Facebook is a scary place. It's like a continuous Class Reunion.  Except its one where you show up as you really are,  having forgotten to lose weight, color your hair or bleach your teeth.  You splay yourself out on Facebook, thinking most of the time of your local friends or family that you are communicating with when WHAM! you Facebook intersect with long-lost friends who now have access to your family photo albums, including the awful pictures that other people post and tag.  (Quit doing that! I hate that!)  Anyway, having just Facebook Reunioned with several old and dear friends, it inspired me to post this Oldie and Goodie. It's about the me I used to be...an annoying me that many will remember quite well.  This column was the first thing I had professionally published and it's still one of my favorites.  It's my heart.

I’m scared of people who know it all. I know a few of them. I recognize the species. Because, well, I used to be one.

I knew it all. At least, I thought I did. When I was younger, hoooo baby, you could not tell me anything. I knew it all. I look back now and blush. If I had addresses, I’d send out lots of sympathy cards. I’d write to everyone who used to work with me, for one. I’d say….

“Sorry you had to work with me in the 80’s. I know I was really obnoxious. Thanks for not throwing me out the window of our high story office building. Blessings! Martie”

I bet some people are still mad. Like one lady chased me into the bathroom once and yelled at me through the stall. She told me I was young and I didn’t know what I was saying. I sat on the toilet and thought about how wrong she was. Sorry, Kate. To Kate, I should send flowers.

My gosh, the moral fiber I imagined that I had! The stand that I took on so many issues! Ok, it’s a tiny bit cute now, to remember how very brilliant I felt when I argued with adults. I felt powerful! I felt right! I could not be dissuaded! On the other hand, now that I have teenagers and have those arguments in reverse, it’s not all that cute. It’s annoying.

When did I figure out that I didn’t know it all? I guess it started when I met the Lord. See, the very first thing I learned about God was this.

“He removes our past transgressions as far as the East is from the West.” (Ps. 103:12, paraphrase mine)

This was both reassuring and humiliating. It was reassuring because I was dragging a lot of baggage around with me. I wasn’t quite sure how I’d ever be free of it. It was great to know that it could be sent through some heavenly FedEx to the other end of the earth. It was humiliating because if God was going to perform that service for me, gosh, it meant He knew what all the transgressions were. He knew it all. It wasn’t me who knew it all, it was God. Gosh, that was painful….but freeing at the same time.

Well, the more I grow in the Lord, the more I realize that I don’t know it all. I hardly know anything.

But I’m psyched because God really does know everything. And He still loves us. He knows what happened in the past. He knows what will happen in the future. He even knows every word we’re going to say, before we say it.

(When I found that Scripture, I was fascinated! Every word? Before we say it??? To test this out, I shouted out a swear word, a really bad one, really fast. And I felt the Lord kind of smirking, with a knowing grin on His face. “I knew you were going to say that,” He said.)

You can’t get away from the Lord. And that’s a great thing.

So now I know that I don’t know much. And I’m pretty relaxed about it. See, the view is nicer from the “Don’t Know It All” side of the fence. You don’t have to always be arguing. You don’t have to think how stupid everyone else is all the time. You can just hang out, and love people.

So now when I meet a Know-It-All, I just smile. And throw up a silent prayer that the Lord will grab hold of them, and save them from themselves, like He did with me. I’m really grateful. I don’t know much…but I do know Him. Turns out, that’s All.

Currently running in the February Issue of Bella Magazine

One of my teen boys just requested that I stop smothering him. Ah, is that what I have been doing? All these years I thought I was mothering. Mothering…smothering. When did I cross the line?

I’ve heard of helicopter parenting but never imagined that the phrase applied to me. Helicopter parents hover around, consider their children as extensions of themselves, and are uncomfortable with letting them feel pain or allowing them to fail. Ouch, does that apply to me? If it does, I can tell you it is not a genetic trait in my family. I was raised by distinctly non-helicopter parents. I can still remember grade school when it was first obvious to me that the other kids were getting a lot of help from their parents. Their projects were shiny and fantastic and mine were put together with spit and an old shoelace. Yet I still remember being proud because I did it myself. (Okay, and a little jealous of the pizzazz that the parents brought to a project.) Dear friend Amy told me that when her first-grader Justin was assigned the task of making a community building, such as a post office or grocery story, Justin got a shoebox and some crayons. His dad, however, put his genius and engineering degree to work and produced, as Amy recalls, “the Smithsonian.” Kid gets an A but Dad gets an F. I can hear the helicopter blades whirring from a distance.

When we had toddlers, I met my first afflicted mother. We were invited to dinner at a home where the family’s youngest child was getting ready to graduate from high school. Her mother confessed, “I am so ready for this. I’ve been doing homework for the last twenty years.” Innocently, I naturally assumed that she was enrolled in an excruciatingly slow graduate program. I inquired what degree she was pursuing. “My kids’ high school degrees!” she exclaimed. She explained how she personally dragged each of her children through high school. This destroyed my fantasy about the vacation time I would enjoy when my little bundles were in school. I realized that this mother was what the educators refer to as a Blackhawk, the most hovering of all helicopter parents. I thought she was a bit wacked and resolved I would never be anything like her.

Alas, this fall I found myself in a teacher’s conference for one of our sons and to my horror and surprise, I wept throughout the conference. Although I admit it was a very tender time of the month for such a conference, even I was shocked when I could not staunch the tears. (I didn’t know I cared that much!) Dear Dave, father and husband of the year, took me out for a fancy breakfast at Famous Anthony’s afterwards. He grabbed my hand, gazed in my eyes and said gently, “Can you explain the tears to me?” I had to confess to him (and now to you, dear readers) that everything I heard about our precious son’s failings felt like a knife in my heart. I irrationally felt that the critiques were aimed at me …and me alone. I was being judged and found wanting. Just so you know, this is the primary symptom of Helicopter Parenting.

Wise Dave, who has earned every one of the considerable gray hair on his head, had to set me straight. “Martie, you have not missed any homework assignments! You are the mom, not the student.” Oh, what glorious words. He’s right…again. We all know that if it had been my assignment, I would have handed it in early and near perfect. And if I were the student, my parents would not have known the topic, the due date, or how I did on any of my tasks until the report card came home. Ah, the good old days.

Helicopter parenting is a relatively new phenomenon where baby boomer parents have Gen Y kids and they can’t seem to let them succeed (or fail) without getting psychopathically involved. This is most often seen, ironically, with college students. Many universities have recently created a new position called Dean of Parents. I’m not kidding. This dean is solely responsible for keeping the helicopter parents from landing on campus.

Danny’s comment to stop smothering him really got me worried. The tears at the conference shocked me as well. So I did what any thinking person would do. I Googled Helicopter Parenting. As with everything, there is a quiz you can take to see if the term (condition, syndrome, illness) applies to you. Here are some sample questions:

1. When your child is having difficulty in school, do you contact the teacher?
2. How often do you contact the teacher?
3. Are you nice when you contact the teacher?
4. Do you threaten the teacher?
5. Have you ever been asked to leave the school building?

I was so relieved. I passed. I am not a Helicopter Mom. Come to think of it, my kids would say I’m more of a steamroller.