Top Sites Tuesday #45 – Story Time
What is your favorite Childhood Story? Maybe it’s a story you were told when you were little or maybe it’s a story you tell the kids now. Either way, this week it’s Story Time on Top Sites Tuesday!
My favorite childhood story would be from middle school.
There was the girl Shirley. She was big... not fat, just tall and muscular, not someone to mess with. Shirley had it out for me from the get-go.
She was consistently picking on me about my clothes or shoes. She wanted me to be miserable. She intimidated me something terrible.
At recess I loved playing tether-ball, but Shirley would always butt in line ahead of me and sometimes I never got to play. Other times, I would have to play against her and loose - facing further bullying from her.
Then one day she started heckling me in the cafeteria in front of my friends at lunch. I was at the breaking point. All I could think of was telling her off or throwing my tray at her. I thought terrible things toward her. She was so bad my friends were uncomfortable and feeling sorry for me. They were all significantly smaller than her (like me) and none of us stood up.
For some reason, I turned to her and simply said "I have no idea why you hate me so much, but I've always just wanted to be your friend. I would never treat you so bad!" I got up and my friends and I walked away. She looked dumb-founded.
That was my first lesson of peace over war. As much as I wanted nothing more that to harm her in some awful way, I made a simple statement, full of compassion - and she became a friend. There was no hiding from her in the hallways, no dreading playing tether-ball or lunch. We simply moved on and forgot everything mean that was passed from her to me.
Peace,
Trina
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There is a Plan
A few of you might remember a couple years back when I lost my nephew at two weeks old. I remember how heartbroken and helpless I felt.
Not being in control is not something I handle well. When my nephew passed there wasn't anything I could do to make the pain go away for my family - nothing that I could do that would really console my brother for his great loss. The funeral was truly awful. Baby funerals always are. The outpouring of support from family and friends, while impressive, was almost gruesome.
There were friends true and dear that supported us and eased our pain by sharing in the tragedy and opening their ears and hearts to us and simply listening. Last week, their grand baby passed - he was premature and after a week and a half, he went to heaven. It was horror all over again. The revisited tears of a mother and father who simply could not be comforted and grandparents and sisters that felt helpless in easing the pain.
The funeral was Friday, August 21. Same funeral Home. Same Procession. Same Graveyard. Literally next to my nephews grave.
I was ok - as ok as one can be at that sort of thing. The funeral was respectful and reverent. The procession was solemn. When we got to the grave site the first thing I saw was the teddy bear headstone that adorns my nephews final resting place. I was done.
I watched my dear friends suffer through the same pain they watched us suffer through and could only hope that I offered the same shoulder and support that they offered us. I though about how weird it was that their lost baby was laid to rest next to my family's baby.
The mother of the newly lost child came to me and said, "God must have had a plan to make you guys friends with my parents. To have our babies resting so close together, I know it's hard for you." To have her tell me how hard it must be for me was proof in her strength and will and showed how much she had grown from this tragedy. She comforted all of us in one simple statement. She eased our minds that she was at peace and without saying it reassured all of us that both babies were at peace.
Yes, I think God had a plan. I believe in something greater than us, not any specific thing, but I believe that there was a plan or a destiny that we were all suppose to be there for each other.
Later that evening she came to me again and said, "I'm going to have another baby... It's a girl I can feel her in my heart already." And there was that happy little girl I've known and watch grown up for years, standing in front of me, confiding in me, tested and true, strong in her faith and relationship with her husband. So peaceful.
