Category Archives: Thoughts and Inspiration

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It’s Only a Blanket

It’s Only a Blanket

© 2013 Mit Maras

Nearly every child has one at some time in their young lives. For some, it’s a favorite toy. For others, it may be a favorite pacifier. It’s that one item the child, without it, cannot function. It goes on every trip to the grocery store. It’s an active participant in every night’s bedtime routine. It’s that one comfort that could never get left behind, or the universe might actually quit spinning. For my son, it was a favorite blue blanket.

When he was a baby still learning to crawl, he made his way over to a bag of blankets I was donating to charity. And, like most kids do when they see a nice and neat folded pile of clothes, he proceeded to knock down the stack of blankets and pulled out this blue one. It became an extension of him from that moment on. Only once, when he was attending a daycare, did we ever forget it somewhere. It only took the meltdown from that one time for us to learn the lesson and never ever forget that blanket again. We could forget anything else we owned. But, that blanket was second on the list, only to the child himself.

One road trip to see my husband, out of state, took a serious detour when the cries from the backseat forced me to pull into a local store for thread and a needle. You see, the tags finally fell out of the seams into his hand. The meltdown that followed is impossible to fathom if you haven’t experienced it yourself. There just aren’t words that can describe the scene adequately.

Then, one fateful night in December 2012, the unthinkable happened.  The blanket was left at a local restaurant after dinner. It wasn’t until bedtime that we realized it was missing. My first call was to my Mom in complete disbelief and panic. The next call was immediately to the restaurant asking if it had been turned in to the lost and found. Had another family sat at our same table, the other mother would have certainly noticed the ragged state and immediately known the importance of the blanket and turned it in for safe keeping. The manager looked everywhere and came back with the devastating news that the blanket had not been found.

To help explain the seriousness of the importance of this blanket to you all, my Mom called back up there and offered a $100 reward for anyone who found the blanket. I was even tempted to go dumpster diving for that. LOL. The next day, however, we had to finally accept the reality that the blanket was forever gone.

Breaking the news to my son was very hard for me to do. After just a few tears, he quickly went to sleep with no notice of the absence. He took it much better than I would have ever thought possible. What I didn’t expect was how hard I would take the loss. No one took it harder than I did. The first thing I did after he fell asleep was stalk eBay until I found another exactly like it and immediately ordered it. Then, after bawling my eyes out until 2:30 in the morning, I finally drifted to sleep. Only to wake in the same depressed condition I had fallen asleep in.

I had plans for that blanket. There was a hole in one corner that still needed to be sewn back together. There had been quilting material carefully picked out for a day in the near future when he no longer needed it. It was going to be the centerpiece in the quilt to make and preserve for him until he one day had a child of his own. I literally mourned the blanket like it was a beloved family pet. I felt guilty over not fixing that hole sooner. I felt cheated out of the quilt and heritage I had planned for my child. And I had anger towards the heartless person who tossed something so precious into the garbage along with our left over scraps.

This went on for about two days when the good Lord stepped in. I had complained to God. I had begged God to let someone find it and call. There was plenty of bargaining, groveling, anger, and hurt cast in His direction over our loss. Yet, when He came to me, He came as the gentle-loving, protective Father that He is. He wasn’t angry that I was moping around over a blanket. He was understanding. He cared that it was important to me. He counts the hairs on my head, so of course He is concerned with the things that break my heart.

The gentleness that He spoke to my soul is still overwhelming for me. He knew exactly what to say, in one sentence, to snap me out of my selfish downward spiral. No one else could coax me out of my sadness. He simply reminded me this, “There are parents tonight in Newtown, Connecticut and all they have to hold tonight are the blankets. It’s only a blanket.”

You see, four days earlier, the gunman had entered Sandy Hook school in Newtown and killed all those children in their classrooms. Two days after that is when we lost the blanket. While I was crying and angry about missing out on the opportunity to pass a beloved item on to my son and future grandchild, those parents were mourning the loss of their children. I could picture mothers curled up in empty toddler beds, soaking blankets with their tears. And now, every night, all they would have to hold would be those blankets. I…still had my child to hold. The choice was easy. I couldn’t run down the hall fast enough to crawl in bed with my son and just hold him in my arms. I held him knowing some other mother was only getting to hold a blanket now.

Not once more did I mourn the missed opportunity with the blanket. Sure, I wish we still had it. But there was an immediate release of the anger and hurt. God reminded me, ever so gently, of the real importance. He knew I didn’t need a chewing out. He knew I wasn’t intending on being ungrateful to Him at all. He knew that He…and He alone…could speak to me in one sweet and heartfelt sentence and make me see. After all, “It’s only a blanket.”

© 2013 Mit Maras

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Gentle Giants

Gentle Giants

© 2013 Mit Maras

Any lover of Great Dane dogs will tell you their breed nickname of gentle giants is an accurate description. All you have to do is Google information for the dogs, and you will quickly read of their gentle and loving nature despite size. Pictures of the enormous dogs standing protective beside toddlers, half their size, are favorites of mine.

A somewhat secret wish of my husband was always to own one of these magnificent animals. I have gladly admired them from afar…living in someone else’s home. Not mine. Not until now.

Recently, my husband lead a fellow worker to Christ. Somewhere along that man’s search for God, the topic of Great Danes arose. He owned a pair of Great Danes that had just given birth to a dozen puppies. My husband shared with him his lifelong wish of owning one of the magnificent creatures, and that is where this new chapter of our lives began.

Oil field men are a special breed of men themselves. My husband’s biceps and shoulders are larger than some women’s thighs. He doesn’t tower others by any means, but his nickname Moose lends some insight into his size. The other guy, my Moose-of-a-husband, calls…massive! The joy it brings me to picture two rough and tough oil men sitting around talking about Jesus and puppies is simply immeasurable! They, themselves are gentle giants!

All this leading to my current journey….the backseat of a minivan. One very excited six year old sitting beside me, separated by a sleeping 9 week old Great Dane…on my favorite blanket. The two day trip that split up a 19 hour drive is one most normal people would have never made. And that was just to get there. Thank goodness we are not normal. With our trusty GPS guiding our way, back roads of the beautiful New Mexico frontier have become our playground. A new blanket of snow, highlighting an already perfect sculpture of God’s beauty poured out onto Earth, makes a backdrop of heavenly inspiration.

One of the highlights of my journey came at 5:30 this morning, when two gentle giants bonded on the floor of a hotel room. My son, exhausted from all of the excitement, slept through it all. I dozed in and out for about three hours. The times I was awake, I saw one of the gentlest giants of a man lost in pure bonding and love with a baby of a gentle giant breed. As they played in the predawn hours, a soft glow from the bathroom illuminated their playful silhouettes. There was something magical witnessing the eternal bonds of these two gentle giants.

There were no burdens of the world weighing heavy on his mind or his chest. There were no whines and cries from a puppy missing her canine family. There was a bonding of two spirits that’s as pure as the crisp white snow blanketing the ground around us. The simple question their playful banter at 5:30 in the morning left me with was….who….saved who?

 

© 2013 Mit Maras

 

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My Word for 2013

My Word for 2013

© Mit Maras 2013

My family doesn’t participate in making any New Year’s Resolutions. Instead, we each pick one word that is going to be our theme word for the entire year. That word represents a goal we each want to work towards obtaining. My husband got the idea from listening to the KLOVE radio station several years ago.

Compassion was my word for 2012. Anyone who knows me personally can tell you that I am the type that has always had more compassion for animals than for people. Two different times in my life I had taken one of those personality tests. Both times my lowest score was in compassion. I don’t think it was possible to score a zero on any section, but I came close both times.

Reflecting back on last year as a whole, I believe a fair report card most likely would result in a C in the compassion department. I grew in leaps and bounds in the area of having compassion for the less fortunate. Weak and lazy were how I had honestly always viewed this group of people. After all, we all have problems to deal with. If I had to deal with mine with no help, then they should suck it up and deal with theirs. That was always my mentality…until this past year. Purposefully taking on several roles shined new light on my negative and unfair views. I was able to help out the less fortunate in our area weekly. The more I got involved and helped, the less judgmental I found myself.

I don’t think I did quite so well with those that are the closest to me. I still hold them to the higher standard that they should just suck it up and do what needs to be done. I pray that knowing what I need to continue to work on will aid to make improvements in this area for years to come.

Choosing a word for 2013 has been, by far, my hardest. There were no less than 5 words that I battled back and forth with for the last several months of 2012. It was several weeks into 2013 that I finally settled on the one thing I wanted to work on more than anything this year. My word for 2013 is…Positive. I tend to side with the pessimists of the world on most topics. Again, anyone who has known me long can testify.

I want to be a more positive and supportive person. I want to look for the positive in all situations life throws at me this coming year. Equally as important, I want to allow nothing but positive to surround myself and my family. There are too many negative attacks on families and relationships in our time, and we do have control over what is allowed into our lives.

Every decision people make in our country is guaranteed two things. The first, is to make one group of people happy. The second, is to have people who disagree and they don’t mind at all voicing their displeasure…to everyone. There is only so much negativity we each can stand, and I had my fill last year. I have accepted the fact that I can’t change people. Nor can I force them to change. But I can and I am changing what I allow into my life, as well as into my family’s life. Of course,  bad things will happen this year. Bad things happen weekly around here these days. It is in the middle of the bad things that I will search for the positive. People who can not bring positive thoughts and actions this year, simply will not be allowed in our lives.

January was a huge adjustment in many ways for our family this year. Our family is struggling to redefine itself in the midst of a new job opportunity for my husband. There were many challenges. There were many victories. I spent my birthday this year trying to keep our house from flooding. Yet, in the middle of knee deep water, I was able to see the significance of all the rain. We live at the bottom of a slowly sloped neighborhood. When it rains heavily, our side yards become small rivers flowing from the back towards the front. Not only do we get our water, but the entire neighborhood’s water drains through our yard. This year’s downpour on my birthday, for me, represented a cleansing. It was a good hard rain that washed all the leaves clean from the backyard. Even when the hard rains ceased, the water continued to flow from the rest of the neighborhood. My lesson in all of this? If we don’t open up the floodgates and let it all out, we will drown in it. It doesn’t matter if it is our own mess. It doesn’t matter if the mess originates from others. What matters is if we choose to do nothing or if we choose to open the gates and let it float right past. Just because landscape dictates that our property gets dumped on by the entire neighborhood, doesn’t mean we have to accept that and let our house flood. We take action. We open up the gates and let their water rush right by our house.

We get rain all the time. I have gotten soaking wet many times trying to keep my house from flooding during downpours. Yet, I have never been able to see the positive lesson…until this year. I was prepared days ahead of time for the storm. I made preemptive strikes preventing my house from flooding. I did not wait to react to the storm. I met it head on with a game plan in place and came out with a positive life lesson. That is how I will live my 2013. I’d say I was off to a great start.

© Mit Maras 2013