There was a time, a time before I was broken, a time when I didn’t know, but thought I did, that I proudly would have worn this title. “Psalm Snob,” Â that was me.
I’ve written about this experience in my bi-weekly blog post for Moms of Faith. Read it Here.
As usual – you don’t have to be a MOM to visit. đ This one’s for everyone.
Writing is such a weird thing.
I find the various facets and sides of myself curious and unexpected at times.
I tend to write “lite” on this, my very own, blog and “heavy” when writing for someone else, such as Moms of Faith. However, this weekend’s post for MoF is a bit more on the lighter side, maybe a facet left of the serious and right of the humorous?
Creating Memories was written because over the course of my life I’ve found our family “traditions” to have had a positive impact on our family dynamic. I come from a non-drama family that enjoys being together and WHAT A BLESSING! I pray the same for my own children and I strongly believe that being intentional when creating family memories or traditions has a huge impact on creating a joyful family.
Who doesn’t want to give their child wonderful memories to remember for a lifetime?
God used music to heal us.
Every Saturday and Wednesday my articles are featured on Moms of Faith – Mom blog, but you don’t have to be a mom to visit, no one will check you at the door for mom parts. đ
Over there you’ll find a different side of me than is usually present here at clothedwithJoy and it’s been a growing experience for me to push myself in this way.
This week I’ve written about music, worship and the healing that it has brought our family. Check it out at the link provided here – “Turn It Up, Mom!”
Thanks! – Rebecca
âMom, my teacher says we need these rolls for school.â
Empty paper towel roll handed to me followed by a large handful of loose, unused paper towels.
The least she could have done was stick it in her backpack herself. Sheesh.
1. Author:Â Pre-adolescent girl. The sheer expressiveness of it makes that obvious, even if you failed to notice that the double exclamation marks were dotted with a smiley and the single exclamation with a heart.
2. The heart and smiley also indicate that she must comprehend on some level that her mother (to whom she is writing) will most certainly NOT take this note seriously, and after photographing and blogging about it will positively dump it in the trash (with all other notes of this sort.)
3. There is a pronounced annoyance that proclaims that the writer (said girl) could not move on with her life (which most likely means removing skinny jeans and replacing them with jammie pants and then laying on her bed watching Netflix on her Kindle) until she got this unpardonable situation off her chest.  I.e. – she is undoubtedly of the high drama sort.
4. The fact that she apparently could not handle (at almost 11) walking a 5 year old the three and a half blocks home from school, with the assistance of FOUR crossing guards, is somewhat alarming and tends to add weight to point 3.
5. It appears that dishing out some discipline to the younger sibling is the note writer’s call to action.
This post could step on some toes, but Iâm just going to say it â I donât like foul language. As in, I donât use it. I think it has a lot to do with what I discussed in my post Dignity.
And as much as I donât like it, my thirteen year old canât stand it. The other night I said, âWhat the heckâŚâ and all heck broke loose. âMom, you already say âcrap,â now this is just too much.â
Sheesh, I didn’t realize I was such a potty mouth.
When I was growing up the âShâ word meant âshut upâ and the âFâ word was âfart.â And I’ve kept it that way in my own home, although fart has moved into the âacceptableâ language realm. Just donât say it around my mother.
My seven year old is, of course, totally concerned with what is and is not appropriate to say. At least once a day we discuss words that may or may not be “bad.”
âMom, can I say âoh my?â Mom, is âyikesâ a bad word?â
The word stupid gets brought to the table quite often. Is stupid a bad word? Well, not technically, but like guns, it all depends on how you use it. Occasionally, âstupidâ gets back on the list of words they can say but it rarely lasts five minutes before somebody done called somebody stupid and, just like that, âstupidâ is once again off the table and back on the list of bad words.
English is a second language for all four of my children, so the discussion of what words are âbadâ happens a lot around here. Of course I donât use âbad languageâ at home but they still hear it in school and on TV so they are often confused about what is and is not appropriate to say.
The other day my thirteen year old and ten year old were discussing the word âdammitâ and if it was a âbad wordâ or not. I explained the origin and clearly emphasized that it was on the âbadâ list. Letâs fast forward to the next day while I am standing with the five year olds and their moms outside of school waiting to go into Pre-K. You know where this is going⌠My little P decides to hop across the center walk way and very loudly proclaim, âDAMMIT!â for no reason at all.
Mortified
Appalled
Ashamed
The fact is, I was more concerned with what others would think of me as a mother than why my little one said that. Sigh.
Little Stinker
PS: She was, of course, immediately corrected and set back on the straight and narrow.Â
The statement above is clearly a lie.
However, when my daughter and I bought the plaque last summer we totally believed it. It still hangs on our door but I’ve hidden it with a kindergarten Valentine project from G.
I’m a flip flop girl. Even living here in the Northeast I could still somehow get through winter with my flip flops, some snow boots and a slip on mule-type shoe (with socks, of course.)
Not this year.
Last week I finally broke down and bought sneakers. I haven’t owned a pair of sneakers in close to fifteen years. I wore them to the office the other day and my brother (who works next to me) noticed them immediately.
“Nice sneakers, Bec.” he says. Â Which in sibling talk means,
“You know you look like a Dork in those shoes, right?”
I confess, I’m terribly self-conscious about the sneakers. I’m 40. I’m a mom. I’m sure the sneakers have caused my butt to spread at least four inches. What I’m trying to say is –
I’m. Just. Not. A Sneaker. Girl.
I have considered moving to Florida where I could wear flip flops all day forever and ever for the rest of my life. The only problem is, I watch way too much Animal Planet.
Not only would I have to worry about alligators and crocodiles snapping up my little ones in the back yard, but now Florida is overrun with terrifying Invasive Species like the Burmese Python and Snakeheads.
Just the name: “snakehead” is enough to keep me out of Florida. Yeeeeee.
I suppose I’ll just have to make my peace with the sneaks.
At some point during my teenage years I paged through my motherâs yearbook. To my great surprise I discovered that Joan, my Very Own Actual Mother, was known for âalways having her nose in a book.â
Whaaaaaaat?
In all my live-long days I never witnessed this. Mom. Reading a book.
Inconceivable.
Today, speaking as one on whom motherhood has also descended, I get it.
In High School I was voted âTalks the Least and Says the Mostâ in the yearbook. Unfortunately, there was a typo and it actually said, âTalks the Most and Says the Least.â Ha ha yearbook editor person. Very funny.
The point is, I was the nerdy, quiet kid discretely reading my Piers Anthony Xanth novel hunched over behind the boy in front of me during Geometry class. Reading was my passion.
DO YOU KNOW HOW MANY BOOKSÂ I’VE READ SINCEÂ BECOMINGÂ A MOTHER?
Neither do I. But it hasn’t been very many.
Oh Mom, I get it now.
I get it.
I was admitted at midnight on a Saturday/Sunday morning. This is important because the doctor and his wife were opening a BEAUTIFUL, MAGNIFICENT, MILLION DOLLAR Maternity Hospital at noon on Sunday. I was 12 hours too early. Sigh.
Yes. It mattered.
The new hospital was not inaugurated, read â Not open until Sunday afternoon. I had to deliver in the old hospital. Now, when I say old, think India old. Think: they knew they were moving to a new facility and had allowed the old one to go to crap old. I didn’t even have a room, which was fine since I was happy to roam the crumbling halls til she came out. They did, however, place a cot in their file closet for me. So, that was nice.
Boom, when she came, she came fast. By my fourth child I knew when we were in the homestretch. I was beyond the point of words so I grabbed a passing teenage girl. Seriously, she might have been eighteen. I hoisted myself up onto the delivery table and man I REALLY wish I had some pictures. Words cannot adequately describe the filthy state of the table I delivered on.
Rusty metal table.
Thick, green plastic cover on top in use since forever.
It was ancient and stained with unimaginable things. And when I say unimaginable things I mean blood, gore, amniotic fluid, fecal matter, etc. Of course.
Letâs just say, it was crusty and I didn’t care.Â
This is Part 3 of 4. Find links here for Part 1, Part 2 and Part 4.
Iâm a bad pusher. I know this to be true. I’ve witnessed many a birth in my life and I’ve even delivered a baby myself â thatâs a WHOLE ânother story. The point is, I KNOW that I am a bad pusher. I do, however, try. I shout at the top of my lungs. I say things like, I canât. I canât. I canât⌠And then⌠I do. Finally.
P. was born in India at 1:24AM with an old Gujarati floor washer pushing on my tummy, a teenager playing catcher between my legs and a sweet friend by my side.
That would be a really nice ending to this story but dang it, thatâs when the doctor decided to show up. Oh, Hello doctor. Thanks for not being here. Oh, now you want to come do some doctor stuff? Iâm going to get graphic here and if you canât handle it skip on down to the next paragraph. Minutes after giving birth and simultaneously tearing open my episiotomy scar (that’s a word you don’t want to Google – ew), the doctor reached his entire hand through my ravaged vagina and into my recently emptied uterus. ARE YOU KIDDING ME? He used his ARM to clear out my uterus. It. Hurt. Worse. Than. The. Actual. Birthing. Of. My. Child.
The good news is, I obviously survived to tell the tale.
In the end, I shuffled back to my file room, pale and sore but oh so happy. She was out, and in my arms. And she was perfect.
Will Smith ears and all.
The End. Or, should I say, The Beginning.
This is Part 4 of 4. Find links here: Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3.
Clothed with Joy 