Browsing Tag

Lessons

Boundaries, Character, Growth, Lessons, Patience, Prayer, Uncategorized

The Highish Road

Let’s be honest…

The high road is not known for being fun and flashy. 

It’s dusty and less traveled enough to not even have a speed limit.

There is no “entrance high” when ramping onto the high road.  If we got the same kick out of taking the high road than we do taking the Loop around Austin, more people would gladly choose it.   Most times there isn’t even a buzz 100 miles into the journey.  It usually comes much later, when looking back and understanding the sanity and peace of traveling this dumb road.  More importantly, the necessity of the LESSON which ended you up on the highish road. 

Truthfully, most times I’d rather just take the Middle Road. Where you can at least get by with a clever snapback.  Because man, there are some good ones for all the Karens and Janets.  

I’ve found myself more times in the swamp.  Not being able to quiet that sharp tongue.  Which never ends up feeling good.  It’s like missing the exit for the Loop and getting stuck in the muck of traffic, downtown Austin. When everything is blurted and off your chest, you think you’ll be free as a lark, instead you feel as low as a toad. 

That being said, I don’t know which road this essay puts me on.  I’m aiming for a higher one.  My hope is to share a little in hopes to help gracefully release some old tie downs that could be holding us back.   

Next to the trinity of my Maker, my husband and boys – extended family and friendships mean everything to me.  Every single thing.  Until they threaten the 5 things in front of them. 

I have created some sturdy boundaries, built through the years which have strengthened me to release some relationships that aren’t healthy for my family or our peace. 

When one continues to speak poorly about your family or children…release them.  It only seems reasonable to recognize their Exit sign.  According to their choices, they chose to sit in an Exit row, accepted the guidelines from the cute flight attendant (think 1980s stewardess here) when moving to that seat, and therefore pulled their own cord to exit your airplane.  Bless them as they float away. 

One can quietly honor the duration of a relationship, including the sharing that happened within it, and 100% be walking yourself and family back to your own bubble of peace, sanity and home.  Even when we are mentally on an airplane where you can’t control the roster or seating arrangement, we can close our eyes and visualize yourself walking back to 1st class, and pulling the curtain closed behind you. Like in the movie Bridesmaids, some of the noisy ones are in coach – ready to par-tay with your emotions and life when you just desperately need silence, peace, air pods, and maybe a glass of wine.

Even when others won’t take themselves on a road a little higher, YOU can. I’d like to think it’s possible that when we choose the elevated path, we can silently wish the person who put you on it would go climb a really tall and really thick cactus. I haven’t confirmed this, but feel God might overlook the later because of the earlier? I don’t know, maybe do your own prayer time on that.

Brene Brown tells us that when we are nervous, we always revert back to our highest level of training.  I think this also works with emotional training.  If we are in the habit of choosing our prayers, our words, our friends, our actions, our habits, and our surroundings wisely…we can slowly create a solid character that wouldn’t dream of taking any other path.

Wouldn’t it be nice to always travel the speedy loop?  To stay grounded and pay attention to the exits given which lead us to those highish paths.  They aren’t always the easiest, but they always end up bringing the most peace. Always. I wish that peace for you friend.

*In complete transparency…

This essay was written a long while ago. It was snappy, written in the weeds of hurt feelings and anger. It was written because I had begrudgingly ended up on the high road. I wanted off of it, and this essay was my ticket. A friend encouraged me to sit on it because she thought I was better than that. Or perhaps hoped me to be? After rolling my eyes and presenting a strong argument that I definitely was not better… I relented. I sat on it, occasionally going back to remove a sharp elbow, one at a time. A dagger here, a swift kick there – all sad feelings processed individually and worked through. Until eventually, I didn’t feel anger or sadness when reading it. Just resolve wrapped in peace.

**Photo by my crazy talented friend Gary Richardson

February 12, 2021 by
Family, Lessons, Parenting

Parenting pirates with bumpers…

A few weeks ago, we were preparing to host out of town friends for the weekend.   I get giddy in preparing for friends and love all the things that entails; the planning, the visit, hanging on the back porch late into the night, being cheesy and making them sign our guest book before they leave.

I also delight in the clean house that happens before guest arrive.  A lot. Sometimes I wonder if I subconsciously invite friends to stay so I will make myself clean out a closet or two in preparation of their arrival.  Probably not, but I still wonder.

My eldest child also loves to host last minute, summer-night, swim parties.  It’s never an organized, planned party, more of a, “Hey mom, we are headed to the house to swim, that ok?” gathering.  On this night, I reminded him that I had just cleaned the house and wanted it to stay that way due to company arriving the next day.  He assured me they were just hanging outside.  No biggie, just a chill night, swimming with friends and listening to music.

Just a few of the crew members…

I should pause here to add that I love Mason’s friends.  Adore them.  Some of them have been friends since they were in kindergarten, and I loved them as sweet, five year olds.  Now that they are headed into their senior year of high school, there really isn’t a time I say “No” to them being here.  We are soaking in the moments, socking away memories like gold coins.  Gold coins that we can look back on and count when our nest is empty.

The kiddos came and swam, a fun time was had, and several stayed over for the evening, crashed out in odd shapes of blankets in the game room.  The next morning, I walked into the living area and was horrified.  Clearly, a gang of pirates invaded our home in the night and destroyed my clean floors.  The dark wood looked like the mateys had ran a 5K on a caliche road before entering in the back door, and dropped crumbs to find their way back out to the pool.  Rosie the Roomba was no match for this job.

I walked into the kitchen to discover that Jack Sparrow himself had decided to cook chicken and rice for his whole gang.  The rascal was gracious enough to leave the dishes for his mother.  I can’t fully explain how random this meal was, or exactly where the ingredients came from.  Just a few hours before the teenage buccaneers arrived, I had determined there was nothing in our cupboards or freezers to fix for dinner, and ordered in.  In the morning sun, spare grains of rice lay burnt under the stove top grate, pots and pans filled up the sink, wet beach towels hung on the bar stools, three trashcans overflowed with the remnants of their bounty.  All I could see in my mind’s eye was salmonella dripping off of every surface.

Shiver.  Me.  Timbers.

Sometimes luck has a method of paving the way for you, and Mason has a knack for seeking out luck’s paved roads.  While standing there in the aftermath of the raided kitchen, it dawned on me that my son is a lot like his Momma. As much as these teens seek to create their own path, the pendulum swings back.  He too, strives to be a good host.   We both want our guest to feel at home, to leave refreshed, restored, and full.  Neither of us ever wish for our people to be famished, which is why I stock massive snack drawers for the kiddos and a wine cabinet for my girlfriends.  I made a mental note to start stocking more meat in the freezer, since Mason’s culinary skills and appetite had blossomed.

With three teenagers in the house, we are facing more situations where I realize it’s time to lower the bumpers on the parenting lane.  Some things need to be discovered on their own, like cleaning up our own messes.  Some still need guidance and discipline.  As their mom, I walk a tight rope of my boys calling me Leigh Anne Tuohy,  “The Blindside Mom” and the cheesy mom who still applies sunscreen to their teenage-sensitive faces and organizes their sock drawers when they aren’t looking.

Confession – I’ve always secretly rolled my eyes at the mom that makes her healthy, normal sized 12-year-old ride in a booster seat.  And, also the mom who throws keg parties and collects keys.  I’m looking for a happy medium, a half-way point; a place for a reasonable, loving, sometimes dorky mom to hang out.  Maybe not fully wrapping them in bubble wrap, but just from the chest up?

For now, it’s just the bumpers, it’s not time for him to find his own lane just yet, we are still family bowling here buddy.  Go wake up your pirates and find some mops.

July 12, 2017 by
Family, Lessons

Lessons from Kenny Rogers and Meme

 

From my earliest memory, I was in love with Kenny Rogers.  Completely smitten.  I’m sure it had something to do with the fact that my single mom and I lived with my grandparents and great-grandmother.  Everyone in the house loved country music.  Kenny, Dolly, the Oakridge Boys, and several more sang to me every day in the backseat of my grandmothers Cadillac.  My grandfather jokingly referred to Loretta Lynn as his girlfriend and it was a major tragedy in our household when Crystal Gail’s hair was shut in her car door and she had to have several inches trimmed.  Oh, the grieving we experienced over those lost locks.

With Meme at our happy place, the Clarendon Ranch.

One of my favorite Christmas gifts ever to receive was a Kenny Rogers record signed by the legend himself.  It was a gift from my grandmother and was deeply coveted. It became my claim to fame anytime there was a conversation about brushes with the rich and famous.  (That, and my mom said Eddie Rabbit drank out of our coke after a concert one time.)  As you can imagine, these stories brought instant popularity throughout elementary and especially middle school.  Once my 1990 peers heard “Kenny Rogers”, they completely overlooked the uni-brow covering my forehead and begged me to sit at their lunch table.

Much too soon, my grandmother was diagnosed with cancer.  As her time on earth drew to the end, I sat beside her bed trying to fit in as many conversations as we could.  Meme was my person.  My rock.  My constant. Throughout my childhood, I would sometimes burst into tears at the fear of her dying.  Odd behavior for a little girl, but I simply couldn’t imagine life without her.  Now, at the age of 21, I had to not only imagine it, but prepare for it.

It’s not easy to pack in all the conversations to sustain the rest of my life without her, but we did our best.  In the middle of one of those talks, it hit me that I never asked how she got the handsome Mr. Rogers to sign my record.  Did she meet him on one of their trips to Vegas?  Did she mail it to him?  Was she a member of his Fan Club?  Was that membership transferable? How was I going to live without her?  Didn’t God know she was everything to me?  How did life go on without your person here on earth? So many questions…not near enough time.

In the middle of our reminiscing, I asked the question, “Meme, you never told me how or where you had Kenny Rogers sign my record, was it Vegas?  Did you see him in concert?” She looked at me so confused that I thought the nurse must have upped her medicines.  Finally, she said, “Oh honey, I thought you knew…I signed that.”

Stop the press. Pause the tears.  WHAT??  Et tu Brute?

Meme left for heaven later that week.  I think once her confession was over, she was eager to meet Jesus with a clear conscious.  I’m sure he overlooked the Kenny Rogers fib, as I’m almost positive that was the worst thing she had to answer for.  After all, Meme was 99.9% perfect and 100% endearing.

Just ask Kenny Rogers.  Oh, wait…

Life is for the living.  Seasons came, went and we struggled to keep moving.  I’ve since recognized that in Meme’s last days, she was gently encouraging me to press into my Creator. To listen and honor the voice inside me as I learned to do the hard things.  My Creator should be my person, not her, who was leaving.  She was teaching me to stand on my own, while I was still holding on to her pant leg, as if she were dropping me off with a babysitter who resembled Marilyn Manson.

Seventeen years later, I still miss her deeply.  I don’t reckon that will ever change, but time has dulled the sting to bearable. I dream more of her and less of Kenny Rogers. I’ve since replaced my little record with iTunes and Pandora. I have learned when to hold ’em and when to fold ’em.

Meme left me with an ace that I can keep and lessons that I am still learning from.

Handsome Hubs and I at the Kenny Rogers exhibit in the Country Music Hall of Fame

April 23, 2017 by