Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Professional Mother

What do you do well?  What defines you?  What are your talents or skills?  With what characteristics God has blessed you?

When I try to answer this I always seem to fall short, to compare my weaknesses to others' strengths and come up lacking.  It is usual an attempt to lift my spirits and find my worth and ends in a bash session.  So I asked my objective, honest 6 year old what I do well.  I take pictures.  That's it.  But later he commented as I cut his french toast in nice little squares, "You're a professional."  It still cracks me up.  Children see the best in us and see no talent greater than another.  Whether I was an executive of a major corporation or just good at taking out the trash I have value and make a valid contribution to society.

Having recently examined myself as a mother and wife, I again found myself lacking until coming upon the word belong.  They need me, I am wanted.  They suit me and I them.  I am an intricate part of, an imperfect individual in, a well-loved member of my family, my church, my community, my group of friends, and in the eyes of God.  I have risen to the much coveted status of PROFESSIONAL.  It may be my job, but more importantly it's who I am and where I belong.

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Heebie-jeebies

Each of us has something that freaks us out... spiders, caterpillars, snakes, lizards, bugs...



I've seen my fair share of pestilence.  Lice in Kindergarten.  Cockroaches that can live under a Houston phone book for 3 days (mental note, step and twist.)  Box elder bugs (aka Love bugs) in the back yard so many you could hear them.  Raining lady bugs when the window was opened.  Flying mutated crickets landing on my face in the middle of the night. (Most of these were in Stephenville, TX, maybe that's part of why I was so glad to leave that barren wilderness, but I miss my in-laws.)  Locusts, grasshoppers, fireants, you name it.  Nothing, though, prepared me for the first over-reaction of my own child.  I couldn't get over my 20 mo old boy being upset by a fake lizard.  He walks around it.  Backs up when we bring it to him... he had me in stitches.

Then Elizabeth Downie posted Selma flipping out about a snake.  It's funny because this post has been in the works for 2 weeks.  Great minds think alike! Selma and the snake

Monday, June 14, 2010

Collage

What makes me...ME?

The power of a name, an interest, a place, a perspective...?  What is the community that formed you or are you the one that formed your community? As for me, I'm the result.


What make me tick?  Art deco, nature, food, color, theory, humor, religion, my personal history.  I think this is more a collage of what I'd like to be.  But aren't we really our potential?