Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful...beautiful boys.

My sweet babies are getting so big. Today Kaden brought me a blanket and said we had to hide from the bad guys so they don't shoot us. Maybe no more video games with Daddy for a while. I want them to stay innocent and sweet and fearless forever. Allen's been doing this fun thing where he listens to our conversations and brings them up to other people. Yesterday in speech (I watch from behind the glass) when Mrs. Kay showed Allen a picture of a car, he said "Daddy should have put gas in momma's car...she be late!" They moved onto another subject, and I decided I shouldn't yell at Zack on the phone on the way to speech anymore.

Reinventor

I'm thinking of reinventing myself. Does that sound pretentious? It is...well, not entirely. I stumbled across a blog today that caught me off-guard, and has started me thinking about who I am and who I want to be.

Younger Whitney didn't picture 28-year-old Whitney where I am now. That's because I never thought about who I'd be at 28 years old. At best guess, I would have said I'd be married, have children, and...well, that's all. I didn't give much thought to the kind of person I would be.

Today, as I read the blog about a woman's life that was devasted by a plane crash, I found myself wondering, as I often do about these kinds of circumstances, what would be my response to such a tragedy? Would I be able to put one foot in front of the other after having seen loved ones die? Would I be able to serve a God who allowed me to live, even if I now lived with the memory of loss, and was reminded of that loss every time I looked at the scars on my own face in the mirror? The blog was filled with gratitude and humor and vulnerability and honesty and love.

Who am I? The girl who's first response when her car breaks down is "It figures! Of course this would happen to me! Why can't I catch a break?" That's not who I want to be anymore. I find myself complaining and whining about the silliest things, and it even sounds gross to me. I hear myself making excuses for why I don't pour myself into the things I love, and why I'm not good enough to be who I want to be, and I've grown tired of what I hear.

Today I'll reinvent myself. I'm going to start being a friend, and a good one. No more "I don't have time for people," because people are all that matter. I'm going to stop letting fear of imperfection stop me from doing the things I love. I may not be the best, and that's going to be okay. I'm going to...and here's a biggy for me...be CONTENT. No more thinking in/planning for the future and wishing for all those good things to come my way, b/c in the meantime, I'm missing what's happening now. I want to be happy and grateful for what I have now, even if it's not the best I'll ever have. Appreciate what's happening at this very moment...because I'll never get it back again. I'm going to let things go. Life's too short to be that guy who can't let it go anymore, and I don't wanna be.

So...Don't be surprised if you don't recognize me anymore. I'm changing. :)

Textured Control

What I wouldn't give for sharper pencils, no eraser
And for the little pieces to fall magically in place
So I don't cut off edges with what's broken from my heart
And press them in and work them out at a shaky-handed pace.

What I wouldn't give for all my questions to be swallowed
By a fuzzy, knotty sweatshirt with a mustard stain on front
And I'd never reason out of all it's warmth and objectivity
And never wonder why it doesn't smell like what I thought.

If dull is what you're after,
You can have this pencil when I'm done
But if you'd like to place a tag on unrequited dreams
I'll take mine in small/petite,
Just keep your answers short and sweet
And give me endless seas of crispy pages, no frayed edges, please.