My Secret Identity

Do y'all (over the age of...mmm...thirty-eight or so) remember that show? My Secret Identity? I'm pretty sure it was too cheesy for even Netflix to pick up.

Moving on....

The past couple of weeks (or months, I don't really know) I've been described as a few things, sometimes by other people, sometimes it's the voice in my head.
I've read it in blogs, heard it on the news shows,
that if I believe one way, I must be _____.

We've all got labels, wanted and not.
There are titles we wear proudly, and others we just wear.
Cause they might be true.
Some of them we wear because we just can't seem to shake 'em.

They can be adjectives to describe our God-given personality,
the darkest parts of us, or the stuff in-between.
You know: the good, the bad, the ugly.

If we hear them long enough,
they could become the totality of who we believe we are.
The sum of us.

Wife
Mom
Homeschool Mom
Type A (winking at my friend*)
Fat
Goodie Two Shoes
Crazy
Spaz
Organized
Confident
Super conservative
Fake
Opinionated
Foul
Ridiculous
Emotional
Christian
Not a Christian (It's an election year)
Loud
Bad A** (actually, I said that one. Ha!)
Sinner (Nobody can out-sin me.)
Racist
Pretty
Homophobic
Medicated
Evangelical
Evangelical Conservative
Tough
Teacher
Manic
Contradictory (If nothing else, this.)
Vain
Bigot
Depressed
Too much
Too little
Legit
Awesome
Over the top
High strung
A hot mess

Oh, there's more. No doubt.

Some of these are spot on.
The rest have probably been spot-on at one point or another.

Of all those labels and adjectives, there's the one that I have the most difficulty remembering:

I am free.

Free.

If you are reading this, and you call Jesus "Lord",
you are free.
You are free from the box that someone wants you to fit in.
You are free from the past.

Easy to say.

I am free from condemnation.
By God's grace that can only be described as scandalous,
I am free from my sin.
I am free from others' sins against me.
I am free of labels.
I am free to change my mind.
I am free to repent, to change direction.
I am free to serve.
I am free to love.
I am free to give.

So are you. We are free.

We are free to belong to the One who made us and
loves me even though He knew we would reject Him.

We are free. We are free because Jesus of Nazareth set us free.

Yes. It's cheesy.
But, the pic is mine so no one will get mad at me.

Free indeed.

You don't even have to keep it a secret.
*Smile*

To Be Known

One of the cool things about moving to a new place, is you get to meet so many new people. It's awesome to get to know people and hear their stories. And, it's fun to tell your story. There are many ways and angles in which to tell your story, too, depending on your audience, right? In our case, we may talk more about church or homeschooling, or we may talk about Spouse's job and all the Lord has done with that. We may include family background, our marriage stuff, ministries we've been a part of and get to hear the same from others. It's fun and exciting to find the common thread(s) between believers.

On the flip side, one of the less than cool things about moving to a new place, is you meet so many new people. You are constantly having to get to know new people and learn their stories. It's like we are all giving our resumes over and over. It may be your church ministry resume (student, college ministry), homeschool resume (The standard, "I loved our school, but we knew this was what the Lord wanted for our family."), the family resume (we love having people in our home, yadda yadda). In some ways, it feels like we have been doing this over and over for the past year and a half. 

It is what it is. It's part of moving. We knew it.
The Super Sanguine here welcomed it.

Until I was over it. After a while, I got tired of my own stories. Those that know me IRL just chuckled. No. I rarely tire of telling stories. I just mean I am tired of telling the same stories! 

I just want to be known. I don't mean in a Fifteen Minutes of Fame kind of way. I don't mean any kind of fame. I'm talking have my people who know what I'm about. You know, the hometown kind of known.
*Singing* Sometimes you wanna go, where everybody knows your name...*

{Image Credit: Cheers}

And, then. I am known more than that. The number of hairs on my head is known. The number of hairs  that are in the drain for my Spouse to clean out is known. The number of pounds I have gained is known. The number of minutes that number takes up in my head on any given day is known, too. The number of cells in my body is known, including the rogue ones. The work that I was sent here to do is known by the One who sent me here to do it.
All of it. Known to a known God.

You have searched me, Lord,

   and you know me.

² 

You know when I sit and when I rise;

    you perceive my thoughts from afar.

³ 

You discern my going out and my lying down;

    you are familiar with all my ways.

⁴ 

Before a word is on my tongue

    you, Lord, know it completely.

⁵ 

You hem me in behind and before,

    and you lay your hand upon me.

⁶ 

Such knowledge is too wonderful for me,

    too lofty for me to attain.

Psalm 139:1-6

The girls and I have been memorizing Psalm 139 this year. We are way behind schedule, but I can't tell you how many times I've come back to it. There is so much goodness in this Psalm, but let's go with verse 1, "...you know me...my thoughts...my going out...a word on my tongue...". 

The God who created you knows you. He knows me.

That same God has given me a precious few who know me, too. They get me. I don't take for granted when new people come into my crazy and walk along side me in it. There are a few in particular here in H that have been total rockstars in how they have loved and spoken truth over me.

Tonight, at a women's Bible Study, I met someone new. We had each been told we needed to meet. So cute, right?! This sweet homeschooling family just moved here from Florida. My other friend, Christa, the new friend and I were all chatting about being the new girls at one time or another and giving our resumes and talking Jesus. 

You know the scene: three women in a parking lot after Bible Study. 

I was talking some sort of shenanigans when my Jesus who knows me gave me the sweetest of gift: Christa interjects in my story and explains to our knew friend, very cheeky, "Melissa has a hard time expressing herself..."

GAH!

Boom. Known.

I need to quit looking to be known and act like one who is known.

Flip-Flops of Blogging

Hey! Check me out! Sitting at the computer and blogging and whatnot like a big girl. I've been avoiding looking at my blog because I knew it had been a while then, yesterday the Big Sister said, "Mom, you need to do some blogging." Six weeks. It's been six weeks.

I've mentioned before how I've got this commitment allergy, but I'm wondering if it really isn't more of a Label Allergy. I'm loving the labels of the the world less & less. And, that's because I'm so non-committal! I'm flip-floppy (schizophrenic) about stuff-- scheduled homeschool, relaxed homeschool, oh my word, where is the closest school?!?; carbs, no carbs;  herbivore, carnivore, omnivore; aspartame will kill us, embrace the aspartame (I don't need the sugar!!); Baptist, Pentecostal (I prefer Bapticostal, or better yet, just Christian!) gym every day, meh (1 Timothy 4:8). Depends on the day or week.

So, see here? Labels don't work with me. They don't stick.

It just hit me. I'm a GIRL! Doesn't that mean I reserve the right to change my mind?!
Shania Twain, anybody?

My ceramic flip-flops I painted. I like flip-flops.

Blogging has flip-flops, too. There's two sides.

~~You have a blog! Yay! It's nice to have a space on the interwebs to connect with people, engage the culture, and have the occasional rant. Blogging can be such an encouragement to the writer and the reader. Blogging is a community all on its own, even smaller when you factor in the niche bloggers. It is a also nice outlet to get out your allotted word count for the day.
Flip-flop.
You have a blog. So, ideally, one would post to the blog. It's kind of like that gym membership. You have the card to get you in, you should go, right? Also, like the gym, the more you do it, the more you want to. If you're like me, when you don't post or go to the gym, you feel like a failure because you know you should. (Extreme, much?) I currently have eleven drafts waiting to be completed, edited, or deleted.
Depending upon your goal, being a consistent blogger may matter.

~~For personal or family blogs, you can share what is going on in your life. Blogging is an effective way to have a digital scrapbook. So fun! You may share what the Lord is doing in your life or personal convictions or goals.
Flip-flop.
Now you've shared. Brilliant. As a chronic over-sharer, I can't count how many times in my baby time of blogging that I've said, "I so wish I wouldn't have told anybody!" That's not to say we shouldn't keep it real. The world is seeking authentic Christians. Be real. Because I believe in this authenticity and I'm committed (really, not flip-floppy on this one) to being real, I will most assuredly say again, "I so wish I wouldn't have told anybody!"

~~People read what you write. This is so amazing to me. I am still blown away that people read my shenanigans. There have a been a few posts that I really believed in and hoped would get shared, but few. Mostly, it's shenanigans. And people read it! Gah! Jokes on you!
Flip-flop.
People read what you write. There have been conversations or interactions that have inspired me to write, but I have to wait a while to post it because it would be obvious to my friend who reads my blog that I'm piggy backing on our conversation. I don't really want to capitalize on my friends like that. Now, I'm not talking about the ones who tell me, "You need to blog about this!" I get that on occasion. :)
I've also had a few stories that I couldn't share because the situation involved a possible reader. When you know your readers, you can't very well go using their parenting fail that you witnessed with your own eyes in your blog, now can you? I'll have to stick to my own parenting fails, there are plenty.

~~Blogging helps kill some perfectionist tendencies. I still have issues publishing a post before it is "perfect", but I'm working through it. I'm getting better. There is no perfect. No perfect content. No perfect grammar. Too many commas. Sentence fragments. All that jazz. I'm letting some of that go because of the conversational style of this blog. I never want it to sound fake, but like my voice. One of the biggest thrills is for someone to tell me, "I hear your voice when I read your blog!" Love.
I also read on another blog somewhere (I can't remember) that it's better for 10 people to read an imperfect post that may inspire them than for no one to read it.
Flip-flop.
Blogging kills some perfectionist tendencies. I still can't stand it when I find a mistake in a published post. Gag.

There you have it. First post in six weeks. What are some things you are flip-floppy about?

Why I Don't Live for my Kids

I once overheard a woman on her cell phone talking about her children making her feel guilty about something. Of course, I only heard one side of the conversation, but at one point she replied to her caller, "I know! I absolutely LIVE for my kids!"

Now, I don't know this lady, so I can't say if she was speaking hyperbolically or not, but this facially-expressive non-eavesdropper raised my eyebrows to the sky!

Cause here's why: I absosmurfingly do not live for my kids.

I am straight up smitten with my girls. They are coolios. My girls have tender hearts toward people and love to laugh. They are sometimes more disciplined than I am and they teach me something every single day. I dig them.
All that and I do not live for them.

Look at em. Freaking Fantastic.

I'm involved in my kids' lives and engaged when they speak. I have taken sole responsibility for my girls' education by teaching them at home. That's work, let me tell ya. I cart them from place to place and research-ad nauseum- that the said places are worthy of our carting. I interrogate interview potential friends to make an attempt to examine their hearts to see if they are going to be good friends for my girls. I lead my girls to the Cross of Jesus, hopefully, every day.
I'm their mom, I parent them. There's so much more I do.
Just like so many of you, I do for my kids in countless ways.

I do for them. I do not live for them. There's a difference.

This is why I don't live for my children:

• That's a lot of pressure on a kid. To live for your kids is a heavy load for them to carry. That's too much. What if she cracks? What if she stumbles? What will happen to you? The perfectionist trap is already waiting to bait kids today, and parents don't need to contribute by being an extra burden.

• Kids' failures are their failures. They will crack. They will stumble. My girls are going to make mistakes that have nothing to do with me. If my sole purpose of existence is for them, their failure is my failure, my fault. That's too much of a burden for me to carry.

• Kids' successes are their successes. Just like I can't take all the blame when my girls fail, I can't take all the credit for their successes, either. The wins belong to her. On the same token, this living out dreams through our children is nonsense. Nonsense. Win or lose, it's their game to play or not play.

• Children don't belong to us. These little ones are a gift from the Lord. We are to prepare them for the battle for the Kingdom of God. For the Kingdom of God. Not for ourselves. They are here, just like we are, to make much of Jesus. He has a work for them to do that is not about us as parents.

• I live for  Jesus. I want them to live for Jesus. I don't want them to live for me, either. Just Jesus.

I live for Jesus. I love my girls more than peanut butter and marshmallows and bananas. I love them. I love them. I love them.

I do not live for them.

Identity Crisis

"I don't even know who I am anymore!"

Anybody ever said it? Thunk it? Anyone? Anyone?
<Insert Ben Stein's voice here.>
Bueller?
Annndddd, I just lost 4 of my 5 readers.

So, none of you ever said or thought something and immediately chased it with a shot of "Did I just say that? And mean it?"

Yessss you have. Just admit it.

Got a few scenarios for ya:

Girl who didn't want a baby until the day she found out she was pregnant. Until then was all about some self and some work. Then, she was all like, "I want to be a stay-home mom." Whattt?? Then, was a bona-fied PTA Board Member before said child had a first day of Kindergarten. Work? You mean, for pay? Who has time?!

Boy who probably got married cause it seemed like the next logical step was not all that into the girl in the dreamy sense. God did a work on the both of them and Boy is now a Spouse who is ridiculously into the girl. *She grins.*

Girl volunteers at a pregnancy care center and helps launch an education program for teens. I would speak in local schools & faith-based organizations on the benefits of delaying sexual activity until marriage. Awesome job. Identity came with it: The Sex Lady. No joke. Middle and high school students from all over would catch me out in public and holler, "Hey, that's my sex lady!" I would smile, wave and say, "Now, explain to your momma why you just called me that." And they would proceed to tell them that I was the lady who came to health class telling them that sex is awesome, but you have to wait til you're married. Amen. "Yes, Ma'am. That's true. I said that."

Girl, now Homeschoolin' Momma, can't imagine anything else. Another work that God did. She now uses phrases like, "do school" rather than "go to school".

Doing school on the trampoline back yard in Florida.

A few more pics from our back yard in Florida.

Girls' garden they grew with Spouse.

Mac. He was good. On the grill.

We had a couple of rabbits (sometimes more than a couple!), some chickens, and a couple of ducks.
Also, is she the cutest ever?

GoKarting in the pasture.

Now. These photos I share for a reason. This is decidedly country living. We were very comfortable in it. Rarely did we get solicitors or other - ahem - door knockers.
We walked outside in bare feet, without makeup. Let the dog and kids and dirt and weeds run free.

Then today happened. I was reminded once again that I don't even know who I am.

I am typing this with manicured, acrylic nails that are the product of an idiotic, insecure impulse. And, that's not even the worst of it!

I walked out to take the trash and found this in my yard.

This. This is the poop that prompted today's post.

I laid eyes on this poop in my yard in my deed-restricted subdivision with an HOA and I let out an audible GASP!  Somebody did not clean up their dog's excrement in my yard!? There is dog poop in my freaking yard! Good Lord, who are you? You came from a yard with all kinds of poop in it at any given time and you are now one of those people who fuss about poop in the area of the yard that you have yet to step foot on!? 

I wanted to beat my own tail with a flip-flop for being ridiculous.

I am not a person that cares about dog poop in the grass. It's OUTSIDE! I have been the person that lol'd about well-meaning, responsible dog owners carrying a plastic poop bag, saying, "I'm not going to live anywhere that I have to pick up dog poo in a bag!"

What a magoo.

Oh, the Nevers I've choked down. I laugh. Ridiculous.

What about you? Any life situations of today that prove to be completely opposite of your lofty plans?