Last weekend I took my son, my nephew and a friend to our church youth group leader’s apartment. They had plans to go get pizza then head to a local elementary school to use their gym for a game of dodge ball. On the way there the topic of career aspirations came up when I posed the question of “What do you want to be when you grow up?” The conversation then went as follows:

My nephew: “I want to go to the community college for the first two years then transfer to the University of Kentucky and get a degree in nursing.”

Me: “That’s great. You would make a good nurse.”

My son’s friend: “I really want to get a scholarship to play soccer for Brescia University and get a degree in biology.”

Me: “You shouldn’t have trouble getting that scholarship. You are a really good soccer player.”

My son: “I know for def that I want to get a degree in science and then go work for NASA in Houston, TX. I’m thinking I want to go to college somewhere in Florida or California because, you know, more boobs there.”

Me: (face palming and making a sigh)

By the time this conversation had turned into an enlightening glimpse into my son’s mind, the moment was over and I was pulling up to their group leader’s apartment. I happily unloaded my car full of 13 year old boys and thanked the Lord that there are actually grown men who volunteer their time to hang out with them. I’m even more grateful that dropping off a car load of 13 year old boys at a grown man’s apartment on a Friday night wasn’t weird…because their leader is just that awesome.

On the way home I thought about my son and how he is changing as he grows up.

He is a self-proclaimed mama’s boy and I’m completely at peace with that. When he was little I would play a game called Who Loves You? with him and his sister. I’d ask them that question then they would answer with names of people who they knew loved them. The game could last all day for my daughter. She would answer each Who Loves You? question with a long list of answers including: Mommy, Daddy, Grammie, Pawpaw, etc.… However, the game was always a very short lived distraction for my son because no matter how many times I’d ask him the playful Who Loves You? he would answer with a joyful “Mommy do!”

I mean, come on, that’s adorable.

But now, he’s talking about choosing where he will earn his education that eventually will steer him towards his career goals by which campus would offer the most cleavage viewing opportunities. It’s a small example of the new trend in my house as I raise a brand new teenage boy. I can’t keep parenting the way I always have because he’s not the kid he’s always been. As he grows I’m forced to grow with him as a parent and adjust where necessary.

I decided it’s time to pay closer attention to how I am able to help shape his newly expanding mind so that he doesn’t become a complete chauvinistic ass as an adult.

I’ve come up with a list that I’ll call…..hmmm…..

3 Ways I’m Trying To Keep My Teenage Son From Becoming Chauvinistic Ass

1. I don’t let him kill hookers.

My son likes video games. When I was a kid we got a Nintendo and saved that Mario Bros princess more than a few times. Never even once, do I recall the princess wearing fishnets and smoking a cigarette as she walked towards the fire-breathing dragon. I don’t recall ever having the ability to fatally shoot her in the face. Video games nowadays (use of the word “nowadays” is indicative of my advancing age and wisdom to any of you laughing at the term right now!) Nowadays video games have ratings similar to movie ratings. I’ve had to pay close attention to those games with an M rating. Those games usually feature very realistic images of people. These people often include voluptuous women clad in black leather and stilettos. There is actually a game where you can steal cars and kill hookers. How can we justify allowing our young boys to virtually kill women for pleasure and let them indulge in near pornographic images of prostitutes then not expect them to have warped views on how to respect and show self-control around women in their non-virtual lives? He gives me lots of push back on this one, but I’m under the conviction that allowing him to disrespect women, or any human for that matter, in the virtual world is one step towards him becoming desensitized to it and then disrespecting them in the real world. When he’s 18 I won’t be able to stop him from playing the games he wants, but while he is a 13 year old I can stop him. So I do.

2. I respect myself.

If I’m going to expect him to respect women then, as a woman, I’d better dang well be sure I respect myself. I want his image of a woman to be a reflection of me. I don’t want that image to be one of weakness or one that resembles a doormat. I want my son to see my priorities in life and recognize that I am one of my priorities. I want him to see me practice self-control yet still speak my mind in a respectful manner. I want him to see how a woman can set boundaries in the relationships in her life while still being able to fully love and show affection in those relationships. I want him to learn how to treat a woman by seeing how I allow others to treat me. I have to find, then always use my backbone. If I want to raise a man of integrity, I must be a woman of integrity. It’s not easy. I fail all the time. I have to right wrongs often, but I think that’s all part of the learning process for the both of us. I hope by watching how I handle things when I get them wrong that he will see that while we aren’t perfect we still get back up and keep trying. I hope he can learn by watching me behave like a lady that women are not delicate flowers, but equals and should be treated as such.

3. I choose my battles.

My son is gross. There’s no other way around it. It’s not just my opinion either. Ask our friends or family, they would all back me up on this one. His room is covered in Hostess cupcake wrappers, glasses half full of sweet tea normally accompanied by a fly floating on top no doubt dead from sugar overload to its tiny little insect body. His bathroom induces a gag reflex. We are talking toothpaste on the sink, dirty clothes all over the floor and a toilet reminiscent of one of those truck stops off an old two lane highway. We have gone rounds and rounds over this. I’ve grounded him, given ultimatums and tried scare tactics by sharing with him how one day he will wake up with a horrible ring in his ear and that ringing sound will be that of a roach that has crawled into his ear from under his bed. But after all the turmoil his untidy part of the house has caused, the result is that it’s still untidy. As I review the list of things I want him to really get branded into his head a clean room falls pretty low on the priority list if I’m being honest. Maybe before he moves out on his own he will have arrived at the place in life where unflushed toilets will bother him, but for now I will keep his door shut, focus on the war rather than the smaller battles and will only go into his room to retrieve his laundry then quickly shut the door behind me. Whomever he ends up marrying, should he go down that path, will have her work cut out for her in this area, if things don’t change before then. I can’t make it too easy for his future wife though. I don’t want to hand her over too perfect of a man. They will need things to talk about.

Do I think any of these things will keep him from not enjoying a hottie in a tight shirt who walks by him on a college campus? Not at all. However, I really hope that the respect he has developed for women through some of these efforts will keep him from Bronx cheering her when he sees her.

No offense, men from the Bronx. I’m sure you’re nice people.

My dad is my guy.

After I grew up, got married and had a couple kids, my dad was still my guy.

He was my go-to for most anything. Something breaks, he’s who I’d call. He could fix anything. Before I got a car with navigation and would get lost he would be my 1st call. I’d call him and he could tell me exactly where to go to get back in the right direction. He expected me to call him when I got to my gate at the airport, when I landed and when I checked into the hotel on business trips. When I was sick he would make sure I had Sprite then would call throughout the day and wake me up to ask if I was getting any rest. When he sat next to me he held my hand. Always. If I ever went more than 3 or 4 days without talking to him I would get a melodramatic voicemail while I was working that said something like, “I guess the only way I can talk to you is if I schedule an appointment. You don’t love me anymore. Maybe one day you will find time in your busy schedule to call your dad.” Then would laugh and say, “Just call me when you can. I don’t need anything. Bye baby doll.” He would sing Barry Manilow’s song ‘Mandy’ to me on my birthday. He loved me. He made me feel safe.

Love like that takes some of the sting out of living in this world.

One sunny day in June, he went to the ER with numbness in his arm, some dizziness and a headache he couldn’t shake. He was diagnosed with brain cancer and was dead 8 months later.

Life is brief.

18 months have passed since my Dad died. I’m no longer consumed by my grief. I don’t cry every day, every week or even every month. I can think of him and find comfort in the legacy he left with me. I’ve adjusted to life without him.

This morning I dropped off the kids at school then went downtown to run. Actually it’s mostly a jog. Who am I kidding, it’s a slow run until I remember that I really suck at running then it’s quickly downgraded to a jog until I approach a big hill, which then gets downgraded yet again and turns into a winded, panting walk sometimes crawl. The goal is to just make it back to my car before I collapse and embarrass myself.

As I was heading up the big hill at the panting, near collapse part of my walk a song come on my playlist that I don’t remember having put on there. It was sandwiched in between Lenny Kravitz and Rihanna. It was a song from a Christian artist, Laura Story, called ‘Blessings’. I was amused at the irony of the eclectic mix of musical genres, but continued to trudge up the hill without much thought until a lyric from that song created a tsunami of emotions causing my eyes to well with tears.

The lyric was:

“We pray for blessings, we pray for peace, comfort for family, protection while we sleep. We pray for healing, for prosperity. We pray for your mighty hand to ease our suffering. And all the while, you hear each spoken need, yet love us way too much to give us lesser things.”

It may have been pure coincidence that at that moment I was literally running alongside the hospital of the ER where my Dad went. It could have just so happened that a song like that would pop up in the middle of my playlist. It could be totally random that the song that popped up contained a lyric that spoke straight to my heart altering the course of my morning. But I think not.

I was still about a mile from my car. By the time I got there, I was a mess.

I had been living with a chip on my shoulder.

My secret problem, that I really hadn’t even fully admitted to myself, was that despite my faith in God I’ve always wondered why he didn’t answer my prayers during the time that I was losing my Dad. 1 John 5:14 says that we can be confident that when we pray he hears us. Mark 11:24 even says that whatever you ask for in prayer, to believe and it will be yours. For 8 months, I prayed that my dad would be healed. I prayed for the chemo to work right up to the time when it didn’t and then my prayer changed to “please heal him or take him.”

I was kind of quietly pissed about the whole ordeal if I’m being honest.

I finally made it back to my car. I got in, pulled up the lyrics and read them several times. “He loves us way too much to give us lesser things.” Was my request to him to heal my Dad and keep him here with me a lesser thing?

Yes, actually, it was.

My Dad was coming to the end of fulfilling the purpose God had created for his life here on earth. The problem was that my plan and God’s plan didn’t match up. It didn’t work for me. I didn’t like it.

Thank goodness I’m not in charge.

I can recall praying for relationships to work out only to later be grateful that they didn’t. When I was fresh out of college I prayed for a certain job then much later on saw how it would have been a disaster had I gotten it. I’ve prayed for God to take away the various pressures and stresses of my life, not understanding at the time that he was preparing me for the purpose he had created for me. That the pressures were often what motivated me to do more, get better and become who I am.

I’m happy I don’t always get what I want.

My heavenly father loves me more than my earthly one was capable of and he won’t allow anything lesser for me.

Even if I don’t like it. Even if I don’t understand.

I started a blog on July 8, 2013 to keep everyone current with medical updates with my dad and to help keep all the questions he got to a minimum. It quickly turned into posts mingled with personal stories about our relationship. He would call me after a post, sometimes crying, and tell me he read it 10 times. He’d ask when I’d write another one. It kept me motivated to produce. After he died the blog site sent me a beautiful book with a copy of all my posts and everyone’s comments in it as a keepsake. When I got home this morning, I dug it out and randomly opened it to an entry from November 13, 2013. On that date I was wrestling with the same issue.

An excerpt from the post that day reads:

“One day when it’s my turn to leave this earth I think my 1st question to God, when I see him face to face, will be to see the playbook. I’d love to see the strategy he came up with for each of our lives. This helps the cheerleader in this situation relax and cheer without it being as burdensome of a task. I can root for the team and not question the coach. There is a reason he is the coach.”

Such a good reminder, written with own words, to further douse me in peace this morning.

Even though I didn’t know it at the time, he did, indeed, love me way too much to give me lesser things. He loved my Dad too much to give him lesser things. I still don’t have the answers to why, but I have faith that tells me it was all part of a much grander plan.

My heavenly father (I picture my Dad standing with him as he did it) choose a time when I was alone and clear minded to infuse wisdom. It’s amazing really. He used a mundane Monday morning jog, with girl deep in the middle of jamming to a collection of randomness including the likes of Jay Z to speak to her heart in a way she understood.

Because he won’t allow lesser things.

I have never been a fan of American Idol. I watched the first couple seasons way back when Simon Cowell, Paula Abdul and Randy Jackson were judges, but stopped watching because I couldn’t stand how mean they were to the contestants. I agreed with them many times, but I would have found a less abrasive way to tell the brave contestants they have no singing ability rather than making soul crushing remarks of rejection to them. Call it my southern upbringing, but being rude is never attractive. Simon would famously criticize the appearance of a contestant, telling them they don’t look the part forgetting it was a singing competition, not a beauty contest. He even would laugh at some people, like he did with the super talented Susan Boyle, for their un-Hollywood like style. This started a trend for all the other singing shows that have spring boarded off American Idol’s fame. They are all the same. Is there a rule somewhere that all singing reality shows must feature three famous celebrity judges, one of which is required to be a royal ass?

There is a show that has taken my fancy. The Voice. It looks the same as all the others at first glance. They have four celebrity judges (Christina Aguilera, Adam Levine, Blake Shelton and Pharrell Williams) who listen to countless numbers of aspiring singers and critique the artists’ performances. Each judge chooses contestants to be on their team by sitting in spinning chairs with big red buttons in front of them. If they like what they hear they push the button, spinning their chair around to reveal the identity of the singer. For the remainder of the season the chosen contestants work with their judge (coach) and compete against each other until a winner is ultimately selected at the season finale. What makes this show different and endearing is that the judges don’t get to see the contestants until after they have chosen them for their team. It has zero to do with appearance of performer and 100% to do with their performance….imagine that. If more than one judge chooses the contestant, the contestant can choose which judge’s team he/she would like to be on. That’s another one of my favorite parts of the show. In that case the judges vying for the contestant usually try to use flattery to persuade them to join their team. It’s fun to watch the awkward 22 year old IHOP waitress from Kansas stand there and watch as Adam and Pharrell fight over her. You can see the surreal experience playing out on her face. The show is refreshing in that every contestant gets a fair shot. It doesn’t matter what they look like. They are judged on talent.

One of the areas I volunteer in my community is in the student ministry at my church. Oh how I wish we could strap those teenagers in chairs and let them talk and get to know each other, not seeing the physical appearance until after conversation. Not until they’ve decided they want to push that red button and spin around. The spinny chairs would aid in developing more authentic and unlikely relationships. It would help cut those friendships that are mostly for status. It’s not just teenagers either. Adults do the same thing. We often gravitate towards people and form our friendships using the Simon Cowell method of judging. Relationships matter and life is just too short to be like Simon. He would pick contestants this week, then later eliminate them when their lack of talent becomes obvious. He passed up amazing contestants and chose some that weren’t as good based on the level of eye candy they offered. In contrast, Adam, for example, never seems to be negatively affected by the contestants surprise appearance because he has already fallen in love with their talent. The appearance is just an unimportant side note. His choices are more longstanding. It pains him to see them get eliminated as the season progresses because he chose them for honest reasons….being their singing ability.

My husband is the oldest of 5 siblings. His parents both worked to keep a roof over their heads, but there was never much extra money left for anything not necessary. He had clothes to wear to school, but it wasn’t the stonewashed Guess jeans that everyone had or the latest pair of Nikes. He remembers how he was judged by how he looked by kids he went to school with. One story that he always tells is of a teacher who made fun of him in middle school. He recalls wearing a pair of sweats this particular day and being picked on by kids because he had a hole in the knee of them. When a teacher overheard this instead of defending him he started making jokes with the bullies and teasing him as well. He talks of how much that embarrassed him and made him feel less than the other students. Flash forward 20+ years and my husband is with some business associates at a restaurant when he spots that teacher at another table eating. He walked over, shook Mr. Jerkface’s hand and asked him if he remembered him. He told him that he was a former student of his. The teacher didn’t remember so he told him his name. That’s when the old, balding, now retired teacher’s mouth dropped open. He did remember him. He couldn’t believe who that boy from his class so many years ago had become. The teacher seemed impressed, asked him where he went to college, asked what he does for a living and congratulated him on his accomplishments. My husband told him thanks for being part of putting that drive in him to succeed. When the teacher thanked him and asked him how he did that my husband told him something like this: “Because you made fun of me when I was in your class for what I was wearing. I was just a kid and it was all I had to wear that day. School was hard enough for me, but your comment that day made me more determined to prove everyone wrong. So thanks.” The teacher seemed obviously shocked and apologized having no memory of that happening. I wish that man had a spinny chair back when my husband was in his middle school class. He could have without unfair comparison clearly heard how smart, driven and ambitious his student was. He would have definitely hit that red button and not cared as much about the pants the kid was wearing.

We all want to be judged fairly. We hope that someone will look past our outward imperfections and see us for who we are. The person who offers that to us esteems themselves even higher when that happens. That person is an encouragement to us and adds fuel to our passions and talents. It builds us up and makes us better. When we offer that to others we discover relationships that are valuable and real. Most of us don’t look like the photoshopped images we see on the magazine covers, but we are all gifted with abilities that are unique to us. Not judging a book by it’s cover is easier said than done, but worth the effort. It’s win-win.

Would anyone choose Simon over Adam? If you know of anyone who would please let me know. I want to talk to them. As their friend you may consider having a heart to heart conversation with them. Friends don’t let friends admire Simon Cowell.

My New Year’s Resolutions don’t involve weight loss. Here’s the thing. I really don’t care as much what I look like when my pale white legs that haven’t been shaved in 4 days are covered with leggings and tall boots. I try not to stress when I gain my winter 8 because those 8 pounds will be layered with a sweater, scarf and coat. I’ll work out and count every calorie that goes in my mouth beginning in February through the 1st week of October. For the next 3 or 4 weeks I’m content being the doughy girl who forgets her fitness app’s password and keeps a steady diet of sugary goodness in her belly. I will reset my password on MyFitnessPal and squeeze into spandex soon enough.

I have, however, been thinking of what I can begin doing tomorrow that will make me a better person in 2015 if I keep it up throughout the year. Here’s what I came up with.

FIrst: If I’m not part of the story or part of the solution to the problem at hand then I don’t want to talk about it. Gossip damages relationships. It shatters trust. It causes us to harbor resentment. It only allows for one side of the story. It makes us turn into narcissist, thinking that every time certain people are together they must be talking about us. Also, I’ve found it to be true that if someone will gossip to you, they will gossip about you. We have to have friends that we can share our frustrations with and get advice from about relationships in our life, but the line needs to be drawn when the story is not mine. If the story isn’t mine then I shouldn’t be telling it.

Second: Speak kinder. I recently read an African proverb that simply said “The axe forgets. The tree remembers.” How wise that person was to have put such a grand thought into such a simple phrase. The words that haunt me are most likely words that the person who said them doesn’t even remember. They were most likely spoken without any thought given to them. When I was in elementary school there was a boy who called me fish lips because of how full my lips are. I ran into him recently and he now has his own family and was very nice when speaking to me. The entire time he spoke to me I felt self-conscious of my lips. I’m certain that if I had told him how much he hurt my feelings by calling me names that he would have looked at me confused having no idea what I was talking about. My 2nd resolution is to think often on that short but powerful proverb……I don’t want to be an axe.

and Finally: Martin Luther King was quoted as saying, “Let no man pull you low enough to hate them.” As sort of a part two to my previous resolution I want to not only intentionally speak kinder, but also to let go of the unkind words already spoken. Once, just a few years ago, I was deeply hurt by the words of someone and was discussing it with my dad. He told me to forgive them. I asked him how I was supposed to forgive them of something they’re not sorry for. He told me, “You don’t have to get an apology from him to forgive him.” It sounds silly as that is something I should already know, but it did change my thinking on the matter. If I sat around waiting for that person to feel bad for their actions and say sorry I’d be an old lady still holding out on an apology which will never come. The hurt eventually turns to sadness which turns to resentment which stirs up hate in my heart. The person at fault not only said something hurtful but now would have my emotions held captive creating negativity in my life. I can’t let that happen.

That’s enough for me to have swimming in my head for 2015. Not gossiping, speaking kinder and letting go of past hurts is something I can work at. Hopefully at the end of next year I can see how it improved my life and those around me. Now I’ll go back to eating the leftover Christmas M&Ms. So happy my resolutions this year don’t require me to get off the couch today.