Wow! I'm humbled at the comments and new followers. This is great! I find it hard to believe that anyone cares what I have to say.
Today I will show a little restraint. I have one heck of a day, with lots of frustrating events, but I refuse to have 50% of my postings be a sob story. So I will try to see things in a positive light and how I've grown - just today.
I mentioned we're building a new home. Everyone asks if it's stressful, if it's causing marriage problems, etc. Everyone is surprised (almost to the point of disappointment) that the answer is no. We started the process back in April of 2007, and I have learned that nothing happens overnight. We're going about it in a way that we decided what we want, and we've saved until we could afford it. Now, three and a half years later, it's become something tangible, and it feels great. Delayed gratification. Who knew.
So today was a fun day at the house site. Today was the day they poured the front and back porches to the house. I was so excited to get home from a crappy day at the office and check out this progress. I pulled into the drive and invited the kids, one at a time, to walk up with me and inspect the work. Hubby wanted me to MMS him pictures so when it was Big Man's turn to look at the porch, he brought my BlackBerry with him. I instructed him with a firm, "Whatever you do, don't touch the concrete." I snapped the picture and as I was typing in Hubby's contact info, I heard Big Man's steps inside the front door. I realized very quickly that he had walked ACROSS THE WET CONCRETE!!! It had been poured early on in the day. so it was pretty well set, but OH YES, there were definitely indentations and scuffs where six of his size 5 shoes had been.
Oh boy was I was angry. I told him to go to the car (through the house, not the porch), and really tried to bite my tongue the rest of the night because I knew that he felt bad. My concern was that this is not the first time his lack of listening has caused problems.
You should have seen me gently patting the concrete around the mark, trying to smooth it out and hide the marks. I have an incredible respect for concrete workers now because nothing I did was going to undo these footprints.
So my positive view on the whole event is that someday, maybe as soon as we have our first visitor - but more likely the day he graduates high school, I will look at those footprints in an endearing way. As it cures, it's very likely that it will be less noticible, but in the moment it happened, it felt like it was the end of the world. And just a few hours later I'm considering how I can skillfully place welcome mats, furniture, and potted plants to cover it up. I fully expect to have a section of concrete with the kiddos' hand prints and the year, but I did not intend for it to a statement as someone enters my home.
I'm happy to report that Big Man and I had a 15 minute conversation before bedtime that brought us both to tears regarding love, listening, and how I will always stick up for him. God teaches us to forgive, and that kept going through my mind this evening. That's exactly what I'm going to do. I just hope Big Man can do the same thing for me when he recalls the mistakes I've made as his mom.
