EPISODE 6

It is 7pm on a Wednesday night and the house is so quiet you can hear the clock ticking. Wednesday is my night off. My hero takes the all the kids to church except for the baby who is in bed and asleep by 6. I have the house to myself for about 3 hrs and it is heaven.

I would like to make a statement right now and say that I love what I do. Sometimes it sounds like I feel like taking care of my family is a drudging job that I can’t wait to clock out of, but it is not. It is my work but it is not my job. It isn’t even my career. Caring for my family is my art form. It is my Opus. My life’s work into which I invest my everything with all my heart and I love it. I think most parents can relate to this sentiment

That doesn’t make it any less challenging. It is a labor of love but labor nonetheless, and anything you do with so great an investment of self, of energy,emotion and passion is something you need to take a break from on occasion in order to do it your best. I would recommend a regular break if you can get it and frequent interaction with other adults while not on break. Artists tend to go crazy you know and these are great preventative measures to keep you out of the loony bin. You may even keep enough of your senses to come off as only a little strange but there is no harm there; we all have a little weirdness. Good things can come from losing your marbles though (you know, in case you can’t get that much of a break, which would not be shocking). Crazy people make great entertainment at parties.

But I digress. Back to my story...

I have the house to myself for 3+ hours. Usually I get a shower and then I can clean, sit, read, exercise, eat, watch a squishy movie, write or do whatever I want to do, but mainly I rest.

This time around, after my shower, I decide to make my bed and crawl in. The remainder of anything I do tonight will be done from a cozy, clean bedroom, under clean sheets and wrapped in a cocoon of fleece blankets.

It’s funny how even in a clean room the right kind of person can find something to trip over. And if nothing can be found, a simple improvisation is all you need. Just throw something on the floor (like the bed covers that need to come off in order to change the sheets) and you have yourself the happy opportunity to break your face (which I promptly did)

So I’m pulling off my blankets to make my bed and I find a decapitated lego man. I can’t help but think of that scene in “The Godfather" with the horse head in the sheets and I wonder if I will wake the next morning screaming because there is a lego head. But instead of it being in the sheets it must be surgically removed from my spine because I slept on it all night and now it is firmly in place as a new part of my body.  As far as I can see, this whole body peircing thing is a rip off. All you have to do is sleep on a lego all night and Voila! A new accessory in a fashionable shade of yellow!

I’m not sure there is a profound lesson to be learned from this story but if I discover one I will let you know and henceforth it will be know as “the lego-head lesson”.

EPISODE 5

That moment When you are giving your baby a bath and you actually see him pee in the water is a life defining moment. It clarifies who you are as a person. It paints a picture of how you think and what you are really like at your most basic level. The way you are when no one else sees.

This may not be true if it is a friend’s baby that you are watching, but if it is your own you are forced to confront your honest self and see yourself for who you really are. Also, if you are taking this opportunity to examine yourself deeper, it shows you how you have grown and changed through the different stages of your life.

For some people, this kind of character analysis can come earlier in life and be discovered through other means. When I was young, I had a sock philosophy that was very much the same kind of thing.

At first, I refused to wear matching socks, and it was a stand against the tendency of western man to ignore the important things that matter and, instead, throw all of their energy and attention into meaningless causes that don’t do much more than make them look good. Sock matching was a waste of time that could have been better spent on more important things. Your feet could be perfectly warm and blister free in one blue sock and one orange-with-green-starbursts sock. The rest is vanity.

Then I grew some, in years and maturity, and my philosophy took a different turn. I began to see it more as an integrity issue. Socks were small and relatively insignificant in comparison to other things (would you rather have socks or pants?) and on top of that, they are rarely seen - but even if others don’t see or you don't think it matters much, God sees and if you aren’t right on the inside you can never be right anywhere else. We may be able to keep our little secrets and cover our flaws, so men don’t see, but God sees who we really are, and His is the only opinion that matters. If you are going to do something, do it right even if no one else sees. I wore matching socks.

Baby pee is kind of the same… kind of…

Here you are, with your first beautiful, little, new born baby and you are lowering him into the infant tub. You’ve tested the water and it is just the right temp. You have your all-natural baby shampoo and your baby washcloth all ready and the sweet little terry-cloth baby bathrobe hanging nearby for when tubby time is over. You slowly put him into the water and the second his hand touches the warm water (you know what happens, we’ve all played this prank) a pale yellow geyser springs up, contaminating the water and sprinkling your baby's head.

“Eeeww!” you say, immediately withdrawing him from the water. You clean his head with wipes, set him aside all wrapped up, dump the water and start all over again.

Fast forward ten years.

Now you sit on a little green stool about the right size for an elf with your fourth child in the tub. He is old enough to be in the big tub but still young enough to not care where he pees or to know that it would be gross to drink the water. You can’t find a washcloth but one of your husband’s clean socks is handy and that is pretty much the same material,right? The tub toys are interesting to say the least. You have just set the baby in the tub but he won’t sit down (apparently, one- year-olds believe that after you learn to stand up, sitting down by anyone else’s desire is one of the seven deadly sins or something) and as he stands there the warm water kicks in and does it’s thing. The golden stream pours forth into the water and you sit there, helpless. The sound track in your head begins:

“Well that’s gross. He is going to put that in his mouth. Really gross. I just filled the tub, he hasn’t even sat down yet! I don’t have time for this and he will scream if I take him out. Still really gross but really, the odds are high that he pees in the tub every time he takes a bath, I just don’t see it happen, so i’m not grossed out by it.”

Out loud you say “Don’t drink the water!” as the baby raises a cupful to his mouth. He is sitting now and has no idea what you could mean by these words. He refills his cup that you have dumped out and tries again. You again dump it with the same command and the cycle is repeated a few more times. At this point you hear a fight break out downstairs and you move to the doorway to forcefully instill peace in your other children. When you turn back, the baby has already swallowed half of the tub water and is working on ingesting the cup.

I have learned that I can’t sweat the small stuff. I will do the very best I can, pay attention to the important stuff and learn to let go of the rest. By the time the baby is four, he will understand the command “don’t drink the water” because I will have said it at least 3.5 million times and I believe he will turn out to be a well-adjusted adult that will know better than peeing in the tub and also know a few other really important things.

Interestingly enough, the sock thing ended in a similar way. I wash all our socks and match them up as best as I can (with a basket of singles on the side) and then you can wear matching socks until you run out -  then you wear whatever fits best until I can do laundry again.

And who knows? My perspectives and philosophies may change yet again. . .  I still have many things to learn and many ways to grow.

EPISODE 4

Scene: Me at home with the kids on a school day and I have a head cold.

Here we are one and a half weeks from the end of daylight savings and my one year old has spent the last ten days crying. Way to go Ben Franklin! To my baby, the shifting of time by one hour is equal to the end of the world. Neither eating nor sleeping are acceptable. Sitting or standing or dancing or walking or lying down or playing or leaving the house or staying home or holidays or pretty much anything besides the Veggietales theme song must be hollered into submission until it agrees to go back to it’s rightful place in time exactly one hour ago.

I am starting to really love Veggietales. I always thought they were clever and liked the message but this is a whole new appreciation. T.V is not really my favorite thing for the kids to do. It isn’t even allowed on school days but i’m getting to the place where Veggietales doesn’t count as T.V. anymore. It’s therapy.

On this particular day my oldest turns nine. It is her birthday so she is wonderful. No problems there!

Then there is my seven-year-old son. He tends to be my biggest challenge but he is a great kid and not having any issues today (except he can’t understand why he has to wait until Daddy comes home and we have cake to give his sister her present. I can handle that.)

That leaves my three year old who is a loving, happy boy who doesn’t misbehave on purpose but he is three. Some things are bound to happen. Plus he has officially entered that stage where you can call his name a million times and he will have no idea you are talking to him.

Through the grace of God and a trip to the store (diversions always help), we are halfway through the day and my crying baby is so tired that I’m sure he will sleep for more than the 10 minutes he called a nap the first time around. I lay him down and after only 20 minutes of fussing, HE SLEEPS!!! Praise you Jesus! There is Quiet!

Time for lunch. To make things fun, I read to the kids while they make their own sandwiches. After a few chapters I look over the edge of the book and see my 3 year-old dunking my cell phone into his water glass like it was an Oreo in milk.

I could tell by the look on his face as I reprimanded him that it was an innocent accident. He could tell by the look on mine that it was a bad idea. He said he was sorry and I know he meant it. When there is a sincere apology there must be sincere forgiveness. I couldn’t stay mad at him.

I filled a bowl with rice to submerge the pieces of my phone in, and prayed.

I put the bowl of rice up out of the way (or so I thought) and finished the chapter we had been reading. After we finished eating, and in the middle cleaning the lunch things up, I hear a sound like a rainstick. OH NO!! The rice!!

Again my beloved 3-year-old and his curiosity were the culprits. Again it was an innocent accident. Again he was sincerely sorry. 70 x 7. I forgave my sweet boy.

Rice was now behind my couch and end table, but vacuuming it up would have to wait. Baby was up. In a satisfied delusion,, I’m thinking,  “he slept almost as long as normal and should be pretty good-tempered!”

Nope.

As soon as the post-nap fog had cleared, he began crying. He subsided for a little while when we took our weekly trip to the library (which I was grateful for), but He was only happy long enough for me to return the books we had, pick out new ones and give me an exceptional cardio workout chasing him from one bookshelf to the next making sure he didn’t ingest too much information… literally!

When we got back home he began crying again and didn’t stop for 2 hours. Food didn’t work, hugs didn’t work, even the failproof Veggietales abandoned me. The baby cried about everything. He would ask to be picked up but when I did he would do this arch thing with his body and push away. Nothing satisfied. My head cold was amplifying the sound and the screams echoed around inside my head like it was a tin can.

Clear, coherent thought did not show up to work that day. Honestly, if I hadn’t let my girl play the part of teacher for the day (birthday privilege) I don’t know how the kids would have learned anything.

Around 3:30 I had an epiphany. I would give him a bath! That morning when I had brought the 3-year-old to go potty, I set  the baby down in the dry tub so he wouldn’t get hurt or touch anything gross (yes, my bathroom is gross but I am going to clean it tomorrow… right after I vacuum up the rice). It was the only time all day he had been content. He sat and chewed on the tub toys. Normally, he hates baths but I figured if I didn’t shampoo or soap him and I don’t put in bubble bath (the foam scares him) than maybe it will work.

And wonder of wonders, we had success! He was won over and played!

At this point, I ask my 7-year-old to bring me my sweater. He brings me my winter coat thinking that was what I wanted and accidently drops the sleeve in the toilet.

“Sorry,” he says “ at least it wasn’t pee water!”

I have to agree.

So here we are, kids are reading in the livingroom, baby is playing in the tub and Daddy comes home from work. The minute the baby hears his voice he starts crying again, so Daddy comes up and sits in the bathroom with us. All the other children follow him like ducklings up the stairs and our entire family is now crammed into our 5-square ft bathroom, all talking at once, and it is painfully clear how small that room is.

All that noise was more than Daddy could take, so he takes the baby out of the tub and goes back down stairs where, of course, everyone follows. That solved the too-much-noise-in-a-tiny-room problem but now the baby is back to fuss-and-fidget and trying to bite people (a new thing he has picked up).

Im’ at my whit’s end and completely out of ideas when out of nowhere Daddy says “I bet he is teething.”

In my finger goes and sure enough, there are two new teeth breaking through his gums, poor bab!. Daddy was home five minutes and he figured out what I couldn’t see through all the crazy.

Every day by the time my husband comes home,I am tired and when I see him come through the door, a subconscious something says “I’m no longer solely responsible” and exhaustion hits and I begin to shut down. but this day went so far beyond that... I opened the pantry door and for the first time I was in a private space, all alone and not “on duty” and I found myself crying uncontrollably next to plastic wrap and peanut butter.

Some days bring us to the place where we have so much stress built up by the end of it that we can’t help crying in a closet with a box of cake mix as a companion.

And I know for certain that many people have been though much harder things than a teething baby while they were sick. But my point is, Difficult days are part of life. Difficult weeks and months and even years. I have been there too. Homelessness and our family separated. Loss of loved ones.Terrifying things happening in the world and in the place you are raising your children. I have been there. It is part of our mess. Many people say “God promises to never give you more than you can handle” , so it must logically follow that you can handle whatever it is you are going through. The only problem is, God never promised that. There are many things we go through that we just cannot handle. But God did promise to never leave us. He will be there with

EPISODE 3

So, I got a broken nose. One of my precious children dropped a 5lb turtle on my face. By accident, of course.

Within minutes of the accident, before the bleeding even stopped, I thought "this would make a great story! It's just blazing with classic slapstick!"

That must say something about me. Either "What a masochistic crack-pot! " or "What a great sense of humor!",  but either way it screams, "now that lady is cut out for taking care of kids!". That's the way it has to be you know. If you can't laugh, you will never survive. And I had better get my gut muscles ready because it was my oldest boy who is only 7 and I have two more behind him!

But not to worry, along with all of the injuries children can provide they are also a great source of straight-up silly fun! The other day they came up with this game where we played hospital and I was the Doctor/nurse and they were Jack and Jill who fell down the hill and sustained excessive injuries throughout all of their bodies and the nurse, who came to give them meds got fired because she kept taking all the painkillers herself! Don't ask me where they come up with this stuff.

So this turtle was not a living one (now THAT would have been funny!), and no, it wasn't dead either… it was stuffed.  How in the world, you might ask, could a stuffed animal break your nose? Well, I will tell you: I sewed a barbell inside it's body not twenty minutes before it came to rest on my face. Ironic, right? Here is a little more irony for you: I did it as a tactile aid for comfort.

There is a story here (isn't there always a story?). A friend of mine was helping come up with some good plans to help my son deal with some emotional/behavioral difficulties. She suggested giving him a calm space to be in and something heavy he could put on top of himself. It is a comfort thing. She works with kids professionally so she knows what she is talking about. She didn't say anything about the risks to my face. Of course, we weren't really in a calm space at the time. We were on the living room floor playing pig-pile. I was on the bottom and now that I am thinking about it, I can understand why you see those completely ridiculous warning labels on things telling you not to do something that no person with half a brain would do. I guess you can have your brain and still do stupid stuff.

My son did like the turtle though! And I think it will help him, which, in the end, is all that matters. Funny how a broken nose doesn't seem like a big deal when I compare it to giving my son the tools he will need to develop into a well- adjusted adult. Besides, my nose isn't crooked and the doctor said that in a few weeks it will be all healed. He also said that he had broken his nose when he was 11 and his nose was very neat and straight, so unless he lied or had plastic surgery to cover up his unsightly deformity, I don't think I have anything to worry about.

It also doesn't hurt as much as you would think… my nose I mean. At least not until after it happened. Then it hurt. The more you think about how you got smashed in the nose and heard a little cracking noise inside your own head, and how now there is a profusion of blood that used to be inside your body and now is finding an easy escape route via your nasal cavity, the more it hurts… but it is probably all in your head.

You can take that last little statement however you want.

EPISODE 2

During the fall season, I keep a pot simmering on the stove filled with apples, cinnamon, nutmeg and vanilla. It makes my house smell amazing. It smells like I have been baking delicious things all day when, in fact, I haven’t made so much as toast. If I had, I wouldn’t need the pot.

It’s like super awesome kitchen Febreze and if I sit in my kitchen and close my eyes I am carried away to the home of an autumn fairy ’s family where they are having a get-together. The whole place is filled with all of the beauty and food and warmth and laughter that any mortal can bear.

Did you ever see those Febreze commercials where people are brought, blindfolded, into a really gross place - like a hot car filled with dirty laundry - that has just been sprayed and they say they think they are on a tropical island with sunshine and dolphins? Clearly, I'm am not the first or only person to think of this trick.

But what happens next in the commercial? The blindfold comes off and they realize the truth. My autumn fairies are replaced with dirty dishes piled high and grape juice on the floor that my three year old spilled while my eyes were closed.

Dishes are an issue for me. Some people don’t mind dishes. The warm water can be relaxing if it doesn’t make you have to go pee - and once I get started, I guess I’m ok  - but the actual getting started part? The amount of psyching myself up it takes to get me to touch that grossness is comparable to the angst felt by the president himself when faced with the decision of pressing the RED BUTTON.  More in some cases, I’m sure. I will do laundry, sweep the floor, change diapers, wash the toilet (the toilet mind you not the tub!) all with relative complacency, but the dishes? Those, I figure, can wait until my husband is off work… next Saturday.

Enter Apple Pot!

I figure this is a great solution so my kitchen will not smell like that green fuzz growing on the leftover cabbage from the New England boiled dinner I made last Monday. I mean… the cabbage is still there, as is the green fuzz. You can see it. but at least you don’t have to smell it. Simply close your eyes and there you go! You don’t have to think about it! Now you can think about other, more important, things... like the bloody nose you got from slipping in the grape juice and smashing into the door frame while your eyes were closed!

Do you see my point?

And we can have an apple pot for many things, not just our kitchens full of dirty dishes. We can cover our sadness or hurt with the “‘I’m-fine’-with-an-easy-smile” potpourri pot. Or cover our broken relationships with the “it’s-not-a-big-deal-we-don’t-need-help” pot. Then there is the multi-purpose “I-am-strong-I-can-handle-this” pot that is so convincing we even fool ourselves with it.

But the problem remains. It is only a cover. A blindfold. Open your eyes and the mess is still there and we’ve broken our nose.

My pot of apples is not  a bad thing (the real one, not the figurative one). I will keep using it because I love the pretty smell, but those dishes in the sink will not do themselves. I must deal with the problem, not just cover it up.

EPISODE 1

EPISODE 1

We have had more broken glass on our floor than we can shake a stick at and that gets me wondering… Why are we shaking sticks at things? (I know exactly why we have so much broken glass!)

My husband is from Chile and when he moved here he took a class called “let’s talk turkey.” It was all about the weird things we Americans say that don’t make any sense unless you’re in the know. It’s like a nation-wide inside joke and the punchline is the confusion we cause among foreigners and the ridiculous things they say when trying, unsuccessfully, to imitate us. I think if the U.S.Army would employ this turkey talk as their new secret code it would be hugely successful in causing the enemy to wet their pants because they are laughing so hard at the weird things we say.

So all the broken glass on my floor is due, in part, to the fact that I used to own a dozen tall, clear, grown-up glasses. I now only have three and they are not from that dozen. That whole set broke one glass at a time so I bought a new set and broke one of those. For fun.

It is only a matter of time before we take out the rest. They say all families should have things they do together. I’m not sure this is what they meant.

I wonder if Martha Stewart ever had this problem. I wonder if she ever broke all her good glasses and set her table with oddities similar to those that have graced our own. Certainly not with a camera crew present! But even if she did, I bet she could put a twist on it so it was still picturesque. I can just see it…

“Let’s see . . . I have a clear glass, a coffee mug, a plastic tumbler, a shot glass, a soup cup, a jelly jar… Drat! I’m one short! what can I use? Oh, perfect! I found a measuring cup! Now if I just paint a perfect rosebud on the side here…”

Whether or not she has this struggle is not really important. What is important is that she does have struggles. Who do you think made orange the new black?

I mean no disrespect to Mrs. Stewart; I am simply trying to make the point that when you are in the middle of pouring your friend a drink into a egg cup, wishing you could trade places with Martha because she would have the perfect glass for any beverage, you should stop and consider if you really do want to trade places. The grass is always greener until you get there and realize there are barbed wire fences around the parameter.

I have a kind of attachment to grown-up drinking glasses and other things like that… seasonal decorations, my bookshelf, couch pillows (don’t even get me started on couch pillows! Okay, I’m started... so my husband uses my couch pillows to nap on and he drools, and the kids use them as napkins to clean their hands, and as building blocks for forts, and what started as something to make our living space look like a magazine cover now makes our living space look like the kennel)... anyway, these things make me feel like I have it within my grasp to be a picture perfect homemaker (like that is a real thing or something) and that we can appear “normal” if I have these things in place. (Don’t roll your eyes - even if your goal isn’t “homemaker”, you have things that make you feel like your goal is tangibly attainable through your own way of doing things). But I need to realize that there are things way more important than being a Better Homes and Gardens center spread and I should not put too much value on the things.

People should always have our best, and our things should always take second place.When I entertain guests they always get the real people cups we use, and we use the plastic cups with princesses and superheros. If more than three people come over,  I have to pick my three favorite people to give the The Glass to... so if you come over to my house and get stuck with a green lantern cup you know what it means.

It means we have broken the last three cups.

PROLOGUE

With four kids, sleeping late is a rare luxury. I enjoy it only when the compassion of my dear husband is at it’s most expressive. Even though I am up by 6am every day I still get up later than he does, so when he says he will rise early with the children on a Saturday so I can remain undisturbed in a blanket cocoon I know he really loves me. That is really the best way he can show it... flowers are nice and a movie is great - but sleep? Man, nothing is better than undisturbed rest in a comfy bed!

Sleep is a precious thing and until you go without it for a few years you assume it is not only a need but a constitutional right provided for in one of those amendments that you haven’t read yet. And so I come to the point…

Things are rarely the same in real life as we believe they are going to be and even less often are they the way we are told they are going to be by the Media. They are even, for some stupid reason, not the way they seem to be for every other person on the planet. You look at these “other people” and you see in-shape, bike-riding, poster children for the dental profession who have clean houses, cute kids, nice hair, big yards, dogs that heel and Friday nights out on the town followed by relaxed Saturdays full of cartoons, friends, naps and mowing the lawn (that picture perfect chore that handsome men do on sunny days without their shirts on).

What are you doing wrong? Why does your life not look like this? Why have you not gone anywhere for the last two years worth of Fridays, and Saturdays are just Thursdays all over again? Why is it that your bicycle has only one tire and the closest thing to “in-shape” you can claim is that you own a spandex something or other (where is that thing?). Why are your kids always covered in some kind of unidentifiable slime and leaving crap all over your house? And what are naps anyway?

I had a life-altering experience the other day that answered this question for me. I got a phone call from my sister.

My sister and I both homeschool our kids. She called to tell me she had seen some pictures on Facebook of some of our school projects and after seeing what we had been doing decided she should give up homeschooling all together. Apparently, compared to our awesomeness, she had failed beyond reason at teaching and it was no longer a benefit to her children to teach them at home if she could not do better. While we were having live action reenactments of western frontier living she was having modern-day, pre-teen melt downs upon the pursual of each and every math problem presented.

Turns out, to my sister I was the “other People”! I was the one with everything perfect!

Impossible! For one thing, my teeth are nowhere near poster quality and for another, I feel like quitting homeschooling every year!! There is practically a whole month in there where I am sure that handing my children over to the ever elusive Sasquatch for wilderness survival training  would have been a better choice than homeschooling. (I don’t know how much you know about New England but February is a pretty rough month and if you are not as tough as ice picks and armed with snow tires and endless cups of coffee you will want to give up on a whole lot more than schooling. Even then your chances are iffy. But I digress.)

Why would my sister think i was the picture of homeschooling success? Because that is all she saw. We as human beings try to put forward the best parts of ourselves and conceal that which is less appealing. Understandably so. No one wants to be known as the lady who has to wax her upper lip or the one who has boogies that need to be cleaned out daily or the guy with the foot fungus or the parent whose kid just locked their friend in the closet then forgot about them until called upon to produce said friend an hour later. No one wants to be that friend either.

Be that as it may, i think there is something invaluable in opening up and being real. In letting people see the ways in which you fall short. In showing that you have a mess and crazy stuff and things you deal with and occasional spurts of brainlessness. Because as much as we don’t want others to see that we are “that one with the thing”  we all secretly know that we are and believe we are fighting that battle alone. We assume and feel the condemnation of those who don’t even know our struggle without stopping to think that they may (and probable are) struggling with the very same things.

Let me tell you what this book (blog) is NOT:

It is Not an excuse to act like a college freshman on his first spring break in FL after being released from a mental ward (“no one's perfect so no one can judge me.”)

It is Not a reason to give up trying to be that person we want to show to the world (“no one is perfect so why even try.”)

It is Not a tool to make others feel vulnerable and pathetic (“no one is perfect so if I play my cards right i will look even better!”)

Let me tell you what this book (blog) IS:

It Is an example to show you that in all of your human struggle, you are not alone. Everything in this book is a true story so when you see someone living out something so dumb it had to have been made up, it wasn’t - and you can say “wow there is someone worse than me!” and when you see something that you yourself have been guilty of you can say “boy, I’m glad i’m not the only one!”

It Is to encourage you to be forgiving of others because, baby, you’re right there with them! If you’re not alone, neither are they. And don’t go and say “well they do this! At least I don’t do that”... well maybe you don’t but you got your own brand of stupid.

It Is an example of how to be real with people and ourselves and God. And being real is important. There is no true relationship, no grace, no trust, no love where there is no honesty. Show who you really are in all of your mess and when you do the gratitude and friendly connection will flow like the mighty Mississippi in a spring thaw.

Trust me! All of your friends are struggling with the same stuff and are trying to pretend that they have it all together with, perhaps, enough success that you are convinced they do. So now you don’t want them to know that you are the only basket case in the group, which is the same thing everyone else is thinking and you all carry around this big secret load alone. Talk about dumb!

This book is also to make you laugh. To help you see the humor in our humanity - and trust me, there is plenty of it. We need to be able to laugh at ourselves and say “I am a freakin’ mess but God’s grace is sufficient for me and He loves me even in my mess.”

Knowing that His Grace is enough and a we don’t have to take ourselves so seriously is a huge load off! We have a mound of things trying to stress us out but if we can get rid of the idea that we need to prove something to somebody I bet half of that stress would be gone.