The Good, the Bad & the Ugly!

I am a realist - I tend to focus on the reality vs. the ideal, which makes for some difficult moments at our house, mostly because reality often-times does not include focusing on the positive and ignoring the difficult ... a trait that is helpful when raising children.  This weekend offered several examples of that - it started out GOOD, it rained, finally (yeah!) - a horseback riding birthday party that Miss Lilly was invited to (so fun!) and the announcement of a temple to be built here in Indianapolis!!!  I'm still so excited about that one.  The temple is an extremely important part of our religion, and we moved about 6 months before the Oquirrh Mountain temple was finished in West Jordan.  That was probably one of the hardest things for me to leave behind in UT - we could see it from our neighborhood as it was being built.  It was so close!  The closest one here in is Louisville, KY.   So that was definitely a good thing about this weekend.

Now for the BAD -- Because of the rain I got to go stand in it at a soccer game -- cold, wet, rain and mud everywhere!  Also, it was general conference weekend.  Twice a year instead of going to church we have the opportunity to hear from the leaders of our church via General Conference.  We watch it on the internet here.  Something that I look forward to - but always seem to have way to much to do to actually enjoy it.  Since I work a lot of Saturdays I tend to over pack them when I'm actually home and this was no exception.  Add to that a lack of planning on my part to keep my children entertained and I ended up feeling more frustrated than uplifted.  But, I've set some goals for the next one in April, some things are going to change ...

UGLY!  And I'm really not kidding here.  There are a few words I could use to describe this:  itchy, nasty, gross, ugly, frustrating, disgusting - all of these words would describe lice.  Miss Lilly has had it once before from a Santa hat from Walmart when she was 2 1/2 years old.  I'm not sure where she got it this time, but it invovled a very late Saturday night, 14 loads of laundry and counting, several baths, at least a few shampoo treatments, several hours of combing and nitt picking, a paranoid mamma itching her head and asking J.D. to pick through her hair every few hours, and some definate personal questioning - how did this happen?  why Miss Lilly?  are we not bathing enough?  I try so hard to keep things clean, am I not clean enough?  I know logically after reading countless things on the Internet and in my nursing books that it has nothing to do with cleanliness ... but how can I not think about that?!  This morning she asked in her morning prayers 'please don't let there  be anymore bugs in my hair'.  She also said, 'Momma, I'm so sorry I had bugs!'  I assured her it was not her fault ... it is just something yucky that happens to people.

So much in life is just that - something yucky that happens to us.  I've been thinking a lot about that lately, there is so much we don't know about each other's lives.  Good, bad and ugly things that maybe nobody else knows or can recognize in us.  Sometimes the good stuff is just as hard to not have people know about as the bad stuff is for people to know about.  We really have no idea what other people are going through, even if we think we know them well.  There are certainly things about me and my life that seldom few, if any know.  I love that quote, 'let us be kind to those around us, for we are all fighting a hard battle'.  I don't know who it is from, but I need to make that my mantra and remember that daily, if not hourly in the people I come into contact with.