Tag: struggle

Spaz Hands

~ Lisa Ancona-Roach ~ 5 Comments

Cspaz handlutch shots are key in the world of professional sports. Adam Scott is wearing the green jacket after his pivotal shots at the Masters yesterday. But I am absolutely 100% certain that if I ever had the skills to put me in that realm of sports, my spaz hands would see to it that no victory would come my way.

No sunken putt to clinch the tournament.

No 300 game in bowling.

Never mind a no-hitter.

Of course, just imagining I had the physical prowess to get to such a level is silly, but even if that was all in place, my spaz hands would ensure that I could never achieve such glory. Are you familiar with spaz hands? Well, how about jazz hands? You know, the flashing little palms upright move that adds a little panache to just about anything?

(I have no intent to PR this show—it was just the best short version of “jazz hands” I could find on YouTube. And trust me, there were some “interesting” choices!)

For me, spaz hands is like a distant cousin seventeen times removed. It’s that energy that courses through my body when I get to thinking too much in such situations, and then it hits like lightning, thereby ensuring a spastic burst when the exact opposite is needed.

So if I was indeed lined up to try for that 300 game in bowling and it came down to the last ball…I’m pretty certain my spaz hands would strike—no, not cause me to roll a strike…but come upon me and cause me to throw the ball directly into the gutter. Maybe even overhand. Cause that’s how I roll. Literally.

And my spaz hands aren’t just involved in sports. Ask my husband what it’s like to walk into a room where my back is turned. Let’s just say I’m a little jumpy. He’ll often turn the lights off and on upon entering to give me a heads up, or lately he’s taken to walking in while gently saying, “I live here…I’m your husband…don’t be startled…” Poor guy. But I just can’t help it.

As long as I have this “special” quality, it would be awesome if it burned off a bunch of calories. After all, if reaching your target heart rate is the point of cardio, then like Ellen DeGeneres says, you should be able to just stand in front of an oncoming bus to achieve maximum results. Or, for me, have someone sneak up on me. And by “sneak up,” I mean just normally walk into a room. That should do the trick.

So I have spaz hands. Yeah, I know I probably need to calm down. (And that’s exactly what a person who needs to calm down wants to hear, too. “Hey, you need to calm down,” and—like a faucet—I will just turn off the crazy and calm down. Done deal.)

On the bright side, if there ever was a burglar who came upon me, I just might be able to spaz hand him into submission—you know, just like a Taser, but with flailing arms of hysteria. Shut up. It could happen.

Oh, well—I’m a spaz. It’s just another nuance of the special crazy that I am. What’s a part of your special crazy?

The Lessons We Leave Behind

~ Lisa Ancona-Roach ~ 11 Comments

Dad and meWith the recent experience of my mom’s health challenges, I can’t help but reflect on my dad. Though he died when I had just turned 21, I find him with me in one way or another on most days. He left behind many lessons for me. Some were life-shaping and some merely enriching in a smaller way.

Many of his life-shaping lessons were work-oriented. As a product of the Depression, he knew how important education was—he worked hard and cut every corner he could (like eating “butter sandwiches”) to put himself through college—and he would put his kids through, too. I always knew I was going to be able to go to college. What a blessing. Interesting that I was a teacher for several years and my sister teaches, too. Go figure.

He wanted his kids to work hard but be happy with their choices, so he made sure from an early age we knew that we should love what we do. The way he saw it, you were guaranteed to be working for at least a third of your life, so it would follow that you should strive to find something you enjoy doing. I am grateful for being taught that the world was wide open to me–I know many people don’t have that same kind of encouragement.

And he instilled in us that all work was honorable. Whatever your choice, be the best at it. One of his phrases was, “If you’re going to be a ditch digger, be the best damn ditch digger you can be.” Anyone who worked hard had his respect. Slackers, losers, and users did not.

Beyond the work ethic he instilled in me, though, he also had lots of other, lighter lessons to impart merely by example. For instance, he taught me that it’s perfectly normal to sing at the top of my lungs when I’m in the car. Alone or not. There were several times that my mom, sister, and I would be traveling in our car running an errand and we would pass my dad’s car on his way home. He didn’t see us, but we would see him—mouth wide open, head moving around as he belted out a number.

Understand: the man was not one to carry a strong tune. It didn’t matter. Though the line “dance like no one is watching” is popular today, my dad was ahead of his time with the embracing of “sing like no one is watching (or listening).” There have been many times I’ve been singing and bopping around at a stoplight to turn and see someone looking at me like I’m nuts. I just smile and keep on keeping on…I feel bad for what they are missing out on!

He also loved to laugh—big, hardy laughter—the kind where he would typically end up coughing because he was laughing so hard. I so miss the sound of that laugh, but I think my sister and I are doing an amicable job at carrying the torch on this one.

Of course, he wasn’t perfect, as no one is. One painful lesson I learned from him was the very specific “don’t wear shorts to play in a softball game.” (This was before it was common for girls to have shorts as uniforms and apparently be taught how to slide without ripping up their legs…still don’t get that one. Back then, we played in our jeans. Yeah. We’ve come a long way, baby.) One 100 degree day when I was 12, I begged him to let me wear shorts to my game. He explained the risks, and I said, “Don’t worry—I won’t slide,” and he told me that if I did get hurt, he didn’t want to hear about it. Well, as my life would have it, I hit a lovely triple that night that I greedily wanted to stretch into a homerun. Not only was I tagged out on the slide, but I had to pick tiny pieces of gravel out of my shredded thigh. It was freakin’ AWesome. He was so mad at me (and himself for not holding to his rule, I think) that he didn’t talk to me for three days. Lesson learned.

One of his universal lessons was “when you play, you gotta pay.” This worked for so many things…goofing off on homework, staying out late, drinking…whatever the case may be, he didn’t want to hear any whining if I was suffering from a choice I made like that. I now hear myself uttering these very words to my kid for various reasons.

It makes me wonder what lessons I will leave behind for my son. Will he, too, have memories that he realizes were lessons on how to make the most out of life? Or will he be at a loss if someone asks him, “What is one important lesson you learned from your mom?”

I know I can’t simply wake up and think, “Today is the day I will teach my son to understand the value of (insert lesson).” If that were the case, the poor kid would be facing a curriculum every day of things I deem worth knowing.

No, I think it is much more a matter of living life by example and purpose and praying that some of the good sticks (and that the bad doesn’t stick but still teaches something). I know a lot did with me and my dad. I hope my son feels the same way someday.

Not Quite in the Plan

~ Lisa Ancona-Roach ~ 15 Comments

calendarI hope you had a wonderful Easter brunch or dinner with your family yesterday. For me, I ate hospital cafeteria food.

This was not quite in the plan.

No, the plan was that I was hosting Easter dinner for my extended family. Instead, I was reminded that my plan has nothing to do with THE plan.

Throughout my life, as I trust it is with you, too, I have experiences that remind me that I am not in control. And since I am a teensy bit of a control freak, that is a tough one to admit.

For me, I believe God is in control, yet he lets free will exist. My take on it (simpleton that I am, and no, I’m not looking for any theological debate, I’m just sharing my point of view, so don’t get your knickers in a knot and just see what I have to say) is that God is not interested in a bunch of robotic forms following him, but rather people who could choose to have faith in him. Or not. So we have lots of choices. And those choices result in an intricate tapestry of effects. And like getting cancer from secondhand smoke, the effects don’t have to be a direct result of a choice someone has made. That muddies the water of simplicity a bit, doesn’t it? Bad things happen to good people and vice versa.

And no matter how much I plan, life interferes. Time and again, I am reminded that the world doesn’t spin according to my desires.

This past week was just such a reminder.

While my plan for the week had been to see to it that my kid had some fun on Spring Break while I managed to get work done as well as prepare for a family Easter celebration at our home, the reality was that my mom became quite ill and needed to be hospitalized…where she is still and where she will be for a while, and where I’m writing this post as I keep her company while she rests.

This was not cleared with us before it was implemented. There was no meeting to consult and decide what worked with our calendars. Nope. Just whammo. No one checked with my mom to see if this was a good time to have the rug pulled out from under her. Or me or my sister. Or anyone else who was directly affected by the turn of events.

My Easter plan was tossed on its head, and I relearned for the umpteen millionth time that I can plan to my little heart’s content, but…hello…it may or may not be a part of THE plan.

Even more important, this is yet another experience that reinforces that what really matters isn’t that which I spend too much of my time consumed with. What really matters is that when we go through tough and challenging situations, there are those who love us (including the One in control) who help us get through it. And for that, I am grateful.

I will always be a planner, but when it all falls apart, I thank God that I have people in my life who help me pick up the pieces. And that, I’m pretty sure, is quite the plan after all.

Techno Interruptus

~ Lisa Ancona-Roach ~ Leave a comment

mobile-technologyI’ve started to write this post about 37 times now. I keep getting interrupted for various reasons…my friends and I refer to it as the “Something Shiny Syndrome” —something shiny passes by, and off I go. Too often it is of the technological variety. Text…email…a thought that sends me Googling to find something out…

It is true: I suffer from Techno Interruptus. And you know what? I have a LOT of company.

Sometimes it just borders on the ridiculous. Like many years ago, when one of my nieces was getting confirmed at her church. My sister, who needed to sit along with her at the front of the church, handed me her purse. “Here—hold this.” Simple enough words, but I had no idea the embarrassment I was in for. Right in the middle of the (very quiet) service, my sister’s phone rang some obnoxious ringtone. I quickly dug it out of her purse to silence it, but it didn’t respond to any of the methods I knew to stop it. All eyes were on me to shut that damn thing up. Eventually, something I did succeeded. The church breathed a collective sigh, and my trauma was over, right? Nope.

You see, they called back.

At that point, I simply got up, walked down the aisle while ringing all the way, found a cabinet in the lobby and shoved my sister’s entire purse into it and shut the door. I gathered my dignity and walked with head held high back to my seat. In silent prayer, I asked God if it was a greater sin to choke my sister IN church, or wait until we were no longer on “official” turf. She, of course, thought it was hySTERical.

I bet lots of us have been in meetings where there’s at least one person who thinks it is totally fine to let all of his audible notifications go off throughout the entire meeting. I mean, the phone isn’t ringing, right? So what’s a little chirp here or there? Sometimes I wonder if they just like people to hear how “phone popular” they are…because why else would that be okay? And the simple answer to silence phones doesn’t always do the trick, either. I have a coworker whose vibration setting makes a sound loud enough that you might as well have it as a choice for an audible sound. And I love when he leaves it on the table and he gets a call…We all just stare at it with our heads cocked like it’s some sort of scientific wonder. (In many meetings it is a welcomed diversion, I must admit.)

Beyond those obvious stories of cell phones causing distractions, there is a subtler form of Techno Interruptus (TI), though. Like when I have texted someone a question that I would like to have the answer to, and then I get into a face-to-face conversation with someone else. The text notification goes off, and…there are times I am guilty of wanting to know the answer right then. In my mind, I’ll be distracted from listening to the person who is right in front of me and think “remember to get that as soon as you can.” But even if I don’t, there is that moment when the other person I’m talking to hears the sound and must wonder “is she going to answer that or not?” I know when it happens to me, I typically defer to the person’s phone. I’ll say, “Go ahead and get that if you need to…” and then…I wait.

And that is kind of a lame feeling. And it’s really lame when the other person chooses to answer the text and then goes back and forth for a bit and finally tells you, “Oh, it was something stupid…” and then they tell you what the “stupid” was (which was indeed stupid), but now not only have you been interrupted for something stupid, but then they’ve taken more time to summarize the stupidity for you…And by the time it’s all done, whatever you were saying that got interrupted has packed its bags and headed for the beach.

It is a struggle to not let technological accessibility become the updated tyranny of the urgent. Accessibility can be awesome…but also detrimental. I love being connected. As someone who works a flex schedule, it is a necessity for me. But that doesn’t mean that because I can be interrupted, I should be interrupted. TI is bad for connecting with the people for whom you should be present in the moment. The easy, obvious answer? Simply power down.

Power what?! Yeah, I know. But disconnecting guarantees that no notification will cause a distraction. And, since I am not a brain surgeon, I’m pretty sure that any work fallout will not cause anyone any bodily harm.

Oh, mother of pearl. I just lost my train of thought because I got an incoming text. And it’s not coming back to me, either. Well, I guess whatever absolutely wonderful sentence or two that I was going to close this post with has now evaporated. Ironic, huh? Yeah, I thought so, too.

What If God Wrote You a Letter?

~ Lisa Ancona-Roach ~ 2 Comments
writing-with-penPersonal letters are a real treat anymore, aren’t they? We cringe at a full email inbox because most of it is work to do or stuff to delete after wasting a precious moment of our lives. But to get a “real” letter in the mail (or, heck, even a truly thoughtful email!) is like a cool spring morning that you just want to breathe in deeply and enjoy.

 

In the blogging world, it is not uncommon to come across letters that parents write to their children as a way for the kids to be able to remember a time in their lives and to know that they are loved. I know I still have the few letters my parents wrote to me in college. Little prose snapshots of a time gone by for me to cherish. And I have numerous fits and starts of letters to my own child…something that I should really be better about.

 

Years ago Ellen DeGeneres did a hilarious bit about calling God and getting the runaround. But…what if God wrote you a personal letter? What do you think he might say to you?

 

In my own musings (NOT to presuppose God…yeesh…don’t get your knickers in a knot), I would hope that–like the typical “parent letter”–there would be a chunk in there about how much he loves me. I’m pretty sure that might even make the first paragraph. Maybe he would say that even though he sees me stumble every day, he hopes I know that his hand is right there ready to help me up. And that even though I mess up all the time, he loves me just the same. And that even though I don’t understand all about him, he’s patiently waiting for me to journey on. I’m thinking he might even say, “Don’t worry, I’ve got the patience of a saint” and draw a little smiley face next to it. Because my God has a sense of humor. Looking at my life, I just know this to be true.

 

Would he then take some time to tell me some of the things he sees in me that he likes? Maybe that would be a short paragraph. Maybe not. Words that I would like to see him use include compassionate, loving, kind, loyal, supportive, forgiving…maybe he’d put an asterisk next to a few saying *you’re improving, but…still needs work! Keep trying!  This portion of the letter is so hard…I am such an imperfect work in progress there might not be anything for him to write about. Maybe he would be reduced to having to write something trivial just to cover this base like, “Your personal grooming habits are impeccable. And have I mentioned what a nice, thick head of hair you have?”

 

Perhaps he would then offer me some loving encouragement about all the ways I need to grow up. That would be a long paragraph. Included there would be things like I need to be better at loving the people around me, have more patience, grow a thicker skin, tear down my carefully built walls, and take better care of myself. He’d find a Godly way to say “Get your ass in gear, Lisa,” so that I press on toward the goal to which I am called. Of course, being God and all, he’d know just the right words to use so that I’d still feel his love after he read me the riot act. After all, the whole omniscience thing is his gig.

 

Just thinking through this imaginary letter has been an interesting exercise for me. I encourage you to explore this idea, too. What if God wrote you a letter? What might he want your heart to know? Well, here’s one thing I do KNOW: he would definitely sign it, LOVE, God.

 

Making Mac and Cheese Out of Uranus

~ Lisa Ancona-Roach ~ 6 Comments

UranusMaybe I should add the subtitle “a twist on making lemonade out of lemons.” That sounds a little less questionable, don’t you think? But stick with me for a bit, and my title will make perfect sense. Or at least I hope it does, because that’s kind of my whole point.

A while ago my husband, son, and I were able to get away for a few days. Living in the Chicago area, we wanted to pick something close enough that we weren’t in the car for too much of our getaway, yet far enough away to…well, get away. After a lifetime of treating St. Louis as merely a stopover for a bite to eat, we decided that maybe we should really check it out.

On the way, we discovered the wonderful little city of Pontiac. More than just home to Pontiac Prison (for some reason, they don’t offer tours…), it also has numerous museums (free!), interesting restaurants, and a lovely old town feel. We will return.

When we finally made it to St. Louis, we had a hard time narrowing down what we wanted to see. Of course, we had to “do” the Gateway Arch, and then there’s the Riverfront and a crazy, fun place called City Museum (I’m thinking the designer is familiar with herbal refreshment and/or various pharmaceuticals), and a fun, nostalgic day trip to go to the Meramec Caverns (the light show was…wow…I’ve never quite seen anyone flip old school circuits with such passion).

Beyond that, though, there were other choices to make. One that turned out to be a far cry from our expectations was the Planet Walk in the Delmar Loop. In our tourist info, there was a brief blurb about it being a scale model of the solar system. You don’t need to know much more for a nine-year-old boy to be jazzed.

Well, but, you kinda do.

After driving the twenty minutes it took to get there, we should have known something was up when we parked and asked the attendant which way to the Planet Walk and he said, “The what??” And then when we stopped in Starbucks to ask there and they said, “The what???”Uranus

It was a rather blustery day, and walking around like lost puppies was quickly losing its luster. Just as I was Googling for more info, my husband asked a guy on the street, and he pointed to a sign on the sidewalk. It said “Uranus.” It also gave some other facts about the planet…and…there you have it, my friends. Turns out that the Planet Walk is…a walk…as in on the sideWALK. As in, “Look, there is a sign that says ‘Uranus.’ Several blocks down the street, there will be another one labeled ‘Neptune.’ Please keep walking.” Uh, yeah…While it is a nice little (stress on little) supplement to window shopping, it sure as hell didn’t qualify as a destination site.

As our 9yo stood there slack-jawed at the letdown of reality, a gleaming light shone through the gloom. Across the street, there was a little restaurant called Cheese-ology. We were hungry. We love cheese. We decided to check it out.

cheese-ologyIt’s kind of like Heaven smiled and out popped Cheese-ology. The restaurant offered several delicious variations of the beloved comfort food. Dishes had choices that included Gruyere, Goat, Bleu…steak, bacon, sausage…artichoke, spinach, sun-dried tomatoes…you get the idea. They even had breadsticks fresh out of the oven in case you needed more carbs. And…here’s the clincher: they served beer. Now, people. Really. It was indeed heavenly.

We warmed up, refueled our bodies, giggled a bit, and then were able to check out a little more of what the Delmar Loop had to offer. And here’s where it all comes together, people. Had we really known what the Planet Walk is, we would have never trucked out to the Delmar Loop for it. And if we didn’t do that, then we would have never had the supremely awesome cheeseilicous experience at Cheese-ology. Turns out there was a cheese lining to our solar system of gloom.

So you see, we did indeed make mac and cheese out of Uranus.