I’ve never really fancied myself a very helpful person. I know I’m not the first person you think of when you want a charity event chaired, a car wash Fundraiser staffed, or your dog fed when you leave town.

I doubt mine is the first name that pops up when you need a dozen cupcakes baked, but you might think of me when you need a dozen half-baked opinions. And, I know for a fact, that people reach out to me when they need to feel better about something dumb they’ve done. I can always be trusted to keep the bar low…

It’s become a ministry of sorts.  In addition to tattling on my own unnatural disasters and string of embarrassing family happenings, this blog has also provided me a unique opportunity to broadcast my viewpoint and opinions well beyond the scope of mere family and friends.

Not that any of the stuff I write about is earth-shatteringly original. It’s the stuff I’ve been yammering about for years. As my oldest daughter said one day shortly after I started writing and asked her if she was reading my blog, “Mom, I could lip-sync that blog. It’s your shtick. I grew up hearing that stuff!”

Okay…good point, But we gotta address the sass factor

The story about my third daughter and her friend, Bethanny, went viral last month. I noticed that just yesterday it was read in 52 countries.

The article contained a personal anecdote and a few of my views on bullying I’ve been sharing with my girlfriends over a glass of wine and a wheel of brie for years. I’m sure my besties are glad to finally see me in print, hoping that outlet might shut me up. (Probably not.) I loved all the feedback and commentary I received and it was beyond thrilling to feel like my little story touched people’s lives.

People wrote me from all over the world to tell me their heartbreakingly personal stories from their childhoods or their children’s. This was a topic that seemed to pierce hearts from one side of the globe to the other. I’ve told my own children for years, “no one escapes bullying.” If someone appears to escape it in their own life, it always seems to catch them somewhere down the road –  if they happen to love someone else. (A child or a grandchild, for example.) That’s just the way it goes.

On a lighter note, I wish I had a dollar for every person who has come out of the woodwork to tell me they’ve crashed one of their cars into another one of their family’s cars in their own driveway. I would be rich! But that’s okay, the solidarity has been compensatory enough.

Equally gratifying was the email I received the other day about my hickey post…

Apparently, there’s a lovely woman around my age running around in a state north of me right now with a hickey on her neck.

I’m privy to this information because of an email I received from a mutual friend of this woman’s and mine, asking me to send her a link to my blog post about the time I had a hickey on MY neck. The point, of course, was to offer this woman comfort in her time of embarrassment and public distress.

Always delighted to help a sister out in her time of mortification, I sent the link immediately. Apparently, when she read my story, she pulled herself together and wrapped a scarf around her neck. (I’m glad it’s still chilly up there where she lives and still warm in her marriage.)   If you do happen to run into her, don’t be a bully, she’s already embarrassed as it is.

Somehow it’s enough for me to know that my bar is low enough to bring comfort to some and high enough to inspire a few others.  Don’t look for me at that car wash next weekend, though, the only thing I’ll be waxing is philosophical.

A Ginger Snapped Prayer:

May God always allow us to keep the bar LOW on the stuff that doesn’t matter and HIGH on the stuff that does, and the wisdom to know the difference…