As part of my grade for a critical thinking class I took a couple of semesters ago, I had to keep a journal and write about various assigned topics. It was nothing special, just a writing exercise. But they are snippets of me and rather than letting them get shuffled around and lost, I thought I would post some of them on here...

Write about a time in which you received a compliment that meant a lot to you.

Several years ago I worked as a Pediatric Dental Assistant. The other Assistant that I worked closely with in the practice was a spunky woman, twice my age named Tammy. What I learned to love the most about Tammy was the very thing most of our other co-workers had the hardest time accepting about her. Tammy had a knack for saying it how it was. Her social-filter, if you will, was set on 'low'. If you wanted a straight shooter, she was your Annie Oakley. I was a decade younger then, just freshly twenty years old and still figuring out how the world works. It was Tammy's bluntness that helped me figure it out faster.

I spent the better part of my childhood and teenage years being plagued with insecurity. I was shy and had a hard time accepting myself or accepting compliments from others with grace. I felt like if I thanked someone for their kind words it meant that I agreed with them about those positive things they had praised me for. And for a girl wracked with self-doubt that was a tall order.

One day, Tammy paid my meek, little, self a compliment. I don't even remember what it was about. It could have been "You have nice eyes." or "You did a good job with that patient." Whatever it was, in typical fashion, I started rejecting the compliment. "Oh, no I don't." or "It was no big deal." Tammy stopped me dead in my tracks and said "Do I look stupid to you?" I was blown away and completely caught off guard. "No." I stammered. "Well," she shot back "when someone pays you a compliment and you throw it back, it means you think that person is stupid. It means you don't value their opinion." Feeling the heat, I tried to backpedal and explain how it was because of my own insecurities that I had a hard time accepting compliments. Not because I didn't value the opinion of the person paying the compliment. "Well," she said "then you learn some manners and just say 'Thank you.' whether you agree or not!"

It has been years since we have worked together. Our lives have both changed and we both moved away from Georgia. But we still keep in touch and she will always be a dear friend to me. I'm thankful to have had a Tammy in my life in those 'figuring-it-out' years. One who cared about me enough to tell it like it was and put me in my place when I was wrong. Any time I receive a compliment now, whatever the reason, I smile a little smile, think of Tammy and politely say "Thank you."

We were waiting for Maryn and Brynna to be done with piano lessons. So Lulu and I went and got a Blizzard to share from Dairy Queen and chatted in the front seat of the car for a bit. Lauryn loves singing and making up her own songs, but gets shy anytime she realizes someone is listening and will clam up. My mom is always saying "I hope you are getting her on film!" in regards to capturing the sound of her voice and personality. So when she broke out in one of her impromptu songs, I thought I'd grab my camera and see if I could capture a bit of her. She was playing along with it and I was so excited I was getting it....and then my camera kept running out of memory! Dang! At least I was able to catch a snippet of my entertaining little Lulu Belle!

I stopped blogging when life got busy. I had another baby, I went back to work, I got behind on everything it seemed like, I moved, I got even further behind, I had another baby, I went back to school and on and on and on. I turned to Facebook to keep in touch with people and I will be totally honest, it was so much easier than writing. But I've found that easy isn't always best. When I would write before I was an open book. It wasn't the one sentence, you have X amount of characters, Reader's Digest version, window to a person's mind, motivation and soul. Those who read my blog I felt knew the true me and that was extremely gratifying in some weird way. I formed friendships with people who I had never even met in person or hadn't seen in years and yet we related. We understood one another.

I can't describe how I have felt lately...It's a mixture of a lot of things, but to be honest, I have felt lonely. The things in life that matter most are in tact and I am so grateful for that. I just feel like I am here and, with a few exceptions, people will occasionally smile but no one really cares to take the time to know who I am. It's been really hard to come to grips with because I came from a place where I felt so loved and so accepted. I asked Justin the other night "Am I approachable? Am I putting off this weird vibe that I am not recognizing?" I try to be friendly but after a year and a half of being here I still so often find myself so often on the outside looking in.

I think I have been thinking on that quite a bit because lately I have had this internal struggle with Facebook. I don't think it is bad or anything, but it felt to me just what it's name "Facebook" suggests. Something external. Something surface. Something face-deep. I am not trying to over think this but as I looked through my "Friends" list tonight, I thought about what it meant to be a friend. I thought about the people in my life who have been true friends to me. So many of the people on that "Friends" list didn't share memorable life experiences with me. They didn't contribute to who I am now. Some I felt like a weirdo commenting on their posts because they would never respond. I thought "Oh geez, am I that person they politely tolerate?" Some probably didn't think about me past a fleeting memory.... I had no feelings of meanness or malice towards them but I thought to myself "I feel so detached from the world right now...and I really just need to surround myself with those that I feel really care." So I clicked and clicked and clicked and before I knew it I had deleted almost 50 of those "Friends." My yearning is for my interactions with people to be genuine. For the people I share my life with to be more than intermittent voyeurs.