Secrets Revealed

Shhh….I have a secret! Before I divulge my secret, let me start by saying that I love organization! I could literally organize people’s homes for a living. When I walk into my closet or open a cabinet I am usually thinking about how I can reorganize it to make it more functional. It is possible that I secretly reorganize other people’s things in my mind as well—perhaps. Add my organizational addiction to my husband’s motto, “every thing has a place, every place has a thing”, and my kids have no hope of being normal.  Just last week I was in CVS Pharmacy with my little miss sassy-pants.  I was searching for just the right cold remedy when I looked up to make sure she was still next to me. I found her just a few feet away from me reorganizing the TV character beanie babies and sorting them by TV show—that’s my girl!

Ok, so here is my confession.  With a family of five I do not always have time to do the mundane organizational tasks. My desk is constantly ignored and neglected when it comes to organization. I said I like to organize, NOT file.  For some reason filing makes me crazy and I find myself avoiding it like the plague. This struggle of mine does not make my husband a happy man. As a matter of fact, I am pretty sure it drives him stark raving crazy. His undiagnosed OCD cannot handle this level of chaos. We just had a conversation about this today and he told me I just needed to discipline myself and have a filing day like I have a laundry day.  I explained to him that like laundry, once I finish filing, there is just more to be done—everyday! The difference in laundry and filing is that no one in my family is running around naked because I have not filed.

As I have shared before in previous posts, my desk is right inside my front door.  The first impression people have of my house is my office, and front and center in my office is my desk and all of its glory. I want to keep it clean and neat and organized, really I do, if only that didn’t require filing! My husband has recently found a solution to my lack of organization, and his solution is driving me crazy—like right now, I’m crazy as I sit here and type to all of you lovelies.  Let me illustrate this thorn in my side:

The first picture is the view of my desk from the door.  The second picture is the view of my desktop from where I sit.  It all looks so nice, tidy, clean and organized.  This desk however is hiding a big disgusting secret…and here it is:

This is what it looks like under my desk.  GASP!!!  I have no words for the horror that lives at my feet under my desk. Hi, my name is Stacy, and I hide instead of file.

This horrible display began about a month ago.  We where having people over and the top of my desk was messy.  Well, honestly, my desktop wasn’t too bad, but my inbox, which is a basket, was piled high and overflowing. My husband, in an effort to help clean up, tucked the inbox under my desk to conceal my mess. Well, now that it was out-of-sight, out-of-mind, it just stayed there. Now it has grown to an obnoxious mess that gives me heart palpations and the sweats. It is making my time at my desk miserable, so I just take my laptop into other rooms. When the mess becomes too much, avoidance is simply the only way.

Anyone who has been to my house and happened to see inside of any of my cabinets knows how I like to have things just so.  I have “Sleeping with the Enemy” tendencies, if you know what I mean. Now that I have put this dirty little secret out there, I have no choice but to spend a day (or a week) filing and organizing this mountainous mess. Pray for me friends. If you don’t hear from me after a few days, send in reinforcements!

Fierce Love

I love my children with fierce love! This does not mean that I am blind to who they are. It simply means that I know them completely and love them anyway. I know who and what they are and I am committed to helping them become the best version of themselves. I look out for their best interest and teach them how to do that for themselves. I see their potential and consistently help them reach it. I know their faults, their shortcomings, their struggles, and their weaknesses, yet love them through it all. I teach them to recognize these traits in themselves and to use this recognition to make personal improvements. My love is not blind, but instead a fully aware love!

We are a family that loves to share! I say it all the time; we are a TMI (Too Much Information) family…and proud of it. When I was growing up, I always shared my TMI with my Mom...still do! Now that I am a parent, I am on the other end of these TMI moments with my kids and I consider it a blessing! I am aware they don’t share everything with me. In fact, I am certain nobody shares everything about themselves with anyone—other than God. I do believe that my kids share the important things, the fun things, the inconsequential things, and the silly things; which bonds us together in a way that I could never explain. Like me and my parents, my children know they can trust me with their secrets, their dreams, their anger, their frustrations, their disappointments, their struggles, and their fears. They know I will not betray them and that my only goal is to help them. They know I will not cast judgment on them or anyone they may be talking about. My job is to listen, share, guide, teach, coach, discipline, and pray...lots-and-lots of prayer.

I know my children are far from perfect, I see them everyday! My hope and prayer is that through our relationship they will learn to do life better than I have. I am preparing them to live better, love better, serve better, and be better than I could ever be. Isn't that what we all want for our kids, to have a better life than we did? We want them to learn from our mistakes so they are free to make different mistakes to learn and grow from.  To live their life to the fullness that God would have for them. “Train up a child in the way he should go, Even when he is old he will not depart from it” (Proverbs 22:6).

Our Pastor recently finished a message series titled “Losing Your Marbles.” His focus was that each marble represents time we have with our children. In this case, one marble represents a week of time and it counts down from birth to high school graduation, or any significant goal or benchmark. The cornerstone scripture was Psalm 90:12, “So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom.” It is sobering to think about this and face the fact that I have a 16 year old with less than 100 marbles! This message forces me to ask myself hard questions.

Am I being intentional with my time spent with my kids?

Am I teaching them all that God would have them learn from me?

Am I wasting my weeks with my kids being too busy to pour into them?

Am I doing enough, saying enough, loving enough, and teaching enough?

Whew, my head hurts! I think I’m going to lose my marbles! These are hard questions with some very uncomfortable answers. I encourage y’all to ask yourself these same questions and see how you feel you are doing.  It is always good to conduct a self-check to make sure we are hitting the marks that need to be hit, “making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil.” (Ephesians 5:16).

*This picture may be a bit old, but these are my babies whom I love fiercely with my whole heart!

Back To Schedules

I love summer! No…like, I really love summer! I love everything about it. I love the heat, the beach time, the pool time, my kids being home, no schedules, late nights, sleeping in later than 5:30am, family trips, late night swims in the backyard, tan skin, just absolutely everything—I love it! However, there is one thing I love more…that feeling of getting back on schedule when school starts. As much as I love the freedom of no schedule, our lives just simply run better with a schedule. Everything absolutely makes more sense. So, here we are, back on schedule and slowly getting used to our routines and feeling better already. 

I thought about writing and blogging all summer, but every time I tried to sit at my computer to write, the joyful (or not so joyful) sounds of my kids interrupted my brain and made it impossible for me to focus or even complete a simple thought—don’t judge! My home office is right inside the front door and completely open to the rest of the house, no privacy and no doors. Plus, it is open to the upstairs game room where my children fight; I mean play. The sounds and echoes that land in this room actually silence my brain and completely short-circuit my thoughts. Hence the lack of posting from me all summer.

Let me just say, I have more words to share than most people say in a year. Just because I am not actually typing my posts, doesn’t mean I am not blogging in my head…non-stop. My poor husband has been forced to hear way to many words this summer so if I don’t get back to blogging soon, his brain may explode. I think I need to invest in one of those little recorders like I used in college to record my professors, so I can speak my posts when I do not have the ability to type them. This little device may very well save my marriage, or at least my husbands brain.

I wish I could remember all of the posts I came up with this summer. So many wonderful thoughts have been lost by the lack of retention in my aging brain. Let me just assure you, I am certain that the lost posts could have solved all of the world’s problems. I even found myself dreaming of blogging and writing words, only to wake up and have lost them all. This makes me sad, but ultimately just fills my head with more words that need to be shared.

Today, regardless of it being the weekend and my kids all being home, my brain decided I had to get all of these words out before it explodes. So here I am, sitting at my desk, trying to ignore the sounds of The Lego Movie (while softly humming “Everything Is Awesome”), typing all of my words hoping they find all of you getting used to your schedules and enjoying your brain function slowly beginning to return to its normal state. I have approximately 800 posts in my mind at this very moment so this could take a while. 

     So here it is, my office.  As you see on the right, that is my front door, which leads to the wide open space which is my office.  Also, notice on the left, the vast openness leading upstairs.  At the top of those stairs is our game room where my children play...LOUDLY. Just beyond the stairs on the main level is our living room where the TV is almost always on. So now you have a visual of why my brain doesn't function while the family is home.  Prayers are welcomed, infact, they are encouraged!

Catching Up

           Ok, let’s play catch up, shall we! It seems like so much has happened in my little world since my last life update. It is amazing what a summer can bring. I feel like it has been forever since catching up with a best friend and now I must pummel you with my words. I will try to restrain myself from sharing every last detail with all of you beautiful unsuspecting lovelies.

First and foremost, we are in the home stretch with our adoption process. It looks like little miss sassy-pants will officially be a Morris sometime in November (we are praying it doesn’t take any longer than this). That will make three years since she entered our home. We officially sent in all of our paperwork and payment so we are just waiting for the courts at this point. We have been dreaming of this day for so long it almost doesn’t seem real yet. For those of you that are my friends on social media, brace yourself for the massive amounts of pictures we plan to post as soon as this is final.  I plan to post on here as well.

Second, we decided to homeschool our middle son, Tony. This was a difficult decision for us, but once it became clear, we were washed in the “peace that transcends all understanding.” You know, that peace that only God can give. We are a few weeks into the new school year and I am even more convinced than ever that we made the right decision. I am not saying this is easy, but I am saying that it is worth it and it is clearly what Tony needs at this time. I’ve learned that the hard decision is usually the right one. I am really trying to be present in each moment and not to miss any teaching opportunities. We joined the local 4-H and plan to go on some group field trips. Plus, he is still taking horseback riding lessons once a week.

Since we decided to homeschool Tony, we also made the decision for little miss to start pre-k 3. Whew, this was a hard one! A couple of months before school started I began talking to her about it, and every time she would cry and explain through her tears that she didn’t want to go. She was really pulling at the heart-strings…and the guilt-strings. She told me at one point, “You can’t yeave me, you my mommy;” I wasn’t sure my heart was going to survive that one. But by the first day of school she was ready to go. My husband and I walked her to class and she was fine. I choked back my tears like a good mommy. When I picked her up and she came running out of that school with her pink backpack on, arms reaching for me, and yelling  “mommy” as loud as she could; I totally lost it and cried all the way to the car and the short drive home. I am such a sap! The next day when I took her to school she cried at the window banging on the class and screaming for me. So yet again, I cried all the way to the car and all the way home. By the end of the second week she seemed to have it down (though she still cries at least once a week just for good measure) and my heart is slowly recovering.

OK, so now I have to address the Texas weather. At the beginning of the summer we had some crazy rain…like monsoon! My husband bought himself a new car and gave his old one (which wasn’t really old, it was still under warranty) to our 16-year old. However, the sunroof was acting up, so he took the car to the dealership to have it repaired. The next day he got a call that his car, the one for our 16-year old, had flooded at the dealership. He was frustrated, to say the least, because he bought that car for the sole purpose of passing it on to our son. As a matter of fact, when he bought himself a new car, he just got the same one, just a newer model and different color so he could do the same thing for our middle son. However, you must know that what my husband really wants is a 4-door, full-size, pick-up truck. At the same time, he wants to do the right thing and pass on a car with better gas mileage for the kids; he is sacrificing his wants for the kids—good man, huh?

So, after the car was determined to be totaled, we learned the amount of insurance refund and my husband feverishly begins looking for a vehicle for our son. He finds the perfect deal. He shows Lance what he found and he is so excited he can hardly stand it. So they go to the dealership to make the deal. We got him a red 4-door, full-size, pick-up truck! It is then that the young man turns to his Dad and says…“Dad, how are you going to feel with me driving a pick-up truck and you driving a car?” To which my husband replies, with a puzzled look on his face…“like I made a mistake!” Boys and their toys!  I am not going to lie; I sure do love it when I get to drive his truck.

Last, but certainly not least, my husband and I celebrated our 20-year wedding anniversary this summer. It is still crazy to me that I am even old enough to be married for 20 years. Here’s the crazy news; for the first time in our marriage, went out of town for our anniversary—just the two of us.  It was so lovely to get away with him and be alone.  Do you know what we learned? Or actually just reconfirmed? We like each other…like A LOT!  That may sound crazy, but after having kids in our home, stealing our focus, it sure is nice to know that we can still be just the two of us and enjoy each other. We still have lots of stuff to say to each other and not just about the kids. We really just love being around each other, which gives me great hope for our empty-nester years; but that’s going to be a while with a three year old in the house! And there you have it, the latest-and-greatest of the happenings in my life.

So what is going on with you?