Bad hair days and crooked tiaras...ALL righted by God's grace!!

Recently while attending a client event party at a conference, the sponsor distributed feathered masks to the participants.  The Mardi Gras style masks made me and others around me almost unrecognizable.  In our everyday lives we don't walk around with sequined feathered masks, but we do often wear masks to cover up the 'real' us-to hide what we are feeling. We go around so afraid of being rejected, made fun of or thought of in a negative light that the mask is our means of protection.  We want to disguise ourselves so that the world will like us.  We want to paint the picture that we choose to let the world see. Several years ago I came across a poem by Lee Ezell which spoke truth of me.  I want to share it with you.  See if you see yourself in the words penned here. The Paint Brush I keep my Paint Brush with me, wherever I may go, in case I need to cover up, so the Real Me doesn't show. I'm so afraid to show you Me , afraid of what you'll do; yo...

"They must be rich!"  Those were the words my friend's 6 year old daughter exclaimed as she looked at a house covered in bright Christmas lights.  I couldn't help but remember that story as I prepared this week's blog post.  My friend and her family are blessed with a large beautiful home in the country.  Each day as she drives her girls to school they pass a house that is in great disrepair.  This particular time they were driving by the house at night and what they saw was an unbelievable number of colored Christmas lights adorning the house and  illuminating the night.  As the child looked at the house she gasped with wonder, "Look, Mommy!! I wish we lived in a house like that !! They must be rich!" Of course, my friend turned this into a teaching moment, but it  is a teaching moment for us too this Thanksgiving. We look at the way people around us are blessed and often fail to recognize how God has blessed us.  I am reminded of ...

In my previous  attempts to find a hobby that I could have a passion for and also excel at (besides shopping) I find that I have a accumulated a vast array of  "equipment".  With each new endeavor I would dive in with everything that I had-even if it meant purchasing everything associated with that particular activity.   For instance, one year I decided to take up tennis- I bought the racket and the cute outfits and took lessons.  Another time I took up bowling-I purchased a flashy bowling ball and bag and joined a bowling league.  Later I took a cake decorating class- I acquired the nice cake pans, all the decorating tips a professional cake decorator could ask for and a cute apron.  I have tried photography-investing in a nice camera that is now obsolete.  My most recent endeavor was several years ago when I took golf lessons.  Confident that it was my destiny to become the female Tiger Woods, I dove in whole hearted-investing i...

I had tried it once before and described the experience as the closest that I ever came to dying, yet here I was doing it again- riding the Tower of Terror at Disney World!!  In this ride the park goer is seated  in a large elevator car and makes several free falls in an elevator shaft. Confident that the belt across my lap was hardly sufficient to keep me in my seat and thus from what appeared to be obvious death, I began to tightly grip the the small handles on my right and left.  As I finally walked off the ride my throat was sore from screaming and my  palms and knuckles were hurting from holding on so tightly!!   Rubbing my hands to help them recover from the death grip that I had while on the ride  my mind went back to something else.  How different my grip had been  from that of the baby  I had seen in my office a few days earlier.  As I talked to him he took his little hand and grabbed my pinkie fing...

The day had finally arrived.  After 4 years of college and 2 years of graduate school-I was about to start my first job as an audiologist.  Brand new job, brand new beginnings, brand new outfit and brand new briefcase.  As I pulled into the parking lot a few minutes early and walked into the building -my stride had to be different.  This was the day I had anticipated.  To ensure that I had it pulled together I decided to stop in the hall bathroom and check my hair one last time.  As I gazed at myself in the mirror-the hair was looking especially nice and with the new outfit and bag I thought I was "lookin' good"!! As I attempted to leave the bathroom I realized that I could not get the door open.  The lock had somehow stuck.  After a number of failed attempts of gently turning the knob and twisting the small lock I began to panic.  It was obvious the door was not going to open.  I sat down on the lid of the toilet with my new brief ca...