Memories in the making

Here are a few funny snippets from my recent life:

*One of my Kindergarten students gathering a bouquet of fallen, brightly colored leaves and handing them to me saying, "These are for you, Miss Heather Beautiful. They are for when you get married. And then I can come too."

*Kyler telling me this morning that he wants to fix cars and be a "fire guy," not a cop and he wants two kids- one named Kyler and one named Austyn.

*Kyler asking me, "You know what, Mom? I have a penis. And you don't have one- ha, ha!" As he sticks his tongue out at me and runs away.

*"All the dinosaurs live in the forest. I saw one by my house. Well, it was a rhinoceros. Actually, it was a rattlesnake." ~Quote from one of my students.

*My mom whispers to Kyler, "Guess what? I love you." Kyler leans over to her and whispers back, "Guess what? I love my mom."

*Kyler singing the ABC's almost perfectly-

"a-b-c-E-E-f-g-h-i-j-k-l-m-P-q-r-s-t-u-B-"doubeloo"-x-y-z."

*Kyler shakin' his honky-tonk badonk-a-donk to the Hokie Pokie. He told me, "Guess I learned, Mom? You do a pokie-pokie and you turn a butt around!"

I fell off the face of the earth

Wow! It has been a while! I actually almost forgot I had a blog! Good thing I don't have many loyal fans... I heard some interesting things at church this morning. The sermon was about anger and how anger can impact your life. The guest speaker said that anger is an acceptable feeling as long as you don't let it turn into a sinful behavior. He said something that I really liked- about what that means- something like, sinful anger is any reaction that is intended to hurt, slander or punish another person. That is so true! I realized that not only is it not nice to yell and scream at my ex when he being hurtful; it is not being Christ like. I really need to work on holding my tongue, taking a deep breath and saying a prayer for grace. I hope that someday I can learn to be a gracious person. I want people to say that I am compassiate, empathetic and gracious. GraceFUL would be nice too, but I have to pick my battles. Letting one person get under my skin and get me to a point of yelling and saying colorful words that I shouldn't say, is not really the picture of grace. So let's just pray that I can accomplish a little of that change in my heart... shall we?

Why does everything have to be so complicated?

I wish that people would just say how they feel and what they are thinking and why they are making the choices that they are... I wish that friends were truthful, but always know how to be sensitive at the same time. I wish that old friends had never changed. I wish we were able to see the truth about new friends. I wish that people would stop getting others involved when it doesn't concern them in the first place. I wish that anger and hurt could be approached with love and empathy instead of defensiveness and destruction. I don't even know what I'm trying to say...

Prayer for Understanding Grace

Lord, give me understanding.
Help me forgive those that have hurt me.
Let me try to see things through different eyes. Blinded eyes. Cloudy eyes.
Give me strength and courage.
Keep kindness in front and mercy right behind it.
Help me be gracious to others as You have been so gracious to me.
Take my hurting heart as an offering to You
And heal it again as You have so often before.
Please bless those in my life- new friends, old friends, no longer friends, family friends...
Bless them and help them see Your light.
Give them understanding of what is right and show them the path that is Truth.
Protect my mind from needless drama and help me filter the important stuff with the trivial.
Keep me standing tall and make me strong.
Touch me with You grace so that I may be gracious to others.
Thank you for Your peace,
Amen

I don't think I quite understand...

A friend of mine (although no longer a friend at this point) shut me out of her life after she married a man of her religion. I don't know this man and therefore, have no idea who my friend has become. I don't know why she has shut me out or what I have done to her. I don't even know if she has ever received any of my phone messages or mail that I have sent her because she has never acknowledged them or responded back to me. Perhaps this change was predestined. Perhaps it was always going to happen and it just happened to coincide with her marriage. That is a possibility- I'll acknowledge that. This friend had told me 6 months after she was married that she was a newlywed and that I really didn't have any right to expect her to be anything else other than a newlywed. Okay, I understand that maybe my timing was off a bit and I shouldn't have expected to see her very often at that time. It's coming up on 2 years now and over 1 year since I have spoken to her. I have tried calling. I sent a birthday card. I invited them both to my son's birthday party. No response whatsoever. I know that she is a very busy person- aren't we all? I know she is a newlywed. I just can't fathom my freind, whom I considered to be the sister I never had, totally and completely ignoring me. I was afraid that her entire family had shut me out and hated me or thought I wasn't good enough to be her friend. (I have recently found out that that is not even close to the truth). Her family was pretty much my second family- I practically lived at their house throughout high school and vice versa. Her parents have always welcomed me into their home and their hearts as if I was their own and never ever felt like I couldn't be around them because I had different religious beliefs. If fact, at my friend's wedding, her father actually saved me more than a few times from various people asking me qeustions about their religion that I had no idea about. He simply put his arm around me and stood there silently, until somone would approach me and ask me soemthing, then answering, "You know? Heather is a dear friend of our family and not LDS." He never made me feel awkward about it or like I was a lowlife heathen that wasn't as great as his family. I was his family. I have never judged my friend's religion- in fact, I had the utmost respect for her because she was the kindest, sweetest, most compassionate, empathetic, non-judgemental person I had ever in ly entire life. I have never met anyone as selfless and caring as she, and I always strived to be more like her in those areas. I am in utter shock that after 13 years, I have to say goodbye to her and just walk away. I don't think I have ever been so hurt so deeply as I am because of her actions (actually, lack of actions). I truly don't understand how someone who has always been there for me and has always been open with me about our different religions, could suddenly and without warning, change so completely. I thought once upon a time, that there was a chance for reconciliation... now, I'm not so sure...

Amendment

I need to make a slight change to a previous post. Kyler's Beta fish is not named "Milkshake" as I previously thought. He has informed me that the fish's name is actually "Doctor Milkshake." i apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.

Inspiration...

It's funny the things that can inspire me. Today, it was the Disney movie Mulan. "Who is this girl I see? Why does my reflection show someone I don't know? When will my reflection show who I am inside?" Who knows? Stay tuned...