Just Dance!

I have never been what anyone would call graceful.  Stories of my childhood and adolescense are populated with stories of me tripping over things and being attacked by inanimate objects.  I always wanted to be a dancer, but as the chubby, uncoordinated kid that was just not in the cards.  One of my most embarrassing moments was auditioning for a music dance theater program as a high school senior and completely forgetting the choreography to the very simple dance about 8 counts in.  Still, I didn't shy away from opportunities to dance.  I went to lots of dances and parties and danced away.  I took social dance in college and loved every second of it even though I knew I didn't look as much like Ginger Rogers as I felt.  Now I go to a dance exercise class called Zumba every week and I enjoy myself hugely.  I get half the steps wrong and I know I look funny doing the ones I do get right, but you know what?  I don't care.  Sometimes I work in my dad's woodshop for hours all by myself, and you know what I do?  I crank up the music and dance like I think I belong on Broadway (or maybe a Shakira video, but I won't burden you with that image...).  I LOVE to dance.  It feels free and liberating and FUN!

I think I got this attitude from watching my sweet little sister Carissa, who had Down's Syndrome.  She loved to dance, too, and she never let any inhibition get in her way.  When the music started, she was always right there in the thick of things.  More than once I saw her get right up on stage with the band.   She could shake it with the best of them, and she always had the best time of anyone because she wasn't worried about others' judgment.

A while back, my brother Dan of Single Dad Laughing talked about his "dancing black duck" -- how he had stopped himself from dancing for years because he was so worried about what other people would think, and how he decided to get over it and just dance.  He invited all of his followers to send in clips of themselves dancing, which of course meant we all had got to be in it, too.  I showed off my awesome moves for a few seconds and then rolled my ankle really, really badly.  (It still hurts, weeks later!)  Dan asked me if he could use that in the video and I hesitated only for about half a second before I said yes.  It's not cute, but it's totally me.  And since the whole point of the dance video is enjoying dancing without worrying about how you look to others, how could I say no?

Today he finally posted the finished product.  I'm stealing his video to post here, but you should definitely go read his original post about dancing.  It applies to so many things in our lives.  What are we holding ourselves back from enjoying because of how some past experience has affected us?  Just dance, people!

Gratitude -- a "Perfect" Thought for the Day

Happy Thanksgiving to all!  Gratitude is such a liberating power in our lives -- I hope we can all take time today, whatever our circumstances, to thank God for the multitude of blessings he gives us each day.

I am thankful for this life, with all it's challenges, happinesses, and heartaches.  I'm grateful for each experience, because I know that they are all gifts from God to help me become the person He sees in me.  Because in the end, this life is not about what we have or what we've done, but about what we have become.

Much love!
Tomi Ann

P.S.  Here are a few more thoughts for the day that I really like:

Gratitude is an art of painting an adversity into a lovely picture.  ~Kak Sri

If you have lived, take thankfully the past.  ~John Dryden

The unthankful heart... discovers no mercies; but let the thankful heart sweep through the day and, as the magnet finds the iron, so it will find, in every hour, some heavenly blessings!  ~Henry Ward Beecher

Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it.  ~William Arthur Ward

The right to bare arms...

Yesterday my beautiful, wonderful sister Emily got married.  Before the ceremony started, my (also beautiful and wonderful) sister Amy was bemoaning the cap sleeves on our bridesmaid dresses, not feeling particularly enthused about showing so much of her "fat" arms.  I told her I had recently been thinking about my own fat arms, and how EVERYONE says they hate their arms, and entire half-hour segments of the Today show are dedicated to showing us how to get Michelle Obama's arms... and it occurred to me that if everyone thinks they have fat arms, when are we going to realize that maybe that's just how female arms naturally are?  Soft and maybe a little jiggly, but perfect for giving hugs, right?  So we made a pact to accept our arms for what they are...

Of course, a few hours later, at the reception, we were cleverly using our Spanish fans to camoflauge our ample arms in all the pictures.

Accepting imperfection is definitely a one-step-at-a-time process...

Seriously, though -- isn't she beautiful?  You should totally check out her new blog, So Says Amy.  It is both thought provoking and hilarious, just like Amy herself.

A Happy Life -- a "Perfect" Thought for Today

Best Self/Worst Self Snapshot

I've written a few posts now about what I call the Best Self/Worst Self Scenario, and a few weeks ago I had an experience that really drove it home to me.

I was at a large fabric store with my 2-year-old daughter, waiting in a loooong line to get fabric cut.  She was grumpy and I was trying to entertain her with one of the animal-sounds apps on my phone, but she got frustrated and threw it on the floor.  That, of course, was the end of her getting to play with my phone, which inevitably led to her throwing a fit.  After a minute she wasn't really screaming and yelling anymore, but she was still doing that "I'm just going to keep crying because I still want my way even though I probably don't remember what I'm mad about" cry, which I'm sure any of you parents of young children know all too well.  At that point, honestly, I was completely tuning her out. I was still trying to soothe her, but my brain was definitely more involved in the sewing project I had planned.

A couple minutes after that it was finally my turn at the cutting counter.  As the lady was cutting my fabric, a middle-aged woman approached the counter and started demanding (loudly) that I do something about my screaming baby, saying that it was upsetting people and that I should leave the store immediately.  I don't even remember what I said, just something like, "I'm sorry, I really am doing the best I can."  Before I even really had time to register anything but shock, she turned and stormed away.  As she passed a man a few feet away, he said loudly "She's not bothering me!"  And then every customer and employee within 15 feet jumped to my defense, saying how awful she was for being so mean and how great I was for not getting angry back at her and that I was right not to give in to Eliza's tantrum and that she really wasn't upsetting anyone.  I really did appreciate the kind things they said, but of course I was embarrassed and I really did want to get out of there as quickly as possible.  One lady even chased me up to the cash register to tell me I was doing a great job as a mom, and another found me in the parking lot.

But I didn't feel like the hero of the situation.  I really was tuning Eliza's crying out instead of being considerate of others.  I'm sure I could have done more to settle her down, but I was tired and stressed.  As for the customer who got angry at me, who knows what her situation might be?  Maybe she was tired and stressed, too.  I thought about my grandma, who had a nervous condition that was great exascerbated by constant, grating noise like crying.  Whatever the reason, obviously that woman was not having a Best Self moment when she lit into me.  But I wasn't, either.  I wasn't a saint for not getting angry back.  Mostly I just didn't have time to be anything but surprised.  The people who went out of their way to come to my defense?  I think they were having a Best Self moment -- reaching out to give comfort to a stranger.  Most of them were older (or shall we say, more experienced) moms who, I think, saw their younger selves in me.  But I hope someone was also around to reach out to the other woman as well.

So there we all were, a bunch of imperfect people, all at different places on the Best Self/Worst Self sliding scale that day.  I was really glad that most of the people in the store were understanding and forgiving of my imperfection.  In fact, I felt much worse for the woman who got angry with me -- she probably felt even worse after everyone jumped to my defense.  Maybe she regretted being so harsh.  Maybe she didn't.  Maybe she just felt even more victimized that now she had to listen to a crying baby AND no one agreed with her.  Maybe she was having a terrible day and the whole thing made her feel worse than ever.

We'll never know, because we never can know exactly where someone else is on their own personal scale, or what they are going through that pushed them to that point.  All we can do is treat everyone with understanding and compassion, trying not to be quick to get angry or be offended.  As human beings, we are all going to have Worst Self moments -- let's not define others (or ourselves) by them.

Tomi Ann

P.S.  If you think others might be uplifted by this post, please feel free to share it wherever you share stuff. :)

True Charity -- a "Perfect" thought for today

This is one of my favorite quotes of all time, and something I strive to live by (though I can assure you I'm not perfect at it). It goes hand in hand with this beautiful talk by President Thomas S. Monson from the last General Relief Society meeting.*




*The Relief Society is the worldwide women's organization for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. President Monson is our prophet and the leader of our Church. Every 6 months there is a broadcast called "General Conference," where the leaders of the Church speak to the entire church. Every October conference there is also a General Relief Society meeting, where they speak to the women especially.

The Parable of the Painting

I have two incredibly smart, cute, funny little boys.

Sammy is the oldest.  He's almost 7 and he is pretty much a genius.  He started reading before he turned 3 and memorized the times tables just for funsies while he was in preschool.  But this post is not about him.

This post is about Josh, who is almost 5.  He is sweet and imaginative and hilarious.  He loves to make people laugh, and he also has a special talent for knowing when people need comfort.  At my husband's grandma's funeral this past summer, he went up to Dan's grandpa and just put his arms around him and loved him for several minutes.  He comes up with elaborate stories about his superhero adventures, assisted by all his animal friends. He loves to be a special helper, and Eliza follows him around all day, imitating his every move.  Right now he sounds like a pirate, because he's trying very enthusiastically to say his Rs (including in words that really should have a W -- ever heard of "taking a showrer" or enjoying a "rarm" day?).  What's not to love about Josh?

I'll tell you what Josh doesn't love about Josh:  that he's not Sam.  In spite of our best efforts to convince him that he is special and wonderful for just who HE is, he is constantly comparing himself to Sammy.  It's understandable, I guess -- Sammy gets a lot of attention for how smart he is and all the things he can do.  It made me so sad one day when the boys were painting pictures together.  They were both putting their best efforts into their projects and doing a really great job.  But Josh took a good long look at Sammy's painting, then back at his own.  He picked up his painting and with a look of such hurt on his face, ripped it slowly and deliberately in half.  I said, "Oh, Joshy!  Why did you rip your painting?  You worked so hard and it was a really great painting!"  He said, "It's not as good as Sam's."  I tried to talk to him about how it was great that his painting wasn't the same as Sam's, because it was his and that he had done his best.  I talked about how Sammy is two whole years older than Josh, so he's had a lot more practice.  I told him I really liked how he had used so many different colors, and how fun it was that he had made up a story to go along with it.  But nothing I said made any difference.  He ripped his painting up into small pieces anyway.

This particular incident happened a couple of months ago, but I've been thinking about it a lot over the past few days.  I wonder:  How often are we the Josh in this scenario?  We look at what others are creating or accomplishing and we instantly devalue our own abilities.  "Oh, I could never ______ like her!"  But instead of trying our best and then tearing it up, we don't even try.  Or maybe we do, but we never share our experiences with others because we think they have no value.  God has given each of us our own special talents and abilities, meant to enrich our lives and enable us to lift others.  Do we throw them back in His face because we think nothing we do will ever be as good as what others do?  And all the while we are hiding a secret sorrow because we want to share, to do, to be everything that we can be.

It makes me think of the Parable of the Talents in the New Testament, which begins in Matthew 25:14.  The basic story is that a man is going away and gives different numbers of "talents" (an amount of money in the parable) to each of his servants to take care of while he's gone.  To one he gives 10, to another 5, and to one, only 1 talent.  When he comes back, the servants to whom he had given 10 and 5 talents had both invested wisely and doubled his money.  He rewards them both equally.  The servant to whom he had given only 1 talent had hidden his talent in the earth out of fear that he couldn't do anything with it.  But the truth was that the master wasn't expecting that servant to earn 10 more talents like the first servant, just to do something with it.  God has given us all different talents and gifts, and he just wants to see what we will do with them.  He's not comparing us to anyone but ourselves, so why do WE do it?

A few weeks ago my husband Dan took Josh out for a special ice cream date.  They talked about all the great things that Josh can do, and came up with a new motto:  "Have fun along the way!"  They talked about how Joshy doesn't need to compare what he does to Sammy -- the whole point of doing stuff is to enjoy doing it, not to worry about how other people are doing the same thing.  Since then, when Josh starts to get into that comparing mindset, we say, "What's our motto?"  And he replies (with varying degrees of enthusiasm): "Have fun along the way..."  At the same time, we are trying very hard to point out all of the things that are great about Josh.  (And balancing that with doing the same thing for the other kids too, of course -- man, being a parent is not an easy trick.)  Hopefully this is just a phase, and we can get through it and we'll all be glad they're not going through it as teenagers... or in their 30s.

I want to challenge you to "have fun along the way."  As adults, it's not just about fun, of course.  We want to find real fulfilment and bring happiness to others at the same time.  Identify something that you love to do, whether you think you're the greatest at it or not.  Do something that forces you to share that gift with others -- teach someone something, give an act of service, create a gift -- and do so unapologetically. 

Don't worry that someone else could have done it better. 

Don't worry if your talents aren't as "visible" as everybody else's.

Don't feel like you have to measure up to some imaginary standard.

Just appreciate the joy and enrichment you felt in doing it, and the blessing it is to someone else to feel cared for.  If you feel like you don't have any special talents, ask God to help you find the gifts He's given you.  He might answer you by bringing a long-lost interest to your mind, or by helping you see a need that you can fill.  Keep your heart open, so that God can show you the beautiful things He's created in you.  Just you, just the way you are.

Our lives are a blank canvas, waiting to be filled with beautiful colors and stories.  Don't let fruitless comparison make you tear it up and hide it away.