Ear Infection

Princess began having trouble hearing at the beginning of this week. By Wednesday night, she could not hear you speak to her unless you were right next to her. Thursday morning we went to the pedi and both of her ears were so infected that her eardrums could not move. The pedi asked her, "Do your ears hurt?" and she replied, "No sir." Amazing. She never runs a fever unless she has the flu and she rarely complains of pain. Ok, backtrack. She's a drama queen so if she has a papercut, it's worth a moan or two. If she jams her finger while playing basketball, you'll hear about it all day. But, if she's really sick or really hurt ... she pulls up her boot straps and deals with it. I admire her. She's my hero.

RAK

Random Acts of Kindness

I love Lysa's blog. I always get a chuckle or stab of conviction. Today is about Random Acts of Kindness. I actually prefer to think of them as SLAK ... Spirit Led Acts of Kindness. You know that internal shove you get when you have the option to let someone in front of you during high traffic times? Or how about when someone is wandering around in the parking lot looking for their car and you have the option to drive by or stop and help them find the car? You hear that a friend is having a rough time and you think, "I should send them a card..." All of these are really easy, simple ways to show kindness. By definition, the person receiving the kindness does not necessarily deserve it or else it would be a payment ... not an act of kindness.

Dictionary.com defines Kindness as:

1.
the state or quality of being kind
2.
a kind act; favor
3.
kind behavior
4.
friendly feeling; liking.

Did you notice in the 2nd definition that kindness is also called a favor? This made me look up Favor in the dictionary:

1.
something done or granted out of goodwill, rather than from justice or for remuneration; a kind act

I guess I always thought of a favor as something that needed to be repaid. I learn new things every day!

Luke 6:34-36

And if you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? Even 'sinners' lend to 'sinners,' expecting to be repaid in full. But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.

Boundaries

I drive carpool every other week. In the afternoons, it is only Princess and her friend, "M". On Friday, Princess and her friend were telling me about their time on the playground which I will get to later. One particular boy, who I will give the original name of "boy", really likes Princess. She has had a crush on him since the end of last school year. This boy's family has had some hard times lately with his parents' divorce. He has a stuttering issue as well that makes him a target of his peers. Princess accepts him just as he is and has a heart for him. It doesn't hurt anything that he also likes horses and they pretend to be horses when they play together. As the year has progressed, they have matured and play other games besides the horse game. King and I have a "no dating" rule. Crushes are not encouraged, but as part of life and maturing, they are inevitable. We have chosen to use this relationship as a teaching one.

"Boy" is providing us some great teaching material! Last week he brought a pocket knife to school and showed it to Princess on the playground, swearing her to secrecy. Being the obedient gal that she is, she told me about it rather hesitantly as she didn't want to break his trust.

This past Friday on the playground, a group of kids surrounded "Boy" and were teasing him. Someone suggested he pretend to be a bull which he proceeded to do with gusto. He began headbutting everyone in his path, knocking my little carpool buddy off of her feet when he hit her in the stomach. The girls then told me how "Boy" makes Princess do whatever he wants her to do. He holds her wrist in a way that she can't get away and drags her places. All kinds of alarms go off in my head when I hear things like this. Then Princess told me about "Boy" and a friend making the sign of the cross in the dirt and stepping on it, then holding her wrist and trying to force her to do the same. She was greatly frustrated and wrenched away from them, using her foot to erase the cross from the dirt.

This is the point where I talked to the girls about boundaries. "Boundaries are good for you in all of your relationships. You will be a good friend to "Boy" if you tell him your boundaries and then stick to them. Tell him you are a lady and you will be treated like a lady." I went on to encourage them to involve an adult to help them if someone was violating their boundaries, in this case, "Boy". As elementary kids, this is a small problem. If this boy does not learn his boundaries and thinks he can force a girl to do what he wants ... this could have huge and devastating effects in 5 years.

At times I wish this friendship with "boy" would disappear, but I am learning to be thankful for this struggle. Princess is learning how she wants to be treated. She has a compassionate heart and I can see her as a teenager falling for some smooth talk from a hurting guy. Now is the time to teach her boundaries ... for her safety and well being. In our society, it's been pretty easy to teach virtue as there is so much material available as negative examples. What is a little harder for me is the more elusive topic of honor, respect and boundaries.

Music

I found this music while visiting another blog. I love reflective, tender instrumental music. As a visitor of my blog, do you find the music distracting? Do you prefer a quiet blog page or does music enhance your blogging experience? Comment and let me know!

Kindness

My precious friend, Katybug, nominated me for the Everyday Kindness Award. I'm a little baffled by this because Katy knows me really well. :) I humbly accept your gift and truly thank you, Katy. Can I give this award back to you? I think you are pretty nifty, too.

What does kindess mean anyway?

"Let a righteous man strike me - it is a kindness; let him rebuke me - it is oil on my head." Ps 141:5

"But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control." Gal 5:22

"And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus." Eph 2:6-7

May I be kind in telling the truth, in allowing the Spirit to flow through me, and in resting and celebrating the incomparable riches of God's grace expressed through Christ Jesus!

The Day

What does this day hold for you? What do you have planned? What will make this day different from yesterday? Do you have great plans, normal plans?

"Be very careful, then, how you live - not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil."

Do you know who said this? What was the author drawing out of the reader?

Make the most of every opportunity.

If one is very careful then, one would be highly alert to each action that they take. Every opportunity does not indicate being careful with only the opportunities that you deem important, but being careful with every single, solitary opportunity.

"Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God."

Make the most of every opportunity. Imitate God.

"Therefore, as God's chosen people, holy and early loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all thse virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity."

Make the most of every opportunity. Imitate God. Forgive as the Lord forgave you.

"But godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it. But if we have food and clothing, we will be content with that."

Make the most of every opportunity. Imitate God. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. Godliness with contentment is great gain.

"For God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love and of self-discipline. So do not be ashamed to testify about our Lord, or ashamed of me his prisoner. But join with me in suffering for the gospel, by the power of God, who has saved us and called us to a holy life - not because of anything we have done but because of his own purpose and grace. This grace was given us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time, but it has now been revealed through the appearing of our Saviour, Christ Jesus, who has destroyed death and has brought life and immortality to light through the gospel...That is why I am suffering as I am. Yet I am not ashamed, because I know whom I have believed, and am convinced that he is able to guard what I have entrusted to him for that day."

Make the most of every opportunity. Imitate God. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. Godliness with contentment is great gain. God gave us a spirit of power, of love and of self-discipline. Join in suffering for the gospel, by the power of God, who has saved us and called us to a holy life - not because of anything we have done but because of his own purpose and grace.

Oh .... Mohhhmmy

We have hit the tween years. I love it and dread it. My daughter is sweet. She's an obedient gal. She really wants to please. However, I can see those teen years coming and all that those years bring with them. I have been dreading it.

Until today.

Today I listened to HomeWord with Jim Burns at OnePlace.com. This particular interview was with Susie Shellenberger, the editor of Brio magazine. The topic was, "Hearing What Your Daughter Isn't Telling You". I was humbled. I was excited. I was nervous. I was relieved. I experienced a lot of emotions while listening because for the first time I realized that I have been quite ill with Ostrich Syndrome. It's quite debilitating, this syndrome. Those affected proceed through daily life with their rears in the air and heads in the sand pretending that their "babies" are not growing up. I got a kick in the seat today and I am very grateful. Digging the sand out of my ears, I realized all over again that NOW is the time to make the teen years great. I need to truly work at my relationship with my daughter to cultivate intimacy and fun ... while she still wants to hang out with me. :)

I'm actually choosing to change my attitude about the change that is encroaching upon my daughter. Praise God that she is normal and can grow up. Praise God that she has the ability to articulate herself to me. Praise God that she can discern right from wrong (even when she doesn't make the right choice between the two). Praise God for hormones as they are part of growing up. It's all good. Change is supposed to be hard. Why was I telling myself that her growth was to be dreaded? All great character growth is ugly in the process, but the result is a blessing to behold.

So, I have chosen to embrace this eye-rolling, fashion-driven, big-sighing, please-don't-embarress-me-Mommy time and just love the whole thing. That's what love is afterall, isn't it? Love is patient. Love is kind. Love does not envy, it does not boast. It is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil, but rejoices in the truth. Love always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.

Mine!

Basketball is fun. I love to watch these girls learn the game. I am a bit perplexed with the conundrum resulting from inate competition and being a woman of grace. This week after the game, Princess recalled that she and a girl from the other team do not like each other. After a bit of conversation, the reason was competition ... not that anyone has done anything wrong or hurtful ... Princess is just learning what good, healthy competition is. As she reasons with her relational nature, if you are at odds, there must be a relational issue and it must have to do with who you are and who I am. She still hasn't learned that you mix it up on the court and high-five the other team at the end of the game. She is great at defense and really gets into ball stealing. She's much better at offense this season, but defense is where she shines. I'm praying that our time in the Word and time on the court will bring many lessons that will bless her for the rest of her life. This picture is Princess on offense teamed up against another competitive girl on defense. Each game is filled with running and scoring. They score combined 70 - 90 points per 40 minute game. So fun.

Becky and Shauna - Welcome!

You guys get your own post! Thanks for the comments on my "New Mattress" post. For some reason I can not post back to you, so I thought I'd give you the headliner spot. :) I hope you guys visit often! Katy, thank you for inviting new friends over to my blog to play!

BTW, I plan to post pictures of my "new best friend" today. It's dreamy....

Candy Palace

My dear daughter got the entrepreneurial gene from her dad. She came up with the idea of a "shop" to sell her wares, The Candy Palace. A lemonade stand is simply not where it's at. This girl wants her customers to have a kiosk full of things from which to choose. Mostly, she just wants customers. The very fun thing is what she does with her money. She doesn't sell things for herself. All, and I repeat, all proceeds go to Makarios to bless Miss Sharla and the Haitian people in the Dominican Republic. Our friend, Sharla, started Makarios (greek for "blessed") after teaching in the DR and seeing the need of the people. It's an amazing ministry. Check out their blog.

So, on Tuesday I began cleaning her room of outgrown clothes and toys. Yes, it is Saturday and I'm still not done. Seems when you turn into a tween that you no longer enjoy the things of a pre-tween. It's actually a good thing, this purging of toys and junk. At the end of this room overhaul, there will be more things to sell in the "Candy Palace" and less stuff in her room to manage. Photos are taken Saturday morning. We'll post after pics ... later. :) And, of course, let's not forget Mommy's little helper, Dixie!

Date Night

I haven't posted about Date Night in about a year. We still date once a week. This school year we have a date on Tuesday nights as Monday is our big homework day. At Princess' school, every day is a big homework day, but Monday has been our whopper. So, our sweet friend and babysitter, Jamie, comes on Tuesdays to hang with Princess while we escape for a couple of hours.

Oh the fun! We always go out to eat and then do something fairly practical like an errand that is more fun to do together than separately. Really the whole idea is just hanging out together and laughing and talking. That can happen at Target or Home Depot or a great restaurant. Last night we went to a new restaurant, Mimi's Cafe. We ordered the Corn Chowder (yum!), with the Tuscan Chicken as a main entree and their S'mores for dessert. Wow! It was all very good and the dessert was rich! I could only eat the top later of chocolate and marshmallows.

After dinner, we passed by Barnes and Noble, aka The Library at our house. We all three love to read and when Princess was little we just bought books to read instead of checking them out at the library. I was paralyzed all the time and couldn't make it to the library. We figured that the books were an invaluable investment in Princess. Consequently, for years Princess referred to Barnes and Noble as "The Library". :)

Much to my dismay, we passed by The Library and headed to Best Buy where I got a new earbud for my cell phone and a cable for the TV to watch The Biggest Loser. Woo-hoo! Go 'Bama Boys and the Black Team. :) I am actually rooting for almost everyone at this point.

I took a personality profile test as part of our Life Group at church. This test is annoying to take, but it is spot on! I found out new things about myself and confirmed others. Our Life Group consists of 6 couples ranging in age from upper 30's (me) to early 60's. We are indeed a fun bunch, if I do say so myself. We met last week for instruction/interpretation on the profile along with 4 other Life Groups. We were the rowdy group as we have all become good friends in the two years that we have been meeting. We know so much about each other, but sharing our profiles has taken us to a new level of fun/relationship. About my profile: If you look at the sample profile, you will see on page 3 the different personality types. If you stack the levels on top of each other like you would layer bricks when building a house, the foundational layer is the core of who you are. The 2nd layer (from the bottom) is your next strongest aspect of your personality. It goes on until you reach the top. Each aspet/type of the personality has a percentage. I'm foundationally a Dreamer at 89%. Next, I am a Persister at 89%. Then I am a Harmonizer at 59% and then an Energizer at 59%. My least strong characteristics are Achiever at 30% and Catalyzer at like 20%.

This is Princess in an episode. She is number 15. If you can enlarge the picture by clicking on it, you will see her blank stare, pale face and brown circles under her eyes. We are learning that this is a classic Hyperkalemic Periodic Paralysis episode for her. This was right before half time. She ate a snack bar during half time and was better the second half of the basketball game.

The school called about 11:00 this morning saying Princess was in the nurse's office. The description was pretty classic although this was her first time in the nurses' office with an episode. The nurse on duty today is the same one that attended me during a whopping Hypo episode in Mom's Prayer last year. This is the same nurse that warned me of the requirement to call an ambulance if I or Princess has an episode (bad idea, btw). It has been good to "grow" together and allow others to see these episodes and how we cope.

I am in and out of episodes myself today, so I couldn't go up to school. Her daddy went to attend to her and I'm sure that was special. King has helped me with innumerable episodes over the past 8 years ... you'd think I'd be copacetic with him going instead of myself. I was later, but my initial reaction was a mommy reaction. My baby was not well and it didn't matter if I was paralyzed ... I was going to be by her side. Silly gal that I am, I eventually saw logic and stayed home. She is out of her episode and should be taking a Latin test about now.

Just Thinking

This is the title of Ravi Zacharias' excellent articles. Dr. Zacharias is an in-depth Christian apologist and one that I enjoy very much. Don't get me wrong, I'm a true blonde and Dr. Zacharias gets over my head in a hurry at times, but I would rather tread "water" in 12 feet of truth than wade in the shallow end with no challenges.

I just finished his autobiography, "Walking from east to west: God in the shadows". It is wonderful and enlightening and heart-wrenching. I highly recommend it!

Basketball

I love my new camera, but it is very hard to get good action shots. This is the best one of Princess at her game on Saturday. She is guarding one of her friends. They were on the same team last year and her mom is one of my very dear friends. These games are fun for the kids, but also for the adults as we get 45 minutes to chat and catch up while the kids play their games. Princess' games have been very exciting. They won by a few points this time instead of clobbering the other team. Between the two teams, they scored 76 points! It was a high scoring, fast moving, ball stealing game!

New Mattress

Have you ever had a bed/mattress just cave in on you all of a sudden? We have had 3 different mattresses (not counting the one we had for a day and sent back) in our 15 years of marriage. We started out with a waterbed (dating myself) and then the next bed was an "amazing" new bed, the Select Comfort bed.

Pardon me while I pull out my soap box for a moment... (scraping sound)


SelectComfort is just a glorified air mattress. We had one of the first beds and let me tell you, if you didn't pay attention to barometric pressure changes before, you certainly did after you started sleeping on an air mattress every night. ANYtime the pressure changed, so did the mattress. You could set it to what you thought was comfortable, but it could change in the middle of the night. We had the early one with out the famous "sleep number". I'm sure you are getting a hint of this, but I can not communicate how much I hated that Select Comfort bed. Finally one night in late January of 1998, I told King, "Last night was a very special night!" "oh really", says King, "Why?" "Well", says the Queen, "Last night was the laaaast night we are sleeping on this bed!"

(scraping sound) Ok. Soapbox put away.

We slept in the Guest bedroom for a couple of weeks until we found our current, lovely, soft, wonderful Sterns and Foster. That was 10 years ago. All of a sudden, about a month ago, we realized that the mattress has a sink hole on each side where our hips are! This is distressing. I love this mattress. It's near and dear to my heart. It's been such a faithful friend. Alas, we realized that all good things must pass on and our beloved mattress was history.

Enter the new mattress. We had toyed with the idea of a foam mattress for a few years and King has done some mighty fine research, but we weren't ready to do anything about it becaaauuuuse ... the Sterns and Foster rocks! Sadly, it turns out that his research was worthwhile. He had warned me that when the S&F died that we would upgrade to a king-size bed and probably try a foam mattress.

I was skeptical.

Most of my paralysis episodes are during the day. However! If I get too hot at night, BOOM. I'm paralyzed. This is highly inconvenient as I can hardly speak and I can not move, thus there is no way to tell anyone that I need help breathing ... especially a deep-sleeping hubby on my right. Have I said I was skeptical of the foam?? I am skeptical of the foam heating my core body temperature to such heights as to incur sudden and complete internal combustion.

King promises that the foam toppers at Target, Walmart, etc are not made to "breathe", but the foam beds ARE made to "breathe". Who ever heard of foam breathing? I thought that was something only non-inanimate objects did.

Anyway. King promises that we can send the mattress back if we don't like it. I'm still skeptical. I acquiesed to go to the mattress store and completely embarress myself by laying down on beds in full view of all of God's creation. Have you ever noticed that mattress stores are made almost entirely of glass? Why is it that everyone walking and driving by must see all the silly folks laying on mattresses? I think it's weird. I think they should make mattress stores like the nooks for the home theater spots in fancy electronic stores ... dark, velvety and quiet.

Ok, back to the mattress test. He takes me to lay down on two different foam mattresses. The first one is a "side sleeper's dream" foam mattress. The other one is for "back sleepers". I made the mistake of laying on the side sleeper mattress first.

Friends, let me just tell you that I did not care who was driving by or walking past me while I layed on my new best friend. That mattress was Valentine's Day in a box. Oh. My. Goodness. I was in love. I felt obligated to lay on the back sleeper bed and endured it for about 5 minutes and then I went back to the side sleeper mattress and caressed it so lovingly that I almost crooned to it.

The best part of my new best friend, is that (he? she? it?) it costs less than half of what they sell them for in the glassy mattress stores! I'm even more in love! I got a wonderful call today. The shipping freight company called and they are delivering my beloved new mattress on Wednesday.

I shall have to take pictures of its arrival and then croon to my new best friend...