Crazy Little Thing Called Love.....

Crazy Little Thing Called Love....

 Kailee Grace moved up from coach pitch to fast pitch softball. She thought it was going to be a walk in the park. She was so excited to go to the ballpark to meet her new Coach and team. Cort had taken her to go get all her new equipment that the coach requested his team to wear. They had spent hours at Academy selecting the right helmet, practice pants,  bat, and glove. Honestly, this thought makes me giggle a little bit because my husband has the patience of Job, but any trip shopping with Kailee Grace is more like you are looking for the undiscovered buried  Nazi Gold in Lake Toplitz, Austria.  However, when her daddy told her she would be wearing  the "face protection", she was completely against it. The face mask felt awkward , uncomfortable and far from the fashion statements she likes to make. In reality the mask  was  not at all what she suspected it to feel like.

 After the first practice, watching several of her friends step up to bat and get beamed in the leg she looked at me with crocodile tears racing down her cheek.  She refused to get in the batter box to hit the box because what her eyes and mind was telling her was that she was only going to get hurt. 

Why is it that so many people have in their minds that love should be easy and like a fairy tale?  At some point in our marriage we girls have all mumbled the words...."Marriage...shouldn't be this hard".  Why is it that we believe this thing called love is so hard after we say I do? 

From a very young age we dream of our happily ever after, when our prince charming will run in and sweep us off our feet. I don't know about you, but I can remember watching Cinderella and picturing that one day my prince my soul mate  would come and sweep me off my feet.

The funny thing about this is I think we girls think there is just that one person out there for us to marry, and that our Prince Charming  will perfectly met our needs and wants exactly the way we want.  I jumped on the soul mate band wagon. You have heard the saying, "Don't drink the kool aide" well this chick took a big gulp of it.   This idea or moral premise could not be further from the truth. The older I get the more I realize that in reality we always marry the wrong person. I know some of you are already thinking... I did not marry the wrong person. Take a chill pill for a moment, and let me try to break this down for you. 

What I am trying to say is  that  when we pick our spouse we say I Do on how they treat us, how they act and who they are right then and there. We dismiss the idea that they will change and we will change.  The idea that if  they change or circumstances change  they will no longer fit our "idea of the prince charming".  We all change from the day we say I Do. So our perfect soul mate turns into the perfect counterfeit mate. Now let's pause a moment. I am not saying at all that you have married the wrong person. I am just trying to say that we all have different ideas of what marriage will look and feel like, and have to learn to adapt. 

So what do you do after you find out that your Prince Charming is not in reality your Prince Charming? Because Prince Charming actually wants you to put the dishes in the dish washer in certain places, or that Prince Charming wants to watch football instead of watching chick flicks. Then Prince Charming and Cinderella start having babies and those babies grow up and cause some problems in the Kingdom of Happy Ever After, or even worst tragedy hits in some kind of shape or form. 

 Do you leave the ballgame? Run to the nearest divorce attorney, or do you die to your wants and needs and learn that marriage is truly not about your happiness all the time and more about your holiness. Now, before you start reading into this post thinking Tiffany is wanting to leave Cort, or oh no what is happen to them?  Take a deep breath! We are good honestly probably the best we ever have been. While Cort might not live up to my Prince Charming ideas, I for sure don't live up to his babe quiet loving wife. However, the bottom line  is at some point you realized your  fairy tales is not turning out exactly the way either of you imagined it to be. You have two options.  

1. Do what society says do... Move on there is someone better out there. 

2. Realize that you  have an amazing relationship with another Human Being one that is closer than any other Human Relationship you will ever have. It might be laced with a little bit of crazy, and dysfunction, but it is also laced with two people who love each other for who they are in the good,bad, and the ugly times. You  both are far from each others Happy Ever After, but who really defined the so call "Happy Ever After"? 

So next time you want to utter the phrases like... Why is Love so Hard, or This is not what I deserve.  Remember no one said Marriage would be Easy.  So take a step back and think, no one is perfect, but remind yourself that you are with  exactly who you want to do life with. Sure they  drive me a little batty and always second guess me, sing in the shower, and dance a little crazy, but I am defining my Happy Ever After.

So my Two Cent's of the Day:

Always climb into the batters box, don't let fear grip you because to become a Major League Star you have to be willing to take a hit or two. The pain only last for a moment, but a joy last a lifetime! Marriage might be hard, but Marriage can be Amazing! So embrace this thing called love! You are never ready for the crazy! 

I love you Cort Bethmann. You drive me crazy, but I love you even those things did not turn out to be my happy ever little after ideas. I would take this crazy ride with you again! 

The Shoes of Life

Shoes of Life 

Jamie yelled from the other side of the pond!  HOUSTON!!!!!!!!!!!! WE HAVE A PROBLEM! GET OVER HERE NOW! I could tell by my little sister’s tone that what just happened on her side of the pond was not good.  I made a mad dash through the tall cat tail grass and around the corner to the far side of the pond.  As we both watched her brand new leather shoe sinking to the bottom of Granny Bea and Papaw’s catfish pond. Jamie was grasping wildly trying to grab it before it sank.  Without hesitation I said, really? We just got those yesterday! Mom is going to have a cow.  How did you let that happen? She responded, “ Your really not helping the situation out at the moment. However, remember that  bright idea of yours tying our shoes the trendy way instead of the old fashion way. Now are you going to get to problem solving mode or set her and preach  to me the B attitudes of wish I... should of'.... could of ”

 OK ok… So feeling a little bit like this was now my fault.  I got down on my knees next to her. I told Jamie to get up from where she was on her stomach desperately trying to fish out the shoe.

 “Don’t you dare let me fall into that water!  Ok?”  Laying horizontally to the pond, and placing trust into my little sister holding one arm and one leg and leveraging my body to keep me from falling.  Jamie said, “Good grief, Tiffany I already stuck my hand into the water. Now get my shoe. After changing and adapting ourselves several times we finally found the position that gave us the advantage on the situation.   I began to stick my hand down as far as I could into the muddy yucky nasty man eating catfish pond in hopes of “rescuing the shoe”.  Together after 15 minutes of carefully positioning ourselves we fished out the brown leather shoe that decided to go Awah.

All of us face situation that we have to adapt to accomplish our goals, and our challenges.  With those goals and challenges we must all embrace one key trait. Can you guess what that trait is?  You got it! Courage!

To exceed in life we must all embrace some level of courage. We have to face the fear of failures, be willing to stick our hands in muddy waters of life in hopes of pulling out that so called shoe or goal we are striving to achieve. 

Think about exercising courage as if you were playing a game of  Mother may I. Some of us are asked to take giant leaps of faith while others get 10 baby steps. While some are just stinking lucky and get to leap frog over the yucky stuff and never have to walk through it. Life is not fair by any means.

Jeremiah 15:19 gives us a hidden treasure that we must take Courage to “extract the precious from the worthless.” This is a great verse to mediate on when you are in the process of going for a goal because you will have moments where you have to overcome your frustrations and your own negative thoughts that will try to paralyze you by saying it is just too muddy? What if you get hurt? Or even worst what if you don't accomplish the goal at all?  I know I have personally  battled those thoughts lately myself. The truth is in every situation even those times we think doing these things that seem worthless and waste of our time. We truly are shaping our lives and forming them into precious moments, by just walking by faith and courage in the muddy waters of life in hopes of victory and reaching that shoe!

Our shoes can be different things to us. Some of us are reaching for that shoe of Success, while others are reaching for the Shoe of happiness. Some of us are even reaching for that shoe to prove to the world they got what it takes.  Jobs, Family, Marriage, Success  we all have different shoes we are desperately trying to reach. No matter what shoe you are reaching for in life. You will always have to face the muddy water where you have to reach for the shoe. It is in the moments we are reaching we must remember to push through the task that seem worthless  to extract the precious.  

So my two cent’s worth of the day is this: If we take a mindset that would be a mindset of Courage nothing could stop us. We were all created to be Exceptional. We have to have the courage to be different.  Even when that different is uncomfortable because when we get uncomfortable and push ourselves into the unclear muddy waters we rely on our faith to carry us and operating in that type of faith is when we extract the precious.