I honestly don’t know what people think about me which is okay, I’d rather not know. My goal is to live the word the best I can, haltingly and imperfectly but honestly. But I do want my life to tell. Paul said his life was an epistle written and read by men. The epistle of Paul’s life tells the …
Ponderings
10 Ways to Untether and Tame the Crazy
Mamas, let me share my heart with you. In my years of mothering I’ve learned a few things and looking back, I see what was important. I see them condensed, pinpoints of light like bright stars in a vast and black sky.
Mothering is universal but things have changed, a lot, since I became a mom almost 3 decades ago.
The world is fast paced with information available at warp speed, voices everywhere screaming for attention. Distractions abound and pull, tugging us away from what’s important. The tyranny of the urgent seduces and traps with flattering but empty promises.
I’ve come up with some remedies, in no particular order, except the last one.
My Ugly Confession
True confession time. You may think you know me but unless you’ve lived with me, you don’t know what a brat I can be. Just ask my poor husband because I was such a pill to him this weekend. If my granny were still around, she’d say, “Stop being such a piss-ant Kate!”
I’ve never known anyone else who said ‘piss-ant’. Except for granny. I can totally see her, standing in front of the stove cooking roast beef hash and eggs for breakfast and waving her spatula around while I pick on my little sister. And telling me not to be a piss-ant. Yes, it means just what you think it means. Poor Mike. He puts up with my moods way better than I deserve. Not to say he doesn’t fight back, he will stand his ground and let me know when I’m being a complete brat. He’s not a push-over that is for sure. We are both passionate people and we will fight for our position even when it’s not pretty. And it rarely is.
What are your Bronze Mirrors?
I don’t know about you, but my mirror doesn’t always reflect what I’d like to see. I’m getting older, 50 plus, (actually way plus!) and what used to be curvy now sags a bit, firm flesh has turned fatty, lines serve as a depressing reminder: you’re not a kid anymore kiddo.
I look in the mirror, my looking glass, and see flaws, mistakes, frailties. I judge what I see as imperfect and compare myself to the women in my life and come up woefully short. I want to be noticed for my appearance. I want youth and beauty and to be all InStyle says I should be.
Don’t we all? Don’t we look in the mirror, vainly wanting more, judging what’s missing rather than seeing ourselves as God sees us, ‘fearfully and wonderfully made’? There’s an easy-to-miss statement in the bible. “He made the laver of bronze and it’s base of bronze, from the bronze mirrors of the serving women who assembled at the door of the tabernacle of meeting.” Exodus 38:8. Moses took the women’s mirrors, melted them down and turned them into a washbasin for the priests.
Today’s Grace
My mom has always told me I have ‘hard feet’. Not soft and lovely with long pretty toes but hard and dry and easily calloused. She said it’s because of my heritage. Not sure which since I have Scottish, Irish, French, French Canadian and American Indian but it’s one of those I guess. It bothers …