The Tooth Fairy Strikes Again

We were driving home from a school choir concert in Decatur. I was in the fifth grade and a select few of us had been picked to sing at the chamber of commerce Christmas dinner. I was feeling pretty euphoric after my performance. Christmas music was playing on the radio in the station wagon and my Daddy was taking me home. Santa Claus is Coming to Town was just wrapping up on the radio and my daddy looks at me and says, “I know Christmas will be different for you this year since you know about Santa.” I looked at him and smiled and said “yes sir.” He told me not to tell my brother. I wasn’t going to. We left it at that and a tear fell down my right cheek as I rode the rest of the way home with Christmas music softly playing in the background.

I was in the fifth grade. I knew. Of course I knew! But for some reason hearing my daddy confirm to me that Santa wasn’t real busted a big ole hole in my tender little heart.

 I had found a tiny envelope with a few teeth in my mother’s chest of drawers the summer before my fifth grade year and it dawned on me then that the tooth fairy wasn’t all she was cracked up to be. I didn’t have a big love for the tooth fairy anyway. A magical creature that sneaks into your bedroom at night to harvest your discarded body parts is just creepy with a capital K. I found the teeth and I knew immediately about the tooth fairy. The rest happened in stages. I dismissed the Easter Bunny next. I mean a bunny that hides eggs seems a little off on a good day. I didn’t say anything though.

Santa fell harder. Santa Claus was Christmas. All of the grown ups wore shirts that said “I believe” you don’t see people walking around in tooth fairy shirts! The “if you stop believing he will stop coming” mantra rolled over and over in my head.

My Grannie told me a story about seeing Santa in real life when she was a kid every year. She was asleep on the couch because she had a fever and she woke up when Santa came. My Grannie would never lie to me.

In the fourth grade a little girl from a less privileged household told me Santa wasn’t real. I told maybe Santa stopped coming to her house because she quit believing and because Santa don’t like ugly and she was acting ugly. I was totally convinced that she was wrong and I was right. My faith was strong. I still feel bad about that today.

I knew the truth when my Daddy said what he said. I had known it for a while... but, hearing him confirm it broke my heart. I cried and cried when I got back home that night. I knew something had changed. I knew there was something about Christmas that I would never get back. That child like excitement, that belief in magic without seeing was gone. That made me sad. I mourned my childhood for a few days but then what my daddy said sunk in. “You’ve got to keep the secret now. Don’t tell your brother.”

I realized then that it was my responsibility to keep my brother believing in the magic. It was up to me to make his Christmas magical. I was in on the big conspiracy now and I had responsibilities. That realization softened the blow a bit.

When I had children of course I propagated the same delusions. It was fun when they were little. The tooth fairy was never my favorite. Too much stress with her. At least Santa only comes one night a year. And he leaves presents in a separate room and doesn’t bother anyone. That damned tooth fairy makes being a parent hard work.

One by one they figured it out. I always told each of them by their fifth grade Christmas. Sam was first and he took it like a champ. He was always wise for his age though. I think he had had it figured out for a while hefore I let him know. Nolan was next after the tooth fairy had forgotten to get his tooth FOUR days in a row. (Mom of the year here!) He was harder than Sam because he didn’t lump them all together right away. The tooth fairy isn’t real, yes, but what about the Easter bunny? What about Santa??? What about snoopy (our elf)???? That was hard on this mama.

Today I told my baby girl. The tooth fairy had forgotten her last night and she had lots of questions. I could tell she was on to me. She would ask “why didn’t the tooth fairy get my tooth” I would say “I don’t know, why do you think?” She’s shrug and get thoughtful. When she got home from school she asked me again. I replied the same and she said “I know it’s you.” I told her I thought that she had figured it out and she giggled. It was at that moment that I knew I was going to have to break her heart.

I asked, “so do you have any questions about any other magical late night visitors?”

I saw the cloud fall over her face. I witnessed the end of her childhood innocence. It fell like a curtain across her face. She didn’t cry though. She said “I know you are Santa too”. I said “yes I am. And I’m snoopy too. But you can’t tell anyone. You have to keep the secret” she nodded and we were home and she got out of the car.

1 hr and 45 minutes later it hit her. Full on ugly crying and some hyperventilating. It was heart breaking. She said she knew but hearing me say it made it real. My child was mourning and I was responsible.

Eventually she calmed down and now she’s fine. She’s excited about knowing the truth around her younger cousins and friends. She will be ok.

I’m not ok.

She was my last one. Christmas will not be the same for our little family now.. There won’t be anymore magic or mystery. It won’t be the same and I’m sad. I’m sad that my babies aren’t babies anymore and I’m said that I’m not the 10 year old kid in the caprice classic wagon two seconds before daddy confirmed what I already knew. I’m just sad.

But Emily made me better. I told her I was sad and she said, “well we will still have fun celebrating Jesus’s birthday no matter what.”

That one tiny sentence confirmed that the magic was still there. My baby knows without a doubt that Jesus is real and He is Alive and That He LOVES her. The loss of Santa in her mind did not for one second shake her faith in Jesus. She knows he is real and she knows he is coming back for her one day.

I hope you know that He loves you and is coming back for you too!

The Helper

Sometimes you just need to ask for help.

Y’all I’ve been struggling about my house in the past 6 months. I’m talking embarrassed to have company struggling. I’m talking telling people I’m not home and hiding in the bedroom, struggling.

Only close family have been in my home... and only they have entered unannounced when it seemed to me my home was at its absolute worst.

I’m not a homemaker. I don’t love to clean. I don’t want to spend every minute I have cooking and cleaning up my family’s mess. That’s just not me.

When I was working full time i had an angel of a housekeeper. She worked from the time she walked through my door until the time she walked out and she was wonderful and I LOVED her.

The other thing about me is that I get attached.

When I decided to take time to stay at home I let my housekeeper go. I missed her every single Thursday but she moved on. She found new, easier houses to clean. And when I started working again, she didn’t need me anymore.

So I sucked it up and convinced myself I could do it all. I could work and clean and do laundry and cook supper on my days off or bring
supper home on my workdays. I’m super woman and I’m able to provide for my family.

I was wrong.

My housework suffered.

My family’s meals suffered (there’s only a set number of times that you can pass off KFC as a “home cooked meal”)

My family suffered (there was a laundry emergency that coincided with a toilet paper shortage.... I don’t need to get into details but let’s suffice it to say that neither would have happened when stay at home mom Heather was here)

I suffered. I had anxiety and depression and anger and fear about the state of my housekeeping. I thought about it all the time. I dreamed about it. I had nightmares about people dropping In unannounced.

I fought it for a long time. I was determined to handle it all by myself. I was determined that I was a good enough wife and mother that I could do it all without help.

I was wrong.

I asked for help..... paid help.... but help none the less.

My helper showed up today and she cleaned and cleaned and cleaned and she never not one time made me feel like I was less. She never implied that I was less of a mother, wife, woman... she just showed up and cleaned. She washed all the crevices in my cabinets, she got on her knees and cleaned floor boards. She made everything look new again (or as new again as was possible).

The moral of this story is that sometimes you have to admit that you need help. We all love to believe that we are super women but sometimes we need another superwoman to come in and help us get back on track.

The same goes for our Christian lives.... we can coast along when all is well and pray our prayers and pay our tithes but when all the things go wrong in our lives and we are struggling with our r dirty house what do we do??? Do we ignore our problems and hope they will go away? Do we struggle in silence and pray that our friends don’t find out how messy our hearts are? Do we put dust covers over our sins and expect all our church friends to sit on the plastic when they come to visit?

Jesus is my help. He is my soul’s housekeeper. He knows my messiest part. He knows when my heart is dirty and he rejoiced when my heart is clean. He sees right through that plastic and loves me anyway. If you don’t know that love and forgiveness I implore you to talk to me, message me. Cause no matter how messy or dirty you think you are, Jesus will be your savior, he will be your house keeper, he will clean up all the dirty corners in your heart and he will make you feel new again.

“But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.”  John 14:26

Jesus Paid it All

“If we don’t believe our sins are responsible for Calvary, then why should we believe that Calvary is responsible for our sins?”

Our pastor made this point during his sermon this past Sunday and I jotted it down and it has stared me in the face every day since then. I’ve been thinking about it long and hard.  

What I’ve determined is that every sin in my life.... from the worst to the least.... Christ bore those for me on Calvary. From the white lie I tell my boss, to the speeding ticket I didn’t tell my husband about, Christ felt the punishment for that on Calvary. Christ felt the punishment for the repentant murderer and the repentant tax evader. He felt the punishment for the time you stole from your mothers mad money jar and he felt the punishment for the time you swore in front of your child. He felt the punishment for the adulterer and for the bank robber. He paid the punishment for all of our sins on Calvary that day. 

If I’m supposed to believe that he did that for me and that he has re-payed those sins for me... then I should take full responsibility for every single lash that He took, for every torment he received, for every thorn in that crown, for the nails that pierced his hands and feet, and for the spears that pierced his sides.... my sins are responsible for that. 

Your sins did that. 

Our sins did that.

My sins did that.

He bore all that for you, for us, for me......

Because he took that punishment, we will be free. He paid our debt. He finished it. 

It is finished. 

Thank you Lord for sacrificing your Son for me. 

Thank you Lord for finishing it.

Just a Nurse

“You’re such a good nurse. Why don’t you go back to school and be a doctor?”

This is a question that I’ve been asked so many times in my career.

The answer? I love what I do. I’m good at what I do. I don’t need to have a higher degree to be good at my job. I love my job. I have no desire to be an administrator or nurse practitioner or PA or MD. I’m fully convinced that I could be any of those. I’m smart. I’m good at school. I’m great at taking tests. I could do any of those things if I chose to.

I don’t choose to.

I choose to be “just a nurse”.

I choose to be “just a (great) nurse.”

I choose to be just the nurse that advocates for your mother when she’s being misdiagnosed by the sleep deprived ER doc. I choose to be just the nurse that holds the hand of the dying hospice patient that doesn’t have family members. I choose to be just the nurse that recognizes the symptoms of heart attack in the patient that signed in to triage with “back pain”. I choose to be just the nurse that can get that IV on your child in one stick. I choose to be just the nurse that can sneak a peek at your chest X-ray and notify the doc that you have pneumonia. I choose to be the nurse that counsels your alcohol poisoned child on the dangers of substance abuse. I choose to be just the nurse that holds your hand and comforts you when you have heard the worst news of your life. I choose to be just  the nurse that you hug when you hear that your loved one is going to be ok. I choose to be just the nurse that you remember being there for you years later, but don’t remember her name. I choose to be just the nurse that your doctor trusts. I choose to be just the nurse that you want to be there when you come to the ER.

I choose to be “just the nurse” that can stay at home with my kids and not worry about student loans or deadlines or papers due. I choose to be “just the nurse” that isn’t replying to emails when she’s off or making up a schedule or replying to patient complaints or  studying PI reports. (No offense meant for those that choose this path. You guys make my job easier and I have the greatest respect for you. It’s just not my choice.)

I choose to be just the nurse that does her job the best way she can and goes home to her family and leaves the rest of it at the hospital.

I choose to be just the nurse.

#loveanurse #ADN #RN #RNforLife #justthenurse #heddyandherthoughts