Green lawn doesn't mean green grass!

Grass, is green, but so are so many Florida native weeds! Yes, my bog is somewhat about grass, I know I couldn't believe it either!

The grass is not always greener on the other lawn and in some cases their green lawn ISN'T even grass!! We just can't let it all get us down. I mean, you should be striving for some sort of measurable success just not based on the nieghbors next door.

Let's face it, contemplating grass in a deed restricted community isn't all it's cracked up to be and I never really even thought I would find myself in this situation. (I was such a country girl long ago.) Life is what it is in these Floridian parts of the country, and although there are some rather nice communities without deed restrictions it isn't working out to be inviting to own a home in, or a plot I can afford at this phase in our lives. And although some will understand the plight of the grass deed restrictions we can really all relate I promise.

Some have that lady in the Bible study who has a new stylish pair of shoes each week. Some of us wonder about the people down the street and how in the world they could afford such a car in this economy. There are those of us who tend to look at our checking account and imagine "what if" scenerios reagrding some "other" life style that must not be hurting this much! A few of us pretend we don't think anything along these lines until we are trying on swim suites and ... we won't go there, but you are thinking it no matter what size you have to walk to the counter with. And then there are a LOT of us that talk to our neighbors, ask them what lawn service they are using (since we know they must be cheating in this conservation lot community) and we secretly hope they slip up and claim to water more than the law allows or use fertilizer that isn't "approved" for our water front properties. (Ok, retention ponds in Fl are really water front, why I don't know, but at least it's 5 acres of water!)

Here's my point I will make as fast as possible, we all tend to drift off into comparisons when the ultimate comparison has already been given. ~ Proverbs 8:17



"I love those who love me, and those who seek me find me."

The green grass, the new run way look, the sexier body (the one who isn't blessed with 3 child births under her hips), the "happier couple" that seem just to just never disagree, the FILL IN THE BLANK life that you are oh so shy of; doesn't exist in reality. They are all facades just like my greener "lawn" neighbor who has more crabgrass than he can manage!!! Sure it's green, but so are clovers. 

God's love should be the only thing we constantly check our compass on. Seeking God's love will always pull your life, your health, and your relationships heck, even your home into a more perfect place than you could've imagined. When we work on our focus and we focus on finding God, He finds us... and restores all that we wished  we could have except with more abundance!  You see, a beautiful lawn doesn't happen by itself and neither does a beautiful life, because only the Giver of Life can make that happen.

Now, go fertilize your grass with naturally stinky stuff, do something selfless for your spouse, call your parents just because, look in the mirror at your figure beautifully marking the joy of that first kiss from your newborn, or simply remind yourself that we all have something better than money could buy.... a Savior, Friend, Strong-Tower and Refuge waiting for us to seek Him.   

'Hallmark' didn't write about your mom...now what?

There must be more people than me that didn't grow up with the "Beaver's Mom" or even a closely related personality. I will clarify that absolutely wholeheartedly love and honor my mother NOW but it wasn't always that easy. Someone must identify with me as we live in a time and place when most parents (especially Baby Boomer parents) were not that in touch with what God says about being a leader or great at parenting in general. 

I understand that some parenting "styles" that were famous led some of our parents astray. The reality of my parents was a little bit different. They had both been broken beyond compare and divorced (my dad more times than he likes to admit) with broken relationships in large abundance. The largest area of brokenness for BOTH of my parents came through their childhood experiences with parents. Let's face it, I am NOT an opponent of excuses, so by the time you are old enough to get married, divorced and married again - I believe you should have these issues worked through. Alas, they did not have anything even put in a pile to work on, because for them they were just too self-absorbed at times to realize there were better ways.

Now, I will interject this small thought - this blog is not a pitty party, for I need nothing of the sort, but only a glimpse to show you that I can empathize. So, my parents were dysfunctional which is after all a learned behavior and not something we are crippled with a birth. My mother especially had a rough childhood and lost her ability to really nurture a small child. Although in her story I seemed to be the infant that didn't want to be nurtured but my reality was more like a stand-offish mother most of the time who lacked compassion until SHE wanted to be smothered in her children, and by then we wanted nothing to do with it. EVEN through group therapy, individual therapy and some serious years of Jesus doing things to fix the brokenness my parents created there are still struggles in my life to allow my mom to try to hug me. She knows this, so I am not hiding the truth. 

And although my parents gave me things, as I plan to share in future blogs, my point is my mom wasn't the Mother that Hallmark writes all those cards for. We didn't have a relationship that felt anything like those warm and fuzzy or rose covered cards in the store. In my adolescence and innocent youth I often created my own cards, and my mother kept them to "prove my inability to love her" because they were riddled with weird thoughts from me. I would try to conjure up the nicest possible thing to say like, "she likes to cook but not things I like." It was raw and embarrassing as I grew into an adult. 

There is hope if you too have this type of memory. Every night around the age of 8 without much fail I would pray for God to talk to my mom, be real to her, show her He was real to me. She mocked God, and often used the church as a source of discipline if I didn't do the right thing....then I couldn't go for a week. If I was sick on Monday and stayed home from school then Wednesday night church was not allowed. I had no hope to believe this would ever change and in reality my relationship with my mom felt stale and impossible. I didn't know how to love her by then and she didn't seem to know how to love me. 

Let me share with you a truth that set me free: All of my therapy in the world combined couldn't begin to change my childhood or who my mother was or wasn't for me ~ GOD COULD! 

Some one is thinking the way I thought - "God doesn't let us have a childhood over again." Well, no not exactly, but God transformed my need to go back and relive it. And in the Hope that comes with a devotional prayer and constant petition to the Heavens.... He did start changing my mom. And my mom was a hard nut to crack, and even harder one to shut up long enough for God to speak! (Love you mom!)

As an adult I would pray for my mom but much less often until I felt even God had given up on changing or speaking to her. The change and sudden transformation of my mother & her life was both in an instant and is still being changed, Praise God. But it came out of "nowhere" as some would say. One night, she showed up at my home church and was changed before she left. She repented of so many mistakes in front of my home church in a few short weeks my mother started to sound like someone overwhelmed with a compassionate love that takes you somewhere over the rainbow. 

I still faced the problem of our past, and you will always have those disappointments, even WHEN (not if) God makes deep transformations in people you love. No Hallmark card will EVER work for me when looking for Mother's Day cards, but not in a bad way anymore. Now I struggle to find one that says, "You once were a stranger though you gave me life and although we lived in the same home, I longed to know you; I am so thankful for who you are now and who you are to my children and I love making the new memories and moving past the old pain, learning to be loved by you is making all the difference on this Mother's Day." 

They don't make them that raw and that real, but that my dear friends, is why they sell blank cards with beautiful pictures on them. 

For the HOPE that we can fill it up with, not the unrealistic kind of hope but the one that comes from the giver of Life and can ACTUALLY set you free to love, free to believe and free to forgive. Yes, I said forgive, because my story didn't stop when my mother's life met the One true Lover, my story only begins there. The transformation couldn't even start until I completely and forever agreed to forgive her, EVEN IF she NEVER changed and never wanted to love me the way I thought I needed it. My forgiveness unlocked the door that let her in to a place to receive a Savior. 

I hope you know that Hallmark or American Greetings doesn't have as large of an audience as they want you to believe when it comes to what truth is being written between those pages. They simply sell what people want their mom's or childhoods to look like. The only real problem with that is when we forget why we need Jesus, we never really look for a solution to our biggest problems: our pain in our past. We all have some, and without admitting it to someone safe, we will never ask Jesus, the only carpenter qualified, to repair what some other human broke within our lives. 

I hope you can honor your mom, as I honor mine. Even when they seem they don't deserve it, you never know when treated them as Jesus would might just Save their Life and change yours for eternity. 

God Bless You.

mother's day blah's

Mother's Day is a strange day for me. I love LOVE love Love LOve LoVE being a mommy! I so enjoy watching my children come home from school or pre-k with a cutie present made from finger paint or crazy scissor work or their own hand writing! I enjoy the moments I am blessed to spend with them all, regardless of their ages or moments of fits.

BUT... (cuz you knew there would be one) I tend to feel over worked and under appreciated during this insane day of the year. Not because anyone is lacking... and not because my kids don't love me. It's deeper than that.

I remember crying at school in Kindergarten in the "family center" ~ called that when I went to KG it is now called the Home Making Center!! Why? You ask, well, it was simple I didn't WANT to be the mommy or rock the baby or feed to family with pretend food. I WANTED TO SAVE THE WORLD IN THE PRETEND CENTER...DRESS UP LIKE BATMAN AND SAVE PEOPLE. Yep, I was that crazy girl the kids made fun of for wanting to be a "boy" when I grew up. The other kids apparently didn't watch "Gem" or "Wonder Woman" or "She-Ra" with me on Saturday mornings. But, I digress!

The story goes on and of course I have the most beautiful children in the world. No, really, I do! And I received a lot of praise from my grandmother before she passed on about how well I was doing. My own mother has come to terms with my style of mothering and has also bombarded me with compliments in the last several years on how "well" she thinks I accomplish this task. I am not honking a horn here, but merely saying that other people seem to agree that I can keep children from tearing down my home, each other and convince them to eat veggies.  This makes a good mom I know. But Wonder Woman MUST have made a fantastic mom too! No?  I personally think that she HAD to be a mom to even know how to juggle two lives!!

So, why don't I like this day?

The deep oh so inner thoughts would be: because it's not a lifestyle. I long to be honored and respected and given extra hugs, because someone WANTS TO... not because they are obligated. Example: 1) The random day of the year when my husband says, "Honey, you are the best mom in the Universe, go sit down." 2) Any one of the kids have drawn a picture or colored artwork and asks me to have it, "because you are so special mommy!"

LET'S BE HONEST...(close your eyes if you can't handle this part)
The other part of me finds that I am more anxious about this day than any other. Reasons: a) too many Mother's Day's have passed when nothing was extra ordinary, or the occasion was over looked all together. b) when something terrific did happen, I was unprepared, my reaction wasn't what anyone expected...leaving a disappointed audience. c) I have to worry about the step-mother issue with my son, the fact that I am a step-mom who doesn't get to even SEE those children on this day let alone be honored by them, and the OH-SO stressful act of purchasing gifts for the other Mother's in our lives.

There it is then... the nitty gritty truth. In all it's unholy glory and dusted off reality. ~ My family is awesome and I love them. So, why can't we choose to either find a tradition that honors the day and let it be the same each year...or leave it in the holiday trash pile with Father's Day and Halloween. I would have much less stress in my life & feel far less unwanted when everyone forgot about the day all together!

And for goodness sake... THANK A MOM TODAY!!