First. I got very tickled yesterday afternoon watching David and Alex “read the paper” (well, D. really was reading, not “reading” – which is a good thing indeed). For the longest time A. sat on the opposite end of the couch from D., looking at all the fliers and circulars. A. eventually moved to the coffee table, where he told us EVERYTHING listed in the circulars, and it was one of those sweet moments where Alex totally studied and imitated his daddy. A. “read” for almost an hour. AN HOUR! Of calm! With no screaming! And no running! Aren’t you happy for me?

Next. I have an unwritten rule that I don’t buy flowers unless the house is very, very clean. What’s that expression about putting lipstick on a pig? That’s why. Anyway, this whole FlyLady deal? It is really working for us. I feel like I have some housekeeping skills now. Skillz. Mad skillz. Yo.

I know that David and I have a different situation than lots of folks because he works from our house, and truthfully that’s made things even easier on me in terms of the FlyLady system. But here’s what we’re doing – for what it’s worth.

Every morning, after I get dressed, I unload the dishwasher, put on a load of laundry, figure out what’s for supper and make sure that the sink is clean (WHO KNEW a clean sink was such a key cleaning component?). And then David follows my four things with his four things: he makes the bed (and he’s done a beautiful job, though this past Wednesday he asked, “Hey, you know that throw thing that you put on the end of the bed? Why? What’s it for?”), puts the laundry in the dryer, makes sure all his dishes go into the dishwasher, and keeps the sink clean. I cannot tell you how much those four simple little things help me during the day.

The house being clean is a total stewardship issue with me, and I think that’s why it affects the way I feel so much. It’s not just a practical concern – it’s a spiritual concern – and to know that we’re developing a SYSTEM for taking care of everything makes me feel much more in control (as opposed to the house controlling me). Thus, we have flowers. Not fancy flowers, but flowers nonetheless. It’s a start.

C) We had the new members meal at church last night. I ended up doing lasagna, salad, bread, and Diane’s idea for ice cream sundaes. I decided on that menu because it was familiar cooking territory and every bit of it could be done ahead of time except for the salads. It was a good batch of lasagna and blah blah blah – but can I just tell you? Serving ice cream for dessert? A REVELATION! The men loved it – most had seconds – and the women seemed to appreciate that they could just have a “bite” of something sweet and not have to feel guilty about eating a big ole hunk of cake. Cake does come in hunks, you know. I believe it’s the official cake measurement.

4) I won a contest. At another blog. For a recipe. Seriously.

Last week I was visiting The Chaotic Home, familiarizing myself with all the LBY bloggers and trying to figure out who’s who. I noticed that Karin was having a soup and salad recipe contest, and in a fit of spontanaiety I clicked over to my recipe page, copied my favorite salad recipe, and pasted it into her comments. Didn’t think about it again. But as it turns out, I am a winner, ladies and gentlemen…and am going to be the proud recipient of a new cookbook, courtesy of Karin. After my walk down the red carpet and my tastefully tearful acceptance speech, I decided that the proper bloggity thing to do was to mention Karin’s blog (not to mention her generosity) here. So be sure to click over her way for a visit. You’ll feel right at (chaotic) home. Oh I am punny.

I believe we’re all caught up now. Except on sleep. But isn’t it great to have sunshine until 7:30 again?

I was thinking this morning about how I haven’t even mentioned the fact that Mississippi State has a new president. But truth be told, I didn’t have all that much to contribute to the discussion – not that that’s ever stopped me before.

Then I ran across Orley Hood’s column in today’s Clarion Ledger.

I wish I’d written it, if that counts for anything.

And for those of you who aren’t State fans, I apologize. You will probably have no interest whatsoever in the aforementioned article. Maybe you can scroll down and enjoy some of my other exceptionally average posts.

BooMama: A Veritable Festival of Mediocrity!

Today has been one of those days that has humbled me to my parenting core. David, too. Because our child? The cute blue-eyed boy? He’s gone crazy. Lost his mind. Cuckoo.

I don’t even know if I have the words to describe it. However, it’s probably important to point out that just then, when I was typing “describe,” I accidentally typed “prescribe,” which I feel certain is my subconscious talking and saying, “YOU NEED SOME MEDICATION, MA’AM!”

The child, he is suddenly SO DEMANDING, and it is making me crazy. It’s making his daddy crazy. I think it’s even making the dogs crazy. I told Bubba in an email earlier tonight that David and I both agree that maybe we need a slight break from the world of parenting. I believe my exact words were, “We have both agreed that if someone wants to come get Alex for a few days, we will throw his luggage to the curb and throw him in the car if someone will slow down just long enough for us to open the door.” I’m kidding, of course, because we would actually insist that someone at least pull into the driveway and stop their car so that we could install the carseat. Oh, we take care of our own.

We started the day off with a bang when the only activity in which Alex wanted to participate was climbing onto my shoulders while I was sitting on the couch and then doing a half-nelson onto the cushions. So I figured maybe we needed to get out and about. Because he has a deep and abiding love for Publix, he’s always up for a trip to the grocery store, but when I spilled my delicious fountain diet Coke (with ice, of course) in the middle of the produce section, Alex apparently felt that his very heart had been ripped from his body – we’re talking major, “hey, did you see that blonde woman with the screaming child over by the onions ’cause, um, STAY AWAY”-level meltdown.

I’m not exactly sure what I did to get him calmed down…it may have had something to do with a doughnut, a sippy cup filled with Sprite, and a bag of lemons featuring a picture of the cast of Sesame Street, though I can’t be exactly sure.

Before I had a child, I would look at a toddler acting like Alex in the grocery store and think, “HMPH! His parents have lost all control.” But David and I do discipline. We discipline as consistently as we know how, and in a loving way, and we work very hard not to undermine each other. There’s no good cop / bad cop in our house. We’re both just cops. Well, technically I’m the cop. David’s chief of police. :-) Of course we’re not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but we try to be very intentional about following through with our word. We know it’s in Alex’s nature to test us, and we know that we just have to get through this stage (at which point there will be another white-knuckle phase just around the corner). But my word it can be frustrating.

Tonight Alex refused to eat supper. He looked at his plate, pushed it away, then looked at me like, “Next option, please…this is not to my liking.” David calmly explained that I had prepared the meal for our family, and it was Alex’s only choice. If he didn’t want to eat, fine, but there would be no alternate meal forthcoming, and oh, by the way, Alex would continue to sit with us at the table. I was so grateful for the way David handled it, because do you know what I wanted to do with that plate of food? Throw it. I wanted to throw it. I wanted to pick it up, and aim it, and hurl it at the back door. If you’ve ever seen Coal Miner’s Daughter, I wanted to do exactly what Doo did when he took Loretta’s homecooked meal, threw it on the porch, and then whistled for the dogs to come and get it. Because I am MOTHER OF THE YEAR.

The rest of the night was one test of wills after another. Get down. Stand up. Don’t touch that. Be careful. That’s not a toy. Don’t push. Alex and David had more father-son “talks” than I could count. David’s great about balancing the discipline with encouragement when Alex makes good choices. Me? I just stand around and try not to scream. I do, however, think that David came pretty close to losing it when Alex took the cup that we use to wash his hair, filled it up with water, and then poured the water all over the bathroom floor. Don’t you wish you lived here?

Suffice it to say that we were both ready for Alex’s bedtime. All three of us needed a break. So I climbed in bed with Alex, we said prayers (lots of prayers for PATIENCE tonight), gave hugs and kisses, and then we did our bedtime farewell routine. At some point in the last couple of months Alex has started saying to me all the things I used to say to him, so it goes something like this: “Okay, Mama. Night night. God made you special and He loves you very much! I love you! Love ya!”

It’s a perfectly natural reaction, by the way, if you feel a little lightheaded from all the sweetness in that last sentence. So consider yourself warned: I’m about to do serious damage to your insulin level.

After this day of childrearing “challenges” (that’s the nice word), my sweet baby boy looked me straight in the eyes, and he started to sing. It took me a minute to figure out what he was saying, but then I caught on. If you know anything about Veggie Tales, you can sing along:

“I thank God for this day,
For the sun in the sky,
For my mom and my dad,
For my piece of apple pie!

For our home on the ground,
For His love that’s all around,
That’s why I say thanks every day!

Because a thankful heart is a happy heart!
I’m glad for what I have,
Thats an easy way to start!

For the love that He shares,
‘Cause He listens to my prayers,
That’s why I say thanks every day!”

Then he said, “Mama, now you sing” – and we sang it together – and I was reminded so much that, some days, the little man teaches me way more than I teach him. It was exactly the encouragement that I needed. It made me cry, honestly, because even in the midst of all our “terrible three” battles, his little heart is getting it. Just a little bit. He’s getting it.

And his mama is, too.

About three and a half years ago some Life Stuff reared its ugly head. You know how Life Stuff works…it pops up out of seemingly nowhere, rocks your world, and leaves you in its wake. By the way, there were three completely unrelated metaphors in that last sentence. Life Stuff apparently renders one incapable of coherent figurative language.

Here’s the thing. The Stuff has absolutely nothing to do with me other than it affects someone I care about, so I feel the ripples. And if you’re thinking, “Um, could you possibly be more vague,” I apologize. Vaguery is of the essence, I’m afraid, because I try not to be in the business of betraying people’s trust. So you’ll have to bear with me. Just know that as a result of The Stuff, I feel like I’ve been in the midst of two Big Battles: 1) fear and 2) pride.

The fear part seizes me at the strangest times. I can be bebopping through my little BooMama life, minding my own business, and BOOM – my stomach drops down to my knees. I like for things to make sense, for all the parts to add up, for everything to be out in the open, dealt with, put back in the box, and filed away (it’s Mix Your Metaphors Day, evidently). Nothing about this situation is like that. And so the unknown – the fear of what’s down the road – well, it gets to me sometimes. I want to know how The Stuff is going to play out; I want to know the end result so that I’m not so wary of all the what-ifs.

Obviously, this is one area of my life where I’ve struggled with trusting God. I lay it all at the foot of the Cross, stare at it awhile, and then I think, “You know, I’m just gonna pick this little teensy part up again…I think I can handle it.” And I tippy-toe over to where I left it, pick up a little bit, and before you know it I’ve put the whole load back on my shoulders, and I’m overwhelmed, and I’m scared.

On top of that, my tendency to speak my mind, my desire to say my piece, means struggles with pride can’t be far behind. Now I have no right to say anything, mind you – this is not my battle to fight – but I have an almost physical need to try to right all the wrongs in this situation. I want to fight for someone who has been hurt; I want to shout, preferably from the rooftops, “HEY, EVERYBODY! LET ME TELL YOU WHAT SO-AND-SO DID!” But I can’t. Over and over again I’ve had to die to that selfish need, and I wish I could tell you that that was it, that I was over it, that I surrendered my need to speak and let it go altogether.

But that wouldn’t be true. Inevitably what happens is that I’m not myself when I’m around this person. I’m not rude in the conventional sense – I’m just distant. But it’s impossible for me to fake it (side note: one time I said that to Sister about something else, and she said, “Oh, believe me – we know – you are many things, but you are not an actress”). :-) On top of that, I want the person to know that they’re wrong, and they messed up, and doggone it there will be consequences, which I will happily facilitate if need be.

Surprise! Welcome to my passive-aggressive party! It’s loads of fun.

As it turns out – and there’s no way I think this is a coincidence – David and I were talking about these very issues last week. I was telling him all my frustrations, pouring my heart out, feeling just a tiny bit sorry for myself, talking about how lonely I was because I hadn’t been able to share the details of this situation with my friends, and I was really expecting some sympathy, to tell you the truth. But about halfway through my self-prescribed journey to martyrdom, David looked at me and said, “You know what? I don’t buy it. I don’t think this is really about you needing to share your feelings. I think this is about you wanting to point a finger, you wanting someone to pay for what they did. And you know what? That may never happen, at least not in a way that you can see.”

So, um, yeah. That sorta cut to the quick with me.

On Monday I started the LBY study. At the end of Monday’s lesson, I had to answer a question about how God might want me to respond to what I learned. My answer: “I think I need [to work on] humility…my pride has been fired up lately….” And then Wednesday, when I opened my workbook to the lesson for Day 3, the following verse was staring at me: “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Galatians 2:20). It hit me right between the eyes.

As I moved through the rest of the lesson, which dealt with 10 essential qualities of being crucifed with Christ, I started talking back in the margins, writing like a madwoman. By the time I got to quality #4 – “intense times of aloneness with God are required” – I knew that being in this study was, as our former pastor would say, “by divine appointment.” Out beside point #4, I wrote, “Maybe God has ‘pulled me aside’ over the last [few] years because He wants me to lean on Him [in this situation], not [other people].”

YA THINK?

And then quality #8 – “You must forego your rights” – pretty much wipes out any excuses I make for being fearful or prideful. Here’s what Beth Moore said, and I’m going to quote it because I hope it’ll resonate with some of y’all the way it did with me: “You may have the right to be angry, the right to be bitter [but]….Don’t make the mistake of trying to simply ignore your rights when they are so difficult to lay down. Surrender them to Christ and ask Him to replace them with a supernatural work of the Spirit: with healing, with power, with wisdom!”

That spoke to me.

By the time I got to quality #9 – “You must accept that death [to self] is painful.” – I felt like God had a 2×4 and was ever-so-gently slamming it against my skull (in a most loving way, of course). Beth says, “…to choose the will of God over our own is excruciating….Never misunderstand pain as permission to forego the will of God.” And I was so completely humbled by that point that all I could write in the margin was “yes ma’am” – because she’s exactly right. Just because I can speak my mind doesn’t mean that I should. Confrontation with the purpose of satisfying selfish motives will never, ever be of God. That’s a tough one, but it’s true.

Dying to self is, for me, the biggest battle of all. I want things my way on my time in the manner of my choosing – and it is so arrogant, this presumption I sometimes have that somehow I know better than God. At the end of Wednesday’s lesson, when it was time for me to write down how I felt God wanted me to respond to what I’d learned, I was crystal clear: “[God wants me to respond] by laying down my need for confrontation and closure with _____. It’s not my battle. It’s not my call. And my motives are selfish.”

So I got a little clarity, you might say.

I Corinthians 2:9 offers great assurance about why I can happily, gratefully die to my own will and desires. It says, “No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him.”

I have to trust Him. He knows better. It’s just that simple. Because it’s way beyond me.

Addie	Heather*	Carol
M	Rach	Jeana
Jenn	Amanda	MamaB
GiBee	Boomama	Maria
Blair	Heather	Nancy
Janna	Flipflop	Robin
Sherry	Patricia	Tara
Lauren	HolyMama!	Faith
Christy	Eph2810	Karin
Leann	Rachel	Janice
This is a list of the women participating in the study and the links to their blogs. New postings on the study will be published for the next ten weeks, between Friday 8pm – Saturday 8am. Please feel free to visit each of us and comment. Everyone is welcome to participate in this discussion as we seek to live beyond ourselves. May God bless you richly from the hearing of His word.

Last night when I was watching the American Idol results show (bye bye, Lisa), I noticed that once again the judges pointed out the importance of song choice. Randy’s comment that the contestants need “to pick better songs” led to some deep introspection on my part that I feel on some level is entirely inappropriate for a 36 year old wife and mother. But I couldn’t help myself.

Here was (is) my dilemma:

If I were a contestant on American Idol next week, what would I sing? Keep in mind that the fact that I cannot sing is by no means a hindrance here in my personal la-la land.

And somehow this question has become all-too-real to me, like at some minute the AI producers are going to walk in my house and say, “Okay – time’s up. Tell us RIGHT NOW.” I feel an odd sense of urgency about my decision, because I’m, you know, INSANE.

Next week’s competition has a country theme, but my talent cannot be limited by genre. I just can’t work with that kind of process, people. Don’t try to put a fence around my level of singing talent. Because the dogs, when they hear me, they will have to run free.

So here are my top three options:
“Independence Day” – Martina McBride – my country selection
“Bring It All Together” – Natalie Grant and my BFF Wynonna – my contemporary Christian selection
“Hard To Handle” – the Black Crowes version – this is my “break out” song to show the judges how versatile I am

Yours? And don’t be shy. I know y’all. I have seen many of you sing into a hairbrush. So ‘fess up.

So. Let’s talk about BLOGS! I tell you what – I know how to reel in an audience, don’t I?

Seriously, I’ve been giving this whole blog thing some thought, so bear with me.

As most of y’all know, I haven’t been writing this blog for very long, though I have been reading blogs for several years. I really didn’t know what was out there besides the 10 or 15 “big” bloggers who no doubt get thousands upon thousands of hits each day on their sites. And good for them, you know? They have an audience, they speak their minds, and several of them are oh-my-word-I’m-going-to-wet-my-pants funny.

A couple of months ago, though, I took a mental step back and really started to think about the blogs I was reading. I realized that the content of some of them was bothering me. Now I am certainly not Miss Prissy Prude, but there’s some stuff out there that made me uncomfortable…what Mama would call “vulgar” language, some incredibly personal details, and, on a couple of blogs, a little Jesus-bashing to boot. Please don’t misunderstand me. Those people are completely entitled to their opinions. But it doesn’t enrich my life to read that stuff. It just makes me frustrated and sad.

So I had an epiphany. Well, several. 1) If I was feeling isolated out here on the vast interweb prairieland, then I needed to seek out some like-minded people. 2) There’s some stuff that I was reading that I just didn’t want to read anymore. And finally, 3) I wish that I were a mere tenth as funny as Finslippy. I’d even settle for a twentieth.

Long story long – right about the time I was “evaluating” my reading habits, Sister mentioned a blog called HolyMama!. Sister found it by – oh, I don’t know how she found it, as she spends much of her internet time unraveling complex unsolved mysteries and pursuing justice in the Jon Benet Ramsey case. And I don’t think HolyMama! is connected to any of those things, just for the record. But I do think that Sister was looking for Christian bloggers, and HM was a great place to land. I envy HM’s ability to write short posts that generate lots of comments…I, on the other hand, seem to ramble on and on to the point that there’s nothing left for anyone to say. I believe myself to be quite gifted in that area.

Anyway, I didn’t visit HolyMama! (very important to include the exclamation point) much at first, because it takes me a while to work a blog into my daily routine (y’all know I’m OCD – don’t look so surprised). But eventually I clicked over more and more because there seemed to be a community there. And it’s not that I’m looking for people to replace my lifelong “real life” friends because why would I? They’re the best. But it is nice to read other people’s stuff and be able to ask questions and see what little buttons people have on their sites and try to figure out how to put buttons on yours. You know, geekery. (And now I’m singing “Geekery In Jesus” to the tune of “Victory In Jesus” in my head, which is proof positive that God made me, um, crazy.)

HolyMama! (again, punctuation is critical) eventually led me to Lauren’s blog, which is where I found out about the Bible study I’ve just started with some other Christian bloggers (oh, the wacky Christian bloggers). And also thanks to Lauren, I have a new blogroll over in the sidebar that links to the sites of all the other people in the Bible study. Y’all know that I don’t believe in coincidences, and I’ve shaken my head a couple of times when I’ve thought about the fact that I’m doing a BIBLE STUDY – on the INTERWEB – with STRANGER-FRIENDS. God is creative, no doubt about it.

All of the girls listed (sorry – I know I’m 36 years old, but I cannot bear to say “ladies” – ladies, at least to me, are 80-ish and use canes) will be posting about our study every Saturday for the next ten weeks. I really encourage you to check out what they have to say. I for one can’t wait to read all their bloggity Bible study goodness.

It’s gonna be good.