Mom.

1.  The twenty-seven fling boogie. 

My mother has a perceptual fear that I am going to become a hoarder.  Seriously.  It’s her favorite thing in the world to throw things away.  Sometimes she would “help” me clean my room by trying to throw everything away.  I would try to tell her I had a sentimental attachment to something, she would say “Oh, okay.  I’ll take a picture of it for you and you can hang it on your wall and look at it everyday” and proceed to throw said object away. 

Once she read a book that taught a horrific clever little game called the twenty-seven fling boogie, where you set the timer for fifteen minutes and by the time it dings, you have to throw twenty-seven things away.  She would bust into the room with a trash bag and timer and say we were going to play a game.  She tried to make it fun with music and laughter, but me and my little brother usually just cried as we were forced to say goodbye to our beloved broken crayons and dusty old shoes.  

 I made fun of her forever, but now that I have my own house, I have a strong desire to throw everything that’s even mildly cluttered away. 

2. Do not care what other people think about you.  If people talk about you, it’s because they have small minds. 

I cannot even count the times growing up that I would go to my mom in tears because of what someone had said about me.  Each time I did, she would respond in the best of ways.  

“How sad and boring their life must be, that they have to fill up their free time by talking about you.”  

She never taught me to retaliate, but rather to gracefully move on, giving them nothing else to say. 

She instilled this so much in me that now, at twenty-one, if someone is gossiping or talking bad about me, rather than being tempted to retaliate with my own gossip, my first thought is always, “what a boring life you must have.”  

3. To love books and words and writing. 

I owe my love of reading and writing to my mom.  She was my teacher growing up, and she did everything she could to cultivate my love of books and writing.  She would often write one sentence on a piece of paper and tell me to fill the rest of the paper with a story. 

When I was eight, I started to write poems and rhymes.  Every time I showed her, she would read them out loud at dinner and hang them on the refrigerator.  Any time I wrote something, she would stop what she was doing to tell me that I was a great writer and she loved my work.  I think she did this because she knew the impact that those words had on my eight year old heart would carry over to my twenty-one year old heart.

4. Don’t give pigs your pearls. 

This is one of the most important things my mom ever taught me.  There’s a verse in the Bible that says, “Do not give dogs what is sacred; do not throw your pearls to pigs.  If you do, they may trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you to pieces.” (Matthew 7:6)

She taught me early on that not everyone values the same things you do, and not everyone is trustworthy enough to be your close friend.  Love all, but don’t trust all.  Don’t share your secrets and dreams with someone who won’t appreciate them, for they will only disappoint and discourage you.  Don’t share the intimate parts of your life with just anyone, for those are pearls, and pearls are sacred.  Don’t waste your time sharing important things with those who will not appreciate you, for you are worth more than that. 

5.  “You’ve got brains in your head and feet in your shoes, you can steer yourself any direction you choose!”

My mom rarely let a day go by without telling me I could do anything I set my mind to.  As a child, whether I wanted to be a doctor, a firefighter, a princess, a singer, a movie star…she would tell me I could do it.  Not only that, but that I was going to be the best doctor/firefighter/princess/singer/movie star there ever was.  This empowered me in a way that only a mother’s words can, and now, whenever I feel discouraged by others about my dreams, in my heart I can always come back to this place:  my mom believes in me.