Protecting the Sacred

We live in an era where many are considered Mini-Celebrities via their social media accounts.  I had a love/hate relationship with MySpace (remember that?!) and then Facebook when I first joined, and it has continued.  While I believe in living a transparent life, it has become so easy to overshare information.

Having an online existence can be fun and make you feel connected, but we must also safeguard moments that are sacred—meant just for us and our families.

Below I have listed my Top 5 Tips for posting to your favorite accounts (be it Instagram, Twitter or others) and protecting the sacred.  Or, not divulging too many details about yourself (and/or) your family’s private life.  (By the way, I have ideas to share because, like most, I have made mistakes.)

1.  Ask yourself, “What is my intention in posting this?”  My newsfeed has been full of summer vacation photos recently.  They bring a smile to my face, and I genuinely enjoy them.  Occasionally I think, “I’d love to visit that area, too!”

My family and I have thoroughly savored this season with a healthy mix of rest, recharge and play.  It’s perfectly natural to have the time of our lives doing something and want to share it with someone else.  Isn’t that one of the main points of living, after all?  Checking my intentions has helped me before tapping that magical “Post” button.

Am I wanting to communicate with close family and friends across the miles?  Am I showing off, or trying to Keep Up with the Joneses, if you will?  I must THINK (Is it True, Helpful, Inspiring, Necessary, Kind?) before listing.  Once something is in cyberspace, it’s there for-e-ver (The Sandlot, anyone?).

2.  When sharing photos of your children, other family members, or friends, ask for permission first.  This is something most of us take for granted.  Everybody has a Facebook account, after all.

This is one area I want to be better in.  Though I have strict privacy settings on familial announcements, and my children are only 5, 3 and 1-year old; I hope to get into the habit of asking them before divulging.  Another small, but significant, question that has helped: “Will this be something that embarrasses them when they are older?”

It can be argued that everything will embarrass them at a certain age, but I don’t want to add fuel to their adolescent fire.

3.  If you are making a big announcement, be sure that you have notified those closest to you first.  It is hurtful for a person to stumble across major news on your status update if they have not heard it directly from you.  Use your own discretion for this.

I have been in friendships where I found out more about the person via their social updates than my interactions with them.  Perhaps it’s the way the world is going, but I refuse to conform.  Plus, it’s awkward.

4.  It is possible to enjoy events and moments without sharing them with the world.  An acquaintance once joked, “If it’s not on Facebook, did it really happen?!”

We hosted a big princess party earlier this year for my oldest daughter who turned 3.  And there was nothing about it on our Facebook or Instagram accounts.  Did we like the party?  Yes, it was fabulous and everyone had a wonderful time.  Most importantly, our girl felt like a true princess that day!

We did not make a conscious decision to not share, but it simply did not happen.  I would argue that it was because we were present in the moment.  And too tired to share anything afterwards!

Some of the greatest times I have experienced with family and friends are not documented.  We were too busy savoring our time together.

5.  I am for sharing helpful information.  If there is a political candidate, idea or party you are especially passionate about, articles and ways to help are impactful.  However, oversharing also applies in this area.

I sometimes find myself rolling my eyes and thinking, “Yes, we all know how you feel,” as I mindlessly scroll on my phone.  Worst yet, during the 2016 Election, there were many I had to unfollow (on both sides of the aisle).  If you truly want to make a difference, get off of Facebook and go do something.  Call your senators, write a letter, organize a rally or peaceful protest… but please, stop telling the rest of us how we should feel.

And for the love of all that is good and holy, can we stop with the “Honk if you love Jesus,” Memes?  (That was a freebie.)

So that is my challenge to you.  Keep posting about the big and important moments in your lives, but not if it means ignoring the person next to you.

The Failure Block

I soared through academics throughout my elementary and middle school years, and seldom had to try hard to get straight A’s.  That is, until I met Geometry my freshman year of high school.  Naturally, it was an AP (Advanced Placement) class.  My teacher was Mr. Zuniga, a man in his mid-forties with a salt and pepper flat top.  Thin-framed, he wore glasses, slacks and a tie most days.

An intelligent man, he loved math and all things numbers.  He also loved the sound of his own voice.  It sounded factual, with an air of, “I’m God’s gift to integers.”  Something would happen when he began his lectures (which usually lasted the whole class period).  My mind was magically transported to a place where I knew and recognized nothing.  He literally sounded like he was speaking a foreign language.

This continued for the rest of the semester.  Each week, I stayed after school for tutoring (also led by him) at least three times.  I took notes diligently and missed nothing that came out of his mouth.  My grade fluctuated every marking period from passing to not, and it tormented me.  I didn’t get it.  The end of the year arrived and I eagerly anticipated what my final Geometry average was.

Progress report in hand, I glanced over all the numbers solely searching for one.  And there it was.  69.  My end of the year average is a 69?!  Indignant, I never understood why he didn’t give me the last point I needed.  “Can’t he see I’ve worked my tail off?!”  I fumed.

Ultimately, Mr. Zuniga and I ended on good terms.  I wrote him a reflective letter on how I was thankful for having been in his class, and the invaluable lessons I learned through failing.  Which, looking back, was quite mature for my 14-year-old self.  My attempt at turning the other cheek.

Thus began my mental block with math.  I would go on to take courses up through Pre-Calculus in high school and do fine, but things were never the same.  I loathed mathematics, and I would never be good at it.


The Christmas Piano Recital is an event my students and their parents look forward to all year.  It is also one of my highlights.  I get especially excited for my four and five-year-old students to play a song by memory in front of an audience for the very first time.  It is not an easy feat.

My students and I were all smiles at the end of our 2016 Christmas Piano Recital.

The fall semester of 2016 was going along like most, except that I now had three young children under the age of 5.  Between keeping up with all of them, my husband, and our home; teaching piano sometimes felt overwhelming.  Still, I powered through because I love my students and appreciate the extra income.

For the big show, we found a venue that already had a baby grand, and I jumped at the chance to book it!  Most years we find a recital hall and rent the instrument separately.  This was more cost efficient for our families and easier for us, too.

The afternoon of the performance arrived and everyone was looking and playing their best.  And then it happened.  One of my precious, most hardworking little girls choked at the piano.  I watched her from a small distance as she began to cry.  I went to sit next to her on the bench, solely for comfort, and placed my hand gently on her back.  Choking back tears, she finished her songs and finished them well.  But she was crushed, and my heart hurt for her.

The four students that followed also had trouble playing, even towards the beginning of their songs, with difficulty finding their hand positions—concepts we had covered time and time again—something they had never struggled with at recitals before.  I kept my composure on the outside, but on the inside, my heart raced.  5 of my 15 students had made major mistakes, and I was baffled as to why.

During these annual presentations, I often feel like a chicken with its head cut off.  I try my best to be a gracious hostess, doting piano teacher and mother (because I also teach my own children), and master of ceremonies.  It was not until the end of our time together that I realized there were stickers on keys C, D, E, F,  and G on the baby grand, exactly one octave lower than where Middle C is located.  I keep one sticker to mark Middle C on my piano for the younger children.  For all you non-musicians reading this, some of the students placed their hands where the stickers were on the instrument the day of the performance, instead of where they belonged.  Confusion ensued, and thus, the results.

I felt like a complete failure.  Nothing anyone said (or didn’t say) consoled me.  As an educator of many years, I have always felt that my students’ success was my success, and their failure, my failure.  I had overcommitted myself once again, and it was painfully apparent (to me).


As an ambitious firstborn, I did not like the idea of doing anything I wasn’t good at for a prolonged amount of time.  As I have grown older, and hopefully wiser, I realize that failure is a necessary part of life and an excellent teacher.

My mathematical mental block lasted for many years.  It remained so until the second semester of my senior year of college when I took Teaching Mathematics for Elementary School Students.  “How hard can it be?” I thought.  While it was certainly not Rocket Science, it was also not as easy as I anticipated.  I found myself attending every tutoring session offered, constantly practicing and reviewing my notes.  I would pass the class with a hard-earned high C.

Numbers and I are friends now.  Thanks to my husband’s influence, I enjoy creating a budget and sticking to it.  I have been contacted twice in the last couple of years to write for financial institutions (read those entries here and here) as a result of crunching figures.

I often see myself in my students, too.  I remember the little girl and adolescent that feared failure, and did her best to avoid it.  Recognizing it is inevitable has helped me fail forward—the idea that our perception and response to failure is key to success (a concept made popular by John C. Maxwell).

Remembering the little feet and eyes that follow closely behind has also inspired me to shift my perspective.  Here’s to fully embracing future inadequacies, learning from them and moving forward.

 

Preparing for the Inevitable

I originally thought about titling this post, “Preparing to Die,” but reconsidered.  (Think Inigo Montoya from The Princess Bride – anyone?)  The truth is, each one of us will pass on.  There is a 100% chance that we will not live to see forever on Earth.  While many fear death and spend most of their days avoiding it, I say it is imperative to think about it and prepare for it– not in a way that is morbid, but practical, considerate and wise.  Below you will find my Top 4 ways to make as clean an exit as possible, in no particular order (since none of us really knows how or when it will happen).

1.  Get out of Debt

My husband and I have been living debt-free for about 6 years now.  We have a mortgage, yes, but it is on a house that belongs to us.  For the story on how we got rid of roughly $14,000 worth of baggage our first couple of years of marriage, read my original entry here.

If you pass away and have a large amount of debt (or any), your spouse may be responsible for paying it off (depending on the situation, whether you co-signed on the credit, and state you live in).  If you are not married, the burden will fall to your estate.  In some cases, when the money owed is steep, heirs must sell items in order to pay it back.

If they are unable to cover it, the creditors are eventually forced to write it off.  Still, don’t do this to those you love.  Because nothing says I love you like “Here is $50,000 worth of credit I didn’t have time to take care of before kicking the bucket.” 

2.  Prepare a Will

There are a plethora of online sites that can help you create and print, or order a will.  We used legalzoom, and paid about $70.  I know people that have simply written something out on a sheet of paper before venturing on a big trip or new move.  Something is better than nothing.

In it you will dictate who inherits your home, belongings and assets.  My husband and I have had difficult discussions over “What if…?” situations before.  The most challenging was conversing over this worst-case scenario:  What if we died at the same time?  What would become of our children?  We have specified that in the official document.  We pray that it never comes to this, but you simply don’t know.

It is necessary to contact said parties and make sure all are in agreement with the arrangement, too.  These talks are not easy to have, but they are of utmost importance.  Other relevant questions deal with life support and emergency situations, and burial and cremation preferences.  Also, are you an organ donor, and does it specify that on your driver’s license?

We have what’s called a Last Will and Testament, and are at liberty to modify parts of it at anytime.  Every now and again we revisit it (like when we recently traveled abroad) to make sure our hopes and wishes are the same.  If they are not, we change it.

Emotions and tensions are at an all-time high when a loved one perishes.  I have heard horror stories over feelings that were hurt and falling-outs that occurred because there was not a will, and expectations were not made clear. This can happen even when there is one.

3.  Invest in Life Insurance

It is best to invest in a life insurance policy that is three times your annual salary.  First, you find a life insurance agent.  We found one through USAA, because it supplies many of our insurance and banking needs.  You apply for it and they send someone to your home to give you a physical.

If everything checks out fine, it takes about 6-8 weeks for documents to be filed and your insurance to begin.  I am thankful that my husband has taken care of this, should anything happen to him.  We will work on getting mine next.  The point of life insurance is to cover those you leave behind.  Funeral expenses can also be included in this.

4.  Make things right

I would argue that this is the most important.  Believe me when I say there is deep regret when it is too late.  Too late for that conversation, thank you, hug, kiss, word of encouragement, offer of forgiveness, etc.  So, have that awkward but needed talk.  Send that letter.  Make things right so that you are at peace when your loved ones pass, and they are at peace when you do.

There is no correct way to make such a grand exit, especially since most of us have no control over when or how it will occur.  Thinking of those we leave behind, their well-being and our legacy are the real treasures, not the material goods they will inherit.  As for me, I want to make sure things are right in my heart with the Lord, too.  (Feel free to comment or message me if you have questions about this.)

What are some steps you have taken to prepare for no longer being here one day?