On the market . . .

As of tonight, our house will officially be on the market.

I’m happy.  I’m sad.  Wait, I’m happy.  Wait, no, not so much.

Mixed emotions here, I suppose.

There are many things about this move that I am already grieving.  So many of my friends are here in Nashville – and I have loved that our kids have spent the last 4 years together.  I actually really like my job here – and though I’m hoping that I will not have to work full-time in Houston, I have really enjoyed doing the work I have done.  Family is not too far away from here.  And Disney World is 4 hours closer to Nashville than it is to Houston.  We love our church.  We love that we randomly run into people here that we haven’t seen in years – because, well, it’s Nashville.  It’s kind of like a big hometown.  I’m also sad that our girls will be leaving their best friends.  That’s the hardest part of all.

But, I’m excited for a new adventure.  I’m excited to be in a place where Gerron can serve full-time in the church.  I’m excited for the chance to live in Texas – we’ve always talked about living there.  I’m excited for milder winters.  I’m excited to take the kids to some really cool places.  I’m excited to live near some friends that we love dearly.

So many unknowns.

We’re just taking it a step at a time.

Now that the house is on the market, we thought that the only thing left to do was . . . go to DISNEY!  We just looked at each other the other day and said, “let’s just go.”  And so we booked the hotel and here we go!

Interestingly enough (not that it will happen this time) – the past two houses we have sold have sold while we were at Disney World.  Who knows . . . maybe it’ll be our good luck charm again.

Or, should we say, maybe we’ll experience some Disney magic.

 

Cleaning house . . .

Yesterday was cleaning day.  And boy, was that discouraging.

I am probably the most disorganized person on the planet, and cleaning my house yesterday helped solidify that fact.  I mean, you would think that with the number of times we’ve moved we would have purged some things at some point.

The closet.  Oh dear heavens.  The closet.

It seemed like every few inches of cleaning brought another box of stuff we had just thrown stuff in – postcards, theater programs (we saw Tom Cavanaugh from Ed in Urinetown when we lived in NY), cell phone chargers from many phones, mixed tapes from college, old checkbooks from before we were married (um, we’ve been married for 12 years), receipts from Starbucks – from 5 years ago, etc.  This is not because we are hoarders and feel like we NEED these things.  It’s because we are extraordinarily lazy.

The number of bags taken to either Goodwill or the trashcan out of just the closet – well, it’s just so hard to believe that we have anything left in there.

I will say, though, that the act of going through those things and throwing them away felt good.  Freeing.

It made me want to throw everything away.  And I just might because right now the upstairs of our home is so peaceful.  So much of the clutter is gone.

We have a lot to do still.  And I’ll post photos soon.  We’re praying that the right buyer will come along sooner than later and that we will all be able to be together in Houston soon.

Another journey begins . . .

Several months ago, my sweet husband was laid off.  After the initial disappointment and fear, we chose to see it as an opportunity.

Since we have been married, he has moved all over creation to help me pursue my dreams.  He has uprooted himself, even when he wasn’t terribly excited about it, and put his dreams on hold.  You see, he has always dreamed of being in full-time ministry.

Granted, we have been able to experience some of the BEST churches on the planet because we were willing to be bi-vocational.  Had he not been bi-vocational, we wouldn’t be able to currently be at Blakemore Nazarene – one of the most wonderful churches we’ve ever experienced.

But the dream of being able to do what he loves full-time has always been like a tag in the back of your shirt – not terribly annoying, but enough to make you itch.

I have to be honest – I’ve probably been the one holding him back from it in more ways than one.  You see, I am very protective of him.  And I know that many good-intentioned church people are some of the most opinionated and mean folks out there.  So I’ve hesitated and stalled and let fear get the better of me.

Well,  back to the present day.

Gerron was laid off.  And we just decided that if he was going to look for a job, he might as well pursue the dream.  We committed to pursuing ministry full-time.

No kidding, in the first couple of weeks after we made that decision, six churches called.  Maybe more.  After a while we just started laughing about it because nobody had been calling prior to that.

After a series of interviews and church visits – a lot of prayer and thinking – a lot of being completely overwhelmed – he accepted a position.

Um, yeah . . . in HOUSTON!

So, over the next few months we will be moving our family to a new city.  A LOT further away from family than we thought we’d ever move.  A LOT further away from Disney World than we ever thought we’d live (yes, this was a factor).  And into a position that my worship-pastor husband probably didn’t think he would ever take.

He’s going to be a Children’s Pastor.  And we’re very excited about it.

I am going to try to blog about our crazy experience over these months – so stay tuned.  We’re going to have to sell our house in the middle of the time when our oldest is starting Kindergarten.  He will move on ahead of us while we try to sell and get somewhat settled down there.  I’ll continue to work and keep the girls with me.  We have to FIND a place to live down there, possibly with me being here.  We’re going to have to say more goodbyes than we’d ever like to.  Ugh, and we’re going to have to smell cardboard boxes and packing tape again.

It’s going to be tough.

But it’s going to be worth it.

 

On perfectionism . . .

My daughter is 5.  And already I can see the elder child tendencies beginning.

She has very high expectations of herself.

The colors cannot go outside of the lines.  The paper cannot be wrinkled.  Heaven forbid if the markers bleed through to the next page.  In her frustration she tenses up and screams, “It’s not good!!”

And she’s incredibly sensitive.

So, when she gets in trouble, I hear her say to herself, “I can’t be good” or “I’m a bad girl”.  Which absolutely tears my heart out.

Because, let me tell you, she is a very, very good girl.  So good that I can’t believe she’s related to me.

Good.

I hear my sweet girl say that she can’t be good – and what she means is that she can’t be perfect.  She can’t help herself from doing those things she knows she shouldn’t do.  She is so hard on herself – just can’t give herself a break – can’t give herself a little bit of grace.

She’s 5, mind you.

As a mom, I beat myself up that I don’t feed my girls all the right things.  That I can’t stay on top of the laundry.  That I don’t know how to decorate my house like people do in magazines.  I fully expect to be able to work a full-time job, come home and spend hours on end playing and laughing with my children while cooking a meal that Martha would be proud of while folding underwear and scrubbing the toilets.  I’m not kidding, I expect myself to be able to do that.

When Emma colors outside of the lines and gets upset, I  tell her, “it’s okay to color outside of the lines, it doesn’t have to be perfect – in fact, I really love all the colors you chose.”

When she makes a bad choice and is angry with herself I tell her that she’s a very good girl.  And that she can learn and make better choices next time.

She doesn’t get it.  And apparently, neither do I.

Several months ago, I wrote a post called, “If you were my kid . . . “

I guess I could call this one, “If I were my kid . . . “

And I would say . . .

If I were my kid, I’d tell me that it’s okay to color outside of the lines.  That the laundry will pile up sometimes and make me feel like a crazy person – but that at the end of the day it’s better that I spent 30 minutes snuggling with my girls on the couch than sorting socks.  I would tell me that it’s okay that they ate chicken nuggets again.  Or a peanut butter and jelly sandwich again.  Or even hot dogs.  Or mac & cheese.  (Okay, so maybe that’s an area I need to work on a little harder.)

If I were my kid, I would tell me that I cannot do it all.  And I don’t have to.  And that no one is expecting me to do it all – no one except myself.  So, get over it.

Life won’t be perfect.

I won’t look like Heather Locklear when I’m 50.

My house won’t look like it just had a photo shoot from Southern Living.

And that’s okay.  Because I love my life.  I love my beautiful, smart, imperfect children.  And I love my talented, handsome, amazing, imperfect husband.

And today, I might just give myself permission to accept my imperfect self.  And hopefully that will rub off on my kids.

 

 

 

Every year . . .

Around this time each year, I am reminded of miracles.

It might have something to do with Emma’s birthday.  Because there for a while we didn’t know if we’d ever have an Emma or a Henley . ..

So, each year I send a few emails to say “thank you” to wonderful people who helped make our sweet girls a reality.

Connie, a fabulous and caring Nurse Practitioner, was so perplexed after I had a devastating miscarriage that she decided to “probe” a little further to figure out why it happened.  She didn’t have to do that.  She could have easily written it off as just one of those things that happen very often with a first pregnancy.  But she thought I should be referred to Dr. Walmer.  Sure enough, there was a defect in my uterus.  A couple, actually.

Amazingly, Dr. Walmer was able to perform a couple of surgeries that fixed things well enough that I was able to carry pregnancies to term.  Without those surgeries, I would have most likely kept having miscarriages.  Kept being heartbroken.

And then Dr. Ford, the same doctor who was the first to see me after I had the miscarriage, who was so caring and wonderful, was the doctor who stayed past her all night shift to bring Emma into the world.  I had a planned c-section.  And since Duke is a teaching hospital, there were lots of people in the operating room.  Honestly, it was fun.  So many people part of such an amazing moment in our lives.  At one point, though, the room went quiet and Dr. Ford moved in.  The umbilical chord was wrapped 4 times around Emma’s little neck.  Had I labored at all, we could have lost her.

How things all come together still amazes me.  The surgeries on my uterus made the c-section necessary.  Without the c-section, that darn umbilical chord could have caused some real problems.

Perhaps all of that is coincidence.  Whatever they are, I’m just grateful.

Now we have Henley as well.  A surprise pregnancy.  A surprise earlier than planned c-section.  A surprise every single day – cause you just never know with that one.  She, too, a miracle.  My own little miracle worker – the way I found out about the cancer.

Thanks to those who helped bring these sweet girls into our lives!

And so we come to another year . . .

This time last year I made some goals.

I’m sorry to report that I accomplished none of them.

Yeah, that whole “I’m going to start running” thing didn’t last very long.  I wanted to lose a lot of weight in my 35th year . . . and instead, I’m pretty sure I gained the amount that I wanted to lose.

I have a lot of excuses, you know.

And, to be honest, I’m tired of them.

I turn 36 tomorrow.  I’m quite certain that I must still be 23.  I mean, really . . . where did these years go?  How on earth does it go so quickly?

I remember vividly the night before I turned 20.  Kristy and I stayed up almost the entire night practicing saying “twenty”.  It was a new decade – I wasn’t a teenager anymore – my age didn’t end in “teen”.  And I was excited about it.

Is it too late to take that back?

I wonder what that soon-to-be twenty year old would think of this soon-to-be closer-to-40-than-to-30 year old.  Would she be disappointed?  Would she be proud?  Would she be surprised?  Would she be mortified?

(I think she’d eat fewer oreos.)

I think she’d be all of the above.

A mixed bag of regret and triumph.

Ain’t that how it goes?

I can’t help but think about what I can do right now to have more triumphs than regrets when I look back 16 years from now.  When my oldest is 21.  When my youngest is 18.

What will they have to say about me?  What will I have to say about me?

There comes a time when I guess you have to accept that life is flying by.  When there’s no denying the wrinkles and the slower metabolism and the fact that more and more people refer to you as “ma’am”.  There comes a time when you still have a chance to turn things around if you need to – but know that that chance is fleeting.  To still have a say in how things turn out in the end.

I suppose every decision is a “say in how things turn out”.

Whether that decision is an action or an attitude.

I want this year to be a year of making things better – for myself – for my family.  I want this year to be one of absolute intentionality.  And I want this year to be fun.

Seriously fun.

Because nobody looks back and says, “I wish I hadn’t had so much fun.”

Embrace the moment gracefully . . .

This morning, I was reading one of the news emails that Over the Rhine sends out.  Linford wrote about visiting Japan after the tsunami and how there had been several smaller earthquakes just before they got there.

Here is an excerpt:

He (the tour guide) explained there was really no way to control what was happening – it’s impossible to predict whether it’s safer to stay inside or run outside.

The important thing regardless of events beyond our control was to embrace the moment in front of us gracefully and surrender the rest.

And so, today, as we face the uncertainty of life in the near future – as Gerron is thrown back into the job search – as we think about pursuing dreams rather than the bottom line – these words were a sweet reminder of living in the moment.

It would be easy to worry.  It would be easy to be afraid.  It would be easy to panic over things like our bills and general well-being.  Believe me, we’ve done our fair share of that.  But at the same time, we have a great sense of anticipation for what the future could bring.  Nothing like getting kicked out of your comfort zone to get you thinking about what you had always dreamed about doing.

The questions that now consume us . . . “What if . . . ?” and “Why not . . . ?”

I’m frustrated that this is how we are coming to that place of surrender.  I’m frustrated that we didn’t do some of this sooner.

Which makes me wonder what might be holding you back from really asking these questions.  Because we all used to dream.  Because the stuff of life shouldn’t take those dreams out of our vocabulary.

Today, I’m dreaming.  There’s no way of knowing if it’s safer to stay or to go.  The only thing I can do is embrace the moment in front of me gracefully – and surrender the rest.

Today . . .

I remember.

On uncertainty . . .

We received news recently that puts some uncertainty in our path.  Nothing too dreadful – in fact it could be a real blessing.  However, uncertainty looms.

And so today I’m reminded of those things of which I am certain.  Because, who are we kidding, none of us are guaranteed a doggone thing.

1. I am certain that God walks with us.

2. I am certain that my husband and my girls are the most important things in my life.

3. And I’m fairly certain that things will make more sense in hind-sight.

I figure if I’ve got 1 & 2, I’m good to go.

Wishes and Dreams . . .

It’s official.  She’s two.

Heaven help us.

We began the day at Starbucks.  Both of the girls got their special “coffee” (kid’s vanilla creme) and we drove everyone nuts who were there to have a quiet moment to themselves.  Yeah, that doesn’t happen too much when we’re around.

Then we headed to our favorite park to play.  It was a simply gorgeous day in Nashville – one that we haven’t seen the likes of in a while.  It was good for the body and the soul.

Then we went home and cleaned like mad people.  So we could have a ton of people over to celebrate our sweet girl.  And celebrate we did.

Friends wrote notes on stars for Henley and hung them on the tree.

The water bottles had quotes about wishes and dreams.

Happy birthday to a dream come true.