MyLeslieNotebook

I was a six-year-old girl when the 1984 Olympics were on television. [Insert: these were the stone ages of TV. You watched ABC, CBS, NBC, or PBS because that's all that we had.] So when the Olympics were on, we watched that only, every night, for two weeks. And I could show you exactly where I was in the floor of my parents' den, on the brown carpet, glued  to the screen watching Mary Lou Retton compete. She was larger than life, even on my parents' 36-inch screen. I had been taking gymnastics for about a year, and to me she was IT. Always smiling, tons of energy, and seemed never to mis-step. I remember asking myself, "How does she do all that stuff? How does she handle it with all those people watching?" And when she won the gold medal, I distinctly remember thinking, "Yep. That's who I want to be." I poured myself into gymnastics, got the leotard (like every other self-respecting gymnast of the 1980s) and dreamed of standing, back arched and a...

My daughter Shelby is so very brave. She faces bigger kids and mountains and sickness like a champ. She has courage in the day time . But it starts to fade when the sun goes down. She has nightmares, scary thoughts, and struggles to fall asleep because she can't get frightening images out of her mind. (You've been there. I have, too.) It happened with Shelby not too long ago. She was trying to fall asleep (not an easy task for such an adventurous five-year-old) and I had encouraged her to think about a movie as she closed her eyes. Twenty minutes later, I heard her pitiful cry. I walked into her room and asked her what was the matter. "I keep thinking about the scary part of Zootopia," she explained, "and I can't stop. I'm very afraid." The Mom in me knew just what to say: "Honey, Zootopia is not real. It's just a pretend story."  "I know, Mama," she cried, "but it seems real in my mind." And that...

My husband, kids, and I just returned from a two-week trip out west. Destination: Colorado.  Purpose: hiking.  We camped in a national park (Black Canyon of the Gunnison), the highest city in America (Leadville), and on one of the highest roads in the Rockies (Guanella Pass). [If you've not been to Colorado, you should go. Add these 3 places to your must-do list!!!] In the midst of our camping, we hiked two fourteen-ers. A 14er is a mountain whose peak is at least 14,000 feet above sea level. The trail length can range from four miles to many times that, but the end result is standing on what feels like the top of the world. We tackled Mount Sherman and Mount Bierstadt , two of the least difficult. (They are all hard. But some are REALLY hard. I blogged about a super hard one here .) The four or us began each mountain together. But, just as I suspected might happen, my seven-year-old son destroyed me in the ability to hike quickly uphill for hours. My husband was...

Did you know we were blueberry farmers? It's one of our family's many hobbies that sounded great at the start but takes much more sweat and work and time than we realized. Not only that, but my husband doesn't do anything half-heartedly: he started our blueberry patch with fifty [50!] bushes. We started getting teeny tiny fruit in April. We would walk through the patch every day or two and identify how well they were growing. We'd watch them carefully, excited for the first ripe berry. That happened about a week ago. It was so delicious. And just this week, the ripe blueberries started flowing like water. We call it the "blue tide." For the past three days we have spent at least two hours each morning picking.  They are BEAUTIFUL. One one branch, you'll have every color from white to green to pink to purple to blue. Sometimes they're so heavy with delicious fruit the branch will bend over to the ground. And just like this picture portrays, th...

I did something a month ago that I hope I never do again: I hurt my back. I didn't tweak it or pull something or twist funny. I HURT it. I couldn't lean forward at all . I had to seriously consider how I could grab the crock pot from the bottom shelf of the cabinet without screaming in pain. I couldn't lean over to kiss by kids in bed at night; they had to sit up and kiss me. It took me four minutes to get into bed the night I hurt it.  (Full confession: I hurt it jumping on the trampoline with my kids.)  That should not have  hurt  me like it did.    I thought I was strong. I thought I was fit.  But the truth is that I wasn't nearly as strong or fit as I thought. And e very motion  reminded me that there had been a weakness I didn't know about . It didn't just hurt my back. My legs hurt when I walked. My hips hurt when I sat. I shuffled when I walked and somehow I couldn't even pull the brake on my car when I needed to park; I didn't r...

I wish all of you could know my Shelby. She is a five-year-old, going on twenty. She is a diva blended with a tomboy topped with an artist who is also a practical joker, public speaker, and fashionista. Who is clumsy and bossy like her mother. And yesterday was one of her greatest moments.  We were at a playground and Shelby was one of about a dozen kids playing together. Some of the boys decided to play "humans and monsters," which of course is a game only a boy would create. These three boys, including my son, were the "monsters," made up of a skeleton, a vampire, and a zombie. They ran around yelling and howling like monsters, pretending to eat any of the "humans," mostly girls, who touched the ground. It was hilarious. Most all of the kids were having a blast. Except for Shelby. (Did I mention that she also marches to the beat of her own drummer?) I could tell by the look on her face that she was not amused or interested. She yelled to me, ...

My pastor gave me a book to read the other day. I love books and I have more than I will get to in the next five years, but when your pastor gives you a book and encourages you to read it, it moves to the top of the stack, right? So this is it: The Green Letters  by Miles Stanford. I don't want to say it was a good book. I don't want to say I enjoyed it. Because here's my honest assessment: it smacked me in the face with TRUTH. Tons of it. I wish you could see all the pages, with my underlining, smiley faces, exclamation marks, and arrows. It's a mess.  Chapter 16, entitled "Help," has rocked my world and been the focus of my mind ever since I read it. After just the first sentence, I wrote this: "Yikes. This is something I've never heard."  So what was this earth-shattering truth that you're dying to hear? [Warning: your jaw is about to hit the floor.] "For most of us, it is time to stop asking God for help. He didn't help...