Sarah Joy Albrecht

Some things, although excruciating, really have nothing to do with us, but rather are for the growth and benefit of others.

Be strong and have faith.

Photo: Micah, age one, and Leah, newborn. When I set her in his lap, she started to cry. He firmly patted her on the head to comfort her… but that didn’t work too well. We had a “be gentle… like this” teaching moment, and they’ve been the best of friends ever since.

Same picture (flowers in my front yard, taken with my cell phone camera), different frames.

The dark, sleek frame would work in a modern, minimalist decor. The juxtaposition of the humble flowers, one fading, with the stark, white space matting might give the viewer pause for reflection about the deeper meaning in the picture. It would display nicely on a white, gray or crimson wall.

The lighter, pastel frame would be better suited for more of a country or shabby chic, softly painted room. The (ahem) “art work” in this setting is more of a background, mood-setting piece. Its composition is not as distinctive and certainly does less to capture attention.

Sometimes in our arguments, we frame our point in our mind’s eye to be like one of these photograph/frame combinations. Our opponent visualizes the point to be more like the other. Although the photo is the same, the perspective is not.

When we communicate, how often do we ask questions to better understand how our intended audience defines their terms? How often do we stop to consider the way they are processing knowledge – their profession, their experience, their learning style, their priorities? When we do these things, we get closer to understanding each other. We get closer to objective truth.

But, we don’t ask.

Screaming crescendos ensue when we have taken the objective truth and framed it to suit our own interests.

While it can be tedious work to deconstruct artwork that has been professionally frame by someone with years of experience in their technique, sometimes it’s necessary to do if you want to use the photograph in a new home with an incompatible style.

Relationship maintenance requires that we go through this tedious assumption frame-removal process from time to time, in order to understand someone’s point, to come to an amicable agreement. ‘Thinking the best of someone’ is a great frame-deconstruction tool.

When our perspective changes, our response changes.

When our response changes, our relationship changes.

Last night, my youngest child was gleefully playing with cups in the sink while the older children were clearing the table. My husband noticed another child pouring water from cups in the sink and scolded him for playing when he ought to be working. I said, “Honey, please consider that you might not understand what’s going on here. I asked him to get the cups from the other room. Some had water in them, and he was emptying the water into the sink.” My husband promptly apologized and thanked him for bringing in the cups.

I am thankful my husband listened to facts and changed his perspective and with it his response – scolding to thankfulness. He allowed his frame (child has tendency to get distracted into play world when asked to do chores) to be deconstructed, and he was able to get to the objective truth.

Not every conflict ends this way, but we can be thankful when they do.

The goals of trust and honesty in a loving relationship dictate that we do not intentionally spin facts to win favor, but humbly present them as they are.

Trust is built when we can we lay it all out on the table, and sort out information in a united way, asking questions and listening to the answers. Keep the truth in focus, and add a bit of each other’s perspective. Solutions are the result.

When we are afraid, it is easy to slant and hide facts. When we cannot trust, we let our perspective get in the way of the truth. Habitually assigning motives and holding our perspective more valuable than the object says a lot about a relationship. Screaming crescendos, quiet bitterness, or both, are the result.

There is no fear in love.

Frames courtesy of http://www.pictureframes.com/scripts/WebObjects/PictureFrames.woa/wa/Home. Simply upload a photo and then choose the wall color, matting and frame. Enjoy!

Elizabeth Hull from Binghamton, NY, is the winner! Congratulations!

She is a mom of four, ages ranging from 15 to two newborn twin daughters. Her husband both plays guitar and sings in the band Old Friends. Elizabeth occasionally lends them her vocal talent.

Elizabeth is currently on hiatus from her job as a nurse practitioner as she cares for her new babies. She recently decided to take up blogging and her debut posts at In Heaven, I Want to Be A Cowgirl are about the natural full-term homebirth of her twins!

(The best part of the monthly giveaways for me has been getting to know my readers!)

After the drawing this morning, I decided to share a “bonus” story about my passport and wallet — which were lost (and found) the night before my solo trip to meet Tom in Tokyo. Enjoy!

For the first time in three years, I went to a party.

Not a children’s party where parents helicopter playtime while standing against the wall and comparing whose child is the most “gifted” or has the worst case of Oppositional Defiant Disorder.

Not a “you-don’t-have-to-buy-anything … just-come-for-fun” bait and switch party.

Not a baby shower / horror birth story swap.

It was a real party.

Dinner was at an off-the-beaten-path Korean yakiniku 焼き肉 . The party – a combined birthday party for two of my friends, and two of their friends – was in an upper tatami room. (It was kinda sad to finally have an opportunity to wear my favorite satin heels, only to have to take them off at the entrance!)

The tables were traditional Japanese style, low to the ground, accompanied by elaborate green brocade cushions to kneel upon. Two grills were on embedded into each table, to cook plates of raw meat to preference – I like mine medium rare.

Daikon salad, sesame beef, and gyoza stuffed with kimchi and cheddar were served in hand thrown stoneware platters. Large glass pitchers of local, fresh, pulpy apple juice and Sapporo beer were refilled the moment they were emptied.

I drove Tom’s car for the first time. I thought it was best, being as he was singing merrily as we left the restaurant.

From there, we went to Big Echo, a karaoke place with private rooms. Ours was #13. All 20 of us sang every song as loudly as we could.

I wore a little black dress.

I drank foamy beer in a big thick sturdy glass mug.

I smoked a handful of cheap vanilla vending machine cigarettes.

I sang karaoke.

I smiled and laughed so much my cheeks hurt.

When we arrived home at midnight and, yes, my babysitter was paid handsomely for those extra 30 minutes, all of my children were still awake. I had to put them into bed myself, but it was so worth it.

Thankful for laughter. Thankful for friends. Thankful for babysitters. Thankful for a husband whom I can still have a superawesomefun time with, best friends even after 10 years of marriage.

“If you’re really hungry, you’ll eat scrapple,” said the older woman from our church, as she reached into a brown paper grocery bag. She pulled out a grayish brick of the cheap, Pennsylvania Dutch breakfast meat, made from pork scraps such as the feet and head meat, and set it on my mother’s counter top with a thud.

Twenty years later, I still cannot believe how my mother held it together while the woman, silver hair tightly knotted in a bun, pointer-finger extended, lectured her on frugal eating while my father was unemployed. The woman had lived through the Great Depression and had experience with stretching every last cent. She probably meant well. Her presentation, however, was very gruff and condescending.

As soon as the woman’s car left our driveway, my mom burst into tears. “I can’t help it that your dad lost his job!” My mom, one of strongest women I know, shook with sobs of profound hurt and anger. “People know you’re desperate and they just throw junk at you and then want a pat on the back for it,” she cried. “Six month ago, when I had your brother, that same woman brought over a beautiful, elaborate meal made with lots of love. Why can’t she put the same kind of thoughtfulness into this?”

I wrapped my arms around my mother’s neck and cried with her. The crazy way her thick, dark wavy hair stuck to my tear-streaked cheeks made us break into laughter. She pulled the strands of hair off of my face and smiled at me. “We are going to survive this,” she said with determination.

Gifted food like scrapple kept us fed and bags of very worn, two-decade-old hand-me-downs delivered in greenish-black garbage bags kept us clothed. Sometimes my mom would modify the clothes to make them fit or deconstruct them and use the fabric make something a little more stylish. (There’s a lot of extra fabric to be found in bell bottoms!) I am thankful for these provisions from the bottom of my heart. I also am thankful for my mom’s resourcefulness.

Enduring my father’s lingering unemployment taught me much about humility, thankfulness, frugality, and empathy. It also gave me a long time to think about giving and receiving.

This has been a year of hardship for many. As 2009 comes to an end, people will start to think about Christmas and suddenly realize for a little over month – from Black Friday through December 24th – that there are needy friends and neighbors who could use some help.

Sometimes it’s hard to give to others when you yourself have very little. That’s when it means the most.

Luke 21:1-4 And He looked up and saw the rich putting their gifts into the treasury. And He saw a poor widow putting in two small copper coins. And He said, “Truly I say to you, this poor widow put in more than all of them; for they all out of their surplus put into the offering; but she out of her poverty put in all that she had to live on.”

When my mom’s friend Marie (not her real name) was single, she was both my French tutor and swimming instructor. She fell in love with someone whose past included time spent in jail. A few years and a few children into their marriage, Marie’s husband worked odd jobs while he went to seminary. Times were tough for them.

One sunny summer day, Marie called my mom. She wanted to give us a beautiful set of dishes and some produce from her garden. I remember my mom shared with me what Marie had said to her on the phone. “I have an extra set of dishes someone gave me, and this food would spoil before we could use it all. Please stop by so I can give them to you. To keep them would be hoarding!”

In our old brown Suburban, with us kids sitting in the way back, so we’d bounce on every bump and slide on the around-the-corners, we drove up to Marie’s gray mobile home. It was accented with a brick red, makeshift painted wooden front porch that precariously rested on cinder blocks.

Marie ran out to greet us, smiling. She embraced my mom warmly. The dishes didn’t come in a garbage bag, but a brown paper bag that had been lovingly hand-decorated by Marie and her girls.

Marie gave from her heart, passing on the blessing, happily. There were no strings attached. Just love and a hug.

Do your gifts make people feel loved or judged?

Photo credit: Retirement by onlyalice via Flickr.

Beverages were in order after an hour of shoe-shopping with the girls tonight.

Yesterday, Leah started referring to her month-old footwear as her “stupid shoes”. I would have, too, if my little 17.0 size feet were being constricted in even smaller size 15.0 shoes!

Tags clipped and new, pink Hello Kitty sneakers comfortably in place, we walked a short distance to the grocery store.

With their enticing packaging and promising flavors descriptions, these two sodas were chosen for the coveted spot in my minty-green two-handled plastic JusCo shopping basket.

Studded with pink faux rhinestone lettering and a shiny zipper reminiscent of the Rolling Stones’ Sticky Fingers (perfectly placed along the perforation to “unzip” label for recycling, of course), on appearance alone, Suntory’s Love Mode Ginger Zero had me salivating like a Pavlov dog.

However, this “sweet and dry ginger ale” proved all bark and no bite. The flavor is overpoweringly diet-sweet and only jests of ginger – weaker than plain-old store brand ginger ale. After a few obligatory sips to be sure I really hated it, I put down the bottle.

If you’re looking for a bitter-sweet, pink Cadillac alternative, I highly recommend Itoen’s Sparkling Pink Ginger, which combines bold ginger with a hint of apple cider vinegar. The ginger-vinegar flavor is true to pink gari, the tsukemono served at sushi restaurants to refresh and cleanse the palate.

One of my favorite delights of living in another country is to experience other-world flavors created by familiar brands. As I think about it, there are rarely special flavors of soda available back home, and, while Coca-Cola has come a long way since Forty Barrels and Twenty Kegs, the folks back home will never know.

Sparkling Tea Royal is one of these delights. Although misspelled due to translation (there is no “V” sound in the Japanese alphabet), the “nable orange” is tartly recognizable upon first taste, followed the delicious roundness of tropical pineapple with a perfect black-tea finish.

Best of all is the understated carbonation in this drink that makes this beverage both a tea and a soda.

The combination is sort of what you’d expect if a bottle of delicately bubbled Gerolsteiner made love to an exquisitely flavored summer tea, blended so perfectly that consumers would argue over which parent their child resembled more.