Hey Little Girl, Whatcha Gonna Be When You Grow Up?

What do you want to be when you grow up?  Wow, what a question!  When I was a little girl at first I wanted to be Cher – my very first memory is of watching the Sonny and Cher show and her hair was gorgeous to me.  Then when I got a little older the answer was Crystal Gayle – again a hair thing, I guess.  Probably because my mother was a hairdresser and I was about thirteen before I discovered you could say no to questions such as, don’t you want a haircut or don’t you want a perm? But, then I got a little older and found out you can't be someone else when you grow up.  I had to start thinking of what kind of a job I would have when I grew up, because that's really what the question is asking.

For those of you who know me, you know I have been to school for A LOT trying to figure out the answer to this important question!  I started out going to college at Southern Illinois University (Go Dawgs!) studying mortuary science – no, that wasn't a typo.  See I grew up in a small town where my best friend's dad was a mortician and they lived upstairs at the funeral home, a la My Girl.  So this wasn't weird to me, I grew up around it, wanted to make a good living, and didn't want to be in school forever to be a doctor.  But after a semester I started to think of the heartache side of it all, how could I ever handle the death of a child and the poor family left behind?  As an 18 year old college freshman - I decided I just couldn't handle dealing with the loss of people's loved ones every day at work.  I became an undecided major, then declared a business/marketing major, then left SIU all together and took a semester off of school.

Next I moved to St. Louis and went to culinary school for a year and a half, I took all the cooking classes, but didn't like the business side of it all.  At this point I decided I don't know what in the world I want to be when I grow up, but I better get a trade to support myself in the meantime. I followed in my mom's footsteps and went to beauty school, I worked as hairdresser for a year and half and just couldn't seem to make a go of my clientele and business - I was staring at thirty and the very real possibility that I would still be living at home with my folks, where I had moved back in when I started beauty school.  I got online and ordered an SIU catalog, time to go back to school and get a degree, so I could be what I was going to be when I grew up.  I spent the next two years back in Carbondale, and then graduated with a degree in history and a teacher's certificate.  I decided I wanted to move back to Tennessee - even though I was born in Illinois my heart had always been there, we moved to Tennessee when I was 13 years old, and it felt like my whole life had been a vacation and I was finally home - my soul could just breathe there.  Much to the chagrin of my parents, who were now living back in Illinois,  I only applied for jobs in Tennessee - after a few kinks I ended up teaching seventh grade in a middle school in Shelby County.

For most of my life I had been in school or working and pretty much self-reliant.  I had been answering the question of what I wanted to be when I grew up, which was why so many things hadn't worked out or hadn't been as rewarding as I had expected them to be.  But, I was about to take on the hardest and most rewarding job I would ever have:  wife and mother, for which there is really no training or schooling to prepare you. This was what God wanted me to be when I grew up, and was what I would continue to be for the rest of my life. This was the only thing I had never known I wanted to be, but what I ended up loving to do more than anything I had ever done before and it was because it was what He wanted me to do with my life.

However, now that both Payton and Katherine are getting older the question of what job (outside of the home) I want to have when I grow up is one I am starting to re-visit.  As I type that, I’m swallowing back the gigantic alligator tears and anxiety of someone else spending the majority of the day with Kit-Kat as she will be off to nursery in a little over a year.  But as time stands still for no one I realize that it will soon be time for me to re-enter the working woman’s world. What to do is something I will have to ask God, because I know He is the only one whose plans will give me confidence, fulfillment, and love so that I can give these things back to my wonderful family.  The hardest part in asking God this question is His answer may not be the one I was wanting or the one I was looking for, however the easy part is, I know it will be the one I need.  It will be amazing to see what plans He has in store for me on my continued quest for what I want to be when I grow up.

Healing Of The Mind, Body, and Soul

This January 2012, I found myself not recognizing the person in the mirror.  I didn't know who I was anymore, and I wasn't healthy and I wasn't happy.  I felt so guilty about that!  I had been blessed beyond measure with a loving and understanding husband, and two beautiful little girls.  In this time of economic stress our country is in, we have a home, my husband has a job he loves, and I am lucky enough to stay home with our daughters. I have parents and siblings that love and support me.  But, I began to realize that if I was going to appreciate my blessings then I needed to change.  I needed to heal mind, body, and soul.  I needed to find myself again. I know the healing process will be a lot of work - but then again doesn't everyone have work to do in there lives?  So I decided to start this blog to chronicle the healing process - to hold myself accountable to make a change and not just another New Year's Resolution.

My Mind Problem:
Sometimes I find my mind drifting to events from the past and the what ifs of the future.  This has been both depressing and infuriating - you can't change the past and you can't prevent the future This is difficult for me, because I am a control freak.  I know those of you that have known me for longer than five minutes are sarcastically thinking - shocker.  So having admitted that, not being able to control a thought process that made me angry all the time was leading to depression and frustration.  My husband had told me a long time ago that I needed to take control and when I found myself in that downward spiral of thinking to stop and put thoughts of things that make me happy in my head.  So thoughts of my little girl have become my  happy place:  her sweet little voice, her recent accomplishments, her cute daily discoveries. This is something I am going to have to keep working on, I have people and events in my life, that frankly I wish I could just erase all together - but I can't. I am beginning to accept this and deal with these situations on a daily basis instead of thinking out future scenarios in a misguided attempt to be prepared, or thinking of past situations I could have handled better. So I guess when these times arise I will chronicle them and then how I try to flip it.  I don't expect myself to always be successful.  I do expect myself to try.

My Body Problem:
My body is out of shape, which is very hard as I have never been someone who exercises.  However, I had always been thin, until a few years ago. (Some would even say I had been skinny.  But, I hate the word skinny, it conjures up pictures of skin and bones and actually being called a bag of bones in high school - just what a teenage girl with low self-esteem doesn't need!)  I had been able to eat whole pizzas or a plate of cookies for breakfast and not gain weight, then when I turned 25, I turned around the next day and thought whoa where did that backside come from?  After that I wouldn't say I was overweight - I just wasn't unhealthy looking anymore.  Then in my thirties I got married and I got pregnant and never seemed to be able to shed the extra weight.  I did weight watchers last year and did seem to keep the majority of what I had lost off - but kept fluctuating back towards the point I had been before the diet.  I know you have to eat healthy, exercise, and take care of yourself - but I never had to do this before.  I had always had a great metabolism and an extreme sweet tooth - deadly combination for laziness.  So now I am dedicated to loose the weight.  I have a friend who started a blog and is brave enough to post her actual weight and pictures as she starts a biggest loser competition - I am not that brave.  I will however, post about the continuing process of re-training myself to eat correctly and exercising.  I know I will never be the one hundred and fifteen pounds I was in high school.  Like I said that's not healthy either and I have accepted that I will weigh more than that seventeen year old girl.  I just want to be a healthy weight and not hear Mammy's voice in my head every time I fight the battle of the closet, "You done had a baby Miss Scarlet - you ain't never gone be no 18 and a half inches again."  I am proud to say that in the past week I have been back on weight watchers and exercising via the wii fit and am going toward my weight loss goal at a good rate - I just have to remember to take it one day at a time.  My mom gave me some great advice that she had given herself as well - you didn't put it on in a week - it's going to take longer than a week to take it off.

My Soul Problem:
This is a problem I have struggled with all my life, I have and will always love God.  I have always felt like I am His special child.  I know He has never left my side and never will.  I also know there have been many times that as He has been my side I have disappointed Him beyond belief - probably to the point of sobs.  When I was a child I had Sunday School teachers that had convinced me I was going to hell.  But as I grew up and started to read the Bible for myself I realized that just wasn't true.  I accepted being human and making mistakes - this doesn't give me a blank check for bad behavior just comfort in the fact that I can be forgiven.  In December of 2010 - I made the decision that I will no longer be a lazy church goer.  I would start going every Sunday even if I went all alone.  I did have to go a few times alone, but now over a year later I am happy to say that barring the weekends we go to visit my parents or the occasional illness we as a family have been at Sunday School and church services on a weekly basis.  I have been going to a Bible study on Friday mornings for the better part of a year and a half and dedicating time to prayer during the week.  Does this mean I'm perfect - absolutely not.  Does it mean my soul is healed - no!  I still mess up all the time, I still hang my head and shed tears at the times I know I have failed God.  But, I can say that if I use the past year a s a measuring stick - I am in a better place, a place closer to God than I have ever been in my life.  It is a continuing process though, I have to remind myself as soon as I see fault in someone else - remember you have faults too - what about just yesterday when you did...  I try hard and struggle daily with forgiveness.  I try hard to remind myself I have to forgive - it's what God wants me to do even if they don't deserve it.  After all I don't deserve to be forgiven - yet He always forgives me & His example is what I need to follow.

So I will chronicle the times I struggle and how as a child of God I pick myself up and keep trying to walk through this life the way He wants me to do.