The Momma in the Middle

I've been anxious and worrying a lot over the past six weeks...really, from the onset of my pneumonia before Thanksgiving. Lots of turmoil. Lots of bills. Lots of doctor appointments. Some changes already happening. Others coming soon. Uncertainty. Upheaval. And all that on top of a life that's already pretty chaotic. So tonight, with only some of today's goals accomplished and even more on deck for tomorrow, I turn to Matthew 6:25-34 in the New Testament. Well-known words, y et somehow - sometimes - difficult to remember. Even when I stumble, God's got this; God's got me. 25Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? 26Look at the birds of the air: They do not sow or reap or gather into barns—and yet your Heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? 27Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to ...

For almost all of the past 10 years, I have lamented on New Year's Eve that the year hadn't been so awesome and that the following year was bound to be better. What I should have been doing was celebrating the various tough times we survived through then between major illnesses, surgeries, deaths, now divorces...and yet we - and here I can only speak for the kids and I - keep trucking along. Enough of that noise. There will always be tough times. Heck, I ended up in an aircas t and on crutches today after injuring my foot and ankle a couple nights ago and finally going to the hospital mid-ice storm today after my foot swelled and I lost feeling to my toes, which, it turns out, will not currently bend. But whatever! I'm done with that nonsense defining me and settling for merely surviving. So I'm here to say that 2018 is going to be AWESOME. Completely and totally awesome. For all of us! And I can't wait to work my way to what I know will be great things in s...

I tend to watch a lot of movies over the holidays. Reruns or cheesy movies are on TV, there's extra downtime to fill, and for the past two seasons, the kids are away for blocks of time with their father. So...Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Redbox keep me fully stocked on movies. A recent selection was the 2016 film Why Him?  I give this movie 3.5 stars, and here's why: First, a half star is deducted for constant "normalized" use of cuss words. Don't get me wrong; I can cuss a blue streak if I'm of a mind to do so. But in this movie, one of the main characters couldn't seem to get through even one moment without another curse flying out of his mouth. We get it: he's a bad boy and the use of language further demonstrates that. In this production, however, it was over the top and became unpleasant to listen to after the first 300 or so f-bombs. The same effect could have been accomplished in this film with a few thousand less instances of gratuitous ...

I normally go all-out at Christmas, in terms of decorating, celebrating, and gift giving. This year, not so much. Several weeks of my life between Thanksgiving and Christmas got sucked up in a miasma of sickness, and it's changed my whole approach to the holiday season this year. See, I got pneumonia the week of Thanksgiving and was admitted to the hospital the following week for what would become a 10-day stay, followed by a week of bed rest at home. That's the time I normally would have spent decking my halls to the nines - my Christmas decorations, when packed away, fill a walk-in closet, floor to ceiling. I dress up the whole front yard. The tree gets decked and then some. And every room in the house gets other decorations as well. It didn't happen this year. We were lucky to get the tree up about a week ago. A few other treasured decorations made it out several days after that. As late as yesterday and today, the kids were bringing a few other things out to use...