Something I never thought someone would say to me

When I retired from my "career/9-5" life, I had the luxury of trading my business wardrobe of skirts & dresses or nice pants, for my mommy wardrobe--jeans or casual pants nearly every day.

Apparently once again my dear 2 yr old daughter has a fashion opinion about this, which she shared with me yesterday: "Mommy, you're a man." I couldn't put a skirt on fast enough...Sigh.

Next stop: Project Runway

The other day I'm getting ready for my exercise class, and am in the process of picking out a shirt, when my little Fashion Guru takes one look at my pants, and says, "Mommy, not that shirt. It doesn't match." Oy vey!

All it took was one broken latch...

and she was in the street.

Now before you start to worry that our dear little Kyra is the "she" in the story, take heart. I'm talking about another young lady, and the story thankfully has a happy ending.

We were driving down the main neighborhood street earlier, when we noticed a young lady sitting right in the middle of the road. I asked David to pull over, and we got out to see if we could help.

As I got closer to where she was, I quickly realized several things: 1) We were right in front of a group home with disabled residents. 2) She was alone and 3) she was in danger of being hit. Although the traffic on that particular street is not extremely busy, people have been known to come flying around that corner, and she was hard to see, sitting down low on the ground.

Not knowing exactly what to do, but knowing I needed to get her out of the street, I started praying, and then slowly started to approach her. When I got close enough, I called out to her, "Honey, you need to get out of the street. It's not safe for you to sit in the middle of the road." I then continued walking toward her, all the time talking quietly and hoping that she would even let me help her.

I helped her to stand, and we got out of the street, at least temporarily. Then things got really difficult. Her verbal skills were practically non-existent, but her sheer determination to get back into the street, not to mention extremely strong arms, was almost more than I could handle.

Still praying like crazy, I was able to keep her out of the street for the most part, until David & Kyra were able to bring out one of the caregivers from the group home. They immediately recognized her, and thanked us profusely for helping her. I said I was just glad we were there at the right place at the right time, and could help. It seems she'd been in the fenced back yard, and then had made her way out to the front with the help of a broken latch on the gate.

I'm so glad we were able to help, and that she didn't seem to be any worse for the wear. I don't know that I can say the same for her caregiver, who looked more than just a little green around the gills.

But the story doesn't end there. When we got home, I sat down to read a little bit of this great book called "90 minutes in Heaven", by Don Piper. It's a true story about a man who was in a horrific car accident, actually died, and then, in his words, "God sent him back."

I'm reading along, and I come to the following section where Don is having a conversation with the man who he believes prayed him back to life, his friend Dick Onerecker:

Don says, "Again, Dick, I want to thank you for saving my life. I obviously can't thank you enough for your faithfulness in obeying God that rainy day."

"It was what anybody would have done," he said..."I just knew I had to pray for you. I could only think that you were hurt, and I wanted to make you feel better. I didn't do anything unusual."

"But you did. When the officer told you I was already dead----"

"Listen to me, Don. If you saw a little kid run out in the street, you'd dash out there and try to save that child's life. Human nature is like that. We try to preserve life, and I will do that any time I get the opportunity. So would you....Yet here we are sitting in this place (they were in a restaurant), surrounded by people, many of whom are probably lost and going to hell, and we won't say a word about how they can have eternal life. Something is wrong with us."

"You're absolutely right," I said. "We're willing to save someone in a visible crisis, but a lot of folks are in spiritual crisis and we don't say a word about how they can get out of it."

Talk about being convicted. Here I had just lived this very scenario, and yet how many others did I pass today that were in eternal crisis, and I didn't say a word?

Going forward, my hope is to be like Don & his friend Dick who, as a result of their experiences, vowed with boldness, to be on the lookout for opportunities to talk about Jesus and His saving love.

Blessings friends!
k~

Show me the way to go home

I ran across this video on one of the local news' website and though I know we're a few years away from this for our young Kyra, it was definitely an eye-opener for me. And it's never too soon to start practicing and teaching...

By the way, just click on the word "video" above, and it should take you to the new page. For some reason, this particular blog design won't let me designate a different color for links within the post, so I apologize if it's hard to tell where they are. Technology, you gotta love it!

Oh the precious things kids say...

Our girl Kyra just loves to help out around the house with any and all chores within reason--obviously the dishwasher is off-limits, but just about everything else is fair game:-)

One of her favorites right now is helping with the laundry. She also loves to "name the item" when transferring it from the washer to the dryer, i.e. Mommy's socks, Kyra's shirt, etc. However, being 2, she still doesn't get all of her words 100% right, so some things are, shall we say, uniquely named. Take for instance, underwear. In our house it's referred to as "wonder wear"--don't know where she got this, it just is. Pretty cute, right?

Well, one day right before Easter, I decided to pop into Macy's to try & find a dress. I had Kyra with me, which I was a little hesitant about since I didn't know how she'd do with all the sitting around in her stroller, but I really wanted a new dress for Easter.

After finding several possibilities, we headed to the dressing rooms. As I'm readying myself to try on the first dress, my dear sweet daughter pipes up, nice & loud so those in the next county could hear her, "Mommy, that's your wonder wear!"

Fearing she would repeat it, if she didn't get a response the first time (something she typically does--"Mom, Mom, Mom, Mom, Mom, Mom"--you know the drill), I meekly responded, "Yes, honey. This IS Mommy's underwear."

If I could have stayed in that dressing room all morning, I would have. But the reality was we needed to get home for lunch & a nap. So after deciding on a really cute polka dotted dress, I slunk out of the dressing room, kinda hiding behind the dress, and we headed home.

Needless to say, this is not the first time I've been faced with an awkward Kyra comment (see this previous post), and I'm sure it won't be the last. But as I've always said, life's too short to get all worked up about the small stuff. And a little laughter goes a long, long way.

Here's to loving innocent comments & the ones that bless us with them,
k~