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I am hanging in. I’m on Day 7 and I’m hanging in. I am so friggin tired though. I wrote yesterday about being overwhelmed and having too much on my plate and then spilling my plate all over the bathroom floor. I put my big girl panties on though. I got dressed and I drove downtown and I valet parked my monster truck all by myself.  I met my husband and we had so much fun. Too much fun. We had the kind of fun that gives you pictures like this one:

If you look carefully you can see Charlie’s reflection in the glass elevator. He’s smiling. Making him smile is just about my favorite thing to do in the whole wide world. Sometimes you just have to enlist a sombrero for these kinds of tasks.

I sent him on his way to work this morning and drove home so I, too, could go to work. I’m so tired though. And so sore. This old girl does not bounce back from a fall like I used to. And yes, there have been many falls over the years. That’s how I roll. And maybe a wild sombrero kind of night wasn’t the best recovery plan but I’d do it again in a heartbeat because sometimes laughter really is the best medicine.

Sometimes you have to shout, “LIFE IS TOO BIG!” and run for the city. Or the hills. Or wherever it is you run. Sometimes you have to run to a place where you can laugh at life.

You can’t run everyday. People who run everyday never get anything done. They never grow because they never fully face the giants that make life feel too big. They never get to learn how strong they could have been if they’d only taken on the challenge. No, you can’t run everyday.

But sometimes you can. Sometimes you should. Sometimes it’s the best thing for you. It doesn’t solve much. It doesn’t fix all the things. It doesn’t make the challenge go away. But it does give you a moment to catch your breath.  It gives you a moment to put on a sombrero. It gives you perspective.

So I’m glad Charlie and I ran away last night. And I’m glad I’m going to sleep in my own bed tonight because seriously, I don’t bounce back like the old days. But I’m grateful for what bounce is left. I have a feeling I’ll need it again one day.

I don’t know where this is but I want to be there. Now. I don’t want to have to get in a car or on a plane. I want to wiggle my nose like Samantha from Bewitched. I want to be walking on that road in front of those trees with that mist swirling around me while I look at those mountains.

Sigh.

I’m on my couch nursing an aching back. I fell in my bathroom this morning. Hard. I got out of the shower and was racing to get ready and my feet slid right from under me. There was grabbing and reaching and a guttural yell. I’m okay; it actually hurt my pride more than my body; but tears. So many tears fell fast.

I had already had a full morning. I’m supposed to meet my husband in the city this afternoon. We are going to a business dinner together. It’s for him. My business rarely takes me out of our bubble of Kingwood. I’m supposed to get dressed up though and drive to the city. It’s a big deal. And there I was laying on the bathroom floor.

I was hurrying because I had been a poor judge of time. I had tried to pack the kids, pack the lunches, type up instructions for Grandpa (who is managing the kids and the carpool and the homework and all the things for me tonight), and go rescue a friend who had a dead battery and needed to get her girl to school. All good things. All things I wanted or needed to do. I just didn’t judge the time well. I needed to be at work. I needed a shower. I was moving too fast. And then I wasn’t moving. I was laying on my bathroom floor.

That’s when I heard God say,”You think you’re ready to slow down now?”

I’ve gone and done it again. I have put too much on my plate. I had space so I started adding things.

Just a little here.

And there.

And I can squeeze this in.

And that.

And then it all piled up and I didn’t know what to do with it.

But I was pretty sure I could figure it out. My husband is under a lot of stress right now. My kids are overwhelmed with homework and, I guess, just normal pre-pubescent angst right now. And I thought that seemed like a good time to put on my cape and pretend to be Wonder Woman.

Except I’m not Wonder Woman. I love her and her star-spangled britches but I am not her.

My laundry is piled high.

My dishes are out of control.

I haven’t meal planned or grocery shopped this week so I have nothing to feed anyone.

And I am now on the couch nursing my aching body and my bruised pride.

So I pray.

God, show me what to knock off my plate. Show me where to offer myself grace. Help me to care for my family. Help me to be truthful.

I’m the lady who preaches simplicity. I’m the lady who talks about organization and prioritizing. I’m the one who encourages others to say “NO” as a complete sentence. I’m the one who waves the flag of “less is more.”

I’m the one who fell in the bathroom today because I forgot all those things. And now I’m the one who is craving retreat.

I probably won’t gain that nose wiggle power any time soon and I’m too busy to jump on a plane to fly off to an unknown destination. I will slow down though. I will back up and ask God to show me his path before racing down the one I think looks best. I will breathe. And right now, I will take an ibuprofen because bathroom floors are hard.

I love Fall. I think it is probably my favorite of all the seasons. This may be the toughest part of being a Houstonian. This is the time of year I really start to miss my Southern Illinois roots. I miss crisp breezes. I miss changing colors. I miss hay rides and wienie roasts and bonfires. Please don’t message me later and tell me of a great pumpkin patch you know of. I’ve been taken by those pipe dreams before. After being in Houston for 17 years, I’ve made my peace.

I am okay with taking my kids to the local nursery to buy our pumpkins. I squeal with delight when the trees on my street turn gold…in December. I have accepted that “Fall” may only be a feeling here; a flavor I pour in my coffee. Houston has so much to offer. It is truly a great city. I can’t blame it for it’s lack of fall-ability.

Halloween, however, is big here. The people decorate almost as much for Halloween as they do for Christmas. There are pumpkins everywhere – plastic ones of course because it’s still too hot to put out real ones. They’ll rot and you’ll draw rats. (Another Houston highlight.) There are glow-in-the-dark spider webs strung from trees. I can throw a stone and hit at least 3 purple light up spiders on my street. (Okay, not really. I don’t have that great of an arm. But the spiders are really there.) And happy faced scare crows are dancing in flower beds all over town.

I love the sweet, happy fall decorations. I think they’re fun. I even did a children’s message at church last week comparing salvation to the scooping out of pumpkin guts. I’m all in with the sweet and I have strategically placed candy corn in decorative containers around my house to prove it.

This morning though, driving my daughter to school for an early morning science test make up, (more on that another day because God knows I have to stretch my topics this month) I encountered the scariest Halloween yard art I’ve seen in a good, long while. There were giant ghosts hanging from the trees. Large black and gray ghouls with skeleton faces blowing in the wind. There was a headless horseman and lots of scary face pumpkins.

My first thought was, “Wow. I bet that cost them a fortune.” Folks they don’t come much cheaper than me.

My second thought was, “I’m so glad my kids aren’t toddlers anymore. We’d have to skip this street for Trick or Treating.”

Our church used to do a “Trunk or Treat” to offer a place for kids to Trick or Treat safely with no threat of evil, scary, spooky anything. It was a great success for lots of years. Lots of people. Lots of candy. Lots of fun. But after a few years Trunk or Treats or Fall Festivals or Harvest Nights Out started popping up all over town. All the churches were offering a “Halloween Alternative” and we started asking,”Who’s greeting the kids in the neighborhoods?” We were wondering what message it sent to the kids on our streets when we locked up our houses and turned off our lights.

So instead of Trunk or Treating we encouraged our people to stay home and be a light in their own neighborhoods. Meeting people right where they are seemed to be a Jesus sort of thing so we thought we’d try it out on Halloween and see how it worked. We suggested that people buy good candy and not hand out a tract. Tracts are rarely a good gift, Halloween or otherwise. We asked people to be out in their yards and driveways and to smile and wave at their neighbors. It was crazy revolutionary.

I love being in our neighborhood on Halloween. I love seeing the littles in their princess/super hero/animal faced costumes. I love sharing Twizzlers and Milky Ways with my neighbors and teasing the teenagers who decided last minute to grab a pillow case and come beg for candy. I don’t love the super-crazy-scary decorations but I completely understand that others think it wouldn’t be Halloween without it. I’m sure they give me the same grace when I put up my Christmas lights the week before Thanksgiving. It’s all in fun

So what about you? Do you like your Halloween spooky or sweet? And what are your plans this year to be a light in your neighborhood?

 

 

It’s Day 4 of the writing challenge and I am officially out of words. It is rare that I have nothing to say. Very rare. So while I entered this challenge wondering what I would have to say after, say, three weeks, I never expected to be out of words by Day 4.

Out.

Of.

Words.

What I am not out of, however, is a head full of gremlins. I have little voices that say things like:

We told you this would never work.

You are out of words because you are really a writer.

You are a children’s ministry director. You will never be a writer.

You aren’t even a real children’s ministry director. You went to cosmetology school.

And you weren’t a good cosmetologist.

You really have no talent.

Or gifts.

Or anything special to think of or mention.

You are washed up.

Eat some Fritos and go to bed.

Geeze. My gremlins are harsh.

So I find myself sitting here, staring at my screen with the flashing cursor, saying things like,”Eff the Gremlins!” as I try to muster up something to say.

Yet I have nothing.

So I lament.

And it’s in the lament that I realize just typing these words makes me stronger. It makes me better.

Gremlins don’t win when I blow them off and type anyway.

This must be what punching fear in the face looks like. I’ve heard Jon Acuff talk about it for years. Now I know.

So while I have typed nothing here that will shake anyone’s world or change a single person’s life, I have learned a valuable lesson.

I am better than my gremlins. They don’t get to win. I can face my doubts head on and not be knocked down.

Not today.

Eff the gremlins.

My son has played on various teams for Upward Sports for several years. We have been blessed with some really great coaches over the years. I honestly can’t say enough about the program, the men who step up to coach, and all the people who organize the league. This year is no different. Our coach has so much heart. So much. And he gives the best pep talks.

We lost today. We lost big. We were out sized, out ran, out thrown, out caught. The other team was so much better it was almost painful. But at the end of the game he called the boys together and said something like this:

We are getting better.

We are getting better every day of every week.

The other team was really good today. They were fast. They could throw and catch really well.

But we played like a team. We played better than we did last week, which was better than we played the week before.

We will keep practicing. We will keep working hard. We will keep getting better.

I want y’all to go home and know that you gave it your all. 

Rest. Have some fun. We’ll get back together and practice hard this week.

You guys are so awesome.

The only thing that would’ve made his speech better was if November Rain was playing in the background. Not the slow part from the beginning, but the hard drive at the end when Axl whines and….well, you know how it goes. It’s a good song. It would’ve fit perfectly.

And I wish I had recorded it because I feel like it’s a pep talk that I could use myself on say, Monday mornings. Or Wednesdays. Or any day I need to get back up on the proverbial horse. So every day. Because every day is game day.

I love food. I love it for the taste. I love it for the nourishment. I love it for the way it brings people together. That’s my mostest, biggest, love. I love the way food unites us. We all need it to survive. And most of us can enjoy it in good company.

I was worried when I woke up this morning that my writing challenge might have to come to a screeching halt today. It’s Day 2 and I had no ideas. No words. Nadda. Zip.

But when my kitchen filled with lovely ladies here to do a Wildtree Workshop I my heart started to swell with love. We shared pumpkin bread and coffee and talked about what food works for our family and what food doesn’t. We prayed over the meals we prepared and asked God to bless every bite. He will. He’s faithful that way.

I have never looked at food as a means to impress others. I see food as a connector.  Gathering people in my home, giving them nutrients their body needs, feeding them deliciousness they love…that’s my love language. I want people to feel loved in my home. I want them to know that I care about their dairy allergy or their gluten sensitivity. I hope that when they see my love pour out in a physical way they will trust I can love them in a spiritual way as well.

Whether I am baking from scratch or pouring sauce from a jar, I want it to always be in love. I never want to be annoyed by diet restrictions or delicate taste buds. I pray that my hands will serve as a means to bless both stomachs and hearts.

So today is the first day. It’s the day I say I’m going to pour my words out non-stop for 31 days. It’s a lot. I made a proclamation. I committed to 31 days of writing along with a whole mess of my Clumsy Blogger friends. I chose the “family” category in the challenge because that seems to be where I spend most of my time anyway. Family is my full time job, it’s my side gig, and all the other pieces of my life tend to revolve around family. This very blog has been committed to faith, family, and food so this shouldn’t be so much of a stretch except that it’s every day. Every. Day. We all may be sick of me by Halloween.

Speaking of being sick of people. I am. I am sick of some people. Mostly mean girls. I was tired of them when I was in middle school and, as it turns out, I’m still sick of them as my daughter enters middle school. I’m also sick of them in my son’s 4th grade class but, seriously folks, I have to pace myself. I can’t run out of stories in the first week. 31 days is a lot of in-a-row-writing.

I digress.

Mean girls.

I have a dear friend that shares car pool with me. She drives to the middle school in the morning. I drive in the afternoon. It saves us time and frustration because, and I know this may be shocking, but their are mean mom girls in the car line at school. Our car pool consists of our daughters and a sweet boy that lives on my friend’s street. I love driving them home because they chat loudly and over each other about their day and I hear bits and pieces of what is going on in the halls and classes and hearts. I hear about fights and tests and locker jams. I hear about crushes and awkward glances. I love it.

One day this week, as their sweat smelling selves jumped into my truck (It was still so hot in Houston this week!) they were united in story, albeit not in the way the story was told. Words. Yelling. Shouts of outrage. It was flying at me from the back seat faster than I could take it in.

“Stop! Everyone get your words situated after you get your seat belts buckled. I can’t understand any of you.” Words after safety.

It turns out that my daughter had a full on happening with a mean girl. The story was rushed and loud but it involved a PE locker room, a cock roach (which you can’t even fully understand if you have never seen a Texas cock roach), a mean girl snatching my daughter’s shoe, and a declaration of “Don’t ever touch my stuff again!”

Apparently a roach was on the loose and the mean girl grabbed my daughter’s shoe to smash it. My daughter told her to put it down and the girl said something cool like, “I certainly can’t use my shoe. I have good shoes!” and smashed the bug anyway. With my girl’s favorite mint green running shoes. And then proceeded to wipe the bug guts on the bench,with guts and crushed wings falling to the floor where her PE clothes were laying.

Tammy Church Worker told my daughter and her friends that sometimes kids are mean. I told them that mean kids are usually sad about something in their own life so they feel the need to bully and make other kids feel bad. Tammy Church Worker believes those things. I told them we all have to keep smiling at mean kids and saying hello and being kind but that we know people who do mean things to us are not our real friends and we don’t have to spend time with them. Tammy Church Worker believes that as well.

But Mama Bear Tamara wanted to find the girl and smash a thousand cock roaches on her pretty shirt. Mama Bear Tamara wanted to get a mega phone and announce mean and nasty things about the girl. Mama Bear Tamara wanted to tell her daughter to punch the girl in the face. Actually, I may have suggested that and then laughed as if I was joking. Maybe.

My daughter won’t tell me the girl’s name. Maybe she knows that while I spend most of my life in Tammy Church Worker mode that Mama Bear Tamara is a very real person, too. My daughter is probably a much nicer person that I am. I may be a mean girl.

Crap.

Parenting is not for sissies.

When I took this course in blogging I found a community of writers that challenge me and bless me on a daily basis. So when one of them mentioned this 31 Day Challenge I was instantly intrigued. And nauseous. And my chest hurt just a little. But that probably meant I should do it soooo….

I’m jumping on. If I believe (and I do) that God has given me a voice to bless others then I should be using it. And while I have been better this year about writing and speaking on a more consistent basis – it’s not enough. I know it’s not enough because I still feel the nag. I still feel the pull deep down in my gut that I should be doing it more. I tried to satisfy the gut issue with a cheeseburger and it didn’t work. So here I go. I’m challenging myself to write for 31 days.

I can not promise you that it’ll be pretty.

I can not promise you that it’ll be earth shaking.

I can not promise anything, really, except that I will write for 31 days about food, faith, family…and it will be just about as real as it gets.

 

Day 1 – Parenting Is Not For Sissies

Day 2 – Daily Bread

Day 3 – Game Day

Day 4

Day 5 – Spooky or Sweet

Day 6 – Bathrooms Are Hard Places to Learn Lessons

Day 7 – Sometimes I Wear a Sombrero and Laugh

Day 8 – Zucchini Bread

Day 9 – Acorn Sized Blessings

Day 11 – A Handful of Grapes

Day 12 – An Open Letter to Christopher Columbus

Day 13 – Honeycomb Words

Day 14 – Did the Dust Know?

Day 15 – Because Jesus

Day 16 – Today is Just for Fun (An offer from DaaySpring.com)

Day 17 – Cluttery

Day 19 – Jon Acuff, Mr. Potato Head, and Other Monday Morning Inspiration

Day 20 – Pumpkins and Patience

Day 21 – Parenting, Smart Phones, and Instagram

Day 22 – Today Is About Chili

Day 23 – Remembering Trumps Worry

Day 25 – And That Has Made All the Difference

Day 26 – Spirit Lead Me

Day 27 – How to Make Brownies for Your Child’s Orchestra Concert

Day 28 – Thank You for the Moon

Day 29 – Surprised Again

Day 30 – It’s Important to Have People

Day 31 – I Have Run the Race

 

 

 

 

 

Sometimes I wallow. Sometimes I get caught up in myself. On occasion I have been known to throw a pity party. And decorate for it.

I have been selfish. I have put my own needs before the needs of others. I have put my wants before the needs of others.

I have fallen. Down. I have fallen with a tuck and roll. I have fallen clumsily. I have busted ass hard.

I have also soared. I have given. I have loved. I have nurtured. I have uplifted and boosted and encouraged.

The enemy wants me to focus on the former. He wants me to feel shame.

The dark one would have me believe that there is so much more of the dark in me than light. He’d have me forget redemption.

He wants me to forget the Power.

He wants me to disconnect.

He wants to pull my plug.

The enemy is not the boss of me.

Jesus loves me. This I know.

I am loved. I am redeemed.

I have a love/hate relationship with my step study. I completely, 100% love Celebrate Recovery as a theory. I love the people who created the workbooks and thought through what steps would need to be taken to overcome our hurts, habits, and hang ups. I love my sponsor. She’s kind of amazing. I love the women in my group – so different and yet so much the same.  I do. Really. I love them. I love it. I love the stuff. I love the people.

I hate doing the work. It’s hard. I’ve never been one of those people that says, “Man, I really love hard work. Especially the spiritual kind that is going to make my guts wrench.Bring it on.”

That’s not me. I do it but I hate it. And I laughed to myself when I was looking for an image for this piece because all the images on prayer were like the one above. Hazy light. Woman slightly smiling as she pours her heart out to God. It looks like she’s listening intently as God whispers sweet words of love and truth to her.

My prayers do not look like this. My prayers are half asleep as I roll out of bed in the morning. My prayers are whispered as I make lunches every morning. My prayers are cried out in the shower. My prayers are snotty, yelled gurgles of pain in my closet. My prayers are paced out around my back yard. My prayers are helping me through the hard work of this step study and they aren’t pretty. My prayers are repeated silently in my heart while I sit through work meetings. My prayers are inhaled and exhaled while I wait in car line at school. But I’m still praying.

So I’m working my steps and my group is on Principle 4, Step 4,  Lesson 10 – Spiritual Inventory – and one of the questions is this:

 

What areas of  your life are you still not putting God first? What is interfering with you doing God’s will?Ambition? Pleasures? Job? Hobbies? Money? Friendships? Personal Goals?

Okay, that’s more than one question but it might as well be the only question. And it makes me want to scream. I can look at my life and see the hurts. I can easily point out wounds and say,”Yes. This is where I was injured and, while God has brought so much healing, the scars look like this in my life.” It’s way harder to look at myself. It sucks looking into the tiny crevices where my own faults lay waiting. It is no fun to look at my habits and pull them out into the open for all to see. I don’t like looking at the questions above and having to answer, “Yes.”

Yes. All the things. All the places. Everywhere. No where.

All the things are in the way and I’m not putting God first anywhere.

 

“Search me, O God, and know my heart: test my thoughts. Point out anything you find in me that makes you sad, and lead me along the path of everlasting life.”

-Psalm 139:23-24, TLB

This is hard. And before you judge I have to ask…Can you answer? Can you be honest about all the areas and all the things? If you can I would love to sit with you over coffee and soak up your goodness and wisdom. The wrestling makes me want to pull my hair out but it’s in the wrestling that the blessing will come. It’s in the struggle to be honest with myself and my God that I will be washed.

“Come, let’s talk this over! says the Lord; no matter how deep the stain of your sins, I can take it out and make you as clean as freshly fallen snow. Even if you are stained as red as crimson, I can make you white as wool!”

– Isaiah 1:18, TLB

So I’m doing it. I’m making the time and taking the energy to make a fearless and searching moral inventory. I am openly examining and confessing my faults to myself, to God, and to someone I trust. I’m saying things out loud that I haven’t said in a long time, if ever. It’s so hard but I’m holding on tight because I’m trusting that the blessing is coming.

“Happy are the pure in heart.”- Matthew 5:8, TLB