And the Award Goes To…

In the past few weeks I’ve been honored to be nominated for a couple of awards.  I’ve been having trouble with my internet connection through our cable company (the only one in our area for some reason I’m oblivious to), and so I haven’t been able to blog these awards without losing my connection 15 minutes into writing.  Well, I’m going to try again today, and hope I get through it. 

The first of these is the “One Lovely Blog Award”.  I want to thank http://hometogo232.wordpress.com/posts/ for the nomination.  I have to say there are certain blogs that have become so much like family to me that when this internet connection thing is working I can’t wait to see how they are doing, and what words of encouragement and life they have for everyone in the blogosphere.  Home to go 232 is one of those for me.  Her words of faith, and of overcoming her struggles in life are heartwarming and really have urged me to press on.  Thank you Home to Go232!

Now the rules for this award are as follows…

• • Share who gave it to you with a link back to their blog.  (see above)
  • Write down seven random facts about yourself.
  • Give this award to fifteen other bloggers.
  • Let them know they’ve won.
  • Pop the award on my blog.

Now for 7 random facts about me…hmm.  Now this is kind of hard for me, because I’ve never been one to focus on myself thanks to my mom who was a humble woman and taught me to look away from myself as much as possible.  For that reason, I’m going to try to give you facts that my mother would share with you.  Some of these I remember, but others are stories my mother would tell about me from when I was younger than 4.

1.  When I was a 2 year old my father was stationed in the Azores.  My mother had 2 stories about me during that period of time.  The first was about my little brother and I, and how we responded to the native Portuguese children who would rummage through our trash.  My mom used to tell about how one day we were playing outside and she heard a bunch of children crying.  When she went outside to see what was wrong, the children told her that my brother and I had bitten them in the backside when they were looking in our trash cans.  Of course we got in trouble, but those children never got in our trash cans again.  Lesson learned, toddlers are better at watching out for your home than a watchdog.

2. The second story my mother would tell about my terrible twos is about a time when I got into something I wasn’t suppose to.  When we lived in the Azores there were no Protestant churches at all.  So the military families that were stationed there had to find Bible studies and Prayer meetings that were being held in fellow military members homes.  My mom and dad were one of the families that started having meetings in our home.  Many of the local Portuguese women worked for military families as maids and nannies, and we were blessed to have a lady name Maria who worked as both for us.  That is pretty much the reason my baby brother’s first language was Portuguese, and I spoke both English and Portuguese by the time I was 4, although both of us have forgotten most of the Portuguese now.  Anyway, we had a maid’s bathroom in our home, so that she would never have to wait for our large family to get into the restroom.  This room was also used to store things that were being worked on.  My mother at this time had decided to varnish our kitchen chairs on the day we were hosting a Prayer Meeting in the evening.  When she finished with the last chair it was time for her to get ready for that meeting, so she put the lid on the varnish and set the last chair in the maid’s bathroom, along with the varnish, paint brush and screw driver, and decided it could dry there until the next day.  As the time neared for my dad to come home from work, the house was a-buzz with preparation.  My oldest sister was in the family’s bathroom getting ready, and taking longer than usual because her fiance’ was coming over for the meeting.  When dad came in, he was in a hurry because he had diarrhea.  When he couldn’t get into the family bathroom, my dad rushed to the maid’s bathroom.  It only took a few minutes before he was screaming at the top of his lungs.  When mom went into the bathroom to see what was wrong, she found my dad stuck to the toilet seat, and much of the sink, toilet, and shower covered with a fresh coat of varnish, just sticky enough to trap anything that landed on it.  The can of varnish was open, the screwdriver handle was wet with varnish, and varnish dripped from the paintbrush.  Mom began looking for the culprit and when she came to me and asked if I had been in the maid’s bathroom, I proudly proclaimed in my 2 year old voice…”Yes Mommy, and I made it all pretty like the chairs.”  Yes, I had gone into the bathroom, figured out how to open the can of varnish, and painted everything I could reach.  The paint was just sticky enough that when my dad sat down he was stuck real good to that toilet seat, and he was angry.  It took my soon-to-be brother-in-law an hour to get dad off that toilet.  Lesson learned…never leave painting supplies within reach of an artistic toddler.

3.  Mom used to tell of how as a 3 year old I sang Christian songs in a group with two other 3 year old girls.  We would travel from meeting to meeting sharing Jesus in song.  Just before I turned 4, my father was stationed back in the states, and we had to travel from the Azores to Mississippi.  Mom said when we were on the flight from the East Coast, I decided to entertain the crowd on the plane, which included many southern senators leaving Washington D.C. for their homes in the south.  According to mom, I walked up and down the aisles of that plane singing “Jesus Loves Me”, and various other Christian songs, stopping to tell people in between that Jesus loved them too.   She said though that even the senators thought it was the cutest thing and applauded at the end of each song.  Lesson learned…even a young child can be an evangelist when they believe in Jesus.

4.  We finally got to Mississippi, and settled in a “Family Barracks” until we could get our housing assignment.  Here is where mom tells most of the stories about me, her very imaginative daughter.  One of her favorite memories was of one day when she was working in the kitchen and heard me singing in the front room.  Like any mother she snuck in to see what I was up to, and to listen to me sing.  What she saw, was this now 4 year old standing on the big Family Bible singing at the top of my lungs, “Standing on the Promises”.  It was mom’s first realization how literal I took everything.

5.  While we were living in the family barracks at Keesler Air Force Base in Biloxi, Mississippi, we often went out to play with other children living in the barracks too.  My mother, because of her German heritage, had developed a quick friendship with a fellow military wife named Maria, who was actually from Germany.  Maria had married a airman when he was stationed in Germany, and had come with him to America when he was restationed back in the states.  My mother and Maria were often together, drinking coffee, helping each other with laundry, and watching the children.  One such day, as they came out to hang clothes on the clothesline to dry, they found me sitting and digging up the ground below  the clothesline.  They asked me what I was doing, and I ignored their question and kept digging.  For the next probably a half hour while they hung clothes up, they continued to ask me what I was doing, and I continued to ignore them, but grew frustrated with the way they were bothering me.  In my mind, I kept thinking…”Really, you can’t see I’m digging in the dirt?”  Even then I tended toward having an attitude.  Finally, fed up with their constant questioning, I decided to give them an answer.  “I’m digging for the devil!”  Maria and my mom stopped what they were doing and looked at me sort of stunned to hear that answer from a 4 year old.  “Now why would you do that?”, my mother asked.  “Because I’m gonna take him to church and get him saved!”  “Wow, I never thought of doing that,” my mother said with a tad bit of motherly pride.  “Well, then we will leave you alone, but let us know if you find the devil.”  With that my mom and Maria went back into our living quarters to share a cup of coffee, and I returned to my digging.  But I didn’t stop until I found this nice black rock, sparkly and smooth, and I decided that I would tell them this was the devil and would take it to church every Sunday.  I would not let anyone think my search for Satan was futile, nor would I let them think I hadn’t kept my vow to take him to church.  Whether he got saved or not was between him and God.  So each Sunday after that I sat that rock next to me in the pew and when someone asked I just answered…”This is the devil, and I brought him here to church to get him saved.”  Lesson learned…Don’t bug a creative child when she is really making mud pies, because she will give you something really ingenious to think about.

6.  Around this same time, I noticed that Mommy was putting on quite a bit of weight, but never asked her why.  I always thought it was all that coffee her and Maria drank each day.  But one day I saw Mommy being taken away in an ambulance, and I didn’t know why.  You see issues of sex, childbirth and other womanly things were not talked about in our family, so I was clueless as to what was going on.  I was crying, and went to my sister, Nelda (yes, the same one I wrote about her anniversary), and I asked why they were taking mommy away.  Her answer was Mom has a headache, and they have to make her feel better.  A few days later, Mommy came home, but she had a wiggling little bundle in her arms.  I was introduced to my new baby brother, the youngest of all 9 siblings.  From that day on, I thought every time someone had a headache they were going to have a baby.  Thank you, Nelda, for sharing with me the facts of life!  Lesson learned…Don’t depend on an older sister to really tell you the truth…especially if she is the mischievious one.

7.  This memory is one that I’ve had to explain over and over to my daughter, Jk, this past week.  Why am I missing 1 permanent tooth on each side of the bottom of my mouth?  At the age of 7, we were finally in our new base housing, a brick house with a carport attached to it.  Between each house was a wooden fence about 6 foot tall, allowing each home a bit of privacy.  At 7, I suddenly got the hankering to be a circus performer.  I wanted to be the most amazing tightrope walker, and decided I needed to practice.  So one day I decided to use that fence as my tightrope.  I was a little tomboy, and so climbing trees were a norm for me.  Climbing up to the fence was nothing, but the challenge of walking across it was a challenge, and about halfway across I fell off, smacking my cheek on the cement and breaking off the tooth on the lower right side of my mouth.  Mom came running out to see what had happened, and found that I had broken no bones, but had a bleeding gum, and broken tooth.  She took me to the dentist on base, and deciding it was too damaged, the dentist pulled this broken permanent tooth.  After a day or two, my mom asked how I fell and why I was walking on the fence.  I told her that I was practicing to be a tightrope walker.  She told me that if I continued to practice I would probably knock all my teeth out eventually.  I guess she knew trying to get me to stop would be like pulling a tooth because I was her stubborn child who would not give up until I mastered whatever I was attempting.  I didn’t stop either.  About a month later, after my gum had healed from the first tooth being pulled, I tried again, and again I fell off the fence.  Sure enough I hit the other side of my face and broke the tooth on my lower leftside of my mouth.  Another trip to the dentist and another permanent tooth pulled, and I finally gave up my future in tightrope walking.  There was no way I wanted to walk around toothless for the rest of my life from more accidents from walking on that fence.  I was lucky not to have broken anything else in this venture.  Lesson learned…Pick a safer future than tightrope walking…something closer to the ground.  I won’t tell you how often this penchant for tightrope walking was used in working theater, but this time it was usually 2 or 3 stories up, and I had learned to be safer than I was as a child.

Well there are 7 stories that my mother loved to share about me, much to my chagrin when I was a teenager.  Now, onto nominating 15 bloggers to recieve this same award.  A Lovely Blog award should go to lovely blogs. So I’m going to share those blogs that I feel share beauty and love in special ways.  Instead of commenting on each one, since I took up so much space with the facts about myself from my mother’s repertoire of stories, I’m going to just list them and let you find out how lovely they are on your own.  For the guy bloggers listed…sorry, but even men can be lovely at times.  Here are my 15  picks…

http://e1aine.wordpress.com/

http://losingself.wordpress.com/

http://faithrises.com/

http://iwu2012breanna.wordpress.com/  I Timothy 4:12 blog site

http://connectingdotstogod.com/

http://wheremytreasureis.wordpress.com/

http://adifferenceforyourlovedones.wordpress.com/

http://modernchristianwoman.wordpress.com/

http://liliessparrowsandgrass.com/

http://sharinhislove.wordpress.com/

http://changedbyhim0510.wordpress.com/

http://artbycamila.wordpress.com/

http://throughthehealinglens.com/

http://waltbrite.wordpress.com/

http://terry1954.wordpress.com/

I could have listed a few more, but I noticed that many of those have been inundated with these awards, and I know if they are like me, they would prefer to just write about what they need to without stopping so often to do these award posts.  So I decided to list some newer ones that I’ve found not only intriguing, but lovely and inspiring to me.

Thank you again, http://hometogo232.wordpress.com/posts/ for the nomination!  May God bless you with immense traffic to your site, so that your heart can be an inspiration to others.