Are You Being Served?

I am completely grateful for each person in my life. I believe that each of you serves a purpose....each of you has been guided so that our paths would cross. Life is funny like that.

But I also have to admit that I am at least a tiny bit grateful for the relationships that have ended. Grateful in some cases that they are no more. But grateful also of what I received from them. My ability to feel at least a little cute in glasses or when my hair is a mess comes from one. My children from another. The ability to ask questions when I don't understand comes from a former boss. The knowledge that "pushing up the twins" may get me a little further in the door than starting out appearing as a confident, assertive businesswoman comes from a co-worker. And laughing til I pee from all those friends I don't talk to anymore for whatever reason.

I wouldn't be the same, wouldn't experience life the same, without all these gifts. All relationships serve a purpose. If they don't, there's no point. My grandma used to watch this show late nights on PBS. It was called "Are You Being Served". I never really understood the humor, but it is what came to mind as I was thinking about relationships....Am I being served? Absolutely. How about you?

The Truth

So, you might have noticed that Lilly has been MIA for a couple weeks...a few of you asked about it. I blew off the questions mostly, I’ve been busy planning some other things and preparing for some things and just hadn’t concentrated on it. Well, the bottom line is, I was lying to myself and to those people that asked.

Don’t get me wrong. I was super busy and pretty overwhelmed. I was being pulled several ways and just plain ran out of daylight every day before I got everything on my list for the day done. In a way, it was more of an excuse than a lie, but, the issue wasn’t about time. I knew it was about me. So, I took some time and did some searching within myself. And I believe I have arrived at the truth.

The truth is, writing in general, but even more so on this blog in front of everyone else, is something very therapeutic for me. It makes me feel good. It makes me happy. It brings me a level of peace that I can’t explain. I want to do it. And I could sit on my bed Indian style and do it all damn day….just let it all flow out, every topic, every thought, every whim explored in text. So why wasn’t I able to post even just once a week?

The deeper truth is that I wasn’t doing it because it made me happy. I wanted to do it, so I wasn’t doing it. Epic fail….I know.

Do you know why I wasn’t doing it? I have had ideas every day. I have thought about doing it every day. But I always found some way to make it less important that whatever else I was doing because my happiness is somehow less important than organizing Girl Scout cookie sales or laundry or you name it and I’ll guarantee I can find a way to make it more important than me.

My happiness, my peace, my general contentment with life is not as important as laundry. The value I put on myself and my well being is so low that I will clean my bathroom sink with an old toothbrush before I’ll do something I enjoy, even though I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that it helps me in more ways than I have discovered so far. There’s the real issue...I don’t value myself enough to invest in me. But I want to make me happy. I need to be happy. And I will.

A "Sparkling" Idea

I was having a conversation via email with a friend the other day. She had forwarded something rather inspiring. For those of you who don’t know me personally, you may not know that my mind has a habit of rearranging things and making associations that are, well, at best unique, and occasionally absurd.

That particular day, inspire led my mind to transpire….and perspire. (Gross, especially since girls don’t sweat, we sparkle.) So, since that day, these three words have been replaying in my mind: inspire, transpire, and perspire.

I tried in fleeting moments of quiet and thought to make the association. No such luck. Until I noticed a quote that the absolutely lovely Andrea Maurer shared this.....

"We should be taught not to wait for inspiration to start a thing. Action always generates inspiration. Inspiration seldom generates action." - Frank Tibolt

There was my light bulb! When you want change to transpire, be prepared to perspire (or sparkle for us girls) a little first. Then, and only then, will you be inspired.

Stop planning it. Start doing it....let the world see your "sparkle."

Amazing Women, Amazing Love



A dear friend of mine recently lost her grandmother. I understood her pain, having lost two amazing women not that long ago. All three of our grandmothers were amazing women. Absolutley amazing. One was from Oklahoma and had astonishing sewing capability. One was born in Ohio and joined the US Marines at the age of 18. One was a small town Indiana girl who became a mother of 5.

As I cried for my friend, and the pain I knew she was feeling, I was trying to decipher what is it exactly, that makes a woman amazing….Whatever it is, they all three possessed it without a shadow of a doubt. Sociologically speaking, these women were from various backgrounds, had differing traditions, and different ideals and views. How could these women be so different, yet so wonderfully amazing?

Then it hit me.

It wasn’t in something they possessed. It was in everything they did.

It was the way they made you feel about yourself that made these women so special. It was that they loved so fully, so completely, that in their presence you were the only thing that mattered. Time stood still, whatever you needed or wanted you were provided with, all for the sake of showering you with their love and adoration for the little soul you were born, the child you grew to and the adult you had or would become. It was the way they lit up when you walked in the room. It was the way they really did care how your day was or how you were. It was the genuine, unconditional love that they poured into everything they did for you.

I don’t believe for a minute that these humble women thought of themselves as amazing. I don’t believe they thought they had left some great mark on humanity, nor did they probably ever believe they themselves were capable of such a feat.

But what I do believe, is that being amazing doesn’t mean that you climbed some mountain or cured a disease or won some award….Instead, being amazing means you made someone feel as if all there was and all there would ever was within them. Being amazing means taking the time to see what matters to someone, and trying to understand it, even if you didn’t agree. It means that you accept them, and that you see beauty in their flaws. It means that you protect them from what you can, and lift them up from whatever knocks them down when you can’t shield them. It means focusing your energy on allowing someone else to see how perfect they are in your eyes. It means never expecting more than they are willing to give, while giving your all to them. It means opening your heart.

Being amazing means teaching someone to love…fully, courageously, deeply, and with the realization that they will never forget how you made them feel.

Who are you amazing to?

Decisions, Decisions

Isn’t it strange how we behave in times of trouble, stress or conflict? We say things we wouldn’t normal say. We do things we wouldn’t normally do…..at least not in front of someone anyway.

Think back to the last day that you weren’t feeling well…..when you were standing in line behind the blue haired lady taking an hour to pay for her coffee with change….when you tapped your foot and rolled your eyes…..Was that you, the real you? Or was that you reacting, rather than responding, to the situation at hand?

So, in tough times, you have a decision to make. You could respond, by staying in your own element…being the hero….separating yourself from the rest of the herd. Or, you could grit your teeth, flake out, behave rudely and be less than understanding to the people around you (who are likely innocent bystanders.)

Either decision will be how those around you will forever remember you. Make a good choice…

Walk by Faith.....Blind Faith

When you wake up, and think to yourself that staying in bed sounds a freaking gggaaaazzziiiiillion (yes, that's a technical term) ways better than facing the world, there is something wrong....deep down, in-your-soul wrong. Especially when staying in bed sounds so alluring not because of some circumstance in particular, but just because barely functioning and dodging the next road block is easier than expecting amazing things and figuring out how to get around the road block.

Someone very wise let me in on the secret that something good comes from all bad experiences….that no experience is really completely “bad” because it will put you exactly where you need to be for the next good thing to happen. That nothing is ever negative except your perception, and it is something you can change in the blink of an eye.

Well, I sit here in a rental house in the small town I grew up in, mid-divorce, with no money in the bank, two beautiful children, and an empty tank of gas. And I’m not proud of an ounce of it. In my heart, I know that I want all things amazing. BUT, I know that the road blocks I'm experiencing are only here to send me on my next adventure.

So, right now, this very moment, I am turning it all over to the higher powers in this Universe and proclaiming loudly, and in a “pee-my-pants” kind of excited way, that I can’t control anything but my perception and deep down I know, by way of my newly discovered blind faith in the journey itself, that wherever this road takes me, it’s all for good.

Mine, theirs, yours….it’s all for good. I am so ready for this. Road trip, anyone?!?!