The Thankful Game, Part 3.

I’m thankful for the use of all my fingers.

And I’m thankful for soap.

And I’m thankful for mosquito repellant.

And I’m thankful for the instant relief you feel after a sneeze.

And I’m thankful for dairy products.

And I’m thankful for the ability to hop on a plane and travel a great distance.

And I’m thankful for Dan Smith.

And I’m thankful for the color green.

And I’m thankful for umbrellas.

And I’m thankful for the times when Brian rubs my feet.

And I’m thankful for Christmas trees.  (Oh, how I’m thankful for that!)

And I’m thankful for parties with themes.

And I’m thankful for silence.

And I’m thankful for the violin.

And I’m thankful for my cosmetology license.

And I’m thankful for deep breaths.

And I’m thankful for what fun it is to put your ear to someone’s stomach and hear all the gurgling.

And I’m thankful for Photoside Café, both the music and the people.

And I’m thankful for denim.  Very!

And I’m thankful for the variety of ways there are to make eggs.

And I’m thankful for coffee.

And I’m thankful for pillows.

And I’m thankful for Ezekiel 16.

And I’m thankful for dry heat.

And I’m thankful for inspiration and interpretation.

The Thankful Game, Part 2.

In the summer of ’97, I took my first solo mission trip.  But when you’re 13 years old and being raised by a single mom, you don’t just go on a mission trip.  First, you have to raise support to afford the mission trip.  You’ve got two options: ask people for money or earn it.  We couldn’t afford to do without either; so we drafted a support letter and sent it to anyone and everyone that we knew.  (This concept of asking people for money has always been a little uncomfortable for me.  Have you ever had to do it?  It just makes my stomach twist and turn.)  The more appealing option was to earn my support.  I’d babysit, clean and take on any odd job put in my path.  Not only were we trying to afford the trip here, but we had all my supplies to consider, too.  The last of the support barely made it in the nick of time, which was a very nerve wracking and faith building experience.

The organization that I went with was clever in that they always had about two weeks of boot camp training to survive before skipping overseas.  In these two weeks on Merritt Island, there were construction courses to take, camping skills to learn and a daily obstacle course to conquer.  The boot camp was designed to develop survival skills that would cater to the needs of the team with the most primitive destination.  Our destination was Ireland, but we were trained to survive in the Amazon.  This place was NO. JOKE.  By 6:00am every morning, they had me scaling walls, jumping through tires and swinging from ropes.  For two weeks I was covered in a layer of sweat, a layer of dust and a layer of swamp.  What I wouldn’t have given for a shower!  Instead, we pumped water (which smelled of sulphur) into our buckets and gave ourselves bucket baths (all the while swatting mosquitoes and avoiding lizards).  The bucket was essential that summer; not only was it my portable bath tub, it was my personal washing machine as well.

The concept of team building was brilliant; because once we got to our destination, we had bonded into a strong unit and were a much more effective force.  America, you’re welcome.  We were the most well behaved, respectful gaggle of teens who has ever represented you.  While we were working at two youth camp facilities, we weren’t the ones actually running the youth camps.  We were the teens in the background fulfilling construction duties and improving the grounds.  And so, one day I was handed a shovel and directed to move a pile of dirt about five feet to the left.  Five.  Feet.

Hold it, I thought.  You mean to tell me that I did all of this asking for money, all of this babysitting, all of  this house cleaning, all of this bucket bathing, all of this rope swinging, Atlantic crossing, tent residing… just so that I could move a pile of dirt in Ireland five feet to the left?  My pride was suffocating me and I’m pretty sure my brain lost a little oxygen that day.  And so like a good, Christian, 13 year old girl, I spiraled into a pitiful, woe-is-me tizzy.  With every shovel full of dirt that I moved, I declared exactly one thing in the world that I hated.

Scoop.

And I hate these purple hard hats.

Scoop.

And I hate these awful construction boots.

Scoop.

And I hate sweat.

Scoop.

And I hate spiders that jump.

Scoop.

And I hate…

Except the problem with my pitiful game was that I actually don’t hate that many things.  These shenanigans couldn’t have lasted more than a half hour before I ran out of juice.  I noticed my mood progressively worsening and decided that this attitude was going to make for a very long day.  With a big sigh and a quiet, “I’m sorry, Lord,” I turned my pity party around.  This time with every shovel full of dirt, I stated one thing for which I was thankful.

Scoop.

And I’m thankful for pretty postage stamps.

Scoop.

And I’m thankful for tweezers.

Scoop.

And I’m thankful for my family.

Scoop.

And I’m thankful…

Do you know that not only for the rest of the day, but for the rest of the summer, I never ran out of things for which I was thankful?  The Thankful Game was contagious.  Our team played it back and forth with each other for weeks during our projects.  Then it spread into the lives of my friends and my family once I got back home.  I’ve been playing The Thankful Game for 14 years now.  It’s great on a road trip and it’s great on a hard day.  It is with tears of wonder and tears of joy that I can admit that I have never run out of things to be thankful for.

(Okay,I know ending a sentence with a preposition is frowned upon, but - darn it! - that’s how I’d say it, so that’s how I’m leaving it!)

The Thankful Game, Part 1.

Peer.  Technically I know how to define that.  In actuality though, I have a hard time telling who the peers should be in my life.  The problem is that I think everyone is just like me, and that they think just like me.  From their age to their taste in music to their income… doesn’t matter!  I assume every client in my chair from the 21 year old to the 65 year old is my peer.  The credit belongs to my mom.  She raised us in such a way that though we had much less, we believed that the lifestyle we had was pretty regular.

What would you think if I told you that I grew up in a trailer park?  (“Trailer trash.”  I despise the term.  Use that term in my presence and good luck getting me to tune in for the next 20 seconds.  Not possible.  I’m too busy trying to swallow spit and loathing.)  What would you think if I told you that when we moved out of the trailer park, we moved into an apartment complex where drug busts happened next door and guns were shot in the laundry room? 

The amazing thing about my mother is that she never let on.  She never let on that we had anything less than anyone else.  I didn’t know what ‘subsidized housing’ meant.  I remember loving being on the third floor of that apartment.  Looking down from the window made me feel like a princess in a castle’s tower, for one.  And for two, I was so impressed with my little legs once I got the hang of racing up the steps two at a time (that’s the staircase equivalent to taking off your training wheels!). 

I supposed everyone used food stamps and coupons.  (That’s just good sense, right?)  It wasn’t uncommon to be donated food here and there.  And all the bags of second hand clothing that were handed to us by church members?  Shoot!  How could I possibly think we had less when I was diving through a jumbo sized trash bag of clothes?

I’ll spare you too many details.  Suffice it to say, my mom not only raised three of us on her own, but she did it with excellence.  She didn’t shelter us in order to keep the bad out.  How could she?  We were right smack dab in the middle of ‘the bad’!  No, she sheltered us in a way that even when pain and poverty were looming, our sights were set on greater riches (not the kind that come with dollars).

What’s so impressive to me is that she never believed that having less excused us from extending ourselves to others in any way that we could.  On one Easter Sunday I perceived that one of our neighbor kids might not have an Easter basket.  I collected and gathered from my own stash and quietly left my Easter basket at his door.  (This was at a time in my life when nobody had explained people’s aversion to unpackaged candy.  I don’t know if my mom noticed the loose jelly beans rolling around the basket.  If she did, it wasn’t worth mentioning… not when I was busy learning what is was to practice thinking more of others and less of myself.) 

Not only did Momma frequently chime, “Suzanna, stop feeling sorry for yourself.  You have a lot to be thankful for,” she made sure that we knew just how rich we were.  We worked odd jobs – babysitting, house cleaning, etc – so that we could raise enough money to participate in volunteer mission work overseas. 

Boy, that will make you feel rich.  Try feeling sorry for yourself when you’re working at a youth camp or at an orphanage or in the middle of the Amazon rainforest. 

No, seriously.  Try it.  I did.  It didn’t work.  Feeling sorry for myself backfired and I ended up with a little something that I like to call “The Thankful Game.”  (And don’t forget that I love to win.)

To be continued…

A three-way mirror and a pep talk.

Last night I finally scheduled a hair appointment with myself.  It’s not easy to get myself on my book!  Don’t misunderstand.  It’s not that I don’t believe that my coworkers are gifted and talented.  They are.  In fact, they’re so gifted and talented that I know they deserve a break.  Therefore, rather than asking them to stay a few more hours to work on my hair, I usually just do it myself. 

And how?  Consider how you know your way home.  The streets and turns are so routine that if there were no traffic, your hands would steer you home, even if your eyes were closed.  Sometimes it’s so second-nature that once you arrive home, you don’t even remember how you got there!  And so it is with my hands.  My hands know the feeling of a hair process so well, that even when my arms are lifted up over my head and I’m maneuvering with a three-way mirror, my fingers still execute the proper techniques out of sheer muscle memory.

Not so with the lip wax.  That’s another story all together.  The ease and timing with which I work on my clients suddenly becomes very tense and awkward when directed toward myself.  Yeah, I can wax my own lip.  It takes a little longer though, what with the disconnect between my brain and my hands. 

There I am with muslin stuck over each side of my upper lip.

Okay.  Pull them off in 3.  One, two, three…

Nothing.

Okay.  Exhale.  Then pull them off in three.  One, two, three…

Nothing.

Okay…

There’s tons of pep talk involved.  It’s ridiculous.  I’m not sure whether it’s the fact that I’m stubborn, the fact that I’m brave or the fact that I’m vain that ultimately overrides the anxiety of what’s to come.  Perhaps it’s a cocktail of the three.  Either way, my lip is smooth again.

Lip waxing, by the way, always needs to be done on a night when I know I’m going straight home.  Because when I’m done, my fair, half Irish skin leaves me looking like I’ve got a third lip.  And that’s only a vision that Brian should behold.  He’s a lucky guy.

I can hear her now.

Have you ever spoken only to realize that you sound just like your mother?  Or maybe your father?  Brian has confirmed that I take after my mother on several occasions.  “All right, Donna,” he’ll chuckle at me.  I’ve especially adopted an exact phrase from Momma that got impressed on me throughout my childhood.  Let’s see if you can guess what it is.

Me, “People are saying that I should go to college.  I don’t know if I should; or if I did, could we afford it?”

Her, “Did you pray about it?”

Me, “Should I take French or Spanish?”

Her, “Did you pray about it?”

Me, “Have you seen my red shoes?  I can’t find them.”

Her, “Did you pray about it?”

I think I could ask her if it’s possible for me to swim to Antarctica and she’d question whether or not I’ve prayed about it.  While there were times that I believed she was just getting me out of her hair, her intentions were for me to get in the habit of approaching my heavenly Father for day to day decisions, to cultivate an intimate and trusting relationship with Him.  (This might seem far out to you, but I didn’t have a very invested or available earthly father growing up.)  She wanted me to be sure that the God who created me loved me very much and that nothing was too big or too small to set before Him.  And I didn’t have much of a problem going to Him for the big stuff.  It was the little stuff that I always wanted to fix myself.

For instance, my senior year of high school I took a job at a little restaurant called Pizza Oven.  I am not exaggerating when I tell you that I burned myself there EVERY.  SINGLE.  DAY.  One day it was the grill.  The next it was the oven.  Then it was hot grease.  Then it was hot plates.  Sometimes the burns were severe and often they were minor.  But they were always assured to happen one way or another.  This infuriated me.  Did I pray about it?  Of course not.  Why pray about something when clearly you just need to me more careful?  Or so I thought.  No matter how careful I was, I simply could not avoid certain burning.

So finally, at my wits end, having lost all hope in my own control over the matter, I prayed.  I begged that God would help me to be as careful as I needed to be.  I begged that He’d keep me from burning myself.  And, like any frazzled person who’s desperate, I bargained and negotiated (not that I necessarily needed to), “I promise that if You keep me from burning myself, I will talk about You every day.”

Do you know that I never burned myself again? 

Sometimes I wasn’t even careful.  Sometimes my arm would still bump the oven or hot grease would crackle, pop and land on my skin.  Didn’t matter.  The oven didn’t burn me and the grease rolled right off.  I kicked myself for not having thought to pray sooner!  I could have avoided a lot of trips to the first aid box!  And yes, I did keep up my end of the bargain, too…  Quite gratefully, in fact.

Yesterday marked the ELEVENTH day that I was without my car keys.  I was using a spare; but the spare didn’t also have my gym pass and salon key on it.  I heard my mom’s voice in my head, “Did you pray about it?”  So I prayed.

I found the keys exactly 30 seconds later.

Restoring dignity at the gym.

It was only a matter of time before the square piece in me came out at the gym.

I think I’m training my personal trainer.

You see, I don't believe that most men understand women’s clothing choices at the gym.  Maybe it’s just me, but we avoid certain types of clothing depending on the activities in which we plan to participate.  This careful avoidance of certain articles helps us to maintain our dignity in a place where we look worse and smell worse than we'd ever care to admit.  So, for instance, consider a regular T-shirt.  We all know that scrubby T’s are welcome wear at the gym.  I would, however, avoid wearing one if I knew I’d be standing on my head that day.  Because if I wore T-shirt and stood on my head, my shirt would come up to my chest and my belly would be exposed.  That's a no-no.  Another example: loose sweat shorts.  Fine.  No big deal wearing those to the gym when you’re a woman.  Unless, that is, you plan on sitting on the weight machines instead of running on the treadmill.  We all know that once you’re sitting in those baggy shorts, anyone can see straight up to your britches.

Well, last Monday I wore snug, cropped exercise pants.  They’re tight all the way to just below the knee, where they stop.  My personal trainer, CJ, had me doing these seated leg presses.  My back was straight, I was seated.  The objective is to scrunch your knees to your chest and then to extend your legs, pushing the weight that’s under your heels away from you.

Like this:

Fine.

On Thursday, however, I was wearing loose exercise pants to my ankles.  Considering the variety of machines I used on Monday, I assumed this was safe.  I was wrong.  CJ situated me in pretty much the exact same machine that had the exact same purpose, except this one had me laying on my back with my legs extended straight up in the air. 

Like this:

You know what this means.  Of course.  My pants wanted to slouch to my knees.

Men, can I just ‘splain something to you?  (That’s explain, if you’ve never watched 'I Love Lucy.')  It is about 89% fact that if you see a woman wearing pants, not shorts, but pants at the gym, her legs are not shaved.

So there I was attempting, after every other leg press, to get my pants back to my ankles.  (The 80’s peg –leg fold didn’t work.)  Finally I surrendered my dignity for the day and just tucked my pants into my socks.  Under no circumstances did this look respectable, I assure you.  I explained to CJ, “On Monday, I was wearing short, tight pants.  They would’ve been great for this machine.  But these roll to my knees.  Pay attention.  Next time I wear these pants, we’re doing the other machine.”  And then, to enhance his morning with extra wisdom, I explained the whole shaved legs thing.

CJ, “But it’s just me.”

Me, “Yeah.  Well, it’s just ME.”

So today he took note of which pants I was wearing and selected my equipment accordingly.  I feel a little sorry for him having to manage me.

Little sibs in the 'hood.

This evening I am entertained by the sounds of my loved ones playing Settlers of Catan.  Brian, Donovan (bro, 14 yrs.) and Olivia (sis, 12 yrs.) are all camped out in a circle on the living room floor.  Dinner is served.  Dogs have circled.

For the first time since I’ve started Square Piece, my siblings have finally gotten to hear some of the stories.  They’re so lucky to have a live reading!  And I’m so lucky that after they giggle and snort and throw themselves over in stitches, that they then applaud me with the snapping of their fingers.

In addition to Settlers of Catan, we’ve taught them a few other things this weekend:

·         How to play Egyptian Ratscrew

·         What the word ‘hood’ means in the context of ‘from the hood’

·         How to engage people with broad questions (instead of the kind of questions that belong in an interrogation scene on a crime investigation show)

·         How an iRobot Rumba works

·         That vigorous exercise after a pancake breakfast is a bad idea

·         That lime juice enhances tuna salad (in addition to a few other ingredients)

·         What Tourette Syndrome is

·         How to walk dogs with authority

·         That dogs are mentioned in the Bible (this made Olivia happy)

·         How to make ‘h’ sounds with worlds that start with ‘w.’  For instance, World Peace Salad is Hwhirrled Peace Salad

·         What it means to banter

Do you know that I have the sweetest little brother and sister in the world? 

Donovan would never want to inconvenience anyone; therefore he absolutely never insists on his own way.  So selfless.

Olivia is so sweet with our animals and with the way she loves to be a little helper.

And did I mention that my other little bro, Joey, almost 24 years old, called me today and gave me some advice regarding an internal dilemma that I had?  For a while there I really felt like his little sister.  Kinda wished I could have reached through the phone and hugged him.  (When will they come out with that technology?)