Act Naturally

I love Buck Owens.

I also love Loretta Lynne.  My favorite Pandora Station is my Loretta Lynne station.  I crank it when I'm cleaning and belt out cheatin' songs like I MEAN it, man. 
"I'm here to tell you ya gotta lay offa my man if ya don't want to go to fist ciitttyyyyyyy!" 
I sing while I scrub.  I sing when my kids ask me to stop.  I sing when I feel anger.

I also love to bake.  I love cooking.  I've envisioned opening a country cooking restaurant... I've thought up the menu, the decor, the prices, the music in the background (Loretta, Johnny Cash, Buck Owens...) Not that it will ever come to pass.  It's just that I have a wild imagination.

I've always had a wild imagination.  I've never quite grown out of it.  I dream up characters and places and stories.  My kids beg to hear my stories (since my singing just doesn't quite DO it for them).

I have a passion for stories.  I tear through obituaries and family history.  I love movies with good endings and even better characters.

Because I LOVE people.

That's who I am.  I'm social.

I love talking and bantering and laughing.  I love creating something new.  I love working.  I LOVE teaching.

I have this THING for doing things myself.  I love making my own graham crackers and laundry soap and dish rags and hot pads and sock monkeys.

Speaking of which, I've also imagined making my living making sock monkeys that look like historical figures and then writing educational stories about them.  Someday I'll tell you all about the Hitler monkey I made...

I sometimes pretend I'm Amish.  I sometimes pretend it's 1940.  I sometimes pretend I look good with RED lipstick on.
I also sometimes pretend my house is clean.   If I work REALLY hard at it, I can pretend SO well that I relax enough to watch an old movie while my kids complain about how boring black and white movies are.

I plan on teaching them to appreciate them as they grow up because, as I said, I LOVE teaching.

I also love music.  I listen to it constantly.  I teach piano lessons and flute lessons.  And -now don't get excited, but -I've even written a few very ridiculous songs about my x-boyfriends.  I played them for Danny once.  We weren't dating.  We were barely even friends.  I knew it was safe to play my ridiculous songs for him because -HECK -he looked like a model.  Models don't date people in band.
I also knew Danny would go on with his modelesque life and forget all about me and my songs.  Besides all that, I was a fearless woman.  I wore thrift store clothing and embraced my quirky THINGS about me: my awkwardness, my inability to match, my love of nachoes and canned spinach (not together).
How was I to know that Danny wouldn't just go on with his life?
How was I to know that Danny wouldn't actually go anywhere without ME?
How was I to know that those songs drew him in like a moth to a flame?

Falling in love was less like falling and more like finding... finding my way home.

I love home. 
My home is in the country.  It's messy because I'm unforgivably right-brained.  It's happy because I'm happy.
It's full of treasures from the past... true to my nature, most every decoration in my home carries a story with it.
My great grandmother's kettle.
My grandpa's milk bottles from his old dairy business.
Aunt Minnie's crochet hot pad...

This is me.
This is me showing you me.

Heavenly Father is ready for me to show you me.  He's ready for me to TALK, to come out of hiding, to tell you about who I am and where I am and what my husband's name is.  He's ready for me to take this trial and knead it into ME so that it becomes something woven into my very being... the Truth Fruit it's producing will spring naturally from me: through my words and actions.
Will I blow up my facebook feed with anti porn quotes?  Probably not.  That's not something I'd naturally do.  Will I invite you to come sit in my kitchen anytime and visit with me about anything?  Probably.  That's what I do.
Addiction has become a natural part of me.
It's as much a part of me as my passion for people, my love of Grandpa's old dairy, and my imagination.  It's become part of my core.

I am not ashamed like I used to be.
I am not afraid like I used to be.

Addiction doesn't define me, but it is an important part of the elements that are shaping me.
Why hide it?

Heavenly Father is ready for me to TALK.  And should I be surprised?  I'm a professional talker.
I don't feel the tightness in my chest I used to feel.  I don't feel panicked about people KNOWING.

I feel natural.