Random musings

I always knew in my mind, that after my kids start going to school fulltime - that I would go back to work.  Now, that it's been 9 years since I stepped in a corporate work environment, the idea of going back to work makes me uneasy - not because I don't want to work but because I feel as if I have lost confidence in my ability and that I don't have the drive to survive in a work environment. Looking back, I don't recognize the girl that stepped out of engineering college. I was ambitious, career minded and driven. Almost like a closet feminist, in a bad way.  Being a female in an engineering field, it always felt like women were in the minority and there were more men to compete with.  I looked down on women who chose to stay at home to look after kids. I thought that they had it easy and that the husband was taking care of the wife because she couldn't take care of herself. One of my first arguments with my husband before we got married was wh

It is hard to meet a person who likes being wrong, or welcomes instruction. In fact, I do not think I have met anyone who likes being corrected. We have heard of phrases like " eating humble pie ", which implies that the person was wrong and is being forced to be humble about it. It is not surprising that kids don't like being told that they are wrong about something, because we as parents don't like it either.  I am very sensitive to criticism; constructive or otherwise. I would rather do things perfectly than have to listen to how something was wrong or could have been done better. We like to pretend that we know what to do, when in reality - we are all really clueless. The Bible has a lot to say about having a teachable spirit.  Ecclesiastes 4:13 Better was a poor and wise youth than an old and foolish king who no longer knew how to take advice. Most of these verses have been written by Solomon, who was considered a great man of wisdom. Yet, he

It's been somewhat disheartening to see the condition of the Indian church. Many people have stopped coming to the church for various reasons. So, the small church has become smaller and the few members who have been carrying most of the load for the functioning of the church are losing hope. Admittedly, the church has issues - with trying to cater to the young people, the older people and the ones in-between. Trying to cater to the ones who speak Malayalam or don't, trying to mix the traditional with the contemporary, trying to get speakers to fill in the void for church leadership, trying to fix the unspoken issues among the members or deal with clashing personalities. For such a small group of people, it is ironic that we have so many issues.  We are a church with growing pains. Anytime a change is brought about, there is bound to be resistance. One such area is the music ministry. I've always watched the choir from a distance but over the past year, - I've

Daniel has been taking piano lessons for the past year. The other day, we were running late as usual. After all the rushing about trying to get there on time, we managed to make it. As I was sitting outside waiting for Daniel to get done with his lesson, a lady walked by me and said, " I'm sorry but we had a parent teacher conference with the piano teacher and we took an extra 3 minutes ." The reason she was apologizing was because they took time from what was supposed to be part of Daniel's piano lesson. I told her that it was totally fine. Before she walked away, she told me, " Next time, try to be 5 minutes early. " I was somewhat taken aback that her apology sounded more like a reprimand rather than an apology.  It wasn’t a big deal that they took 3 minutes of our time. It would have been better on her part to not say anything rather than a feeble apology. This got me thinking about apologies, and how it is so hard to apologize. Someti