Bandaids

One of my favorite stories happened to a friend of mine. She has twin boys. They are in kindergarten this year. How precious is that? Anyhow, the one twin had a boo boo. His sweet brother ran to help and reappeared with a maxi-pad while announcing excitedly, "...the world's largest bandaid!"

It still makes me smile, just thinking about it.

Misconceptions...it's happened to me before. I think one thing, my husband thinks another. When he asked me to take Michaela to her soccer game on Wednesday night (and we both had meetings) I thought I was taking her and he was picking her up. He thought I was taking her and picking her up. Uh Oh! Misconception.

When I have repeatedly told my husband we don't do Sunday suppers, rather Sunday night breakfasts or snacks after night church. Then last weekend when we had the single missionary stay with us and I made homemade Monteray Jack Chicken Soup and he looked at me questioningly. "I thought we don't have Sunday night suppers?" he asked. Uh Oh! Misconception.

I told Matt to drink lots of milk since he broke his right foot over Christmas Break. Then when he comes home for his doctor's appointment last week and says the doctor said his foot has a ways to go. I asked, "Are you drinking lots of milk?" He replies, "A glass at each meal." "Three glasses a day" I complain. Uh Oh! Misconception.

When I catch my daughters putting their dirty dishes in the sink instead of the dishwasher and I give them the evil eye. They reply, "I don't have the kitchen chores today. I have the bathroom." Uh Oh! Misconception. (Although I know they really do know what they should do.)

Uh Oh's and Misconceptions! I don't like them! I wish I could fix them with my little friend's 'world's largest bandaid.'

I can't!

They will always be there. There will always be conflict! Shoot! For this middle child who hates conflict...Guess what? I hate it! I hate it more than scrubbing the toilet and cleaning up dog vomit put together.

Some misconceptions are real, like my first incident with my hubby. We truly were thinking two different things. Some misconceptions are cover-ups like my daughters and the dishwasher- responses to keep from getting in trouble (and throw Matt and his lack of milk drinking into this category, too.)

I know about cover-ups, too...my responses to keep from getting in trouble. They often come in the form of excuses or blaming somebody else. "Sorry girls, I was late to take you to dance because my meeting went long." (I can't leave when I need to, to take care of my family?) "Sorry honey, I was going to get your laundry done, but I just forgot." (Is forgetting a viable excuse? Or does it show the limited value I place on caring for my family?)

Yuck! What kind of a blog is this? I'm instantly not liking it! I hate misconceptions! I hate even more looking at my cover-up misconceptions! Getting real with myself may be the hardest job I have. It's one I avoid as much as possible.

Can we stop here? Can we go back to the light-hearted 'world's largest bandaid story?'

Unfortunately, once I've exposed my heart and it's weakness, I can't pretend I don't know.

My boo-boo is invisible, yet it's real.

Lord, only you can heal my sinful heart...and that's for sure better than the 'world's largest bandaid.'

The Circus

The girls are at snow camp. All three of them! Woo Hoo! Quiet weekend...time with my man....life is good! After dropping them off at church I returned home. The quiet hush of my house was soon interrupted by a crazy black dog whining and jumping up 5 feet in the air.

O.k., O.k. Bathroom duty time, since those with the real job are gone, I thought, while attaching the leash to his collar. After a short potty break, made shorter because I had no boots (Madison's wearing mine) we came back inside.

His conspicuously empty water and food dish made me growl. Do those girls remember to feed the dog. I went into the garage to get his food. As I scooped it up I smiled.

The dogfood scooper is a chunky plastic cup, which looks like an elephant and is labeled "Romeo."

As I went back inside and plopped Hercule's food in his dish, I was beaming. Matt was only 3 or 4 when we had taken him to the circus in Cleveland. He, of course, needed a snack at intermission. He and his dad left and returned with a red snowcone in the Romeo cup.

How had that cup survived the moves, garage sales and radical clutter-eliminating treatments given by my husband? I shook my head in amazement. I must have tucked that away in some unseen nook or cranny or it never would have survived our household for all these years.

No, we must've lost it.

Yet, here it was. Today...the day of anticipation, because the house was quiet. Maybe we should surprise Matt and visit him at college, I thought excitedly. Then remembered, No, no...this was our quiet day. Our Day! :)

I scooped out the second Romeo cup of food. Memories of the circus made me smile again. I remember asking Matt as we were putting our coats on and getting ready to join the mass exodus of people leaving the Gund Arena, "What was your favorite part?"

Without hesitating, he smiled and said, "the clowns."

The clowns? Anyone could be a clown. What about the trapeze artists, the lion tamers, and the elephant stunt men? These people had spent hours and years perfecting their craft and skill.

The clowns? Their job was simply to give us something to watch while the rings were being taken apart and reset for the next act. The clowns were a matter of keeping us occupied and laughing while the next significant act came. The clowns did not need skill - just lots of crazy interaction with each other and the audience.

As I gripped Matt's little hand and we stuck close to Daddy, winding our way through the crowd, I kept thinking about the clowns.

As a mom, I am the clown. My job doesn't seem very important. It doesn't take years of skill to be a mom, just a moment of conception.

I often wonder what I'm doing...surely there's something more important and significant than changing poopy diapers and listening to children fight. I often feel like I'm not 'getting anywhere' and neither does the clown who occupies the ring he's assigned to. Yet, the circus could never operate without a clown. The clown captivates the eyes, minds and thoughts of the child while the "big stuff will soon be happening."

Yet to the child...the clown is the big stuff.

4 Little Letters

The other day while cleaning out my hallway closet I found it. Now that I had taken the plunge and thrown out all my brown paper Aldi's bags, I had carefully replaced the stack with 3 simple but overly large fabric bags. There behind the fabric grocery bags was a small paper bag. What's this, I wondered.





Inside were 4 old blocks.




That's right! I had bought these for my friend, Julie. By the time I remembered to give them to her, I couldn't remember what they had spelled. Once again I began turning the blocks over...l, o, e, b? Surely the word must have been love. I carefully looked at each of the 6 sides on each block. No letter v!





Was I thinking I was going to marker in a a little dash here or there to make a letter look like a v? No, no way! For myself...I might have thought that. For Julie, my dear friend, whose blocks I had already decided to keep, no way!

New thought...what if the word wasn't love. What other 4 letter word could it be? Twenty minutes later, I got it!

HOPE


It was better than LOVE. Love is passe, overused, trite. HOPE is soul-ful, heart-pounding, life-inducing.


I grabbed my antique, chunky, perfect letters and placed them on my antique ice chest. Perfect! They looked perfect. It was confirmed. I needed them. (Sorry Julie.)


HOPE...my favorite word for the new year.


Why is it that January 1st should feel any different from December 31st? It's simply a tomorrow tacked on to today, or is it?


The difference is hope. With each new year comes hope. Hope that I'll lose weight, hope that I'll pray more, hope that I'll get my priorities right, hope that I'll make a difference in the lives of others. Hope that God will reach down and use me to be a blessing to those I touch. It will be small, likely unnoticeable. I just need to hope in that quiet trusting kind of way. I need to hope and believe and act upon the truth that all I need to do is stay close to Him and let the amazing smell of His aftershave rub off on me.


I hope I'll choose that...day after day.


It's even better than losing 20 pounds!