October 2019

On scaling the Mountain of Unimportant Things

Posted on October 30, 2019 by Be still Imbalancing act

I remember reading those books as a teenager about how to not sweat the small stuff. Before Rachel Hollis was reminding us all to wash our face, Richard Carlson was running the motivational show in the 90’s, showing up in all of our grandmas’ bathrooms in paperback, telling us to JUST CHILL because really, it’s all small stuff. I liked ol’ Richard. That guy had some sense.

Even so, I’ve been stumbling on the Mountain of Unimportant Things forever and ever. Every time I trip on that mountain I drop something – usually time, money, sleep, or general happiness. I’ve stumbled over little pebbles on the mountain like burnt pancakes, paint colors, the Christmas card picture, and how my butt looks in those pants. Other times it looked more like a boulder – a missed self-induced deadline, a faulty effort to make someone happy, or the thought of what so-and-so might think. You know, small stuff.

There are certain momentous occasions in life too that make that mountain harder to climb, not because it’s any steeper than any other season, but because the air around these occasions tends to get foggy for the climber. 

Take a wedding for example. As someone who spent ten years photographing this occasion, I’ve seen hundreds of people cartwheel down that one. It’s TRIPPY. But do you know how many actual people in the actual world actually care what flavor your cake is going to be? Maybe your Aunt Betty, but you only see her twice a year and, seriously, how many times can she really bring it up? Pick a flavor and crush that pebble.

Guess how many people care what shade of dusty rose those bridesmaids dresses are? ZERO. Unless you do, and you force your favorite friends to give up four Saturdays in a row to “get the perfect look” for your day. Then I can promise, all those favorite friends care about is when your wedding can be over and they can get back to their own mountains. Kick that rock out of the way and get to building the actual marriage (cause that part, honey, is so not small stuff). 

How about when you birth that first baby? There goes a thousand topics for another day, but THE FOG can be SO DANG heavy up on THAT mountain. You’ll be better off to just stop where you’re at, lay down the hiking stick, pull a KIND bar out of your diaper bag and sit yo’ silly self down before you lose your footing completely. 

The Perfect Birth Story. Not yours to write.

The Perfect Going Home Outfit. Might be covered in spit up.

The Perfect Newborn Pictures. WILL be covered in…something.

The Perfect Breastfeeding Experience. May or may not be in the cards.

The Perfect Baby Daddy. Bless his poor pitiful heart! Who dat?!

Now I’m not sitting high and mighty over here. It’s easier to see all that once you’ve been through those particular foggy times, and even for experts like me (HAAAA!), there are other seasons too. Holidays, new homes, going back to school, new jobs, and anytime you see anything cool on someone else’s Instagram story can make you feel a little disoriented on the mountain. It’s especially easy to stumble when you’re climbing beside other people who are as clumsy-footed as you are. 

You know how it goes. If they slip on an Unimportant Thing, the first thing they’ll do is wail about it, and depending on your own strength that day, you’ll either fall right down there with them or offer them a hand to stand back up. It takes practice to be strong enough to offer the hand.

At this point in life I still stumble, but I’m finding it way more fun to be standing on top of the mountain than to be buried beneath. Maybe I dropped my Give-A-Crap in one of those other falls, but I’m becoming a more steady climber with practice, and I’m telling you, the view is extra refreshing and much less sweaty from the top. 

Kids looking flawless every Sunday at church – Under the mountain.

Just getting the kids TO church – On top.

Having my name on every volunteer list in town – Buried underneath.

Bringing my best service to one or two worthy causes – Beautiful up there. 

Getting the Annual Incredible Christmas Card Photo – Back at the bottom.

Being present enough to notice Christmas Card Worthy Moments all year – So high I can feel the clouds.

When I feel my foot slipping, I like to think back to my favorite line in that bathroom book. 

“Will this matter a year from now?”

Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff and It’s All Small Stuff, Richard Carlson

Most of the time I find that whatever it is that tried to trip me doesn’t even matter right now, and THAT is what it feels like to stand strong. Oh, what I could do with all the time, money, sleep, and happiness I’ve dropped along the way if I could only get it back now.

Let’s keep practicing, friends. When we spend all our waking hours UNDER the Mountain of Unimportant Things, it’s nearly impossible to find the energy to climb Mt. Actually Meaningful when we get to it. I promise to grab your arm and pull you up if you’ll grab mine.

Let’s talk about the prom queen

Posted on October 23, 2019 by Girlfriends Get It Imbalancing act

You know the girl. The pretty one. The one everyone adores. The one that can do no wrong, always has it together, never has a bad day. I bet you can see her smiling face in your head right now. Does the image of that girl make you want to smile back? I doubt it. Not for real at least.

She’s not just the prom queen anymore anyway. She’s everywhere. She’s the mom that walks into school looking like she slept a full night and ate fairy dust for breakfast. It’s obvious her husband adores her and her kids must wake up looking like a Target billboard. She’s the one with the perfect body or perfect hair or at the very least the perfectly clean house. You know the one. 

She’s the woman at work who magically balances her cute coffee mug in one hand and endless to-do list in the other. She’s the girl that’s killin’ it on the front row in your fitness class. She’s the lady at church who always bakes the cake, teaches the lesson, sits with the feeble, and sings a flawless soprano. She’s amazing, you think. And you’re not. 

Perception is a funny thing when it comes to the prom queen. The assumption, I believe, is that she, herself, thinks she’s just as amazing as you think she is. She must know it after all. The chick has a mirror and we all know she uses it. 

I’ve encountered the prom queen just as often as you have. I don’t always want to smile back at her either. Sometimes I secretly want to stick my foot out to see if she trips or leaps. [YES WRONG, but we’re all here for honesty and you know you’ve thought it too – sue me.]

The problem is though, that I know without a doubt that girl needs a smile just as much as the band geek in the back. I know because, well, I’ve seen The Breakfast Club about a hundred times, and also the truth is that I’ve been the prom queen a few times in my life. Once in 2002 in a royal blue sequin dress, and again a few months ago backstage at my daughters’ dance recital. Really. 

It was obvious in 2002 [there was a K-Ci & JoJo song that made it official that night] but I was taken aback when I realized it a second time backstage at the recital when another mom called out among the chaos, “I need scissors! Anybody have a pair of scissors?” 

Before I could answer, that mom looked right at me and said, “Allison, gimme your scissors. You’re the most got-it-together person I know. I know you’ve got a pair.”

And you know what, I did have a pair. There I was, sitting backstage, laughing with my gorgeous kids and my cute earrings, fully prepared for the evening ahead and making it look like a piece of flawlessly-frosted cake. Prom queen. 

Just like that twinge I felt when I was slowly turning around the dance floor back in the day with the equally awesome and awkward king, at that moment it flooded right back. HOW insane. They actually think I’ve got it together. 

Yep, I had the scissors in the bag, my kids were dressed and ready and I had even successfully showered that day. But you know what? The day before, those same kids barely got to school on time, one of them without her book bag because I’d overslept and shoved them out the door without it. That same week, I’d washed ONE load of clothes FOUR times because I didn’t have the brainpower or the energy to remember to put the rotten things in the dryer. And that very day, the actual day of the recital, I’d nearly had a meltdown in my office at work.

I mean, daaaaang prom queen, where you at, girl?!

I won’t lie, sometimes it feels nice to be the prom queen. In the finest moments, it seems better than the alternative. I’ll argue ‘til my death though, that the title is never permanent, it’s completely an illusion, and it’s never EVER enough to get you by in life on its own.

I recently had lunch with a friend that I’ve only gotten to know well in the last couple years. During the span of our friendship we’d established a routine to meet for lunch in town – me, always on my lunch break in heels and professional attire, and her, in whatever comfortably cute outfit met the needs of her day. When I told her recently that I was making a career change and leaving my job, she told me she couldn’t imagine what I’d be like without the always-put-togetherness that my position had required. 

“It’s just a uniform,” I told her. And it was. Under the got-it-together-girl she thought she knew, there was just another regular ol’ messy woman in here. I think she likes that second girl even better. I know for sure that I do, but really, we’re one in the same. It’s just that perception either lays down the red carpet, or rips it right out from under us. We don’t even really get to decide.

So next time you bump into her, remember that some days, we queens just get lucky. Other days, we’re just trying not to let the drool drip out of our clarinet. (Believe me, I know. I’ve been that girl too.)

Conway Middle School Band, 1997

The girl with the grocery store feet

Posted on October 16, 2019 by 'Round here Family

Just a few steps east of the stoplight, where 158 meets Highway 35, sits an aged and weathered store, a vacant restaurant, and the most cherished memory vault of my entire adolescence. I drove by it a few weeks ago just like I do every time I go back to visit or pass through – slowly – half wanting to stop and spend hours exploring, and half wanting to run like hell.

I’ve been inside only once in the last decade, naive to the real effect this place had had on me, thinking that I could actually walk in and grab a block of cheese and a quick hint of my childhood and be on my way. (Bah!) I didn’t get the cheese on that trip.

Instead, I realized quickly that the nice man behind the counter wasn’t Miss Becky or Miss Deanie, that it wasn’t 1994, and I was either going to puke or sob if I didn’t back away fast. I made it to the car before the ugly crying started. Whew – wasn’t expecting that.

Once upon a time this place was my Disneyland. It was full of candy and hand trucks to ride, and some of the greatest characters of my happy childhood’s movie. I can still hear the sound of my daddy’s key in the lock and smell the can of Pledge behind the checkout counter. I can hear the loud hum of the back room and taste the chocolate-covered peanuts and peanut brittle that no other Christmas candy will ever beat. I can see the line of customers at the meat counter and I can feel immediately and fully right at home if I let my mind settle back there.

I got off the school bus right there at the front. Every day without fail (at least the way my memory tells it) my Pop was standing in the window waiting with a smile. He’d opened that store in 1954, and saved a special seat for me and my glass-bottle Coke to take a break and have a snack in his office after school. Good grief, what I wouldn’t give to share a Coke with him now.

I spent afternoons straightening the stock on the shelves until I was old enough to carry a box cutter of my own in my back pocket. I learned to keep all the bills facing the same direction in the register if you wanted to count change quicker. I loved watching my daddy talk to his customers like they were his friends (because they were), and I loved it even more when the old ladies would ask, “Ain’t you Johnny’s baby? Good Lord girl, you done grown.” My response: beaming.

Today, the locks have changed, the characters have all moved on, and life for us all looks very very different than it did back then. But no matter how many years go by or how many turns we take, the fact is that I’m still Johnny’s Baby, we still belong to J.C., and to me, THIS will always be our place.

Somewhere along the way I thought I outgrew that little store, that little town, that little life. So often these days I feel like I’ve lost the little girl with the grocery store feet. Maybe I’ve been wearing high heels too long.

She’s still in there though. She’s the piece of me that knows how to make friendly small talk with a perfect stranger. She’s the one who knows that everybody (from the town drunk to the town mayor) buys toilet paper. She knows that hard work is made for more than money, and that when you add a little kindness and a few good folks to it, it doesn’t feel like work anyway. She knows what it means to build something and keep at it until it becomes a part of you. She’s also the piece that understands that it’s okay to turn the page. Just because a chapter ends, that doesn’t mean it can’t always be one of your favorite parts of the story.

Flip-flop feet don’t quite count, but close enough.

Though it might be another decade before I go back in, driving by that store these days makes me smile. I smile because I know there’s such beauty in turning the page.

Just last weekend I got to hang out for a while in another place that felt right at home, just two hours east of that old Disneyland. My daddy has the keys, my Pop’s picture is on the wall, and the two little girls I love the most in this world learned a little bit about straightening stock on the shelves. Eventually I pray they’ll get the time and the chance to learn the other lessons too, if they’re lucky, with grocery store feet and all.

Visit www.obxbutcherblock.com to learn more about our place.

Dropping the *F word

Posted on October 9, 2019 by Be still

We all have to deal with it whether we want to or not. Some of us wear it like a tattoo on our forehead while some of us keep it tucked away in the bottom of our purse, mostly forgotten and dirty but there, with us nonetheless. Some of us try to control it, some of us…Just. Can’t. But we all have it. We all know it.

Fear.

I’ve had a solid relationship with Fear my entire life. At times it’s been helpful [see teenage me, too afraid to put my lips to a bong when everyone else at the party seemed pretty friggin’ fearless]. Other times I’ve been embarrassed by it, like the time I launched into a full blown freak out [now known to me as an anxiety attack] in the middle of a pleasantly crowded lagoon in Italy, sure that the rocks I could see below me in the crystal clear water were about to eat me. Like, WHAT? It happened.

Other times I’ve put it in my back pocket, covered it with makeup, waved it in the air, stomped on it with pure certainty, oh, and clutched it with white knuckles that time I made it jump out of an airplane holding my hand. That’s right, I jumped out of an actual airplane so who’s fearless now!? Yeah. Not me.

Lately, as it tends to operate when your deepest desires tell you to DO something NEW, Fear has been showing up in my face like a middle school mean girl. Hand on hip, whispering in my ear one minute and behind my back the next, saying things like:

Look at you, you have no idea what you’re doing. You’re going to fail. You already have failed. You’re going to offend someone. They’re all going to laugh at you. You’re wasting your time, your money, your energy. NO ONE cares. You don’t have the skills or the discipline to make this work. WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?

Middle School Mean Girl Fear is the WORST. I’d like to punch that Fear in the face, but then, I’d never punch anyone really because that’s violent, violence is bad, and also I’d be too afraid she’d punch me back, just much harder because she’s more experienced than I am at punching things.

You know what’s more terrifying to me at this moment than anything Fear has to say? Not taking the chance. Somehow it seems that in our world, you have to be recently brushed by death – or at the very least, a millennial – to get the fact that life is a temporary gift. There are TWO important pieces to that statement – temporary, the obvious one, and GIFT. We forget so often that God never promised perfection or ease down here, but for me at least, the gifts keep coming – they’re literally all around us. Why on EARTH wouldn’t we open them?

Today, Fear is with me, resting it’s head in my lap sleepily as I prepare to put it to bed. When I do, I’ll lay it down gently, then take a walk with some other friends – friend’s that I don’t make time to see quite as often. Trust and Obey. And the three of us, if Fear keeps napping, WE are gonna open some gifts.

“Be still” and grow (because He said so).

Posted on October 7, 2019 by Be still

You know what you get when you take a perfectly good life, throw in a perfectly great husband, a couple perfectly awesome kids, a perfectly respectable career, perfectly incredible friends, and a small town community full of perfectly well-meaning people? If you’re anything like me (we’ll get to that later), you just might get a capital M.E.S.S. – that’s right, the hot kind.

I recently celebrated my thirty-fifth birthday feeling like the most-blessed, least got-it-together, happiest, most anxiety-ridden person I’ve ever known myself to be. You see, friend, by literally ALL THE STANDARDS, I’ve got it all. I can’t turn around without bumping face-first into a blessing. I’m safe, I’m healthy, I’m loved, I LOVE, and I’m saved. I’m here, and I’m good, but I feel like a complete whackadoodle of a mess, because someone (yep, I’m talking to YOU, God) dropped a bomb of a message on me when I least expected it. Thank you? I think?

Not the blast-you-into-a-million-pieces kind of bomb (thank you, Lord – that would call for a much more serious kind of story). More like one of those giant unicorn-shaped sparkly bath bombs your daughter drops in when you JUST sipped your wine and closed your eyes, the kind that splashes you up the nose, leaves you with a perfume headache, slippery feet, and an uncertain ring around the tub. I mean, that’s what I imagine those things do…I haven’t had a closed-eye-wine-bath since way before unicorn bath bombs were a thing.

Anyhow, here’s what He said:

“Be still and know that I am God.”

Psalm 46:10 NIV

Eight tiny words. Words that I knew by heart, suddenly SO LOUD. I heard it for the first time in the middle of the night, again the next day, and over and over AND OVER again for months. “Be still. Be still and know. Be still and know that I AM. Be still and know that I am God. Not you, hun. Me. I AM GOD, and I’ve got this. Let it go. Slow it down. BE. STILL.”

I mean…WHAT? “Of course I know you’re God,” I argued. I was grateful for that, always had been. His plan, not mine. He’s in control, not us. He’ll take care of us. Yes, I KNOW. But I wasn’t living like I knew. I was living like ALL THE THINGS were mine to do, mine to accomplish, mine to fight for, mine to make perfect, not His. Ouch. [Splash up the nose.]

There I am, fresh-haircut-deep in this life that any small town American girl could only dream of, I’m doing it. I have THE ACTUAL dream. And I’m drowning. I’m drowning in work, I’m drowning in missing socks, in unanswered texts, in unfinished Bible studies, in candy melted to the door of my new car, in wishing I could be a better wife/mom/daughter/sister/friend, in guilt for thinking this, and regret for not saying that, in desires for more and shame for how I could possibly feel that I’m entitled to ANYTHING more. I’m treading water holding two bowling balls and I. AM. GOING. DOWN.

I knew for certain when I heard it that I had to make some changes, but (control freaks unite) I wasn’t sure that I could. Life was GOOD. [Perfume headache.] I was fine. Never mind that my hair had started to fall out and I couldn’t catch a full breath on a weekday morning. I was FINE.

“Be still.” Wait. Who? ME? [Slippery feet.]

SO, here I sit, making one small move at a time [sitting stunned and disoriented in an uncertain (sparkly?) ring], waiting for the next clear message to come. I’m BAD at this, but I’m trying. I’m trying because now I know that believing something and actively living it are two completely different things. “Be still,” He said. “Be still.” And then a few weeks later, one more VERY loud, VERY clear word.

“WRITE.”

So bossy. So awesome. SO scary I’m still a little nauseous from encountering it. This could be a HOT MESS…but wait…hot messes are kinda my jam? “Be still. Trust me. ‘BE STILL and know that I am God.’ And WRITE.”

I’m inviting you into this story just in case you can relate, and if you can’t, maybe you’ll find it entertaining to watch a pre-midlife crisis go down, southern-smalltown-working-mama-style. It’s happening either way, and I can’t wait to see where it leads. We’re all gonna need that bath soon.

I'm Allison
Family girl, creator, lover of the 80s. Recovering workaholic and reformed people-pleaser. Certain that life begins at 35 (or whenever we wake up and realize we are laugh-lines-deep in blessings).