Not My Own

I confess I was THAT Mom today with the screaming kid in Target who was having a tantrum! Before my child rearing days, (when I thought I was going to be the best parent ever) I used to look at those parents with judging eyes. I assumed those kids screaming in Target were the ones who were very spoiled by their rotten parents. Oh how little I knew. In my attempts to be the best parent ever, I decided to teach my four year old about the "true spirit of Christmas"  by showing him the importance of giving to the poor. I did everything I could to prepare him. I don't normally buy my son a toy every time I am out shopping but since his Birthday was last month we had fun Birthday shopping with money he received from family. I guess he got too used to the idea of shopping for himself. Keeping this in mind, I told my son today we wouldn't be shopping for him and we needed to shop for others. In fact, I explained how today was special because we were shopping for some poor

I will never forget my honeymoon since it is where I learned the depth and beauty of true intimacy in the most unconventional way. My whole marriage started off pretty rough because during my wedding I was battling c-diff (google it) on top of an intestinal disease known as ulcerative colitis. Sometimes I get angry and bitter about how the disease tainted my wedding day and my honeymoon. I have been able to let some of that go because I realized I learned a lesson about vulnerability and intimacy on my honeymoon that most don't get to experience. And no I am not talking about in the bedroom… but in the bathroom where we are most vulnerable.    In the hammock closest to the bathroom of course. First, what you need to know about ulcerative colitis is that this disease is a giant literal pain in the ass. Basically, my immune system freaks out and makes my intestines attack themselves causing me to knock down the bathroom door before I crap my pants between 10-20 times a day. Th

When I was a kid, I always imagined my future family with a husband and two children of my own. When I physically tried to picture this in my mind the faces were somewhat blurry or faceless. This sounds weird, but it makes sense to me because I didn't know them yet. My brain couldn't fill in the detail of who they were, because they were just an idea. They were unknown characters in the upcoming story of my future. I always thought the best day of my life would be my wedding day. However, my favorite day ever was the day my husband asked me to marry him. This is because for the first time I could picture with certainty who the man by my side was going to be. I had wondered my whole life who I would marry. Our engagement brought an idea into a reality. Even now, I still catch myself staring at my husband thinking… Whoa! There is Andrew Tidball, and we are married . Maybe that’s weird, but we have known each other since our childhood so sometimes it feels like my past and fu

A few weeks ago my husband and I took the kids on a family outing to the Reptile Zoo in Ann Arbor. After parking the car in a fairly spacious parking lot, we sat there for a few minutes talking and eating. Suddenly, we heard a BAM and jerked forward. Thankfully, we were all still buckled in. Some guy backed into us with his fancy mustang denting our back door. We were annoyed and confused as to how he managed to back into us in such a large and unattended parking lot.  We tried to be nice since obviously the guy was very embarrassed. After a repeated apology, I told him not to worry about it because it's just life and this stuff happens. It's easy to get prideful in situations we don't understand how someone could possibly screw up. It's easy to think we know better or we would have done something differently. The truth is... we are human in desperate need of grace from one another. Yesterday, I saw great strides in my marriage all because we made a series of stupid