ironing

I HAAAAAAAAAAATE to iron!! In the past we have taken Matt's suits to the dry cleaners because I hate to iron so much. I am going to start ironing his work clothes and suits because we are trying to conserve $$, and for that reason, I don't mind. But I am still not ironing the kids or my clothes ;)

One year for my birthday I asked for a steamer, turns out that it is no more fun than ironing, and it doesn't get as many wrinkles out ;) But... it did work pretty good yesterday. Matt is taking pictures for our church directory. We have 2 backdrops, 1 is a huge white sheet (instead of buying the paper which we may do in the future) for casual pictures and 1 for the directory that Jen's dad let us borrow. Jen's dad has been SUCH a blessing to us!! He even took off early yesterday to come make sure Matt was ok and set up for his first night taking pictures! But I needed to go over yesterday and iron out the major wrinkles in the white sheet, luckily photoshop will take care of the rest of the wrinkles. Hey, I wonder if we could find a way to make that work on people - hee hee. You know, get dressed in the morning, then photoshop your makeup, hair, all the wrinkles out of your clothes... hmmm if only that would work :) Well, the steamer did work pretty good on the sheet, and it actually was pretty quick and easy; MUCH easier than if I would have had to iron it.

I read a verse this morning:
"I urge Euodia and Syntyche to IRON out their differences and make up. God doesn't want his children holding grudges." Philippians 4:2 The Message

If I were to evaluate myself, I would say that I generally get along well with most everyone. Sometimes people don't know how to take me when they first meet me (I don't know exactly why, it just seems that way to me) but once I get to know people, I almost always get along with them. Probably because I am a people pleaser, but I have a strong enough personality to stand up for my convictions. For example (in my opinion) I will do just about anything for anyone, but I will also let you know what I think when it is an important subject, but I also can listen very well and have NO problem keeping something private when it needs to be. Having said that... there are a FEW people that if I were to truly evaluate my heart... I know I hold a grudge. So when I read that verse this morning, I knew God was telling me to "iron", something I don't like to do in either sense of the word - ironing clothes or confrontation. To be honest, I have tried to iron out some of the differences before with some of these people, alone AND with other people; but nothing really changed. I think 1/2 of it is that I can't, nor should I try to, change them; and the differences that I have with them are issues from the past and also ongoing differences. The ongoing differences are not going to change, because it isn't a matter of opinion, it has to do with personality conflicts and the way those personalities take part or affect my family. SO...I am babbling here about trying to figure out how I can iron, steam, or photoshop those differences out :) But... I know that God doesn't want his children holding grudges, so I know that at least with one person I am going to have to try to iron out some differences, even though it is something that I don't look forward to doing.