Things I've Learned This Week

All moms should wear capes. You know it's true. 

Experts say caffeine is bad for you, fat is bad for you, sugar is bad for you. . . But don't worry, because that's bad for you too.

There's a thin line between "I should do a status update about that" and "I should talk to a therapist about that".

I'm much rather buy all new Tupperware than even bother to open this one to clean out whatever this used to be. 

An 103-year-old woman in Wales is officially the oldest Facebook user. It just goes to show you that you are never too old too waste your precious time.

Every time I look in the mirror, I see this old woman staring back at me. I think my house is haunted.

Fall is Awesome. Except for the rain. More precisely the kids boredom with the rain. The cabin fever. This called for desperate pre-planning measures. Solutions can be found in a little post I like to call: 

 It's Raining, It's Pouring, My Kids Find Me Boring

If falling asleep on the couch was a job, I’d be up for a constant promotion.

I’d appreciate it if the city just delivered the phone books straight to my recycle bin.

It's hard to have street cred when you know every word to all the children's show theme songs on The Disney Channel.

My 3-year-old really needs an "airplane mode".

Having sleepovers when you're an adult is just as fun as when you were a kid. Except after a couple of glasses of wine, you tend to not stay up as long as in years past. 

There is no surface in my home high enough that my ninja children cannot reach.

Despite what I may think at times, God never gives me more than I can handle. 

Simplifying Life: Believing God OR Clothes 2.0

Really, folks. Living in 7 articles of clothing is a lot harder this week that I originally thought.

You see, I ABHOR laundry. And it seems if I don't want to smell atrocious, I must do it daily. I've continued to learn this the hard way. Many times this week I've realized that the only thing I have clean is my OKC Thunder T-shirt and a pair of black leggings. You will not understand without picture evidence just how NOT RIGHT that outfit choice is, but I'm not ready to subject my readers to that kind of torture. Just picture a tight baby T paired with black spandex on Richard Simmons and know that it is close to that. Not okay. Laundry has become my life. Or reeking of B.O. and I'm really not ready to stoop to full-on hobo status for this social experiment, so a daily load it is. I'm tired of this month already.

Vainly, I'm just tired of seeing myself in the same things over and over. I'm tired of putting on make-up and doing my hair and then pulling on the same t-shirt I had on two days before. I don't feel attractive anymore. I know that sounds all kinds of conceited, but it really has opened my eyes a bit to how much what I put on the outside affects my mood and my emotions on the inside. I thought they were two totally separate things, but I'm realizing how closely they are linked in my life and that bothers me. I've walked around in a depressed funk lately, you can ask anyone in my home. Nothing's wrong, I just don't feel right. But what it boils down to is that I don't feel pretty or impressive or significant or attractive. I rely too heavily on the outward adornment to validate who I am. The truth is, my personality, the person that I am on the inside is impressive, significant, attractive, but I guess I've not believed it for a long time. I've masked the inside by putting on a nice little covering and calling it good. It's hard work spending more time uncovering the real ME, instead of hiding behind fancy clothes or a trendy wardrobe and letting that tell the story of who I am. Hard work, I tell ya.

So this week I'm spending more time and attention and energy working out who I am from the inside out. It's seems fitting that I am also going through a women's study at church by Beth Moore called Believing God.  I "just so happen" to be on the part where your focus is "Believing YOU ARE who God says you are".  I'm coming to grips with just how little I believed I am all the things that He says I am. . .Blessed, Forgiven, Chosen, Anointed, Adopted, Redeemed. Seems like such a simple concept. Of course I believe all those things! Do I though? Because when I spend more time picking out what outfit I'm going to wear for the day/event and not nearly as much time with God, I'm deliberately forgetting those things. If I believed I was those things, the result would be more worship, more seeking, more trust and less worry about life, and a life that is sold-out to God's passion for the world and His people and less focused on facebook and status and income and who pinned what recipe on pinterest.  I wouldn't care how many blog followers I had or how many people came to my son's birthday party. My life would be completely different. My focus would be on living a life of thankfulness because I am Blessed, I am Redeemed, I am Forgiven, I am Adopted, I am Chosen. . . and not having as many days of waking up and looking in the mirror being bothered by the fact that I have to wear my OKC Thunder shirt again today.

So in conclusion, this week has been poop. I've not really enjoyed it, but it's been necessary to get out impurities in my life that I would've continued to mask had I not done this social experiment. Living in 7 articles of clothing is changing me. I'm ready to be done with this month, because I kind of enjoyed myself just the way I was. The fact that I still have two whole weeks for God to reveal even more superficial tendencies of mine is quite frightening. I wonder sometimes how much more of a "fake" I could feel, but I'm sure He's sitting up there going, "Oh, dear. . .brace yourself. This mirror of mine is only getting started showing you unattractive views of your inner self".  Sounds like a barrel full of monkeys. My kind of fun, Lord. Bring it on. Just be gentle, will you?

1 Samuel 16:7b says: The LORD does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart.” [NIV] 

Find out what else I learned in this Clothes Fast

Simplifying Life: Week Three

I'm the "Difficult Child". . .

(image from sheknows.com)

God is never more REAL to me than when I'm parenting. 

I never realize how wrong I'm doing at the time. When I'm screaming and flailing my arms all about at a toddler who has insisted on spraying down every last bit of the bathroom walls with his own homegrown hose, I tend to lose my gloriously cool, calm, godly disposition that I'd been working on all morning. When the little monsters are tearing through the house at warp speeds chasing a dog who has just come in from the backyard and the result is muddy paw prints and muddy clothes and carpet and furniture and faces because they've collapsed on the floor in a wet, dirty heap, it's hard to compose my gentle, patient, super-feminine tone and not just go bat-shiz crazy on them!  When I've put them back in bed a gazillion times in the course of one thirty-minute episode of Drop Dead Diva and each time the excuse has been different and more creative (I forgot to brush my teeth.... my throat hurts and I need a drink.... there were scary noises at the window.... brother won't quit kicking me.... my eyes won't stay shut....) and I can't keep up with whether or not Jane and Greyson are about to have another "moment" or not, I seem to trade my supermom demeanor in for Cruella DeVille on Crack.  It's like Whack-A-Mole: Bedtime Edition and I'm at my ultimate wits END. It's in those moments, the ones where I find myself screaming my foul head off at toddlers who don't understand why their mom has "had it", or stand back and watch myself march into their bedrooms at the slightest little peep (after warning upon warning) and slam the television off, spank their behinds, holler "ENOUGH! I'm THROUGH with YOU!" and whip right back out the door leaving behind a wake of tears and frightened whispers and unanswered calls of "Moooooo-ooom..." behind me. These are the moments that I'm not proud of. These are the moments when I realize how much I need help.  These are the times when God gives me a glimpse of what it's like to parent me.  And let's just say, it's in these moments that I realize that there is no way on earth that I can do this thing called parenthood by myself. 

I've brought up before that I didn't have the greatest role models.  My parents, especially my mom, tried their hardest to parent my siblings and I the best way they knew how. And in many ways, they succeeded. I'd like to think that I turned out somewhat sane and not entirely emotionally damaged. But there are scars and there are bruises and there are sore spots in life and in memories that have shaped who I am today and that continue to shape who I'm becoming as a parent. Sometimes, I realize that I am unable to give my kids things because I was not given them myself. You cannot give what you've never received. I'm learning this everyday. I have a five-year-old who struggles. He is so much like his mommy, very vulnerable and very needy and when life hands you difficult situations, you react out of defense and protection. I've done it my whole life. Though I've tried to give him emotionally and physically what he needs on a daily basis, I'm finding that I come up short. I don't have it in me. I'm still healing from parenting neglect from years ago and causing these same emotional bruises to be inflicted onto my sons.

For example, I struggled for years and years with the need for a father figure. My parents divorced and even prior to that time, I never had a dad who was affectionate. He was "there" but never presently involved in the day to day. I continually sought affection from him only to get turned away and left in a very vulnerable state. I consistently tried to gain his approval and his attention but what I found more times than not were feelings of annoyance from him, as well as neglect. A child can only take so much of that before they build up a tough outer exterior and decide they are completely fine without the affection and the attention. I struggle in my relationships with my loved ones even now in the area of affection.  I desperately want it, but don't know how to ask for it. And when I do finally receive it, I don't know what to do with it. I almost push it away, like I don't deserve it or even like it. I find my son doing the exact same things, and I know it's because I have struggled in giving affection because I, myself have a bit of an aversion to it at times. I hate to think that they are suffering because I have not got the healing that I've needed until now. 

This past year has been full of reflection and spiritual growth and relationship-building and molding and I am so thankful that God has made me understand on so many new levels how much He loves and cares for me. In the way a Father does a Child. Within this time of healing and stretching, He's beginning to shine a new light on the way I look at parenthood. He's confirmed over and over how much of a failure I will be in this area, were it not for Him. Seriously. That may sound a bit trite, but it's completely true. I cannot do this well without His help. I will continue to be the Bedtime Nazi From Hell, the Bat-Shiz Crazy Lady chasing my kids through the house because of lack of patience, and the Bathroom Monitor with NO room for grace, if I do not let Him lead me into a better way of parenting. . .one in which I study and understand the way He parents ME. I'm quite sure I've done the spiritual equivalent of running muddy through the house and creating a mighty horror to clean up. I know I've created indignant, intentional messes in my life that rival those that my boys have made with their one-eyed monsters in the bathroom, leaving endless chaos and loads of regret. And never once have I felt God say that He was "through with me".  I wish I could parent like He does. I'm finding I can, but it takes a kind of personal surrendering that I've never known before. One in which I allow Him to speak to me everyday about new and more personal ways that I can show love to these boys. He's not always telling me ways to love them that make me feel comfortable. Most of the time they feel a bit forced and inconvenient, but each and every time, they bring some more healing in my own heart and get me closer and closer to theirs. More than anything, I want them to feel how much God loves them because they know how much I do.  

My super-intelligent hubby and lover-of-all-things-music-and-movie-related let me in on a spiritual nugget that he found in one of his old, favorite movies, The Crow. However dark and vengeful the film is overall, there is a scene between the Crow and a mother/daughter where he sees the physical damage that the mother is inflicting on herself (with drugs) and the effects that it has on her daughter and tells her:  Mother is the name for God on the lips and the hearts of children. Do you understand?  Right now, the God they see is in Me. Daily, I'm asking God to curb the Nazi Mommy mentality and control Cruella DeVille and let me see them the way He sees me. It's not always easy, and I'm literally messing up constantly, but I'm starting to feel a little less of me and a little more of Him.  It's a process. I just wish I wasn't such a ridiculously slow learner. Sometimes I realize I'm one of God's more "difficult children". He loves me in spite of it. 

50 DIY Halloween Costume Ideas

If you are anything like me, you walk around aimlessly in the party stores year after year looking for the perfect costume for your little monster. When you finally find one that will do, you look down at the price tag and GASP. Two little pieces of fabric barely sewn together, a little mask held together by string

 and a couple of staples = $50.  Yep, we think that's fair. 

Well, I've got news for ya! You could probably make the same thing or something EVEN cuter at home with everyday household items and a whole lot less money. So it will take a little time to piece it all together, but that's the fun of Halloween isn't it?  You and your little goblin can do this together!  Start a new tradition!

Here ya go: 

50 DIY Halloween Costume Ideas

BumbleBee

 Animals of the WILD Kingdom

Boxer

Homeless Little Guy

Little Chicken

Construction Worker

Cowboy

Dwight (from the Office)

Little Flowers

Garden Gnome

Handy Manny

Hawaiian Hula Dancers

Little Lambs

Mad Scientist

Magician

Nacho Libre

Little Pirate

Popeye The Sailor

Raining Cats and Dogs

Scuba Diver

 Shark

Toddler Superhero

Toadstool

Mini Golf Pro

Lady Bug

Mermaid

Mime

Minions

Oompah Loompah

Bowl of Spaghetti

Cat & The Hat

Clark Kent (Superman)

UPS Delivery Man

Where's Waldo?

Wall-E

Sweet Little Piglet 

Super Mario Brothers 

Biggest Loser

Baby Sumo Wrestler

Colonel Sanders

On Safari

Planet/Solar System

Beetlejuice

Pinata

Cruella DeVille

Mr. T

Napoleon Dynamite

I hope these ideas come in handy or trigger your creativity to come up with your very own!

Happy Halloween to YOU and here's to making lots and lots of memories with our little monsters!

If you need any MORE ideas, check out last year's post

LAST MINUTE HOMEMADE HALLOWEEN COSTUMES

*Most of these photos I found on Pinterest, Google, or Babble.  Mad thanks to them for all the awesome ideas.  I could never have come up with this list by myself!