Being thankful. I am not getting deep tonight. I do that enough. Like Here, and Here, oh, and Here. (The goal is for you to click one. Yes. Just click one!)
Back to being thankful. I am the Queen of the great complain. Just ask my Dear Husband…
Okay, no please don’t. He will reiterate that I can be whiny. Whaaa…
This world is crazy. After the tragic and terrifying events from the past weekend in Paris, I find myself turning on the news often, just to turn it off because it disgusts me and scares me at the same time.
I really try to find the good out there. But, when the TV, radio, social media and chatter is ever consumed by the doom and despair, pictures of horrors, stories of sadness, it is hard. Yes, sometimes it is hard to find the good in the world.
Not to get all sappy, but when I look at her, I see it.
I have often find myself thinking about what characteristics it takes or is embedded in the hearts of those who serve this country? Are they natural born fighters, filled with bravery? Do they possess an unselfishness that only they can understand? Are they filled with a sense of pride in this country that others do not? Do they have this nagging voice that constantly tells them this is their calling?
Tonight I missed you.
I had no intentions either. No plans for the emotional roller coaster that would take me on a tearful ride. But, I felt my stomach drop and a knot build in my throat as I carelessly scrolled though my Facebook wall. I merely was passing time. No real rhyme or reason. But, as I scrolled through my year, our year, the memories came rushing back.
You know when you go to the doctor’s office and they ask you, “On a scale from 0 to 10, what is your pain tolerance?”
When my water broke with Baby Lo, we rushed to the Emergency Room. “Level 3!” I declared and it was mostly that high due to nerves. I just felt like I peed my pants over and over but there were no contractions yet. I actually remember at one point thinking, “Maybe I will be one of those women who has a great pain tolerance for labor.” HaHa, oh silly girl. Then the pitocin kicked in and I smiled and told the nurse, “Okay, I think I am a 6.” An hour later, I rocked myself in an upright fetal position and exclaimed, “I am an 8.” I know, I am bad ass. Actually, then the kind anesthesiologist made his appearance and knocked me back down to a 2 before I ever had a chance to make it to 10. Thank you, kind sir.
So, why am I sharing this with you?
I met Deanna in college. She was the beautiful, charismatic, popular girl with the infectious smile. The other cool thing about Deanna, she was warm and welcoming. Folks, now that is one great package of characteristics not a lot of people can boast.
I went through a bit of a “what am I going to do with my life?” crisis during my early college years. Maybe you can relate? I had aspirations of being an architect and if I had followed that route I probably would have never met so many wonderful people, including Deanna. After one semester in college I decided to change career focuses and well, the rest is history!
I am a pretty impatient person.
It is my downfall and the one characteristic that I know I posses that needs a little love and attention. You know some emotional massaging. I did not become impatient overnight. It developed over the years as a result of my environment. Working in a “high-demand,” customer-focused position, sense of urgency is quite simply a protocol and necessary for success. With this “go, go, go” attitude and way of life, I have become someone who demands the same from my co-workers, peers and even family (oh, poor Nathan and Baby Lo!).
So, what does this mean? Well an impatient person translates into someone who is always mentally and physically rushing on to the next thing. Time shall not be wasted. When I am committed to a cause, in the moment and have a clear objective, a hiccup can frustrate the heck out of me.
Well we have a 9 month old in our home. She is successfully crawling which means nothing is safe. I remember I once said, “I can’t wait until she crawls,” and another fellow Mommy looked at me with a furrowed brow and said, “No, you don’t.”
“Cranky, much?” I thought.
What I did not realize was just how much chasing I would be doing.
I love that this Blog has become a breeding ground for Mommy (and Daddy) peers and I to question our sanity and offer words of encouragement.
Months prior, a Mommy Friend secretly reached out to me and asked if she could share a “little secret” and then proceeded to gift me with the knowledge of her pregnancy, which at the time was “shhh!” She had yet to make an announcement but felt comfortable enough sharing with me because she found comfort in my Blog. I think it was this One. It was one of the first moments since I started the Blog that I felt good about what I was doing because my ultimate goal has been to generate discussion, become a source of relation and develop connections.
Since then, her little secret became a big announcement, and now her announcement a sweet little baby girl! Congrats, again!
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Dear Lauren,
I never knew you, and you never knew me. But somehow over the course of the last few years of the nearly 3,000 people whose lives were so tragically taken from this earth on 9/11, your name keeps presenting itself to me.
The first time I learned of your story, I was volunteering at the Flight 93 National Memorial in Shanskville, PA.
September 11, 2001:
I remember. It was picture day at my high school. I was in the school’s auditorium waiting for our classmates to finish up so we could be dismissed. The initial whispers of what had occurred began here. A few minutes later the hallway bell rang loud and we were scattered, heading into different directions to our next class. The memory that forever exists in my mind like an image that has been burned into a TV screen, was in those moments. I was walking past a fellow classroom and as I looked in I noticed the usually rowdy bunch of upperclassmen were still, all faces glued to a TV. And, in my memory, I swear it was slow motion, I looked ahead and my Spanish Teacher, whose class I was heading to, came running from the classroom across the hall and into a fellow teacher’s room exclaiming, “Turn on the TV.”
I saw the World Trade Centers on fire.
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