Be Cinderella

I was standing in a check out, just a couple of days ago, purchasing a slightly fancy overcoat for an event I had coming up.

Says the sales clerk to me: "WOW you must be going somewhere fancy!"

My response: "Well, yes, I have a Ball in a couple of days."

Clerk: "What's a Ball?"

Me, holding in the comments my brain was telling me to make, lol, as maybe it's an honest question: "Like a Gala, a Dance, a Formal Get Together."

Clerk, in a very rude tone: "Oh, I thought that's what you meant. Only Rich People and Cinderella go to Balls and Galas..."

It took me by surprise, and I dropped the conversation then and there. This teen girl was making assumptions based on stereotypes she wasn't even old enough to fully understand yet. But, as I walked away, something hit me. I kind of am Cinderella. I have a wonderful job, a beautiful family, a husband who adores me. I have plenty of food on my table, can finally afford some of the more expensive luxuries in life. All of this is very, very true. What that young girl wasn't thinking about was, how did I get there...I read a very simple quote a couple of days ago that really struck me. "My life isn't anything I like expected it to be, but I am perfectly happy with that."

Very early years, I grew up in rural Washington County, PA. In a trailer park. I distinctly remember riding my pink bike with a white banana seat and streamers all over with a similarly-aged pack of heathens, lol. I really did walk a mile or so in all weathers to my bus stop. It was wonderful. We had VERY LITTLE but it was wonderful. Fast forward, divorced parents, abuse, family deaths from cancer, moving to and from more than 10 schools before I even reached High School, pregnant at 19 and in a foreign country, eventually a single mom in her early 20's of a little boy with my entire remaining family over 3,000 miles away with an ocean between, and as I sat in what they call "a room and kitchen" in Scotland (basically what it means a bedroom and a kitchen, thats it), keeping my perishable food items on an external window sill to keep cool (no fridge), washing my sons clothes in the bathtub (no washing machine) and brushing the carpets on my hands and knees with a stiff bristle brush (no vacuum) a generic can of baked beans in one hand and a couple of slices of bread in the other deciding if I was going to split it between myself and my son or give it all to him so he could go to bed with a full tummy, that I decided. NOTHING, good or bad in my past was going to define who I was, and NOTHING was going to stop me from raising myself, and my boy, out of poverty into something much better. WE deserved that. And so I worked. A LOT. I gained life experiences, I asked questions, I never said no. I changed my destiny. I WAS CINDERELLA.

I don't write any of this for sympathy or praise (in fact, those hard times did teach me to be a little *edit* a lot more thick-skinned. I don't like, or sometimes show, emotion like I should.) I write it for myself. As an affirmation that it's ok to buy the coat, lol.

I said a prayer for that young clerk as I left. I prayed that her heart and mind stay open. I prayed that her life be filled with love, laughter, and success. I prayed that she, too, would be Cinderella.

Life has taught me:

1. Try SO HARD to never judge a book by its cover, you never know where someone has come from.

2. Love, and more importantly, GIVE. Love and give with abandon, even when you feel you can't afford it, emotionally or financially, God will make sure that your sacrifice does not mean that you will go without. Trust that.

3. Work with passion, integrity, and honesty and you will succeed.

And, last and most important...

4. Buy the Coat, Wear the Shoes, Be Cinderella.