Friday, April 30, 2010

Daring

Dear Hollywood:
I just read a blurb that flashed up on my screen, inviting me to view the "daring" photo shoot of yet another screwed up celebrity.
What cracks me up is that you people still think that getting pictures taken of you in various kinds of lingerie is daring.
Sorry to break the news to you folks, but that's not daring anymore. We've reached the point in our society that whoring yourself for a camera and trying to buy approval with your sex appeal is MUNDANE! Who cares about your crack ravaged arms and fake DD's? Please, how often have we seen that? Give us a break.
You know what is daring? Having 15 kids, and raising them well, that's daring. Daring is having morals when everyone around you is throwing their soul away for cheap thrills. Daring is teaching your kids to pray, honor that which is holy, and read the word of God.
You think you can revolutionise the world by mainstreaming darker and more lascivious deeds? HA! You're not revolutionary, you aren't even unique, you're just another drop in the downward flowing tide.
You know what? I feel really sorry for you.

Tuesday, April 27, 2010

I'm really only posting this for me

I just want to put it down somewhere so I will remember it, someday I may need the reminder.

A girl who read my book (the second one) came to me a few days ago and asked if she could read my book again.

I write for me, I write as a hobby, and outlet. Getting published is only a tiny part of it.

However, it is immensely gratifying that someone, especially a shy someone, would ask to RE-read my work.

That is a true compliment.

Monday, April 26, 2010

The Completion of a Quest

Ladies and Gentlemen,
It is my honor to announce that after 15 years of searching I have finally found the illusive desire of my heart.
Long ago a beloved friend gave me a rare and precious gift. Inside the deep purple bottle was contained a fragrance beyond compare. I loved it from the first whiff, and rationed the precious ounces out over the years. It was one of the few scents I could wear without feeling constriction in my chest, an unpleasant feeling I have known again and again in the intervening years.
For ration as one way, a few ounces will go away, someday, and leave one destitute and scentless.
Then, one day (as I waited for the children to pick up the toys at Grandma's before going home) I picked up a magazine. Flipping through the pages I came up on an advertisement for a new perfume. I took a cautious sniff, ready for my lungs to seize in protest, as they nearly always did.
Instead, I knew instantly that I had found it at last! That scent! It bore another name, it wore another bottle, but I knew it instantly!
My next trip to the store had me venturing boldly among the bottles I usually avoided, but alas, they did not stock it! So I found among the lotions one that had the tiniest whiff of the right scent buried under the other ingredients.
There you are, orchid sweet, I have found you, where have you been all these years?
I wore the lotion often, but though that one, perfect scent was there among the others, and I smelled so very nice indeed, I longed for a fuller experience of my beloved scent.
Then Friday night my husband decided we needed to go grocery shopping at 11:30 pm. I had my second wind (having just printed out the 5th draft of my second book) so I went along only a little reluctantly. We strolled along, enjoying the freedom that the kids regular Friday night at Grandma's gives us to be an old married couple. Then as we passed the perfume aisle a purple display caught my eye! Hurrah! My illusive scent, my passionate perfume, at last I have you! I can spray you on my arm and drink you in. At last my big nose is the hero of my body as it fulfills the role to which it was born!
At last, at last, I have found my orchid perfume.
Thank you Halle Berry.
(And by the way, the orchids at our Lowes are defective and have no scent at all, or I would own a roomful.)

Thursday, April 22, 2010

Scary Thought

I realised today how incredibly close I am to forty. I suppose it means I've turned a page in my life that I can look at a span of 9 years as "close," but all the same, yikes!

It's not the big looming number FORTY that people fear, because like I did with my thirties I and looking forward to my forties. I don't fear age and rather enjoy the thought that I am proportionately closer to catching up to my mom every day that passes.

No, it's something else that scares me. I look at my forty-something friends and I realise how much have to learn, how much I need to mature before I'm there. Knowing as I do that wisdom and maturity come through attrition, yup I'm a bit scared. That's a lot of hard-knocks.

I'll take them though, and try to learn as much from each to avoid re-peat blows. I'll do it because I want to be like them, and I know not all forty-somethings ARE like these beloved women. So I've got to do it right, as scary as it is.

I suppose this is kind of what it felt like walking up to the veil between the pre-earth life and mortal birth.

Monday, April 19, 2010

On My Birthday

Now that another year is done
And I am turning thirty-one,
It's time for me to celebrate
The blessing of a life so great.
I take my opportunity
To think of all God's given me.

Parents so dear, and far away,
Put so much into today
Labor to bring me to this world,
Remain I in their love still curled.
Formed and born, then raised up in love,
The first of blessings from above.

Then to flank me along my way
Came siblings in their vast array.
Though side by side the world we met,
We see it not the same, quite yet.
Oh the things I could only learn,
From the teachers that Mom has born.

Friends came, some went, but some did stay.
They cheer and bless down to today.
Some knew me back when I was small
Some got to know me grown and tall,
But each a gift, a treasure true,
Thank heaven I was given you.

Funny and sweet, and often kind,
And so complex I've come to find.
This man who walks along with me
May not see our eternity,
But helps me grow in his own way,
And works for me all night and day.

Then came a child, with much to teach,
Learned not I from her baby speech,
But from her quiet, gentle way
Found truth in all my parents say.
Though deaf to truth, for all those years
I've learned by crying Mommy tears.

A gift I gave, on Father's Day,
A gift to whom? I hear you say.
My son, a gift, to all he knows,
To all who shape him as he grows.
In helping him be still and reach
We find the patience that we preach.

More drama than should ever be
Confined in one little body,
The fairy that could rule the world,
Nations around that finger twirled,
This force of nature I'm to groom,
And help her in the light to bloom.

Yes, blessed am I, beyond the price,
I've paid, lo He has giv'n me twice!
Through time's wisdom I can now see,
The Lord is anxious to bless me.
So I trust in His constancy,
Wait and see what He makes of me.

I turn my thoughts from of happiness,
To pain with which I have been so blessed.
For change, progress, comes not in ease,
But in dark hours spent on my knees.
Lord, I thank thee also today
For the trials I've lived on my way.

In conquering each bitter hour
I've learned my strength, and trust God's power.
There is not formed an enemy,
That we can't conquer, God and me.
I know not joy like which is from
Each trial that We have overcome.

Blessed am I beyond all measure,
Blessed beyond a great king's treasure.
No mere candle could grant a wish,
To match my over flowing dish
Of family, friends, and victories won.
Just think, the fun has just begun.

Wednesday, April 07, 2010

Egg hunt

Perhaps I shouldn't have put the PINK egg there.
She is such a drama queen.

P1010865.jpg picture by teljchall

Sunday, April 04, 2010

I have found the lesson

Thank you to all who have so kindly, gently, and lovingly helped me. The comments on my last post and the ones on babycenter have been wonderful to read, wonderful to ponder, a balm on my heart.

As I watched conference yesterday I was filled, and only after reflecting on all of this combined have I concluded what I needed to learn. I should say re-learn, in a better an deeper way. It is something I have been taught for years, but now understand better.

The only opinion about me that matters is the Lord's opinion.

I have been blessed, truly, deeply, abundantly blessed with people in my life that love me. I rather adore myself too, which is sometimes not such a good thing... but you are all right. I have set far to much stock, for far to long, on what others think of me.

Perhaps this harks back to my childhood, when others proclaimed me ugly. Those who loved me said otherwise, but for some reason I believed the negative others. Or perhaps it was an extension of my knowledge that people are likely to be rather blind to their own faults.
Where ever it came from, I was wrong to allow others to challenge the whisperings of the spirit.

God loves the stuffing out of me, and I'm so thankful that He does. He is acquainted fully with all of my shortcomings, my secret thoughts, my desires, and my potential. He knows me better than I do, and He tells me I'm a good person. So I'm going to trust that, and try again to see the good person he sees in others. I AM going to continue to look for the good in them, I am going to assume good intentions in them. I am going to continue to see God in every face I look on.

Thank you all for helping me find my way through the fire. This side of the trial feels lovely.