A body is not meant to function with only 3 hours of sleep. At least not my body. And certainly not on a day when I have to sit through an 8 hour board meeting. Where’s that intravenous needle? I need CAFFEINE!
Some day, soon, I hope, my children will all be healthy again, and I will get to SLEEP!
I’m not particularly fond of catchy little sayings. Especially Christian ones. You know what I’m talking about – “Jesus is the Reason for the Season”, “WWJD” – I can’t even think of any more because I’ve blocked them from my memory.
This mild dislike bubbles into pure loathing when I see these “pearls of wisdom” etched into Christian kitsch. Walking into an average Christian bookstore makes me shudder. Wading through the clap-trap of “test-a-mints” and Christian bobble-heads to get to the books is too painful to endure. So I very rarely set foot in those places. My dear friend Michele says it makes her want to do her best tae kwon do kick and destroy all those glass shelves of Christian mockery. (If you want to read a good book about this, check out “Addicted to Mediocrity”.) If you share my opinion, you might enjoy a perusal of “Truth is Stranger than Fiction” at the Wittenburg Door. Or check THIS out for a good laugh.
While the principle behind it may be reasonably sound, I hope no one EVER gives me a bracelet or bumper sticker or t-shirt with the letters “WWJD” emblazoned on it. What would Jesus do? Well, for starters, I don’t think he’d wear one of those bracelets! Or etch his name on plastic bobble-heads. He made trees and mountains, for God’s sake, why the heck would he want to associate himself with PLASTIC?
That’s my rant for the day, but that’s not really what I wanted to talk about. On the topic of WWJD, yes, I DO try to live by Christ’s example (or at least on my better days), but often I find myself thinking in terms of WW(fill in the blanks with the name of one of my friends or family)D. When I’m struggling with being a parent, I consider the super-mom in my life, and ask myself WWCD (what would Cathie do). When I’m stressed out with how messy my house is getting, I think about the clean freak and wonder WWDD (what would Diane do). There’s a long list for me…here are just a few…
taking a good photograph, hosting a party – WWCD (Cynthia)
making people laugh, understanding politics – WWMD (Marcel)
planting/caring for flowers, crafting word pictures – WWDD (Dwight)
doing computer-techie stuff, buying stereo or computer equipment – WWBD (Brad)
interpreting scripture, questioning “truth” – WWDD (Dad)
crafting a poem, initiating conversation with a stranger – WWSD (Sue)
coming up with teaching ideas for my kids, being a gracious hostess – WWLD (Lorna)
being a fun uncle/auntie, pleasing people – WWJD (J-L)
baking a cake, showing lots and lots of love – WWMD (Mom)
showing compassion, making people feel valued – WWLD (Linda)
being authentic, making kick-ass soup – WWMD (Michele)
On my more self-judgmental days, I can interpret that as weakness – that I don’t have enough confidence in my own abilities to trust my own judgment, or that I’m not relying on God enough to lead me. But on my better days, I like to think of it as letting people impact and inspire me.
There are lots of significant people in my life, and I like the fact that they inspire me. I think we should be open to letting people touch us, teach us, and change us. I don’t think we were meant to figure it all out on our own.
That’s part of the reason I like blogging and reading other blogs. I like sharing my moments of inspiration, and letting other peoples’ moments of inspiration touch me. It helps to know that there are other people trying to figure out some of the same things I’m trying to figure out.
And now that I’ve gotten to know a few blog friends, my list of WW_D will get longer. Thanks for that – but don’t expect me to put it on a t-shirt!
Don’t you wish, sometimes, that you could hear the world through the ears of a child?
Saturday, in the backyard, Maddie heard the birds chirping in the tree and said “MOM! The birds can talk too!”
Today, in the laundry room, she heard the thumping of the washing machine and said “HEY! It’s making music!” She even made up a song to go with the rhythm of the machine. It was something about dying monsters in the zoo. Not sure where that came from. But what a treat to hear music in the mundane things in life! From now on, when I’m doing the dreaded laundry, I’ll have to listen for the music.
What fun! I got a real kick out of all those comments on the last post. It seems that when I’m feeling the least profound I illicit the most response. Not sure what that says, but I’ll take it for what it’s worth.
I got interviewed by my sister, ccap. She sent me the following five questions. Just for fun, ’cause she was hangin’ around watching me, I asked Nikki the same questions. I included hers here too, because most of hers are better than mine!
1) If you could have one superpower, what would it be?
Nikki’s answer: “burp really loud so that you cause earthquakes. So Saddam Hussein would come out of his hole and die. Mwwaa-ha-haa!”
My answer: I can’t think of anything particularly meaningful, and since the thing I long for right now is a clean house, I’ll just say the ability to snap my fingers and have my house spotless. Guess I’m in a practical frame of mind these days.
2) If there were one childhood experience that you had that you could protect your children from having what would it be?
Nikki said: “when your mom says NO to Slurpees”
My answer: I played baseball when I was a kid, but I was never particularly athletic. I usually got stuck in the outfield because my skills weren’t worthy of the infield. I remember this one girl who’d moved to our town a year or two before. She was older than me and she was a bully. And she was good at sports. She hardly ever missed the ball. The day I remember in particular, I missed the ball when it was hit to my section of the outfield. She was in the outfield with me and she started yelling at me for missing the ball. When my mom picked me up after the game, I cried all the way home. It was one of my worst memories. Mom said I could quit baseball if I wanted to, but I really didn’t want to, so I stuck it out, even though I was scared of her the rest of the season. I hate bullies. I hate it when a person makes another person feel small. I wish my kids never had to experience being bullied.
3) What aspect of your daily routine do you look forward to most?
Nikki said: “playing on the computer when I get to go on IMDB”
My answer: I love it when all the kids are in bed, the housework is done (or at least that portion of it that I feel I need to do that day) and I can crawl into bed and read a book for awhile. On my worst days, when I’m really tired or when I get to bed late, I only make it through a page or two, but on my best days, I go to bed right after the kids and read for an hour or more.
4) What trait is most annoying to you in other people? Elaborate.
Nikki said: “there’s a guy in my school who pees in his pants”
My answer: Narrow-mindedness. I get really annoyed with people who have no flexibility to consider other ideas. I find there are incredibly narrow-minded people on both the left and the right side of the political spectrum, and that ticks me off. And c’mon, really, don’t they know that I’m right and they’re not??? teehee!
5) If you were attending a costume party and had all the time in the world to design a costume and had every item necessary at your disposal what would your first 2 picks be for the ultimate costume?
Nikki said: “lots of jewellery and lots of funky clothes… I would like to dress up as Oprah Winfrey or Michael Jackson”
My answer: Oh boy, this is a tough one. “all the time in the WORLD?” Yeah, but you KNOW I still wouldn’t get around to doing it until the night before! Hmmm…let’s see… some day I’d like to try to dress up like the world – make a big globe out of foam, paint all the continents – you get the picture. And perhaps another idea might be to dress like a peacock – a male peacock – with the magnificent plumage trailing behind me and the feathers that look like giant eyeballs. (I think I should come back to this question when I’m in a more imaginative frame of mind- that’s the best I can do for now.)
Anyone else want to try?
The Official Interview Game Rules
1. If you want to participate, leave a comment saying “interview me.” (Make sure I have your email address.)
2. I will respond by asking you five questions – each person’s will be different.
3. You will update your journal/blog with the answers to the questions.
4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview others in the same post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions
I wanna sit down at this computer and type something profound and noteworthy. I wanna be creative and brilliant and wax poetic about something meaningful. I wanna make you laugh or make you cry or make you sit in awe of the way I string together words.
But I got nothin’. Big ZIPPO. Zilch. Nada. Don’t know why, but I’m drained dry. Got no creative spark, even when I dig down deep. The only thing down there, in the place where there USED to be a creative spark, is a pile of smoldering embers, soggy and wet from too many days of rain, rain, and more rain.
So, in the absence of brilliance, here’s a list of boring random thoughts…
1. I just finished reading “Secret Life of Bees”. MAN I wish I could write like that. (Yup, for those of you who were wondering, that was one of my purchases with my birthday money.)
2. Tonight, after a long and frustrating evening, in which it seemed the only way I was interacting with my children was in the form of argument, I walked into the kitchen and heard the song Marcel had playing. “How could I live without you” – by Trisha Yearwood. That was one of the songs we danced to at our wedding. Right there, in the kitchen, tonight, we danced again. The kids were in bed, and it was just him and I in the kitchen. Yeah, go ahead and smile, ’cause it was a nice moment between two people who might forget sometimes, but after 12 years, are still pretty crazy about each other. And in the words of Trisha… How could I live without him? There was one day when I thought I might have to learn to live without him, but thank God, I didn’t have to.
3. We’ve been doing interviews for one of the director positions at work this week. We’ve done six and have one more to go. Part of me loves being on THIS side of the table – getting to ask the questions and watching how people struggle to present themselves in the right light. What makes them answer the way they do? And why is that I form an opinion of a person almost before they’ve finished answering the first question? Do those opinions have anything to do with reality? But there’s another part of me that finds this completely exhausting. And by the sixth interview, I have a heck of a time trying to keep them all straight. And then, the other part of it is having some empathy for the person on the other side of the table. All of the people we interviewed are from different cities and most from different countries, and so all of them have probably had to have conversations with their families – “if I get this job, we’ll have to move away from home.” And yet, only one of them will get it, and so the others will have to live with the disappointment, and tell their families that no, mommy/daddy didn’t get the job this time. That’s the part where I don’t really like having their future in my hands.
4. PLEASE somebody make the rain go away. That’s ENOUGH already! I got soaked and muddy biking home from work today, and I just wanted to crawl into the bathtub and CRY!
5. If I can JUST survive next week (board meetings, team retreat that I have to lead, major project deadlines) I MIGHT actually be able to take a couple of days off. Oh, I sure do hope so!
6. Somebody said to me today (not one of the people we were interviewing, by the way) “If you don’t have passion for something, then you shouldn’t be doing it. Find someone else who can do it better.” It’s not entirely practical, ’cause there are LOTS of things we have to do that don’t have anything to do with passion, but I think he’s partly right. But sometimes you just have to trudge forward and hope the passion catches up with you.
I think I’ll go to bed now. Maybe the beauty sleep will help revive that creative spark. Or maybe not, and I’ll slug (is that a word I can use as a verb?) through another sloggy soggy day just hoping some light will appear.
By the way, hello to Glenda! Don’t know you, but I hear (from Michele) that you’re reading, and you’re welcome! If Michele likes you, I’m sure you’d be a friend of mine, ’cause Michele’s got GREAT taste!