Too sick to croak out your name...

​Just yesterday I was talking to one of my videographers who has a nine-month-old son, and he says his wife is obsessed with getting his son into the best schools and figuring out where to move and all these things, and I told him that I had just recently been thinking that one of my words of parental advice would be to relax a bit, as I’ve watched my children grow into adults, and neither of them are doing what we worked so hard for them to be able to do, and they are happy as can be.  We hauled Tyler around to several out-of-state colleges, several in-state colleges, and he didn’t even attend college.  Talia went to college, got a degree in communications, and we just KNEW she’d be doing marketing or political campaigns, and she’s now back in school to become a history teacher. 
 
I believe as parents, we should strive to teach our children about God, who He is, how He applies to their lives, make sure to instill as much character in our children as is humanly possible, and try to shield them from the world’s influences upon their choices as much as possible.  I can remember looking at my children at times, when they’d say or do something totally AGAINST what they’d been taught, and I’d think, “Who in the world is this???  This is NOT my child!”  And I think God has to do the exact same thing with us at times….wondering where that evil thought came from or those nasty words that were spoken out of our mouths, looking down at us and thinking, “You are not acting like my child, the one I’ve been teaching and training and believing in and building up.”  But the fact remains that even though our children disappoint us or break our hearts, they are still our children.  And aren’t you thankful that when you disappoint God, He doesn’t just give up on you and turn His back, but instead turns you back around to what He was teaching you and training you to be? 
 
All these Miss America memories popping up on my Facebook reminded me of the craziness of that time, and I’m not sure I’ve told the story of what it was like to go through getting a kid ready for something like that and being there with them.  When you are Miss Oklahoma or Miss Arkansas, they have an entire team of people (voice coach, interview coach, personal trainer, you name it) preparing you for the Miss America pageant.  When you are Miss West Virginia, you have your mom and a few wonderful volunteers who do their best to get you prepared interview-wise, practice and critique your talent with you, and help you shop for and pack for the biggest event of your life.  Talia had something like four or five HUGE suitcases to get all these gowns and cocktail dresses and workout wear and shoes out to Las Vegas.  Tom and I had two or three large suitcases just to get all the things we would need for a week as well.
 
Talia goes out a week or ten days before we leave, and mom and dad are meeting us in Vegas as they were coming from their place in Florida.  We had rented a condo a few blocks away from the hotel as we thought that would be a lot easier with food and things.  For some reason, our flight got delayed, so I have to message mom that she’s going to have to pick up the rental car, wait at the airport to pick up Talia’s friend that was coming also, and then just go ahead and go check into the condo.  I have very little time to tell her any of this, as they were on a plane, then we were on another plane, and I basically have to leave her a message.  After I get off the phone from leaving this message, I’m thinking, “I just dumped a huge responsibility on my 70-year-old mother,” thinking nothing of telling her to just get a car and find her way around Las Vegas!  If anyone could do it, it’s mom!  So once we arrive (many hours later), there are mom and dad sitting and waiting for us.  I ask how it went getting the car and getting to the condo, and she tells of this harrowing experience of trying to drive and find her way through this wild town, and her GPS dies on her.  She’s struggling to figure out the one-way streets and dad keeps saying, “Ask the woman!  Ask the woman!”  Talia’s friend died laughing as she told us how classy-never-gets-rattled Patty Vannest screams, “The woman is DEAD!”  By the time we arrived, it was 11:00 p.m. or so, and we are told that they finally dropped Talia’s friend at her hotel and arrived at the condo, only to be told that they couldn’t check in because they hadn’t rented it.  So they have been sitting at the airport on a bench for about six hours just people watching.
 
We get our luggage and take it to the car to load it.  We’d rented this economy car, of course, because why would we need something better or bigger?  No thought of how we’d get four people’s luggage to this condo.  Mom and dad still had their suitcases in the car because they hadn’t been able to check in, and their stuff took up almost the entire trunk.  Then here Tom and I come with three more large suitcases.  We have to put the suitcases in the back seat, and Tom and I sat on top of them.  Yes, there was about 3 feet of room left, so we’re bent in two, laughing hysterically because we’re all so tired.  We left mom driving, because by that time, she’d made about 20 trips around the town and knew her way.  I’m laughing even now, just remembering how ridiculous we must have looked, peeling ourselves apart and getting out of that tiny car at midnight to haul all this luggage into this place.
 
As the week progressed, it was a nerve-wracking deal, that’s for sure.  Each night was split up so the girls would do talent one night, onstage interview another night, evening gown one night and swimsuit one night.  After each night, you could meet with your girl for a few minutes before they took them off to wherever they were hiding them.  The girls didn’t have their cell phones, so you couldn’t talk throughout the day.  On Saturday, the day of the actual pageant, I get a strange call from a random number, and it is one of the Miss America chaperones that stayed with the girls.  She says, “I need you to come.  Talia has been in the emergency room all morning, and we have her in bed, and I can’t stay with her as I need to go be with the other girls for final rehearsal.  Can you come and sit with her?”  I assure her, of course, I could come.
 
I jump into the car, and mom drops me off at the hotel.  I race up to the room I’ve been told to go to, and there she lies, dead asleep in this hotel room.  I don’t try to wake her, but my thoughts are racing.  I’m praying and praying and thinking, “Lord, all these pageants she’s gone through to get to this night, this dream of hers, this dream that she felt like you were walking with her on, are you going to let her miss it?”  I’m thinking of what in the world would happen if Miss WV is just missing from the pageant?  Do they announce that she’s sick or do they just go to Miss Washington or whoever and sneak it through?  A couple hours goes by and she wakes up.  She can hardly move to sit up to use the restroom, and I just know we’re done.  She had been starting to get sick before she left, and we even got a Z-pack to take with her in case she came down with strep or something while there.  She had already started taking it, but turns out she had fainted during a practice and that’s what landed her in the ER. 
 
Long, long story short, she and I cried and agonized over what was going to happen.  Was she going to just miss it?  She croaks out, “I’ve just got to be able to say I’m Miss WV and then I can go collapse in a corner somewhere.  I can do it – I know I can!”  I’m not really buying it.  She looks like death warmed over and can’t even hardly sit up.  A doctor arrives about an hour and a half before the pageant is to start.  She convinces him she can do it, she can at least stand long enough to say her introduction, and he clears her to try it.  By this time, there is less than an hour before a LIVE TV show starts!  He takes her to go get ready (starting from no makeup, pajamas, eyes matted together), and I call mom to tell everyone that she’s been approved to be on the show. 
 
I ask mom just to grab my formal floor-length gown, the sequin belt that goes with it, describe the shoes, etc. and just get her, dad and Tom ready and bring me the clothes and I’ll change in the restroom outside of the event.  They had been waiting on bated breath, so they were dressed and ready.  She grabs my clothes and they head out the door.  They immediately get stuck in a traffic snarl because of an accident, and it’s FIVE MINUTES before the pageant begins when they arrive at the hotel.  She throws me a Walmart bag, and I rush to the casino bathroom to change.  When I open the bag, the belt she’s sent isn’t the sequin one, but another more casual one.  At this point, who cares?  I throw this dress on while trying to straddle a toilet, cram my jeans and things into the Walmart bag and have to enter the Miss America pageant while carrying a Walmart bag full of clothes.  They searched your bags when you went in because of cameras and things, and they sort of looked at me like…..”Uhhhh?”  I said, “It’s a long story,” grabbed my bag and rushed in as the music began and the show was on.  I am thinking to myself that it’s only Miss West Virginia’s mom that arrives to the Miss America pageant, having dressed out of a Walmart bag while in a casino bathroom stall…..
 
She was able to make it through the first dance and introductions, and they propped her against the wall as the rest of the pageant went on.  We knew she had not made Top 15 or they would have been really freaking out with her being sick, so it was a relief that she could just disappear after her piece was said – LOL.  And what an honor to represent West Virginia in ANY CAPACITY on a national stage – we are so proud of our State and its people, its heart and its work ethic! 
 
I tell this story so you can have a good laugh at my expense, but in the end of the day, we all know these pageants and these “honors” mean nothing in the scheme of anything that matters.   It is only who we are inside, where our heart and soul resides, that matters in the eternity we will all arrive at some day.  I pray you know who you are and Who you belong to!