If you were just wondering where the best place to get boxes is... now I feel silly!

A friend of mine recently asked me for moving advice. I moved a lot when I was a kid. I have had three major moves since I was an adult. Adults are a lot less adaptable than kids so I actually think in a way moving is harder for an adult than for a child. I feel like I have learned a few good lessons about moving the hard way and decided to share what I told my friend about them here to maybe save someone else a little trouble:

I have one big piece of advice about moving that I had to learn the hard way about three times before I finally figured it out. It may seem weird but here it is.....decide you are going to love it before you go and realize that just because you love where you came from doesn't mean you can't love where you are going. What I mean is for two of my three big moves as a grown up (one to Virginia from Oklahoma and one from one town in Virginia to another where I didn't know anyone) I was so busy thinking about the place I had come from and how awesome it was that I wouldn't let myself see all the good things around me in my new place. It was kinda like I was afraid to love the new place because I already loved the old place so much. So I spent a lot of time focusing on how much I missed the old place and no time enjoying the new place. Then after a lot of time had passed I would wake up and realize that this new place isn't bad at all and actually has a lot of good about it. I always regretted spending so much time being sad and miserable at the beginning of new place that I would eventually end up loving . Anyway so when we moved here I decided ahead of time that I was going to love it from the beginning. It didn't mean I wouldn't miss Virginia and all the memories I had there. It did mean I wouldn't set my new town up for failure by constantly comparing it to where I had come from. I would find things I liked about it right away and start enjoying them. More importantly, I would start treating it and thinking of it like home not some strange new place. Those are hard things to do for someone who is sentimental like me, but I made a decision to do it and this has by far been the best move ever. I have realized through all my moves that you can truly love more than one place with all your heart and that makes opening my heart to a new place much easier because I don't feel like I have to turn my back on other places. Places that in their own way are still very much home to me. I don't know if that makes sense but I hope so! Also, I hope that is the kind of advice you were looking for. If you were just wondering where the best place to get boxes is... now I feel silly!

One other thing I had to learn the hard way. Making new friends as an adult is a lot more challenging than it was when we were young. Adults have their own routines and ways of doing things. They aren't really worried about making new friends. They don't have to meet all new people every year in classes like kids do. So my advice for when you move is don't wait to start making friends. Jump right in. Find a church and maybe hobby or something and start meeting people. Don't wait for them to ask you over or out for dinner. You do it. The quicker you jump in and make it happen the quicker you will have friends and the quicker you have friends the quicker you will feel really at home. I didn't do this in my last move and I found it hard the entire time to make friends. I learned though from watching a few military families come in and out of town that when you are the new person the responsibility for making friends lies with you. If you put forth the effort people will happily open their hearts to you. You just have to jump in and do it. If you are shy like me that is hard but totally worth it.

One awesome thing about moving when you are our age is that you you get to take your best friends with you. Having Ron and my girls with me means home is anywhere I am!

Happy Leap Day!

For some reason I love the idea of Leap Day! It seems so fun and exciting to have an extra day in the year. I know no one treats it that way. Everyone just goes on as if it were just another day. Even so, an extra day is exactly what it is. Last year we had 365 days, this year we have 366, a whole extra day.

I always want to celebrate Leap Day, but am never sure how. The only people I know who do so are people who were lucky (or as some think unlucky) enough to be born on a Leap Day. One fun way I thought of celebrating it would be for me and Afton to walk over to the hospital (the one where she was born is just across the parking lot from our building) and see if there were any babies born today and smile and wave at them through the nursery window. I thought better of it, deciding that may be a little weird. Still, it is fun to look at newborns in the hospital. Everybody knows that!

The best celebration of the day I have had so far was reading up on its history this morning in The Christian Almanac. Ron started reading it to us each morning this fall and I was very excited today that in our first February of reading we got to read the entry for the 29th. As I told Ron this morning, we could have very easily gone four years with out getting to read it! Here is what Grant and Wilbur had to say about Leap Year:


"The leap year system was adopted by Julius Caesar to keep the calendar from getting out of whack and was adjusted in 1582 by Pope Gregory XII. An extra day is added every four years, except for years ending in 00 -- unless the year is divisible by 400. Thus 2000 was a leap year, and so was 1600, but 1700, 1800, and 1900 were not."

I, for one, had no idea there were any rules about years ending in 00. I guess that is because 2000 was the only year with double zeroes during which I was alive. Apart from some pretty rad medical advances and/or the special intervention of God himself, I probably won't get to see a 00 year that is not a leap year. That is okay with me, though. I am glad I was here for one of the few that were leap years.

I have spent the day deciding what I will do with this extra day. I couldn't do anything but the usual today, but I have a fun plan that I am rain checking for myself and my family. Now, I also realize that what I would do with an extra day is probably not exactly what Ron would do, so I am going to encourage him to decide what he wants to do with his extra day this year and take a rain check on it himself. They will have to be different days, of course, because he is a big part of my extra day plans.

I think this is going to become my new way of celebrating Leap Year. Decide what I would do if I had more time and then take a day that year and do it! I am pretty excited about it! I will let you know when I have my day, what I decide to do, and how it goes!

I would love to hear what any of you would do if you were a give an extra day this year. After all, let's face it, you were.

If Mama Ain't Happy

I have always kinda hated the saying, "If mama ain't happy, ain't nobody happy." It evokes for me the image of a demanding, hard to please woman whose emotions tyrannically rule those around her. The kind of woman I never want to be. The kind of woman I know I could very easily become if I am not careful and apart from the grace of God. Lately, however I have come to understand the profound truth in that statement. I have also come to understand that really need not be an admonition to those around mama, but to mama herself.

This realization came a couple of weeks ago when my husband came home from work and made this remark, "You seem to be in good spirits!" He said it with a small measure of surprise and no small measure of joy on his face. At first I was a little puzzled. Was this such a strange occurrence? Am I not usually in "good spirits?" Before I opened my mouth to ask I thought about the previous few weeks.

To start off I was in my first trimester of pregnancy. I have not proven myself to be a real trooper (i.e. silent sufferer) when it comes to pregnancy. Secondly, this pregnancy seemed to be doing a real bang up job on my emotions, not just my tummy and my energy like last time. Thirdly, I had been pretty sick and then so had my baby. And lastly, my previously very easy going baby had entered a little fussy phase just as I had entered my weakened state. So yeah, while I would like to believe I hadn't been downright grumpy, I could concede that perhaps it had been a while since my husband had come home to find me in actual good spirits.

What was of such great interest to me was how delightfully happy he was to find me in that state. It was very curious to me. I just locked this little observation away in my heart. In the weeks that followed I began to see this was a trend. The happier I was the happier he was - the more we seemed to enjoy each other's company and the more smoothly we sailed through the little things that came our way. The gloomier I became the more sullen he became. Things became harder for both of us. I then started noticing that the same was true with my baby. When I was having a joyful day, she seemed to have a joyful day right along with me. The more tense and overwhelmed and unhappy my behavior was, the less consolable she was. I began to realize the kindest and most loving and outright best thing I can do for my family, for those I love most, and for those who love me most, is to choose joy. Just be happy. Look at the sunny side and be grateful. I couldn't believe such a small thing could have such an impact on our home. But it really did. More than a vacuumed rug, more than a delicious new recipe, more than everything being in place. Just a light-hearted, merry spirit.

That is when I remembered the old saying, "If mama ain't happy, ain't nobody happy!" And no one can be responsible for mama's happiness, but mama. I have a long ways to go to totally apply this principle to my life, but I am very excited about it. What could be a more pleasant goal than learning to be happy more regularly. I am not going to resort to fake happiness, because as I have been learning, it not only isn't fruitful, it isn't necessary. As a Christian, no matter how bad things get, there is always something to be thankful for, something to really and truly smile about. That is the gift I am going to work to give my family this year. My smile.

Real Virtue?

Realness. The virtue of choice for me and most people my age. But is realness really so virtuous? I am beginning to wonder. It is definitely more virtuous than its obvious opposite, phoniness. Originally, I think it was a reaction against phoniness that brought "realness" its current prominence. I am coming to believe that it is something else that has allowed this quality to remain so popular and esteemed. It makes a perfect mask for sin. Think about it. I can behave in a lazy, unfriendly, foolish, inconsiderate, hurtful manner and if I pass it off as being "real" I am praised rather than criticized. How delightfully convenient. Not only that, but if I am really good at it I might even convince myself and then I get to be proud rather than ashamed of unseemly behavior. I am coming to realize that this is a major pitfall for me. It shows up most in my life through complaining. I would rather complain that put on one of those fake smiles I have been taught to despise. But are those my only two options? Must I choose between complaining and being fake? As a Christian I know the answer is certainly not. So that brings me to my New Year's Resolution of sorts. I aim to seek by the grace of God to stop complaining. I pray that He will help me to replace my complaints not with a skin deep, painted on smile, but with all the joy and gratefulness that befits one whom Christ has brought from death unto life.