The Importance of Being Julia


Now appearing in the December 2009 issue of Bella magazine.
What a blessing to have a bonus baby. Mary and Joseph had one. They were a bit shocked at their baby's arrival. This is the time of year when entire populations celebrate the miracle of a famous surprise birth. (At least, all the neighbors were surprised. God knew.) Some of us have been in a similar and still miraculous situation. Subsequently, there are many families where a child is described with adjectives such as "surprise." We don't use that word. We call our youngest our bonus baby. Julia does surprise us every day, true, but since her arrival, she's been an unexpected bonus in our lives. She's the exclamation mark on our sentence. She's truly the prize in our Cracker Jacks. She's the gift that keeps on giving.
At age eleven, Julia is leaving childhood behind. She's in the netherworld of a girl growing up; she's put her childhood toys in the basement but she's not yet allowed on Facebook. The greatest longing of her heart is to get a cell phone. Her siblings did not achieve cell phone status until they turned thirteen. If we give her a cell phone at age 11 1/2, the flack from the older four will be cacophonous. (SAT word for loud and unpleasant.) They already accuse her of getting everything she ever wanted. Of course she does!
Like many girls her age, Julia is part Miley Cyrus, but she's the best part. She belts out songs like she's the star of her own Disney show. She is also a comedienne who dishes out the quickest quips in Roanoke. She is often funny be design and sometimes funny unintentionally. Either way, it's hilarious.
For instance, the other morning we were insisting that Trevor, the red twin, take off the blue shirt he was wearing to school. After many mix-ups, we were forced to assign colors to our identical twin boys when they were just three months old. We color coded them and they've never questioned the habit until recently. Trevor wanted to wear blue (Danny's color!) to school but I wouldn't let him out of pity for their dear teachers.
Julia joined in the struggle. "What do you call two people who look exactly alike?" she queried. "Colons?"
We all burst into gales of laughter. Caroline was the first to recover. She gently corrected her baby sister by say, "I think you mean clones."
"Oh, right, " Julia agreed.
"Do you even know what a colon is?" I asked, still foolishly giggling.
"Yes!" she insisted, "It's the punctuation mark you put before a list." I explained the more earthy definition of colon, the section of the large intestine which, well, you know the rest. Hey, no offense, brothers, but if the shoe fits....
That's our Julia. She has always had a unique and zany perspective on life. She has never worried about finding just the right word in a given situation. She makes up her own. This why we all still call a piano a "companio" and Kroger "Krogurt" (rhymes with yogurt.) Once when someone sneezed, Julia couldn't remember the expression, "Gesundheit," so she called out, "Kielbasa!" Who cares that she replaced a German blessing with a Polish sausage? Certainly not Julia. She's just doing her own thing.
We found out that Julia needed glasses when she was in third grade. She was thrilled. She knew just what kind of glasses she wanted, "black rectangles." She set the fashion in her elementary school. She was so sporty in her specs that the guy at Sears' Optical offered her a job. She even insisted that specs be added to the littlest bird that graces this column. This summer I used her affinity for glasses as a way to describe her to a local photographer who was looking for some fresh faces.
But two weeks before the photo shoot, she announced she wanted contacts, right away, and that she must have them before 6th grade began. Stunned, and looking for an excuse to delay the purchase, I mentioned how I had told the photographer that she loved wearing glasses. "What should I tell her?" I wailed.
"Just tell her you don't know your little girl very well," Julia patiently explained. Oh, my bonus baby!
It will be just be our little secret, Bella readers. I'm not ready for my fifth teenager. how I long to keep Julia my little baby. I'd like to keep her out of the Juniors department. I'd like to keep her offline. I'd like to keep her bedtime at 9 and make her favorite place snuggling between her parents. Just for this one, final, bonus child, I'd like to stop the march of time and maybe twist the hands of time back a few turns.
Julia, I miss your little self. You were the three-year-old who wore mismatched dress-up-shoes and angel wings to church. I miss that baby girl. But your father and I rejoice in the young woman you are becoming. Your unique perspective on life is shown through the lens of your camera. The way you photograph the world proves that you see clearly what most of us miss.
Bless you, bonus baby. Just keep on being Julia. It's very important work and you're the only one for the job.
Photograph courtesy of Julia Grace Byrd, "Self-Portrait." Summer 2009

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My child the adult

Oh my gosh, he's gone and done it. He's grown up. Our firstborn son is now 18. Alex is eighteen. How did that happen? It escapes me.


Motherhood seems to have two speeds. One is overdrive and the other is fatigued coma. Both of these speeds make it impossible to accurately judge the passage of time. Consider overdrive. You are so busy slapping things together. For instance, halloween costumes, sibling relations, peanut-butter-and-jellys, outfits that make your belly bulge less, and more Slap, slap, slap in warp speed. Thus you have no time to sit and reflect on the near-adult status of one of your babies.


Or, you are in a fatigued coma. This is when you get out of bed in the morning already calculating when you can get back in. You are in a fog of sleep deprivation and despair. The Bible says that to the Lord, one day is a thousand years. Tired moms can relate. We routinely have days that seem to last an eternity. Monday alone is one hundred years. I often feel I do a day's worth of work before 9 a.m. The sheer exhaustion must be akin to being oxygen-deprived at the top of Mt. Everest. If you would stop to sit and reflect, you'd fall asleep right in the laundry pile.

Both of these motherhood conditions conspire to make significant birthdays slap us right upside the head. I have stopped paying attention to my own birthday. (This does not mean I don't want presents, rather that I've stopped counting!). In order to figure out how old I am, I remember my husband's age and subtract eleven. The numbers are all foggy in my head. Until this week. One number stuck out.


Eighteen.


Eighteen. The age you can vote, be drafted and apparently, the age you can smoke a cigar. That's how Alex wanted to mark his Coming of Age. Smoke a cigar with his dad. Praise God for his fun-loving dad. Dave called a friend, another dad of an eighteen year old, and they met at a local pub to shoot pool and watch the boys smoke a cigar. (Don't comment how gross and unhealthy this is...I know...but I am struck by the significance of wanting to Mark Time and, get this, WANTING YOUR DAD TO COME WITH YOU!).


I held my breath when prodding Alex for a birthday wish list this year. Phew! He did still want some game system games. I already dread the day that the games are put away and all he wants is a business suit or help paying his mortgage. I still see my child in this new adult, but he's fading. He's becoming more manly every day.


Yet I rejoice. I rejoice that we have now seen one child cross the invisible, societal barrier from child to adult. He is strong, smart and capable. He is planning a future that doesn't revolve around home. He is leading the way with his sibilings right behind him. I am proud of him.


Except the part about the cigar.

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Halloween Fun Won't Haunt Kids by John Rosemond


We have always struggled with what the right thing to do for our children each Halloween. Our compromise, like the mother below, is only "happy" costumes and "cheerful" jack o' lanterns. We respect all different opinions, of course, but have felt vaguely guilty and "un-Christian" at times. I saw this article by John Rosemond today and loved his response. MSB

QUESTION: I do not like the implications of Halloween, but my husband does, so we allow the kids to dress up as fun/positive characters. Our son is now 7 and is asking to go to the local haunted house. My husband thinks this is OK, but I would like to keep the negative aspects of Halloween out of the picture as much as possible. What say you?

Answer:
Halloween may have its roots in ancient pagan rituals, but then so does the Christmas tree and the Maypole. Personally, and speaking as an evangelical Christian, I think the brouhaha over Halloween is much ado about nothing, as is the brouhaha over the Harry Potter books.
I do believe there’s evil afoot in the world, but the notion that Halloween somehow lures children to the Dark Side is more than a tad over the top. The tradition is just pure childish fun, much healthier for children, in my estimation, than the orgy of materialism they’re exposed to at Christmas, or even the 6 o’clock news for that matter.

My kids participated, to the fullest, in Halloween, as do my seven grandchildren, and none of them are more than normally evil.

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Text Me


As seen in the November 2009 issue of Bella Magazine.

I’m not trying to be cool. I just am cool. I am a cool mom of teens. I’ve read Twilight. I say, “My bad.” I’ve recently painted my nails such a deep purple that in some lights it looks black. I am a Facebook friend to scores of teens and I love it. But there is one thing that continues to confound me as I attempt to stay relevant to the ever-changing culture of teenagers. Texting.

It’s one of those things that I swore I would never do. (I also swore I would never email and don’t even get me started on Facebook!) I distinctly remember arguing with my husband that I didn’t need a cell phone. What was I thinking? Now I don’t think we need a home phone any more. The cell phone is such a part of our happy home that nearly every month I am calling to increase our minutes. We are up to 10 zillion minutes a month and still using them up. So what’s a mom to do? Text.

At first my dear children whined, pleaded and begged for the ability to text. Like any respectable English Major with a concentration in Shakespeare, I refused. “It will ruin your ability to communicate!” I asserted. “Language is a requirement for society and increases your intellect.” Or some other yahdah yahdah like that. (Sometimes even I tune myself out when I start lecturing…) Truth be told, I didn’t understand that texting requires great skill and intelligence. Consider this. Who could succinctly communicate a future plan to continue the conversation in just four letters: TTYL? (Talk to you later.) Who was the Einstein who expressed great mirth with the popular anagram: ROTFL? (Rolling on the floor laughing.) And who came up with my favorite -- so simple it’s astute-- the abbreviated way to say that the plan is fine with me in just one cute letter: K? (Uh, you can figure that one out on your own.) As I saw texting in action, I started to see its great value.

Texting can be done anyplace BUT driving. If you value your life, for pity’s sake, keep your eyes on the road and your paws off the keyboard. Don’t text and drive. Once the car is safely parked, however, texting is a quick and silent way to communicate. You can text anywhere! You can text in the hospital! (Hi Claire and Ed!) You can text in the movies, although it is discouraged. (I recommend keeping your phone in your purse when you do it.) You can text in the bathroom and I suspect that you can text in class. Again, don’t do it! Yet it’s nice to know that if there was a National Emergency and you needed to locate your parents to tell them one last time that you love them, you could.

With young drivers on the road, I like to know that they’ve arrived at their destination in one piece. This is communicated to me daily through texts. I receive a text that says, “At school” or “At work.” I text back, “K.” Badda bing, badda boom, we’ve communicated, 21st century style. It’s sleek. Any fool can do it. Even a mom.

Now, as you suspect, there are some drawbacks to texting. It is oddly addictive. I know a thirteen-year-old who was texting her friends while her family gathered around to sing Happy Birthday to her. We can all agree that is unnecessary. Hey Birthday Girl! Next year, wait the thirty seconds until the song is over, would you, please? Texting, because it’s so abbreviated, does not say all that you want to say. It’s a billboard, not a poem. Yet teens are deluded into thinking “All we need is text.” Or was that love? Today young couples actually date solely through texting. Call me old-fashioned but we used to at least get a movie out of the deal. Relationships are started, carried out and ended all on texts without a single word spoken. Keep this up and we’ll lose the ability to speak.

As a parent of a teen, I don’t allow my kids to send pictures from their phones. This is good common sense but if you can’t imagine why, text me and I’ll explain it. This column is strictly rated PG. At home, we’ve had some issues with Runaway Texting while kids are supposed to be pursuing more wholesome activities such as sleeping. Since my name is on the cell phone contract, I reserve the right to read any outgoing or incoming texts at any time. (People who text the Byrds, beware! Mama Byrd is reading for comprehension and she knows almost all of the abbreviations!)

If you have teens and want to keep in touch with them, may I recommend texting? I hear that when they leave for college, it is the only way they communicate. I have until next fall when my first Byrd leaves the next. That’s good because it will take me until then to learn to use the Barbie sized keyboard with my middle-aged myopia. That’s all I have to say on this topic. Txt if u wnt 2 tlk.

Martie Smith Byrd lives with her husband Dave and their five teenagers in Roanoke, Virginia. She is saving her pennies to buy a cell phone with a real keyboard! Check out her books on Amazon.com.

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Who ya gonna call?

Getting ready to step on some toes this morning. My own, for instance.


I was thinking morbid thoughts the other day. Like, if someone close to me died, who would I call? Sadly, these are the thoughts I have on rainy days. Also sadly, most of the people I thought of were long distance calls. That made me stop and think...a lot.

I had the great priviledge of sharing with three lovely groups last week. They were all groups organized around a common theme: MOPS, or Mothers of Preschoolers. This is a fantastic organization that helps to create community among young mothers who are often feeling overwhelmed, undershowered and alone. I was so thrilled to have the change to encourage the moms. One of the most important things I wanted to share was the need for community.

I need it, too. You know what keeps me from it? Carpooling.

Yes, that's right, I said it. Carpooling. Driving to sports. Running up and down the road with someone's forgotten soccer cleats or science report. How can I create time to bond with my local friends? I'm a moving target.

In my Driver Improvement Class this weekend (another story), I learned that likely the ability to talk on the cell phone while driving will be rescinded over the next few years. This made me feel lonely in advance. I like to talk on the cell phone while I'm driving. It's a quiet time to catch up. But guys, get this. It's not real community. It's simply a shadow of real community. You may believe that sometimes a shadow is all your life allows for. But that would be false.

We were created for community. Don't settle for a lonely life. Nuture a friendship, starting today. To have a friend, we need to be a friend. We need to have people over to sit at our kitchen table and talk. We need to bring a friend along when we go shopping for those new pants. We need to welcome a friend who drops by.
Starting today, work on your friendships...and not just your cell phone-ships. Plan a face-to-face interaction. You'll be amazed at how it fills you up.

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No, seriously, He really KNOWS you!

Who really KNOWS you??? Think about it.... Is there anyone who knows your every thought? Who knows what you are going to say before you even say it? Who loves you inside and out, forever and ever, no matter what??

This is a 2 minute clip from my time at Abingdon Bible Church in Abingdon, Virginia. Dave was the videographer and we used Julia's fabulous little Flip camera. Not very high tech, but it's worth a peek.

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Celebrating Brooke


Brooke Mckinsey Smith

Brooke captured the true essence of beauty both inside and out. Man looks upon the outside, and God looks upon the heart. I believe they both smiled when they looked at her. She seemed to be born with a smile on her face and was full of life her whole life through, even through her bout (roller derby) with cancer. She loved her family so much and they were very, very important to her. Her sister Ashley, age 23, who was only 14 months older than her, shared everything with her, from food and bedrooms, to clothes and colds. She loved to mother her younger brother Mitchell, age 18, and yet was his close buddy. She made her Mom, Rebecca Wimmer Smith, and her Dad, the late Barry L. Smith, laugh with glee and, at times, lose their hair. Her friend, and Mom #2, Cynthia Oliver and her family had a special place in her heart. Her grandparents, Rose Smith, Shirley Lineberry, Eugene (PaGene) Lineberry, and the late Dennis Earl Wimmer and Clarence L. Smith, were all fun for her to hug and kiss. Numerous close aunts, uncles, and cousins made life beautiful, and her God-ordained family made life complete.

She was a social creature and LOVED people. She had so many amazing friends that I hesitate to try and mention you all. Just know that she loved you So Much. God was truly the author and the finisher in Brooke's life. Her relationship with Him was her core, and she returned to Him with an amazing passion. She loved sports, her latest being Roller Derby, which brought her great excitement. Her creativity and love for people shined in her hairdressing skills at St Pierre Salon. Brooke, it's impossible to say goodbye because you will live on eternally through the impact that you made and will continue to make in our lives. We LOVE you Forever and Ever and Ever. Dance With Jesus until we see you again!

Contributions can be made to the Brooke Smith Memorial Fund at any BB&T Bank, account #1430000375266.

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The Greatest Adventure


If Heaven is such a wonderful place, why are most of us reluctant to get there? C.S. Lewis called this place where we live The Shadowlands. He meant, I guess, that this world is only a shadow of the world to come. Shadows are fleeting, unsubstantial and veiled. If that's this place, imagine how crisp and alive we'll feel over there. Or, to coin the popular song, "I can only imagine." Of course I sing it, "I can't even imagine." Because, frankly, I can't. And that's kind of the beauty of heaven. It's beyond imagination.

Many people have faith that they will live forever. This is indeed promised to followers of Christ. They are not afraid to start their eternal life, yet they are afraid of dying. I've read this many places, that the fear of dying scares us to death. I'm not joking, I'm serious. I guess we're scared because we've never done it and also we're afraid that it will hurt. I am. And we've never lived on The Other Side, so it's beyond impossible to imagine. Popular fiction such as The Lovely Bones don't help. (In that book the protaganist haunts this world, trying to send messages back to her loved ones, and is very reluctant to go on to Heaven. That book will mess you up for sure. And the movie? Forget about seeing that!)

J.M. Barrie writes in Peter Pan, "To die will be an awfully big adventure." I agree. I cling to that thought. I can even get excited about the Big Adventure. I can't imagine it, exactly, but I wholeheartedly Believe.

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Green Byrds


Now appearing in the September 2009 issue of Bella Magazine.

I told the kids that my Bella assignment was to write about how our family is “going green.” “But we’re not going green!” Danny exclaimed. “I know!” I wailed. “That’s why this is such a hard assignment!”

I’ve been thinking about Going Green, Byrd style all month. Here’s what I’ve come up with so far. I recycle. For instance, I re-use all the kid’s funny lines and stories. If I didn’t recycle their clever bits, I wouldn’t have this column or my hilarious new book, The Kids Drank Pickle Juice. Even the title of my book is a recycled line from my friend Amy. She was lamenting the fact that she didn’t have any food in the house and her four small children were so desperate for nourishment, they were drinking pickle juice. I stole the line, er, I mean, I recycled it, and turned it into a soon-to-be bestselling book. I’m doing my part.

Oh, doing my part for the environment you say. Oh. That. I asked the kids for inspiration. “You plant a lot of flowers,” Danny said. “What difference does that make?” I asked. “Mom, it creates oxygen!” Gee whiz, he’s right. I am doing my part. I have many massive gardens. Weeds emit oxygen too, right?

“We reuse water bottles,” Julia chirped. “No, we don’t!” Danny argued. Julia was remembering that for several years I insisted that the kids wash and refill plastic water bottles. I was doing my part for the planet, heck yes I was. Then I read that it’s dangerous and cancer-causing to heat those water bottles, as I was doing when I sterilized them in the dishwasher . Gosh! I was trying to do my bit for the world by reusing the Dasanis. But once I heard I was potentially sterilizing my young ones, the environment was on its own. I couldn’t allow plastic spores to leech into their water, even if I was saving $8 a week by reusing the bottles. We stopped refilling the plastic water bottles. It’s really just as well because I was having nightmares about landfills exclusively full of Byrd crap: our old water bottles and a gazillion disposable diapers. So, like many of you, I did my part. I switched to aluminum water bottles. They are hip. They don’t leech plastic. And, they come in many fashion colors! That’s me, goin’ green. Doin’ my best.

Now, recycling is a great way to go green. Everyone should recycle. Email me and let me know how that’s going for you. See, another shameful secret up our way is that the Byrd’s don’t recycle. I say secret but our entire neighborhood knows so it’s not that hush-hush really. We don’t recycle. The shame! The absolute cryin’ shame! The kids berate me on a regular basis. Desperate to think of something we recycle, I cried out, “Hey, we give blood!“ I make it mandatory as soon as the kids turn sixteen. (Did you know 16 year olds can donate if they have parental consent and a photo ID? Give blood; it’s the gift of life.) I assured the teens that our family donates blood, that’s what we do to go green.

“That’s for humanity, not the environment!” Danny exclaimed. Oh, whatever. Go green, go red. All you feel is good. I just know I’m in favor of both giving blood and donating organs. My mother received a donor kidney nineteen years ago and Joe Kidney is still going strong. Therefore, whenever people start nagging me about recycling, I say, “We are organ donors. We are going to recycle our entire bodies.” That usually shuts them right up.

I do care about the environment, sort of. For instance, there are many hip reusable shopping bags sitting in the trunk of my van. They sit there, anxiously awaiting the day I will remember them before I go to Kroger, not after. In the meanwhile, I choose plastic and I re-purpose the seventy-five cheap plastic bags that come into the house each week. We use them as small trash cans liners and for lunch bags. We also use them instead of bubble wrap when we are sending packages. Great strides for the environment, right there.

I grew up in New England. The Yankees have a saying: “Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without.“ That is something that the Byrds do every day. For instance, all summer I’ve been using a disgusting flavor of toothpaste. I refuse to throw it away until it is all gone. I suffer, how I suffer, but I will use it up….that’s how I roll. When it comes to wardrobe, we make do. The kids are well accustomed to hand-me-downs. The girls have made some really cute cut off shorts out of pants that are too short. They get their green from me, I think.

I do think that the next generation will be naturally more green. Julia, aged 11, wrote about going green in her blog. (Yes, she has her own blog.) She wrote:

I reuse my water bottles
I take short showers
I turn off the water while I’m brushing my teeth
I air dry my hair. Which is saving electricity (I think that’s part of going green).
I turn out the lights when I’m leaving the room.
I’m going to start unplugging the cell phone charger when I’m not using it.
See, Baby Byrd is goin’ green!

After much reflection, I think we are doing our part. We just can’t help ourselves. Much to my surprise, it turns out that we’re Green Byrds at heart. Go green!

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Celebrate


I'm on this gig where I want to celebrate the little things. I've always made a big deal of taking pictures on the first day of school. The kids pretend that they don't like it. Some are really good actors. Yet I sense that deep down, they enjoy being fussed over a little. They don't even protest when I post the pictures on Facebook while they are still in their first hours of the school year. I know that they know that I love them with a crazy love and want everyone else to realize that. What a great sensation..for them and for me. I am celebrating my children.

Julia is now two days into sixth grade. Through God's miraculous provision, all five of our children are attending Faith Christian School, a classical Christian school in Roanoke. Julia is well-accustomed to hand-me-downs and never complains. However, we did not have enough shelves to customize five high school lockers. Julia did not ask for a shelf. She only quietly reported, "My friend said they have locker shelves in cool colors at Staples."


Now, I can't stand Staples. Everything there seems is four times more expensive than at WalMart. However, we were near Staples. The shelf might be pricey, but it would be the first one we'd ever purchased. All the other locker shelves we own were given to the kids. Would it be such a big deal to buy just one cool-colored locker shelf? She choose pink. Wanting to make a moment of it, I said, "Julia, that's your special present for starting middle school." (Keep your fingers crossed, I hope her friends don't tell her when they get laptops and iPods for their gifts!) She was thrilled. Absolutely thrilled.


When Dave got home from work, Julia animatedly told him all about the trip to Staples, the choice of the pink shelf and the fact that it was a gift for sixth grade. It was told with flair, anticipation and much celebration. It was the best $5.99 I ever spent.


I want to live that way. Flair. Anticipation. And much celebration. My goal for this season? Celebrate. Celebrate little things. Put notes in lunch boxes and under pillows. Stop for ice cream and a heart-to-heart with whichever family member is closest. Snuggle. Laugh. Love. Thank you, Lord, for Staples. Help me to remember what I learned there.




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Can't Complain...


I just love it when I ask how someone is and they say, "Can't complain." My response is always, "Well, you can complain but no one will listen." Ain't that the truth? And why doesn't anyone listen any more?


Etiquette fairly demands that when someone asks "How are you?" we respond with some quick version of "I am fine." It's a little social dance that we do. It doesn't matter if we've just busted up the car, overdrawn our checking account, found a suspicious lump or fought with our spouse. We answer, insincerely, "I am fine." 98% of the time we are not fine, yet we say we are. What this really means is, "You don't really care to know...do you?" That's why I enjoy hearing the much more clever, "Can't complain." I like it because what it really means is, "I could complain, but we both know you don't want to hear it, so I won't even try."

The thing is, I want to hear it. I want to be the friend who listens. I want to listen when someone wants to whine as well as when they want to celebrate. Isn't that what being a good listener actually is?
I ran across a funny line in a book just now. The main character in the delightful book The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society is surviving during World War II. She laments that due to bombings, she's lost a great apartment with views of the Thames (like the ones pictured in this post!) She says, "I know that I am fortunate to have any place at all to live in London, but I much prefer whining to counting my blessings."

How about you? Do you much prefer complaining to counting your blessings? If so, why? If someone asks how you are doing, do you treat them to a peek into your world? Do you complain? Explain? Lament? Or answer with a terse, "I'm fine," assuming that no one really cares?

I'm interested. Let's talk. Starting today, let's be the one who listens. The one who cares. The one who asks even one more question beyond, "How are you?" Let's not take, "I am fine" or "Can't complain!" for an answer. We could literally revolutionize the world...with love.


The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love. Galatians 5:6



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And...they're off!


Currently appearing in the August edition of Bella magazine!

Have you ever been to a horse race? I’ve gone a few times and this phrase echoes in my memory bank. “And ….they’re off!” It’s the announcer’s traditional call when the horses leave the starting gate and begin their race. Here’s what it’s like to watch the race. You know that your favorite is out there, but you can’t see him very clearly. You can still cheer for and depending on how much money you sunk on a bet, you will yell and scream for him to win his race. When he comes back around to the finish line, you can get a better look again…as he glides on by. He has blinders on and will never even know you’re out there…cheering and praying for his successful run.

This describes my summer with my three teenage boys. And they’re off! Quite literally. Alex, almost eighteen, has been in Costa Rica since school let out. He is there with a local Roanoke ministry called Answering the Call. It’s an awesome discipleship training program…part adventure in the jungle, part study, part mission, part livin’ large away from home. He is loving it…or so I assume. You see, I’m cheering him on from a great distance. But I can’t see where he is on the track. Thankfully, the worldwide web extends to a tiny Internet Café in Costa Rica. He updates his Facebook status (in lieu of a note to his mommy) and this is how I know he is jumping off waterfalls and playing soccer with the ticos, or Costa Rican natives. In any case, he’s off.

Danny and Trevor are around this summer and with the absence of their big brother, I intended to hold them even closer than usual. The day Alex went to Costa Rica, the rest of the family headed to Williamsburg on our family vacation. We were down to four children, at least for that trip, and the extra space was put to good use. We stretched out, every family member listening to his or her own iPod. I imagined there would be plenty of time for family bonding when we got to Williamsburg. But the minute we arrived to our condo, the announcer shouted, “And…they’re off!” We scarcely saw the boys for the next seven days.

Thanks to the generosity of our benefactors, Santa Dan and Aunt Janet, we stayed at a lovely large condo in Williamsburg. Danny and Trevor had their own apartment which was joined to ours. This meant they had their own bedrooms, own fridge and own laundry. Best of all, they had their own media center. They made use of this every night when they sponsored their own movie nights with cute girls they had met at the pool. What a way to celebrate turning sixteen. To think there was a day when getting cupcakes was special. Sigh.

I sat on the other side of the unit, twiddling my thumbs and staring at the box of Yahtzee that I had packed in anticipation of hours of family fun. I missed having my boys around. I knew it was going to be a different version of a family vacation without Alex but I hadn’t anticipated the mass exodus of all the teens. The resort had a great workout room, several pools, game rooms and did I mention, cute girls? No mother in the world can compete with that. I tried to lure them back with great snacks and drinks but they would come to my side of the house, raid the food, then head back out again. I could hear the announcer’s voice yelling, “And…they’re off!”

I have always been a mom who has encouraged growth and independence. When my babies were little, I couldn’t wait until they could sit up. When they sat up, I encouraged them to crawl by holding the TV remote just out of reach. (This works like magic.) When they could crawl, I helped them stand and then walk. What I didn’t realize was that once they could run, they would. And they wouldn’t look back.

When they reached preschool, I rejoiced. I couldn’t wait for them to get to grade school. Once elementary school was under our belt, we’d race into middle school. But now, all of a sudden, I see where this independence is headed. They are headed right out the door and judging from the six lines of communication from Alex this summer, they will not look back. They’ll do what they’ve been encouraged to do…run their own race as swiftly and skillfully as they can. I’ll be relegated to the sidelines, cheering them on and hoping to catch a glimpse of them as they round the corner in the race of life.

Turns out, I wasn’t ready, after all. But it’s too late. They’re off.

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Stress Busters!


I read that 90% of stress is from unfinished business. 90%! You likely already know or experience the physical problems that come from stress. Stress causes stomachache, backaches, headaches...every aches. It will literally eat you alive. Things left undone, things left unsaid...they can really harm you. So what can we do about it?

Take care of business. Yup, I said it. You see, we often spend the bulk of our time worrying and complaining instead of simply doing. Here's my brainstorm....Just get it done. Stop talking and start doing. All you'll feel is good!
What is the unfinished business in your life? For me, I hate paying bills. There's nothing about it that I enjoy. I put it off and put it off. The longer I put it off, the more it stresses me out. And there are consequences to my delays. Things like late fee and increased interest rates. Those things stress me out even more. I've struggled with my bills for years. For years I would go to bed thinking about paying bills and wake up thinking about paying bills. Something was not right!

Finally one day, I realized how foolish I was being. In just about one hour, I got all of my bills set up online and I set up automatic payments for these bills. It was very simple in the end. The dread was completely ridiculous. It was easy! Best of all, I was able to request emails to myself, telling myself that I paid my bills. These emails are so much fun to receive. A lot more fun than the bills! And the benefits.....no more late fees! Low interest rates! And no more stress! In other words...freedom!


Here's another great example. I know that having boxes and drawers of photographs really stress people out. I would love to see everyone in the world preserve their family photos in photo-safe albums. Yet just the thought of making albums adds stress to many people. I want to bring a word of freedom to alleviate this stress. My word is....shoebox. Dig the photos out, throw out the duplicates, trash the blurry and duddy ones (and the ones where you look bad!), and put the rest in order in your shoebox. You will be amazed at how much stress is lifted. You'll feel like you've lost twenty pounds!


Don't allow stress to keep you from getting your job done. You see, it's a vicious cycle. The more stressed you are, the less effectively you work. The less effectively you work, the more stressed you'll become. Break the cycle; today is the day! Make a list of your incomplete work, then resolve to complete it.
Just one final hint...you'll likely have to get off the computer and stop monkeying around on Facebook if you want to get some real work done. Just a hint....




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Just keep swimmin'...

I am still smiling from my fantastic few days with the Homemade Gourmet consultants. What a great group! I just love a convention vibe, anyway. The colorful t-shirts, tiaras, clappers...what's not to like? It's the best of my old sorority days without any of the junk. So much thanks and appreciation to the HG gang who may be tuning in to the blog from now on. You will likely be surprised to know how unbelievably nervous I am when I join a new group. I have flop sweats, no kidding. Talk about getting over your fears. I have to do deep breathing exercises just to get out of the cab, never mind walk on to that big stage. You made it easy and I thank you.

I'm still laughing at how much everyone enjoyed the "Just keep swimmin', swimmin', swimmin'" pep talk, courtesy of Finding Nemo. I wonder how much other wisdom we can find in animated shows? (I don't think there's a lot of wisdom in Sponge Bob Square Pants, but that's just me.) There's just something really wise about submitting to the path ahead and just going full-steam ahead. It must be how Lance Armstrong feels when he gets on the bike, knowing that he's not going to get off it again until the Finish Line. He tucks his head down and rides.

That's what we need to do. Swim, ride, press on. Shampoo, Rinse, Repeat. Just keep doing those actions over and over again until you've arrived at your destination.

Today I'm swimming through a pile of unanswered mails, bills and I'll tell you what, I'd rather be lying on my bed, watching HGTV. It's why I always set an expectation for each day and what I'll accomplish in that day. If I don't give myself a "To Do" list, there's a whole lot of HGTV-watching going on. Can you relate?

So here's a simple tip. If you have trouble getting motivated, give yourself one task to do a day. Just one. Write it on your day planner. Check it off when it is accomplished. Do that every day this week. Then see how much progress you have made in just five days. You'll be amazed.

Thanks again, everyone. I am delighted to be your friend.

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The New Me by Alex Byrd



I wrote about Alex in Costa Rica in my post "YahYah in the Jungle." This is the essay Alex after returning from his self-title "Trip of a Lifetime". It is reprinted here with his permission.

He is a new man.



I grew up in the church. As a child, my parents brought me every Sunday. I always considered myself to be a good Christian because I went to church. However, as I got older, I began to drift away from church. I began to view it as a hassle and something unfun that I had to get out of the way every Sunday before I could go hang out with my friends. Then in sixth grade my parents enrolled me in a private Christian school while all of my friends went to the local public school. This made me angry. I felt like I would never see them again. I felt like we weren’t going to be as good of friends. I was scared of going to a new school where I didn’t know anyone. All of my fears were misplaced though. I made really good friends over the years and also still hung out with my old friends.

However, at this school, I began to pull away from not just church but God and Christianity altogether. I hated the mandatory Bible classes. I felt like I was having Jesus shoved down my throat. I hated the way it was presented and taught and deep in my spirit I knew that this was not the way it was supposed to be at all. I had a feeling that this way of teaching was wrong and that there was so much more. Despite this, I didn’t care enough to pursue it and decided to just pull away from it all. By the time eigth grade started, I was beginning to hate Christianity. During my sophomore and junior years in high school I began to return to the Christian faith little by little. I still felt that it was my parent’s religion and that I didn’t have to have anything to do with it. As I began to think more and more about the rest of my life, I started thinking about death and what would happen to me. I hoped that I would die peacefully so that just in case God was real, I could slide in the back door to eternal life right before I died.


This was my mind set before I went to Costa Rica for a program called Generation of Promise. I was taught a new form of Christianity that I had never heard before. I learned that God doesn’t love me any less because I’m a sinner. Nothing I can do can change the amount of love that God has for me. God wants to have a relationship with me before I start worrying about following His rules. I was always taught by the Church that a man must put his sin behind him before going to God. But the truth is the complete opposite! I only spent one month in Costa Rica but I came back a completely different person. The new me wishes to pursue God and His plan for my life.

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Shopping Spree


As seen in the July 2009 issue of Bella Magazine

Lately all of the kids needed new clothes. They have this pesky habit of growing every year. You’d think I would be used to it by now, since they’ve been growing on and off since birth. But still, when they need new stuff, I always freak out. “Didn’t we just get you those skateboarding shoes?” I cry out, visions of $65 dancing through my head. “Yeah, last fall,” a boy will concur. I live in a fantasy world where each child only needs one new pair of shoes a year. Come to think of it, that’s not fantasy, that’s how I grew up. We always got new school shoes in August, before school began. Then we were stuck with ‘em for the whole year. I never remember getting new shoes in the spring. When one of my own darlings has his entire foot sticking out from the huge hole in his shoes, I naturally suggest that he duct tape them or wear his flip flops until summer is over. For some reason, the kids are not that hip to my plan.

So lately, we’ve been doing a lot of shopping. It’s best to take the teens out one at a time. Sure, it’s nice to spend that individual time with them. But it also heads off the inevitable and annoying comparisons of what brother or sister is getting. Shopping is bad enough but the pouting can send me over the edge. And I pout very easily. Disagreements generally are part of a shopping trip and I don’t care to have many witnesses to that scene.

A few years ago one of our sons was going through a stage that involved him coloring all of his fingernails black with Sharpie marker (we wouldn’t buy him black nail polish.) This was long before Adam Lambert of American Idol fame made that look commonplace. The black Sharpie nails were complimented with black t-shirts and skin tight jeans. Having recently been a teen myself, I knew it was just a stage so I played along. I also looked like an idiot in high school when I wore men’s boxer shorts as outerwear, so I’m willing to cut my kids some slack. We trotted to one of the fierce stores at the mall. (My hip hairstylist, Tamar, told me that “groovy” is not cool to say and “fierce” is much better.)

At the mall, son-who-shall-not-be-named was trying on these skin tight jeans. I was shocked he got into them without Crisco or going on that lemonade and hot pepper diet. He walked out, stiffly, as he couldn’t bend at any point. I immediately challenged him to sit down or at least prove that he could breathe. I also wondered aloud if these pants would prohibit his ability to father a child one day. Our helpful salesperson showed up at just that moment to tell him how sexy and fantastic he looked in the jeans. (He was sold at sexy, believe me.) When I protested saying, “He can’t walk, sit or breathe!” she took the time to explain to me that this is the style and if he’s got it, flaunt it and a bunch of other nonsense from someone who clearly works on commission. He got the $60 jeans, wore them twice, ate lunch for a few days and outgrew them. He sold them to an emaciated friend for $15. What a deal.

The lesson I learned was this, “Let the kids have a say but when it’s your money, you cast the deciding vote.” I hope that you clip that sentence out and put it in your wallet for when you are at the mall with your own teenagers. If they want to buy weird, oddly fitted and horrific clothes in an attempt at self-expression, that’s fine, they can pay for it themselves. I want to buy them things I’m not embarrassed about.

Back to our recent shopping trip(s). We were so thrilled to find the Plato’s Closet in Roanoke. It’s a resale store with all teen clothes. I was actually there four different times last week with kids who suddenly discovered that shorts are cool and needed them immediately. I have (almost) kept my mouth shut as they’ve worn jeans constantly over the last few summers, even when it was 103 degrees. They would say, “We’re not hot.” But now all of a sudden, they are hot and want shorts. This is the moment I’ve been waiting for. Shorts are back in! And they are the preppy plaid ones from when I was in college. The tag on one pair of shorts actually called them “Old School.” (Isn’t that kind of like “groovy”?) In any case, I got out my VISA and was secretly full of glee. Finally, they are wearing clothes that I like! Just don’t tell them I said so.

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YahYah in the Jungle


Our oldest son, Alex, is on the adventure of his lifetime. He is in Costa Rica on a Discipleship training program. He's with a great mission organization called Answering the Call. We love their ministry and the people. We trust them completely.
Alex worked hard to earn money for this trip. He was also blessed by many family and friends who contributed money and prayers that made it happen. Alex is in Costa Rica for the entire month of June. At seventeen, this is the farthest he's ever traveled. It's by far the longest time he's been away from home.
Mommy misses her YahYah.
When our twins were little, they couldn't pronounce "Alex." They called their heroic big brother YahYah. They outgrew the nickname but I still cling to it. There is a large part of my brain and heart in which little YahYah still lives. Just nineteen months older than Daniel and Trevor, he was always the leader. Beginning when he was 3 and they were 2, his battle cry was, "C'mon, Bruvvers!" They would scramble to follow him climb a tree, pee outdoor or pile things up in order to crash them back down again. They never questioned his plans or if they would get in trouble. Alex was the boss or as I call him, the King of the Kids.
Alex has always been daring, brave and true. Need photographic evidence? This is a picture of him doing a back flip off a cement bridge at Lake Linganore. He flips into the lake at Uncle Dan's house every summer. I can't even watch. Then he sprints the mile back to Dan & Janet's house, just because he can. Now Alex is front flipping off waterfalls in the rain forest. How do I know this? I read it on another kid's Facebook. (The 21st century missionaries use cyberspace.)
Oh YahYah, I see that you are not my baby anymore. You are not even a young man. You are a man. An international traveler. Seeking to hear from the Lord of the Universe. Looking for a plan for your life. Jump, Alex. Run and swim and seek and find. I am so proud of the leader that you have always been and I can't wait to see the leader who will come back to the States on the 4th of July. It's appropriate that you will return on Independence Day. I suspect it's the day you'll be free of your childhood. I might even have to drop the nickname.

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Memory? What Memory?


Currently appearing in the June 2009 issue of Bella Magazine.

The kids have been asking me to write this piece for a while, but frankly, it’s slipped my mind. They are concerned about my memory. “What memory?” I retort. You see, I remember when my brain was like a steel trap. That I do remember. There was a time when I didn’t have to write myself a note, set buzzers on my cell phone or ask other people to remind me of things. That was then, this is now. As my beloved Trevor recently noted, “I can remember when I was three years old and you can’t remember 2 weeks ago.” (Fooled him! I can’t remember 2 hours ago!)

They say if you lose your memory, you still have it somewhere. (My theory is it is in with all the socks missing from the dryer as well as the kid’s shot records, birth certificates, and the like.) If I still have it somewhere, I hope it will move back in when the kids move out. In case that doesn’t happen, though, I’m keeping their scrapbooks up-to-date. Pictures actually jog our memory and in many cases, make the memory. Since I only take pictures of the happy moments (birthdays, proms, etc.), we’ll all conclude in time that our life at home was one big party. The piles of laundry, temper tantrums and disgusting bathroom sinks will not be pictured and therefore, forever forgotten.

My teens are actually concerned about my wifty-ness. One suggested that I carry a notebook around to make note of things I want to remember. I explained that I tried that method, but was always forgetting the notebook. He told me to write in the notebook to remember the notebook. Hahaha, that is so funny I forgot to laugh! He either has a future in comedy or as an aide to senior citizens.

The faulty memory is not necessarily a family trait. For instance, my mother and sister don’t put any names in their cell phones. They just memorize the numbers. They know everyone’s number. They think it’s FUN to memorize numbers. I, on the other hand, don’t remember numbers. Any numbers. If I lost my phone, I’d only be able to call my husband and, on a good day, 911.

My mind used to be very sharp. When I turned 35, I took what neurologists call a “cognitive step down.” (Turns out it was an escalator to the bottom floor.) I started “compensatory skills” at that time…like writing things down. I write it all down on my calendar. If it’s not on the calendar, it’s not happening. (Except starting laundry, making coffee and unloading the dishwasher, I do those things on autopilot)

Everything else is on the calendar. Here’s a typical day:
Work
Groceries
JB off bus 2:20
Kids drama rehersal 3-5:30
Pick up kids!


This is how I manage. If I don’t get it down, I don’t get it done. No kidding, I have to write down “work” so I remember to go! Even things that repeat, every week, at the same time, for year after year after year, I write down. “Bible Study, Wednesdays, 10-12” got tedious to write so I printed out a label and slapped it on 52 weeks out of the year. Not noting it was not an option. It’s the only way to ensure I’ll be there.

I once read a story about Ronald Reagan. Apparently he kept a desk journal, like mine, and wrote down everything. As the story goes, one day mid- January, his Day-Timer read:
Get up
Shower
Read Bible
Eat Breakfast
Get inaugurated.

I can’t actually recall where I saw that story, but I’ve repeated it a lot. I don’t think I made it up, but who knows, I could have. The point being, very successful people need to jog their memories once in a while. Or once in an hour. But they are still beloved and don’t necessarily all go on to develop Alzheimer’s.

Why is my memory so swiss-cheesey? I have to give credit to the kids. Each one of them cost me hundreds of billions of brain cells during pregnancy. (These, again, is not scientifically verifiable, but ask other parents and they’ll agree….kids make you dumb. Kids will also agree their parents are dumb, especially after age 13). I turned to my beloved Google to verify this for you. “Some reasons for post pregnancy memory loss are lack of sleep, improper diet, birth, and lactation.” You ask me, the real cause of post pregnancy memory loss is KIDS.

Once I was leaving church after a lovely Mother’s Morning Out. I spoke with my friend Jeanette in the parking lot for a while, but was bothered thinking I’d forgotten something. Oh yes! I forgot my Bible! I ran back into the church to grab the Bible and was accosted by the childcare worker. “We were wondering when you were coming to get your baby,” she said knowingly. Oh right, I knew I forgot something important. Julia. (And she’s a keeper.)

So, it’s irritating to forget to pick up milk and bread. But in truth, there are some great benefits to the Loose Mom Memory. It causes the kids to be responsible for their own library books, school schedules and soccer cleats. After asking me seventy-five times, “Do you know where I left my ________________?”, the kids develop this odd habit of keeping track of their own stuff. (Mostly.) It’s sheer delight. It’s also fantastic to see how the kids are learning to write down their work schedules, start grocery lists and already begin to take care of me in my old age. They are definitely five things I will never forget.

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All the Trappings


We meet on Sundays with this cool group called The Gathering. We're starting a church and that's about all we know right now. We spend Sundays praying, praising and sharing what God is doing in our lives. This weekend there was a bona fide 3.0-on-the-Richter-Scale earthquake here in Roanoke. The epicenter was just underneath a Lutheran church. Is God telling us something? That was one thing we talked about.

Our conversation often circles back to battling the fears that middle-lifers have. (Middle age sounds silly to me, because we don't know how long we will live so how do we know we are in the middle of our age? But we do know we are in the middle of life by our situation. We are no longer children, but parents, yet not yet grandparents. Middle-lifers.) We'd like to go where the Lord sends us and answer His call, except....sigh! there's so much to consider! The middle-lifers are in agreement that we don't have freedom to move on a moment's notice because of all the trappings we have in our lives.


That word has stuck with me. All the trappings. I look around and see them everywhere. Like the desk I am typing on. It's gigantic...it would be hard to move even a few feet over if, for instance, we wanted to refinish the wood floor this summer. It's a trapping. So is the wood floor that needs refinishing. Another trapping is my formerly fabulous laptop. It has lost its ability to be wireless. If I have to connect it to a wire, and get stuck typing on the gigantic red desk, what's so great about having a portable computer? Trappings.

The trappings are the things around us that we worked hard to earn and now work hard to maintain. Could the whole thing be a trap? I'm starting to think it is. For instance, I love to go to a furnished apartment for a short stay. Life is so simple there. I don't have attachment to the stuff because it's not mine and I'm just passing through. This spring I fervently enjoyed staying at the William's beach home on Tybee Island, Georgia. Part of my enjoyment was it wasn't mine! Very low maintenance! It was pretty close to the simple life that I fantasize about. (I dream of being a monk...when my kids are grown, of course.) Could I actually live that way...like I'm just passing through? I want to.

Trappings. Trappings. Trappings. How can we own the stuff and not let the stuff own us? Last night Trevor told me that he accidentally knocked a ceramic chicken off the mantle. It shattered into a million pieces. I am ashamed to admit that I almost cried.


"Did you tell his brother chicken?" I choked out.
(Shattered chicken had a matching brother chicken who is now an Only Chicken.) Yet in the light of day, on the broken laptop, on the unwieldy red desk, I can see that it was just another trap. What are yours? The things that are possibly holding you back for realizing your dreams and the purpose God has for your life? Let's think about it together.

"Anyone who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves his son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and anyone who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me.
Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.
-Jesus
Matthew 10: 37-39

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The Mother I Imagined I'd Be


My friend Amy and I always talk about the mother we imagined we'd be. She was really, really great. She never lost her patience or for that matter, her car keys. She never yelled at the kids "Hurry up!" She didn't have to yell to hurry because she was never in a hurry. She had everything planned in advance, outfits laid out on the beds, library books all together on a shelf, and car keys on the hook. She was awesome.

She disappeared when the kids came. She was replaced with someone who had brain cells leaking out with the breast milk. She lost her job to the one who woke up crabby, locked the keys in the car, forgot the diaper bag on the day the baby's diaper exploded all up his back. She lost her job to me.

Now I realize that the mother I imagined I would be was actually a grandmother. She was patient because she was not lactating or homeschooling or having to wear her husband's jeans to Wal-Mart because they were the only clean pants in the house that would fit over her rolls. She sang songs because she was not worried about transferring money between accounts before another check bounced. She made cookies because she wanted to make a memory and she wouldn't be bothered by granulated sugar crunching underfoot in the kitchen. (Grandma also has a cleaning lady.)

I've let Imaginary Mom (or Grandma) off the hook as I realized that she was as much of a fantasy as the mom on a Hallmark commercial. I do want my kids to leave home with something that they'll treasure forever. (No, not a scrapbook, though I'll fill their car trunk with those!) The gift I want them to leave with is an abiding faith in Christ. I want them to be like Timothy in the Bible who could trace his spiritual lineage through his mother and grandmother.


"I have been reminded of your sincere faith, which first lived in your grandmother Lois and in your mother Eunice and, I am persuaded, now lives in you also." Paul writes to Timothy in 2 Timothy 1:5. "For this reason I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God, which is in your through the laying on of my hands."

The true Mother's Day gift is to see our children walking in the truth. I hope you get that...and breakfast in bed, besides!

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Freaky Twilight Moms


As seen in the May edition of Bella Magazine.

Since the dawn of Harry Potter, I’ve made it a policy to read what my kids are reading. I do this cheerfully as I love to read and it’s a fun way to have at least one thing in common with my teens. Do I read everything? Nah. For instance, recently they got into a very long series of animated Japanese-style comic books. I checked out, literally, after flipping through the first book. What’s to discuss? I can imagine myself starting with: “Did you like the sketch of the guy karate-chopping the other guy?” “Mom, get a life.” However, the anime books kept even my non-readers reading and we requested about 127 inter-library loans in order to see every last tae kwon do move. (Thanks, Hollins Branch Library, for your patience!)

Literature heavy on hobbits or dragons don’t get my blood pumping, but other than that, I really enjoy peering into their taste in what we used to call literature. When they were younger, I would bribe them to read with the offer of a private Book Club with me. If they read Old Yeller or the Little House books (or whatever dorky book I chose), I’d take them out to dinner and discuss the book. After a while, that idea became “lame.” I ratcheted up to pure bribes. After enjoying The Shack, I offered each of my kids $5 if they would read and discuss it. Only Caroline took me up on my offer and sadly only got $3 into the story before she was lured back to a series that has cats as the protagonists.

To really discuss books with teens, you have to read what they’re reading. And just FYI, Harry Potter is so Last Year. The hip kids are reading the Twilight series by Stephenie Meyer. (And if they say they’re not, they’re lying.) Everyone has read at least one in this popular (42 million sold!) series. These books even caused my son Daniel to ask, “Do you think books can be addictive?” (Posed after a cumulative sixteen reads….he has good reason to be concerned!)

With that kind of question, I was more compelled than ever to hop on the bandwagon and see what all the fuss was about. Hearing only that it was a genre called “vampire romance,” I picked up the first book gingerly, as if it would bite me. I thought I was the only person over 14 who was reading the books. Turns out I’m not alone. Although initially written for an adolescent audience, this series is popular from middle school through menopause. (Warning for parents: the romance heats up as the books progress.)

What’s it all about? Dreamy, hunkish vampire love for a girl who just simply can’t believe she’s anything special. Of course she’s special…her name is BELLA! (Everyone who reads Twilight is transported back to high school when we also suspected we weren’t special but swooned over the football captain, not the Living Dead.) After only a few pages, I could see why Danny asked the question. The books actually did suck the life out of me as I devoted every waking hour to completing the series of four books over three hypnotic, dinner-less days last summer.

As a lark, my Book Club decided to read Twilight. We are a proper group of Roanoke ladies who generally dip into The Good Earth or The Road. We have a little wine and cheese and are both jovial and erudite. The Twilight Book Club was being held at my home. After one member offered to bring virgin Bloody Marys, I knew we were in for a serious theme night. I put on a blood red shirt, baked a cake with a vampire face, and invited Danny to be our guest speaker. The Book Club was getting hip!

To add some panache to the discussion, I got online and was flummoxed to find over 12,000 variations of Twilight themed t-shirts. Good news! All come in adult sizes. A few of my favorites were:

Shh, don’t tell Daddy, Mommy’s reading Twilight again

You say ‘obsessed’ like it’s a bad thing
Meanwhile, in a town called Spoon....

Twilight Mom

Freaky Twilight Mom is more like it! I am only going to wear my Twilight themed t-shirt around the house…or possibly when we go to Williamsburg this summer. (Just kidding…I didn’t get the shirt but my kids know just which one I want!) Surprisingly, my teens were really into it. I asked, “Do you think it’s weird that Mom read Twilight for book club?” and they said, “Nah, it’s cool!”

Danny did a dynamite job as our guest speaker at book club and explained how he relates more to the Werewolf than the Vampire. It all but garnered applause. Do you read this as an endorsement for the monsters-among-us books? That’s not my point. (At all!) My point is this. I endorse reading! And I’m willing to go where my kids lead. I read The Naked Olympics prior to a book report on Ancient Greek competitions. Reading their books has made for some lively dinner conversations. Think about it. Why discuss who is next to go on the Reality TV Show Du Jour? How about we talk about books?

It’s so crazy, it works. Read along with your teens. Tell ‘em Freaky Twilight Mom sent you.


BIO
Martie Smith Byrd says “Any book is better than Sponge Bob Square Pants.” She anticipates the glorious day when her kids will read things she can’t even understand. She and her reader husband Dave parent their five teens in Roanoke, Virginia.

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My Virtual Model is Hefty

Something about bathing suit shopping can really do a number on a girl's self esteem. (No, I'm not calling myself "girl" in a coyish attempt to seem young...I'm referring to my daughter, Caroline.) She is a beautiful young lady who will be turning 13 in the fall. Perhaps you remember what that's like. She's out of the Children's Department, but not quite a woman. There's a Juniors Department but from our observation, it's Victoria Secret-type Junior, not "I'd still be shopping in the Kids Department if I could" Junior. What's a girl to do????



Last year's bathing suit shopping with Liney-Belle ended just short of tears. We made it out of the mall with a bag in hand, but it was a tricky assignment. Maintaining modesty while looking cute...it's a pretty tall order. We ended up getting a tankini seperate top from Juniors and a cute little skirt bottom from the Petite Women's Department. Caroline says, "That was the most awesome bathing suit EVER...it was perfect!"


Note the past tense...it WAS perfect...that is, until the straps on the top broke mid-summer last year. We rushed into JC Penney's for another top but of course, there were no comparable tops available. The agony, the disappointment. It had been the perfect bathing suit.



This year we got a jump start on the bathing suit discussion. We made Virtual Models on Land's End.com. Turns out my 12 1/2 year old daughter has the body of a Size 6 Woman. (This made me feel fantastic about being a Size 10 woman! After all, Size 6 is the same size as a little girl!) We mixed and matched suit tops and bottoms to wile away the hours on snowy winter afternoons. But the prices...ouch! Is it really necessary to spend $100 on a bathing suit for a pre-teen? I think not.

Imagining I had her size figured out, I did what any cheapskate mom would do. I looked for a Land's End-ish style bathing suit at other retailers. I found a modest tankini on Old Navy.com. (Interestingly, the modest suits are only available online for them...their store is full of teeny weeny bikinis). I ordered the suit for her and sat back, satisfied that it was a job well done. Bring on the hot weather! Today is about 90 degrees and sunny so Caroline said, "Mom, where is that bathing suit you got for me?" Optimism buoyed her sweet voice. Until she tried it on, that is. It was cut for...a child. The suit didn't fit. She went out to run in the sprinkler with last year's swim skirt and a t-shirt on.



I got back on Land's End.com and scoured the Overstocks, looking for just ONE! MODEST! TANKINI! TOP! SIZED! 6! Is it all that difficult? Apparently, it is. Meanwhile, while I was online, I tried a few suits on my Virtual Model. Although she's lost 25 lbs since last year, she still looks hefty in most of the suits. You can turn her around, if you care to, and see her from all angles. It's enough to make me long for the olden days when women swam in their dresses.

Caroline wandered in to reject the suit tops I had saved in our online shopping cart. (Thankfully it was for the cause of modesty that she questioned some of my choices...she's such a good girl.) She noted that my virtual model looked like she'd had too many baskets of chips at the new Mexican restaurant down the way. We did a little research and it turned out that I was using the sample woman....my very own model had disappeared sometime over the winter. (I think she went South.)

This was thrilling news! My Virtual Self is not hefty afterall! Voila, with the point and click of the mouse, I adjusted her hips, her bust, her waist and gave her a cute new haircut. For the sake of legitimacy, I clicked "more mature features" which is why she looks a bit haggard yet swimsuit-ready. (See above!) Naturally she is haggard...she's trying to find appropriate bathing suits for two lovely pre-teens!

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Resurrection Power


He who plants a seed, beneath the sod

and watches it grow, believes in God.


I've been thinking a lot about Resurrection Power these days. It's the power to bring dead things alive again. Dead marriages. Dead hopes. Dead dreams.
He can take a heart of stone and replace it with a pulsing heart, a real heart.

Ezekiel 36:26 says this: "I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh."

That's Resurrection Power! This year I've seen it. I've seen dead hopes and dreams spring back to live. Dead relationships begin again, fresh and new, restored by Him. These things happen when we bring things to the light. Jesus is the light. Things grow in the Light.

Resurrection Power means that things that appear dry and dead can begin again, fresh and vibrant, and bear fruit. They can flower and bring beauty where there was once nothin' much to look at. That's why I like to garden. I love it when last fall's mums turn into dry sticks. When I break off the dry sticks, I see tiny green leaves peering up from the dirt. The perennial resurrection of a garden is enough to make me Believe.

Jesus said, as His life here was ending, "The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds."

Jesus Himself is the seed. He's the seed that went into the ground. The seed that bears much fruit. We are that fruit. 1 Peter 1:23: "For you have been born again (Resurrected!), not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God."

We are resurrected through the Word. Christ is the word. I implore you to allow the seed, the word to plant in your new hearts. James 1:21 says, "Humbly accept the word planted in you, which can save you." The word can make you new...and beautiful...when you accept it. Now that's Resurrection Power.

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Move Over, Nicole Kidman



Do you have recurring dreams? Maybe you have the school dream. You know, where it's the day of the final and you didn't study? I have that one...but in my version, it's a college exam and I never went to class. (I must admit that one is partially based on truth. U.S. History in 1985 was a killer class for me...and in the dream I keep saying, "I meant to drop that class!!") I have dreams that keep me up at night. Do you?



Recently I've been dreaming that I am on a trip and don't have what I need. I miss the meeting, or the dance, or the speaking opportunity because I am frantically going through my luggage saying, "Where did I put those pants?" I have this dream at least once a week. This week, however, it took a bizarre twist.



In my dream, I was on a trip and had everything I needed. However, Nicole Kidman came in and wanted my room. I quickly, sheepishly packed up all my stuff, no questions asked. After all, she's Oscar-award winning actress, Nicole Kidman. I felt like her staff member, vastly inferior to her. I gave it up without a fight, quickly shoving my items every-which-way to get out of Nicole's way. She didn't give me a second glance, by the way. (And hunkish new husband Keith Urban was sadly no where to be seen.)



When I woke up I was thinking about the dream and about Nicole's impossibly clear complexion. I felt a bit stupid and embarassed that I gave Nicole my room. After all, maybe she was mistaken. Maybe it wasn't actually her room. (Friends will recall that this is how my husband and I met....I was mistakenly sitting in his assigned seat on a plane. Sometimes very bright people just get the numbers mixed up. And oftentimes, God has a sense of humor!) In the light of day, I knew that it was a mistake to give Nicole MY room. It was MY ROOM!



My friend Jenn has a lot of cool dreams and I asked her what she thought this dream meant. She wrote this killer line which I now have posted above my desk. Jenn said:



We have the authority to occupy whatever room God gives us.



Do you believe that's true? And are you occupying the room God gave you? Or are you quickly relinquishing your God-Given Space whenever someone looks cross-eyed at you? (It doesn't have to be the ex-Mrs. Tom Cruise, either. I admit that in the past I've relinquished my rights to just about anyone.)

When you believe that you are who He says you are, you'll stay put. Scripture says, "You have assigned me my portion and my lot." In other words, God has given you your space. For you. To use. To grow. To occupy. Don't give it up, to Nicole Kidman or anyone.

LORD, you have assigned me my portion and my cup;
you have made my lot secure.
The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places;
surely I have a delightful inheritance.
Psalm 16:5-6

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Wake Up and Smell the Coffee


As seen in the April edition of Bella Magazine

Getting seven people up and out of the house in sixty minutes or less is a ton of fun. I have pitched this concept to the networks as the latest reality show. It would be called Wake Up and Smell the Coffee. It would be a family competition and I know the Byrds could win big bucks.

Dad would be team captain. He actually wakes up every morning without an alarm clock. You might say that he wakes up with the birds (the other ones.) He works out at 5 o’clock in the morning. By 6:30 a.m., he’s been up for hours and is ready for some company. He cheerfully wakes up all the kids. Cheerful is an understatement. He actually channels the Robin William’s character in Good Morning, Vietnam. He wakes them up with songs, comedy numbers, and character sketches. He lets me sleep. I’m not a Robin Williams fan.

Caroline, Julia, Daniel and Trevor are all woken up in the 6 o’clock hour. As you can imagine, there is a mad rush for the shower and lots of door pounding, accented with “Hurry up!” and “I left my toothbrush in there!” or the forlorn cry, “Can someone bring me a towel?”

Alex, at 17, has a very hard time waking up. He sets his cell phone as an alarm. It goes off at 6:30 and every 5 minutes thereafter. As a backup, he sets the alarm on his iHome, the ipod deck. That alarm goes off every 10 minutes. Alarm bells are ringing at 6:30, 6:35, 6:37, 6:40, 6:45, 6:47...you get the drill. Still, Alex tenaciously refuses to get up. He stays in bed until someone yells, “Alex! It’s 7 o’clock!” Yet he’s a tenacious competitor. He can shower, dress, eat breakfast, brush his teeth, and corral his siblings into the car in 25 minutes or less. Alex would be an awesome contestant in the Wake Up Reality Show.

His alarm(s) really bother me, his loving mother. Why? Because I’m still enjoying my sleep, and don’t like to hear the jarring bells and odd song selections. His little sister says his alarm sounds like the scary monkey music in the Wizard of Oz. Clearly, this is upsetting, even all the way down the hall. Yet he is immune. When complaining about it the other morning, the whole family chimed in on how irritating his alarms are to us. Dad said, “What alarms? I never hear a thing.” Dad is relentlessly upbeat in the morning. I am not. Therefore, I opt to stay in bed as long as possible.

My goal is to stay in bed until three things happen. One, I hear the coffee grinding. Two, I smell it brewing. Three, I hear the bus pass by. Then, and only then, do I emerge from my room. Julia is our only child who still rides the school bus. t comes at 7:04 every morning. Hearing the bus pass is Julia’s signal to get her coat on. It’s also my signal to hop out of bed. Julia wants a “Mommy and Daddy sandwich” before she leaves in the morning. This is when you hug with your child stuck in the middle. I have just enough time to enjoy a Julia Sandwich before she gets on the bus.

Speaking of sandwiches, they are a big part of the morning routine. Happy Daddy (one of Dave’s comedy characters) runs a sandwich shop in our kitchen. He keeps up a hilarious patter of jokes as he makes peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Because special orders don’t upset Happy Daddy, the kids expect to have it their way. Some like crunchy. Some like creamy. Some like their sandwich loaded with peanut butter. Others like extra jelly.

Mom likes coffee. And I like to stay out of the sandwich business whenever humanly possible. I’m so thankful for Happy Daddy. (When Happy Daddy goes out of town on business, Crabby Mommy instructs the kids to buy lunch at school.)

It may sound like Grand Central station, but I’m telling you, we’ve got it down to a routine. And part of our routine is someone forgetting something important. The most critically important item to the success of their day is placed on the kitchen island “so I won’t forget it.” For decades, I have been saying, “Put it in your backpacks!” Or the variations, “Did you put it in your folder? Did you put it in your gym bag? Did you put it in your binder?” But no, these kids know better. Their system is to put the most important item on the island. It may be the paper they typed until the wee hours. It may be their uniform for the big game. It may be the recorder they absolutely must have for music class today. It may be a library book that has to be turned in or else.

Naturally, they proceed to the car laden with bags, lunches, backpacks. It’s crazy how much they have to carry to school each day. Sadly, routinely, daily, they forget the island items. This is when I spring into action. In my bare feet, gigantic red bathrobe and bed head, I sprint after them, flailing the forgotten item. This must amuse the neighbors. I know it will be the funniest part of the Wake Up and Smell the Coffee reality show. I’d howl with laughter seeing a crazy mom running after the bus with a Sponge Bob Lunch Box and a Recorder. As long as it’s not me, that is.

I’m starting to wonder if they do it on purpose. Running after them is how Crabby Mommy shows her love.

Martie Smith Byrd lives with Happy Daddy and their five children in Roanoke, VA. Their youngest, Julia, officially becomes a pre-teen this month. Happy 11th Birthday, JB! (And no, you can’t have a cell phone now.) Martie is a encourager and would love to speak at your club or organization. Contact her at martiebyrd@yahoo.com.

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Books on my Bedside Table

  • The Gift of Rain by Tan Twan Eng
  • A Mountain Too Far by Karl Purnell
  • Tents in the Clouds by Jackson & Stark
  • The Relationship Principles of Jesus by Tom Holladay
  • Twisting the Truth by Andy Stanley
  • Anna Karenina

    Favorite Bible Verse of All Time

    Teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.

    Psalm 90:12

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