soap boxes

Everyone has soap boxes, I suppose.  I have a plethora.  A Pandora's soap box.  But I do try to keep my nutty opinions to myself most of the time as I have learned that most people really aren't interested in an opinion that varies wildly from their own.  Imagine that.  Pfft.

However. 
It's.
My.
Blog.
So.
There.

If you have a blog and want to vent your nutty opinions I will totally support that.  Actually, I'm in favor of all y'all getting your own blogs because sometimes I don't hear much from you (hint, hint, nudge, nudge) and you still feel all caught up with me and mine and our dirty laundry and it would be great if I could read what everyone else is doing these daze.  So go ahead.  Start one.  I will follow it and comment faithfully (hint, hint, nudge, nudge).

1.  Mean people.  And consistently cranky people.  People who go through life with a sour outlook and evidently feel the need to suffer through their pain, consequently forcing you to suffer though along with them. 

Do you remember that line from the movie Marvin's Room?  'He's dying...very slowly...so we don't miss a thing.' 

The most cheerful, perky, happy people I know are the ones who have been through tragedies.  The cranky, unsmiling ones are the ones who seemed to have life handed to them on a silver platter and still find reasons to complain.  Odd, isn't it?  I hope I don't fall in the latter.  Ever.  I am deciding from this point onward to be full of joy no matter what.  If I come to church looking like I just ate lemons, please feel free to smack me.  If I whine so much your ears start to bleed, please offer me cheese.  And then please smack me.  I have a friend who had the worst childhood I have ever heard of and she is the perkiest, friendliest woman you could ever meet.  My dear friend, Mandy, lost her little girl which is something my brain can't even process several years later, yet she is the most outgoing, fun loving gal around.  I met this woman once in Wyoming at a homeschool swim event.  She had 8 children.  But two of them were dead.  They were only teenagers and they died together in a car accident.  She spent the hour that our kids were swimming telling me how I need to get up every morning and say Yes, God to whatever He has in store for me, because someday - unless you're the world's first ever person to never have a tragedy - you will be handed something you think you can't handle.  I don't even know her name and I will never see her again but I will never forget her.  Why do we think our lives are so hard?  Everyone has issues.  Everyone has baggage.  The kids here...they have baggage.  Some have a matching set of baggage.  But I know that someday at least one of them are going to change this world.  They're going to be big.  How many heroes in our world had life handed to them on a silver platter?  I don't have any silver platters to hand anything to these kids.  I have a couple plastic ones from the dollar store.  And all I can put on them are some hope and some attention and some prayers and time and maybe some apple cake.  That's the best we can do.  That's all we can do.  I don't want my own kids to have everything their hearts desire.  They need to know that money is tight, that that toy is unnecessary, that that food is unhealthy, that that bully won't magically disappear, that grown ups make mistakes, that God is big and we are small, that respect is important, that knowledge is amazing, that hard work is everything, that the world does not revolve around them but around all of us.   I want them to not just to get into college, not just to graduate, not just to meet a nice spouse, not just to find a comfortable job, but to do something.  Lots of things!  Have adventures and go places and find new things and discover what's real and what's not, have lives that their great great grandchildren will talk about.  To not waste time.

Ok, it's only one soap box.  And I'll step off it now.