shenanyagans

My dad has never been a sports fan. Normally, a girl wouldn’t stand much of a chance of becoming a lover of sports with a dad who’d rather be watching PBS or listening to classical music. But my mama raised me right, and I grew up loving most every sport we could watch. We collected baseball cards together, watched football every Saturday and Sunday, and, of course, never missed a final round of any golf tournament on Sunday afternoon.

I’m not sure how many kids have a favorite golfer, but thanks to mom, I did. That golfer was Payne Stewart. If you’re not familiar with him, you’re probably familiar with his outfits.

(Lord knows I tried to find a photo credit and came up with zilch. Forgive me.)

I knew years before I was even married that I was going to name a kiddo after him. And when he was killed in a tragic plane crash, I knew there’d be no talking me out of it. Fast forward to 2004, Declan came along and we chose Payne as his middle name. I was happy.

Fast forward, again, to 2011. This year, Dex was in Kindergarten. One of the many things on his report card was whether or not he knew his full name. Each time his report card came home, that blank was not marked. I knew he knew his name, so I finally asked him about it one day.

His response? “Declan (Last Name).” And no matter how many times I asked, he refused to tell me his middle name. I told him he needed to tell his teacher, Mrs. Judy, so she could mark it on his report card, but he didn’t care. When I finally said it myself he said, “No it’s not. I hate that name. It’s stupid, and I’m not telling Ms. Judy!”

Turns out someone lovingly called him “Declan Payne-in-my-booty” one too many times. Who knew?

I tried explaining who he was named after and why it was such a special name to me, but he wasn’t having any of it, so we dropped the subject for a few months. Then one half-second clip at the end of this year’s U.S. Open changed everything. Dex caught a glimpse of Payne Stewart in that famous celebratory fist pump after his 1999 U.S. Open win. I looked at him and said, “That was him, Dex!! That’s the one you’re named after!” And for the first time, I saw his eyes light up with excitement. We had to rewind it many times just so he could see that clip over and over again. I was so relieved! (I may not be mother of the year, but I didn’t exactly want my kid hating his name his whole life.)

Aside from sports, one of my other obsessions is photography. I have become unreasonably fascinated with photographing graffiti on the trains that pass through our little town, so every time I see a train I start scanning it for artwork. Just a couple of days after Declan’s change of heart, we were leaving another town about 15 miles from home. It was pretty boring, not much graffiti at all, but I could see one car up ahead with something really colorful on it. My boys have joined me in my obsession, so I told them to be watching as it approached. When we finally pulled even with the car, I squinted to try to make sense of what it said. It finally registered for me, and I couldn’t believe my eyes.

Dex was ecstatic! And here I was, driving down the highway, with no camera in the car. So I did what any reasonable person would do. I raced the train home, ran in the house to get my camera, flew back out to the highway and waited for the photo op.

Call me crazy, and maybe I am, but now that little guy who hated his name 4 months ago, can’t wait to have it hanging on his bedroom wall.

There are so many words I could use to describe my boys. At 6 and 8, they are wild, loud, smelly, usually covered in dirt and up to no good. Exactly what you’d expect them to be. But the one thing I am constantly amazed by is their resourcefulness. Tell them they can’t do something, and they will find a way to work through every loophole they can think of to accomplish what they want without breaking any of your rules. You know, something along the lines of, “Mom said not to punch my brother in the face, so I’ll kick him instead.” You get the idea.

Some rules we’ve been harping on lately are things like, “Don’t touch the lightbulbs after they’ve been on all day, they’re hot enough to burn you,” and, “Don’t put things on the electric stove top, they’ll melt to the surface and I’ll never get it clean,” or, “We can’t roast marshmallows without a fire, and we can’t have a fire outside when it’s this dry.”

Seriously, do other families even have to discuss these things? Sometimes I wonder.

Of course, as a parent, my hope is that what they’ll take from those rules is literally not to touch hot lightbulbs, lay melty things on my hot stove surface, or start bonfires in the back yard.

As 6 and 8-year-old boys, however, what they took from those rules was simply that lightbulbs are a source of heat, they need heat to roast their marshmallows, and they can’t use the stove.

So there’s obviously only one solution.

I know I should have been mad, and I tried to put on the mama face and scold them for doing it. But to be quite honest, when I walked in and found them sitting on my bed, skewered marshmallows raised toward the light bulb, it was too ingenious to be angry about.

On the other hand, maybe it’s time to build them a real campfire before they coat the house in marshmallow. Because, trust me, that stuff doesn’t come off of anything.

Meet Hamburger.

Hamburger is our resident turtle. Three years ago, at our local town celebration, he was disqualified from the turtle race for being a water turtle. Discrimination hurts, even when you’re a turtle, so we took pity on the little guy (the boys begged for him), and we brought him home in a styrofoam hamburger box. (Ahh yes, now the name makes sense, eh?)

I’ll be the first to admit, I thought turtles must be insanely boring pets. But I was so wrong. He has been so interesting to watch, he interacts with us when we come to his tank, and he eats out of our hands. Hamburger has singlehandedly (do turtles have hands?) turned us into a family of turtle lovers. Which brings me to the story of the day.

Last week, we took a break from cleaning and working to make a Sonic run. If you’re not familiar with Sonic, I’m sorry. But it’s probably best that you don’t know what you’re missing. If you are familiar with it, you know that sometimes you just have to drop everything for a cherry limeade and some chili-cheese tots. So we got our order and headed to the nearby park to eat in the shade.

As soon as we pulled in, my 6-year-old, Dex, spotted something on the tennis court. He swore it was a huge turtle. I gave a quick glance, assured him it must be a leaf or some garbage and didn’t give it a second thought. But Dex didn’t let it go. Pretty soon he yelled, “MOM! It moved! I told you it was a turtle!!” I looked again, and sure enough, he was right. Maybe I didn’t want him to be right because it was 102 degrees, the turtle was trapped inside a fence, and the pond was on the other side of the park. I knew if he was right, I was going to have to rescue the thing.

But right he was. The boys immediately wanted to get out, and I immediately said no. Turtles carry germs, and if you tangle with the wrong kind in Oklahoma, you just might lose a finger. A million reasons swirled through my head, and then my own words came back to haunt me…”Why not?”

So we piled out of the car and went to investigate. Sure enough, it was one massive turtle. And to top it all off, it was a massive version of Hamburger himself. The boys knew he wouldn’t survive in the heat and they went into hero mode. They grabbed an empty box from the car, I held it while Dex slid the turtle in, we loaded him up and headed for the pond. The ridiculously fearless Canadian geese greeted me as I searched for a spot to drop him off, but I kept my composure and made my way to the shore. I gently dumped the turtle out where he’d be facing the water and it took him no more than 2 seconds to realize where he was and dive right in.

The boys erupted into cheers, squealing that they had saved a life. They were heroes in that moment, and nothing could wipe the grins off of their faces.  They raced back to the car, eager to get home and tell the Canadian what they had done. It was a blast.

And totally worth every drop of hand sanitizer I coated them with afterward.

Way back in November, about a week after my Angry Birds cake took over the internets, I was contacted by a cake magazine about featuring my work. Silly me, I assumed they meant the Angry Birds cake, so I told them, “Nooo problem! I can meet your deadline in 2 weeks, the cake is already made!” Then I got their second email with the instructions. They wanted something new, unique and never published, and they wanted…cupcakes.

Cupcakes? Unique? Seemed like a stretch for me, but I do love a challenge! So I set out to create something new. And then…the magazine imploded, and I haven’t heard from them since. So, I think I’ve waited on them long enough. I spent too many hours on these cupcakes to let the pictures gather dust on my hard drive.

Now, I love cupcakes just as much as anyone. And because I love to make tiny things out of fondant, they are especially fun to decorate. But they are lonely little critters, in their individual wrappers, separated from the rest of their dozen. So, I decided to fix that.

Call them double-cuppies, couple-cakes, cuppy-buddies, whatever you like. I present to you the most socially well-adjusted cupcakes on the planet. Because cupcakes shouldn’t be lonely!

What’s a kitty without a ball of yarn? A sad kitty, that’s what.

Why would you want a sad kitty, when you could have a happy one?

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Airplanes are always fun.

But sometimes, airplanes have important things to say!

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It gets cold and dark way up north in the winter time. Talk about lonely!

But when you’ve got your best buddy with you, things look a little brighter.

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And, finally, it probably gets pretty lonely when you’ve been sailing the high seas, pillaging for booty.

But I guess lonely may not always be so bad.

Some of you may know that I used to be a contributor at Testifyblog.com. The blog went through some changes, and our past content was lost in the process. I am no longer writing for Testify, and since those posts are no longer out there in internet world, I hope to re-post some of that content intermittently until I get most of it into my archives here. If it is a repeat for you, I hope you’ll get something new from it this time.

I wanted to start with this one, because, let’s face it, I am still struggling with this subject, and I needed the reminder. Enjoy!

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Be honest.  What do you see in these pictures?

A burned out pile of rubble?

Vandalism?

A heap of rusty metal ravaged by the passage of time?

That is, after all, what they are on the surface.  But that’s not what I see at all.  Maybe it’s the photographer in me, but I see beauty in each of these pictures.  Through my lens I see, not a pile of rubble, but the burned shell of a home that once sheltered a family, I see a wealth of memories, stories, and images of times gone by.  I see, not vandalism, but art that gives life to the cold, industrial surface of a train.  I see the artist behind it, I think of the talent he holds, I wonder where it could take him if someone would just deem him worth the time it takes to help him refocus his efforts in a more positive way.  I see, not a rusted out truck, but the miles that brought it here, the teenage boy who was eager to drive it to the soda shop with his sweetheart, the hot sun and the torrential rains that brought out the deep red rust and curls of peeling paint.

I see beauty.

The ironic thing is, when I look at myself in the mirror, I see anything but beauty. I see the gray hairs starting to appear, seemingly overnight, no doubt a product of the worry and stress I’ve subjected myself to.  I see the many many extra pounds I’ve allowed to take over my body because of my own laziness and lack of self control.  I see the lines starting to form on my hands and my face, a testament to the years that have flown by before I could accomplish what I thought I should.

I see ugliness, failure, and disappointment.

And the sad thing? I know I’m not the only one. If you had to tell me what you honestly thought of yourself, holding nothing back, what would say?  Many of you wouldn’t paint a very pretty picture for me. It’s just how we are.  We spend our time picking ourselves apart, focusing on our faults, comparing ourselves to others who may be smarter, prettier, or more successful.

So how is it that I can find beauty in the burned up, graffiti covered, rusted out things of this earth, but not see the beauty in myself?  When I look at that graffiti, I think of the artist behind it.  I give him credit for his talent and his vision.  But I was created by the Master artist!  How can I not give Him credit for his work?  How can I not look beyond the surface of His creation and see the beauty inside?  He created me in His image.  How insulting is it for me to see ugliness in that?  How is that okay?

The fact is, it just isn’t okay.  It’s not what God intended for us.  Psalm 139:14 says, “I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.”  God doesn’t make mistakes, He doesn’t make ugliness, He doesn’t set us up for failure and disappointment. We do those things to ourselves.  It’s time to start accepting *His* image of us instead of ours, and allowing ourselves to live as though we truly believe it. There is no limit to the empowerment that comes from embracing who we are in Christ!  The only thing standing in the way is us.

So?  Get out of the way.

Last week, after a quick trip to town, I came home with this:

Not really what you want to see when you get out of the car. The air was gushing out of that tire so fast, I could hear it as soon as I opened my door. We all had a good laugh at my expense, I mean, you have to be pretty talented to get an entire bolt lodged into the thickest part of the tread. The Canadian took the tire off that evening, took it to work the next day to get it fixed, and by the next evening I was ready to hit the road again. Sure it cost us a little bit, but it was quick and painless, all taken care of, and we’re still laughing about it a week later.

Now, what if I had told you that when I saw the bolt in my tire, I just ignored it? Maybe I thought if I pretended it wasn’t there it would go away. Or maybe I thought over time it would fix itself. What if I continued to try to drive on it? Even better, what if we had removed the whole tire and just left the car that way?

Ignoring it would have let it go completely flat, it wouldn’t have repaired itself. If I had continued driving as though it wasn’t there I would have damaged the tire beyond repair, and if I just took the wheel off, the car couldn’t take me anywhere at all.

Ridiculous, right?

But the truth is, we sabotage our own lives the very same way. Some of us have been doing it every day for months, or even years.

Say what? Stay with me.

Maybe you said something you shouldn’t have to a friend, or done something that, even unintentionally, hurt someone’s feelings. Perhaps you need to apologize to someone, or confess about what you’ve done. On the flip side, maybe someone has hurt you and you’re just bottling it up and letting it eat at you. All of those scenarios are just like that bolt in my tire. Left unattended to, they can literally drain the joy from your life. Ignoring it just makes it worse and causes more damage, sometimes irreparably so. Allowing it to go completely unchecked can be paralyzing and all-consuming. A friendship, a relationship, your own peace of mind are all too precious to allow them to be destroyed by something you can take care of. Sure, it may not be easy, it might be uncomfortable, and it may cost you emotionally, but in the end, it’s worth it. Just knowing you’ve done all you can to make amends is enough to start the process of letting the guilt go.

Here’s my challenge for you. Pick up the phone and call whoever it is you need to make amends with. Let them know they’ve hurt you, or apologize for hurting them. Not later today, not tomorrow or next week. Right now. Whatever you do, don’t waste another day driving around on a flat. Get it fixed, and get back on the road. You’ll be glad you did.

If you could hear the roar from the dugout, you would have assumed someone had hit a grand slam. A good ol’ solo home run, at the very least. The cheering was followed by the biggest round of high-5s and fist bumps you’d ever seen. Every coach, every kid on the team, every parent that was within 10 feet of the dugout came to congratulate Roenick on his hit.

But that’s just what it was. A hit. Not by baseball’s definition, since he was thrown out at first base, but his bat hit the ball and he ran as fast as his little legs could carry him.

So why the eruption of the crowd? That happens a hundred times every baseball season.

But it hadn’t happened to Roenick.

You see, he hadn’t had a hit all season. It was his first year out of t-ball, he had struggled to adjust to having a pitcher. And while every other kid on the team had had a hit this season, he was getting more and more frustrated with every at-bat that ended in what he considered failure. It had completely altered his attitude about the game, and about himself, to the point where he didn’t even want to finish the season.

No amount of “it’s okay, you did your best” or “it takes practice, you’ll get it next time” could change his mind. As a parent, it’s hard to watch your child struggle with something you have no control over, so I had resorted to praying. You may think God doesn’t care about silly things like baseball, and maybe He doesn’t, but every time Roenick stepped up to the plate I would pray, “Please just let him get a hit. Pleeease just let him get a hit.” And, finally, at his last at-bat of the season, he connected with that ball.

As he ran down the first base line and I realized he was going to be thrown out, my heart sank a little. I wasn’t sure how he was going to react, I was so afraid he’d be disappointed, I was afraid everyone would be disappointed for him. But they weren’t. They didn’t care if he made it to first, all that mattered was the hit. They all treated him as though he had just won the game, and he literally danced his way to his position at shortstop…where he proceeded to make his first out of the season.

When we got home, he grabbed his journal and disappeared into his room. When he had finished, he showed me this:

One hit made all the difference. It really made me stop and think. How often are we disappointed when we don’t get everything we want? How many times are we so busy feeling sorry for ourselves when God doesn’t give us the big things, that we don’t even notice the little things He does give us? We miss out on so many blessings that way. We literally rob ourselves of joy.

So take a lesson from an 8-year-old boy. Don’t be disappointed about the home run you didn’t get, just thank God for the hit.

You and I both know that 6 and 8-year-old boys can’t dunk.  They’re too short, their hands aren’t big enough, they can’t jump high enough, and they’d more than likely get hurt trying.

But if you tell them they can’t?

They’ll find a way to make it happen.

They don’t see the same things we do.  They don’t see that dog kennel collapsing beneath them, they don’t see the busted head when they take one too many steps off the edge. They don’t even see the most likely outcome, you know, the one where the brother still standing on the ground kicks the kennel out of the way while they’re hanging on the rim and leaves them there screaming for help for several agonizing minutes.  No, they just see a way to prove you wrong, and make their dream a reality.

All kids are like that. I’m sure we were all the same way at that age. There was no reason or logic to tell us we couldn’t, there were only endless possibilities and a million reasons why we could.

So at what point does that all change? When do we allow the “cannot” to replace the “why not”? When is that first seed of doubt planted in such a way that we let it take root and choke out our dreams?

I can pinpoint several times in my life when that happened.  The first one came when I overheard my first grade teacher tell my mom I had no creativity. The artist in me began to die a long slow death from that very moment.  Another came when my favorite teacher decided I’d never be able to make a science lab work without screwing it up somehow. The future marine biologist in me gave up at that point. When I got to college, the first thing I did was give up a scholarship and change to a major that would allow me to avoid lab science altogether. The next best thing for me would have been a career in graphic design, but when it came time to think about enrolling in that first required drawing class, all I could hear in the back of my head were the words of that first grade teacher. How could I make it through an art-based degree with no creativity?

Two remarks, two individuals, changed the course of my entire life. They planted enough doubt in my head at an early enough age, that it completely changed what I believed about myself. That set up a pattern that would follow me the rest of my life. Any time I dared to dream about doing something, I conjured up a reason why I couldn’t.

And one day, I opened my eyes and realized I had stopped dreaming at all.

I don’t want that for my kids. I don’t ever want them to stop believing they can do anything they can dream up. I don’t ever want them to believe someone else’s opinion of them and allow that to shape their identities. More importantly, I don’t ever want to be the one who plants the seed of doubt that chokes out their dreams. I don’t ever want my words to be the reason any child gives up on something they love.

My experience is not unusual, and, because of that, I believe that my generation is more keenly aware of the value of dreams and the power of words than any generation before us. Many of us are still overcoming the damage someone else’s words or opinions did to us, and learning that it’s never too late to dream. I hope, more than anything, that what we take from our experience is that we have the power to raise up a generation of dreamers who blow us away when their dreams start becoming a reality, a generation who will look back with no regrets, knowing they never stopped working toward everything they wanted to become.

The sermon at church this week was on remembering. The focus was on remembering what God has done for us in the past, but as the preacher talked about various photos or other items he had that reminded him of certain times in his life, I couldn’t help but do a mental inventory of the things I have that remind me of something special in my own life.

I didn’t come up with a whole lot. Since 1998 we have lived through an apartment fire, a raw sewage flood, and a tornado. Slowly but surely, a lot of those heirloom pieces and photographs have been destroyed or ended up gone with the wind, the really BIG, spinning kind of wind. We were very fortunate to have some of our possessions left, but there are so many very special things I can think of that I really wish we still had.

One thing we do have is this:

I know, to you it looks like a generic statue that has seen its fair share of weathering.  But to me it is so much more.

This owl stood in the birdbath of my grandmother’s house. Poppy, as we called her, was my mom’s mother, and our neighbor across the street. She lived in a little pink house with her little white dog, Princess. I spent many hours at her house, playing in the front yard, filling that birdbath with the garden hose, climbing on what seemed to be the biggest fire hydrant in the world, and trying to sneak my way up a set of old wooden stairs that she was sure would be the death of me. When I got mad at my parents, I’d “run away” to her house every single time. She’d let me sit on her lap and we’d talk for as long as I wanted, she’d tell me stories and laugh with me until I had forgotten what I was mad about in the first place. The times I spent with her are some of my most precious childhood memories.

I was very young when she passed away, too little to have any say, and through the normal chaos that comes with cleaning out someone’s home, all of her belongings went with other people. I was left with nothing to remember her by, nothing to tuck away in a drawer or a jewelry box, nothing to sit on a special little shelf, just my own memories.

But then there was the owl. He and his birdbath moved across the street to our yard, and there they stood, playing a part in new memories, until the tornado in 1999. When the storm had passed, the birdbath was broken, but there he lay in the rubble. Sure, he was a little worse for wear, but chips and cracks don’t erase memories, they just add to his story.

Now he sits where you see him in the picture, on the front porch of my mom and dad’s house. Every time I see him I am flooded with memories, and there are truly few things left in our possession that have that effect on me. No matter how bad he looks, I am just thankful he’s there to remind me.

What about you? Is there one thing you cling to that reminds you of someone special, or an important event in your life? Tell me about it. I’d love to hear your stories in the comments!

I recently changed my iPhone lock screen to this poster by T.W. Addison:

In the age of Twitter, I have grown so tired of quotes.  One scroll through the timeline and you can find a million of them to fit any situation you’d like.  They all eventually blend into one another and I just skim past them.

But this one, well, it skipped right past “speaking” to me and went straight to “screaming” at me.

To be honest, the last year has been pretty crappy.   The school year was anything but enjoyable, full of conflict, bullying, and annoyances.  We had friends and family diagnosed with serious illnesses, and we lost some truly incredible loved ones.  Life in June of 2011 really doesn’t even resemble what we called “normal” in June of 2010, and we’re still trying to get comfortable in our new circumstances.

That’s not to say everything was bad, we have much to be thankful for, and God has worked in some pretty awesome ways through it all.  But when so much goes wrong, it’s easy to find myself dwelling on the negative.  More than once I have caught myself complaining, going on and on about everything that’s wrong, and all the things people have done to hurt me, my kids, or whoever else gets in their way.  And, since I’m not good with confrontation, I have become the master of the sarcastic tweet and the passive-aggressive status update on facebook.

While there’s nothing inherently wrong with voicing my opinion, the fact is most of the time it doesn’t prove anything.  Oh sure, there’s the rare occasion when it might lead to something positive, but more often than not it just stirs the pot and fans the flames. Then I usually end up feeling guilty for saying it and wishing I had kept my mouth shut.

Funny thing is, I have never felt that way for saying something positive.  And, as much as it kills me when the people who have offended me go on about their life without acknowledging what they’ve done, I’ve never ended up regretting just keeping my mouth shut.  Sometimes silence really is golden, and our moms were right when they said, “If you can’t say something good, don’t say anything at all.”

Of course, when I’m angry or feeling low, and the perfect snide remark enters my head, I’m clicking on that status update so fast my brain doesn’t have time to recall such sound advice.  Hence the wallpaper.  Now it’s staring me in the face every time I click that button to unlock my phone. I am forced to think before I “speak”, and most times I end up not saying anything.

I’d like to think I’ve always had more positive things than negative to say, so let’s not talk about the obvious decline in my online activity since I’ve had this little ephiphany.  Ok? Ok. That’s right, just smile and nod.

And before you give me your real opinion on that, scroll up and read the quote again. 😉