The curtains in our bedroom are crumpled on the floor. The hardware gave way and shot slap out of the drywall. I tried to take it in stride, but standing there on a stool balancing one heavy-ended curtain rod while trying to get the other end to come out without scratching the ceiling, well. I cried a little. And clenched my fist tight like a toddler. Just one more thing not going right today.

I take close up photos of grass and plants and green living things because it helps me to remember to see. It is therapy to notice the beauty in the chaos of nature, to predict what happens next in the seasons even though each year it’s different, to believe in a God who holds everything in His hands.

I don’t like when things don’t go right mainly because I worship order and control a lot of the time. I want to do stuff right and to be right, not just as in having the right answer, but to have things go right by me. I put those curtains up in haste some time last year. And having them fall out of the wall is direct evidence of my domestic failure, like they’ve been waiting for me to have a bad day before they reveal their secrets about me.

I don’t really believe I’m a domestic failure. Not usually, anyway. But when the laundry piles and the baseboards stink and the curtains fall off the wall, the word failure comes to mind. I’ve circled around healing from my good girl ways for many years now, but there are still triggers that bring out the lies. And hearing them feels like finding a note from an ex-boyfriend. You aren’t attached to him anymore, but when you read the note suddenly you’re back there in college, standing in the middle of 15 years ago, feeling the sting of the break up. The feelings are real, but they are based on something that isn’t. Shadows. Remnants. Untruths. That’s what it’s like to hear a lie in your head.

We carry around those fragments of untruth with us everyday. And when things happen all in a row, it dislodges the crazy and even though we know the truth, the lie feels more true at the time. We have to choose what we’ll believe, then. It doesn’t feel very romantic or mystical to say it that way, choose what you’ll believe. But I do believe we have a choice, even when it all goes wrong.

I recently talked a bit about that choice with the women from Full Circle in Canada. I can’t embed the video here, but here’s a peek.

Here is a link to the interview if you’d like to watch. (This is a link to the entire program. Interview begins at 6:41. Ish). Would love to hear from you this morning – can you identify any triggers in your life that cause your crazy to come out?

Today I’m writing at A Deeper Story. When I was in high school, that kind of blog would have scared and intimidated me. Deeper Story? Your deeper stories might be scandalous, heartbreaking, dark and brooding. I couldn’t relate with them, didn’t understand them, and generally wanted to pretend they didn’t exist. Back then, your deeper stories highlighted the fact that I didn’t think I had one. Continue reading at A Deeper Story and enter to win a book on the last stop on the blog tour…

One day, I decided to write a book. So I did and then, someone decided to publish it. (Don’t you love how easy that all sounds? Carry on). So we had this book and I realized how wonderful it was that I married a man who had the last name Freeman. Because isn’t that nice? Freeman? And my book is all about living free. How great, right?

As it turns out, I’m not the first Emily Freeman who decided to write a book that someone decided to publish. In fact, the first Emily Freeman has a lot of books. I have one book. And so, it was decided that in order to differenciate between her lot-of-books and my one book, I would need to include my middle initial on my book. The p was born.

Rewind twenty years to the bedroom my sister and I shared together. We had lots of pet peeves like walking barefooted on wood and burping in public and using spoons. We dislike spoons. Have I not mentioned that here before? No?

Well, you see, when you use a spoon on something for which a spoon was not meant, there leaves behind a thin trail of … film. Yes, film. (insert barf noise).

Like, for example, when you order a cake-type item at a restaurant. They clear the table of all dinner-type things (goodbye, my lovely fork!) and bring out the dreaded spoon. And you take your first cake-bite and behold and lo, there is film on your spoon.

Now before you get all hyper in the comments, yes we use spoons for cereal and soup. And also ice cream, although if we could manage it, we would use a fork for that too.

Anyhow, there are silly things that  still are used to be peevish to us, and one of them is spoons. Another? Words that begin with the letter P. You know the ones: pimple, peruse, perforated, perfunctory, other words that I’m not sure I want to say on my blog, purse, pregnant, period. You get the idea. Still, I don’t mind my middle name but it does begin with a P. And that is somewhat unfortunate, but that is why there’s a P on my book.

If you can guess what the P stands for, I’ll totally send you a book. With a P on it. Because it’s all I’ve got to give is why. Or if you’ve got a super strange and quirky thing like a dislike of spoons, I want to hear about that too, because that’s just fun.

The photos are from the book party my mom and sister hosted for me, for friends, the book (and the P) this weekend at her house. Visit her place to see more! I’ve also posted them all to Facebook.

Update :: Thanks for playing! The winners have been announced. But I’d still love to hear about those pet peeves because those? Are hilarious.