Secrets

The differences between boys and girls never cease to amaze me. When you tell the boys a secret, they MIGHT wait until they are out of your sight before they tell one of their siblings. At Christmas they have been known to say something like "I am not going to tell you that you are getting......for Christmas." Yes, we have stopped Christmas shopping for others with them!

Of course, none of these are serious secrets. Usually it is just goofiness. Like, yesterday Mady asked if she could go out for lunch. I said no but told her we probably would tomorrow because we had errands to run all morning. She began planning tomorrow's lunch. Last night, she came in to talk about it and I told her it was a secret and we couldn't talk about it around her brothers. Basically, I just didn't want to hear how unfair life was because Mady was going to out to eat and they had to go to school. Mady got a big smile and put her finger over her mouth.

Her brothers would have immediately gone to their bedrooms and spread the word. Any time Mady needs to talk about her secret, she comes to me, pulls me down to her level and whispers in my ear "Don't forget - Chili's or Raising Canes!" Then she puts her finger back over her huge smile and says "SHHHH!"

Today I love it. But, as she grows older I can only hope that I am still the one she wants to tell her secrets to. I don't want to be her best friend. First and foremost I am her mother. I will make her mad. I will make her life unfair and miserable and all of those other irritating things that parents "do" to their children. I will do it with the utmost love and always with her best interest at heart. If, in the midst of doing my best to parent her, she decides that I am still who she wants to share her secrets with then I am one blessed Momma! If she decides that she wants to share her secrets with someone else, well I am STILL one blessed Momma. And this blessed Momma will be praying hard that she has a great friend that will know when to keep her secrets tucked tight in her heart and when to take her secrets to the proper person if it is necessary for her safety or well-being.

Us going to lunch doesn't need national security. But that does not matter. I want her to learn that trust is a very important thing in a relationship. Any relationship. If someone tells her something and says it is a secret, no matter how trivial it seems to her, for whatever reason, her friend does not want the information shared with anyone else and she should respect that. It might be a test or it might be that that friend knows the whole story and Mady doesn't. There will be times when a girl-friend will break her heart and her trust, but I hope through all the pain that will come from that she learns that you have to choose your friends carefully and the importance of NOT doing the same thing to someone else.

As much as I hope and pray that Mady (and all of the kids) have a great friend like that in her life, most importantly I hope Mady learns to BE that kind of friend.

A Social Experiment

Right before our 15th wedding anniversary this year, I started posting “I love Paul because.....” on Facebook. Every day I would choose one reason that makes me fall completely in love with my husband every day. I did this for many reasons. However, it ended up being kind of a social experiment after hearing the reactions to it.

An important reason was that I wanted my husband to know that there are infinite reasons why I love him. I can tell him, but sometimes the words just get lost in the thousands of words spoken a day amidst the craziness and chaos of our busy life. There is also the fact that between Paul’s work schedule and frequent travels, the kids schedules and the tag-teaming we sometimes have to do, we don’t always have a chance to spend a lot of time talking. On top of it all we have friends and family that had just gotten married, a few that were planning weddings, along with some struggling in their marriages and some divorces.

Pretty early on with the post we started getting comments. Comments like “No one can ever be as good as he is!” or “You are making the rest of us look very bad.” Sometimes, it was just a “You are blessed with a great man!” or “He sure is wonderful.”

The comments were in good fun. But what really bothered me were the “He never does anything wrong, does he?” or “You must have gotten the only perfect man around.” or “What did you do that you are trying to make up for?” or “Are you trying to get something from him?”

I never said he was perfect. He isn’t. Neither am I. Neither is anyone else on Earth. My question is why would I ever criticize my husband, especially on a public site? The point was to build him up. To let him know that I am, and always will be, in his corner. To remind him that as stressed as he is, we will always get through it together. To encourage him and show him that I see and appreciate his struggle to find that fine line between work and family. To let him know that I am PROUD of him, his hard work and how seriously he takes his responsibilities. I also want him to know that I appreciate the little things that make him who he is.

(And, just to be clear, I do not know of anything I have done to hurt him. I am not trying to redeem myself for any reason. I am not “sucking up” or “buttering him up” for anything.)

If I spend my time pointing out his weaknesses or failures then I am spending my time focusing on his weaknesses and failures. Soon, that is all I will see in him. That certainly is not what I want people to focus on in me.

If I spend a little bit of time every day saying what I love about him and what I am proud of, then that is what I focus on. When you go out of your way to focus on the good in someone, it leaves little time to dwell in the weaknesses or annoyances of that person.

He is going to fail. He is SUPPOSED to fail sometimes. He has weaknesses. He is SUPPOSED to have weaknesses. Even Superman had his kryptonite. If he didn’t have weaknesses and failures he would BE God and would never have to TURN to God. If he didn’t have weaknesses and failures he would never have anything to grow and learn from.

We don’t have a “perfect” marriage. We have bad days. We argue sometimes. He drives me crazy often. I drive him crazy more often. But, we look for the best in each other.

In our society divorce has become the norm. No one is shocked when they hear another marriage fell apart. To the point where I have had a child come home upset that his parents have never been divorced. “All of my friends parents are divorced. Most of them live in two houses and have two of everything and their parents get them whatever they want.” It broke my heart!

The main reason I was posting the “I love Paul because” and continue to post the encouraging marriage statuses is because I want my children to see why I love their father. We hold hands, we kiss, we call each other by nicknames, in front of our children, and sometimes their friends (even though they think it is “like, totally disgusting!”)

Often, the words from my mouth seem to mean little to my children. I want to meet them where they are. I will do anything I can to teach them how to love and be loved and to teach them that it is worth the hard work it takes.

If in the midst of my encouraging my husband, reminding him what he means to me and showing my children how to love and be loved, I am able to encourage someone that needs encouragement or offer support to someone struggling, then that is just an added bonus.