Category Archives: My 3 Sons

So, what did you expect?

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Back in the day, my inlaws had a great place in the Ocala, Florida area. The entire family loved it there, right on a canal for boating and fishing, plus it was not too far from Disney World. There was great shopping and restaurants nearby, not to mention The Mighty Ocean.

But the best part?

It was FREE.

One summer, my mother, grandmother, younger brother and the only one of My Three Sons to grace the planet at the time, Kyle, decided to take advantage of the free vacation spot. The Sweetheart couldn’t get off work (or could he???) but graciously said we could go without him. Hmmm…little did I know that we would look back later and wonder who really had a vacation.

Heading  south, we made pretty good time considering our diverse party. It was a great week, the weather was fantastic and we just relaxed.

The decision was made to spend one full day at the ocean. So, this group of Indiana rednecks piled in the car and in no time we were claiming our spot on the beach. Kyle had a great time building sand castles and the rest of us enjoyed the sunshine.

Until the tide came in.

Being the newcomers we had no clue about tides and oceans or the rules of the beach. We had pulled our car up to our spot just like everyone else had done. This was the 80’s; obviously things have changed!

What we didn’t notice was that the other sun worshippers had MOVED their vehicles an hour or two earlier in anticipation of the changing tide. But the Hoosiers had not gotten the memo. Suddenly, a man came running over with excitement in his voice and yelling, “Why haven’t you moved that *&^%$#@! car?”

Blond and totally oblivious at the time, I didn’t realize that the wheels of our car were half-buried in the sand. Panic set in as we all jumped to our feet but that Buick was going nowhere, no way, and no how.

Our knight-in-shining-armor, who I assumed was there to save us, just kept shaking his head as if we were idiots. Okay, okay, we weren’t the smartest sand lovers on the beach. Finally, he hollered to a few guys around us for help and just like a scene from Beach Blanket Bingo, we were surrounded by muscle in no time. They heaved and pushed and rocked the car back and forth as it spun in the sand but she wasn’t budging!

Exasperated, our hero looked at me and said, “So, what did you expect?”

A valuable lesson was learned that day and even a beloved  Sunday School story came to mind that went along with our scenario. You can’t build anything on a sandy foundation. It sinks. Period. You will always need someone to come bail you out. Maybe it’s because the tide is coming in or because your sand castle is collapsing, but that house will just not withstand the storms of life.

Because you need a sure thing. You need a solid foundation.

In this world of uncertainty we must be established in what we believe! It is imperative that we KNOW Jesus Christ, not just know about Him. All of the Sunday School stories in the world will not do us any good if we have not been filled with His spirit. They are just stories until you know Him.

Look at what Jesus said here in the book of Matthew. I don’t normally use The Message version but this is so good, (don’t skip it! It really is good!)

“These words I speak to you are not incidental additions to your life, homeowner improvements to your standard of living. They are foundational words, words to build a life on. If you work these words into your life, you are like a smart carpenter who built his house on solid rock. Rain poured down, the river flooded, a tornado hit—but nothing moved that house. It was fixed to the rock.

But if you just use my words in Bible studies and don’t work them into your life, you are like a stupid carpenter who built his house on the sandy beach. When a storm rolled in and the waves came up, it collapsed like a house of cards.” Matthew 7:24-27

Stupid carpenter on the sandy beach. That was me that day because there was no plan, no thought that if you park next to the ocean you are going to have problems!

Today, at 99% of the beaches in the Sunshine State, you must park in the PARKING LOT; surely that rule/law came about the day after we left the ocean behind. I am a trendsetter like that! Mercifully, Frankie Avalon and his beach buddies saved the day and rocked the car right out of the sand…eventually.

Thankfully, I do not have to worry about that happening to me again. Nor do I worry about the spiritual house I am building. It is fixed on the Rock, Christ Jesus, and nothing can sink it or tear it down. These are homeowner improvements to my life! My house will not get washed away when troubles come.

so what did you expect

What do you expect when storms come your way? They will come, friend, they will come for sure. But we do not have to be afraid when we are built on the solid foundation, Jesus Christ.

What are you building on?

For the kingdom

Hey Guy, Somebody Call The Cops!

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supermanBack in the day, we decided in order to be able to feed our growing family, The Sweetheart was going to have to bump up the paycheck. Air Traffic Control sounded like a good occupation, so off to Oklahoma City he went to the Mike Maroney Aeronautical Center for the first three months of initial training.

I was left behind in Indianapolis with two little boys to take care of all by myself. At the time, Kyle Douglas was 6 and Kristopher Ryan was 1 ½.

I could tell you all kinds of stories about the trials and tribulations of trying to work and take care of two energetic and inquisitive blond towheads by myself without any family close by. But that would be whining, and I am sure it wasn’t near as bad I remember it to be.

I’ve decided instead to tell you about our adventure when The Sweetheart graduated.

My wonderful in-laws graciously decided to take us down to Oklahoma City for my husband’s graduation. We load up the Roman Wheels Custom van with the grandparents, sister, nieces, nephew and me and the boys. The trip down was great, no problems from our little travelers, even with the long drive.

Unfortunately, their Daddy doesn’t get to come back with us because he has a couple of weeks left to wrap up. It’s been almost three months since the boys have seen their Daddy and Kristopher hasn’t been forming sentences too awfully long anyway, so when he sees him he is a little confused and is not sure what to think. He has a little trouble warming up to him and keeps saying, “Who dat Guy? Who dat Guy?” At first we think it is funny, but when Daddy comes home and he is still doing it, and out in public, we are starting to get worried! No matter how many times we say, “This is DADDY!” He would just keep saying, “Dat Guy, dat Guy.” And eventually he dropped it to just “Guy”. And so Daddy became Guy and remained that until Kristopher started kindergarten.

We arrived back in Indy, after being gone almost a week, and they dropped us off around midnight. Kyle is asleep in his room and Kristopher has finally settled down in his baby bed and I think all is well…

About ten minutes later Kyle comes creeping into my room whispering, “Mommy, Mommy, I hear somebody out in the garage!”

Now, if you are a regular follower of the blog you will remember that Kyle has a tendency to worry. But that’s not his fault. He always had to watch out for his younger brothers. Especially for number two, who has always caused him to be on guard. Number three had not come along yet, and it is just as well, he was quite busy with the one he had. So he is especially cautious and has a keen sense of hearing.

I didn’t hear anything and tell him not to worry and to go back to bed. Just as I started to walk out of his bedroom we both heard something coming from the garage.

It is way past midnight and I am home alone with two small children. I walked slowly toward the garage and stood and listened. Sure enough I heard men talking in my garage! I have been terrified of something like this my entire life. I am afraid of my own shadow, and every movie I have ever seen of an intruder in the house always left me terrified.

I always knew I would do one of two things: I would go running and screaming out the front door or I would lock myself in a room that had a telephone and call the police. Of course number two would be dependent upon the intruder not having cut the telephone lines.

They always cut the telephone lines!

Well I couldn’t go running and screaming out the front door because of the boys.

But I did have a phone. Did I use it? No.

Did I call the police? No.

Did I lock the door? No.

Did I send my little boy to his brother’s room and tell him to lock the door and not open it no matter what happened?

No. I did none of those things.

I opened the door.

I don’t need to tell you that the two men on the other side of the door were more surprised to see me than I was to see them. Actually, the look on their faces was priceless.

One was a cop. The other was my neighbor.

Kristopher, bless his little mischievous heart, had taken the garage door opener out of the diaper bag when we got home and took it to bed with him.

Okay, I don’t know how he did these things, he just did. Call me a bad mother, you didn’t live with him.

His bed was next to the light switch and he was flipping the light on, off, on, off, and the garage door, up, down, up, down all at the same time, creating his own light show at 319 Center Street.

We had great neighbors. We had patient neighbors.

We had neighbors that thought we weren’t coming back until the next day.

They called our other neighbor. He was the cop.

Thankfully neither one of them had a bad heart.

And thankfully both of them were still speaking to me the next day.

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Kingdom2

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To the frazzled young mother on Mother’s Day

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I always did pretty well in school growing up, at least until high school. I loved grade school, loved everything about it including the teachers, and I even wanted to be a teacher. When I hit the teenage years I changed my outlook a bit. Boys were a little more interesting than teachers but I still had many interests that kept me busy. I loved Sunday School, reading, the clarinet, and babysitting. The latter because it paid!

Then I met The Sweetheart and I knew I had fallen and fallen hard. Of course you will say I didn’t know what love was as a teenager. That’s what The Parents said too. But when July 20 rolls around it will be 39 years and whatever it was has lasted a long, long time.

I have never been happier than when My Three Sons were little and in school; the house was busy, messy and crazy. I dearly loved the daily routines, fixing breakfast, getting them ready for school, seeing them off to school, enjoying the little ones that were still at home, and trying my best to keep the house clean.

I miss that big old two-story, four-bedroom house with the wood floors that made so much noise when the three boys were chasing each other up and down the hallway. The memories of the wild things they did like duct-tape four-year-old Korey to the wall, pretending they were Tarzan only to have the vine break just as they soared halfway over the gully, or slamming doorknobs into each other’s foreheads…at least we kept the ER busy.

I miss riding the tractor for hours, the growing grass was just an excuse for quiet time! I could watch the world go by and see everything the boys were doing while the lawn was getting manicured: the softball and basketball games, chasing Molly the Beagle back onto her own property, or trying their best to pull a catfish out of the pond.

I couldn’t wait until they came home, even though I may not have gotten everything finished that I had intended. Even though they were going to pick at each other and there would probably be some punching and name-calling before the night was over, this is what I had chosen for my life. I didn’t want a career in the corporate world, nothing wrong with that, it just wasn’t for me. I had helped to get The Sweetheart there and he promised I could stay home with the boys. We never regretted it.

But seasons change and…

  • All of that time that I wished for a clean house?
  • No laundry flowing out of the basket and into the hallway?
  • No dishes in the dishwasher?
  • No dirt on the floor?
  • No Legos puncturing my tender feet in the middle of the night?
  • No calls from the schoolteacher?
  • No sound of little fists pounding on the bathroom door?

Those wishes have come true and I would give anything to relive them. You don’t know what you have sometimes until you are missing it.

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I remember when I was a young mother so many older women would say to me when I was frazzled and chasing three little boys, “Oh, you had better enjoy these days! They will be grown before you know it!” And I would just want to turn around and smack ‘em! I DID love my boys and I DID love everything about my life but sometimes it was just plain hectic. It is hard to realize that when you are in the middle of it.

And you know what? It is true…it does go by so fast. It is such a wonderful time in your life that you would love to be able to do over again if you could. Now I am the old lady saying the same thing to young mothers in the checkout line!

But God has given us seasons in our lives for a reason. And I am learning to enjoy every single one, even if it is sometimes painful. I didn’t know then what I know now and I didn’t have the relationship with HIM that I do now, which is so much to be thankful for.

And if you ARE that young mother who is so sleep deprived you can’t stay awake through church, remember they are only little for a short while. Drink in the smiles, the mischievous antics, the endless “Why’s” and “Mom! Mom! Mom! Mom!” God has entrusted you with His most important treasure and most important task: to bring up your child in the way he should go so that when he is grown, when she has children of her own, they will remember a frazzled mother who even made mistakes but they will also remember the time you spent with them and the love that surrounded them.

For God is in control of each new day and if we let Him, He makes every season beautiful in its own way. And, don’t forget, the grandchildren are coming!

(photo courtesy of Shelby Fannin Photography)