Extra Ordinary

True extraordinary beings!

I begin this entry with a heavy sigh. So much is going on in my life, more than I thought I would have to take on at once, especially at my age as a young mother. One challenge that is on my plate is my husband and I have taken in my much younger sister who is still a teenager. My father works a job that doesn’t allow him flexible enough hours to be there for her. Because of this she has had to be more independent than a young teenager should be; and the affects of this independence on this independent spirit is starting to show. So, in short, since I am stay at home mom I can provide the care and attention my sister needs and deserves.

Most days I feel inadequate jumping straight into this world of parenting a teenager when normally I won’t be there for another thirteen with my kids. It’s a trial and error process and I’ve told my sister to be patient with us as we are figuring this out as we go along.

One reoccurring conundrum is the same I feel every teenager faces. She wants to stand out and be extraordinary. There are always the go to answers parents use, “you are unique… there is no one exactly like you… you are special…” and so on and so on. I am sure every parent of a teenager knows those go over as well as, “Because I said so.”

I tried to give her examples, such as her name and no one looks exactly like her or no one has her fingerprint or her back story.

I got responses such as “There was a girl in my last school with the name close to mine” and “Everyone has a face” also “Everyone has fingers” and “I’m not telling anyone about my past.” Or “I like music… everyone likes music!”

Her idea of being extraordinary is drawing cat whiskers on her face with a sharpie or coloring parts of her hair black or other such things.

I was at a lost to how to show her there are better ways of being extraordinary than looking like the Cat Lady.

That’s when my husband said something that I feel is genius.

“Being extraordinary is just doing something ordinary, only a little extra,” is what he said.

BRILLIANT!

 The word is really, extra ordinary. He told her about Marie Curie, how she was a doctor, like many others, but did extra research on radium and what it can do and she changed the world of medicine. Thomas Edison was just an ordinary inventor until he invented the light bulb.

I also want to add William Shakespeare, my favorite playwright. He wasn’t born into a rich family that could afford a great education. I’m sure he was just an average guy that had a gift with words and knew how to use it as well as the other playwrights who could afford a better education and look what he did!

Now, I think that desire we all had as a teenager, to stand out or be unique, never goes away. (Though of course we had that caveat of not standing out too much to where we were mocked. We wanted to stand out in a cool way.) We all want to leave our mark, but sadly, more often than not that desire  gets locked away in our hearts and forgotten when our attempts fail too many times.

I remember my senior year of high school I was trying so many ways to make my mark, but everything I was trying wasn’t working. I submitted an idea for our senior mural; I tried out for the musical and to be a graduation speaker and so many other things previous years. Nothing I did seemed to be good enough. I was so frustrated one day I took it out on my Styrofoam lunch tray while my worried friends watched me and gave me the best encouragement they could as high schoolers.

I still have that desire to not have my ideas die with me. But I learned that high school isn’t the end all be all. If I didn’t stand out there and be extraordinary while in high school, then that’s okay. Since then I’ve still done the ordinary, worked, gone to school, got married, had kids, etc. But on both sides of my family graduating college with a bachelors degree is an extraordinary thing, not many that I know in my family have gone that far in their schooling. And while finishing my degree I felt like I was doing something far from ordinary; I was caring for premature twin babies while trying to finish my last semester. I’ve had amazing life experiences that I wouldn’t trade for anything, not even fame or money.

 With my experiences mixed with my gift with words hopefully can be woven into my stories that will one day be published, and they will not only entertain, but be beneficial for my audience.

My sister may feel like she NEEDS to be extraordinary right now, but great things take time to blossom. After all, Rome wasn’t built in a day!

In the Footsteps of No One

As a mother of twins I have the unique opportunity to watch the growth and development of two people at the same time. They are two little persons born two minutes apart and born from the same parents. However with some much in common, with DNA, and only 11 months old they are vastly different.

My little girl is quiet, calm… but very adventurous! She plays nicely by herself and if I don’t keep the doors shut in our apartment she will wander into dark rooms and even bathrooms. My son however is loud and energetic and seems to be very much a people person. He has to be around people. He will stay close by my side or his daddy when at home. He’ll never wander into a dark room without the company of another person, even though his twin sister will.

These differences go down to the way and timing they have learned to crawl. My little boy, even though less adventurous, has done everything first from being born to most of their development. He has rolled over first, crawled first and pulled himself on furniture first. When he was learning to crawl it almost looked like he was doing the butterfly stroke out of water, both arm pulling and flapping forward to get his to those coveted Cheerios. With his sister she crawled much later and preferred the one-armed army crawl, one arm to pull forward the other to reach and direct. But now they are both on their hands and knees crawling, going this way and that.

A Stare down when they looked alike

They took two different ways and got to the same end result. Again, these are twins being reared by the same parents. These kinds of differences seem to have been prepackaged in them from before they came down from heaven.

From what I noticed, and learned differences in families don’t only exist in my twins.

Again, reared by the same church going parents, my brothers and I are very different. My oldest brother and I are poles apart. He preferred a different path than attending church. He is more artistically and musically talented than I could even dream to be and has chosen to be a tattoo artist. My other brother, even though more similar in personality our career paths are very different. I chose to get my bachelor degree in theatre and writing while his bachelor degree is in business and holds an office job at a cable company.

Not stopping at my family let’s look at my husband’s siblings. As the youngest of five I have seen great differences in each of them. Even though I haven’t been married to my husband that long and haven’t gotten to know my in-laws very well these are the differences I’ve seen already. One brother is very much into sports, another is more reserved, engineer, one sister has strong leadership capabilities and the other sister has a great mind, and works a lot with her husband in his family and marriage therapy practice, while my husband is the people person, business man. He is more energetic than his whole family and often explodes with questions of curiosity about the scriptures.

These five people were raised in the same household, came from the same church-going parents, but each have taken their own path in life, and are raising their families in different ways. (Even My second brother and I are raising our families differently.)

No one is less than the other, neither ways are wrong; it’s what is needed in that family.

For example my husband and I love Christmases with lots and lots of family, the more the merrier. Whereas with my husband’s sister and her family they enjoy a quieter, more intimate Christmas with a few family members at a time. Which way to spend Christmas is better? I say neither. It’s just two different paths to get to the same goal, spending Christmas with family.

As mine and my husband’s family grows; I look forward to watching what unique paths our children will take. What kind of unique personalities they have and will come with that will add to our family. I hope they make their own tracks in life and venture out and explore as they figure out who they really are.

My job as a parent is to help them become who they really are in the eyes of the Lord. In a book I am enjoying called Captivating it says this about mothering:

“Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it” (Proverbs 22:6). This verse is not a promise about faith. It is not speaking of training a child to follow Christ or promising that if you do, the grown child will continue to follow him. Sorry. The proverb is about raising a child to know who he is and to guide him in becoming even more himself. In the way he should go. Not in the way you would like him to go… it speaks of teaching a child to live from his heart, attuned to it, awake to it, aware of it, the heart. It is about seeing who a person really is and calling him out to be that person.

(Captivating John & Stasi Elderedge pg. 179)

I agree with about 99% of this section. I feel that this scripture doesn’t have to have one meaning, I mean the parables of Jesus has layers of meaning, so why not the Book of Proverbs? Yes, it’s about faith and good morals, and teaching those morals to your children, but it’s also as the authors said, helping our children become who they are meant to blossom into, who Heavenly Father intended them to become. It’s not my job, or anyone’s job to decide who they will become. It’s our job to be there for them and teach them all they need to know.

Just because we come from our parents doesn’t mean we ought to walk the same path as them. I’ve been told I look a lot like my mom, but just because I look like her doesn’t mean I am her. Our personalities and talents are our own and quite a bit different.  Just because the children aren’t exactly like their parent doesn’t mean either person is less of a person. Nor are our parents bad parents because the only way we are like them is mainly by looks. Sure there are some similarities, but each of us is our own person with our own capabilities and ability to choose for ourselves who we want to be. We are all on different paths with difference challenges, all with the same goal, to be able to be worthy to return to live with our Heavenly Father.

How We've Stayed Sane

“All work and no play, makes Jack a dull boy.” We all, or majority of the human population know this saying, or have heard some version of it. My husband has a similar way of thinking. He has this philosophy about how to live life; it’s a good one and really thinking on it I feel has helped us stay relatively sane in these very difficult months (six to be exact). It is, “Work hard, play hard.” He has others, but I’m only going to go into this one right now.

He feels living this way you get a more complete life, it’s balanced. When you work hard you get to play hard. And my husband does. He works himself to the bone each week at a job he is over qualified for because he can’t fine descent work that allows him to use his Bachelors in Business. But, nevertheless he works what jobs he can to keep a roof over our heads, food on our table and continue to make payments on the only car we have. He also donates plasma so we have gas money and is trying to get his own business up and running, and that’s not even going into when he helps out with household chores and with the twins. Some weeks I wonder how he survives to the weekends. I believe it’s this god-given extra energy he has that keeps him going. My husband possibly has twice the normal energy given to most humans.

Like I said my husband works hard, but like all people he needs balance. On the weekends, and whatever spare moments there are in the week we find something fun to do. Before the kids came we would go hiking up in the mountains. Lately we’ve been using free passes to visit local museums and the zoo. When he gets the chance, my husband will go play basketball with some guys from church. At church picnics he would come home sore because he played too hard at Ultimate Frisbee.

Living this way my husband has helped me to not just work hard, but balance out by finding the equal amount of fun as well. When I was still going to college I had gotten better grades when my husband was in my life, he inspired me to work harder. Now that I’m done with my husband has made it possible for me to be able to focus on my two careers, being a mother and being a writer.

Now, many maybe asking by now, “How can this ‘work hard; play hard’ philosophy keep you sane?”

Well, since my husband has been working nights I am the one who is usually caring for our kids majority of the time. He sleeps a few hours in the day, and job hunts and other such business stuff several of the remaining hours in the day. This doesn’t leave for much family time in the day, or even time for just the two of us, either. We are all hard at work taking care of each other. Even the kids are hard at work figuring out how to operate their little bodies.

If we continue like this day in and day out someone will explode and end up in a room with padded walls. So, on the weekends we stop, take a breather and remind ourselves why life is worth living. Jon gets to goof off with the kids, we enjoy movies from the library, visit friends and if the weather is good we find reasons to go outside. If family is in town my husband loves to see his nieces and nephews and hang out and goof off with them for they are the younger siblings he never got to have.

Then when Monday comes we take a deep breath and dive right back in ready to take on the world again, or as ready as we’ll ever be.

I’ve seen it when we work hard and leave no time for anything else. I made that big mistake once. One day I tried to do laundry (wash, dry and fold), the dishes, take care of kids and make dinner and more, all while my husband was sleeping during the day. The end result was him missing work because I about nearly exploded. My goal was to try and serve my husband and have him wake up to a clean, organized home where everything was done. That night I learned my limitations. I can’t do everything, but I do what I can is enough, as my husband reminds me often; and I have to remind him of it as well.

I also know hard moments in life don’t last forever, even though it may feel like it and feels even longer because you don’t know when it will end most of the time. I do know that I am not alone in this I am surrounded with help from around and even from above.