What to Expect When You’re Expecting: Uncompromising Rigidity

How many of us are selfish and want our own way? (Yes, you better be raising your hand because we all are.)

found via Google

Found Via Google

found via Google

Truth: When two people hop into a relationship, they are saying, “Hey, let’s do (at least some) stuff together.” They aren’t always going to agree and they aren’t always going to want to give in. Couples don’t have to do everything together. But if you never agree and never compromise then you aren’t in a relationship. You are roommates… maybe.

You cannot expect your partner to change or do things. We cannot change other’s – only ourselves. This means that you, yes you, must be the one to compromise. DON’T GIVE YOUR PARTNER A LOOK RIGHT NOW!

You have to be the one to change your mind.

When Andy and I first got married, I had a very definite way I wanted the house kept. When he didn’t meet that expectation, I had three options: divorce him, keep up the house myself with no expection for him to help, change my mind about how the house should be kept. Option 2 and option 3 are equally acceptable in this situation. Do not expect you partner to do anything. Either do it yourself or give up the expectation that it should be done.

What to Expect When You’re Expecting: Incompatability

There are a few things that one should expect in a relationship – mutual respect for one. A person should be able to be in a relationship and expect not to be cheated on. They should also feel free from abuse – verbal, mental, and physical.

image found via google

One thing that puts relationships on the rocks from the get go is when one person is “saving” the other. There is no thought for compatibility. You must realize from the beginning that if you are either being saved or saving, this relationship is doomed. You cannot save someone (with a romantic relationship OR a friendship or any type of relationship) from poverty, depression, mental illness, or addiction. A person who is saved by another is automatically obligated to that person, no matter how much that savior insists they are not. A person who saves someone automatically has the expectation that the saved person will not fall back into the pit they were pulled out of and there is to much hurt when they do to not create relationship killing tension.

image found via google

Real compatibility must be free of expectation. This means that there are common interests but no expectation for someone who is not a camper to become one once the relationship has been going for a while.  There may be inside jokes between a couple but there can be no expectation for a partner to make your day better by being funny.

Do not expect someone to convert to your religion or keep your customs. Do not expect a partner to want to honor every family tradition you are used to. Do not expect an understanding of a culture someone did not grow up in.

Image found via Google

I’m not saying that people who do not share a common religion, race and/or culture should not be together but if you find a special someone and expect them to move to another country, join a new church or learn to cook a new cuisine just to satisfy you, you are kidding yourself.

What do you think? Am I totally off base? Should we expect someone to change themselves for us? Are my rules unreasonable?

What to Expect When You’re Expecting: This Ain’t No Hollywood Love Story

For some reason, Hollywood loves to present romance and love and all things relationship with the “all you need is love” mentality. Why do they do that to us? Love ain’t enough.

First of all, the older we get, the more our bodies change. We won’t be that wonderful combination of super model and girl next door forever. You can’t expect that a woman will pop out three kids and look like a Hollywood starlet. You can’t expect that a man will work like a dog to provide you with what you need and still have abs like he did when his life centered around working out and playing video games.

Snuggling: well, we all know that peoples limbs fall asleep and a chest isn’t as comfortable as a pillow. Sex is messy and life is hard and we all need a sleep number bed and maybe a CPAP someday so…. There’s that.

image from the Notebook

Love is not grand romantic gestures and kissing in the rain. Do that sometimes if you can but remember that the best relationships are the ones that have a husband who makes coffee for his wife every morning and a wife that jumps up and kisses him as soon as he walks through the door every day. They are the ones who make each other a priority all the time and who just plain treat each other nice.

What has your experience been? Have you been as frustrated with Hollywood’s portrayal of love as I have?

Small Town Life – Cold water all over the front of me….

I feel like everyday conversations tend to lead me toward epiphanies that change my life. I never know when something is going to click. It’s like drinking ice water. You are drinking along and suddenly, that dam of ice breaks and you are covered in cold water! It’s a freezing and humiliating/humbling experience having a life epiphany because there is a realization that you have been wrong the whole time and only now are you going to be right… maybe.

I remember my mother drilling into my head as a young child the phrase, “Treat people the way you want to be treated.” She did everything she could to get this point across but to no avail until one day when we were looking for a birthday present for a friend. “Just buy what you would want. You are both 8 and you both like the same things.” Click. Cold water all over me. I was happy to know what to buy but my eight year old self was embarrassed at how I had treated my friends. At eight, this didn’t click in reference to my siblings but as far as friends go, I got it. I didn’t always apply it but it clicked.

Perhaps even better than that was when I was a part of a conversation that finally drove home the point that God doesn’t have a measuring stick. Although I had always had the head knowledge that God loves everyone equally, I had secretly harbored the belief that if I followed the churches rules, I would be more loved or better loved or just better. Then a pastor was asking me a few pertinent questions and click, freezing water. Yeesh…. That was sobering to say the least.

How about you? Have you had a life epiphany that poured cold water all down the front of you in front of the whole restauraunt?

Small Town Living – Relationships

Listening to a client who came into the store, I heard this statement, “I just don’t have time to waste on things I don’t care about. I only spend time on activities I really enjoy.”

Interesting. So I assume you are a recluse then? You don’t have many friends? You don’t find it easy to foster relationships with people? Are you happy being alone with your passions? If that’s true, more power to you! I know there are introverts who need time away from others to recharge. But does that really mean they want to be alone and without friends? FOREVER?! ALL THE TIME?! I doubt it.

If you only spend time on activites/passions that are important to YOU, you will rarely, if ever find it easy to foster relationships with people around you. How many yous are there out there? How many people are going to connect with you on every activity that you find important?

Small Town Life – Ice cream for breakfast?

I have started making smoothies for breakfast. I love it. One banana, milk and a smattering of frozen fruit. The other day, I saw that my bananas weren’t going to make it through to the next smoothy so I froze several just to not be wasteful. This morning, I used the frozen banana and WHAT? It makes the smoothy way smoother. It’s like having ice cream for breakfast. Try it. I’m telling you! It’s AWESOME!!!

Small Town Life – An Old Dog

I hear the phrase “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks” used in reference to humans alot. I just want to put it out there that we are not dogs. Humans are humans! Therefore, no matter how old we are we should be capable of learning new tricks.

My grandmother was gifted an iPad by her children (who I was amazed were using iPads themselves as they are in their 60’s and rather resistant to technology). At first she hated it. I just wasn’t working well for her. Touch screens take some getting used to and well, it’s not fun to get used to them. I, myself, was a little nervous about my first touch screen device.

However, after many months of just keeping at it (mostly because her grandson was on the computer so much), grandma got the hang of the iPad and now spends a significant amount of her time using it for the various functions it’s good for. She peruses Facebook, keeping up with her kids and grandkids and great-grandkids (no doubt reading this very post). She maintains a Netflix account and does online banking. (She also golfs almost daily.)

When she first started doing adult things like paying bills, she was writing personal checks and keeping accounts in a ledger. Now she’s using her iPad for all of that old stuff she used to do. She’s in her 80s. Now, I would never presume to call her old but I will say that she learned a new trick and I hope to stay that open minded. I want to always learn new tricks and never have it said of my that I’m an old dog.

Small Town Life: A Question of Morality

I read a passage in the Bible the other day that said, “If someone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for the one who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen.” – 1 John 4:20

So my question to the world: Is the inverse true? If someone says they hate God (whatever the name they use for him or if they even believe in a higher being), but loves their brother, are they a liar? Is a person who doesn’t have any solid belief in a god but is kind and loving to their fellow man still going to go to heaven?

I think so. I think that as much as the God I believe in wants to have us include Him in our lives, if some human uses the idea of Him to hurt someone and that someone rejects that idea of God but continues on in life in a loving way toward their brother in humanity, they are a follower of the true deity in their heart.

What do you think? Do you have to have thoughts on this verse? Do you believe in a deity who is loving? Do you not believe in a loving deity and why? What are your thoughts on loving your brother?

Small Town Life – A Four Year Old Pedicure

You may see my husbands photos of the four year old’s fashion choices sometimes pop up. (Today she is wearing white capri leggings, pink patent leather dress shoes and a tie dye t-shirt. If I wore that I’d be featured on the next “People of Walmart” video but somehow, she looks CUTE!) The other day she wanted to give me a pedicure. She pulled out all the colors and proceeded to do a bang up job of making my toes look like Revlon threw up all over them. She changed her mind about the color several times and never bothered to take off the previous choice before applying the new polish. Therefore, it was not only amazingly multicolored (not in a nice way), but also quite uneven and thick. It should also be mentioned that I wear flip flops all summer… even to work.

So I didn’t “fix” her pedicure.

She also mopped the kitchen floor the other day and I didn’t “fix” that either.

What I’m saying is, my child is good enough. I might suggest things to her like, “Maybe it would be a little easier if you held the paint brush like this,” or, “We need to mop here also because it is sticky from your juice.” But if it’s not perfect, I’m going to let that go and I’m not going to go behind her and fix it because then she will know that she wasn’t good enough. Mommy will always be better at it than her and she will always be in competition with me.

I don’t want to compete with my daughter for anything. I want her to rise above me and go beyond me and be better than me and be more than me. I want to lift her up and have her be comfortable in my presence and know that I am comfortable in hers. I want her to trust me and know that I trust her.

Therefore, my toes will stay crazy pink and weird green and everything mixed together.

Small Town Life – Death of a Saleswoman

When I was single and working a limited amount of time and living in a place I knew very few people, I signed up under someone to be a part of a “relational marketing” group that sold product. I got the kit and promptly put it under my bed and never took it out to “market” to anyone. The main reason was that I never wanted to approach people about my product. How could I possibly know if that person had any interest in what I was selling if I was just sitting there with them at coffee and suddenly brought up my product and mentioned that I was also a salesperson for that product?

I also tried door to door sales for a year in high school and that was a bust.

I’ve never been good at that kind of marketing and I’ve never taken to kindly to being marketed to that way.

When someone calls me up and says, “Hey, I just wanted to talk.” I’m like, “Awesome! I missed you.”

Then they are like, “So I started this business and I want to tell you about it…”

And that’s when my heart sinks. Did this person really want to talk to me EVER? All future calls from them are under scrutiny. Are they trying to sell me something or get me to sign up?

The thing is, I understand the appeal of being a home based business because I’ve been a stay at home mom and I’ve needed income and not been able to find a job and I’ve just been there.

I’m not dogging the product or really the sales people. I think there is a way to approach this whole home based business thing that won’t alienate people. I also love Mary Kay (I already have a MK lady and we have a nice arrangement) and Pampered Chef products. (Don’t call me. I’ll call you.)

However, I have a store and people come to me when I have something they want because I’m in the Yellow Pages or on my website or whatever so I can sell like nobodies business because I know that people have come to me for the express reason of being sold to.

When I answer my phone seeing that it’s one of my friends, I’m answering the phone for the express reason of talking to my friend, not being sold something.

There has to be a way to put it out there that you are a home based business and then allowing people to come to you! I’m not sure what that is but you would think that with social media being what it is, we could accomplish that better.

How about you? Do you “do” the pyramid scheme? Do you “get” the home based business? Is there such a thing as “relational marketing?”

 

Pine Cone & Frost

Purple Aster