Gobbling it up...

I remember those days. The days of waking up and wondering how I was going to fill the whole day with three small children. I am not naturally a morning person, but all toddlers are, so I was up and depressed by 6 a.m. most days. Lunch was a peanut butter and jelly by 9 a.m. Such was life. I thought it would never end.
The teen years came upon me, schedules grew, and I woke up wondering how I was going to fit it all in with three active boys. I started housework by 6 a.m. so I could get everything in before collapsing into bed by midnight. Some days I didn't even have lunch until 2 in the afternoon if at all.

I think of this today because my eldest son came home from college last night for the first time in 5 months. I can't believe that much time has passed. All I want to do is spend time with him. He is home for 5 days, and I wish they would stand still. Looking back I'm sorry I ever wasted a single minute.
Happy Thanksgiving... give thanks for every minute with those precious children. I am.

The Gamble of a lifetime...

I just spoke at a huge corporate event. Not necessarily huge in numbers, maybe 85 people or so, small in comparison to most of my audiences these days, but huge in significance.
This audience was comprised of the spouses, mostly women, of the upper tier leadership of Procter and Gamble, one of the largest companies in the world. They are amazing people from around the world, all different nationalities. I was to emcee, humor, teach, and entertain them as their keynote speaker. This is an audience to impress if there ever was one said my brain. My heart said something different.
Instead of trying to impress, I dared to encourage. My middle son Cooper said to me one day while preparing "Mom, these are just people like you, moms and dads, doing their best. Just people." What a genius I thought.. a chip off the old maternal block...
So that's how I approached it. I talked about life, humor, parenting, and sacrifice. I taught them, embraced them, and encouraged them just like I try to do with every audience I have the priviledge of speaking to. And you know what? They left encouraged, and refreshed, in need of both just like you, and just like me. It wasn't a gamble after all.

Humble pie is actually Mighty tasty....

Have you ever found yourself wondering why you do what it is you are doing?
For example, when I had my first son, I used to lay face down on the carpet by his crib while he slept thanking God that He saw fit to make me a mom. An exaggeration? Nope. If you'd known me B.C. (before children) you'd understand. God was taking a chance on me... at least that's how I felt.
I had a similar experience this last weekend at a speaker's seminar I participated in. There I was with a group of ten women, all desiring to be better speakers, and all working in a learning lab to perfect our skills. I was the veteran of the group by far. Some of these newbies had just started to look into the possibility of speaking for the very first time. I thought I would be at the head of the class...
To my amazement, there were women in this group who were clearly born to speak. Articulate, polished, moving...you name it, they had it. I was humbled beyond belief. Here were women without my fourteen years of microphone experience, not to mention the 20+ years of musical theatre time, and they were twice as composed as I have ever been.
My conclusion? Five years ago I would have crawled into a hole and never spoken again. This time, I saw the humor and promise of what God has called me to: not by might, not by power, but by My Spirit, says the Lord.

No such thing as a free lunch!

Teenagers! The economy! Who can understand either?
My friend just told me she was missing her entire jumbo roll of aluminum baking foil. That stuff isn't cheap, but that's just a detail to her determined teenage son who used the whole roll to make himself look like a burrito in order to qualify for Chipotle's "free" burrito day.
His "free" $5.00 burrito cost his mother $7.00 in foil....but who's counting? Certainly, not him.