A Smidge of Nonsense....

A Brief Post…to take the place of the previous.
Out with the old, in with the New.
In with the Butterflies, Out with the Bees….

Snow is crazy…and SO am I…
Family is like a golden…..straight jacket,
I am joking here…..really.
Jocularity, hilarity, and glee, oh my.
See how funny I am?...

Spring inches closer….But I saw the sun today.
That is pretty good.
Who knew you could fold and press,
your own molecules?...

You put your right foot in (the puddle).
You put your right foot out (of the snow bank)
You put your right foot in (the pile),
and you shake it all about…..

You have a ‘running fit’,
and your turn yourself around.
That’s what it’s all about.

Tip of the day:
Never accidentally wash a pair of disposable
big kid ‘pull-ups’
Who knew they put a washing machine full
of gel in one pair?
Seriously.

Accidents happen,
Oh yes, they do.
The question is….
How much love do we allow for
accidents?

The answer is; If we have Christ….
And… after a momentary tantrum,
endless amounts.
The tantrum is optional,
sometimes…
Tonya Willman © 2011

The Kool-Aid Stains Of Negativity...

What is it about a ‘fly-a-way-wild-day’? It is stressful anyway and then one person triggers a thing, and then the next person layers it until you realize it can’t be them, it must be you. But you cannot stop being you unless God changes you. And you cannot get the hamster off of the wheel long enough to sit with Jesus. So you go about like the mad thing you are.
And people are waiting on you…waiting on you to make up your mind already. But paralysis sets in and it is easier to grab a spoonful of Nutella and sit by yourself. So you sit alone staring at Face Book like a giant sloth……Jesus calls to your mind, “Peace, be still” The waves obeyed Him; so why can’t you?
And you feel as though you are being driven around the bend. You cannot connect. You used to connect. What happened to the relationships you have with some folks? Well, you know…… but there is no fixing ‘somethings’. How do people become oil-and-water when one little thing goes wrong? Here we go again, around and around. Whee!
You judge a person for ‘rabbiting’ and always wanting to run away, but then you find yourself feeling the same way, except that you are not a rabbit, cannot and never will be one. You are not a runner, but you wish you were. You make short little sprints that take you to the end of your leash for the day, but there is no full out race across the fields of the world.
You cannot, and will not go back to the days of the frozen rose. But, there is nowhere to find, no place to sit in. Why? One thing said; one stupid conversation of unimaginably ordinary foolishness and you are done for? Really now, come on. But here you are at noon with your P.J.s on; thinking that your bed is like an island, an oasis in the vast sea of Too Much.
And aren’t you just letting all of this control you to avoid the fear; which sits there because the enemy plants it like a weed. Oh yes, you know that ‘Perfect love casts out all fear’ but at this moment it is like knowing mathematical or geographical facts that in no way apply to you.
Chastising yourself for being the idiot you are, or staring numbly into space is apparently the agenda for the day. Wow, you are just swamped, uselessly swamped, swamped and useless. A full day.
Then you say, “Are you kidding me?” And you realize that you are allowing this overwhelm-ed-ness, and it needs to be fought, because, it is a seriously poison dart from the enemy who, of course, always has the dart gun at ready!
So you figure out that you do, in fact, have a wee bit of steel in your soul, and you let the Lord show you just how whiny you are being. And trust me when I say; You ARE being monumentally whiny, and stuck and silly. And then you try oh-so-very-hard to remember what a really wise person told you this week, which is; “No one can make you feel upset or angry without YOUR permission.” Wow…Think on that. Really, ruminate on it! So then you say--in your head of course-- to the one who is pushing your buttons, “Permission denied!” But, now to just get it into your soul, I mean really let it saturate. Because if you want peace (and boy do you ever) then you have to GET this vital truth. And, what you know about yourself is that you are really just a big, fat “negative-emotion” sponge!
You just suck up negativity like you want it or something. BUT that is certainly NOT true, so you then remember what else that wise person said; if you stay filled up with God, His love and whatever is good and true and right and lovely, then you are like a sponge that is already filled up with wonderful warm soapy water. You just can’t hold the Kool-Aid stains of negativity IF you are already saturated with the good stuff.
*Sigh, and of course, you will notice I say YOU, because I am certainly not talking about myself here!  Have a nice day!!!  Tonya Willman©2011

THE DOMINO EFFECT

The domino effect of one soul leaving this earth can never be fully measured. There is no rewind. There is only forward into a strange and foreign landscape. Every one changes and relationships shift. Ugly whim-whams that were hiding in the deepest corners of each mourner’s heart surface. Everything seems to need to be redefined.
When my mother-in-law died, almost a year ago now, it profoundly changed us. Big changes have happened, some even geographical, but thousands of small; even miniscule changes have happened as well. We have always been such a tight-knit clan with a deeply held family-identity. Were these strange and disturbing changes coming anyway, or would everything have stayed status-quo without her death?
Really, no one has a time-line for grief, and since no two people react the same to loss, how do these reactions become the catalysts for such intense changes?
Our daughter-in-law really only knows us in our weirdly apocalyptical ‘Post-Elsie’ state. My son told her of, and shared his memories about a family that somehow does not exist in quite the same way anymore. And sadly, that earlier family is NOT the family that she has gotten to know. Matriarchs are absolutely familial glue. I believe that with all my heart. Women are the center of the family in so many ways. We are the heart, and warmth, and I don’t think it is too big of a statement to say that somehow the vastness of God’s love is displayed within maternal love.
When I was a little girl there was often chaos and drama, yet I always knew without a doubt, that if I had my mom everything was going to be okay. She was and is my touchstone. If we know the joy in this world of having the unconditional love of a wonderful mother then we could be a hundred years old and still want our mommies.
I do not mean to make us all sound like giant babies that need fathomless amounts of soothing and ‘mothering’; but, as we near the anniversary of Elsie’s death the changes are undeniable. What does a family come out looking like on the other side? I do not know, but I am as curious as can be. I am ready for it. May be all of these unspoken changes would have come about regardless, and if that is true then we would have benefited ever so much by having my mother-in-law and friend here to work through them with us.
But, I still say that there is no measuring the Tsunami of change that one leaves in their absence. We miss you Elsie, every day. I am at peace in knowing where you are, but I am also enough of a spoiled brat to get really mad about it sometimes too. Still, I know God understands that. You know; you wouldn’t be so missed if you had not done such an amazing job as a mother, grandmother, friend and human being. Love you dear, I’ll be seeing you. Tonya Willman ©2011  

HIGH-TECH-HUMILITY

     Just as prunes are nature’s way of saying, “Have a seat…” and major plumbing failures are the Universe’s way of saying, “What? You really thought that six hundred dollars belonged to you?”; gadgets, gizmos, and all the latest technology is the World’s way of saying, “Don’t even think about it, Old Lady….”
     Oh sure, you watch 13-year-olds texting in a lightning-fast manner and using cutting-edge phones with the skills and precision of a brain surgeon, and it lures you into thinking; ‘why not me?’ Pardon me while I bark out a bitter and derisive cackle. Why? I’ll tell you why--if you are; a.) Forgetful,  b.) Old enough to remember the first man on the moon,  and-or, c.)Interested in the role that green-leafy vegetables play in your diet in terms of either anti-aging OR fiber, then chances are you will find yourself as skilled at these high-tech phones (which will even do your taxes…..seriously) as your dog is at thumb-wars….
    I speak from humiliating personal experience. I actually own a little pay-as-you-need-it cell phone. It makes phone calls and even texts (though I do not). It has voice mail and a calendar (which I don’t use, and why should I? I have a perfectly good one hanging up in my kitchen) Really, I just call people and they answer. I speak into it and then close the little flip-front when we are through speaking. Hand-to-God; I thought I was cool.
     Come on! I own a laptop! I have the current “Bill-Party-Animal-Gates-Micro-Stuff”…..I have even sat smugly as others have said, “How do you know how to do all this?” And of course by others I mean my mother. And, get ready….I have mastered my own MP3 player! I have helped barely comprehensible Pakistani tech-support teams fix funky little ‘glitches’ in my computer as well as complete crashes. (And yes I know they were Pakistani because I flat out asked them, I am NOT profiling!) I have even upgraded and installed more memory into an ancient computer we had prior to the newest one.
    Still, I found out that I knew absolutely nothing! I strode in to the phone store with badly misplaced confidence. Again, I have seen fast-food employees that could not count out my change without getting a read-out from the register, using their awesomely shiny phones to text AND check their emails with one hand and pick their nose with the other. I mean how hard could it be? As it turned out; Hard.
      Touching all the pretty screens, and looking at all the different “Apps” that were possible, left me breathless. I have many Face Book friends who are always sending pictures and texts from their phones. They gaily update me about their latest adventures; funny pictures from stores and stirring drives with gorgeous sunsets; making my life all the richer. I now hate them. I laughingly told the nice phone store girl that I was ‘pretty new to it all’, so I would need a user-friendly, touch-screen, kind of phone….thingy…..
     I will not tell you what I chose, however; it was NOT a Droid or BlackBerry. BUT, no matter. It was waaaaay too much phone for me! It could do everything! I think I could have tapped into the CIA’s system if I could have just understood it all! I probably could have actually dialed Obama directly if I had taken the time to hang out around the Taco-Bell. But, alas…I did not. I am a quitter, an OLD quitter.     
     My daughter kept showing me the same things over and over. She was patient. She would have remained patient. She never rolled her eyes once. I would say, “Wait, wait….touch what? Now do what with this? Okay, so where was that (bad word) place I was supposed to go again?” She would show me another time, with a bright; “See Mom, easy.” Or “See! You’re getting it…..” Increasingly, I became more agitated than a cranky, hyper child, hopped-up on Hershey Bars and bereft of behavioral meds.
     The final straw and the thing that sealed my buyer’s remorse was…… (Ominous music) The Cost. I was actually paying more, and as it turned out after many a fee; a lot more, on my phone plan to feel like Grog-itha the cave-woman trying to understand the basics of say fire, or the wheel…I returned the phone, (and tragically for my daughter, the companion phone as well.) and undid the extremely complicated (for me) calling-text-nights & weekends-picture-messaging-WITH-internet-roll-over-and-bite-me minutes…each feature just a wee bit more of a fee, plus tax on the monthly service plan.
      Oh Lord!   When I walked out of that phone store with my refund receipt for the phones (which were really free, AFTER the rebate, so why not just give me the freaking phones already???) I felt like the weight of the world had been lifted off of me. I gently fondled my little silver pay-as-you-go phone and whimpered, “Hello, old friend.” It was a very good moment and really, how can you put a price on that? Tonya Willman ©2011