A Special Time

I just had to say "no" to something.  It is so hard to say "no" to good things...especially when everyone just assumes you will say "yes."  To many observers who don't take the time to find out why I said "no", it will not make sense.  And saying "yes" would have been the easier path to take.

My daughter is joining American Heritage Girls this year.  When I turned in her paperwork, I let the leadership know that I want to attend with my daughter because this is going to be our special time.  The person I was speaking with threw up her hands in rejoicing...because my daughter's group has no leader yet.  I quickly said "no" about being the leader, which was accepted without argument.  But then the other person started talking about my being a "helper."  I was told I would be trained and it would be fine even though I had never before set foot in an AHG meeting.

I left that night being unsure of what to do.  On one hand, if I didn't help out, who would?  And would my daughter even have a group to attend?  But I had made her a promise...this time I would be all hers.  This would be our time and she would be my main focus.

She does not get this type of opportunity often, and she is growing up.  She's reaching an age where I need to focus more on training her and discipling her.  We need to build memories together that do not always include her brothers or involve my telling her to wait until I have finished helping another child in one of her other activities.

At this point, I volunteer in her AWANA program and in some of her Sunday morning kids' worship times.  I am also preparing to be an assistant teacher in her co-op class.  But I am not just there for her.  In fact, she has a brother in each of these times with her so even if I were only there for my children, she would still be sharing me.  But I'm not just there for my children.  I am there to serve and lead and assist with a group, and our children know that.

Even at home I am rarely able to give her undivided attention.  She  has an older brother on the autism spectrum, which means outside therapy appointments.  It also means that he needs some extra one-on-one instruction with his academics.  And she has a younger brother, who is simply the baby of the family.  As the baby is known to do, he just finds ways to get attention for himself.  So she is the only girl and the middle child, and she sometimes gets lost in the shuffle.

So, for now I have said "no."  I just hope my "no" can remain a "no" throughout this upcoming year.

My Secret Life

I've been keeping a secret from my husband.  It's not a terrible secret, but it is a secret about how I've been spending some of my time.  What is this secret life I've been leading?

This blog.

Why have I kept it a secret?  Because I so often start off on new ventures, throwing myself into them with great abandon...only to later abandon these great new ventures in favor of the next thing that turns my head.

My dear husband has seen me through two direct sales ventures, a variety of new curriculum that will be "perfect" for our homeschool, and more systems than either of us can probably ever list.  He has seen me through weight loss (and re-gain), exercise programs that fell by the wayside when I fell off the wagon, and hobbies that filled up rooms only to be cast aside.

And he has never complained.   I'm not sure why, but in general, he has been more than gracious about each of these new undertakings.  But this time, I wanted to be sure before I pulled him into yet another hobby in which I wanted to dabble.

We are very different, he and I .  When he says he has "been thinking" about a new hobby or some other activity, he means he has actually weighed the pros and cons and has decided that he wants to go ahead with it.  He also means he will actually stick with it.

When I say I have "been thinking" about a new hobby, I mean the thought just popped into my head, and I'm going to jump in with both feet and give it a try.  And I will probably quickly lose interest and move on to something else.

So, today I sent him an email with the link to this blog because I'm past that initial "thinking about it" stage.  I hope this doesn't mean that it will be yet another venture that gets cast aside, because I'm really enjoying this opportunity to write.

Welcome to my blog, Dear Husband.  I hope you enjoy what you read.

Humor in Failure

Tonight I'm not feeling particularly chatty.  In fact, the only reason I'm posting at all is that I made a commitment to do so, and I'm working on keeping the commitments I make.

So, rather than ramble on, I am going to simply share a quote from one of the books I'm presently reading.  I read based on my mood, so I do often have multiple books going at once.  This is especially true for non-fiction books.

This quote if from Becoming More Than A Good Bible Study Girl by Lysa TerKeurst.  "There is humor to be found in almost every failure, if only we'll look for it."

So, tomorrow if I fail, I hope to find humor in whatever that failure may be.  And I'd love to hear your best (and funniest) failure stories.  I know I'll be sharing mine as I go along...it seems like yesterday's story of my attempt at catching our dog falls firmly into that very category.

Wet, Racing Dogs Can Build Patience

This afternoon I had an experience I wasn't expecting.

It had been raining out (which I didn't realize) and our dogs were out in it - getting soaked.  When we brought them in, it was obvious our younger (also described as "wilder") dog would need to spend the afternoon in his crate or he would get everything wet.  But he had other ideas.

He started by wrestling with his "big brother".  He did stop long enough to cooperate and head upstairs per my request.  But he blasted into our room where my husband had been resting.  He then shot quickly back out of the room and down the stairs.  After a quick tour of the main floor he returned upstairs and actually ran into his crate.

Good - I had him just where I wanted him...until he shot back out of that crate and blasted onto the bed, landing on the sleeping (and fairly grumpy) cat.  So, sleeping cat and resting husband were no longer doing either - in fact, sleeping cat had become a whirling ball of fur and claws.  As a result, the crazy dog shot back off the bed after the cat, but by then I had gotten wise enough to close the bedroom door so both were trapped.  They then began running circles around me.  When he finally came to a stop and simply resorted to obnoxious barking I was able to catch him and escort him to his crate.

When we first got this dog I honestly told my husband that I thought getting another pet would be good for me because felt I needed the growth in patience it would provide.  Yes, I said that.  I wish I could say that was a mistake on my part.  But it wasn't.

So often we are told not to pray for patience.  And yet, patience is listed in Galatians 5:22-23 among the evidences we are to find in our lives - the "Fruit of the Spirit".  God wants us to display patience just as much as He wants us to display love, joy, peace, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness and (the other dreaded one) self control.  These are all areas in which we need to grow.

Today's lesson in patience brought me to fits of laughter.  A few months ago it may have easily brought me to fits of anger.  I guess sometimes growing in patience can be comical.  By the way, before we even really knew much about this dog, we named him "Speedy".  Some days I wish we'd picked "Sleepy", "Lazy" or "Pokey" instead.

Showers of Blessings

About a month or two ago, something dawned on me.  I'm selfish.  I guess since I'm also human this really should not have been a big surprise.  But it was.

I had felt pretty justified in my interactions with others and felt like if there was a difference of opinion, I was generally right and they just needed to see things my way.  And I'd do all that was within my power to try to show them the light - I'm "helpful" like that.

But then it hit me one day.  I was not being a blessing to the people around me.  I'm not really sure why that had not been especially important to me before.  Or why, once I realized this flaw, it became far more important to me to be a blessing, but that is kind of how God has seemed to work in my life time and time again.

While I often envy the people with the amazing testimony of total transformation, I am coming to realize that I couldn't handle it.  I need things in smaller doses.  Smaller transformations at a time, so that they will be lasting transformations.

So, my daily prayer for these past couple of months has been for God to show me how I can be a blessing to someone around me that day.  I have often been an "all or nothing" type of person, so this has been a project in discipline.  To daily come before my Heavenly Father and actually present myself as a sacrifice to Him and ask that He give me a task to do for someone else, has been very humbling for me.

And yet, as with everything God shows me to do, while I have started out making an effort to be a blessing to others, I often find that I am the one who ends up being the most blessed for the experience.

A Visit to the Doctor

I had an interesting visit to the doctor's office today.

First, as I was discussing the medications that I have been taking in recent months, I informed the tech that the extended release form was not working as well as the short acting form had worked.  She then shared that she is on extended release for ADD and has experienced the same thing with her medications.  She said that it seems to wear off around 2 or 3 in the afternoon.  She then began talking about her children who like to try to sleep in on the weekdays, but who wake up at the "butt crack" of dawn on the weekends.  While it was only 10AM when she said this, I'd venture to say that her meds had already worn off as her impulse control was not working.

Then, while waiting for my meds to be refilled I noticed that a "lady" in the waiting area was wearing a lovely sundress.  However, it covered almost none of her bra, which she seemed to be wearing as an accessory and not as the secret that Victoria recommends.

As I sat there pondering all these things and shocked at the behaviors of those around me, I had someone sit down beside me who struck up a conversation.   I realized fairly quickly I had actually met her before, but she did not seem to remember me.  I decided to keep my identity quiet as it might negatively impact our conversation.  You see, when I met her before, it was because she approached my husband and I when she was his patient.

Today, she was sharing with me that she is a cancer patient and that she has sought second opinions because her options have become so limited.  She is presently receiving radiation in hopes of being a candidate for surgery.  She shared that her child is getting ready to turn 4 next week and the day after she will be meeting with the surgeon to find out if he is willing to operate.  If so, she will lose her leg and her bladder.  If not, she will lose her life.  If she had realized I am the wife of the doctor whose opinion she did not trust, she may have simply walked away and not shared what is happening in her life.

I cannot imagine what she is facing yet she cried no tears, just shared.  I don't know what her secret is, because I cry over the dumbest things.  She shared about a recent trip to Disney that others had given their family through fund raising and how they had been so blessed through it all.  She showed me a picture of her children, 3 and 8 years old.  And she did it all with an upbeat attitude.

Every day recently I have prayed and asked that God will show me someone who I can bless at some point in the day.  I don't know if He answered that prayer today because I never felt as if I went out of my way to be a blessing to anyone.  But, He did bless me today.  I cannot imagine being in the position of praying that you can lose your leg just so you can spend more time with the people you love.  But I interacted with someone today is who is praying that very thing right now and preparing herself for the "no" answer she may receive next week.

For anyone who reads this, I don't know her name, and I'll probably never have an update because my DH cannot share such information with me out of respect for confidentiality, but I do hope you will lift her up in your prayers.

No Glitter

When I started this blog about 10 days ago, I was not sure what I was getting myself into.  I'd been considering it, but thought I'd probably end up doing a blog with lots of pictures of my children and their activities.  I thought it might be a good way to chronicle their school year and to keep family in other parts of the country abreast of what was happening.

But something happened on the way to that first blog post.  Instead of pics of my kids and sharing of our daily happenings, I felt a need to share more of myself.  This has turned into a wonderful creative outlet for me.  I've always had a desire to be a writer, but felt I lacked some key elements necessary for writing anything of great length.  First, I have no creative ideas so works of fiction are beyond me.  Any time I thought that I may have an original idea, I later came to realize I'd either already read a book just like it or seen the movie.  And as for the possibility of writing a work of non-fiction, I don't have the stick-with-it-ness needed to do the research and follow it all through to completion.

But I'm discovering that my mind is perfectly suited to the blog.  I seem to even think in blog posts several times a day now as if I am creating something even when I'm not at the computer...it will probably start to drive me crazy at some point, but for now, it's kind of fun.  The other great thing about blogging is there is absolutely no clean up like every other creative venture I've embarked upon...and I do not need an entire room devoted to it like the one I have filled with cardstock, ink pads, rubber stamps, punches, ribbons...well, you get the picture.  And no glitter to vacuum.

I think I could get used to this...