You Have To Be Willing To Fall!

Yesterday will mark a day in my life’s history that I will never forget. It will go down as the day I threw a bigger tantrum than my 9 month old could ever think of. I am not proud of it folks, but I must make it more than just the day I threw a tantrum, I must write about it so maybe someone could get something out of my shortcoming.  

My husband is the type of guy that loves to do lots of active/sporty things.  He’s always up for going on walks (this is especially humorous, when he tries to get my entire family to go on a walk after dinner! After many attempts, my brother finally caved and promised Doug to go on a walk only and only after Thanksgiving dinner every year.) With this love for sports and outdoor fun comes my disinterest in them. You would think I enjoy it, but sometimes, I don’t . I do it for him because I know it’s important that we compromise and that we show interest in each other’s interests. So when Doug suggested we go on a family bike ride yesterday, I said yes because I had no idea what was in store. Here is my background in bike riding; I haven’t ridden a bike since I was probably 5, and even then, I only really got a couple of “riding” times, if you even want to call it that. After getting married, Doug got me a bike and I had to kind of re-learn how to maneuver the thing. Here are my bike riding highlights, just so you know the extent of my novice-hood; 1.- when I got my cruiser bike, I wasn’t used to the breaks being on the pedals, so instinctively I kept trying to go to the handles. Doug was bothered by the fact that I kept ringing my bell so many times that he yelled “Why do you keep ringing your bell!?”  Well I wasn’t trying to ring ANY bells, I was trying to break the darn thing. 2.- I FELL off of my bike when it was stationary! Yes, we were just standing waiting to go at an intersection and I got started and FELL to the side brining my bike down on top of me! So you see, I am not at all an expert at riding at all! PLUS, I’m a big scaredy cat! Yes, I said it a BIG scaredy cat. So add these all together, throw in a hard bike trail course… add a very steep hill… with a little bit of panting…struggling to get up it… wishing I had never said yes to the “bike ride” … follow that by the creepy man staring at me trying to pedal for my life, grinning at me…and the ease of Doug going up the hill whilst pulling the trailer our 18lbs baby is in… and ladies and gentlemen you got yourselves a tantrum!! I knew I wasn’t going to make it up the very last part of the hill and I was imagining what I would look like falling backwards and then my bike coming to meet me at the bottom of the hill. So I stepped off my bike and yelled “THIS IS SOOOOOO STUPID! I HATE THIS!” Aaand the waterworks began. Doug was so taken aback by my frustration and tears, that all he could do is repeat how sorry he was for making me come on this death trail. For 10 minutes all I could do is, cry. Can you imagine a twenty-seven year old, grown woman crying while riding her bike? Well that was me. At the very end of the bike ride I kept thinking how upset I was that he would make me do something I wasn’t ready for, something that I was scared of. Had he described to me what it would be like before going, I would have said no. But I would have missed out on seeing how I react to life throwing something at me that I am not comfortable with! Why did I get so mad at my husband? He is helping God to mold me into a better person. He is taking these situations and helping me overcome fears I’ve had for ages by gently making me come face to face with them.  At the time it doesn’t feel like it to me, but he is doing something good rather than just trying to torture me. I can be the type of person that likes to stay in the boundaries of what’s comfortable. In the boxes of what I’m good at, I like to say I’m a thrill seeker, but only the thrills that I view safe, or easy, or things that come naturally to me (I think we’ve all established that bike riding is NOT one of them.) But how can I ever be a better person if I don’t expose myself to situations that can help me grow? Why is it so hard to get rid of a fear? Doug was helping me get free of these chains that feel so heavy at times, that prevent me from doing things that I “think” are scary but when I let go could be fun in the end. On our way home there was one last hill we had to ride over. A freeway overpass that goes up then goes down. Doug was so kind to ask me if I wanted to walk it and I said yes…But something made me change my mind and while I was riding up the hill I still felt a little bit of fear. Once we were on our way down there was a sense of accomplishment in my soul.  I even let go of the breaks and put my legs out (for like a milli-second, BUT STILL!) I felt so free. Thank you Doug for always finding a way to scare the shiitake mushrooms out of me and introducing me to new things in life! I love you and I would not be the woman I am today without your help!  Folks, what are your fears? I suggest you go and try to overcome one this week. Ask someone close to you to help you out, but you have to be willing to let yourself fall. Now, go kick that fear’s A-double snake and put it in your past. Because it can be done! 

Stay blessed, stay saucy!

Easy As Pie!

 I’m the type of person that loves to do different projects around the house. With this amazing love for “remodeling” if you will, comes great impatience from my part. And if you know anything about remodeling, you know that patience is crucial if you want to get a clean and beautiful result. I love the idea of remodeling and love the idea that it will look really pretty in the end. However, most often than not, I don’t not love having to do things carefully nor do I posses the measure twice cut once discipline. Lucky me (depending on the day) I found me a husband that is completely the opposite of me. Yesterday, Doug gave me the most amazing Sunday present, he decided to get to one of his very pressing ‘honey do list’ items crossed off the list! Oh how excited was I to finally get the floor done in the guest bathroom (because I would probably die without it right?! Gosh sometimes when I really think of what I worry about I want to punch myself in the lady bits, there are people out there with no food and I’m crying over a bathroom floor…. REALLY! Well yes, unfortunately this is my reality, I hope someday I can be an amazing human being that doesn’t worry about trivial things and can cure world hunger, until then, back to my dilemma.) So of course I had to help my man out, so I asked what my duties entailed and he said I had to clean the nasty wax toilet ring AND de-caulk the bath tub. What the what! I don’t want a nasty job, or a job that takes too long! But since I was so happy that this project was finally underway, I zipped the lip and started cleaning.  I knew that if I did a half ass job, he was just going to make me do it again so I was trying so hard to do it as he would. So many times I found myself wishing I had magical powers so that I could just wave a wand and poof it would all be done-zo! Then I would revert to anger in my head and think gosh why am I having to do all this prep work! It’s his list! Then I would go back to being grateful and happy, then cycling back to wishing for magic. This went on and on until I was done. Doug was able to follow suit with his part of the job and then voila, we were done! When I saw the finished product I could not believe my eyes, it looked GREAT!  I was so happy that I have a husband who cares about the small details and when he decides to do a job he doesn’t take shortcuts.

I look at Doug and admire his patience and diligence for details (although he’s not a saint either everyone, he can be impatient with other things, ha!).  But seriously, I wish there was a vitamin to help with this impatience of mine. But is it just me? As I was driving the other day, I saw a bill board with an advertisement for green beans. It said, “Just four minutes.. Because life should be that easy!” I started thinking about our society and how everything that we stand for right now is all about the “quick and easy”. You want to lose weight?  Here, take some pills that God knows what’s in them but you’ll lose 30Lbs. in 10 minutes. Or wait, here’s a drive thru so that you don’t even have to get out of your car and walk 10 steps to get your coffee. Hold on there’s more, why don’t buy this packet that tells you how to get rich NOW? We get so mad if we have to wait more than two minutes at a light. What is happening to us? Really?  In a place where there’s a surplus of blessing we are all still worried about why our overnight cleaner can’t just wash our clothes for us really quick while we wait for two minutes. I see it every day, today at the grocery store, a lady  with a bazzillion things in her basket would NOT let a gentleman who asked her very politely if he could go in front of her in line since he was only buying two items… she said NO! I could not believe it. I don’t want to sound like a hypocrite because there are many things that I enjoy the comfort and ease of. But when all I want is for my life to take no effort that’s when I should question why I’m thinking this way.  To think that I don’t really need to work hard at anything and patiently wait to see some amazing results is a misconstrued notion that is only fueled by the world around me. I am the worst person at this when it comes to exercise and healthy eating, if I don’t see immediate results I think it’s not working. WHY? I don’t know, I really don’t but raising the question makes me feel I’m on the right track to rectify my behavior. I know that life shouldn’t always be easy. If it were than it wouldn’t be exciting. It would become predictable and boring and who wants that? All I’m trying to say today is maybe being patient is something that I can work on day to day. Find the good in taking those extra steps to making my life more beautiful. Not relying so much on what’s quick. Because in the end when I’ve had two stories to tell, one where I had a hard time and I sweat blood and tears, and another that was just easy-peasy, which one do you think I was most proud to tell my friends?  So thanks for reading, gotta go watch a movie on my instant queue!

Stay blessed, Stay saucy. If you enjoyed reading this, please pass it on to a few of your peeps!

  

Our Window Got Smashed on Mother's Day!

Yesterday was my first mother’s day as a real on-duty mommy (I say that because last year I claimed it to be my 1^st because I was pregnant and needed a present, don’t judge me!) Well this year, Doug made it a point to make me feel really special! It was the best day ever! I got treated to a massage the night before. When I woke up I got a very nice card from Maddy, Comet and Doug, and after church we were on our way to my surprise. We arrived at the Melting Pot! We had an amazing brunch that made my belly very very happy. Then, we were off to Doug’s softball game where he won both games and made the most amazing catch ever (so he says, I didn’t see it because I was chatting it up with a soon to be member of the wives club) Ready to wrap up this amazing day, we walked to our car with two of our amazing friends and as we were saying goodbye and getting ready to put Maddy in the car, I noticed something on the passenger’s seat. It resembled water; I thought somehow Doug got the seat all wet or something. After looking a little harder I glanced to my left and then noticed the gaping hole that was our window. Someone had SMASHED our back window to pieces!!! I told everyone, “Our window got smashed in.” Doug and everyone else was in utter disbelieve. We then searched for the stolen items, but noticed that they took nothing! All they did is rummage through my clothes that were sitting to be donated in the back seat! Well, at least they could’ve saved me a trip to the goodwill! To my surprise Doug and I didn’t freak out about it. We just took a moment to be in disbelieve about the situation and then attempted to clean up the mess, although we hardly cleaned anything up since our friends, Kelly and Danny were cleaning it for us, bless their hearts. When we were done and on our way home, Doug and I had this peace about the whole thing that would never been able to be achieved without God in our lives. We knew that somehow, someway, God would make a positive out of this very negative situation.  To our surprise our insurance has a window thinngy-maggyger that covers these sorts of incidents, so our deductible is only $100 (I know, I’m so insurance lingo savvy huh!) I called the window place today and the lady was so nice to me and after talking to her for a while she told me that she would knock down my deductible to only $50! The window specialist is coming to my house to fix it today and voila, problem solved!

 I don’t know about you, but I never count on my day being filled with these sorts of unpleasant incidents. However, they tend to creep up on ya’, when you least expect them to! And trust me, I don’t always handle them with such grace, but I do know what makes the difference in my attitude. It’s having faith that I can hold on to. Knowing that in spite any negative circumstance the world can throw at me, I have a promise that could never be broken. I will always have a God that loves me and is kind and will find a blessing from ANY situation I am put in, no matter what. But with that promise comes great responsibility, as my good friend Margarit said “God gave you a brain, so use it!” I can’t just rely on the universe to give me the perfect day, or the perfect job, or the perfect circumstances. I have to exercise my responsibility (the ABILITY to respond!) and have a positive attitude towards any situation that comes my way. I don’t mean that I have to be fake in my emotions, because for a second there I was pissed that someone would violate my property, but I allowed myself to feel and then moved on with positive thoughts about the situation. So many times I’ve allowed a nasty situation such as this get the best of me and I’ve allowed it to ruin the day, or even weeks of my life for that matter.  I’ll tell you something, getting my window smashed was not about to ruin my amazing 1^st Mothers day! So today make the choice to not let window smashers dictate your joy! Find the positive in every situation, I promise you there is ONE!

Lastly, if you’ve enjoyed reading this please pass it on to someone else! Thank you all!

Stay blessed, and stay saucy my friends!