A "NO!" and the Day I Turned Into My Mother

There's one more type of flowers that I believe are in order at our house:  the "I'm Sorry Boys are Dumb" flowers. For years Zoe has dreamed of her wedding. She's going to marry a boy named Ben who goes to our church. She thinks about this at least once a week. Mainly when she sees a wedding dress or fancy shoes. Sometimes she freaks out about it.

This past week she's been 100% gung-ho about finally asking Ben to marry her. She said to me, "mom, you need to ask Ben if he'll marry me when we're adults and I'm okay if he says no."

Here's the thing about being a parent, you walk a very fine line of crushing their little spirit or setting their expectations too high. Because I don't have a crystal ball, I didn't try to talk some reality into her, I just kinda let it go as, "I'll see what I can do." I figured either she'd forget about it by Sunday or I'd just tell her I already asked his mom before I got her from Children's Church.

Unfortunately I couldn't forsee into Sunday at church where we'd run into Ben and his mom and Zoe would know I hadn't asked yet because church just got out. Here's the order of events:

Zoe remembered the important question.

She asked Ben if he'd marry her, full of hope and excitement.

Ben's eyes became the size of saucers.

He forcefully said, "NO!"

Zoe grabbed onto me, said he said "NO" and began to cry.

And cry.

And cry.

And attract a crowd.

And cry some more.

Then it became the ugly cry with gasping for breath and loud sobs.

Then I told her a story of my preschool life with Jeff. I basically had the same story.  I'm pretty sure I didn't cry that hard, I just kinda shrugged it off.  Although we're friends today and I can laugh at my 5 year old self. Then I told her that N was the perfect man God had for me. Maybe God has someone even more awesome then Ben and I pray He does because Ben should see how awesome she is. If he doesn't, he's not worth her tears!

Then I turned into my mother.

The end.