Perseverence

So I've never been a gifted piano player.  Part of the problem is probably also that I was never that diligent at practicing.  I remember quitting lessons with my mom in junior high or maybe even elementary.  She was tired of fighting me on it and I had other things I wanted to do.  Like everyone who has quit piano, I have often regretted it.  But regret is unhelpful so I haven't spent much time on that.  :O
We got a piano after moving to Texas 11 years ago and I have been so grateful for have one in my home.  A keyboard was very difficult for me to practice on because it felt so different from a real piano that all my practice didn't seem that helpful.  I have been dreaming of being asked to be the primary pianist for years but I just don't know if I'll ever get that wish.  However, two years ago, my ward took a chance on me (and they were desperate) and asked me to be the pianist in Relief Society. This is a weekly Sunday meeting for women only and there are typically only 2 songs: opening and closing. It has been the perfect environment for me.  Probably not SO good for everyone else in the room. 
You may not realize this, but performing PTSD is real.  So for most of my life, I have had this.  I will be able to play a song well (never perfectly because I'm really not very good) but the moment someone walks into the room, even if it's a friend or family member, I begin to stumble and can rarely recover.  I have a memory of a church talent show when I was around 10.  I had completely memorized a Fresh Air piece for the show.  I didn't bring the music because it was so solidly in my mind.  But somehow my nerves started acting up right before the performance and in the middle of the piece I totally drew a blank.  I actually don't remember how I finished my performance- blocked it out.  I may have just walked out of there.  :O  It was pretty devastating to my young self.  
Anyway, similar endings have played out several times for me over the years and I suddenly found myself as a 30 something unable to play the piano when ANYONE was around.  Arghh.  This was driving me crazy and I was considering hypnotherapy or medication or some dramatic route when my awesome church gave me my current opportunity.  Church accompaniment has some additional challenges because it turns out that playing while people are singing along is quite different from just playing a piece on my own.  But, slowly... I'm getting better. 
I am not great yet- by A LONG shot!  But oh I can't believe the improvement.  I'm not shaking and sweating and panicking.  My younger sister told me one time that the only true antidote for a phobia is: exposure.  So I'm getting that and it's really helping.  
It's funny because I have tried to just reason with myself, begging my fingers to not care if I mess up and just soldier on.  But patterns are hard to break.  And I must suffer from some form of ADD because I am SO distracted by everything when I'm playing.  If someone is singing loudly or a little off key or if the chorister is right in front of me, I can't stop looking at her arm and noticing if it's in time or not.  It's really an act of sheer will for me to just look at the music and try to tune out all the distractions around me.  And also I'm getting better about not freaking out when I mess up.  It's hard because, especially at church, music helps to bring the spirit so I feel a lot of pressure because I want people to be thinking about spiritual things and to not be distracted by ME.  
Something that has really helped me is a metronome app on my phone.  When I am practicing throughout the week, I use it and it helps me to focus on the music and rhythm.  So then when I have people singing along, I am used to that pull to keep going no matter what.  

Moral of the story: Meet your phobias head on and I love the many growth opportunities I get because of the lay ministry in my church.  :)

Your beautiful Mind

I try to be open minded about most things.  I get that people do things differently and have different ideas of fun, good, interesting.  Now for the but.  And there is one.  I just see zero benefit to the horror movie genre.  My 14 year old asked if he could see "It" the other day.  I am actually quite certain he has no interest in seeing it and he just wanted to see what I would say.  But he did tell me that all of his friends at school have seen it.  Seriously.  What is wrong with people?  I'm gonna judge hard on this one.  There can be no benefit to watching hours of "entertainment" about sociopaths who torture and kill.  Zero.  None.
I'm so thankful that early on in our marriage both Curtis and I agreed that we had no interest in scary movies.  We love movies- it's so fun to escape in that way.  I love a good sci-fi, mystery, spy action, comedy and of course romance.  I don't know what I would do if Curtis was one of those guys who wanted to rent "Paranormal" or "Saw."  We have made a point of talking to our kids about this a lot and I appreciate his back up.  He says straight up "those movies scare me" (which is just powerful coming from a manly man like Curtis).  And I tell the kids that I sincerely believe those movies are straight from Satan, just like church lady on SNL said!  I saw a few of those movies as a teenager (always at a friend's house- who's parents were renting those for us?!?) and literally 20 years later there are scenes from them that I can still remember clearly.  I'm just so grateful that I learned pretty quickly to get up and leave and didn't see very many.  
We've had lots of talks in our family about how precious your mind is.  And how truly powerful images are.  My mom would often ask me to think about the messages in movies, books and music.  At the time I was just annoyed but her words stuck and to this day I find myself analyzing what is truly being portrayed, encouraged and promoted in entertainment.  In my opinion, horror movies have done too much to normalize sociopathic behavior, or at least to make it entertaining.  We should listen to the genre name and be "horrified."  I haven't even mentioned all the demonic possession type movies.  I avoid those for a different reason.  Those movies invite evil into your life, plain and simple.  I believe there is an adversary and he has spirits that follow him.  Why would I knowingly invite that into my life?  

I'm so thankful for the standards for the youth of our church.  I need them as reminder in my adult life!  This line is instructive:

"Satan uses media to deceive you by making what is wrong and evil look normal, humorous, or exciting. He tries to mislead you into thinking that breaking God’s commandments is acceptable and has no negative consequences for you or others. Do not attend, view, or participate in anything that is vulgar, immoral, violent, or pornographic in any way. Do not participate in anything that presents immorality or violence as acceptable. Have the courage to walk out of a movie, change your music, or turn off a computer, television, or mobile device if what you see or hear drives away the Spirit."

I know that many people think Stephen King is a genius.  Sorry (not sorry) I think he's a creep.  

This guy...

It's fun to scroll back through the pictures on my phone every now and again.  It really gives a quick overview of what's happening, what's important and what's true.  Texas was just hit by Hurricane Harvey and received over 50 inches of rain in just a few days.  That's the amount of rain we normally receive in 6 months.  Predictably, many homes and streets flooded.  It has been a crazy couple of weeks.  First anticipating the storm, stocking up on water and food and testing our generator in case we lost power.  Then the waiting.  Then the night when we started reading up on the reservoirs near our home and realized that the likelihood of our home flooding was high.  Like most people here we don't have flood insurance because... we don't live in a flood plain.  Turns out this was a 1000 year event (should only happen every 1000 years :O).  So we had a roller coaster couple of days, preparing to receive water.  We took all of our furniture upstairs and worked for hours in our backyard redirecting water that was pouring into our yard from the skies and from our neighbor's downspouts.  Turns out all of hers were pointed straight at our yard and it really looked like water would come in through that side first.  There were 3 separate times where we certain we would flood and all the anxiety and worry that comes with that (stress eating is real people)!

Long story short, we were so blessed to be spared and our home stayed dry.  But at some point during the disaster, I looked over at this guy....

and realized there was no one I would rather go through tough times with.  He is knowledgeable, competent, hard working and intuitive.  And then, if he doesn't know the answer to something, he immediately goes to work finding it.  He's a machine and did SO much work on SO little sleep.

To top it off, literally the hour that we were confident our home would stay dry, he was loading up the truck with Jonah and a group of friends and heading over to a stranger's home to help remove flooded furniture and drywall.  Seriously.

For the next 12 days, he worked all but a few.  Mostly on homes of people he doesn't even know.  He was invaluable at all of those places because he is so competent, hard working (see above) etc... I'm so just thankful for his example.  I love this guy.

Looking back further in my pics, I found a few like this:

After seeing "Wonder Woman" together :)

Saying goodbye before heading to scout camp with Daniel, in the blazing JUNE heat!!

Helping out at the High Adventure for Isaac and Jonah in Austin

Watching Isaac's band preview with Lucy

So much time spent on our kids and working with the youth at church.  Time he could be doing other, more enjoyable activities of his choosing.  And then there are few more pics like these:  This guy!

Building a new fence for us and our neighbor (and teaching Jonah and Isaac to work alongside him)

Putting new brake pads on my car, because he knew that was something he could do and didn't need to pay someone else to do it.  

And then these... just because.  

Celebrating 20 years at Taste of Texas!  

Wearing the Harry Potter shirt I got him and trying out his new church shoes, while being exposed by the kids!  "Boyeee!"  

Love you Curtis Turner

Equality

Any mom knows that there are a couple of problems with making equality your primary focus.  First of all, it's impossible because each individual is different.  What works with one child, fails miserably with another.  Second, even as an involved, on the ground and loving parent, it's just so difficult to manage the task of keeping everything equal.  Trust me, I've tried.  Two things happen:

Massive contention.  My kids see what I am trying to do and suddenly they are looking constantly to see what the other kid got and how they are measuring up.  Lots of finger pointing and fighting ensues.

Even worse, the kids immediately resort to entitlement behavior.  Meaning, they wait around for the great equalizer (me) to fix any inequity they see.  And trust me, they start to see it everywhere.  Lots of whining and unhappiness ensues.

I'm certainly not suggesting that general equity isn't healthy and desirable in any society.  Everyone should be treated fairly by others, regardless of their race, gender, religion, status... and I believe the USA has largely achieved this!   But if equity is the whole focus, if this becomes my "cause" things get pretty hazy.

I love being a Mormon and really studying Christ's words and the words of our apostles and prophet today.  In studying Jesus Christ's life, I noticed something interesting.  He wasn't an activist.  He didn't incent the Jews to rise up against their oppressors.  He saw inequity everywhere he went: The way the Jews treated the Samaritans, the way women, the poor and sick were treated generally.  But did use his power and influence to demand change?  Not at all.  In fact that's part of the reason so many of the Jews couldn't accept him as the Messiah.  He offered no deliverance from their oppressors.  They wanted fire and justice!  And this wasn't an unreasonable thing to want.  Things were decidedly unfair and unequal in Israel at that time.

But Christ didn't organize any marches or send around petitions or encourage violent rebellion (or peaceful rebellion for that matter).  Instead, he spent a significant amount of effort showing us the value of each person on this earth.  He chose simple, uneducated and poor men to be his apostles.  The first person he ever declared his divinity to was.... drum roll... a woman.  A Samaritan woman.  Probably pretty much the lowest on the society totem pole.  Christ spent his time with publicans, "sinners" (of course we are all imperfect but I think he was hanging out with known and unrepentant sinners) and those who were unpopular.  One of my favorite stories in the New Testiment is about Zacheus.  I love this story because it is so applicable to everyone.  Zacheus was not well liked.  He was a tax collector, he was Jewish but worked closely enough with the Romans that the Jews resented him.  He was short, probably not the coolest guy in the room.  And Jesus walked past all the people who were more attractive, maybe more pleasant or influential and invited Zacheus for supper.

Jesus didn't just show us how to make the world better, he said it.  Clearly.  "He who is greatest among you shall be your servant."  We've all heard this so many times but do we really get it?  Your status, your success, your looks, your money, your piousness... none of it matters in the end.

How about more time reflecting on our responsibilities and less time thinking about rights?  We do happen to live in the THE MOST FREE society on earth.  Are there racists here?  Yep, mostly because there are humans here and they tend to do that.  Maybe I'm a Pollyanna to the end but I believe most Americans don't care where you are from or what color your skin is or who you are sleeping with.  Most Americans will judge you on the content of your character.   And the constant drumbeat of "It's not fair" is probably having the opposite effect of it's intent.

The Story of Ozzy

For my 42nd Birthday, Curtis and the kids managed to keep a big secret from me- for several weeks!  They had made me a lovely dinner with cake and we were opening presents.  My gifts included a chew toy and a leash.  Hmm... Then the doorbell rang and this little guy was sitting on my front porch.  awwww

He was cuddly and we all adored him on the spot.  He was one of the puppies from our friends' recent littler of Golden Retrievers and he was the runt of the litter.  But it gets cooler than that.  His birthday is Thanksgiving Day and he was stillborn.  Our friend, Paul Davis, had delivered many pups but had decided to brush up on a tutorial for dealing with stillborn pups shortly before the birth.  So glad he did.  He actually worked on "Lazarus" (their name for him) for almost 10 minutes!!  Amazingly enough, the puppy came to.  Fast forward 2 months to my birthday and little Ozzy was a Turner.

I've only had one dog before, Goldie.  I sure loved that dog but we only had him for a few years because my mom was so allergic to him.  She sacrificed for as long as she could but eventually we had to find him another home (and we did find him a really sweet older woman with a nice big backyard).

So as an adult, I've never owned a dog and as the years passed I became more certain that I simply didn't have enough love in my heart for what I figured would be a stinkier child that I didn't love as much as my own kiddos.  But for about the last 5 years all of the kids have been begging for a dog.  Curtis and I did a lot of research.  We were trying to find one that Jonah wouldn't be allergic to.  He is dreadfully allergic to cats and some dogs.  Jonah spent a lot of time over at the house where Ozzy was born and didn't seem to have an trouble so that  helped Curtis pulled the trigger.  I was actually leaning towards a smaller dog that didn't shed (maybe a Shishon or Yorkie) but I was definitely torn because there is just something so special about a big dog that you can lay on and wrestle with.

Sooo, the last 6 months have definitely been fuller and sweeter because of our big dog.  He is now pushing 60 lbs, he is shedding right now like crazy and I have to vacuum and swiffer daily.  His poops are huge!  We just got him neutered last week and everything seems to be healing just fine.  Keeping him cooped up inside the house is a bummer though.  Just a couple more days and he will be free to race around the yard without a leash and swim with the kids.  He loves to swim!

Overall it has definitely enriched our lives.  The kids have been great about taking him on lots of walks, brushing him and feeding him.  Ozzy is so smart and we taught him to sit, shake, stay, come and wait to eat a treat that's right in front of him.  The only problem is that he will only do this stuff if you have food in your hand.  He LOVES food.  I think I need to ban him from the kitchen.  My butter has disappeared at least twice in the last week.  We are pretty strict about giving him dog food only.  Curtis is really the only one who feeds him a few bites from his meal but I actually think it's been a good thing because he sits so nice and still and waits patiently for a bite at the end.

Ozzy is a super chill dog.  I kept waiting for that hyper puppy behavior to happen but it really hasn't.  He loves to lay around with us and snuggle.  The only time he's tough to handle is when a squirrel is nearby or when a new person comes to the door.  Working on both.  The gentle leader has been amazing and I can take him for walks now without have my arm pulled off everytime a squirrel runs by.

Oh and the name.  We visited Curt's Dad last summer and they have the best dog ever.  My kids absolutely fell in love with him.  And his name was Ozzie.  So all the kids voted to name him after his cousin so that 's what we did.  It's super annoying because we still have Ollie and the names are just way too similar.  Oh well.  For the record, Ollie doesn't want anything to do with Ozzy but every now and again they will eat Cheerios together.  :)

We're already talking about getting a second dog to be a friend for Ozzy and are also on the lookout for a bunny friend for Ollie.  Stay tuned.