Write on Wednesday #50: Thank you Georgia Butler!

Today is my 50th Write on Wednesday!  To celebrate this milestone, this prompt is dedicated to my 9th grade English teacher, Georgia Butler.  For many years after graduating from high school and graduating from college with a degree in English, I search for all of my English teachers specifically to tell them how much they inspired me to pursue writing. Ms. Butler left my high school to take a position as a principal in a neighboring town shortly after my 9th grade year.  I lost touch with her and was unable to find her.  About two weeks ago, I ran into her at the grocery store!  She could not believe I recognized her.  It has been 30 years since the last time I saw her but, I recognized her immediately.  I couldn’t wait to tell her what I was doing and that writing and education is still a huge part of my life and that I now work in higher education.

I have always valued education in all forms but, I have a tremendous amount of respect for those who teach our young children.  As with my first Write on Wednesday post I honor a teacher who left a lasting impression on me, but there is also a prompt in line with the them of this post.

 

Today’s Writing Prompt:  Write a Lesson Plan

Teaching takes time, planning, dedication, and effort.  It is not a small feat to create a lesson plan.  Pick any subject you like.  Take into account learning styles, audience, and objectives. This is a great writing exercise to practice something different.  It will work every area of your brain.

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God’s Plan, Your Action

Many of us Christians will say, “I will put it in God’s hands”.  I have said it numerous times, but being a Christian also requires action.  As followers and believers in Christ, we are well equipped to take action in our lives.  It is our Christian duty.

It is not only necessary to believe but we must also support that belief.

Control

In my previous post, I ended with how I needed to gain control over my emotions.  I feel that control over my emotions is something I will never have, but I do have control over how I allow my emotions to affect my life.  If you follow my blog and read any number of my posts, you are familiar with my season of unfortunate events.  That time in my life was a period of reflection, introspection, modification, and liberation.  It was a necessity for me to gain control over how I allowed my emotions to affect my life, but I was failing at it.  I looked great and no one could tell that I was going through my emotional turmoil.  Actually, I made it my mission to look my absolute best, have the best attitude, and appear to have my act together.  The more my world fell apart, the more I tried to hide it.  I was doing a great job until my health started be affected.  I was getting sick often, getting various infections, viruses,  and inflammations.  I was not in control of my emotions.  I was still feeling these things, but I wasn’t dealing with them properly.  I was pushing them under layers of stylish clothes, Ruby Woo lipstick, and halo of perfectly coiffed, but gradually thinning hair.  It wasn’t until I got tired of sweeping tumbleweed of my beloved kinky coils off of the floor, that I realized something had to give.  I needed to regain control.

I had to realize that I had to do something about what was happening to me.  There were some things I couldn’t control in my life, but there were also things I could control and that’s where I started.

Do I want to be an independent woman?

There are songs about it.  Women are praised for it. We all want to be it, don’t we?  I am referring to being independent.  This past year I have heard it so many times.  I’ve said it so many times.  I’ve felt it many times.  I am on the fence about whether or not I like it.  I know it is not the most politically correct thing to say, but being an independent woman kind of sucks.  What I mean is, I don’t want to be an independent woman.  I want help.  I need help.  People were put on this earth to help one another and I am no longer going to be too embarrassed to admit that I can’t do everything myself.

For the past several years, I have been going through a major transition in my life.  It is a welcomed transition and I am looking forward to this new chapter in my life, but the process has been very lonely and I have had to do many things on my own.  I have been the quintessential independent woman.  I can change my own oil, change a tire, shoot a rifle or handgun, (better than most), move heavy objects, etc. all by myself.  I even have even been given the name, Superwoman by my colleagues.  People often wonder how I can do so much.  My answer is, because I have to.  I honestly do not want to be an independent woman. I want to be able to do all of the things I listed, but I don’t want to have to do them all by myself.  I wears me out.  When I take off my fancy bulletproof, uniform with the chiseled muscles embossed on the glossy exterior, what lies beneath  is a battered and bruised body with aches and pains. That body is in need of a warm bath, massage, and bandages, but I am too tired to run the bath or reach for the bandages.  Instead I sit and wait until the throbbing pain subsides and I put on the Superwoman garb to cover what has yet to heal and walk out into the next day to begin again as an “independent woman”.

The Superwoman moniker is somewhat true in my case.  On the outside looking in, I may seem invincible.  My superhero uniform is pristine and I am, for whatever reason, freakishly strong physically.  I only sleep, at most, three hours a night and function perfectly on just those three hours (my grandmother was the same way.  It is apparently a gene mutation. You can read a little about it here. )  All of these things are remarkably impressive, but unlike most superheroes, I lack the ability of rapid healing.  I feel the effects of my “independence” physically and emotionally.  I will have to admit that a lot of it is my fault.  When I was younger, I was so proud of all of my seemingly superhuman abilities and loved to show them off.  I taught everyone around me that I could do everything myself.  After a while, offers to help stopped coming in because I supposedly didn’t need it.  I was an “independent woman who didn’t need no help”.  I didn’t like it then and I don’t like it now.  I gave in to the pressure of being the independent woman.  I wore it like a badge of honor, but it became my scarlet letter.  Being the “independent woman” was shielding me from the help I needed.

Years later, I realize I am in the same pattern.  I am no longer challenging men to arm wrestling contests, but I am still showcasing my “independence”.  Now I would welcome any help that is offered, but I have shown that I don’t need it.  As old habits die hard, I have become accustomed to turning down help because I have also convinced myself that I am invincible.  I have recently had to allow myself to show weakness.  Every superhero has his or her limits and I have reached mine.   As before, I can still do all of those things, but it is getting harder to just throw on the costume and make it through another day.

Now I have to create new habits and change old behaviors.  These past few months have been quite challenging, even for this superhero.  I have never cried so much in my life.  I have wondered why no one has been around to help.  I had to realize that I had put on a superhuman performance that showed all of my loved ones that I could handle everything on my own.  I truly believe in being vulnerable.  In some areas of my life I feel that I am, but I never ask for help.  I have no problem expressing my feelings or showing when I am hurt, disappointed, unhappy, etc., but I never ask for help with dealing with those things.  I have a lot of work to do.  As I have mentioned before in many of my previous posts, I am a work in progress.

I would like to challenge all of us to not only be open to help, but to also ask for when when we need it.  We were not put on this earth to travel this journey alone.  Although it is great to be self-sufficient, self-reliant, and self-supporting, we don’t have to be, nor should we be.

 

Build

We are all building something. It is up to us which materials we choose.

As like all people, I have had ups and downs, highs and lows.  During the downs and lows, I felt stagnant.  I felt as if I was stuck in mud, marinating in gloom and doom.  What I did not know was that even in those down/low times, I was building.  I was building with inferior materials of guilt, self-pity, anger, and insecurity.  Those things are flimsy and degradable.  Once I realized those things were not going to improve my position or outlook, I had to first get out of the mud and that required some help.  Sometimes you aren’t capable of getting out of the mud on your own.  You need something to grasp onto.  I latched on to my faith in God.  I realized I had sank so deep in the mud that I allowed my hands to get stuck as well.  I had stop reaching for help.  Wiggling my hands free from the mud was a choice I had to make and I made it.  That was one of the best decisions of my life.

Once I reached out my hand and let faith lead the way, I was given the materials to construct an abundant life.  I did not find them! I did not purchase them! THEY WERE GIVEN TO ME! 

It had to be my choice to wiggle my hand free from the mud, reach out and believe. That was all I had to do.  God took care of the rest.  I made a choice to accept that I could not build on my own.  I had to get rid of the inferior materials to make way for the premium-grade.

I would like to challenge all of you who feel you are stuck in the mud to at least wiggle one hand free. Have faith, reach out and believe.

 

Bloom

We have all been planted.  Some can bloom in their present situation.  Some need to be uprooted and transported to an environment conducive to growth.  Regardless of your situation, you owe it to yourself to blossom.

Sometimes change needs to happen. If your present situation is not to your liking, by all means, do something to improve it.  Things could always be worse, but they could also be better.  There is always a bright side.  Don’t be afraid of the light.  The grass is not always greener on the other side, but if there is no sunlight on your side of the fence, nothing will grow.  Make a move!  Go out and find the sunlight to fuel your growth.

Making Room

We have all heard “Out with the old, in with the new.”  It sounds so pleasant, but it can be very difficult.  Sometimes it can happen abruptly and without warning.

If you have read some of my previous posts, you will know that I went through a season of unfortunate events.  The first unfortunate event was the second accident in my minivan.  I was on my way to the body shop to get an estimate for a rear end collision that caused some minor damage to my rear bumper.  I had planned on doing some Christmas shopping as well.  I had my mother and my two-year-old son in tow at the time when a pickup truck crossed the median,  T-boned another truck which in turn hit me, pushing my van into oncoming traffic on the opposite side of the highway.  The first truck went on to hit the car behind me. Fortunately, the oncoming traffic was far enough away not to hit me again.  After the dust cleared, I checked to see if my mom and son were okay, snapped my dislocated thumb back in place (yeah, I’m tough like that), I realized all of my airbags had deployed which meant my van was surely a total loss.  The drunk driver who hit us had destroyed my mommymobile and caused so much damage and injury to others as well. The last person hit was seriously, but not life-threateningly injured.

The paramedics came to take us to the hospital and as I could see that my mom and son were okay, I wondered what lingering aches and pains would follow us in the upcoming days, and possibly years to come.  I hoped my thumb was not broken.  It wasn’t, and my mom and son were fine (my mother and I needed several weeks of physical therapy, but on the whole, we were okay).  After my family and I made it safely home from the hospital, I started to think about my mommymobile.  I had purchased it when I was still working.  Now as a full-time, stay-at-home mom, my family was living on just one salary. I wondered if we would be able to get another vehicle comparable to the one we had.  I loved that van.  Fortunately, we were able to get a used van identical to the one we had.  This one even had all of the bells and whistles my base-model had not.  Something I loved was replaced with something better.

I think of this story when I have challenging moments in my life.  There are times when I need to make room for better things.  I cannot get too attached to something that may be blocking the place of something better.  Go with the flow.  Allow things to be transient.  Oftentimes we tend to hold on to things with the mindset of scarcity.  The world is abundant.  We have more than we need at our disposal and should never hold on so tightly to things with the belief they cannot be replaced.

I would like to challenge all of us to make room.  Purge the old and tattered and make room for something new.  We deserve it!