Back Off Old Lady

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On the morning of Christmas Eve, we visited another Panera, a few towns away from ours. You might be thinking – “Geesh, the Bab’s sure do go to Panera a lot.”  And well, yes, we do…when we have a gift card.  For Christmas we were generously given a $50 gift card to Panera – and we blew that money so fast on pumpkin muffins, egg sandwiches and coffee, it didn’t last the week.

So at 8:30am, we arrive in the Panera parking lot, hungry and ready for a fun fam day.  P.A. goes in for a parking spot and is cut off by a car that he thought was pulling out, but was really backing into that said parking spot.  So, we move on and find another spot after affectionately nick-naming the driver of the other car “mustache guy”.  As we are unloading the wee babs to go into Panera, I hear P.A. grumbling things like, “I can’t believe mustache guy wasn’t watching where he was going” and “mustache guy should’ve just parked normally, instead of backing in”, etc…

Once inside Panera, P.A. gets in line – which was long – behind mustache guy. I take the 3 wee babs to find a good table.  Soleil & Salem head toward the comfy chairs next to the fireplace, disturbing an older lady who was sitting there.  I call them over the booth I’ve found closest to the fireplace… (it’s all about sitting near the fireplace when you go to a Panera on a cold winters day).  The wee babs are on one side of the booth, peeking over the top trying to see daddy while he’s waiting in line, and I am on the other side.  A few minutes later another guy, who I am affectionately calling “santa hat” guy, comes over to say “hello” to the kids.  He assumed they were looking at him, and I assumed he thought that because he was wearing a santa hat.  When he says “hello”, they dive into the booth, hiding from him.  I kindly explain, sorry santa hat guy, they don’t care about santa and know he’s not real.  We don’t really care about your santa hat, they were just looking for their daddy in line.  He smiles and goes back into the line with his wife, who I’m affectionately naming “wife of santa hat guy”.

Then I hear P.A. talking and saying “no, you can have it…(response) but if you don’t want it, we will buy it.”  A few minutes later, he comes over with the muffins and declares, “Mustache guy just took the last souffle!  We ordered it at the same time. He wasn’t even sure he wanted it, and I had to wait for him to discuss with his wife (wife of mustache guy) whether or not they wanted it, when I knew we wanted it!” Dilemma: this was a crisis moment for me.  I could either get upset, flip out and say something like, “Oh great! Now our breakfast is ruined!”  Instead, I calmly said, “It’s no big deal, the kids can eat their muffins and share my egg sandwich.”  After all, it was nice for P.A. to give up his rights to the last souffle and let mustache guy have it.

So the wee babs started eating their muffins while P.A. was waiting for our egg sandwiches to be made.  Then all hell broke loose.  He waited. and waited. and waited. After waiting some more, he went up to the counter and the Panera worker confessed, I’m sorry sir – we forgot your order.  Now P.A. was fuming.  He came back to the booth explaining the situation to me, upset that he was missing Christmas Eve breakfast with our fam.  He calmed down a few minutes later when the first egg sandwich was delivered.  As the Panera worker handed us the sandwich, she realized we had ordered 2, so she offered to give us a 3rd egg sandwich on the house.  She also brought the wee babs tubes of yogurt and chips to appease the situation.  Nice, nice girl.

As we are waiting for the last 2 egg sandwiches, the kids are eating the yogurt and finishing up their muffins.  Selah now has yogurt all down her shirt and on her new blue purple suede boots.  I switch places with Salem and move over to sit by her and clean her up.  By this time, Salem has decided he is done with this wonderful family breakfast and does not want to sit back in the booth.  He has decided he wants to go home and is now sitting on the floor, arms crossed, lips pouted.  This upsets P.A., so he grabs Salem and pulls him up off of the floor to make him sit down in the booth.  Meanwhile, Selah is crying because I took away her yogurt.  Salem rebels against P.A.’s advances, flings his head back and hits it on the wooden edge of the booth, and is now screaming/crying.  Selah is still bawling and Soleil is cowering in the corner of the booth, wishing she was part of a different family.

As I calmly try and mom-mediate the situation saying things like, “It’s gonna be okay” and “everyone just calm down” or “calma down-down”, thru gritted teeth and a fake smile, I see P.A. put up his hand and say “Mam, please don’t.”  I turn and see standing beside me the older lady from the comfy chair beside the fireplace.  She starts to talk and P.A. cuts her off again, “Mam, please don’t, no thank you.”  She then responds, “Oh, I was just going to tell the kids about santa clause”.  P.A. just looks toward Salem, and I give her a fake smile with worried eyebrows, while thinking – please just go away.  We’ve got this situation under control.  The kids don’t care about santa clause.  They know he’s not real.  They will stop crying in a minute. and they did. And she did.  She just walked away.

A few moments passed and the wee babs calmed down.  Then, as we were watching the older lady leave Panera, she says good-bye to every worker, and a few of the other customers. Yep, she was a “regular”.  They all knew her name. Whew!  We were just thankful this whole incident had not happened at “our Panera”.  No one knew us at this Panera. Then P.A. started to question his actions, “Was it rude of me to cut her off?” I said, “No way, you did the right thing.”  This woman – however well intentioned she might have been – did not have a right to “speak” into our lives or “comment” on the situation.  I imagined if we would have let her talk she might have said something like, “Oh little children, if you’re crying and upset, santa can’t come and visit you tonight.” Blah, blah, blah.  Had she said that, I would have flipped.

In this ‘day and age’, people think they have the right to comment or speak into others’ lives probably more than any other time.  And we allow it, sometimes to a fault. Much of this is because of facebook or blogs or other communication avenues in which we ‘put ourselves out there’ and wait to hear what people have to say about it.  But mostly I want to hear from God, and I value most what He thinks of me, my life, my blog, my facebook.  I do welcome and enjoy comments on my blog or my facebook page from all of you.  It’s fun to get feedback.  But I have boundaries.  So don’t cross them.  Or I will have to say “Back off old lady”.

Poop and Panera

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Over the holidays, we traveled to and fro, over the river and thru the woods to Grammy & Grandpa’s house in Oklahoma.  Really, we drove west thru 5 different states, for 18 hours stopped along the way at 4 different Panera restaurants.  We plotted our stops out carefully with the help of Yelp.  We timed our intake of liquids and held our pee in order to only have to stop at a Panera.  Because We are food snobs.  and coffee snobs.

But we are not poop snobs.  We deal with shit on a daily basis, sometimes several times a day. For the last 7.5 years, our lives have been enhanced by experiences with shit.  Thanks to our 3 wee Babs, we are experts at changing diapers, in any position, on any surface and wiping up their shit poop.  You get the picture.  And if you don’t, you can come over and visit anytime.

We regularly joke about poop.  It’s a daily part of our lives.  Our son plays with dolls – wait, did I just say that?  He plays with dolls by squeezing them, flying them around the room and chasing his sisters, while holding the doll over their heads, saying “I’m gonna poop on you!”.  The other day our 2 year old stepped into her own poop I had neglected to see and clean up.  It ended up on her heel, and tracked around the house as she came to find me and tell me her struggle.  I cleaned it up.  Shortly after, our family engaged in a wrestling cuddle match, one in which we rolled around on the carpet and rug that had just been cleaned. Yelling and laughing so hard we were crying saying, “Don’t roll in the poop!”

But I digress…back to our stop at Panera.  My oldest daughter and I went to use the Panera restroom, as custom before getting back in our van for the rest of our looooong drive.  As we were patiently waiting for an open stall, I gently told her, “Soleil this is your last chance to go potty before we get to Grammy & Grandpa’s.”  There are no more Panera’s along the way.  This may seem harsh for a mother to tell her daughter on a long road trip, but have you ever been in a Panera restroom?  They are NICE!  And given the options along I-70 and I-44, they are the definitely the best option.  No stoppin’ at Wendy’s, Love’s or Kum & Go gas stations for us – Panera all the way!  Though, Cracker Barrel is a close 2nd.

But I digress…again.  So we enter the “big” stall together and prepare to take care of business when what do I see on the toilet seat?  SHIT!  I mean, POOP!  Whatever you want to call it!   There it was, and it was the last thing I expected to see.  For a Panera bathroom, I had higher standards.  Sooo, I calmly took out a baby wipe and scrubbed down the toilet.  Then I proceeded to go first, in order to absorb any germs that might be lingering, so that Soleil wouldn’t have to.  Maybe all of this is TMI?  But I’m making a point, people.

We have lived many places, traveled to other countries, and poop is something I would expect to see in a bathroom in… India or another country.  Heck, I don’t even expect a toilet when we travel to India.  But not in the good ol’ US of A, and certainly not at a Panera!

But we are not poop snobs.  I left that Panera thankful.  Thankful for a toilet I had to clean first, thankful for toilet paper, thankful for soap & water to wash with, thankful for my family I have to travel with.  Thankful.  Even for the poop we have to deal with in our lives.

Note: this is the first of 3 Holiday Stories involving Panera, which I am affectionately calling “The Panera Series”…stay tuned!

Jello.

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The other night, we were all sitting on our couch, having some quality cuddle fam time.  My 7 year old Soleil says, “Mommy, your tummy feels good, it feels like jello.”  Sweet, sweet child.  As much as I wanted to defend my mid-section-squishy-ness, by blaming it on the holidays… I ate too much… we just finished dinner… I’m about to start my period… bloated, ya know?  Instead, I just started cracking up!

Promptly followed by 200 crunches.

Seriously, I kept laughing about what she said all night long… and even into the next day.  But what if someone else had said that?  If P.A. would have made that comment, I would have decked him. Whoever coined the phrase, “sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me” was… well, an idiot.  Words Hurt. They can hurt bad and deeply wound a persons’ soul.

As a Real-Life Pastors Wife, I am sometimes plagued by people’s words.  What do they think of me?  What did they say about me?  What did they say about P.A.?  What did they just say to P.A.’s face?  What did I hear from someone else that they just said about us?

She said, he said, I said, she said, they said, we said, I said, she said.

Ahh!!! Words can be ridiculous!  Because people use them and people are ridiculous!

I have been hurt by word wounds.  I’m sure I’ve hurt others with wounding words.  Sometimes, we don’t even realize our words are wounding – because we are ridiculous.  Words can be a huge distraction.  It can be difficult to heal from word wounds.

Just like jello.  My mid-section will never be the same after 3 wee Bab’s.  I can accept this.  I run an average of 3 miles a day, six days a week, 18 miles per week.  I take Sunday’s off – no condemnation – it’s my Sabbath, people!  I can run, run, run – but when it comes to the discipline of a steady regime of daily crunches, I’m over it.  I just. don’t. care. anymore.

I can walk around with my jello and be just fine. But if I am carrying a word wound – I’m. not. fine.

But there is hope. In Jesus.  I’ve tried other people, places and things to heal my wounds – only Jesus can.  James chapter 3 is a great section in the Bible about taming the tongue.  I’ve read it.  Ouch. But it’s not about perfection.  We will always have something to be healed from.  Or bring forgiveness to.

With Jesus, there is hope to heal from word wounds, watch my own words… and jello weight.

Me + my jello & P. A. after the 10k Dechutes Dash - Bend, OR

New Year’s Failures

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On New Year’s Eve, we asked our 3 wee Bab’s, “What are your New Year’s Resolutions?”  After several “What’s, Why’s and Who cares???”, they gave us some answers for the taking.

Soleil: “I want to learn how to be a Teacher.”

Parents: “You are already a teacher. You teach your brother and sister lots of things.”

Soleil: “No, I want to learn how to be a real Teacher – a School Teacher.”  She is so literal.  She’s so black and white.  There’s no fooling her.

Selah: “Two”

Parents: We thought, this is an appropriate answer – she just turned two years old and we’ve been saying, “You’re two! You’re two!” repeatedly the last few weeks.

Again, another literal answer from our second daughter. TWO. She will succeed at being TWO for her 2012 New Year’s Resolution.

But what about all of those New Year’s Resolutions we hope for ourselves, which are less attainable?

The resolutions which somewhere, someone’s statistics try to prove ‘That won’t last thru January’ – the ones which will most likely fail.  These are the resolutions which require more work. more prayer. more surrender. more hope.

Is failure our fate?                                                                                                                         Should we just give it up and quit trying all together?

Our sweet son, Salem gave us his hopeful answers.

Salem: “I want to learn how to read, so I can read the Bible” – {insert parental gushing here} – and btw, No, we did not feed him that answer.  Yes, Salem can learn to read in the year 2012.  He will eventually be reading his Bible.  Literally.

His second resolution…”And I want to learn how to exercise, so I can do the treadmill!”

You see, I am not sure this is every little 5-year-old boys dream for 2012; but Salem spent a lot of time downstairs with me, playing with trains or Lego’s, as I logged 938 miles on the treadmill in 2011.  He probably figured, mom does this treadmill thing and makes it look so cool, so I want to learn how. Amidst all of his enthusiasm, Adam & I looked at each other and smiled.  He caught our glance and said…”but I’m to small to do the treadmill”.  Still, he can try… He can still hope.

I don’t think he’s going to give up his dream of using the treadmill so easily.

Adam & I have many New Year’s resolutions for 2012 ~ travel, save money to travel more, walk more closely with God, grow in our marriage and family,  fully live in and enjoy the present moment ~ even the difficult ones.

So, why?  Why do we give up our resolutions, hopes, goals, dreams for the New Year so easily?  Why do statistics somewhere that someone made up, exist to say “that won’t last thru January”?

I think we lose hope so easily.  We don’t want to be hurt or disappointed in life, so we give up hoping and dreaming all together.

2012 New Year’s Resolutions become 2012 New Year’s Failures. And we accept it.

But we don’t have to ~ we can choose to live out our resolutions. We can still hope, be disappointed, dream again, get hurt and hope again. Don’t lose hope.

Let’s prove ’em wrong… why not?  Let’s change the New Year’s failure stats. Let’s all start by using the treadmill, and at least try and make it thru to February.

*%?@#!* [Explicative / cussing / foul language / bad / harsh words]

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C’mon, you all know you’ve said them, thought them,

or at least listened to them.

When I was younger, I thought cussing was “cool”.

Once I incorporated a few choice words into my vocabulary,

I instantly felt “cooler”.

I was culturally relevant.

One day, during my 7th grade year, I was caught saying sh*t on the playground.

I was given the punishment of standing on the sidelines, while the rest of my classmates finished their recess break.

I was a little embarrassed, but really didn’t think it was a big deal that warranted such an unjust punishment.

I used bad words flippantly, off-handedly, carelessly. Cussing was a part of my every day vocab.

Soon after was a time in my life when I thought something called “Perfection” existed… And could be attained. By me.

Ha!

It was hard – every time I wanted to resist the urge to cuss when I was angry, upset or just feeling “cool”, I would slip up.

An explicative would come flying out of my mouth.

Sometimes loudly

Sometimes softly

Sometimes thru a clenched jaw and gritted teeth.

The words just hung there

In space

Floating in the air

Unable to be erased

But not unforgiveable

I believed a lie – if I followed Jesus, I would / could / should work toward perfection – which included no more cussing.

Then after becoming a mom, I discovered new reasons to cuss.  I stubbed my toe on a toy.

The kids are fighting.

I’m stressed out, I’m tired, I’m hungry.

We are running late…again.

Cussing became more complicated when my oldest daughter Soleil (then 2 years old) repeated the ‘F’ word after hearing me say it.

Every time I told her – “don’t say that word, mommy shouldn’t say it either”, she would repeat.

This went on for about 2 weeks, until I stopped bringing as much attention to it.  Thankfully, the ‘F’ word is not a part of her (now seven year old) vocabulary.

My life went on and I am older, wiser, still not perfect and I still cuss from time to time.

But I don’t just want to cuss for the hell of it.

I now have a new appreciation for foul language.

I use my harsh words in prayer, and wield them toward the devil.  There is nothing nice I can say about him.

There are things in this world that are unjust, inhumane, and evil – they need to be called out –

And cussed out.