The Bead

At 6pm last night, my 5-year-old tells me, "I stuck a bead in my ear at nap time."

"Why?"

"It was pretty and I wanted to save it for you and I didn't have any pockets and I couldn't get up because it was nap time!"

A few minutes later, there was a tearful moan from the back seat, "Mommy!  I am so embarrassed because I really think that I probably know better!"

Our walk-in clinic was closed by then, and I really didn't want to drag my kids all the way to the ER on a night my husband was working late.  I started to feel my head spinning, then I automatically took a deep breath and assessed my options.  There was a lot of beauty that came flooding into my consciousness.

Beauty:  My cousin is an Otorhinolaryngologist (ear/nose/throat doc) and ALWAYS replies to my texts (Love that guy!).  From stories I've heard, he has removed some pretty incredible things from little ears and noses (and a few big ones as well).  He said it is not an emergency.

Beauty:  The bead looked huge and pretty deep, but she was feeling no pain.  She would say it just felt like a bead rolling around in her head.

Beauty:  This is a moment for her to learn from her own actions.  If my daughter spends a day with weird feelings in her ear and then an afternoon with a nurse digging around in her ear canal...she will learn the lesson better than any scolding or overreacting I may do.

I didn't overreact!  I am gaining ground!  I breathed a bit, asked her why, then empathized.  I tried mild efforts to dig it out with no results, so I told her she just had to wait until the clinic opened the next day.  My inner-adult prevailed!  Success!

I am finding more and more that I am not genuinely a freak-out mom.  The bead won't be causing any major diseases any time soon.  This morning I sent her to school like always, and I told the teacher just in case my daughter mentioned something about it.  The teacher got this horrified look on her face, like she thought I was insane for sending her to school with a bead in her ear rather than rushing to the ER, and proceeded to scold me about ear infections.  I thanked her and left.

We were in and out of the clinic in no time this afternoon.  The longest part of the procedure was waiting to be taken back to a room.  Once we were in, the PA-C got it over and done with in no time flat with a tiny little pink plastic crochet hook.  Over-all, it happened in the best possible way.  I even remembered to bring a box of Craisins for the 3-year-old to occupy himself with during his sister's procedure.

The benefits of choosing to breathe deeply as a habit made themselves known over the past 24 hours.  I was not tempted to freak out, when in the past I would have scolded and been upset.  I am finding and enjoying my inner-adult, one kicking and screaming inner-child moment at a time.

I deserve BEAUTY in my life!

Not So Bad

Last weekend my father came or a visit, so of course I spent much of Friday doing the "clean-up scurry" around the house.  I was feeling awful because he and my mother expended so much effort and love in January to help me get on top of things, and I had failed to maintain, despite my best laid intentions.

I was so distracted on Friday morning that I misread my daughter's Kindergarten calendar.  I thought she had school this week, so we went through all of the routine of getting there.  Once at school, I realized I didn't recognize any of the other kids or parents in the hallway, and they informed me that it was a "red" Friday instead of a "blue" one.  Well...that was a wake-up call to me that it was going to be quite a day.

As it turns out, having my daughter home that day was a blessing.  She really kept me on my toes, and her excitement about Grandpa coming never waned.  Her ability to keep the ultimate purpose of our efforts in the forefront really kept me motivated.  For entirely selfish reasons, I set her to scrubbing pots (being mom has its privileges ).  She is so sweet, I really got a lot done around the kitchen while listening to her singing a made-up little ditty:

"Scrubby!  Scrubbing!  Pots-pots-pots-pots!
Bubbly!  Bubbles!  Pots-pots-pots-pots!
Rinse-y!  Rinsing!  Pots-pots-pots-pots!"

 That was the most beautiful music I could have in that moment.

She loves to vacuum as well.  I have a little Dirt Devil stick vac, which she has laid claim to since the first day she saw it at barely age 2.  I use the big Hoover and she uses the stick, and we vacuum together.  She has taught me that vacuuming is a fun process when you make it a game that is a cross between bumper-cars and power cord limbo.

As the day progressed, I realized that the house wasn't really that bad!  Sure, we still had to scrub pots, vacuum, make beds and clean bathrooms...but it all was surface.  In the past I would be rearranging the mess, dusting the piles and scurrying, collapsing in an exhausted, sweaty fit of shame and "good enough".  This time, I was able to actually clean and restore my home back to a nice place!

I believe that this is because the underlying energy of love and openness was still there.  My house is almost back in order and it only took an afternoon.  There were piles and dirty dishes and the floor was in dire need of some TLC, and I was able to do it all (with some very adorable help).

I need to discover how to be gentler on myself.  It seemed like a big job up front because in the past it was a big job.  I think that over the course of the past few months, several small habits have changed and that is making the difference.  I am so very hard on myself and I see even the ugliness or "failure" so quickly and clearly.  I treasure beauty so deeply, why don't I focus on that first?  There is a lot of self-talk involved here.

I AM NOT a failure
I AM a beauty-work in progress

I AM NOT a failure
I AM capable of maintaining beauty

I AM NOT a failure
I AM a success

I deserve BEAUTY in my life!

Perspective

Dandelions are ugly.

Dandelions stink.

Dandelions don't die.

Dandelions litter my yard.

Dandelions are evil incarnate.

"Mommy!  I picked all of these for you because they are yellow and so pretty!"
Mashed, mangled, truncated and bundled dandelions in the grubby hands of a loving child.

Dandelions are love.

Dandelions are bright.

Dandelions are beautiful.

Dandelions represent a heart the size of this world.

Dandelions might not be so bad.

Sometimes, I guess, it is all just a matter of perspective.

I deserve BEAUTY in my life!

Shining Light

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, 'Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?' Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.” 

― Marianne Williamson, Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of "A Course in Miracles"

A friend sent this quote to me in an email a few days ago.  I think I have read through it a hundred times since.  There is something about it that resonates with me deeply.  The fear of success, my hesitance to recognize my own beauty, my hiding from my own light not only injures myself, but deprives those around me of the beauty I have to offer.

My goal is to eventually come to understand and truly believe how deserving I am, without even thinking of asking, "Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?"  Who am I?  I am me, and I am enough.  I have what it takes to shine brilliantly, as I was designed to do from the day I was born.  

This paragraph has so many important ideas within.  It is a very inspiring call to move past my learned behavior of self-annihilation, of abandonment of my true light.  Seeing God in my children is quite simple, and admiring the Divine within my husband is a snap.  Seeing the true light of beauty within others through personal compassion is something that is getting easier every time I do it.  The call here is to look in the mirror and see God within myself and let His light shine through me.

There is nothing wrong with admiring myself and the work that God has created within me, but it is so hard.  I spend so much time telling my children that I love and admire them, in the hopes that they will believe that they deserve to feel the same about themselves.  Again, I am reminded, the only way they will learn it is if I do it for myself. Compassion for others comes more readily than compassion for myself...but unless I have it for myself, what I have to offer others is only a partial truth.  Making myself smaller in the hopes of disappearing or raising up others serves nobody.

That is a tall order.  It makes me nervous, but it also gives me resolve.  I am a work of God with light and love to share.  I deserve every bit of light that I possess, and I deserve to believe in and continually celebrate  the worth of my own beauty and power.

I deserve BEAUTY in my life!

I Promise I Will Never Tell

Last night I was reading with my 5-year-old daughter before bed.  She suddenly fell quiet, and in a tiny, sad voice she said, "Mommy, I need to tell you something..." and she proceeded to tell me about something she saw a few days ago that she is pretty sure she shouldn't have.  I was so proud of her for coming forward like that, even though the adult in me knew that it wasn't really anything of concern.

She was so embarrassed and sad, I felt bad for her.  We talked and she explained that it was a careless "oopsie" that she saw it.  I explained that if it really was an accident, then she did absolutely nothing wrong.  I could tell that she didn't entirely believe me, so I asked her if she wanted to hear a story about how I accidentally saw the same thing once when I was in high school.  As I proceeded to tell her my story, a look of relief washed over her face and she said my story made her feel better and less sad.  We discussed how, when we feel this way, it is really important to talk about it with me or another trusted adult.

In the end, she said she felt a bit better, but still a little embarrassed.  Then she asked me to promise to never tell anybody ever what happened.  I promised, and then even reiterated my promise to her this morning.  A promise to a child is a sacred and beautiful thing...whether what happened is a big deal or not in the grown-up world.

I came down from this conversation with a sense of relief.  So much of my time is spent fighting with and berating myself over my failures and shortcomings as a mother.  Even though I am not the poster-child for awesome parenting, I am doing something inherently right.  I love her so completely, and so unconditionally, that she knows she can trust me implicitly.  Of all the people in the world she can and deserves to trust, her mother should be the one at the top of her list.  And that is me.

How beautiful is it to know that my child feels she can share an embarrassing moment with no fear of shame. She was so nervous telling me, and her eyes became so vibrant when I empathized with her plight.  It was a truly beautiful moment between a mother and her daughter that I was so blessed to be a part of.  My love and acceptance of her will never wane, and my prayer going forward is that the strength of this love will always assure her that she can trust me completely.

My daughter deserves this beauty in her life.  Every little girl deserves a Mommy she can rely on.

I deserve BEAUTY in my life!

Mommy or Me?

I had my fifth and final week of PTI this past weekend. It was challenging and beautiful, exhausting and exhilarating, just as PTI always is.  The life-changing aspects, along with the ugly truths that I was forced to face, have made the journey completely worth it.  I would never go back to where I was before this journey.

I didn't have as many instantaneous ah-ha moments this time around, but I did a lot of important work nonetheless.  I am currently sitting with my muddled-up feelings, and trying very hard to be patient while my conscious and unconscious minds chew things over.  The beauty of it all is that I know that if I give myself time and don't try to push it, things will slowly come to me.  They have in the past, and I just need to wait for the beauty to unfold in its own time.

One of the exercises we do on these weekends is called Energetic Psychodrama.  There's not much I can say about it beyond the statement that it is like hypnotherapy times about a hundred.  Never have I gone through something so intense or informative.  It is done with the support of the whole group, and the combined energy is second to nothing.  So much happened in that hour, I know it is going to take me weeks to put it all together.

Part of the take-away that I have been able to act on with immediacy is to stop calling myself "Mommy" when I talk to the kids.  When I say, "Mommy loves you" it does not have the same staying power nor ownership as the statement "I love you".  "Please bring that to Mommy," versus "Please bring that to me."

Somewhere along the journey of my life, my comfort in the identity of me, apart from those I love, has fallen away.  As far as I can remember, my personal identity has always been my father's daughter, my husband's wife, my children's mother...where does that leave me?  I have always been torn between the need to be independent and strong and the feeling of enmeshment with those I love.  Where is the line?

Since I started calling myself "me" instead of "Mommy", I have noticed a tiny shift.  I don't know for sure where the shift lies, is it in my children, in me, in our common energy?  My children seem slightly more respectful, and more apt to listen.  They are little kids, but I think this one change is truly resonating in their little brains.  My words are more meaningful, more powerful, and game-changing.  I feel that my relationship to my children has become slightly clearer and stronger because I am feeling stronger.

Who knew that referring to myself in the first person would make such a difference in such a short time.  It is actually really hard to do on a consistent basis.  I hadn't really realized how often I referred to myself as Mommy in stead of me.  Sometimes it feels somewhat cold and distant, as if some of the endearment is no longer there.  I think this is part of the journey towards reclaiming my own identity, though.  I will have to sever some of the enmeshment in order to stand on my own. The more I have grown accustomed to referring to myself in the first person, the easier it is becoming.  I feel somehow lighter and a bit freer, and stronger with more love to give.

I am one small step closer to being the kind of person I would want my children to emulate.

I deserve BEAUTY in my life!

2013 Dodge Grand Caravan AVP

After a long and arduous week, here it is!  My shiny, beautiful new mode of transportation.

It was a bit of a challenge, figuring out how to get people from point A to point B, so we decided to rent a car for a week so the family could function.  I will say one thing good about the rental...it assured me that we would not be buying a 2012 Ford Fusion.  I smashed my head on the door frame every time I got in or out of the thing.

My husband and I did research.  To be perfectly honest, he did most of the work.  He drove through lots and scoured online and really did the homework.  It was very stressful for him, and the thought of haggling with a car dealer caused a great deal of anxiety.  In the end, he wound up in the hands of a very capable team at Larson Dodge in Puyallup.  They made the process seamless and low pressure, so it was as pleasant as it could be.  They even purchased the Escort from us!

They let him do a test-drive to bring it home.  We put it in the garage (almost had to grease the sides, but it fits!) and let the kids climb around and explore it a bit.  The right car at the right price fell into our hands.

The pricing was phenomenal.  I mean, Dodge has this American Value Package where the vehicle does not have any frills, it is a people-mover with air conditioning.  It was actually a better price to get this vehicle brand-new off the lot than it would have been to get any other brand of minivan pre-owned.  My guess is because the other minivans all come with the frills standard.

Once we settled on this van, things just fell into place rapidly.  We got the best financing we possibly could, and it came through with lightning speed.  Suddenly the money was in our account, instantly we got a cashier's check...went to the dealer and signed the paperwork.

Spending this much money is never a fun thing.  That being said, this happened in the fastest, easiest way it could possibly have.  I still giggle when I get into my van, it is so much fun.

I DESERVE a new vehicle!
I DESERVE great financing!
I DESERVE rapid turn-around on a decision!
I DESERVE to be proud of my vehicle!
I DESERVE a sweet new ride :-)

I deserve BEAUTY in my life!