Welcome to the Funny Farm (10 page)

Be that as it may, so far my friends don't share my enthusiasm about the lessons. But I'll be sure to keep you informed.

The point is, my friends and I are always swapping ideas on how to make our lives more interesting or productive or healthy. Okay, so I'll admit the bellydancing brainstorm might have been a little over the top. Normally our ideas are much more mainstream.

Like the way we're always swapping diet strategies and newsflashes. Last week, for example, I got a phone call from a friend of mine. She sounded positively manic as she squealed, “You'll never guess what happened last night!”

I wondered if she had won the lottery. I was getting ready to ask her to pay for my bellydancing lessons when she said, “I got into my blue jeans!”

She hasn't worn blue jeans in a year. But after dieting and exercising for several weeks, she got those denims zipped.

I understand the significance of her news. I've fought the battle of the bulge myself. The truth is, winning the lottery pales in comparison to getting back into a favorite pair of jeans after a cellulite-induced exile.

We also encourage each other when it comes to beauty secrets.

And, boy, do we need those beauty secrets. Can anyone explain to me why, as we get older, our eyebrows, lips, hair and bones get thinner while our waistlines continue to thicken? It hardly seems fair.

Not to mention what happens to our eyelids. Last week my friend Beth lamented, “It's getting harder to put on eyeliner. My eyelids are too wrinkly.”

I know what she's talking about. It's not easy getting liner up and down both sides of all those tiny wrinkles.

Half the time my eyelids sport a dotted line.

I have good news on the hair removal front, though. Several chapters ago I confessed that I had an appointment for electrolysis to remove a dozen stubborn chin hairs. I've had more than one reader write and ask me how it went. Here's the report: I love the results! You'll be glad to know that my chin stubble days are behind me. I no longer look like Michael W. Smith, which is thrilling to me although my fourteen-year-old daughter says she misses snickering at my rendition of “Rocketown.”

Electrolysis tip: Take a Walkman and listen to your favorite music as your hair follicles are getting zapped. And turn the beat up loud—with enough decibels it's possible to drown out some of the pain. (But not too loud. Your electrologist will be determining the voltage via a foot pedal. You do NOT want her tapping her toes to the beat. Trust me on this.)

And when my friends and I aren't trading health and beauty secrets, we can often be found talking about the relationships in our lives. We ask each other questions like these . . .

How can I teach my kids to be more respectful? How can I forgive my husband? How can I encourage a friend who's going through a tough time? I'm lonely—how can I create more meaningful bonds with people around me? How can I get rid of the anger I feel toward my ex? How can I get my kids to be more responsible? Do I criticize my husband too much? If so, how can I build him up instead? How can I set boundaries at work? How can I get along better with my parents?

From there the categories get even broader. The Bible says God forgives me for my past mistakes—why can't I seem to forgive myself? How can I stay consistent in God's Word? Why do I have a hard time believing that Jesus loves me? How can I experience more power in my prayer life? I'm struggling with lust or envy or bitterness—any suggestions how I can win this battle? How can I get a handle on my depression? I can't seem to trust God about my situation—how can I learn to trust him more?

I love having these kinds of conversations with my friends. And if you're not broaching these kinds of topics with godly girlfriends in your life, maybe you should give it a try.

I find that my friends are a wealth of practical information. No one friend has all the answers, but between them all I've gathered useful insights on everything from fixing my cat to fixing my marriage, from bleaching my teeth to harnessing my tongue, from balancing my checkbook to balancing my life.

And what's really great is that you and I can have these kinds of intimate, encouraging conversations with our friends any time, anywhere. We don't have to make a formal appointment! We can encourage each other over coffee at our kitchen tables, via cell phones as we commute home from work, or side by side as we browse garage sales or watch our kids play softball.

In fact, I was sort of hoping Thursday nights would provide an opportunity for these kinds of conversations with my friends as we drove to our bellydancing classes.

If that sounds like fun to you, give me a call.

As of this moment, there's still plenty of room in the car.

22

Never Underestimate the Power of an Imperfect Woman

I
REMEMBER THE DAY
K
ACIE, THEN FOUR, WALKED
into my office and announced, “I'm ready to go to the party.”

Indeed, Kacie was supposed to attend a birthday party in a couple hours. I looked at her. She was wearing her Princess Barbie nightgown.

“Kacie, you can't wear that to a birthday party. That's a nightgown.”

“Mom, it's a nightgown at NIGHT. Today it's a dress. I'm wearing this to the party.”

Immediately I thought back to my childhood. When I was growing up, there were rules about these sort of things. People understood the meaning of the word etiquette. We not only didn't wear pajamas to birthday parties, we didn't even wear our play clothes. We wore party dresses, for crying out loud. We had standards. We had manners. This is what made America great.

All this was running through my head as I evaluated Kacie's request.

“This is what I want to wear,” Kacie repeated.

“All right,” I said. “But the Winnie the Pooh slippers have got to go.”

I've got SOME standards, after all.

In my defense let me remind you that I'm forty, not to mention the fact that Kacie is my second child. We forty-year-old women simply do not have the energy to raise our second, third, or fourth children as diligently as we raised our firstborns back when big hair and leggings were in style.

So Kacie wore the Princess Barbie nightgown. I did, however, take extra pains adorning her hair with pink ribbons, and I made her wear frilly socks and Sunday shoes.

After all, I didn't want the other women to think of my daughter as a poor, neglected child whose mother would pack her off to a party in pajamas.

No way. I wanted them to realize this was a beloved and well-cared-for child whose mother would pack her off to a party in pajamas.

There IS a difference.

Look, I came to grips several years ago with the fact that I'm not Superwoman.

That was always my dream. I wanted to be Superwoman. When it came to homemaking, marriage, being a friend, and especially raising my kids, I wanted “perfection” to be my middle name.

Unfortunately, I soon discovered that I'm hard-pressed to outrun a speeding toddler much less a speeding bullet. And leaping tall buildings in a single bound isn't even in the realm of reality—not after I sprained my ankle trying to hop over a sprawling Barbie metropolis my kids erected in my kitchen one rainy afternoon.

So I'm not Superwoman.

How can I be so sure?

Not only would a real Superwoman refrain from sending her child to a birthday party in Barbie pajamas, she also would never be rushing to get ready for an important job interview, nick her leg shaving, and have to walk out the door wearing a Muppet Babies Band-Aid under her hose.

Furthermore, a real Superwoman would never hang up on her editor while shouting the phrase, “I have to go! The baby's in the toilet!”, and she CERTAINLY would not be growing eleven different strains of penicillin in her refrigerator.

I used to want people to think I was perfect.

Now I'm relieved when they realize I'm not.

Frequently folks write reviews of my books, and one review in particular made me want to hug the writer when she referred to my tendency to use the smoke alarm interchangeably with the oven timer and then went on to observe: “This woman is a nonthreatening teacher. We are convinced that she needs help, but since we do too, we will accept any pearls she has to offer.”

Have you ever looked at your life and thought, “I'd love to be a positive influence in someone's life, but my own life feels too flawed/chaotic/imperfect/unorganized/broken for me to have anything worthwhile to offer”?

Yeah, me too.

But I'm wondering if you and I don't have it all backwards. Maybe our struggles and imperfections don't disqualify us from reaching out to others after all. Maybe they are, indeed, the very things that give us not just credibility, but compassion as well.

For example, I have a couple friends who have experienced depression, as I have. When I feel myself slipping back into the abyss that claimed my life for several years, these are the women I turn to. Do they have all the answers? No way. Sometimes they still struggle too!

But the real reason I turn to these friends isn't for their solutions. It's for the passion I see in their faces when they look me in the eyes and say, “I know you're tired. But please hang on. You can get through this.”

The truth is, accountability and encouragement coming from someone who appears to have her own life completely “together” can feel stifling and obtrusive.

But accountability and encouragement coming from a friend who has scars and wounds of her own is both humbling and empowering.

Am I Superwoman? No way.

Are you Superwoman? I don't think I'm going out on a limb here by saying “Fat chance.”

Isn't that great? That means you and I have the credentials to encourage, inspire, entertain, educate, mentor, train, teach, laugh with, walk with, and cry with each other all the way through this crazy ride called life.

Which means we can relax. In fact, wouldn't it be great to get together some evening, maybe at a favorite restaurant, and linger over coffee and pie as we laugh and talk? We could leave our façades at home and talk about our shortcomings, and how God manages to use us to bless others in spite of ourselves, and how he uses other imperfect folks to bless us.

In fact, you pick the restaurant and I'll meet you there. You shouldn't have any trouble recognizing me.

I'll be the one in my pajamas.

23

The Sunday Morning Comics (and Other Indispensable Gardening Tools)

T
WO DAYS AGO A WOMAN SAID TO ME,
“I'd love to see your garden sometime.”

Sara has never been to my home, but she read about my gardening efforts in my book
Just Hand Over the Chocolate and No One Will Get Hurt.

In the book I painted vivid pictures of daylilies and hollyhocks, morning glories and hydrangeas. I described hours spent puttering in the dirt with my kids, playing with caterpillars and watering cans.

I smiled lamely at Sara. “Oh,” I said. “The Garden.”

My garden was once as beautiful as I described. But if Sara came to my house today she would find one neglected bed of pansies, an overgrown trellis of Lady Banksia roses, and some diehard lamb's ears.

Not to mention weeds.

You see, last summer I was feeling sort of overwhelmed and found myself trying to simplify my life. It was while in this state of mind that I thought about the amount of water it was going to take to keep my garden thriving through the scorching Texas summer. Somehow, I came to the conclusion I could save time and money by letting my garden succumb to the heat and simply purchasing all new plants in the spring.

So now it's April, and I'm thinking I should just go down to the bank and take out a second mortgage on my home. Or add Home Depot to the signature card on my checking account. Or sell my children to the gypsies. After all, replenishing all my beds with blooms isn't going to go easy on my wallet. In fact, I suspect the National Debt will seem quite manageable in comparison.

Not to mention the labor it's going to require.