What I Haven't Done

The picture you see above is a picture I took in the woods near our house.  The "woods" are sparse and do not cover a lot of territory..but there are enough trees there that once you walk in, you do feel a little isolated from everything.  Recently I've gotten into photography; specifically, taking pictures of strange or unusual things and applying filters to give them special effects.  It's always fun to discover a new hobby or interest. There is so much out there, and so little time to experience what is out there.

Recently I have been assisting a neighbor with tutoring her son for some of his classes.  For one assignment, he had to come up with a pretend vacation and include latitudes and longitudes and other information about his "destination".  I said, "Oh, I can help with that.  I used to be a travel agent."

"Is there anything you haven't done?"  she exclaimed.

Well.  I have this list, and it's longer than the Great Wall of China.

Seriously, though.  I'm at the tail end of a second semester of school.  I've decided that I will never stop going back.  I will get my degree, and use it to fund the next degree, and then the next, and the next...

Pay Attention

The other night I went to Wal Mart kind of late to pick up some stuff, and to get out of the house.  The woman who rang up my groceries was about my age.  It was almost ten o'clock.  We had a conversation that went sort of like this:

"You much be ready to go home," I said.

"Yes.  But when you think about it, who does want to be working, late at night,  away from their families and their homes?"

"True," I said.  "And then you must get some customers that are hard to deal with."

"It's really not so bad," she said.  "People are nice.  The people I work with are nice.  It's a good place to work.  Sometimes, people just have a hard time and they're going to be in a bad mood.  As long as you understand that every now and then, you're going to get someone like that, then it's okay."

I LOVED her attitude.  She had every reason to be in a foul mood herself.  She was working late, had been on her feet all day, and was obviously tired.  But her perspective changed everything!  She had made a conscious decision to view her job and the people she came across in that job in a certain way, and she was better off for it.

In the past few years I have found that this applies to many things in life.  It's easy to get up in the morning and complain, and to express our unhappiness over things that aren't quite going the way we want them to.  It's challenging to take a less than desirable situation and turn it into something that can be enjoyed or at least make you content.  But it can be done.  How do you do this?  How do you change your attitude?

The biggest tool I use for this is prayer.  Because God has an eternal perspective, praying about a situation can actually give you peace.  If you're going through a trial, praying can ease your mind and help you to remove yourself from the "here and now" of the problem and look at it from a distance.  This is also useful in solving problems that arise in your life.  It keeps you cool headed.  It helps you act after thinking, not act without thinking.

The other major tool that can help you is empathy.  Stop and switch places with someone.  Being with Logan and witnessing his struggles with communication and behavior has taught me that when someone is acting a certain way, there is always a reason.  Whatever that reason may be...I try to think about the person I'm dealing with and understand their behavior. Sometimes there's an explanation.  Sometimes not.  But either way, you are still accountable for how you are acting towards them.

As I write this Logan is sitting in a rocking chair next to me, pushing on my arm with his foot and yelling (or "singing" as he sometimes tries to call it.)  It's annoying.  But he's telling me something.  He's saying, Stop writing, mom, and look at me.  Pay attention.

Score One For Mom

Yesterday I took advantage of the somewhat mild weather and walked with my oldest son to his favorite fishing spot.  He wanted to check his fishing traps and I wanted to spend some time with him.

At one point we had to go down a steep bank and jump over a gully.  I complained to him, "Didn't you stop to think that your poor old mother would have to jump over this when you went this way?"

He stared at me for a minute with a bemused expression on his face.  "Whatever, mom, you exercise!"

This made my day.  I am not super skinny.  I'm just not built that way.  But I try to stay healthy and I do work out at least three times a week.  I didn't think he really paid attention, but he does!  And if he pays attention and notices something like that, then that means my oldest daughter does, too.

What's the moral of the story?  That we, as mothers, sometimes think that how we treat ourselves goes unnoticed by our children, but it doesn't.  My kids notice that I take care of myself.  I hope that this influences them in a good way and teaches them that taking care of yourself and taking the time you need to stay  healthy is time well spent.

Breaking the Mold

This morning I read an article that really disturbed me and saddened me.  A woman died after supposedly injecting herself with Vaseline in order to give herself a breast augmentation.  (You can read the full article here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/20/sonia-perez-llanzon-dies-vaseline-breasts_n_4999990.html?utm_hp_ref=mostpopular)  Her son misses her.  She is remembered as a marathon runner and a boxer.  Not as a woman with small breasts.

There has been a bigger outcry lately against photoshopped women and advertisements in stores that only feature "skinny"  models.  Yet the pursuit of that look remains.  We are a society obsessed with perfection.  We are our own worse critics.  Every morning we get up and look in the mirror and it's a rare person that can be completely satisfied with what they're seeing.  Why is that?  I think it's because we grow up with an idea in our heads that we are supposed to look a certain way and dress a certain way.  Society tells us that if our waist expands beyond a certain point, then it's very, very bad, and we should feel very, very bad and very, very guilty.  This is where things become twisted.  We should love ourselves enough to want to stay healthy, not hate ourselves enough to torture our bodies into submission.  We should recognize that the look we have is uniquely ours, and does not belong to any other woman.  We should celebrate that.  We should own that.

Beyond that, what should scare us the most is the attention that gets paid to what we put on the outside of ourselves, but the apathy and lack of interest with what we put into ourselves and what we can offer to other people.  Are we becoming our best selves by continually finding fault with our skin, hair, breast size, waist circumference, clothes, teeth?  We are not.  There's making small changes in order to feel better about ourselves.  Then there's obsession.  What should we be obsessed with?  We should be obsessed with becoming our best selves, not forcing ourselves into a mold that was never designed to hold us in the first place.

I teach a large class of twelve and thirteen year old girls at my church.  I try to impress upon them on a weekly basis that they are unique, special, talented, beautiful, and that they each have something to offer to this world.  I tell them every Sunday that they are daughters of God, that He loves them, and that they each have something important to do. If this applies to twelve and thirteen year old girls, then it applies to their mothers, sisters, aunts, grandmothers; it applies to women everywhere.  Not a single woman on this earth is exempt from this.  We are all daughters of God.

Go Do

(image from timeanddate.com)

When I was in the ninth grade, I had this teacher named Mrs. Powers.  Mrs. Powers really lived up to her name.  She lived on a farm or a ranch and spent her mornings or afternoons baling hay and doing other chores that needed to be done.  She prepared detailed English lessons for a class full of arrogant talented and gifted kids and taught a bunch of other classes as well.  One of her lessons still sticks with me to this day.  She asked us, if someone gave us a specific amount of money, what would we do with it?  The caveat was that we could not save the money.  We could not give the money to someone else, nor could we refuse the money.  We had to spend it.  What would we spend it on?  One very wise classmate said he would invest it. Several other people agreed.  Some people argued with the necessity of spending it all.  She then told us that the money was, in actuality, time.  We are given a finite amount of minutes in a day.  We can't save the minutes, refuse the minutes, or give them to someone else.  We have to spend them.  What is the best way to spend this very limited and valuable resource?  

The reason, dear readers, that I am thinking of this subject today, is because in our house, we are at the tail end of spring break.  I have spent this particular day lamenting the fact that I am tired and eating a bunch of junk food, and it occurred to me, as I sat here with a (small) stack of Pringles in my hand, that I was wasting time.  So then I started thinking about other things I do that waste my time.  And it occurred to me that over the last two or three years, I have learned a lot about time wasting.  

Specifically, I have found that it is a waste of time to:

1) Worry about things I cannot change or undo.  Everyone makes mistakes.  Sometimes, we also look at our lives and wish that something was different.  If it's something that you can invest time in (see?  I learned something, Mrs. P) such as becoming more healthy or learning something new, then do it.  That's not a time waste. If, however, you are spending hours on Pinterest pinning pictures of kitchens that you cannot possibly afford (guilty), you might be wasting time. Even though this activity is fun and in the throes of self-justification I call it "research for the future".

2) Feel upset about things I can't have.  Like the kitchen.  Or a certain type of car.  Whatever!  Again, if it's attainable, and it's something that you can feasibly work towards, then it's not a waste of time.  Otherwise, you're just making yourself miserable.  Move on, until your circumstances change.

3) Carry a grudge.  Everyone gets offended. Everyone gets a wrong done to them.  That's life.  Thinking about what someone did to you, and replaying it over and over in your head, encourages bitterness.  It deletes the possibility of healing.  The old adage "acid damages the container it's in just as much or more than the thing it's poured on" is true.  If you are carrying a grudge or nursing emotional wounds, then you are taking up space in your head that could be used for more positive things.  It may take time to get over the vilest of wrongs, and a lot of soul-searching and praying (if you pray), but realize that overcoming this type of thing is a process.  Investing your time in emotional healing and forgiveness is NOT a waste of time.  Thinking up nefarious plans for revenge and willfully hanging on to the memories of what someone did to you is not only a waste of time, it's harmful and painful.

4)Spend hours on the internet.  Facebook, Pinterest, email, SnapChat, Twitter...It's fun and it's a great way to connect with people.  But you do reach your saturation point with all of these.  Do you really need to know that someone "liked" your post from yesterday?  Is it important to see what everyone did while you were taking a nap?  It's addicting.  Moderation. 

5)Complain.  There are certain times when complaint is called for.  For instance, if your child is having a problem at school, complaint is called for. If you are in severe pain, complaint is called for. Perhaps a trip to the ER.  Otherwise, personally, I have no time for complaints. 

6)Pumping gas.  Yeah, I know, this is not legitimate.  It's on here anyway!!!

But what should I do instead?   

Clean your house, learn something new, make something, serve someone,  exercise, work, write...just GO DO, people.  Just GO DO. Turn yourself outward, stop looking inward, think of the quality of the things you are doing and ask yourself if you would spend money on it.  If the answer is yes, (Yes, I would spend money on a good exercise program if I had the money, No, I would NOT pay money to spend four hours looking at kitchens/bathrooms/cars I cannot afford , No, I wouldn't pay big bucks to hold on to a grudge against my ex, my former best friend, the girl who got my order wrong at that fast food place (whatever), If you would pay money, hard earned cash that you earned, to engage in that activity, then it's probably not a waste of time.  And it's going to be personal for everyone.  Some people relax when they get off work by watching a little tv.  Nothing wrong with that.  Relaxing after a hard day is time well spent.  Some people get inspired by the things they find on Pinterest; it gets their creative juices flowing.  Again, it's personal.  The list I made, that's for me.  What about yours?

Once Upon a Time

I used to believe in fairy tales.  I loved them when I was a kid.  I imagined, or perhaps simply just accepted it as my destiny (ha. ha.) , that one day I would live in a castle and that I would have a perfect life with perfect everything and that my perfect prince charming would adore me and love me until the end of time.

The problem is, life sort of got in the way.

I do not live in a castle.  I'm thankful for the home I have but it's far from what I pictured it would be.  I do not have perfect everything.  I do not own a horse. My pet shih tzu  resembles an orc, but that's as close as we get to mythical creatures around here. My chariot is a 2000 Dodge Caravan with a saggy roof and an aroma that has yet to be categorized by mankind. Prince Charming does not exist.  More often than not, the princess has to save herself, or at least come to terms with the fact that she may have unreasonable expectations of the person she's chosen to be her ever after.

I think young women, especially since the advent of Pinterest and Twilight, have those same unreasonable expectations of life.  Everything is going to be beautiful and perfect, and this brooding guy with movie star looks is going to show up and love you forever.  That's not how it works, ladies.  Not at all.

Take my advice. Find someone who you can be friends with.  The biggest myth about finding your "true love" is that it's some huge romantic thing.  The best marriages are based on friendship, because a friend, especially a best friend, will never leave you in the cold or kick you to the curb, will never make you feel bad about yourself, and will never treat you like you are less than important in their life.  Find someone that will love you to all the planets.  Find someone you can talk to, who can make you laugh, and who can be sensitive to your feelings.  Find someone who supports your dreams and who will let you stretch and live a little.  When you get married, you don't become one person.  You're still two people.  Find someone who understands that.

Now say you manage to do all this.  You've found this incredible friend, who you also love.  You get married.  You start a life together.  That's when you can say, Once Upon a Time.  Because the story is just beginning, and it's a story you write together.