Living in Bravery...Being the Mom

Today I am wearing white shorts. I must say as a mom of a toddler it is one of the bravest things you can do this side of some kind of war or trauma. It got me thinking. What other acts of bravery do average women face every day just because they woke up...and then so did the kids.

1) We brave judgement from the very beings we brought life to; from our choice of breakfast, to outfits, to way what movies we allow them to watch, our kids just love to point out our dorkiness.

2) We brave judgement from other moms. Yeah, I bottle feed...and?

3) We brave sacrifice. Those shoes might be on sale with only one pair left in your size, but the baby needs diapers. Dang it! Poop wins.

4) We brave stains on every single thing we own. Sometimes, we don't want to know what it is, how it got there, or who did it....just clean it up.

5) We brave an unknown future with the faith and optimism that it will get better. In the US, we're even more blessed because we don't live in a war zone. Praise be to God that things can get better if we ALL make the right choices.

6) We brave the possibility of losing our children to their own bad choices or the bad choices of others. We cannot save them from stupidity all the time.

I think the thing we brave most of all is the uncertainty that we are "doing it right." Am I doing everything I can to help my kid be a productive member of society? Am I making the right choices? If I screw up, can I redeem my mistake? Am I doing too much? Am I doing too little?

What the #$#%$#%^ am I doing anyway?

Hears to all those brave moms out there: wear those white shorts...those little handprints don't stay little for long...be brave

look at it another way

I was having a little chat with mine husband this morning. I'm thinking it might encourage some of you too. What had happened was...

He was saying that he's not where he used to be spiritually speaking. My eyebrow shot up in confusion. You see, Bear and I see things differently...he speaks in binary code and I speak Gonzo the Great.

His side: Things are different in the different areas he's serving in. Not that they are bad; he approves of the changes/directions things are going in. But that's not the issue. It's more of the change-is-hard-and-I-don't- really-know-where-I-fit kind of thing. For really smart, tech-ish guys like Bear, this is hard place to be. You're looking at the data screen of your life and your spiritual bar used

to be up here, and now it's down here and what does this data show us. Oh no! My Jesus-ness is slipping! Emergency meeting! We must analyze the data and reconfigure our lives in a priority one setting. Commense analyzation process..... (an aside from the wife: this gets irritating because Bear has always kept Jesus at the forefront and doesn't see that sometimes. False data will screw up your Jesus chart in a jiffy, my friends)

My side: Wow. There's a pill for that.

Try to look at it another way. Things change because they do. Instead of looking up and down, flip the chart and look out. You're not in the same place you were because you're not the same person you were. You're still truckin' towards the Lord, just on a different path then you once traveled. A better path, might I add, because you've grown and paved the path a little for the people who are coming up behind you. Jesus-ness still intact...go and serve the Lord with confidence. The data on your graph is conflicted with false reports of the Devil. Abort the project and redefine you project goals.

I'm trilingual: I speak English, Gonzo and Geek. Groovy am I.

So be encouraged today if things aren't the way you think they should be in your relationship with Jesus. Just really check the data and the map to see where you really are. You might be surprised, hopefully, in a good way. If you jumped off the path, you might want to get back on before you picked off by wolves, bears or an angry mob disgruntled by the results of American Idol. It could happen.

Now, if you don't have a relationship with Jesus yet, it's never to late to pick up the map and start the journey for yourself. I can help you with that if you like. I am groovy after all.