At work we’re having a spirit building, moral boosting, ring in the fall sort of activity where we are invited to share our best demonstrated practices in order to help others. People write the best demonstrated practices on fall covered leaves that are attached to a tree.
The first leaf that I read said something to the effect of,
“Smile, it will shine through to your customer and may even improve your mood.”
Now, I have nothing against smiling… sometimes it is a must to keep from crying. But my smart-assed sense of humor reflected upon my last year and so many months… life in general… not my career. I conjured up a slightly different twist…
“Bite your lip- it will keep you out of trouble and if you do it enough you might not even have to pay for that piercing.”
Of course, the person who would have most appreciated my odd sense of humor and smart-assedness (if that’s a word) isn’t here anymore.
I have yet to bore a hole though my lip, but I know I definitely have a rub mark at times. For all of the times when I bite my lip when somebody says something like…
“it was his time.”
“it was God’s plan.”
“I feel like a single parent, my husband never helps…”
“I’m a ________ widow, I never see my husband during ______ season.”
“God must have needed him in Heaven.” or the variation of “God had a different plan of him.” To this one I bite hard… I want to say… after 9-11 he has more firefighters than he will ever need… I needed my husband here… my son needed his father… But I just bite harder… I’ve only drawn blood a few times…
People don’t have malicious intentions… in fact minus the obvious idiots, they mean well…. they feel a need to be supportive or identify, but they just don’t get it. But widowhood is something you can’t understand till you’ve been there… unless you’ve lost a child… and I don’t have a desire for anybody else to have to experience it.
Then there are the times where I take a deep breath and bite my lip when I’m dealing with Nathaniel being a typical two year old. Nothing like continuously having to wrestle an toddler, for a diaper change, who his doing his best imitation of a crocodile death roll while covered in poop. Nothing like being beyond exhausted and having to cater to whatever need the little human has at that point in time. It is so fun to deal with temper tantrums over and over and over again. If I didn’t need to eat, I’d never go into a grocery store again.
Horses are so much easier to deal with… for one thing… a chain shank, a crop, or lunge whip can go very far in establishing respect and creating rather instantaneous shape ups. But you can’t “walk softly and carry a big stick” with a kid. I don’t have mommy experience… I learn by trial and error and fly by the seat of my pants… Sometimes, there are nuggets of wisdom that drop in to save the day… and I finally find something that works most of the time.
So… for me… one of my best demonstrated practices remains the standby of take a deep breath and bite my lip…
Maybe someday, I’ll be ready for a fancy lip ring…
Rainbows & Mourning Doves 