Tag Archives: Humor

Don’t Put Off Until Tomorrow…

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“…what you could do today.” 

Have you ever heard this quote? I know I have, and yet to be perfectly honest when I originally sat down to type out this age old adage I legitimately couldn’t think of the actual quote…so I Googled it.

In fact that right there is very telling about how I choose to work. I Procrastinate. A lot.

Now comes a story that may seem as if it has no place in this entry and yet I will bring it all back around, and hopefully before you become wise to my plot twist.

I always wanted to become an escape artist. Seriously I was in awe of Houdini and all those illusionists who could seemingly never be tied down. When I was younger I went through a phase where every chance I got I would beg my older brother Mark to tie me up and then time me to see how long it would take for me to escape. He gladly obliged if only to keep me out of his hair for a little while longer. I would do this over and over until either my brother locked me out of his room, or I decided I wanted to do something else. But over time, I got really good. So good that I cocky. I started bragging to my brother’s friends that I could escape any knot in under 5 minutes (hey, that was a long time to 7 year old).

One summer’s evening my brother and his friend Travis decided to put me to the test. So they tied me up to a chair in our basement and walked away. Piece of cake. I was out and bothering them within minutes. So they upped the ante, two different ropes. Again I escaped within minutes. Then came the final test: three different ropes duct taped to the chair. This was outrageous! How was I supposed to slip my wrists free of their bonds when all the rope around them was duct taped? So I did what any 7 year old would do in this predicament. I started to complain, loudly. Calling my captors back to taunt me, however they quickly grew weary of my whining and so instead of releasing me from my bonds, they added insult to injury. My brother upon scouring the basement for rope, had come across a used diaper from my Baby Alive doll. To silence my annoying complaints they promptly taped the diaper across my mouth.

I swear this was a real toy, and I am pretty sure they still make them. Google it.

This effectively shut me up, I wasn’t about to get fake baby poop in my mouth! Travis and Mark exited upstairs where they continued to enjoy their summer evening. About ten minutes later there was a knock on the door and my brother greeted my friend Sydni and told her I was downstairs. To my embarrassment Sydni walked into the room and all she saw was me tied to a chair, with a diaper over my mouth. She gaped at me then said, “I guess you’re busy, talk to you tomorrow.” And then she walked away leaving me gagged and humiliated. What felt like hours later but perhaps was only about 5 minutes. My brother and Travis, after realizing that Sydni had abandoned me, came down stairs and let me go. I never asked to be tied up again.

Over the years I’ve come to learn something about myself. I enjoy a good rush of adrenaline. It doesn’t need to be overwhelming, I don’t put myself in dangerous situations just to feel the blood pumping in my veins, but one thing that will always give me a jolt, without fail, is the pressure of working under a clock. I like to put things off, because I have convinced myself over the years, and trial and error, that I work better under the pressure of having to get something done in a short amount of time.  Which means that most of the time I tend to put things off. However, I have grown and learned that there are some things that you just can’t put off because they take time. So I try to live a balance of longterm planning and work, and the short term. My seven year old self wanted to be an escape artist because for me that was the height of an adrenaline rush that I could get on fairly regular basis and in a somewhat safe manner. I put myself on a clock and the pressure was to make my escape in a timely fashion.

I know that there are times that I would be happier and less stressed if I didn’t put something off, and yet its a habit I cannot seem to break completely. Sometimes being ahead of schedule feels good, and other times I just find it incredibly boring. There is no moral to this story (with the exception that a diaper is the worst possible way to be gagged ever), no lesson learned, mainly because I haven’t learned it yet, and I fear that I may learn it the hard way. Yet that fear of failure gives me just enough pressure to make sure that I continue to push myself to succeed.

It’s a vicious cycle.

Now I know you may be wondering where my parents were that they were seemingly okay with me being tied, ducted taped and gagged. This particular evening they happened to be out and our babysitter (Travis’ older brother). Was in my dad’s office 15 feet away from me, with the door shut working homework he was doing for a summer course at the community college.

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See it does exist and they are still being made and there are more of them…just check out hasbro.com.

I Wanted To Do It All…An Unrealistic Expectation

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So it’s been awhile. I mean a long while, since I’ve posted anything to this blog…I had such good intentions of posting weekly, and I have all these great ideas of things to write about, but like all well meaning New Year’s Resolutions, I failed…I posted regularly for about a month, and now here I am 3 months later, asking you all to tune back in. Sorry. I could give you all the excuses, I was busy, work was crazy, and just life. But really that’s all they are, excuses and the only person that they are really working on is me. Because let’s be honest, I just stopped dedicating time to sitting down and hashing something out. 

Eventually I’ll finish all those half written blogs I’ve started since October. Alright who am I kidding, no I won’t. 

When I was a kid, I wanted to do everything. No seriously, if you asked me what I was going to be when I grew up, I was going to be an actress, a singer, an astronaut, cure the common cold, and become the first female president. On top of that I wanted to do everything my friends did. I wanted to be in dance, take piano lessons, ski school, and girl scouts, and do all the things my brothers did, play soccer, basketball, baseball, and hunt. Then there were the things that I wanted to do simply because I thought they would be great like gymnastics and figure skating. Overall I wanted to not have a life, because activities would be my life. 

Thankfully my parents were very good at managing my expectations and grand ambitions. Most of the time I would bring something up and my parents would respond, “Mmmhmm, yeah, we’ll see.” After that I would hold out hope for these activities but would quickly lose interest and my parents were never bothered again. However, on the rare occasion that I remained persistent, they would either make me a deal, or say no. 

For example, piano lessons, I think my parents would have gladly signed me up the first time I pushed the issue if we’d actually owned a piano. However, we didn’t, and therefore how would I practice? But I was oh so persistent, because all my friends were taking piano, and so my parents struck a bargain, they signed me up for a six-week course on the keyboard. A family friend, lent us her keyboard and I began my training to become the next piano virtuoso. That dream lasted about a week and half. I was expected to practice, what is this madness?! On top of homework after school I was supposed to spend 45 minutes a day practicing on the keyboard and then twice a week I gave up 90 minutes of my evening to go to class. It was eating into my Batman and Star Trek watching and it was awful. Looking back, I’m not sure how that keyboarding course was really going to help me with piano, because on a piano you don’t have different programable sounds that you use to achieve the desired tone for the melody you’re playing. I mean come on, have you ever heard of a piano piece called the Galaxian March? (Seriously, I’m not making that up, that was one of the songs we played, I can recall it from memory. Do, So, Fa, Mi, Re, Mi, Do, Do, Mi, So, Do, So, Fa, Mi, Re, Mi, Do, Do, Do, Do). Needless to say, I wanted to quit, and my parents told me if I wanted to quit before the end of the course I would have to pay for it. So I stuck it out grudgingly and never wanted to play piano again.

 Then there was soccer, I had wanted to play soccer from the time I could walk, and this is one of those activities that I wanted to play, mainly because I was a daddy’s girl and this was his sport of choice. This activity also had the added benefit of social interaction with my friends, my parents were happy I was doing it, my brother played, and it was something I wanted to do so it hit all of my criteria. Every fall from the time I was 4, I was playing Fall Recreational Soccer. Honestly I wasn’t that good as a kid, in fact early in my career I use to sit in the back field and pick dandelions while the kids all played horde ball. You know when they all just run around the field in a pack following the ball. Then my dad bribed me to play, by telling me that he would give me a quarter for every time I kicked the ball. Let’s just say after that game it went from a quarter to a nickel to nothing, very quickly. Once we all got older and started playing more cohesive soccer I really did love it. And couldn’t wait for 5th grade when I could officially try-out to be on the spring traveling soccer team. Fifth grade and try-outs finally came, I was on the team and it was going to be wonderful, but let’s not kid ourselves, it was really hard. We started practicing indoors in February three days a week. Then outdoor practices four days a week in March with games starting at the end of the month. Practice wasn’t the worst thing, honestly it was the games. Every weekend we were on the road, we’d drive 300+ miles to play two games, and then do it all over again the next week for about three months straight. The hardest part wasn’t even the traveling and playing. I knew what I was committing to, because my older brother had been doing it for years and I traveled with his team, the difference was that we almost never played in the same place. Which meant I was spending all my weekends split from my family, my mom and I would go one way, and my dad and my brothers would go the other. My dad was the assistant coach for my brother’s team, which meant he never got to watch me play. For me personally, that was the biggest reason I only played one year of spring soccer. My dad had been my coach, and even though I didn’t always appreciate his commentary on my playing, he always wanted me to get better, because he knew that if I was playing better than I would have more fun. Don’t get me wrong the mother daughter bonding that happened that year was wonderful, but sometimes moms can be too supportive. 

The other reason for quitting was that I wasn’t enjoying myself, the team had a lot to do with it, we were on the brink of middle school and my 17 other teammates were not always the kindest bunch, in fact I was told fairly consistently that the only reason I was on the team was because there was only one team and all the girls that tried out had made the team. Now mind you this never happened in a public forum, but was whispered to me during meals on weekends or in the backs of minivans as we traveled with another family. Along with that I was constantly being played as a left fullback. In my11 year old mind, that is the equivalent of being put in center field during tee ball, it’s like I was being told that I wasn’t really useful on the field, they just needed a place to put me where I couldn’t do much damage. I was never to cross mid-field, unless I was, by some miracle playing a mid field or even a forward position.   

Of course these were not the reasons that I revealed to my parents when I told them that I wasn’t going to do another spring season, in fact I just told them, that I would prefer to play rec soccer in the fall and rec volleyball in the spring. They shrugged their shoulders, said okay and honestly were just happy that I had played the whole season without begging to quit halfway through. 

I will admit though, that during my last three weeks of play that season, our regular sweeper was moved to mid-field after one of our players was taken out due to a spread of Hepatitis A (it was a thing that year), and I was put in as sweeper. That was where I really learned to love playing defense. There’s more pressure, and your team and fans are depending on you to do your job. That was probably one of the best things that came out of the season, that and realizing that for the sake of my self-esteem, I was never going to play soccer competitively, I couldn’t deal with the constant gossip, and false friendships.  

For all the things that I wanted to do and be when I was kid, I can tell you that as I grew and with some help from my parents I realized that dreams and wants change and some even drop off the map (I never want to be the President, seriously politics is not a game I’m interested in playing). However, the things that you want to pursue won’t come easily and sometimes you’ll just have to stick it out, but they will be worth it. Commitment is important. I won’t promise that I’ll post on this blog every week. But I will commit myself to more time in my life to be more diligent in writing and editing my thoughts to share with those of you who are still interesting in reading about what I have to say. So thanks for sticking with me, there will be more humorous anecdotes soon. 

If Only…

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Game 6 of the World Series was last night. Now I know I just posted about baseball, but this is the last one for a while.

I would say, “I promise,” but I can’t and won’t promise that, baseball is never far from my mind.

As I’m sure you know the Boston Red Sox won the Fall Classic last night in a 6-1 win over the St. Louis Cardinals. This hurt. A lot. No one wants to lose; in fact it hurt less when we lost to the Giants in the NLCS last season than last night.

I am now using ‘we’ in the sense that I am apart of the team…it’s just something that fans do. Don’t judge.

I had to work last night so I didn’t get to the bar to watch the game until the middle of the 6th inning. As I got out of my car and was walking in a gentleman coming out of the bar said to me,

“You might not want to go in there if you’re a Cardinals fan.” (It was pretty obvious as I was wearing my Freese jersey).  I responded, “I know the score, but I have to watch my team, win or lose.” The gent smiled and responded in turn, “Good for you.”

I had to see it end, good or bad. You never know I might have missed a biggest comeback in World Series history and I just couldn’t take that chance.

Here’s the thing for some unknown and baffling reason, I am the most superstitious person when it comes to baseball. Seriously I’m not kidding. The rules I place on my superstitions change from season to season. For example: during the postseason this year I wore my Cardinals sweatshirt twice on game days during the NLCS against the Dodgers. We lost both times. So obviously, my brain tells me that I can no longer wear my sweatshirt on game days. And two years ago during our incredible and unbelievable postseason run (along with World Series victory) I refused to post anything baseball related on social media. Seriously, nothing, there were no “go Cards #postseason #wildcard” tweets or “David Freese is my boy, I knew we could do it at home!” Facebook status updates after that legendary Game 6. I posted a few things after we won the series, but even those were tempered. With the exception of one series of tweets to a friend of mine, and even that was all in good fun.

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There is one superstition that I adhere to no matter what and that is no trash talk. I absolutely refuse to engage in trash talking. A passionate and intelligent debate, sure. Bashing the other team simply because they are competing against my team? Not a chance. The superstition lies in the idea that if I do engage in trash talking the competition that some sort of karmic comeuppance will cause my team to suffer.

I don’t believe in Karma, in fact the rational and faithful Catholic that I am knows that none of my superstitious beliefs actually affect the outcome of a sporting event that I’m not personally participating in, but there’s always that “what if?” And for some illogical reason that “what if,” outweighs all other logic. So I choose not to trash talk.

And yes you could insert the theological argument here that sin affects us all and that it is a ripple effect and that sin isn’t strictly personal. I know, I’ve stated that case many times to young minds. However I’m on my soapbox about sports, and I’m not talking the type of superstition that would travel down the road of sin.

In the end I just find it easier to be gracious, in winning AND in losing. I find that at the end of the day, those people who try and trash talk me will be left speechless and maybe respect me more, when I reply with a “congrats” and “great game.” (Though let’s be honest last night’s game…not so great, not because they lost, but mostly because they weren’t playing up to their potential).  Being gracious and humble will take you far in life, and I’m not talking false humility or being under-handedly gracious. It’s not about taking the high road to shame others. I really am happy for the fans of the Red Sox, it’s nice to have a winning team. I know. That doesn’t mean that I like the Red Sox I don’t, I’m still bitter from 2004, but more over, I’m not a huge fan of the organization. But hey, I accept that people feel the same way about the Cardinals, it is the nature of competitive sports and their fan bases.

I understand that what I wear on a game day and what I tweet about won’t affect the outcome of the game, but I do think in life, graciousness and humility will always affect the outcome of how people treat you and how you treat people. Be good to each other.

Also, this new twitter format made it really difficult to be a Cardinals fan last night.

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9 Innings of Bliss

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It’s the end of October and Postseason Baseball is in full swing, as an avid St. Louis Cardinals Fan and a lover of baseball since I was a kid, October is like the Superbowl to me.

Growing up and watching baseball in the 90s I saw some amazing things, I saw the Braves rise and fall, the Yankees dominate, Randy Johnson and the Diamondbacks come out of nowhere, and even the year without baseball.  All that time I loved to watch the game, but would become easily bored, leaving the living room if we were watching at home, and even wandering the stadium with my cousins when we were lucky enough to be at a game.

The 90s were also a tough time to be a Redbirds fan, I don’t know if you know this, but the team isn’t really listed much in the history of that decade, with the exception of Mark McGwire in ’98 and I don’t know if you follow baseball, but that didn’t end well. However the mid to late 2000s and now the 2010s have been very good to my team.

Seriously…have you been watching baseball the last three years.

The problem with my team’s sudden surge in popularity and wins, however means I am constantly having to defend myself against a large number of people who will classify me as a bandwagon fan. This irks me. While I may not be a numbers person, and I don’t memorize batting averages, ERAs, or RISP, I do know what’s going on with my team…all the time, I follow the trades in the off season, the recruits and draftees and their ascent through the farm and triple A system. I know what’s going on, on the field and if anyone were to sit down and actually talk with me about baseball they would know that I didn’t just “hop on the bandwagon.”

However, engaging people in that conversation can be difficult. Why? Because baseball is a slow sport, there is no time clock on a baseball game; it will go on as long as it takes for a team to win. While some people find this tedious and boring to watch, I revel in it. Over the years of watching and learning about the game I have found that baseball is a finesse sport, a unique chess match that happens on the field, and one that will be different every time.

The past couple of summers I have spent a lot of time watching baseball, mostly on TV, and when I watch I become very still and calm, you never know when someone will make an amazing catch or hit a grand slam. Patience is the name of the game, even when you get nervous and the team is losing. Patience and a cool head is what keeps pitchers’ in the game, what keeps the batters cool at the plate, and what keeps the fielders from making mistakes. Even in the most stressful situations patience and calm will keep things from getting out of hand. Long gone are the days of my fidgeting and leaving the couch, and when I’m lucky enough to get to see a game in person, there’s no aimless wandering around the stadium. That’s why you show up early.

Watching baseball, has given me a better prayer life. Seriously, it has taught me to be present in the moment but to keep a calm mind and heart. It use to take me a long time to sit down and calm my mind when it came to my personal prayer, and even then within 20 minutes I was fidgeting and putting myself on the clock. (You know like just 10 more minutes and you’ll be good). The problem with this is that I was never fully putting myself in the presence of God. I would spend 10 minutes calming my thoughts, 10 minutes whining to God and asking for advice, and then another 20 minutes thinking about how much longer I needed to sit and “listen” before my prayer time would be considered adequate.

This is not how you pray.

Prayer is a conversation with God, which means that it needs to be a two way street, if prayer was meant to be one way, it would simply be called a monologue, of the internal variety. There is no time constraint on prayer no minimums or maximums, prayer is about being open, calm, and peaceful, to communicate and converse with God. 

Listening is the hard part, to do that we have to learn how to calm our thoughts, to be okay with sitting in silence and waiting to receive him.

Baseball taught me how to wait, something we struggle with in our NOW society, people find baseball boring and outdated, I think this is because we’ve forgotten what it means to be patient, how to wait, and to be okay with waiting and not having the answer come right away.

They say the best baseball happens in October, and that may be, it certainly seems more exciting. However, astonishing and beautiful plays happen in baseball all season long, you just have to be willing to wait and see.  The Fall Classic may only come around once a year, but your relationship with Christ is there everyday, if only you choose to participate.

On that note…

Go Cards!

Miss Montana Had It Wrong…

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A couple of years ago I found myself watching the Miss America pageant. Don’t ask me why, I have no idea. It was on and I was intrigued. At the very beginning of the televised part, all the girls are introduced and they get to have a clever little sentence they say about which state they are from.  I have never watched a Miss America pageant, so I became instantly curious about what Miss Montana would say about our beautiful Big Sky State. Perhaps something about the speed limit, or the fact that even the democrats own guns, but no, Miss Montana made a comment about our wonderful state only having two seasons, winter and pre-winter. What?! There are so many better things to say that would be funny and highlight where you come from…all she really did was repeat a poorly constructed joke and belittle the place she was supposed to be representing, after that I changed the channel.

Now some of you might be asking why I was so offended by a joke about the weather, yes Montana does have a long winter, and we never know when it will start or end, but we really do experience the other seasons, I promise. However short and fleeting our spring, summer, and autumn are. They sure do come with pizazz, and it is best to take advantage while you have the chance. This is why as soon as it hits 45 degrees in March (or April) we’re all wearing shorts and t-shirts, come visit us during the summer and the lakes are full of boaters and swimmers, the mountains full of hikers and the parks full of picnic baskets. And when the leaves of fall start to appear in September and October the sidewalks are full of people walking and kicking up the fallen leaves, enjoying the new crisp chill in the air and apple cider.

I know it is standard for us as a people and culture to see winter as the end of the year, however, I have always seen winter as the renewal and beginning. Maybe it’s my Catholic beliefs, and the fact that Advent is the beginning of the new liturgical year, or maybe it’s just that when everything is covered with a beautiful layer of cold snow. A snow that deadens all sound and yet reflects all light, and brightens even the darkest of nights. It’s clean, and when I look out at the streets, trees, houses, and mountains. I see a fresh start, a new beginning.  Its calm and its peaceful, a deep breath before everything picks back up again.

Spring is that renewal realized, everything is cleaned up and nature is prepared to make way for all the coming regrowth. We as humans do that too, after winter we seem to have more energy, hello spring-cleaning! Spring gives us hope. Again, this might have something to do with the fact that in the liturgical year Spring is a new beginning with Lent and Easter…I know it doesn’t seem that way, but as a Christian Catholic there is a beauty in the waiting of Lent, just like we wait and hold our breaths for new flowers and the leaves to appear green on the trees.  Then with the Crucifixion and Resurrection of Easter there is new life and we can rejoice in that, just as we do when we can play outside again, and yes, even mow the lawn.  Spring is rejuvenating.

With summer we are at our peak, we’ve settled into the re-creation of nature and life, as we know it continues on. This really won’t settle in until after the school thing, when you’re working full time. Because hey, when you’re an adult, you don’t get 3 months off for a summer vacation, for most people they maybe get a week or two. Unless you’re a teacher, or a youth minister…I still work, it’s just more fun during the summer, hence the reason I took the job, duh. Just kidding. Summer really is easy going because we’re all settle into our routine of work and recreation.

Then comes autumn, which is one of my favorite seasons, don’t get me wrong I love them all, but there’s just something about the color change and the temperature drop, and postseason baseball. Okay, a lot of that has to do with postseason baseball, but more on that later. 

I think there is something so beautiful and sad about fall. In my mind it really is the end of the year, a time for me to reflect on the past 10 months, and to make a change, if there is something that has been bothering me that whole time, I either choose to actively change it immediately, or I let it go. I do a lot of letting go. I think that’s really what fall is all about. Prepping you for the new things to come, to make room for renewal.  

Just like you have to make room on your hard drive for more music, photos, videos, etc. It’s so easy to hold onto things, and to let them define us for the next however many days, months, or years, but just like the trees have to shed their leaves for the winter, to prepare for the new buds in the spring, we humans need to shed all that hold us back. And what better time than fall? It’s almost as if God devised the seasons as a guide for us to follow, a cycle for us to use to our advantage. 

If you’ve ever listened to Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, this makes perfect sense. Seriously it’s beautiful listen to it.

I have visited New York in the fall, Washington and Oregon in the spring and have spent a fair share of my summer weeks in the hot and humid mid-West and Southern U.S. I have even been to a few of those places during the winter, and as beautiful as all those seasons are in their own right, given the choice I will always choose my long Montana winters and my wonderful, albeit short, spring, summer, and autumn days.

Remember that as the leaves change and fall, it might be worth your time to take a look back and re-evaluated what’s important to hold on to, and what is worth letting go.

…and to answer that question you’ve been asking in your head. No I did not know Miss Montana in the pageant. Though last year’s Miss Montana and I went to high school and did theatre together and the new Miss Montana grew up down the street from me…so yeah, maybe Montana is just one big, small town.

A Joke Only I Could Get Away With…

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This isn’t my first take at writing a blog. When I was a junior in college I was a student blogger for our small liberal arts college, it was a pilot program and was supposed to show both parents and prospective freshman that we had normal lives. Apparently we were successful, because they have kept the student bloggers as a part of their online presence ever since. Score! However, we need to rewind all the way back to the beginning.

My junior year of college was actually quite unique, I had just transferred into a small college of about 1300 students from a state university of about 14,000 students…needless to say it was a bit of an adjustment. Let’s just say there is a reason we referred to Carroll College as Carroll High School.

As I was new to the school, I was really just trying to find my footing and was truly trying to keep my head down. In a school that small if you sneeze, give it a minute, and the entire campus knows you have a cold. Get my drift.  About mid-September Carroll started to advertise that it was looking for student bloggers. To apply you just had to submit a blog and email it to the admissions office. Suffice it to say, my roommate and I thought this was the funniest thing and continually joked about submitting a blog. However in the back of my mind, I kept thinking about how unique to the school my perspective was, and perhaps it could be useful to someone who was thinking about transferring. *Damn me and my need to serve other people!*

One evening, after finishing my homework and messing around on Facebook, I found myself writing a blog submission and before I knew it I had emailed it to the admissions office. It was at that moment after I hit send that my roommate walked in. She looked at me sitting at my desk, took in the look of shock and disbelief on my face and said, “What did you do?”  Turning towards her with wide eyes, and moth ajar I responded, “I think I just applied to be a student blogger.”

Within two days I was meeting with the admissions staff and 3 other student bloggers and was set up and ready to go. And within two hours of that meeting the entire student body knew that I was a student blogger for Carroll. Happy Thursday!

The next day my parents were in town, for my younger brother’s soccer game. After the game they took my roommate and I to dinner. It was at dinner that I decided I should tell them that I was the new internet celebrity at school.

As we sat enjoying our appetizer I looked across the table at my parents and said, in a serious tone, “Mom, Dad, I have something to tell you.” They immediately looked up from their chips and salsa and I continued, “I’m pregnant.”

Let me digress for just a moment, this was not what I intended to say. I was simply going to tell them that I was a blogger, but in that brief moment my brain decided that this would be the perfect time for a joke.

I only let that settle in for maybe 2 seconds before I followed up with, “just kidding.” But those two seconds were all it took, my roommate, having no idea that I was going to say that, just burst out laughing, while my parents stuttered into recovery. My mom shook her head, a slow smile beginning to spread, while my father muttered, “two years at a public university and nothing, then a month at a Catholic college and you’re joking about being pregnant.”  Then as if it was planned, my parents both looked at each other and said simultaneously, “She’s your daughter!”  Then burst into loud raucous laughter. I told them about being a blogger and we continued dinner without any more surprises.

After that, I wanted nothing more than to write a blog about that moment. However, I realized that people would have to know my parents and understand our family dynamic for that to resonate, and perhaps, since I still wanted to keep a low profile, that this was something that I didn’t need to share with the whole world.

Sometimes there are moments that we experience and we cannot wait to share them with our social world. And in the days of Facebook, Twitter, and smart phones, it is easy to immediately share them. However, sometimes it would be in our best interest to hold back, to keep those things in the personal moment file for a while before making a world-wide announcement. Remember that moment when Jesus took Peter, John, and James onto the mountaintop and you know, was transfigured in front of them? Yeah kind of a big deal, and the disciples were excited and wanted to stay there and set up tents, but then they were scolded (gently) about trying to keep Christ from the rest of the world. But in a twist, Jesus asked them to keep this particular happening to themselves for a while, to not rush right back to the masses and tell them all about this amazing thing. Remember that moment? Do you know why he did that? I mean it does seem a smidge hypocritical, doesn’t it? In reality Christ was protecting his disciples as well as the timeline of how things were going to happen. If Peter, James, and John, had run into town screaming about Jesus, Elijah, and Moses, people would have thought they were crazy, which would have been to the detriment of all they had accomplished already, and also it would have led to a very angry Jewish community, and then Jesus never would have gotten back to Jerusalem…you see what I’m saying?

In our culture of over-sharing, it takes a wise and patient person to keep things under their hat. It also takes some contemplation, something that I think we could use more of in our status updates. I cannot imagine what the next two years would have been like at Carroll if I had told everyone about my “pregnant” joke. People were still getting to know me and I could have hindered that, by simply choosing to act without thinking (which is exactly what lead to me blurting out the pregnant thing to begin with).  We could all use a little more contemplation and discernment in our lives, because who knows if you don’t, you might just write a blog connecting an inappropriate joke to the Transfiguration.  Happy Thursday.

The Beginning of a Beautiful Friendship

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Back in the fall of 2008 during my senior year of college, before “selfies” and “duckface” were a part of our urban dictionary, I spent a week in NYC visiting my friend Eric. The trip was great and the week was amazing and ever since I left, I’ve spent a decent amount of time thinking about how to get back to the city and spend my life watching Broadway shows. I came back from that trip with a few gifts for family and friends, excellent memories, and one pair of sunglasses.

The interesting thing about these sunglasses, were they were just another pair of cheap $5 glasses. Honestly the only distinguishing feature was that they were yellow. I bought them on the street, from a guy who had hundreds of these yellow glasses and was just trying to get rid of his inventory, hence the price. I liked them, I thought they would be fun, and I have stupidly sensitive eyes so I collect cheap sunglasses so as to always have a pair on hand. These would be no exception, they would be worn until they broke or I found a new pair.

Fast forward about a year. I graduated from college, and after much deliberation, stress, fear, and yes, even tears, I was now working with a young adult traveling ministry called Reach Youth Ministry. I spent about 10 months traveling from Washington to Ohio and everything in between, putting on retreats for grade school through high school students. It was a wonderful and fulfilling experience and all along the way, those yellow sunglasses could be spotted atop my head or on my face.

After my year with Reach I was again blessed with a dream job, becoming a multi-parish youth minister in my home diocese. This was a new adventure for me and from the very first night of youth group, my trusty sunglasses were always by my side.

Somewhere along the way these yellow sunglasses became my trademark. Kelly and yellow sunglasses had become synonymous with each other, I almost couldn’t go anywhere without them. Who knew a small accessory made of plastic with a splash of color could become such a defining piece of who I am? As a youth minister and someone who is actively involved in my faith and church, did I really want to be so defined by an accessory? I felt as if I was being reduced to something so small, literally a pair of sunglasses. I didn’t want to be the minister with the gimmick; I wanted my faith to shine through my life and the way I live it.

So I changed it up, stopped wearing them all the time, I would leave them in my car or on my desk. I just squinted a lot when I was outside. Whenever I was asked about the sunglasses I just brushed the question aside in a false sense of aloofness. Finally a good friend of mine asked me about the sunglasses and when I brushed him off, he got in my face (in a non-confrontational way). I finally admitted my fears of being associated with a pair of sunglasses and how I didn’t want them to define me as a person or my ministry, and he laughed at me. (See! This is why I didn’t want to tell anyone, because I knew it was ridiculous). However, he explained to me that those sunglasses didn’t define me as a person or a minister, because who I am and what I was doing with my life was set about long before those sunglasses came into it, and it was only if I let them define me that they would.  Damn him, he was right. No more! I was going to define those sunglasses. I would own them, and not let them own me. So I set about to change my attitude about myself and those sunglasses.

I stopped being concerned about the sunglasses. Hell, I liked them, and I didn’t want to be caught up in a petty insecurity. It became my goal to share the Gospel message as often and as best as I could. If someone happened to associate yellow sunglasses with me, so be it. Maybe they would remember what I taught them about the love and sacrifice of the cross, because all they could focus on at youth group that night was the bright yellow sunglasses that were on my head, when it was the middle of December and dark outside and I had no business having them on. In ministry we are lucky if we get to see the fruits of the seeds we hope to sow, but that doesn’t stop us from sowing them, and I was going to use every tool I had.

There are times in our lives in which we need to make a sacrifice of self, to let something else define us, and yet we sometimes allow ourselves fall victim to our own insecurities. I let my Catholic beliefs and traditions define me, because it is so intricately woven into my being. I stopped giving in to my insecurities about an accessory and chose to let those sunglasses be a trademark of the message I was and am trying to spread about faith and the Church.

I am re-defining those yellow sunglasses, they still provide much needed eye protection, but I hope and work toward the goal that someday some kid will see a pair of yellow sunglasses and be reminded of the love of Christ and the sacrifice he made.

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