messymiraculousmommy

Have you seen the ' what you ordered v/s what you got' memes? They are really funny, except, of course, if YOU paid good money to get a counterfeit product too. Some don't work/fit at all and some look exactly like the advertised product but are still far from what they are supposed to be. So, you click a photo, get a few likes and laughs out of it, return the product and hope to get your money back. Maybe you send out a prayer too. But you can't do the same with counterfeit experiences, now can you?! Time and energy once spent is gone forever. So I thought I'd enlist my collection of experiences that appear like prayer i.e. communicating with God but are far from the real deal. I had tried all of these many times over before I realized that what I was doing was just mimicking the real thing. In the process, I lost out on much time and many opportunities to enjoy a genuine communication with God. Maybe this list will save you some time. Or maybe you'd like...

You've done this in the first grade of school, haven't you? Write 5 sentences on MYSELF. Everyone knows what to write for the first three sentences: name, age and name of school. (All the spellings are on the school calendar cover ;) The next two are a little harder and that's where you gain or lose the marks: two original sentences about myself...hmnnn. We only seem to know who we are based on what others tell us. So we ask our parents and they tell us who they think we are. As we get older, more people start to tell us who we are and sometimes those names become louder than the one on your school calendar: smart/stupid, nerdy/sporty, hardworking/lazy, sweet/selfish. Everyone seems to know who I am better than I do. Then there labels we strive for: marks, a certain stream of education, a graduate in this or that, and finally a grand answer to the most popular question of all time: what do you do? (It's supposed to be the polite thing to ask after you'v...

I don't know about you, but I just HATE waiting. Growing up in era before android phones meant that every minute spent waiting at the bus stop, the fish market or the line for groceries meant less time to do what I wanted to do. Which was always a lot. I don't remember ever feeling bored, not even during long summer vacations at home. I remember often feeling like others are wasting my precious time by making me wait. Turns out, adulthood had a lot more waiting in store for me. Waiting for feedback on dissertation work, waiting to get one decent job to apply to, waiting to hear back from their HR department while all my batchmates had already got their salaries for many months, waiting to find a new home, etc. But the most painful of all was waiting to be a mother. In the 2006 movie 'Facing the Giants', one of the lead characters asks: How is it possible to miss someone so much even though they don't exist yet? I knew exactly what she meant and was...

As a matter of habit, I don't run. Not for races, not for trains, not after my children. A light jog once in a while is all I've been motivated to attempt, that too, in only a few great phases of my life. But this tiktok trending video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1eaOId9Zts reminded me of 2 times I actually ran really fast. Both times, I was in my teens and an unknown teenage boy expressed interest in me late in the evening, while I was leaving an institution and there was no one else around. I must have looked exactly like these animals did and those poor boys must be relieved they dodged a bullet by not dating me. After I finished laughing at myself, I reflected upon why I had scooted out of there without any explanation rather than just stand my ground and say 'No, thanks.' Maybe, it was because I had enough experience to know that when an older male (especially if he's a family friend) chooses to be alone with you, they do somethings really sca...

Like any other busy mommy, I find my brain wandering away for a little private picnic in the land of imagination every once in a while because a real picnic is nowhere on the horizon. On one such trip, it came up with a messymiraculousmommy's list of recommendations for new inventions: A self cleaning house: No need for dusters, brooms, pans, mops, scrubbers, washcloths when you have a self cleaning house. Whenever a stain or some dirt appears, that part of the house just eats it up. Three advantages: [a] the more dirt the house eats the stronger it gets [b] kids can enjoy being as messy as they wanna be [c] house is always clean without mommy doing anything! A mischief detector: When a mischievous plan is being cooked up, the mischief detector goes off, letting the mischief planner know that his or her game is up. Mommy doesn't even need to know about what she didn't need to handle. The super duper multi level planner: a computer t...