I had a rough day yesterday.  For assorted reasons.  By the time I picked the kids up from soccer (which we’re quitting for reasons I will detail on another day) and got home to feed them dinner, I was a wreck.  Fortunately, my mom had come and made dinner which allowed me to just sit down at the table with them and put my head down.  The baby was so worried about me he got up from eating dinner and came over to give me a hug and pats on the back.  This child is precious.  So for today’s Flashback Friday, I remembered a post from about this time last year.  I was super sick and this sweet child came and covered me with his blanket.  I hope you enjoy my post from September 19, 2011 entitled Top Five (or maybe bottom five):

This weekend had its highs and lows. For example, I lost 2 pounds. But I didn’t lose it the fun way.

Here’s the Top (or bottom) Five Wrap Up from the nuttiness that was our weekend:

5. I got to go on a date with my husband. To the E.R. After he stepped on a nail Saturday night, which went through his boot and into his foot (which he then proceed to extricate), he decided he probably should get a tetanus shot Sunday. Not wanting him to feel lonely, I woke up at 5 am and threw up so violently for several hours that twice I thought I was going to pass out because I couldn’t breath in. Then I broke out in a terrifying, and itchy, rash from neck to knees. We didn’t make it to church Sunday morning, but St. Luke’s we figured was close enough.

4. The little lady’s burgeoning independence. She loves doing stuff herself. She will punch you out if you try to help her (unless it’s putting her shoes on, those she wants on all the time, and various pairs, and she needs help and needs it now). During our school drop off this morning, I’ve never seen a child run so fast. She ran right past me, gave her lunchbox to Miss Michelle, put her paint smock on and began her next work of art. Seriously, she was painting in full gear in the two minutes it took me to unload all their stuff and say goodbye (not that she bothered waving, she was busy at school).

3. The baby’s empathy. Little buddy was SO worried about mommy laying near death on the sofa while waiting for Miss Maria to come (so Bray and I could go to the ER), that he ran over and crawled up on the couch with his blanket and covered me up and sat there patting me. Seriously? He’s not even 2. He’s going to be the one making sure my hair gets done at the old folks home.

2. The neighborhood playground. I can not BELIEVE it took me so long to discover this thing. You pay $25 and get a playground access key. I did it because we’re having the kids 2nd birthday party there, so I got a key about a month ago. Oh my heavens, it is wonderful. It’s the only place right now I can take them solo. It’s fenced in and super kid proof and has all these fabulous slides and swings and toys. We go every weekend morning and had some weirdo not come and parked there and watched us with his truck running we would have stayed all morning long. It rocks!

1. Rain! It rained on our little corner of the world for several periods this weekend. My favorite of them all was the 5 am rain we got this morning. The thunder was loud enough to wake two of the three. The little lady settled back into her crib but Dennis the Menace was having none of it. He was coming to bed with us. Lest you think he was beside himself with fear, let me clear up that misconception. One of his favorite books is Mr. Brown Can Moo, in which there is a page that says, “Boom, boom, boom! Mr. Brown is a wonder. Boom, boom, boom! Mr. Brown makes thunder….” So imagine, if you will, a three-foot, towheaded, evangelical preacher standing in your bed, pumping his fist in the air with all his might, bellowing “Boom, Boom, Boom!” It was too funny to grieve over my lost hour of sleep.

For those of you just joining me, this summer I’m doing Flashback Fridays as I work on finishing my books.  This post comes from nearly a year ago.  I’ve been going through old posts as I build my portfolio for the writers conference I’m attending (two weeks from today!).  I stumbled on this one and it still felt so true.  I hope you enjoy The Other Side of the Mountain from August 2011:

As you might imagine, I hear a fair amount of kids music these days. We have a little c.d. player (yes, we’re not high tech in my house) and a stack of kids music c.d.s covering everything from the alphabet to nursery rhymes. I’ve had this one annoying song stuck in my head all week. It goes something like this (I apologize in advance for my singing):

The bear went over the mountain, the bear went over the mountain, the bear went over the mountain, to see what he could see.
And all that he could see, and all that he could see, was the other side of the mountain, the other side of the mountain, the other side of the mountain……..was all that he could see.

Clearly the people that write children’s songs are geniuses. But after hearing this song in my head for several days, the wisdom of the lyrics began to seep in. Here’s a bear that is restless. Discontented. He’s looking for something new, exciting, different. So he sets out on a big adventure. He’s going to go to the OTHER SIDE of the mountain. Maybe it will change his life. Things could be so much better. Then he gets there. To the other side. To see what he could see. Turns out, all that was there was the other side of the mountain. Can’t you hear his little bear brain whirring, “Hmmmmmmm, this is just the other side of the SAME dad-gum mountain. What was the big appeal? Why was I in such a hurry for this? It’s the same mountain.”

Have you been there? Are you there today? Are you fed up with your side of the mountain? Are you ready to take off to see what you can see? Leave your job, your marriage, your church, or your friends…… Unsatisfied, unfulfilled, unsettled. Wouldn’t life be better on the other side? Can’t you imagine what must lay JUST on the other side? Might I offer the wise words of a children’s song to you? When you arrive, it will just be the other side of the same mountain. Life has a way of working that way. I know, I’ve gone on these adventures. They promise more than they can deliver. So hang in there. Say a little prayer. Take a deep breath. Reconsider going over the mountain.

Well, it’s Friday which means Flashback Fridays – at least for the summer as I work to pound out these books.  Today’s installment was written on November 2, 2010, and was one of my marriage posts entitled, Boot Camp – On the Track and at Home.  I hope it resonates with you today.  Have a great weekend.

So this week I began my SECOND month of boot camp.  Let me start with two important facts.  I hate mornings.  I hate exercise.  This is terrible I realize but it is reality.  However, for some bizarre reason, last month I committed to a boot camp near my house that begins at 5 am.  I’ve lost nine pounds.  AND……..I actually ran the 3 reps of 400 meters w/sit ups and wall balls for our Monday work out that we benchmark against at the end of the month.  That is huge.  At the beginning of October I could only do the 200 meter reps.  But one of the trainers said something that stuck, and really pushed me to this new threshold – pain is temporary, quitting is forever.  

So I’ve decided to apply that slogan to the boot camp at home too.  And in fact, any woman of faith could apply that to her marriage when the going gets tough.  I have been madly in love with my husband for almost seven years and married nearly five.  But if a year of triplets doesn’t provide stressors on a marriage, I don’t know what would.  And while this has been an amazing year filled with daily delight at seeing the new things unfolding before our children’s eyes as they learn and develop, it has also been a hard one as our marriage has to mature to a new level.  And during the fights, and the fall out, I think it’s important to remember that pain is temporary, quitting is forever.  

God is a big fan of marriage (healthy marriages – none of this applies if you are being abused).  And He’s a big fan of them surviving.  AND THRIVING.  These marriages He designs for us are not marriages on life support.  Jesus’ first miracle was at a wedding – He wanted to be part of this precious celebration!  (John 2)  God tells us in Genesis “it is not good for man to be alone,” and in I Corinthians that, “For as the woman originates from the man, so also the man has his birth through the woman; and all things originate from God.”   Plus He repeatedly uses marriage as a metaphor for His relationship with us.  (Isaiah, Hosea, and more…) He wouldn’t draw that picture for us if He hadn’t designed marriage as a perfect union.  Lucky for me.  

Mark 10: 6-9: Jesus says “But at the beginning of creation God ‘made them male and female.’‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.’So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.” 

Pain is temporary; quitting is forever.

I am in the middle of writing three books.  One for the ABA on leadership for women.  Two for me.  A funny parenting book and a book about how our worth, regardless of the good or bad feedback we get from the world, only comes from Christ. 

As a result, I’m in writing overload.  So for the summer I’m introducing “Flashback Fridays.”  A look at some of my older blog posts, some of which were written before I even told anyone I had a blog.  I began writing in October 2010, when the kids were one, and wrote about faith, family and some really random stuff.  Today’s is one of my most random, but also one of my favorites, because this really is how I think.  It’s from December 2010.  It was titled, Banshees (and thank you Grey’s Anatomy).  Here you go, enjoy & happy Memorial Day weekend!

So I was going to attempt to describe what occurred over the course of Christmas weekend with my 14 month old triplets entering their first running around simultaneously phase which happened to coincide with our stay at the VERY non-baby proofed family farm house in Louisiana. I felt the best way to describe the experience was to say they were running around all weekend like banshees. I don’t know if your family uses this expression but I grew up with it – for example, my mom would say that my brother ran around the house “like a banshee.”

But before I posted my hilarious story for the blogosphere I thought it might be prudent to actually look up the word banshee & figure out what the heck a banshee is and why my mom used it. Well, it turns out it’s this pretty terrible Irish mythological creature who was an omen of death and wailed. Somehow this word made it into the English lexicon as urban slang for nutty behaviour. Seriously? This is all I could think – seriously? How the heck did my little momma, wife and daughter of a minister, end up using this pretty creepy term to describe hyperactive children’s behaviour? I certainly have no interest in using it in my jargon anymore.

This, in my streams of consciousness mentality (which I will not subject you to often because it truly is a train wreck of an experience), led me to think – why was my first thought, “Seriously?” In fact, my first thought was “seriously?” at least a dozen times this weekend. Freely given parenting advice from the in-laws – “seriously, have you had 14 mo old triplets?” My husband deciding after the first day at the farm we’d leave earlier than we’d originally planned – “seriously, what do you think I’ve been telling you about taking toddling triplets to a very uncontained space?” My youngest laughing so hard during his Christmas Eve bath that he literally laughed the poop right out of himself – “seriously, you are freakin’ hysterical!” Quickly followed up with, “seriously, on top of everything now I have to disinfect all our bath toys and bathtub?”

This led me to my above-titled gratitude for Grey’s Anatomy. If you are not a fan of the show, then you probably don’t utter “seriously” in every other thought you have during the day. Even my mom (also a fan) says it all the time. What did we do before Grey’s Anatomy? What word could possibly appropriately capture that emotion if Meredith Grey had not popularized the term, “seriously?” I mean, seriously, what word did I use – I guess I used “really.” “Really – have you had 14 mo old triplets?” Do you see what I mean.  This does not have the same ring AT ALL! What else could we use? My mind is a blank. This term is absolutely PERFECT for almost every single emotion that you need to begin with an emphatic punctuation.

So drop the use of the term banshee and start using seriously if you don’t already use it regularly. Except, now what will we replace the term banshee with? “Running around like a _________…..” “Screaming like a ____________…..” Maybe I’ll write the creators of Grey’s and see if they can come up with a term for that too.