Precious moments

So Samantha made profession/confession/confirmation (what ever you call it) of faith this morning, declaring that she has asked Jesus in her heart and wants to live for Him.  As we were singing opening songs, she started to look a little green and asked me if she could sit down.  Brandon looked over at me after she sat down so I leaned over to explain that she was getting a little nervous about standing up in front of everyone (she passed out once at a school program).  So Brandon sat down with her and talked to her a little bit about it.  They started talking about how all of heaven rejoices when even one person comes to Christ.  So Brandon says you  know, you’re giving your brother a party in heaven, I’ll bet he even gets to eat cake.   Samantha (being the ham that she is) leans over and says “you suppose it’s angel food cake?”  We are so thankful for Samantha’s committment to Christ and His promises for her.  Truely a precious moment (too bad we forgot to video tape it for Nana and Papa) -and just for the record when we realized that fact she said “well I’m not doing it again”.  Apparently public speaking is not her favorite thing.

Outing my secrets

I am a perfectionist.  There, I’ve said it.  But not the good kind of  “wow that lady always has it together -I wish I could be like her” perfectionist, more of the “paralyzed by my inability to do it perfectly” variety.  The living in CHAOS (can’t have anyone over syndrome) type.

They say perfectionism is something you learn as you are growing up and while I do remember hearing the phrase “if you’re not going to do it right, you might as well not do it at all” I think I am just naturally inclined toward it.  I remember when I was applying for my first salon job, it asked for strengths and weaknesses and I listed perfectionism under both because already then I realized that it can fall into both catagories.  It can mean that I do an incredible job at something that someone else would not.  Or it can mean that I will get sidetracked by a small unimportant detail or take too long because I’m not focusing on the main objective.

For example (true confession time) I remember when I first started teaching cosmetology, I was getting ready for my very first Junior class (the newbies) I had everything ready but it was not yet “perfect”.  You see the student kits that they would start with until their permanent kits arrived had hair clips in them, the kind that would hold a large amount of hair when they sectioned it off.  I’m sure at one point they all started with matching sets but over time one would break here or there and would get replaced by one from the lost and found …this would not do.  I wanted everything to be “perfect” so I stayed late after everyone else had gone home and took out all the clips from all 16 kits and sorted them out into matching sets which was trickier than it sounds as once you got past the first few sets, the matching logic had to stretch a bit.  In the end some of the kits matched by color, some by shape, and I think I ended up with one that had to be considered matching because they didn’t match any of the others -this is the depth of my “illness”. =) 

Brandon and I sometimes joke that I am a little bit OCD.  Truth be told (which is kind of the point of this post) it actually literally feels good to me to organize things, to have ” a place for everything and everything in it’s place”  I get just a little bit of a high when I  make order out of something that is in disarray. That being said, anyone who has visited my house recently would look at me and say “really, you’re sure about that”?  The problem is that my perfectionism takes over, I don’t want just a place for everything I want the perfect place for everything.  We have been living in some degree of CHAOS pretty much since we started living together after our marriage over 14 years ago.  Oh there have been times that we’ve managed to get it together and we even had a streak going there for a little while where we had it together enough that our home group was able to meet at our house for about a whole year….as long as no one looked in the dryer (yes that was my secret stash and dash place).

I actually think that is part of why I have not been blogging lately, I couldn’t come up with the perfect post. That and I added a baby and a teenager to my household all within 3 months…. but I am making progress!  Thanks to one of my facebook friends (another reason I’ve been busy) I have discovered a website for people like me: www.flylady.net .  My older sister had actually told me about it years ago but at the time I didn’t have internet access and the “FLYlady” hadn’t yet written her book “Sink reflections” .  This site has been so helpful to me, helping me let go of my perfectionism and learning that there is such a thing as “good enough”.  My house is not yet perfect and it may never be but it is slowly getting better and I know that because of the baby steps I’m taking to get there, it will eventually be able to stay that way.  It has also helped me to start teaching these things to my kids, teaching them how to take care of their things and allowing me to take time to spend with them to do fun things even if everything is not perfect.  As a matter of fact we had what I considered to be a really good summer.  I think it was mid to late July before I heard anyone say “I’m bored” and it wasn’t until the last couple of weeks before school started that they started getting on eachother’s nerves.

When I was a little girl my mother was the song leader for Sunday school ( I may have mentioned that before).  At one point, she taught us a song that said “He’s still workin’ on me, to make me what I ought to be. It took him just a week to make the moon and the stars, the sun and earth and jupiter and mars, how loving and patient he must be, he’s still working on me.”  I’m proud to say God hasn’t given up on me and I will always be able to grow in him.  The FLYlady has helped me to get a better glimps of me through His eyes.  I am not a failure, I am a work in progress.

That said, the title of this post is Outing my secret(s).  My other secret is my other blog.  Yes that’s right, I have a secret blog.  It is also about people like me, the name is actually “mom’s like me“.  It is about my experience with our son Joshua.  I must warn you it is not perfect yet.  As a matter of fact I have a lot that I want to do to it yet but as with most other things, It may never be perfect and if I wait until it is I may never be able to share it and I have already been blessed by ”meeting” other “moms like me” through it.  So I will continue to work on it as time and emotions allow and I will share our story piece by piece.  Just think of it as a continual cliffhanger.