10,000 Reasons

This song has been stuck in my head, seemingly without end, for days and days.

This happens to me now and then, but not usually for this long, and not usually with a song I actually like. It’s generally more along the lines of ‘Don’t Worry, Be Happy’ or ‘Copacabana.’

But nonetheless, here it is, stuck, this song I love. For days and days.

I find myself making a mental list. My own ten thousand reasons.

It’s a task so daunting that I don’t know where to begin and I don’t know how to stop, all the same.

What they all have in common?

Gratitude.

My daughter, my son {Just Write}

She doesn’t know how to be a girl.

She says the words and my heart aches, because I don’t know how to be a girl either.

She doesn’t even want to be a girl, and I nod my head in agreement.

I don’t know how to make her hurt go away and so I throw my arms wide and fold her in, her sobs wet and warm against my shoulder, my tears falling heavy on the top her her freshly washed hair. I came to tuck her in and discover instead that we are having a Moment that I won’t ever forget.

‘Why don’t they like me anymore?’ she asks, and I don’t know what to say. ‘Because they are stupid dumb boys,’ I think in my head, but I can’t say the words because I know they suck and they don’t fix anything and I’m sick of mothers blaming their offsprings’ behavior on a penis, so I can’t bring myself to do the same.

Boys are different.

The words run through my head and make me want to scream. As if boyness makes it okay? As if girls are all the same? I am a girl who has nothing in common with the other girls. I am different too.

She is different like me and I love this about her. The son I never had, in a beautiful girl package. And six months ago these boys were her friends. But now. Now. Something is different. Friendship is conditional. Only if there isn’t another boy around.

She said that she feels like they hate her and I felt like I had been kicked in the stomach. I told her that they don’t hate her, and I knew nothing else to say so I stopped. She felt me falter and she looked at me with wide eyes, sincere and sad. I asked her if she wants me to tell them to include her, and she said no. ‘I want them to want me all on their own,’ she said ‘and they don’t anymore. I don’t know why. I don’t know what I did.’

And probably she did nothing but Be A Girl, and my chest tightens because there is no way to fix that. ‘Well you could play with the girls,’ I told her, and her sister was happy to include her, but she was reluctant. I know that feeling – girls are second best. Now she tells me that it makes her sad to be with the girls, because she doesn’t fit in. She’d rather read a book alone than be with the girls.

I know that feeling too.

I’ve never outgrown it, either, that pain of not belonging. The frustration you feel when you have to play with your own kind, and you’re the only one who seems to recognize that Your Own Kind is actually the other kind.

At recess she’s always played football with the boys, but this year her teacher won’t let them play football. She said it’s because someone could get hurt and I feel sad, because what will hurt worse than a playground injury will be the lost year of being One Of Them, an accepted equal on the playing field. A year removed, I wonder if she will still be part of the club. Will she still be comfortable in her skin, able to hold her own with the boys, or will she then feel that she doesn’t belong? I wonder how long we have before the other girls stop feeling indifferent to my tomboy, and start resenting her. Start gossiping. I don’t want her to lose that precious year of childhood, that fearless confidence.

Her Muchness, even amongst the boys.

I’m lost in all these thoughts, the saddest of which is that this is only the beginning of her adolescent angst and after all my years of living, I’m still not wise enough to give her good counsel. I squeeze her tighter and hope it will make up for her pain. It doesn’t, but she loves me anyway. And this is what gets us through tonight. Hurting together, and holding on tight.

Photo Credit: J&G Photography

Linked to Just Write

Where I am now {Just Write}

It’s quiet here. It’s always quiet here now. The silence that I once longed for seems overwhelming now. Too much. Unavoidable.

I turn the TV on but the chipper voices irritate me. ‘Why do the birds go on singing?’ I hum in my best Skeeter Davis imitation, and then that irritates me too.

Grooveshark. It never fails me. Much better.

I think about the friend who introduced me to Grooveshark, and how we don’t talk anymore. Not because there was a fracture, just because life leads people apart sometimes. Second time we’ve been led apart. This makes me sad too, and I decide that it’s a day full of sad and that the whole entire day will be sucky and sad until I get my babies back.

This picture has nothing to do with anything, really, except I’ve always liked it, and it’s when they were all small enough to be with me always, and it was wonderful. Every moment, even the terrible ones. All wonderful.

But that’s irritating. I’m not a wallower.

So I tug on my running shoes and hit the treadmill, ipod cranked loud to drown out the silence, and I vow to push on until I forget the sad.

Twelve minutes later I’m still sad. I wonder what they are doing. I wonder if Annie is absentmindedly sucking her thumb and if she’s going to need braces because she’s nine-and-a-half and she still can’t break the habit when she reads. I wonder if Catie has found a girlfriend in her class, because she so desperately needs a girl and the only kids she knew going in were boys. I wonder if that little twit is making Lilly cry again today. Mean kid who told her that her handwriting is messy and her hair doesn’t look pretty. I feel angry again and for the hundreth time I remind myself that it is not acceptable for me to kick a five year old and I pray for her instead, the guilty prayer of a mother whose first instinct was to kick a kindergartener.

I have a long way to go.

Linking up with Just Write today, because it seems like everyone I know is doing it and I was never a follower when I was younger and it was socially acceptable so I’m mumble-mumble years late and now I wanna jump off the bridge too.

Bob, part deux

Wow.

After a record-setting number of visitors and emails yesterday, I’m a bit overwhelmed. I feel like I should have something really profound to say today, but as my regular readers can verify, I rarely have profound things to say. I like to bust out my profoundity profoundess profanity deep thoughts only on special occasions.

Coincidentally, I do have another subject that I’ve gotten several emails about. Marriage. And if you’re reading this all ‘Why is the world would anyone think she should be giving out marital advice?’, don’t worry – I’m right there with ya. I’m not qualified and I know this. But my post about my friend Bob marrying the wrong woman apparently struck a chord with many of you, and I got an unusual number of questions. Never one to disappoint my handful legion of loyal readers, I’m obliging with a few more thoughts.

Reader Lisa (not the Lisa from the Bob post) asked me how I know that settling is a bad thing. ‘Just because it wouldn’t work for you doesn’t mean it wouldn’t work for someone else, right?’

Maybe. Maybe if you’re not very intelligent, or you’re not very passionate, or you’re not very ambitious, or you have low self-esteem…maybe then you’ll be okay with settling. Not happy, but maybe not miserable. So if ‘not alone’ and ‘not completely miserable’ appeals to you, well, then, best of luck.

For the majority of you, settling will not a happily ever after make.

You know those sitcoms like Everybody Loves Raymond, where the loveable characters bicker over how the toilet paper goes on the dispenser [paper over] or how the toothpaste gets squeezed [bottom up] or who carries the suitcase up the stairs? And then they laugh at their silliness before the kiss and make up?

Lies.

Things like one spouse saying ‘alls’ will make you homicidal one day ['Alls you have to do is...'] You will not laugh and kiss and make up, you will silently stew over the most annoying spouse in the whole entire universe because little things become huge when you’re in close proximity with the same person for forever.

When I was a young girl my mom said that for a happy marriage, spouses should agree on religion, politics, and money. And while I don’t necessarily disagree, I’d have to amend this thought.

Those things might make you, but sometimes it’s toilet paper and toothpaste that breaks you.

If you don’t have something deeper and more meaningful underneath, if you have no passion, no true love, then the little things become too much to bear.

The Art of Marriage
by Wilferd A. Peterson

Happiness in marriage is not something that just happens.
A good marriage must be created.
In the art of marriage the little things are the big things…

It is never being too old to hold hands.

It is remembering to say “I love you” at least once a day.

It is never going to sleep angry.

It is at no time taking the other for granted;
the courtship should not end with the honeymoon,
it should continue through all the years.

It is having a mutual sense of values and common objectives.
It is standing together facing the world.

It is forming a circle of love that gathers in the whole family.

It is doing things for each other, not in the attitude
of duty or sacrifice, but in the spirit of joy.It is speaking words of appreciation
and demonstrating gratitude in thoughtful ways.

It is not looking for perfection in each other.
It is cultivating flexibility, patience,
understanding and a sense of humour.

It is having the capacity to forgive and forget.

It is giving each other an atmosphere in which each can grow.

It is finding room for the things of the spirit.
It is a common search for the good and the beautiful.

It is establishing a relationship in which the independence is equal,
dependence is mutual and the obligation is reciprocal.

It is not only marrying the right partner, it is being the right partner.

You’re not likely to do that for someone you settled for, so don’t tell yourself you will. It’s a lie, and it’s a lie that will haunt you for the rest of your life.

So whatever happened with Bob?

Well nothing, yet. He was a little annoyed with me for writing about him, but said it made him think. He’s still dating the same girl, but he’s not talking marriage proposals anymore. And he said he’s thankful that he isn’t ‘stuck’.

Now let’s hope it stays that way. Stuck is a very bad address to have.

If you don’t advise settling, then how would you recommend I meet someone?

I don’t know. Truly. I’m just being honest here.

My parents met in a bar. I would not recommend meeting someone in a bar. Yet my parents have one of the best and strongest marriages I’ve ever seen.

You just never know. And I realize this is not the answer you want, because it involves waiting and patience and fate and destiny, none of which you can control. I can totally be all ‘eharmony.com baby’ if you’d like, but I wouldn’t have any idea if that’s really good advice or not.

What I can tell you is that I went to a Bible college, and the place was crawling with husband hunters. It was repulsive. Granted, Bible college is probably a decent place to meet a good man. But to have marriage as your only goal makes you, frankly, not very appealing. And I say this as a woman who wanted nothing more than to be a wife and mother, so I know of what I speak.

Develop yourself, get a hobby, and volunteer somewhere so you don’t become completely self-centered. The right partner will come along, and if you rush it all you’ll do is make yourself more likely to settle for the wrong one.

If Bob ever breaks it off with Ms. Wrong, will you play matchmaker?

Um, no. See the above, and sign yourself up for zumba or something. Patience is a virtue.

In closing, Bob would like me to clarify that he’s not a loser. He thinks I made him sound desperate. He’s not. [Because not desperate people marry someone that's just 'ok' all the time...] He’d also appreciate it if I clarified that he does not have ‘a good personality’. He’s a stud.

He just wanted you to know that.

I told Bob that you don’t always get what you want.

Amen

Ecclesiastes

Ready for Adventure Club (AKA Children’s Church) this morning!

Ecclesiastes 3: 1-14
A Time for Everything

There is a time for everything,
and a season for every activity under the heavens:

a time to be born and a time to die,
a time to plant and a time to uproot,
a time to kill and a time to heal,
a time to tear down and a time to build,
a time to weep and a time to laugh,
a time to mourn and a time to dance,
a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,
a time to search and a time to give up,
a time to keep and a time to throw away,
a time to tear and a time to mend,
a time to be silent and a time to speak,
a time to love and a time to hate,
a time for war and a time for peace.

What do workers gain from their toil? I have seen the burden God has laid on the human race. He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end. I know that there is nothing better for people than to be happy and to do good while they live. That each of them may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all their toil—this is the gift of God. I know that everything God does will endure forever; nothing can be added to it and nothing taken from it. God does it so that people will fear him.

We are the champions. Or something.

My dear friend got me thinking with her post last week. Have you read it yet? Go ahead – I’ll wait. You need the context, trust me.

I’m a champion for respect too – in theory, at least. I do my part, and I hope that you do yours. Where I fall short is the speaking up. When you behave badly, I’m more likely to stew in silence than to verbally call you on it.

I’m not sure why this is. I think it’s more polite to suffer in silence than to speak up and risk offending? I’m afraid of getting shot? (I live in the south, so both are pretty plausible) Whatever the reason, it’s the way I roll. But I really admire people like Darcie, who speak up.

I was channeling her energy last week at one of Annie’s shows. She was in The Wizard of Oz this summer, so I spent a great deal of time in an outdoor amphitheater in the heat and humidity, squeezed in with 1458 of my friends and neighbors, since all but one show were complete sell-outs. I found that it was mostly just neighbors, since the rude factor was so high I couldn’t possibly be friends with those people.

Last Thursday night during the show, I actually texted Darcie to tell her how much I wished she were there. The women behind us were talking and ohmygoodness singing along through the whole show, and I thought I might lose my mind. Had I only known then what I would encounter on Saturday night, I’d have been grateful they were just talking.

Saturday, you see, brought the screaming child, and the baby talking family members. I don’t blame the child. I’m guessing she was about 1, which means she has a perfectly valid reason for her behavior. Her mother, on the other hand…

Parents of the world, here’s a tip for you. Don’t take a baby to a play that ends near midnight. Your child will be exhausted and miserable, and you will miss the whole play because of it.

Or at least you should miss the whole play because of it. If you’re the woman who sat behind me on Saturday, you won’t miss a second, because you’ll keep your butt planted firmly in your seat whilst your child screams bloody murder, ruining the show for everyone else.

You will ignore her kicking the back of my seat. You’ll allow her to pull my hair and pat my back with her sticky red fingers. You’ll share your diet soda with her and try to ply her with popcorn and maybe shake a teddy bear in her face when she cries, begging you to leave. You’ll tell the women you’re with that she’ll eventually scream herself to sleep, and then you’ll allow her to do so for two-and-a-half hours, while you sit 10 feet from the stage. And she never will fall asleep. Shocking, I know.

Because of the situation behind me, I elected to sit on the very edge of my seat, safely out of the child’s reach, and moving my ears ever so slightly farther away from her piercing wail. About twenty minutes before the play’s end, I’d lost my coping abilities. The child’s cry was escalating (as was my headache) and so my mom and I moved a few feet away, to sit on the edge of a rock wall. A few minutes later, for the first and only time of the night, the woman finally decided to take the child out.

Or so we thought. Instead, she left her seat – and came to stand directly beside us instead. For reals.

Naturally we went back to our seats.

When the show ended – the last last of the season – we started on to the stage to shower my girl with hugs and presents. Suddenly I hear Granny behind me, angrily shouting ‘Good riddance!’ in our direction.

Are you *kidding* me?

Apparently even I have my limits. I turned and smiled and shouted back ‘We feel exactly the same way, lady!’

And then I immediately felt like a moron for dignifying her with a response at all.

We talked to Annie for a few minutes, and then we she went to change out of her costume my mom turned around to discover that the women were still standing there, shouting and gesturing in our general direction. Um, crazy much?

I had a lot of things I’d love to have said to them, but restraint is more my thing. So instead, I did what will from here on be referred to as ‘pulling a Darcie’, and I whipped out my camera phone.

Oh yes I did.

I walked several steps closer to them so that I was out of the crowd, and what I was doing what very obvious. I held my bright blue phone up above my head, pointed it directly at them, and I began snapping away.

The jerks? They ran.

No surprise.

In the interest of complete honesty, I will tell you that rather than feeling satisfied after this exchange, I felt petty.

But it was pretty funny.

And I have the [blurry] pictures to prove it.

Actually, you’re *not* special

This is something I try to teach my children. Sounds terrible, right? But I think you should teach it to your kids, too. Looking around our society, I see plenty of adults who were never taught that lesson, and the results? They’re not good.

Case in point – traffic. Oh my goodness do the drivers of the world need to hear this. You are not special, people! We all have places to go and schedules to keep, and unless you’ve got freshly harvested organs in your car and you’re rushing to a children’s hospital, you’re not special. You need to sit and wait your turn, just like everyone else. Don’t drive down to the end of a lane you know is merging, then swerve in at the last second, cutting everyone else off. You are no more important than the rest of us.

About to miss your turn? Then you need to drive down to the next light and turn around and go back. You, know, since you are the one that screwed up and all. You don’t need to sit there blocking traffic, waiting for 2 lanes to clear so you can illegally turn from the middle lane just to save yourself 90 seconds of turning around and going back.

In parking lots where there’s lots of traffic – think just after church, or during school pick-ups – you need to wait in line. Patiently. Stop looking for empty parking spaces to cut through and work your way up 3 cars. Especially after church, this is a real jackleg move. Just wait your turn.

This mindset is what my dad calls ‘Hooray for me and the heck with you’.

And traffic isn’t the only place you’ll encounter it, either. Hooray for the lady in the grocery store with a cart full of stuff, and the heck with the man behind her who has to wait 10 minutes to buy his loaf of bread. She was there first!

I use this as an example because I think we, my fellow women of the world, are the worst offenders. Women act so entitled these days it’s sickening. No wonder chivalry is dead – we killed it with our own attitude of entitlement. No one wants to hold the door for someone who walks right through without a thank you - just ask my friend Darcie.

So I try to teach my kids that they aren’t special.

God made us all unique, there’s only one irreplaceable you, you’re amazing, yada, yada, yada. Sure. I’m down with that.

But special as in ‘the rules don’t apply to you’? No way.

I apply this rule to things like prayer at graduation.  You don’t believe in God? Fine. But it’s not going to hurt you to sit down and shut up and let someone else believe out loud. You can even think how silly it is the whole time in your head – no need to call the ACLU for your imagined slight.

Somewhere along the way – and I dare say it was when The Greatest Generation raised The Baby Boomers – we came to believe that individual rights can trump those of a group. That every thought and feeling we have is so profoundly important, we have the right – nay, the obligation – to shout it from the rooftops. And we’re hypersensitive to boot. We believe we’re special.

While discussing the new ‘debt deal’ (tongue. biting.) someone recently commented that everyone wants to make cuts, but no one wants the cuts to affect them. It’s true, in all aspects of our lives. We all think that a vague ‘something’ should be done somewhere, but few people feel the obligation to start with themselves. (When’s the last time you sent in a little extra with your taxes, just to help out?)

So this is me, at home, doing my part. Following the rules of common courtesy and basic respect. Teaching my kids that we’re just like everyone else.

Except better drivers.

I’m definitely a better driver.

Breaking my silence

Whew! I’m glad that is over. I’ve had a lot to say, and no way to say it!

I took a hiatus, as you may have noticed. I promised myself that I’d take the summer off and completely enjoy my precious children, and enjoy them I did.

While I was gone, there were trips taken and memories made. Swimming and slip-n-sliding and many, many popsicles eaten. A few Big Moments, but mostly lots of little ones, which are precisely my favorite kind of moments.

A few highlights:

~The day I treated everyone to a strawberry limeade, and while we were in the drive-thru line Annie asked me if I could roll down her window. There was a bus parked nearby that was unloading soldiers, and she leaned out the window to call to those passing by. “Thank you for keeping our country safe!” My heart swelled. This is a very good kid.

~Catie? No longer shy. In the slightest. She talks 90 miles an hour to anyone who will listen, telling perfect strangers about our dinner plans or her loose tooth or the play that her sister is in. The child is Out There in a big way these days, which is something I wasn’t sure would ever happen, given her previous inclination to hide under my skirt in pretty much any social situation.

~It’s too early to be sure, but it seems Lilly, at four-and-a-half, may finally have gotten the hang of putting her shoes on the right feet. Everyone please find something wooden to knock on, so we don’t spoil it. This has been a long journey – the child even wore flip flops on the wrong feet, with the strap between the wrong toes. It pains me just to think of it.

~The county fair! I know many people mock them, but I really love ours. The girls and I do lots of baking and sewing and drawing and flower cutting and photograph taking, and we enter as many categories as we can. The result? Lots of ribbons, and enough prize money to pay for our night at the fair. This year Annie and Catie were tall enough to ride lots of things they’ve never ridden before, and they were delighted! A very good, very late night was had by all.

We’ve enjoyed tea parties and day trips and lots and lots of craft projects. There’s been a lot of staying up late and very little sleeping in, and s’mores on more than one occasion.

Lightning bugs were caught, stars were wished upon, and a little camping was done.

And every day, I was very, very thankful to have these precious girls to spend it with.

I am blessed beyond measure.

Why I’m not celebrating

I’m sure you’ve heard the news by now. After 9 1/2 years of pursuit, Usama Bin Laden has been declared killed by US Forces. I watched the television coverage late into the night, with very mixed emotions.

I am glad that he’s not ‘out there’ anymore. I’m not even mourning his death, really. But I cannot stomach the celebrations that I’m witnessing.

Let me say right now that I consider our military personnel separately from what I’m about to say. Their story is not our own. Their emotional attachment to this news is and deserves to be  on a different level. I understand something of their relief and their satisfaction at a job done. Something.

But for those who have done mostly nothing…those average Americans who sit at home day after day, living their comparatively cushy lives, risking nothing and sacrificing nothing…for them – because of them – I feel saddened. Weary. Ashamed.

UBL did evil things. Few would argue with that. The world is probably a [marginally] safer place without him in it…though I don’t for one moment deceive myself enough to think there aren’t hundreds more radicals lined up to take his place.

I’m not sorry he is gone.

But I’m very, very sorry that another soul has been lost.

By earthly standards, Usama Bin Laden was about as bad as it gets. He was ‘less than’ me.

But by God’s standards? He was another child. A child just like me.

A child loved and lost.

I cannot allow myself to lose sight of that, and I cannot bring myself to celebrate something so contrary to the heart of God.

I don’t generally like to hear scripture quoted in a context like this. It can seem so self-righteous, and that’s not my intent. But in the hopes that it might give you pause, or reason to look at this victory in a new light…

Do not gloat when your enemy falls; when they stumble, do not let your heart rejoice, or the Lord will see and disapprove, and turn His wrath away from them. ~Proverbs  24:17

As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign Lord, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked. ~Ezekiel 33:11

From my feed, Facebook statuses from the past 10 hours:

‘Good News. Osama Bin Laden is in hell.’

‘Wish we had footage we could all watch on tv, Al-Jazeera style’

‘We should have a parade with his head on a stick’

‘Earthquake warning: Bin Laden is in hell and even they don’t want him.’

‘They should strap a bomb to him and blow his body to bits, let the pieces rain down over the whole [bleep] country’

Nice.

Oh and of course the numerous ‘Ding Dong Bin Laden’s dead’ posts. Cheering the fact that he’s gone ‘below, below, below, yo-ho!’

Awesome.

I’m very sorry that this nation, despised for its arrogance in much of the world, will now be making international headlines for our celebration in the streets. Much like they celebrated the terrorist attack that started all of this. Much like I imagine they would celebrate the assassination of our President. And we would be sickened by their celebrations, wouldn’t we? Because it’s evil. Because we’re above that.

Except when the shoe is on the other foot, apparently. Then we’re able to appreciate the differences.

‘But we’re the good guys!’

Right. The good guys.

Who, in that moment, don’t actually look all that different from the ‘bad guys’

Perception is reality.

Remember that while you celebrate.

Conduct yourself accordingly.

We did what needed to be done, but we don’t have to delight in it.

I take no pleasure in the death of anyone, declares the Sovereign Lord. ~Ezekiel 18: 32

And…the job is not done.