skeletons & such

So Halloween is over! It was a HUGE disappointment for us this year, so much so that we're thinking of doing away with it altogether as we've been doing it, and just having a costume party with other people dedicated to a non-scary Halloween....sheesh! Out here they've, for some bizarre reason, decided to take scary Halloween to an entire new level. Not just cute scary spiders & bats, mind you. We've got to have impaled skeletons on spears, and haunted graveyards, and freaky ghost things like the ghost of Christmas future in a super-scary version of "A Christmas Carol." We're done. That mess is NOT appropriate for preschoolers in any way, shape or form.

We've been dedicated to doing Halloween, mostly because of a great lecture I heard in seminary about putting out a jack-o-lantern at your house at Halloween because it's a great way to reach out to the culture around you. I believe the argument was along the lines of, "Hey, it's the one time of year each and every one of the kiddos in your neighborhood will willingly come by your house. Show them that Christians can be friendly!" (I'm sure it was much more nuanced and theologically appropriate than that explanation, but work with me here...). So every Halloween we sit outside, and hand out candy to all our neighbors...except that we only maybe saw 4 neighbors out of about 300 kids, and just as we were packing up to go inside, a boy in a "scream" mask decided that it would be funny to run up to my sweet Miss K and scary-scream at her as loudly as he possibly could. NOT funny. She turned white as a sheet, and when her daddy picked her up, she burst into tears, and didn't stop crying for an hour!

We're done.

On another note, honey and I went to a party a few weeks ago for a game night. I should have known it might not be a perfect fit for me upon seeing the house - beautiful, and immaculate! Crazy immaculate....I threw something in a trash can at the beginning of the evening, and when I went to throw something in it later, the trash can was empty! When it came to game time, we wound up with a song game, where someone read a word, and teams had to go back & forth singing songs with that word in it. The first word was hot, and all I could think (and of course, say, because I have no filters): "Don'tcha wish your girlfriend was hot like me!" I got a few funny looks, and a few people said, "Is that a real song?" When it came our turn again, honey said "It's gettin' hot in herre!" More funny looks. "Real song?" Honey said, "Well, I did work for DISD..."

So bizarre! That night, I just kept thinking, "I really need to find a skeleton in a closet somewhere in this house! Everything is so perfect..." People didn't know Nelly songs, trash disappeared from trash cans, and everything was so amazingly in place and beautiful. I don't do well in the midst of perfection - it just tends to make me nervous; I need a little mess to function properly (I heard that AMEN from all of you who've been to my house!).

I find that's true with my relationships, too. Authenticity is a key for me. People who seem to have it all together, who are "practically perfect in every way" mystify me. I know I'm a mess...I live it every single day, and because I tend to wear my heart on my sleeve, anyone who's around me for longer than 5 minutes can pick up on it. So bring on the skeletons, girls - they'll always be welcome here, so long as you don't run screaming at my girlies on Halloween.