ok, so yesterday, i sent my blog link to my dad. he called last night to figure out what that email was about, and if he follows the instructions i gave him, he could possible be reading my blog today. well, he has the time, he is retired. he is most likely the ONLY person who has the time to read the drivel i write AND he loves me, so that drivel might be kind of interesting to him.
so then i am laying in bed last night (or is is lying in bed? really, my dad spent a FORTUNE on my education and he is going to be so dissappointed that i don’t know that, AND now i have misspelled disappointed and that is just the icing on the coconut cake- he likes coconut cake so maybe that will distract him for a bit), and as i am laying/lying in bed, i think to myself , “self, what have you written in that blog that might upset your sweet daddy?” beside the whole grammar gaffes and such horrible spelling and sentence structure, what ELSE is in here that might be upsetting to one’s father?... which is most likely a lesson that i need to learn about what to write for an audience, but really people- i learned a lesson yesterday. MUST I LEARN ONE EVERYDAY? that is truly exhausting, YOU learn a lesson today and i will just go on blogging...
so dad i am here to tell you to skip the entry with the pretty flowers at the top because in that i refer to wetting myself because i was coughing a lot and you just don’t need to read that, and skip the “things i learned in college” because you paid a LOT of $$$$$$$$ to send me to college and you most likely are living under the delusion that i learned a LOT more than those three things.
so here is a story about my dad.
are you scared, dad? are you worried what this will be about? are you thinking maybe of giving me some money to keep me from writing about you? that might work, by the way... but as no cash has greased my palm yet today, on with the story...
it happened last year at this very time. my mom and dad built a new house and all the boxes were moved to the new house and they left town to go to the mountains, because packing all their stuff into the boxes and moving them from the other house was enough activity for them. my brother and sister and i devised a plan in which we spent THE WHOLE WEEK, EVERY WAKING MOMENT, AND EVEN SOME UNAWAKE MOMENTS unpacking their stuff and moving it in and organizing it and making it all pretty and nice and so that they had almost NOTHING to do upon their homecoming. now dad had hinted to us that it might be nice if we unpacked a few things, i had already volunteered to do the kitchen basics, so it wasn’t like invasion of privacy. anyway, we were SO excited to show them everything when they got home and see the surprise and relief on their faces, and their homecoming did not disappoint...
we were showing them around the house, and showing them where everything was (though a lot of it was labeled, you KNOW my love for the labels). i looked back at my dad at one point in the lengthy show and tell lecture and he had tears in his eyes. i was fairly sure that it wasn’t because he didn’t want his shirts hung next to his pants in the closet, so i said “daddy, you okay?” and he said these words that made the WHOLE WEEK of unpacking over a hundred boxes, running around town buying storage items, sweeping, cutting shelf paper for the 476 kitchen cabinets and drawers (my momma is a big fan of the “sheff papaer”), and making beds worth it...
“it’s too much, you did too much for us.”
aah, you see dad, where could i have learned that excessive, too much, kind of love? well, mister, i think it was from you. you did “too much” for us too. you gave and you gave and you gave of yourself, of your time, of your love, and since i am a teeny tine bit of a spoiled brat, dr. phil might say that you gave me a few too many material possessions, but let’s not quibble over that point.
if any one statement describes my life it is “too much”. i do too much for others sometimes, i eat too much, i pack too much into my schedule, i love too much, i talk too much, i read too much, i write too much, i organize too much, i spend too much money (adam has now screamed YES, RIGHT ON, PREACH IT SISTAH), and i am not ashamed of being TOO MUCH because sometimes too much of a good thing is wonderful (like your daddy’s love).
i am the girl who was given too much and now i must give that too much back.
and i think i know where my dad learned the too much style of parenting. for i look at the Bible and i see a perfect Savior hanging on a cross for MY sins and my only response is “it’s too much, you did too much for us”.
how can i not be too much, how can i not love too much, how can i not have too much to do, when i learned the lesson of too much from my heavenly and my earthly fathers. so stop telling me to be less and do less because it ain’t gonna happen people. i have made some kind of peace with my friend TOO MUCH. just get ready to write on my tombstone “she was too much and yet now she is even MORE”...
from everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded;
and from the one who has been entrusted with much,
much more will be asked.
luke 12:48
(ok total sidebar here, after typing the word MUCH that many times, it looks strange to me and like it isn’t spelled right... does that ever happen to you?)
here is hoping that you have too much today...