Time in a Bottle

Recently I was asked a simply question, "How old are you, really?" almost accusing me of lying about my age. Not that I wouldn't lie, but this time I was telling the truth. They said, "I never would have guessed." Whatever that means. I'm taking it in the most positive way a person can possibly take it.
After the conversation ended I began to think about where all those years have gone. When I was little I always heard my parents and all their friends talk about how fast time passes. I didn't understand it. It seemed like it took forever for Christmas to get here, or for school to get out. But even then it always seemed like Spring Break and Summer Vacation flew by, maybe that was a little insight into what they were saying, but I was to young to get it. As I got older and would spend more time with my grandparents, I would hear them say that the days pass so slowly now. Is that what life is, constantly trying to control the speed of the sand in the hourglass? Where's the balance?
As children we are in such a hurry to grow up and move on with our own life. Looking back I wanted to be a grown up so badly and now I would give anything to be able to go back to my childhood. Most of the time being a grown up stinks. There is an unwritten list of rules you can't do without other grown ups looking at you like you lost your mind. For example, hopping a ride on the shopping cart in the parking lot. You know what I'm talking about. You get it going really fast and hop on and coast to your car. Or getting a slushy at the convenience store and adding a little soda for that extra real flavor. Or splashing in the puddles after a rain. One of my favorites, eating a watermelon during the summer and having seed spitting contests. I know it's disgusting now, but that's my point, did we really stop to appreciate the freedom that comes with being a child?
As a grown up you can't do those things without someone saying or at least thinking you are acting like a child. As grown ups we are responsible for everything. It seems that someone is always asking or needing something from us. That is when I think that time starts to speed up. We are so busy with our children and their activities, our careers and trying to move up the ladder, our church and trying to be a what God wants us to be, our friends and being there for them. We get so wrapped up in all of those things and a million more that we sometimes forget what it feels like to be free.
In the song, Beautiful Boy, John Lennon sang, "Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans." Is that what my grandparents meant? That now that their children were all gone and married and the grandchildren were all older that their life had passed them by with out realizing it. Now the only thing that was left to do was to reflect back and try to hold on to the time they may have missed.
Some of you know that I have been working on making my life less of a spectator sport. I have tried to learn something new everyday, I try to look for God's handy work throughout my week, I am listening to Kyler and trying to hear what he is really saying to me, and I am trying to say yes more than no. However, by doing this I feel like my life is like trying to walk on a high wire without a net. I don't have any idea how to keep my balance without holding my arms out on each side of me and walking ahead slowly. Maybe that is the key, walking ahead slowly, not running in all directions fast. We only get to be with our families for such a short time and then it is gone. I don't want to have to look back and think about all the things I may have missed. I want to know that even though I may not be able to lay the hourglass on its side and call a time out. I can know that in my heart I touched each grain of sand that went through it.

Muskogee ~ A Week in Review

We are back and this is what I learned after spending a week in Muskogee, Oklahoma:

• Muskogee isn't on my Top 10 Places to See & Do, but it wasn't that bad
• 7 Strike outs = a 7 in Kevin's head
• A week is a long time to spend with some people
• An XBox game doesn't stand a chance in a microwave
• Popping one kernel of popcorn at a time in the microwave is not a good idea
• You really can cook anything on a grill, including pancakes
• 10 boys can take over a hotel
• Some people are "doers" and some people are "watchers"
• Are boys are brothers; they win together and lose together
• There really is such a thing as Karma
• You can never smile or laugh to much
• Our boys brought home 4th place trophies from the World Series

Muskogee will always be a place where "even squares can have a ball" even if it is baseball!

What's Your Dirty Little Secret?

Do you remember watching Father Knows Best or Leave it to Beaver? Me either really, I'm not that old. I do remember the image of the mothers, baking cookies in their high heels and pearls. However, I did watch Happy Days and The Brady Bunch. Mrs. C and Mrs. Brady were the perfect moms. They always knew the right thing to say, always had dinner ready when their husbands came in the door, and did it all looking fantastic. We sometime forget that was television and Mrs. Brady had Alice.
If we can talk among us girls for a moment...not one of us can say we are a perfect mom all the time. I said it, WE ARE NOT PERFECT! As moms we have put so much pressure on ourselves to be everything June Clever was and most of us didn't even watch that show! Lets start embracing our failures, so we can learn from them. I found this excerpt online that made me feel better knowing that I'm not the only mom with secrets:
"You're not the only mom who's forgotten to brush her kids' teeth or cursed in front of her toddler. Trisha Ashworth and Amy Nobile, both 39, have compiled these confessions and more in their new book, Dirty Little Secrets From Otherwise Perfect Moms. Here, they reveal how they got moms to spill the dirt.
How did you convince so many moms to tell you their secrets?
Trisha: When we interviewed moms for our last book, I Was a Really Good Mom Before I Had Kids, we would inevitably ask them, "Are you happy?" They would say, "Well, what do you mean by happy?" That's when they would talk about deeper issues, like feeling guilty about barely keeping it all together, and the confessions would just start pouring out.
Did certain secrets come up again and again?
Amy: Dinnertime was a huge hot button. When we asked about cooking, so many moms said, "Oh, my gosh, dinner just throws me over the edge!" Then we would get confessions like, "I sometimes feed my children macaroni and cheese five nights in a row" or "I get takeout and pass it off as homemade!"
Why do you think they were telling these secrets to you instead of their friends?
Trisha: There's so much pressure to be the perfect mom, and if you admit these secrets, it makes you feel like you're not doing a good enough job. We quickly deduced that there's not a whole lot of honesty about these issues, which makes moms feel like they're all alone. But in truth, we all have those moments when we don't make the best decisions!
Did the moms seem to feel relieved after they confessed?
Amy: Definitely — it was so cathartic! A lot of them started by saying, "I know you've never heard this before, but...." And we felt compelled to say, "Just so you know, this is probably the 10th time we've heard this!"
Okay, what's your dirty little mommy secret?
Trisha: We just gave Amy's two kids and my three kids lollipops and stuck them in front of the TV so we could do this interview!"
Moms, remember this, you were perfect today if you did these three things: hugged your kids, told them you loved them, and fed them, no matter what it may have been!

Summer Vacation

As people do in the Summer, most of our friends have already taken their vacations, if they haven't they are preparing to do so very quickly. A couple of our friends are going to the sandy beaches of Destin, Florida. One friend is boarding a ship on Friday for an Alaskan Cruise. My sister-in-law and her husband are doing a "grown-ups only" trip to New York City. As for us, we leave on Sunday for our Summer Vaca. We have decided to spend our time off in a remote area that is well off the beaten path, a place where many people have never heard of before, where the sunshine will be plentiful, and there is little to no chance of rain. Where is this isolated place I speak of...Muskogee, Oklahoma. I'm not kidding, so stop laughing, you know you're jealous.
Yes, Kyler's baseball team has earned a bid to the 9U USSSA World Series in beautiful Muskogee. For those of you who don't know where Muskogee (Musk-go-ge) is, it is approximately 50 miles Southeast of Tulsa in the middle of nowhere! Muskogee is famous for Merle Haggard's 1969 hit "Okie from Muskogee" and its annual Azalea Festival. How much fun could a place be that mixes old country music and flower tours together? According to Mr. Haggard, it's a place "where even squares can have a ball," well, we'll see.
Kyler and his teammates have worked so hard to earn this trip. For those of you who are stat minded, here is a few for you:

38-7 IN-CLASS RECORD (42-19 Overall Record)
4 CHAMPIONSHIP TROPHIES
4 SECOND PLACE TROPHIES
7 THIRD PLACE FINISHES
RUNNER-UP IN THE ARKANSAS STATE TOURNEY
2 ALL-STATE SHOWCASE PLAYERS
3 ARKANSAS STATE ALL-TOURNEY PLAYERS
Ranked #1 in Arkansas out of 33 teams (Power and Points)
Ranked #4 in the U.S. out of 900 teams (Points)

Ranked #32 in the U.S. out of 900 teams (Power)

FOR ONE WEEK (May 1, 2008) RANKED #1 in the country in Power Ranking

One last stat, Kevin and I have been at every tournament, every game, and we won't miss this one either, even if that means we get to spend our vacation in the Oklahoma Sun instead of the Florida Sand!

We are not Dogs

For some of us we live in the "woulda, coulda, shoulda world" and we can't get out or we don't want to get out. We continually think about what we would have done differently or what could have been or what we should have said. We like that world. It's comfortable. Nothing changes there. We never have to grow or learn anything new. Proverbs 26:11 says, "As a dog returns to its vomit, so a fool repeats his folly." Are we no better than dogs?
I have been listening to people lately and I have come to the realization that for some of us we never learn to "let it go". For humans vomit comes dressed in different clothes, for some it is old boyfriends, girlfriends, friendships, career choices, a divorce, it is a something different for everyone. It doesn't matter how it is dressed, it's all vomit. We keep whining and going back to toxic people, old ways of thinking, bad habits, or bad behavior. If we are not progressing and not learning from our past then, according to Proverbs, we are fools and we are no better than a dog.
After Kyler has lost a game, he will dwell on that game for the rest of the day, most of the evening, and sometimes he will carry it with him through the next day. He will replay every at bat, every play in the field, every pitch, over and over in his head trying to figure out how they lost. If we wins, he may talk about it for a few hours, but then he is focused on the next game. Even at ten years old losing is his vomit and he can't let it go. He keeps going back to it. I know some of that behavior comes from being competitive, but I started to think about how much of it comes from observing me and my behavior? Is that what I want to teach him, that it is alright to keep going back to his vomit?
So, I am working on trying to be a better example, I am trying to "let it go". When we ask God to forgive us, He forgives us from EVERYTHING no matter what we did. We have His promise that the vomit is gone, FOREVER. We have a hard time understanding unconditional forgiveness because Satan and all his devious ways, won't allow us to forget. His job is to keep us swimming in the vomit pool and to keep us thinking we are not worthy of God's love. God made us in His image and gave us free will to choose Him and to have life more abundantly. We have to learn to stay away from the vomit.
My life is not always what I thought it would be, in fact it is very different than I had pictured it as a little girl. Honestly, it could be better in some areas if I would stop acting like a dog. Some people act like dogs because they don't know any better, no one has ever shown them a better way of life. I know better and I want my son to see the better way in me, so, when I feel like I am returning to my own vomit I have started repeating, "I am not a dog" it is a simple statement that helps to remind me that I am better than our four legged friends.