Monday, August 20, 2012

My Special Girl, Emily

This is my precious Emily quite a few years ago. 

This is my Emily now.
Emily is my side kick. You rarely see me without her. For 8 years I taught school and every day she went with me. We have special restuarants, songs, words, jokes, secrets, and stories.

So today, I felt like I should be sleeping in the dog house when she came to me in tears. It seems I wrote a special blog for Clay and Katey on their birthday. But i didn't write one on hers. That led to the old "there aren't as many pictures of me as there are of them either".

Now if you are a mom and have more than one kid, you know that life happens and the last kid gets the shaft in some ways. But in other ways, life is good. I was the oldest of three and found the position quite restrictive. Let's face it, parents lighten up as time goes on.

Emily is way cooler than either of them were at 12. She speaks spanish, is comfortable in many more situations than I am even today. She loves Jesus and has a heart of compassion. She is genuine, sweet, beautiful, talented and funny. So even though there are less pictures of her and this blog is a month late, her and I have way more secrets. I mean, I know that ever since she read the book Junie B First Grader Aloha-ha-ha!

she has wanted to go to Hawaii. So we have a plan, when the other two are finally out of the house, we are going!! And I promise to blog about it and take tons of pictures!!

Tuesday, August 7, 2012

Fashion Sense

I panicked today. We take Katey to college in 2 and 1/2 weeks. I didn't panic for the reason you are thinking, I panicked because I only own crocs and flip flops. I only own old capris. I own t-shirts and Gautemalan jade jewelry. I don't even wear a wedding ring. On a normal day these things don't bother me, but today it hit me. I am going to a weekend orientation with my daughter at her new college and I am going to look like a missionary.

This might sound silly to some, and shallow to others, but it was terrifying to me. I spent the evening trying to figure out how I can buy myself a pair of shoes on Zappos and send them to her school before she even moves in, so I can get them as soon as we arrive and put them on before meeting anybody new.

Really. That is how I spent my evening.

Then I thought, I will google a Godly woman devotional to calm my craziness. And up pops a beautiful young woman with a professionally taken picture, professionally done hair and beautiful nails. She happened to have gone on a mission trip this summer for a week building chicken coops. And yet she didn't want to blog about any of her stories because she is planning on writing them in a book.

Really? After one week? A book?

So, here I am, unable to sleep and God meets me where I should have turned first, in my favorite book. Philippians.

"Let your gentleness be evident to all." 
Not your shoes, or your nails, or your new book that you wrote on your one week mission trip..... your gentleness. I know I have that. I have to find it, but it is here somewhere. 

It goes on to say,  "The Lord is near."  Do not be anxious about anything" 
Wow. As if it were written for me at this very moment. 

So I am going to pack my gentleness in my carry on and rejoice in the fact that He is near and I am going to choose to not be anxious about anything. 

I will be ok,  but it sure would help a lot if someone could just meet me at the airport with a pair of cute sandals.

What do you need to pack in your carry on?