Remember when you were young, and your parents went in to the grocery store, leaving you and your siblings in the car for what seemed like hours? For fun you would point at whoever came out of the store and call out which one of your siblings had to marry that person? Your Welcome..
I needed my walk this morning, more than I care to admit! I have been struggling, of late, with my attitude…a lot! How can a chosen woman of God ever have a bad attitude, you ask? Very easily, just so that you know. I wrote a piece the other day, in which I mention the fact that I am the founder, leader and main audience member of Overthinkers Anonymous! Guess what? Also on my Christian resume, is my professional grade skill as a Feelsorryformyselfer!!
Yep! I am especially proficient in self-pity, the blame game, wallowing and good old fashioned poo flinging! There is nothing I hate more, than when I hear God laughing at my wallowing or poo flinging, as it was meant to get Him to fix things, not entertain Him! Then, there is nothing I love more, than when He scoops me up into His lap, and calms me…not with harsh recriminations, that I am sure I should receive based on my attitude…but rather, He reminds me of the home He is preparing for me, and He promises me, softly, that He will be right there with me no matter what! He’s got me!
Not that you were wondering, but if you were, the reason I walk 6 miles a day, is not for the calorie burn…it’s for the tension burn! I get out on the trail and I push myself to the point of exhaustion so that I can get my mind to shut up and listen! I am the animal equivalent of a wolverine in the body of a loud mouth frog! Let that form a picture in your mind…lol! During these walks I can go from worship to arguing with God in a hot flash! That is why God is literally the only one who can fully handle me, because it might be wise to give me a wide berth when I struggle, as I wear my emotions openly and sometimes it aint pretty!
People, as a whole, get pretty uncomfortable around me on a regular basis, due to my emotional maelstroms. I get it! I am a lot! But apparently, God loves this about me, as he has yet to demand that I shut up! Point in fact, I think that is why God loves it when I write as much as I want to talk. Every single one of us has a gift to manage throughout their journey, one that needs to be developed and perfected as much as one can. I believe that every human soul has a unique gift, as well as a weakness.
Yup! I believe in checks and balances! God wants each of us to recognize our gift, or what makes us so special, but he tempers it with allowing us a weakness, so as to remind us that, though we think we are so capable, the gifted part of us Only comes from Him! So long story short, I needed this walk more than I like to admit, because my attitude was affecting my gift, or the way I write, if you were. God wore me out enough let go of the attitude, and remember the depth of His love for me, and how He has a purpose, even when I cannot see it!
I found an old post from last spring that I thought rather fitting, if you twist the daily prompt’s meaning just a smidge…
This was one of my ‘Investigating Truths’ episodes, but it seemed fitting, somehow.
For as long as I can remember, I have made sense of myself and this world two realms of thought. One realm of thought is in the actual and physical sense. What we see, do, talk about, eat and feel are in the here and now… The second realm of thought is what I think of as my storybook, or cartoon version if you will. Let’s call this part the “Behind the Scenes of My Truths,” the adventure version.
What follows is written in storybook version…….
I am wild from the top of my head all the way down to my toes! It is all that I can seem to remember of myself. My journeying, or running if I am being truthful, has always found me far out in the desert. For as long as I can remember, there has been a path worn, from one hidden oasis to another, by my feet. I have hidden them well, though, so most that wander by are unaware of my presence. As the years of my life rolled forward, I found that there was One who had been following my footprints, always leaving little packages of love for me. On one of my journeys along the outskirts of the Cities of Souls, I came to realize that the One whom I had sensed, was in fact my True Father! It was both joyful and difficult to become aware of Him.
I stayed…
Before I knew it, time seemed to have sped forward in my journey, by a great many years! I discovered that I had settled down right inside the walls … building relationships with others, and trying to live and do things the way all of the others thought was right. My Father showed me the gifts given to me, but instead of being at peace, I became fearful…I believed that I was losing myself, and would simply become a nothing…moving along by habit…so this wild child ran!!!
I fled into the desert with as much speed possible, for my feet had become softened over time. I tripped many times, stumbling over rocks and debris that had been left on my paths. Had it really been that long? I was not sure if the way had become obstructed or if I had simply forgotten my exact path. Many seasons were spent wandering, clearing out my old and unused paths. Time rolled on…
Oh, I would come near the outskirts, just close enough to remember what I left behind. The intensity of my pain and fear, along with the guilt over my failure, drove me away again and again…
My last act of running into the desert, or defiance as I see it, nearly cost me my very life, but that is for another time. For now, I leave you with this thought…I am still that wild child inside, but my Father has been revealing to me the graceful Phoenix that He is rising up from the ashes of her truth…
You didn’t think I would forget your cookies, did you?
You know sometimes there are just those days…you know, the ones where we want to just get back in bed under the covers and try to fall asleep again, hoping that when you wake up things will look better. It isn’t the weather…in actuality, it’s sunny outside and quite beautiful. It isn’t that I feel sick…in fact, I went for an amazing walk and didn’t even need a hat.
There are just those days where I think, Lord, why does every single thing in life have to be so infuriatingly difficult? I exhaust my brain trying to ascertain if it is I that makes it hard or if it just is…am I just feeling sorry for myself or not, are my expectations of myself and God too unrealistic…wait, was there onions in my dinner last night?? ***Note to self…don’t eat dinner late, and if you do, absolutely NO Onions!! Trust me, you will regret it in the morning girl…
I think that a lot of times I think too much, and it is maybe just what I ate…lol. Sometimes, though, maybe it is a good thing to mentally get back into bed for a reset! We have to realize that there are going to just be days, where nothing makes sense, and its ok! That is what I think I might be learning, finally! It is days such as these in which I can put into practice the Faith that I’m always talking about. It is often the difficult times that teach us where our faith is!
Everyone knows how much easier it is to be lighthearted and easygoing when things are all perfect, but throw a bit of life in the mix and it’s not so easy. I have struggled so much in my life with fear verses faith, it is laughable, as I carry on about how big I know God is.
Whenever I have one of Those days, I came up with a little repeatable pep talk for myself and I thought you might enjoy hearing how I get out of my funk. Here goes,
“Welcome Everyone To Overthinkers Anonymous! My name is Toni and I am an overthinker!”
Hi Toni
“For anyone wishing to join, we meet here every night, usually as soon as you get tired. Be sure NOT to bring anything to take notes so you can relax…no no…here at overthinkers anonymous, we like to use up as much of your sleep time with absolutely every single thing that you have no control over. Oh yeah, and also we like to obsess about things we really only think might happen…they probably won’t happen, but we here at overthinkers anonymous strive to ensure that you will worry over them anyway!”
For some reason nobody ever joined my late-night club…lol…Sometimes, I just think tooooooooooo much!
The reason I share this is not to put myself down, because I am the way that I am, no shame! But if someone that reads this story is perhaps secretly an overthinker, well, I wanted to say that its ok! There is not a thing wrong with you! Sometimes Life is just really tough, but remember that sometimes you just shouldn’t eat onions with dinner…lol… and I pray you and I would show ourselves some grace.
What was wrong with this picture? As I stood in my kitchen talking on the phone with my girlfriend, I kept glancing out the window suspiciously, towards the sound of singing. My five-year-old sat contentedly on the swing set in the back yard. Something was not right with what I was seeing, but I could not put my finger on it.
You see, it is usually the absence of noise that signals childhood mischief, but I could see her clearly and she was simply swinging…wait a minute, that’s it! I could see her but not clearly because of the distance between us. I asked my girlfriend to hold on a second, momentarily placing the phone on the counter. Leaning out the back door, I called my child over to me. Hopping off of the swing happily, she skipped toward the house.
As she drew near, my eyes became riveted to her forehead, where her bangs had once been. My baby gave herself a reverse mohawk! I saw what looked like a small monk! She had somehow sheared off all of her forehead hair. In mortified shock I grabbed the phone up and cried to my friend, “You have to come over and look at my baby girl’s hair”! As I hung up the phone, I asked my child what she had done. She looked concerned at my anger and said, pointedly, “My hair was in my eyes, so I got out your sewing scissors and cut it off”! I was in tears by the time my girlfriend walked in and I turned to her for comfort in my hour of need.
All I received, though, was her hysterical laughter. Point in fact, she laughed for a good bit, to my dismay.
“How can you laugh” I cried! “It’s not funny”!
As she tried to contain her laughter, and not very well I might add, my friend said, “I know this seems awful, but her hair will grow back. Look, kids do things like this. I am sorry for laughing but I can’t help it! Its hilarious, really it is! I am sure you will look back on this and laugh someday. In fact, you can laugh at anything my kids do to me when it happens. I will even call you first.”
After my girlfriend left, I had to hunt down all the evidence to be found. Underneath my own bed, I retrieved my scissors, as well as a massive pile of hair. There was a lot more contributions of hair than I had anticipated, which was alarming to me. My thoughts raced to my other children, then to the dogs and cats we shared our house with. When I asked whose hair this belonged to, she confidently took me to her toy pony. The poor jumpy horse had received an army style crew cut, and was never the same after that, the poor thing.
Of course, my girlfriend was right! I did look back and laugh.
And if you are wondering, I did have the occasion to take her up on that offer. Several years later I got to laugh at what her child did to her. That, however, is another story…
I know I should be irritated by this paint job, but truth be told, I find it rather impressive. I am familiar with a lot of the folk on this route, and a great many are of the younger generation. I myself find it comforting that there are still such budding artists out there. Personally, remembering some of the things I did for entertainment at that age, I think this is less obnoxious. I chose things like dog poop bags on the porch’s of grown ups I took issue with as my form of creativity. I hope nobody ever took pictures of my work…
Feathers… feathers everywhere……. Feathers were softly floating, in mass quantities, through the air in the bedroom, when I opened the door that day.
I was momentarily confused. I had sent my little five-year-old to our bedroom, for her nap, since she and her sibling had been bickering. As my eyes locked onto hers and then down to the pair of scissors in her hand, realization slowly dawned on me.
My good feather down comforter lay in her lap with ragged slices in every direction. As I stood with my mouth open, shock beginning to settle in, I heard her cheery little voice say, “Look mama, I’m sewing for you”.
Don’t you love it when children get caught doing something naughty, they always add the “for you” part onto the end of their confession?
Remember when I said that my mouth had been hanging open? Well, it was still hanging there, but now it was preparing to usher forth some very graceful and eloquent words gathered from, I’m sure, a very well-educated Semi Driver. Fortunately for most parents, God has instilled a great safety mechanism for just this sort of occasion. You lose all ability to form even the simple sentences. Verbally, you are reduced to an angry toddler.
All I can remember, was uttering a guttural moan, and then starting in with an I…you…my…how…and then I called the other parent responsible for this little being… As he came stumbling down the stairs, I pointed to the bedroom and said hysterically, “Your child…..you need to fix this…leaving!”
Long story short, my calm and steady parent partner cleaned up with our first born in tow, making her collect and reinsert as many feathers as she could catch. If you are wondering if any valuable lessons were learned that day, there were none! Lol, except having a sense of humor about life…
I have been married to my best friend now for nearly 17 years. Just the other day I was looking back over the years at all of our highs and lows, and I remembered something. When we were first married, as with most new marriages, there was a lot of romantic gestures, attentiveness, and memento type gifts, the usual honeymoon phase behaviors. One morning, as I was getting ready for the day, my eye caught sight of what looked like a post it note. Oddly, it was in the shower of all places. I leaned forward and snatched it off of the wall to find that it read, “I love the way your hair smells”. As I stood there thinking how sweet it was, my eye was drawn to the towel shelf above the toilet, where there was another sticky note. It took me an entire day to find all of the notes that he had strategically left throughout the house for me to find. I cherished each and every one of those little things.
Through time and circumstance, I have lost the little notes but not the memory of tenderness they left behind. We all know how life gets in front of everything, and I realize that over the years, he continued to occasionally write me poems, or letters that I have actually saved, thank goodness.
When I was thinking back the other day, I realized that I had not written to him for a long time. Why is it, when we go through difficulties, we hold back from one another instead of leaning in for support. Well, anyways, no excuses…I am going to make an effort to write a love note back to the big idiot.
Now, here is where I have to explain the Idiot title. If you knew my husband and I, you would know that our life is a bit on the rough side, and ours is a hard love… so I have a tendency to be brutally honest. I have come to believe something about a person, whether it is a man or a woman makes no difference. When it comes to human nature, we all are made up of a percentage of Idiot and a percentage of what we will kindly call a Buttnugget. Deal with it because I used to have a mouth worse than a trucker and God said to cut it out, so I chose the best alternative. It is not my fault, as I am somewhat new to not using profanity, so I am learning.
Anyway, what we want to hope for, in ourselves and people that we entrust our hearts to, is to come out at least at about a 60/40 split. We know that it is impossible to be perfect, but our aim is to be more of an Idiot than a Buttnugget!
Here is the difference…the idiot is still going to screw up, hurt you, fail you or sometimes just do things that make no sense. But there is no spite, no malice, no ill will intended. Just being human. The Buttnugget, however, chooses to be that way. There is always a motive, or spitefulness of the heart. We all have met that one person that does things that we cannot fathom for no apparent reason other than to cause harm.
If you can follow this reasoning, then you will appreciate why I call my husband, My Idiot! He is, in my opinion, one of the best human beings I have ever encountered on my journey. I can confidently attest that he is, in my eyes an 80/20! I am very grateful for this, as I have a running average of 60/40! We would be in trouble if his numbers were off, cause I am mean!
“Your little one sure is a stinker”, were the words that came from the mouth of our Hostess. We stayed for a week at their families ranch. She continued on, saying “She was missing for over an hour today while you were on the trail ride. I thought that I was going to have to tell you that I lost your child”.
Apparently, right after we left on our horseback ride, our youngest child went missing. The family had every available ranch hand searching frantically for a tiny three year old. Though they searched high and low, through all the barns and rooms, the child was no where to be found. The hostess told us that just as she was leaving her second sweep of one of the cabins, she heard a wee little giggle coming from underneath one of the beds. As she peeked under the bed, she discovered a delighted little three year old, along with one of the kittens discovered in the barn, staring out at her with an impish grin.
My child fell in love with that kitten, calling it Buttercup for some reason, even though its name was Gus, I think. Our little clown had been under that bed, watching the whole search party event along with her co conspirator, with great pleasure.
Relief is always a great diffuser of anger, I believe. Everyone was so happy to find the little escape artist, that they couldn’t be angry. They chose to laugh about it instead of dealing with panicked parents, had we gotten back before they found our child.
The next time that you decide to ignore your microwave for two weeks, because you thought it was broken, try plugging it in!
Journey With Me! 