Where I Am…

I’ve been doing some thinking lately about my life – what matters, what doesn’t, who I care about and who truly cares about me, etc.  I have so many great things in my life, but I seem to get hung up on the stupid stuff that irritates me.  I always end up spending too much time thinking about people or things that just aren’t important.  So, in that spirit I’ve made the following decisions:

I WILL NO LONGER WORRY ABOUT WHAT PEOPLE THINK OF ME – I am who I am and at almost 40 years old, I’m not going to change enough for some people.  I will continue to act in a way that is God honoring with everyone, but if someone is talking about me or complaining about me or just gossiping about me, oh well.  This is going to be hard, because I’ve always worried about what people think, but it’s self-destructive.  There will always be people who don’t like me, but I can’t control how they feel about me.  I can only control how I react to it.

I WILL BE AUTHENTIC – for too long, I’ve been so worried about what other people think of me, I put on a show.  I hid my feelings, disappointments and hurts, even from my closest friends.  One of those friends told me recently, that I’m more myself right now than I have been in years.   That hit me like a ton of bricks!  I had no idea I was being so fake…or more to the point, that people could tell I was faking it. Lesson learned!

I WILL NO LONGER READ BLOGS OF PEOPLE WHO USE THEM TO BASH – I had this whole paragraph about this topic and when I read it, I realized what I had written was no better than the people I was writing about.   So, I have deleted the blogs of people who use their platform to tear people down instead of building them up.  Enough said.

I WILL NO LONGER ARGUE WITH MY KIDS – I know, I know, I shouldn’t have been letting them argue with me to begin with.  But I have & I have to fix it.  This has been an ongoing thing for the last few weeks – if I tell the kids to do something and they argue or try to get me to do something different, I shut them down.  Sounds harsh, I know but it’s necessary.  I will always listen to them when they have a valid concern or complaint, but not when complaining is a knee-jerk reaction to everything I say.  I have literally started putting my hand up (Talk to the hand!) when they won’t listen.

I WILL NEVER PUT SOMETHING ELSE AHEAD OF MY FAMILY – In the past, I’ve gotten my priorities out of whack and put jobs, other people, volunteering, etc. in front of my family.  And my kids have suffered.  And my marriage has suffered.  In most cases, the work I was doing was good stuff but the value of the task doesn’t matter when my kids are hurt.  When they think that where I need to go is more important to me than they are.  I’m looking for a job right now and even in this economy, I’m being picky.  I’m looking for a job that will cause the least disruption for my family.  Maybe that’s an indulgent attitude, but my family has paid a very high price for my failure to put them first in past.  I will do everything possible to keep that from happening again.  I’m so thankful that God has shown me the error of my ways and is helping me to repair the damage.

EXCEPT FOR MY RELATIONSHIP WITH GOD – I’ve found that it’s easy to get too busy to spend time with God.  I’m reading this great book and it boils it all down to relationships.  It’s not about going to church, going to Bible Study or any other program…it’s about my one on one relationship with God.  And when that comes first, everything else will line up accordingly.  Life won’t be perfect, but I will be sheltered during the storms.

So, that’s where I am.  Where are you?  I’d love to hear your comments.

23 Years Ago…

23 years ago I was 16 years old and a junior in high school.  And I found myself hanging around with this guy…this guy I had known since elementary school, who I went to church and youth group with, who I sang with in the youth choir.  It seemed that everywhere I went at school, there he was.  Before school, during lunch, even when I was roaming the halls he showed up.  At church, the youth group always sat together during the service and for the last few weeks, we usually found ourselves sitting together…

23 years ago today, I became his girlfriend.  Together we went to 3 proms, countless movies, ballgames & dinners.  I watched him sing in the school choir, march in the band (he was a drummer then, too) and play soccer.  He watched me graduate and a year later, I watched him.  I said goodbye to him in front of his apartment building in Nashville, TN and rode 8 hours home with his parents.  I wrote him letters and talked to him on the phone late at night (when the rates were down) for the long year he was in school.  And after watching him graduate again, this time from Nasville Auto Diesel College, I rode away from that same apartment building except this time, he was driving us home.  Less than a year later, I helped him move again.  This time, I helped him move into an apartment that in less than 6 months would be our first home together.

Our journey hasn’t always been smooth – no one’s is.  There were harsh words and misunderstandings and arguments.  There was even a short break up in there, but we never left each other’s hearts.  The separations were hard and sometimes we wondered why we bothered to stay together being so far away.  But for me the bottom line was I couldn’t imagine my life without him.  For some people the decision to leave their hometown and all their family to get married might have been hard.  But for me, it was simple.  I would go where he went – and I’ve never regretted it.

23 years is a long time…but it seems like it was only yesterday that I was standing in the hall of good old Bluefield High School, waiting for him to get to school.  I can see him walking in the doors in front of the audiotorium, feeling myself start to smile because he was smiling at me.  He’s walking toward me and leaning down to kiss me…