Made Over 1.

Driving home from church this morning I talked with my brother in law as I drove, listening to the previous night's escapades of catching up with old friends. Seems my brother in law called it a night earlier than the rest of them and I picked on him for being "a light weight". I even carried it on a little further and continued my insults, friendly picking and nothing out of the ordinary for our relationship. But his response was different then the usually bantering back he says, "This is how you talk when you just got out of church? oh you Catholic keeping up with the guilt and…"

Here is where I was interrupted, as I typed, by my father. Not wanting him to see that I was writing, for fear he would ask to read it, I stopped and "x'd" out.

I don't remember the rest of the conversation from the car very clearly for as you will read something far more serious happened that day. The point I was getting at, I think, was that how pathetically sinful I am and he assumed that church is supposed to make me saintly. I vowed to remember we are Christ's hands and His words. How can I accomplish what I am set out to do while picking and teasing? How I wished I could explain that "church is for sinners". Whatever it was that I was aiming to get across to myself, to him and to you is heavily overshadowed by the events of that day.

After church and after picking on my tough enough brother in law I was in a mood. I was in the kind of mood I think many poor women must get into. In church all around me, in the pews, under the pews and throughout the pews all I saw was clean, and it wasn't my fmaily. Within my own family I saw, ragged hems, worn knees, stained fronts, smelly shoes, messy hair, mismatched socks, used clothes, used purse, used books, sweaty hats, dusty lives, unclipped fingernails, and faded colors. I desired a clean, white, shiny, crisp t-shirt, I wanted a life make-over.

After church that day my parents treated us all to a new bakery along with our friends, we cleared out the shop of every morsel of sweet and frosted goodness they had. We sat in the grass in the back. We drank coffee, they all talked about life while I wished for a new one. After my eldest son broke a chair that I'd asked him not to sit in and we boxed the leftovers we chatted in the parking lot, "What are you doing later today?" Catherine asked. I replied, "Can you come over and give me a make over, a LIFE makeover?"

I went home and continued with my dragging my feet attitude. I called my sister, "I need a life make over!" No one seems to take me seriously, they think I am melodrammatic and carry on, but I don't say things like that unless I think I mean them. She asks what it is that I want and I flippently say " a clean white shirt…" and then she carries on with all sorts of ways to achieve this, visualize the shirt.

The thing is I don't have the time or money for what I am looking for and maybe I am looking for an illusion?

I fussed about the lack of housing possibilities, I cried as I put my baby down for a nap, feeling extremely sorry for myself. Later that day, in an attempt to bring some joy to the day, we took the kids to the beach for a picnic dinner. We hadn't even made it to the shoreline before we got a phone call, within an hour my husband was fatherless, my children grandpa-less. This was not the make over I was looking for.