blossomed. He's turning into such a little man and has shown some serious interest in engineering. I've been encouraging him to keep going and am sometimes astounded by what he creates. He learns very differently from the girls and I have to keep reminding myself of this and remembering to be patient. He's methodical and analytical and sometimes mindnumbingly slow but this is my problem not his. When I tap into that sweet spot where he has full understanding, the sky is the limit for him because he can cruise through pretty much anything.

In school, math was always a thorn in his side. Nowadays it's one of the things he loves. It makes sense, all the angles and lines he uses in his creations can be translated into numbers and when he understood that it lit a spark of interest. The other major break through has come in his confidence. Sure, there are still times when he's nervous but mostly, he's so much more sure of himself. He used to be terrified to be in front of people and now the boy is performing puppet shows and acting in plays! He's engaging new people, especially peers, and each time he does this he gets a little taller.

He's learned how to cook completely alone using both a recipe and by memory, has mastered countless life skills and read more books in a month than the previous two years combined! Now, if only I could get him to take a shower!!

My youngest is also my wisest. Or maybe she's an old soul. She gets up early and checks the weather and always packs an umbrella if there is even the slightest chance of rain. She's a planner and an organizer. Her closet has two neat rows of shoes that are lined up just so because "it makes them easy to find." She's great at remembering appointments and will not let anyone eat supper until they've said grace.

On Sunday mornings she wears high heels, dangly earrings and clutches her bible under her arm. If she wore Channel #5 you'd swear she was 77 instead of 7.

She too has plowed through her curriculum books. Every once in a while she'll get stumped and flustered but that happens so infrequently anymore that it's hardly a blip on our radar. When it happens it's just an opportunity to encourage her. We recently had a family meeting where we expressed our needs and shared our love languages with one another, that is...the way we feel loved. Hers was small gestures and so I've been focusing on picking her flowers and saving that extra slice of pizza for her and making her favorite breakfast. This has made her happiness skyrocket!

Her reading has improved as well! She had a tendency to rush and skip words when she read out loud and so we came up with a really clever way to help her slow down. In her reading comprehension workbook, I had her highlight the paragraphs. The first word in a sentence was highlighted green, commas were yellow and periods were red. We called this her "stop light reading" and she understood that green meant to go, she paused at yellow and then stopped at the end of the sentence. This improved her reading cadence significantly and she was so proud! I was pretty proud too :)

She's taking piano, sewing, art, holiday crafting, biology and participating in a play. Along with that she continues to do girl scouts and recently attended her first Awana meeting and loved it so she'll probably be joining that as well!

We've read several classic books including Treasure Island, Black Beauty, Alice's Adventures In Wonderland and Where The Red Fern Grows and we've also been listening to Adventures in Odyssey which the kids seem to love! We've been participating in our state's library program and the stacks of books we've checked out is as high as my thigh. We've ridden the ferry across the river, we've gone to our science center, have been rock climbing, hiking and joined friends for other adventures.

As you can see, between school and co-ops, activities and outings we've had our hands full in just these first six weeks of this new year. We are due for a break as we do a 6 week on, 1 week off rotation and have lots of fun stuff planned. We are off to a great start and I hope and pray that we continue on this course!!

What Faith Feels Like

noreply@blogger.com (America's Next Top Mommy) — Sat, 06 Sep 2014 22:09:00 +0000

I've just finished the first book of Chronicles. I have found it quite tedious. I'm fighting with all my might not be be like, "Yeah, yeah...I know all these stories!"

Do I really need to know who begat who? Is there going to be a pop quiz when I get to heaven?

And just when this feeling of arrogance had reached it's zenith, God came and pricked my bubble ever so gently and sent me reeling.

I found a story about David that I don't remember reading in the books of Samuel. I say I don't remember reading it because maybe I did and it fell out of my brain and landed on the floor with a splat! But God knew I needed to hear it so it jumped off the page and into my eyeballs. It was tucked away between genealogy lists and job titles.

In this little story God becomes angry with David because he decided to take a census of his military. He didn't do it because the paper-pushers in Jerusalem needed up-to-date paperwork or because of any other reasonable cause. No, he did it because he wanted to count out how awesome he had become. Back then, Kings measured their worth by their military and since David had a pretty bangin' military he wanted to line them up and count 'em so he could feel strong and superior.

He wanted his main man Joab to come back with a report of thousands upon thousands so that he could stand tall and say, "I am like...total awesome sauce!"

And God wasn't cool with this because of course David wasn't awesome, God was. David wasn't the one who was securing victory, God was. And David was starting to rely on himself more than God.

Oops. Sound familiar?

Sorry God. My bad!

There is a pocket of existence in which we should strive to live and that place is where we depend solely on God while being active in our faith. Any slight turn either way from this place is not healthy. It's that great dilemma Jimmy pointed out when he said that faith without action is dead. Of course the flip side to that coin is that I have a tendency to put my hand in God's face and say, "Babe, I got this!" By the way, if you've figured out how to remain in this balanced sweet spot of dependence and action for more than five minutes at a time, please email me with instructions because I just can't seem to keep hold of it.

This scripture was just another reminder that I've got to keep trying, constantly checking myself because I'm prone to veer into a ditch.

I wish I could say that God slapped David on the wrist and put him straight but that didn't happen. Instead, God cut David off at the knee, literally crippling him for a long while when he gave him three choices as a consequence for his disobedience. At David's choosing, God ended up destroying David's army and making him temporarily weak.

God has a way of knocking me to my knees as well. Always in a loving way of course. More and more I'm learning not what I should do but what I shouldn't do! You know that feeling you get when all seems right, like things are going well and everything seems in place and you take a deep breath and feel all is good with the world? Yeah...RUN from that feeling!

Run fast!

That feeling, when it comes from having enough money or just the right friends or pat on the back from someone or anything short of God himself, is a problem. I'm slowly learning this. I've spent my life running towards that feeling. It's clean, crisp and comfortable and I WANT IT!!

As you probably already know, that feeling is fleeting. There is never enough money, the house always falls apart, something goes wrong, things don't work out. When we count our armies and feel proud of ourselves, God cuts them down.

The alternative is for me to find that security in Him alone and I'm still getting used to the feeling of it all. The water is cold here and I'm not totally used to how it feels but I know I will adjust.

It's so hard to imagine how everything can be falling apart around me and I'll still be able to take a deep breath and feel at peace. It's like walking in the dark, unsure whether there is secure ground under each step. Scary! Yet, I know it's possible. I've experienced it first hand.

Last summer my family and I traveled to Chicago and stood at the top of the Willis Tower which has these four foot glass boxes that hang off the side of the building. You can see over 100 stories down to the street through the glass floor and standing on those things made my stomach turn. I got dizzy and flushed even though the attendant assured me that they could withstand over four tons of weight.

It made me terribly squirrely.

That's the feeling I should be striving for, that scary, turn my stomach, heart beating fast, flushed with sweat, breathing hard kind of feeling because that's what faith feels like. That's what dependence feels like. That's what surrender feels like and that's the sweet spot.

Shaky Spiritual Muscles

noreply@blogger.com (America's Next Top Mommy) — Fri, 05 Sep 2014 17:07:00 +0000

I started an exercise routine. It's laborious and tedious...yet totally necessary. I'm no longer in the business of dieting for vanity. I believe that when a woman reaches a certain age, she says, "I just want to feel good!" And that's just a good a motivator as any!

I want to feel strong and energetic and really, I don't want to creak more than my bed when I get up in the morning. So here I am, breaking a sweat. The squats are just miserable but my butt is feeling confident and looking at itself in the mirror and saying, "how you doin'?"

I went with something called Daily Burn. Mostly because they gave me a free trial and I figured why not. Also, I was pleasantly surprised, when I did the first workout, to find out that in the beginner series of which I'm a part of, that the people working out are fat like me. These are my people...my sweaty, groany, wheezy people.

We squat. We lunge. We stretch. I'm part of their team now and I look forward to our morning time together!

In one of the videos our instructor Justin says, "if you feel like you're starting to shake that's good, that's the change!"

As I pressed my triceps toward full blown collapse I embraced the shake, that feeling that I was going to give out at any second and tried to be inspired by Justin's words. We only shake when we are pushing ourselves outside of our limits and each time we do these things we get stronger and stronger.

It's expected that we push ourselves physically so that we can be strong and fit. Any trainer would tell you that you need to work hard and dig a little deeper each time you come to the mat. I'm finding that the same is true spiritually.

Just as it's easy to pick the couch instead of the gym, it's easy to get spiritually out of shape, to pick the TV instead of the bible, to pick the peaceful quiet of solitude instead of the bustling madness of opening one's home to a mass of people. We miss a day and then a few weeks of working out our spiritual muscles and before we know it, we get winded when He calls upon us to run towards him.

We should be challenged all the time, shaking and out of breath because we are living that hard for Him.

Am I living a life in which I feel shaky because my spiritual muscles are being worked hard? Or am I too comfortable? Am I giving of my time to a point where I feel a little strain? Am I loving that way?

There are so many places where I can do better!

Still, there are areas where I'm headed in the right direction. For example, Hal and I are hosting a life group beginning in a few weeks. Traditionally life groups in our church have been study focused and I've expressed my disappointment with that. Not that I don't think study is important, I just feel that too often we get together and express our fake lives instead of what's really boiling under the surface.

With that in mind we wanted to provide a place where people can let it all hang out. What happens when Christians stop being polite and being real? A sort of "Real World" Zion edition.

We will build friendships and invest in each others lives. We'll get messy and all of that is wonderful but it means that we will be all up in each other's business and if I'm honest, I'm not 100% comfortable with that. I'd much rather spend my evenings laying on the couch and falling asleep to re-runs of "How It's Made."

The idea of connecting and spending time together sounds wonderful until I'm pushed outside of my desire to be lazy and then it's not so fun anymore. So...we'll see how it goes. Seeing as how this will be going down at my house every week I won't have much of a choice to show up. Someone will be at my door whether I like it or not. In this way, I'll definitely feel the stretch.

At first it will almost feel good, sort of like that first set of jumping jacks that feel fun and freeing. I'll be all, "I love these people!" Then stuff will get real and feelings will get hurt and someone will be insufferable and I'll roll my eyes, stick out my tongue and say, "Dude, this is SO not worth it!" We'll see what happens when I get to round 3, when my spiritual muscles are aching and I'm sweating profusely. I suppose that's when my true character will shine through.

It'll be good for me. So will adding a volunteer gig and a morning bible study and getting up early to take care of my body and spirit and eeking out opportunities to teach the kids about Christ and praying without ceasing and showing up to church early so I can help greet others and sitting my butt in the chair and writing what I know what I'm supposed to write even though all I want to do is run away from it.

All of it will be an exhausting whirlwind and it will push me in ways that will leave my heart beating fast and my lungs out of breath. I'll just be a sweaty mess. But it'll be so worth it!

I'm reading a book that says, "I think this is what we're supposed to look like when we stand before Jesus. I don't think we're supposed to show up in glory with time to spare, a fresh manicure and perfect hair. I think if we're really living the gospel, we're going to fall at His feet exhausted and messy, with mismatched socks, just plumb worn out from loving people as hard as we can!"

Yep.

The Fourth Essential Prayer

noreply@blogger.com (America's Next Top Mommy) — Sun, 10 Aug 2014 23:50:00 +0000

Anne Lamott says that when it comes to prayer, it's best to keep it simple. It's best to say, "Thanks!", "Help!", "Wow!", each one bringing us to a place of utter humility where we come out of ourselves for just long enough to realize that the earth does not revolve around us.

But she says there is also another essential prayer. "Ok!"

"Ok" might be one of the hardest prayers because unlike all the rest of the essential prayers, it calls us to action. We say "Ok" and accept that we aren't going to get our way, that our beloved person or pet won't return from their death. We have to forgive someone who doesn't deserve it. We need to get up out of our big, squishy comfort zone and do something that makes our heart race and sweat start to pool in embarrassingly conspicuous places.

"Ok" is what people say before they board a 21 hour flight to Asia to do what they can, anything, for sex slaves. It's what they say when they give up their lives in the states to live in Africa and adopt a dozen girls.

It's what we say to the big stuff but also what we say to the little stuff as well, the stuff that while not as exotic, is often times equally as hard if not harder.

"Ok", I'll give up my day to help someone. I'll put the last $100 in the tithe basket. I'll go to church even though all I want to do is roll around in these cool sheets and drool on my pillow!

This week God asked me to face ugliness about myself. I tried to run from it because, let's face it, that's the easy thing to do! But he just wouldn't let it go! You see, I'd had a terrible attitude and had been unkind, even hateful to someone.

I wish I could say why. I would totally explain it if I understood it at all. The best I can say is that I was being selfish, that I could only see things my way, that I allowed myself to indulge in thoughts that centered only around what I needed and wanted. I basically acted like a spoiled brat.

God nagged at me though, like stood over me with his hands folded while tapping his feet and giving me "the look", the one that says, "c'mon now...you know what you have to do."

So I apologized and that's always horrible. Taking responsibility is not fun. Hearing negative things about myself is not a joy ride.

C.S. Lewis said, "humility is not thinking less of yourself, it's thinking of yourself less."

I'd been the opposite of humble for these past few weeks. In fact, I'd been downright prideful! If Lewis' quote is correct then I can infer that pride is not thinking more of myself, it's thinking of myself more! And that's exactly what I'd done.

I had to rein myself in and say, "this is all very, very wrong. Let me start over here, hands and knees on the ground so that I can get a little perspective and only see the dust I came from and realize how in the grand scheme of things, I'm so very small.

Humility is a hard thing to live out because we live in a world that shouts catch phrases like, "You're worth it" and "Have it your way!" I am worth a lot but I'm certainly not worth more than anyone else. And while I want to have it my way, everyday, that isn't the life I've vowed to live. It's really inconvenient to die to myself when I'm trying to have it my way!

Being an asshat is easy. Following God? Not so much!

What I'm learning is that the only thing I can control is my actions. Damn it, I hate that. I don't control anyone else or any situation and I have to be okay with that. In the midst of my growing up and realizing that the universe does not in fact exist to suit me, I have to put on my big girl pants and take control of myself. Sometimes I'll do things right and other times I'll do things wrong and when I do the bad stuff, the only thing I can do is own up to it and ask for forgiveness.

That's it.

Sometimes I'll be forgiven and sometimes I won't. If being a screw up helps me at all, it does so by teaching me to be understanding when someone else goes bonkers and acts like a weirdo too. This week I've prayed all the essential prayers.

"Thanks" for friends who are amazing, who have this miraculous ability to love and forgive me even when I'm acting totally unlovable and unforgivable.

"Help" because I've really messed things up!

"Wow", for beautiful days and butterfly kisses from seven year old eyelashes and facetime connections that don't cut out and that extra long hug that leaves me covered in the scent of that amazing woman I love and perfect words at the perfect time.

"Ok", I don't really have it all together. I mostly don't know what I'm doing and I need to admit that, like shout it across the internets lest someone think that it's all unicorns and rainbows over here, that while there are sunny days on the sand where I'm kissed by the sun, there are also rainy, stormy days in the trenches where I'm eaten alive by ravenous bugs.

Holy Cow, We're Debt Free (And by the way, so are you!)

noreply@blogger.com (America's Next Top Mommy) — Wed, 06 Aug 2014 15:42:00 +0000

This morning I read an article by Crystal Paine, a blogger otherwise known as "The Money Saving Mom." In a several part series, she shared the inspirational story of how she and her husband, both who are completely devoted to the idea of living completely debt free, pinched pennies and lived years of sacrifice in order to be able to pay for their starter home in cash.

And they did it! She described the moment they walked into their new home and how satisfying it was to claim this space knowing how much work, focus and selflessness it took to get to that point.

I would love to get to that point as well, to pay off our house and be completely debt free. It's such a dream to be completely without the weight of owing something. We're on our way! We've paid off our vehicles, are this close to paying off student loans and having no credit cards either. But it's terribly hard when unexpected expenses crop up. It can be overwhelming.

It made me think about the overwhelming amount of debt I owe for my sins, for that which I could never pay for if I lived to be 200 years old and worked 24 hours a day without rest. I know this is hard for many people to understand. Honestly, it's even hard for me to understand as well. All I know for sure is that I am not without failure. I know for sure that I cannot live a perfect life. I am going to hurt people or say or do or think the wrong thing. I will have attitude problems and fall into apathy.

There are a million ways to screw up but even if I focused on just those top ten, I'd still fail everyday. I don't always put God first, I still covet, I still lie...mostly to myself, about what I can get done and how important my needs are!

I know that I could never be without flaw and so by default that I'd have a mountain of debt if it weren't for what Jesus did for me when he got nailed to that piece of wood.

He was beaten, kicked, spit on, gouged, pierced, humiliated and murdered. "It is finished," he said with his last breath. He said this in Greek with one word, "Tetelestai." Incidentally, "Tetelestai" is what people at that time used to stamp on loan notes when the debt had been cancelled. The literal meaning of it is "Paid In Full."

That's what I am, what that debt that I rack up daily is every single morning, paid in full.

And so why is it that I often live as though I still owe so much? Why do I often feel the weight of my debt on my shoulders? I still try to make payments on something that was paid before I was ever born. It would be as if Hal and I do finally pay off that last mortgage payment and receive a statement with a big fat zero due balance and then try to continue to make payments.

We shouldn't try to keep paying what we don't owe!

I can't pay for my covetousness. I can't pay for my apathy. I can't pay for the lies I tell myself or others. The best I can do is be grateful that my statement shows a zero balance every morning, that I can walk into the world unburdened, shoulders unweighted.

I don't owe anything. And neither do you.

You don't have to make any escrow payments. You don't have any late fees. You don't have a balance owed. You are debt free!

I hope I do achieve our goals of living debt free in terms of money but I do know that today I can start living in the reality that all of my sins are forgiven!

Americas Next Top Mommy: Take Care Of Your Vessel

noreply@blogger.com (America's Next Top Mommy) — Wed, 16 Jul 2014 13:34:00 +0000

Americas Next Top Mommy: Take Care Of Your Vessel

Take Care Of Your Vessel

noreply@blogger.com (America's Next Top Mommy) — Wed, 16 Jul 2014 13:12:00 +0000

I had a talk with my daughter this morning as we drove in the car. It was just me and her, my sweet 12 year old who is finding her way and wrestling with all the things that 12 year old girls wrestle with. She'd never admit that self-image is one of those things but it is- because it just is with every female aged 12 to ...

I myself wrestle with it and try really hard to find a balance between being responsible for my body yet not being down on myself when I don't do such a great job at it. Both of us struggle with giving in, with having that extra fudge pop or not getting enough sleep or not working out.

So our talk went down like this...
"Do you think that the car we drive has any bearing on what kind of person we are?" I asked. "No, that would be stupid," she said with her face all scrunched up. "Because it's just a car." "You're right, it is and so we can't base our worth on what kind of car we drive. It's just a thing, a vehicle that gets us from point A to point B."

There was a moment of silence as we stopped at red light. We both gazed out of the windows and I noticed the thousands of tiny droplets attached to the glass like little, watery marbles.

I continued. "The thing is, we belong to God. We are not of the earth. We didn't come from here and when our lives are over we will return to God. Our lives are short. These bodies of ours are gifts, just vehicles the Lord gives us to get from one place to another and our job is simply to take care of them. It's like this car. In order for it to keep running well, we have to maintain it (change the oil, wash it, vacuum it, rotate the tires). And our bodies are the same. We maintain them by getting plenty of exercise, eating healthy foods, getting plenty of rest, drinking enough water. And if we do, God willing, our bodies will take care of us while we are here. They will keep us safe and keep us moving."

She smiled and nodded her head.

"This is why I tell you to skip the extra bite of that brownie, baby. Not because of your weight or how you look on the outside. You are beautiful no matter what. You'd be beautiful with one less leg and half your face melted away. You'd be beautiful fat or thin, tall or short, pimply faced, bed-headed and stinky. You would be because your inside is beautiful. And so my advice to you baby is to simply take care of your vehicle. Don't do it because it matters how you look on the outside. Do it because it matters that you take care of this gift that God has given to you, because you value it."

Teenagers are sometimes hard to understand. That's because they don't communicate well. A slammed door could mean they are feeling hurt just as easily as it could mean they are being selfish. That's why I try to see past the exterior and listen to her sweet, little spirit. Her spirit was singing this morning with relief, relief that someone saw her as perfect and beautiful and that she has my undying support and approval, that she doesn't have to try to live up to the world's standards because they are unrealistic and hurtful. Her spirit was happy and relieved and best of all, inspired.

"The world will tell you that it's all about the outside. That you should be skinny and sexy and gorgeous all of the time or else nobody will love you and you should know that those things are lies. So many people live their lives working just on the outside but that's such a waste of time. That's sort of like buying a run down house and putting new siding on it with a new roof and gorgeous landscaping in front in order to make it look good on the outside but leaving growing mold, rusted pipes, warped floors, cracked walls and raw sewage on the inside. The house is worthless even though it looks good on the outside.

So...work on your inside, baby. And take care of your vehicle because you love God. It's not easy but it's pretty simple."

If only my mom had said these words to me. If only it hadn't been about trying to fit in or how people would "see me" or first impressions. The good news is that I know this now and that decisions are made easier every single day having the conviction that I want to care for myself not because of anything else but for my desire to be loving and grateful with the gift God has given me.

It's been so good to me, this body. It's kept me healthy and sane and given me much pleasure. It's given birth to three babies, nursed them, carried them and wrapped itself around them when they were feeling sad. It truly is a gift and so today I will try to separate myself from it to see it for what it is, something that doesn't reflect my value or beauty, but rather, my vehicle. It's time I start pampering it because I want to put a couple more hundred thousand miles on it!

Saying "I'm Sorry"

noreply@blogger.com (America's Next Top Mommy) — Sun, 06 Jul 2014 22:19:00 +0000

We spent the better part of the weekend working on my oldest daughter's room. She outgrew her bunk bed months ago and the walls were a Pepto Bismol color. She vehemently abhors anything "girlie", so she's been begging and pleading for us to "give her a new room" for the past few months.

This isn't exactly the kind of project that's on my priority list. I mean, we're talking about going through a room packed to the gills with junk; trash, stuffed animals, papers, books, clothes. I have nightmares about the kinds of things that grow in her closet!

So I made a deal with her. If she cleaned her closet, threw away all the trash, organized her toys and kept it clean for a few weeks, we'd talk make-over. I made this deal thinking that there was no way she would be able to do it which in turn would get me off the hook but darned if that girl didn't keep her end of the bargain. This totally backfired right in my face.

We emptied the room, cleaned, washed walls, sanded, painted, shampooed the carpets and washed windows. All in all it was lots of sweaty, messy work. My husband was a lot of help and so was my oldest daughter and son! My little one? Not so much.

She was more like the dog...eager to be with us but always under foot at THE. WORST. TIMES. POSSIBLE!

When the carpet had finally dried and we brought the bed back inside all hands were on deck to move the full sized bed. And there she was, underfoot yet again and adding high doses of drama to the situation by saying she saw a spider on the bed which made everyone else drop the mattress just as we were going up the stairs and left me heaving and cramping and dripping with sweat.

All the kids screamed in terror. The dog barked. It was chaos!

From my daughter's description the spider was a beastly creature with fangs and claws, the "biggest thing" she'd ever seen. It was going to eat her in one swallow without having to chew.

I looked everywhere and finally spotted the monster. It was about the size of a grain of sand and it was trembling with fear.

"It's a tiny, little spider", I said.
"AAAAAAHHHHHH."
"Come on you guys, help me with this mattress!"
"AAAAAAHHHHHH."

Since it was the little one causing all the drama I yelled, "Stop it! I can't stand it anymore! Go AWAY!"

She immediately ran away crying, this time because of her terrible, terrifying mother with fangs and claws. We put the bed in place and though the weight of the bed was off my shoulders I felt heavy with guilt. My poor baby girl. I'm setting such a terrible example when I lose my cool like that. I mean, stressful as they are, those kinds of moments are learning opportunities, moments when I can show my kids how to behave under pressure with grace, patience and kindness.

I was the exact opposite of graceful, patient and kind today. I was like a sweaty, growling animal. Ugh!

I went downstairs with my tail tucked between my legs and found her in the kitchen still crying. I said, "I'm so sorry for yelling at you baby."

"I..*gasp* was just trying to *sniff* help *gasp* and that spider *sniff* scaaaaaaared me!!" She sobbed and I felt terrible. She really was trying to help in her little seven year old way with her noodle arms and super xray vision eye sight able to spot invisible spiders!

"I'm so sorry! I was wrong. I shouldn't have yelled at you and I know you were trying to help and I do appreciate your help. I'm sorry the spider scared you and I'm really sorry that I got mad at you when I should have been making you feel better. Can you forgive me?"

She gave me a hug and it was over. Like immediately. She went from cries of agony to smiling and laughing in lightning speed, like someone had yelled "CUT" on set and her performance was over. She really is a pain in the behind sometimes. So am I. I wonder where she gets it from!?

I wish I could say that I will never do that again, that I won't ever lose my cool under pressure, that I'll never yell at my kids when I've cracked but that wouldn't be the truth. I will do my best but there is a good chance that I will falter again. And I'll apologize again and that's the cycle of love, right? We love well and then sometimes we don't and we offer a heartfelt apology and our loved ones forgive us because they know that we will forgive them when they fall apart too.

I'm trying to learn not to beat myself up about these kinds of things. After all, this is family life. There is no such thing as a perfect family, a family who never argues or never gets on each others nerves. There will always be a crack somewhere and it's good to know that while I can't avoid falling in them, saying "I'm sorry" goes a long way in making things right again.

He Made The Sun Stand Still

noreply@blogger.com (America's Next Top Mommy) — Sat, 28 Jun 2014 12:42:00 +0000

In the book of Joshua (chapter 10) there is a story about five kings who, fearing a continuously victorious band of Israelites who threaten to invade and claim their land, decide to join forces. The Israelites were under strict orders from God. They were to conquer and claim the inheritance promised to them and they were to do it ruthlessly and without fear or burden. Naturally, the five kings wanted to defend their territory so this set the stage for a mighty battle.

Joshua, the great military leader of the Israelites and servant of God, now faces the biggest challenge of his life but instead of backing down or being terrified, he does exactly what he's told and clings to God's repeated words, "Do not be afraid."

He presses on but not without a little nervousness.

I can't even imagine how scary that had to have been, to be met with not only one opposing and formidable enemy, but five at the same time! I've never faced a military battle that seemed hopeless but I've faced several personal battles. Even one big one is enough to take the wind out of me.

I remember losing my mom and how much faith it took for me to keep walking every day. It took Herculean strength to open my eyes, to lift myself out of bed, to get dressed, to speak. And so, I'm trying to imagine what it would be like to have five terrible things against me at once; to lose my mom, have my house burn down, care for a sick child, go bankrupt and face depression all at the same time.

I mean, seriously? Even one of those things is enough to bring someone to their knees. I'd like to think that I'd have some strength and do my best but that would all be some tough stuff!

And so it's from that place that I stand in awe of Joshua's faith, that he didn't waver or tremble or beg for mercy or get angry. Instead, he did something pretty amazing. He looked up at God and basically said, "look, if you want me to do this I'm going to need some help, BIG time help. You need to make a huge gesture on my behalf, like...you need to make the sun stand still!

And God does something miraculous that has never happened again since that day...

He made the sun stand still.

He listened to Joshua and gave him the miracle he asked for. He did this for two reasons: he loved his people and Joshua asked. The bible says, "Surely the Lord was fighting for Israel." Translation: It's obvious that God was on his people's side and would do anything for them.

Yes. He was. And he still is. He's on our side. He's on my side. Why do I keep forgetting that? Why do I forget that I have the source of all power at my disposal?

He made the sun stand still...

...and yet I struggle to trust him with my finances.
...and yet I worry about petty things.
...and yet I resist asking for help.
...and yet I keep trying to do things on my own.
...and yet I forget that the only true strength I have, the strength that will endure and get me through even the toughest of times, comes from him and him alone.

In the end, Joshua emerged victorious. The five kings fled in fear and they hunkered down in a cave. Joshua found them and brought them to his camp and told his commanders to each place their feet on the king's necks. Then he said, "Do not be afraid, do not be discouraged. Be strong and courageous. This is what the Lord will do to all the enemies you are going to fight." Joshua then impaled their bodies and left them for everyone to see.

This is what God does to the trials I face, big and small. He allows me to place my feet on their necks and own them. He gives me command over them and puts me in a place of victory over them. This is the power of Christ, the power he gives me to understand that following him does not mean that my life will be easy. I will always face a battle. There will be big ones, there will be small ones and there will some that make me tremble and sweat but that is the image I want in my head when I face the world, an image of me standing on the neck of my problems...and crushing them with a strength that defies all logic.

He made the sun stand still...the magnitude of that is mind boggling. And he'd do it again for us all! What miracles, what victories could we all claim if only we'd ask him for the impossible!

He Gives And Takes Away

noreply@blogger.com (America's Next Top Mommy) — Thu, 12 Jun 2014 13:18:00 +0000

"You give and take away, you give and take away. My heart will choose to say, Lord blessed be your name!"

I've lost several friends in the last few months. Not on account of disagreements or hurt feelings but on account of big kinds of things. One moved away to mission in another country. Another was called home to heaven.

And in the midst of that, I couldn't help but feel really bummed. These weren't acquaintances. These were people who inhabited parts of my heart, parts that were now vacant and who echoed with the stillness and silence of their absence.

He took away.

I felt sorry for myself. I'm not the kind of person who makes friends easily. This, I must point out, is usually my fault. I tread lightly when I meet new people. And I walk into friendship sort like I walk into a haunted house...suspicious, a little terrified at what I don't see and expecting to be surprised in a bad way at any minute.

You know, when you're a kid, making friends is pretty easy. You have plenty of time to have fun together and enjoy sleepovers and long summer days of just hanging out and riding bikes and laughing together. But when you're an adult with spouses and kids and bills and jobs, well...it's just not as easy. And then I go and add even more difficulty on top of it by being a weirdo.

So when I do finally make a connection and feel like I can trust someone, it's a big deal. Like, I can finally breathe and feel comfortable and do the happy dance because I HAVE A FRIEND!

I should clarify that for me, a friend is someone who is connected to me in a deeply personal sort of way. This is someone I see often or speak to often. If I don't see them often we still maintain a closeness that never seems to diminish. In other words, it's people I love! I have many acquaintances but I have a small group of close friends.

And so I lost two really big players on my team. And I thought it was just about the end of the world. I may have been dramatic about it in my head. "I'm never going to find another friend. I'm going to be lonely forever. Nobody likes me. What is wrong with me? Why did God do this to me?"

But then something pretty amazing happened. Friendships began to cultivate in unexpected places, to multiply weekly, to deepen daily. Where there was none there were suddenly three..and then five.

I recently met a woman who is just...wonderful. I like her a lot and we've been getting closer and closer, spending many days a week together, talking a lot, telling each other intimate details of our lives. Walking into this friendship never felt scary or dark to me. It felt well lit, comfortable, easy. And how am I ever grateful!

God does take away. He took away two precious people from my life. But, he also gives. And while there is no replacing my loved ones, I'm finding comfort in new beginnings. It was less than three months ago when I felt the depths of loss. How would I ever recover from losing someone who's known me my whole life? How do I recover from losing someone who I need every single day? I felt immobilized, amputated. Being gifted with all these new, loving relationships brings me so much joy. It's amazing to me how one minute, our lives can be filled with pain and in a single moment, things can change. Where there were empty, echoing spaces in my heart, there is now music and laughter.

A friend, a real friend, can change your life.

He has given me friends my whole life. And he will take away, I can count on that. But I'm starting to find hope in the cycle. It's always darkest right before the dawn and so when I'm at my lowest point, I know it's time to celebrate and be happy because that just means that I'm about to be flooded with light.

What I Learned After My First Year Of Homeschooling

noreply@blogger.com (America's Next Top Mommy) — Thu, 15 May 2014 11:30:00 +0000

It was a year ago that we made the decision to pull our kids out of school. And since then I've been asked two questions countless times, "why" and "how is it going?"

The first question is complicated and personal but a simplified answer would be that we wanted more authority over their overall education. As for that second part, well...after a full year of homeschooling I can honestly say that it's going pretty darned well.

Sure, I floundered at times. I questioned myself countless times over the past twelve months! It's been challenging in many aspects but despite those hard moments, there have been lots of great moments. I'm now starting to feel settled in my role as mom/teacher/friend/coach/spiritual adviser. We've come up with some sort of routine and by that I mean that it's become routine that there is no routine.

I've stopped sweating the need for curriculum, learned to deploy countermeasures when the inevitable and unrelenting attacks of inadequacy are honing in on me and long since lost track of whether my kids were "keeping up." I never realized how programmed I was to keep up! The world is all about measuring success and so it took quite a bit of time and effort to re-adjust my gauge of what success looks like.

It doesn't look at all like I thought it would. I can't check off any box and make sure that I'm up to par. Instead we've had to learn to measure our success by...gasp...our happiness! It seems so simple, right? It does but we're not taught to do it that way. Instead it's about the numbers; test scores, height, weight, income, IQ, square footage, credit ratings. I had to let go of that old way of thinking and embrace something new. Our family motto is "Never Quit!" That is now our standard. As long as you keep trying, you're a winner.

I'm feeling much more comfortable in this new skin of mine, this identity that in the beginning seemed scary because it was so different from everyone else. It's unnerving to stand out, to be different and claim prideful ownership over a choice that can be interpreted as subversive.

When I was graduating from college and moving from Oklahoma to Pennsylvania to go to graduate school, a professor gave me some great advice. He said, "It'll be really scary at first. You'll probably cry and want to quit but just keep going and eventually, it will just become your life." This pretty much describes this first year for us. There have been tears and frustrations. I've wondered whether I made a mistake, worried that I didn't have the patience or the knowledge or the stamina! But we've just kept getting up (late) every morning and chugging away and darned if despite my fears, we haven't made some serious progress!

I've noticed that we've grown closer as a family. I definitely notice this in the relationships between the kids. I have no doubt that deep and meaningful connections are being forged every day. I also feel like we all know each other much better; the good, the bad and the ugly.

Besides that, I'm astonished to report that I haven't ruined them academically! They've learned a crazy amount of stuff. My son, the boy who could barely multiply 5x7 at the beginning of our year, is now doing complicated multi-step order of operation type problems without batting an eye. He's grasping algebra and geometry which seems like a miracle to me. They can now speak some Spanish, name of every country in Africa, have learned how to count to ten in five languages, can read and write well and think critically.

They've become better at problem solving and have learned a slew of life skills including everything from loading a dishwasher to writing a check. We've made new friends, been to 17 states and four countries and had so many adventures, it's hard to list them all. All three kids are in the Junior Olympic Archery Development program. They've learned to cook, to read a map, to do research but most importantly, they've learned to pray, to marvel at God's glorious artistry and to appreciate the blessings in their lives.

When I started I said, "We'll try this for a year and if it doesn't work, we'll send them back to school." Honestly, I think that's a pretty healthy way of looking at things and we will continue taking it year by year but we are no where near ready to throw in the towel. We're loving this homeschooling opportunity so far and look forward to both the challenges and fun times ahead next year.

Yes, things are going pretty well. My sanity is intact, my kids' brains have not turned to mush and best of all, we're happy and we count that all as a big success!

How To Ask Me For Help

noreply@blogger.com (America's Next Top Mommy) — Wed, 14 May 2014 23:45:00 +0000

You know how when someone asks you for your help and you say, "sure" even though every cell in your introvert body screams, "DON'T DO IT!" Yeah, that! That's what has happened to me. Twice...in the last week.

I'm happy to help.

That is until you make it impossible for me to offer you assistance because you are doing any the following:
1) Not telling me what you'd like me to do or being R E A L L Y vague about instructions ("just do whatever" doesn't cut it for me, mkay?
2) Shooting down suggestions when I take initiative
3) Refusing to answer phone calls/emails/texts/your front door

At this point you've made it impossible for me to help you and so I don't want to hear about how much work you have on your hands and how "nobody steps up to help" and so on and so forth. Let's be clear now...this wasn't my bag to begin with. You came to me. Remember?

That means all managerial deficiencies fall on your shoulders not mine and so yeah, I'm just going to sit here and continue to say, "when you need help, I'm right here." I will push aside all frustrations and all of that nagging in my head that tells me to just throw my hands in the air and tell you that I'm done, I'm out. I'll suppress the urge to roll my eyes and sigh heavily at you. But ~~when you get your crap together~~, when you need me, I'll be right here.

Just do me a favor and don't take your stuff out on me. I cannot help it if you are a control freak. I love you, but you are. And I can't help it if you don't know how to ask for help or you don't like to ask for help. I have to learn to stop taking responsibility for other people's short comings. I don't own them. I don't own your frustration. I will simply be available and eager to help when you need me because that's the most loving thing I can think to do right now...

...even though I want to smack you upside the head with something heavy!

I'm Right Here

noreply@blogger.com (America's Next Top Mommy) — Mon, 05 May 2014 13:07:00 +0000

I was in my kitchen, busily preparing a meal. This seems to be where I spend the majority of my time. Someone is always eating. There is always a dish that needs cleaning, a piece of meat that needs de-frosting, a counter that needs wiping.

I am a master of multitasking. Actually, I should say that I am a consistent multi-tasker, I'm pretty sure that I haven't mastered it yet because I always seem to mess something up. Let's face it, the idea that anyone can multi-task well is a big, fat lie. We can try but we inevitably fail.

So there I was, cooking and cleaning and talking on the phone when I realized that our garbage bin was overflowing so I called to my son to come and dump it out.

"CARTER!!!!" I shouted loud enough to reverberate the drywall.

"I'm right here," he said. And sure enough. He had been standing right next to me all along.

"Oh!" I said. "Sorry!"

I'm starting to realize that this scenario plays itself out in my spiritual life. I've mistakenly believed that to follow God means that it's his job to walk in front of me, to blaze a trail, and it's my job to walk behind him, to look at the back of his head and follow in his footsteps.

Problem is, this is not who Jesus is at all. When he called his disciples to follow him he didn't say "watch where I go and then follow along behind me." He walked with them, side by side.

And so there are times when I think he is walking along ahead and because I fall behind and lose sight of him I start to squint and look around, eventually getting scared and shouting out. "JESUS!!!" I shout loud enough to reverberate the drywall around me."

"I'm right here," he says. And sure enough. There he is, standing right beside me...where he had been all along.

It's important to remember that God doesn't abide by our rules. To us, to follow means to come after. To Jesus, to follow means to walk beside him. I have a friend, Laura, who used to come over ever Saturday and walk with me. We need to start that up again, girl! And it may not seem like it but there is an art to walking with someone. We can't walk too fast or too slow. We have to match each other's pace so that we can walk shoulder to shoulder and have a conversation. It's kind of hard to talk if someone is way ahead and someone else is way behind.

Do you want to hear something sad? There are countless days when I "walk with God" and don't even acknowledge him. Like he's right there keeping the pace, standing next to me and I completely ignore him. I don't engage in conversation, I don't ask for advice. I just walk and somehow I think that's enough. Sure, there is some merit in simply walking with him. It could be worse, I could be running away from him. But when I think about all those countless missed opportunities when he and I could have been laughing and crying and sharing and connecting, it makes me sad. And it also makes me determined to never walk in silence again.

He's right there. Standing next to you. Walking silently. It's time to start a conversation.

Love Over Pity

noreply@blogger.com (America's Next Top Mommy) — Thu, 24 Apr 2014 13:10:00 +0000

When I was a kid, my mom and dad and I would take a yearly trip to Mexico. We'd pile in our old pick up truck, me riding in the back, huddled in a nest I'd made from blankets and pillows under an old truck cap that whistled when the air blew threw it.

We'd go to some of the poorest parts of Mexico; places where indoor plumbing and electricity were unheard of, places where the roads were nearly impossible to navigate, where there was very little access to medical care if needed, places where all sorts of human and animal smells scorched under the Mexican sun and wafted into the air like a putrid perfume.

The people there lived in poverty and often times in hopelessness. But we weren't there as missionaries although we did bring the word of God. We were there as family. This was where my dad's family lived, in the middle of that dusty old town, each of his many siblings spread out, living in their own tiny, dirt houses. We'd often bring food, clothes and money. We didn't have much but despite being poor by American standards, we were practically millionaires compared to what his family endured in Mexico.

We weren't blind to the poverty. It was hard to ignore. But it was different being submersed in it, sharing blood with it. The biggest difference was that even though I watched my cousins run around in torn, dirty clothes, many times without shoes, I never once felt sorry for them.

That was because there was no them and me. It was us...WE. We ran down the street together in our naked feet, the sweat running down our faces and caking mud into our pores. We played ball in my grandma's courtyard. We tormented her donkey. We played jokes on each other when one of us were in the outhouse. Our mothers bathed us together in large metal tubs filled with river water that was warmed over a fire.

It's impossible to feel pity when all you feel is love.

I felt this way again today when Food For the Hungry posted a story about Ethiopia. It's a reminder that we are all called to love the poor.

As I looked at the beautiful faces of those children, I had no sense of pity. That's because I've been there. I've walked on their soil, I've held their hands and kissed their beautiful faces. I made it personal by being there and by sponsoring two children of my own. And just like my cousins in Mexico, there is no them and me anymore. It's now us, in it together.

When I came home from Ethiopia someone asked me when I was going to "get back to my life." They asked me this because I couldn't stop talking about the trip, about the people, about the need. I likened it to when the news reports that a child has been abducted. News like this usually pains the heart and we might even send up a prayer for the family. We ask God to help them. But then we get on with our lives and forget.

But what if it was your child? Would you be able to forget them? What if it were your friend's child? Your brother's child? Would you be able to walk away? I doubt it.

That's the difference! When you make a connection with a child around the world who is suffering they no longer become forgettable. They are now your child! And you don't tell their stories for shock value or to garner pity. You tell them for one simple reason: you love them. You care about them and you want others to care about them as well.

It's time we stop looking at the suffering of the world with pity and look at it with love. Pity shuts us down, it leaves us unsure of how to act or what to do. It leaves us with doubts and fears and paralyzes us. But love, well...love it a powerful thing. It can move mountains. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

So the question is, will you choose to love a child today?