Apparently I can now blog from my new phone. But don’t expect this to happen much. The tiny keyboard is driving me nuts. But there are times I just want to post a little blurb but I’m nowhere near a computer. Problem solved!
Posted from WordPress for Windows Phone
I am 100% against texting while driving, so I just had to post this cartoon.
But I am 100% for my daughter texting me. The rule in the house is that you can’t have a cell phone until you’re 13. Which she is going to be in about 6 weeks. We decided to go ahead and get her a phone for Christmas. Actually, I decided and then talked Tyler into it. Since she’s homeschooled, she doesn’t have all day to be with her friends at school. I could tell it was taking a toll on her, and since a lot of her friends have cell phones, I decided she could stay in contact with them that way.
However. I was completely unprepared for how much girls text. Austin’s had a phone for a couple of years and he texts, but nothing, nothing like his sister. She got the phone on Christmas Eve and was in full swing with her friends less than 24 hours later.
One benefit I didn’t foresee was how much she would text me. Whenever she has a random thought she wants to share with me and we’re not together, she texts me. She went to the movies today and saw that there is going to be a second “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” movie. So she texted me. She then went to Red Robin and they were playing Taylor Swift. She had to text her joy over that.
I think in the two years Austin has had his phone, I’ve received around 10 or 12 texts from him. They’re all along these lines: Are you done yet? Are you still here? Did you forget and leave me here? Are you even reading your texts?
For the record, Austin has never been left anywhere! So why he freaks out about it now is beyond me. Okay, one time . . .ONE TIME . . .I forgot he was at Awana and might have forgotten to pick him up. I couldn’t help it. I was having a great conversation with my husband and his sister. Time just got away from me (and so did the memory that I had a child out of the house). I was only about 15 minutes late and the lady in charge was with him. But that was about 6 1/2 years ago.
Suffice it to say, there is a huge difference in the way the kids text me. And that’s fine. Amber likes to text. Austin likes me to watch movies with him. I take what I can get and I love it all.
I had the BEST blog on my mind. And it tied into a blog I posted about a year and a half ago. Sheer perfection. But then things started dawning on me.
Too many of you whom I know in real life read my blog.
You know who you are.
Too many of those people go to church with me.
You know who you are.
And too many of THOSE people saw me at church last night.
You know who you are.
So I cannot blog about something that drove me crazy for a second time by the same offending party it did a year and half ago. Because although I’d keep identities secret, too many of you would figure out who I was skewering with my words.
And that’s not very Christmasy, is it?
*sigh*
Have a Merry Christmas!
I wear my mom’s wedding ring. She gave it to me a couple of months before she died. She then asked for it back and said she wasn’t done wearing it yet. Just before or after she died, my dad gave it to me again. It was like both of them gave it to me and that made it very sweet.
A friend of mine put this comment in her status update on Facebook, “It is better to have old second-hand diamonds than none at all. Mark Twain” One of her friends commented that she wears her grandmother’s wedding ring and added, “She and my great-grandpa had a really amazing love story so it makes me feel very honored to be entrusted with the responsiblity of honoring their legacy of love in my own life.”
Honoring their legacy of love in my own life. In a nutshell, that’s what my mom’s ring means to me. My parents didn’t have the perfect marriage, no one does. But I did spent a lifetime watching them “Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ,” Ephesians 5:12. I spent a lifetime watching them make huge sacrifices for each other (and their kids). I spent a lifetime watching them not always do what they wanted to do, but considering the other and how it might affect them.
I watched my mom love my dad completely. She loved him until the day she died – 46 years and two days after she said, “I do.” I watched my mom do things for my dad I thought were ridiculous, because she loved him. I watched my mom love people like no one else I have ever seen. I watched her do things in the name of love that I wanted to strangle her for. Because, hey, I know it all.
Not.
I thank God for the example of my parents in my life. Let me stress again their marriage was not perfect. But I did have the amazing opportunity to see true, sacrificial love on both of their parts for 40 years and 15 days. And I have seen how my dad has continued to love and honor my mom after her death. How he reveres her. How he automatically knows he will never be able to find anyone else like her.
The sort of love my parents shared and practiced over the course of their marriage is in short supply these days. I can’t ever remember my mom running off and doing as she pleased. But I do remember my mother doing many, many things, probably more than she could have thought of by herself, because her husband wanted to make her happy. He encouraged her to go out and do things, he just didn’t always want to tag along :-). He bought her things she loved that she never would have gotten for herself. Because he loved her.
My mom worked hard. She didn’t work to progress in a career and pump up her ego. She didn’t work to fulfill herself. She didn’t work because she needed a break from her children. My mom went back to work when I was in high school because our family needed the money. She worked not because her husband was out doing as he pleased and someone had to earn an income. She worked a job because my parents were working together to provide for their family.
My mom didn’t live a life that was all about herself. I don’t want to live a life all about myself, how wonderfully decorated my house is, how perfect and accomplished my kids are, how cultured I am, how many vacations I can go on in a year. I want to live like my mom did. A life full of love.
That’s what my mom’s ring means to me. A legacy of love that I pray I have the strength to carry on.
The Misadventures of Cheri 