aren’t these lovely?! our aqua stone earrings (genuine amazonite) are the perfect shade and the perfect length.  that’s my darling friend jamie modeling for you.  and you can get them free today, just leave a note when you place any order–”free earring friday”.  you can shop here. yay for the weekend!!

a little while ago i received an email from a woman named caroline, who was, like david, born with two fingers.  i was immediately intrigued and wanted to hear more of her story.  she is filled with inspiration and insight.  after talking a bit, i asked her if she would be willing to be interviewed on the blog–and she agreed!

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caroline lives in the UK with her husband and two sweet daughters.  below you’ll find her thoughts and gain insight from her life experience.  leave a comment and let us know if anything has impact on you!

hi caroline!  you have a small hand–can you tell us about it?

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Yes I have. I was born with a little finger, another “finger”, and a thumb on my right hand. I am right-handed. I had several operations as a child when a very clever plastic surgeon made the middle finger into two fingers. He put the feeling nerve in one finger and the movement nerve in the other finger. I have ended up with a normal little finger and thumb, one finger that just “flops” and doesn’t really do anything, and another finger that does move, but only has one joint in it so only bends to 90 degrees

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how did having a small hand affect your development as a child?

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I am very fortunate not to have other disabilities, and to have parents that fiercely wanted me to live a normal life and be treated the same as everyone else, so I am not aware that it affected my development at all. I learned to pick things up and open doors with my feet and do most things with my left hand. I also had 2 periods in hospital, so that must have affected my schooling in some way. I feel fortunate having had this from birth and not from injury as I just naturally compensated. As a family we all accepted and compensated for one another. I don’t think my brothers every thought of me as disabled. My brother had an allergy to the pet rabbit we both shared and so I took on all of her care – she still belonged to both of us.

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was it hard having a physical difference as a teenager?

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I did find it hard as a teenager. Growing up, as a teenager, I did have a low self confidence and low self-acceptance, and although I longed to be married, assumed that no-one would want to marry me because of my hand. (My biology teacher was talking about genetics and described a tribe of hairy-eared men which died out “because who would want to marry a man with hairy ears” – this affected me very deeply at the time because my immediate teenage thought was – well my hand is far worse than having hairy ears. Of course I know now that my thinking was very wrong). I knew that my parents and brothers loved me and accepted me unconditionally, but it was not until I had some new youth workers at church who did the same that I started coming out of my shell and stop hiding so much. I discovered that people stared at my hand, more because I was very conscious of it and because I hid it a lot sometimes. As I grew older and started waving both my hands about while I was talking etc, people seemed to not notice any more (except when shaking hands or when I was writing cheques etc) and so I started becoming less conscious of it myself. I did sometimes have a hard time at school with other children staring or whispering about my hand just within my earshot, so my reaction was to always wear a top or jacket with large pockets so I could keep my hand hidden. This made the problem worse – where it had been only one or two people, it then became quite a few after that, but I didn’t connect it at the time. I have seen old school friends since and I remember myself as being very shy and retiring and hiding away – none of them remember me in that way at all! I also found out that I was apparently quite popular, but I never recognised that! It may explain why I was chosen to play the lead part in our end of school movie production even though I had never done any acting in my life before!!

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how have you overcome insecurities about having a physical difference?

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I am a Christian and that has helped me a lot. I know that God loves me and accepts me the way I am. I have been able to see positive sides of being different and having a small disability. It has been some years, and several people have been involved in helping me (most without realising it). When I was in my early twenties I had a boyfriend who happily held my right hand, and for some reason I had a problem with that (at the time I had not looked at my hand for several years and he brought me to the place where I was comfortable looking at it). One morning I was looking out of my window with the rain outside, feeling totally overwhelmed with my hand and all the things I could not do, and felt God speak to me very clearly and say that He has made me as I am. Who am I to say He got it wrong (it probably sounds quite strong, but in the place I was then, I needed strong words to get through to me).

I also had a very close friend who found that looking at different fingers made her feel sick. She looked at my hand and was fine, so that helped me a great deal.

When I had my twin daughters I had to face the fact that I found it impossible to ask for help – I think that in my mind I was admitting that I had a disability if I asked for help with anything, and I could not admit that to myself, let alone anyone else. I did accept help though and my parents and my church were absolutely amazing – my church formed a rota and cooked meals for our family for three months and my parents came and helped me every day and night for six months. This meant that I was able to nurse both my daughters myself and bond with them properly.

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how do most people react when they see your hand for the first time?

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As a child and teenager, some children and teenagers reacted with revulsion, and adults tended to react with pity. Now people tend to stare with a rather fierce or serious expression and then when they see that I have noticed they look away.

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ideally, how would you like people to react when they see your hand?

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I do understand that sometimes we all find that we are staring at something, without even realising. It would help me, if, when a person realised that they were staring at my hand, they looked me in the eye and smiled. To me, a stare can communicate a lack of acceptance and a smile communicates acceptance.

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how did you and your husband meet?

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My husband moved to the area where I was living and joined my church to be near his girlfriend at the time, who I was sharing a house with! We knew each other for 10 years before we started dating. We were very close friends for a long time – I called him my soul-mate because we understood each other. We both had things about us which meant that some people tended to put us on a pedestal (I had a very successful career) and we kept each other grounded. It was not until he moved away that we realised that we actually loved each other!!

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are there things that are physically difficult for you to do?

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There are many things that are physically difficult for me to do. I can only write for short periods of time as my hand gets tired and loses its strength. I am unable to chop or prepare food; shopping is difficult now I have children as I like to hold one of them in my good hand, but can only carry the shopping with my little finger. Doing up buttons, zippers and fasteners can be a struggle. Anything that needs a strong grip with a dominant hand is difficult or impossible for me. There are ways round most things though, I do my shopping on the internet, buy prepared food, type rather than write, dress my daughters in clothes with elasticated waists etc.

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what do your daughters say about your hand?

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Because I have now accepted my differences, they do too. They accept that I cannot lift them in the same way my husband can and they laugh with me when I drop things or can’t hold things properly. They accept others with differences because I just explain that they are like me, except that it’s their legs or face etc that is different. They call it my “funny hand” and love the fact that, because it is as thin as my tiny wrist, I can wear their bracelets

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what can we learn from your experience?

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I think that the main thing we can all learn is that we are all equal. We all have feelings, and although some of us are more different than others, we are basically the same. We all need to feel loved and accepted. I find that when people force their help on me, it is difficult to accept, but when they come beside me in friendship, accepting and showing love to me, I love being helped when needed. We have a group from our church who meet round at our house every other week. We all eat together and all prepare different parts of the meal. Jan, who arranges the food, always asks me to do something she knows I am able to do. She never makes a big thing of it or asks what I am able to do in front of others, she has never asked me to prepare any food that needs peeling or chopping. I love her for that!

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anything else we need to know?

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I know that once I was able to accept my hand as it is, I was far more able to live in a positive and fulfilling way. I cannot speak for others who have disabilities, most far more limiting than mine, but I can say that I would like people to understand that I am just like them – everyone is different in some way, no two people are absolutely alike (even my identical twin daughters have character differences). We all have things that limit us – for some it is emotional, for others, like me, it is physical. Our differences do not need to change the way we are accepted. I would like people to smile and show acceptance, because the hardest thing for me to deal with has been that my hand makes people feel ill or uncomfortable, or that they cannot accept me as a person. Pity is something I hate – I have a difference, that’s all, nothing to be pitied. I have many good things going for me too!!

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isn’t she amazing??

i find i need alone time.  time to think and journal and collect my thoughts.  or maybe to organize my thoughts.  coffee with a friend doesn’t count (since i’m not alone), date nights don’t count (but i love those, too!).

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for me, quality alone time might be a soak in the sub, a short nap, a drive alone to run an errand, or time to sit in my car and make a list while i look at the ocean.  after a few minutes of solitude i find i am energetic, ready to play with my boys and happier in general.

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how about you?  do you need you crave solitude?  how do you find time for it?

introducing our new friendship necklace.  a sterling rectangle (1″x1/2″) is adorned with two sweet flowers, strung on sterling chain with pearl detail.  so simple and organic.

and meaningful.  because as i’ve gotten older, i’ve realized that good friends are hard to come by.

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it seemed to easy to connect and hang out when i swam in high school or lived in the dorms during college.  now with kids and work and all kinds of activities, i find it harder to connect with my friends consistently. let alone make new friends.  it takes time to trust someone, doesn’t it?

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my friends are honest, kind, generous and patient with me.  it’s easy to pick up where we left off when we haven’t talked for six months.  and they understand when i have to cut coffee short to go pick up a sick kiddo from school.  and they tell me when i hurt their feelings–instead of letting distance and misunderstanding creep in.  what are the most important qualities of friendship to you?

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leave a comment and tell us what qualities of friendship are most important to you.  in a week, we’ll randomly choose two winners for the new friendship necklace!!

this weekend we went up to camp ocean pines in cambria with the college leadership from our church.  a beautiful camp, near darling shops and the beach.  we had a great time hanging out.

while the students were meeting and planning we passed time at the park and the beach and eating ice cream.  it was really rough.

we got to witness (i’d much rather watch than participate) their dye war.  basically two teams with red or blue dye go at it.  you can see the before and after shots above.  everyone was covered in dye.  so fun.

but the main reason we went was to hang out with daddy.  he’s a good daddy.

getting to experience camp is just the icing.  i love this last shot of my boys walking to the dining hall.  what did you do this weekend?

*oh and come back tomorrow for a new design.  i love love it!!

David hasn’t recorded any of his musical genius yet.  Maybe someday…

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three lucky people have some amazing (and encouraging) music coming their way!!

Every day I hope for little things, like a good parking spot or time to sip a second cup of coffee before we jet out the door.

But more than that I hope for big things. Big things that fill my heart and motivate me to pray.  Things like having the energy and courage to love my husband well and give my children a stable, happy childhood.

And then the even bigger things…

today i’m over (in)courage…come on over to read the rest of the post.  and happy friday!

* to wake up a little early so i’m not rushed (and i hopefully don’t yell, like i did yesterday )

* for a second cup of coffee (everyday’s a good day for that!!)

*to draw lots of superheros

*to get a new washer and dryer (yep, they are being delivered today!) our old set just died.  the washer and dryer.  on the same day. i didn’t cry too many tears since they were 15 years old and purchased with my ex-boyfriend.  long story.

*to add an extra breathing treatment in for good measure.  david has a nasty cough.

*for a second cup of coffee.  wait, i already said that–darn!

*to take some self portraits.  seriously inspired by this post.

*to enjoy the extra evening hours before it starts getting darker.

*for playing a few minutes of backyard baseball before dinner.

*to go to the dentist.  ugh.

*to go to back to school night.  matthias is in kindergarten and david is in second grade.  and we love love both of their teachers!!

*what does your day look like?

feeling a little blue today–nothing really wrong, just blah.  so i’m posting a picture that totally makes me smile.  i can’t remember how many pictures we had to take before we finally got one with all four sisters up in the air.  wait, are we jumping on count of three, or right after three?  or someone walking behind us–hello!?  photo shoot in process!  ahh, good times.  feeling better already.

so i thought maybe he had gained some weight.  he was stuck right around 20 pounds for.ev.er.  but on saturday morning during a trip to urgent care (for a rash that disappeared by the time the doctor came into the room, oh well!) david weighed in at 26 pounds.  no wonder my arm and back get so tired!  he can walk just fine, but getting him to walk in the right direction is the challenge.  way to go david–you are so big!!