sometimes, I throw things.

I have a thing for BBC.
You know, the one that airs all of those Dickens-esque miniseries' that manage to make tragedy and romance seem equally wonderful.
Shows like "Downton Abbey" and the miniseries "Pride and Prejudice" are filled to the brim with effortless elegance and plenty of good grammar. I admit, a few favorite friends and I have sat down to watch more than one episode of more than one series with more than one kind of carb. If we're honest, we mostly adore what we've seen.

The men in these types of things are always gentleman (at least in the public eye), and the women?
Well, they seem to float through life with straight backs, flawless skin, great hats, and of course, those accents. Sure, there's a fair amount of drama, but nothing that can't be tamed with a word uttered at a whisper.  It's all very romantic.
But, as giddy as I am to have BBC in the USA, it can be a little bit unnerving. And make me feel quite less than a lady.

Because sometimes,
I throw things.

When I'm mad, you won't find me whispering politely about it over a cup of tea. Something's probably soaring through the air.
And I don't cover my split ends with a great hat, or have any trace of a British accent, and the closest I get to a dinner party is cheeseburgers and sweet potato fries with the two little gentleman I nanny.

So, how do we measure a "lady" these days?
Because as much as I admire the seeming flawlessness of the early 20th-century version, I've met some lovely ladies who do not fit that description.  Not even close.

Thinking about this has stemmed from my own insecurities, really.  There are days when I don't like what I see and so I start wondering what everyone else is seeing.  I'm under no illusions that a person can't look straight through a smile and a coat of mascara.  I've done the seeing-through before and there's no doubt that there have been plenty who've seen through me.  So, since we're rarely fooling anybody, and never fooling God, what's to be done about it?

I met a lady once some time ago in Guatemala City, Guatemala.  A friend and I stayed in her home during a missions trip for only a little over a week,  but I remember noticing how rarely she spoke about herself.  She mentioned that she was a widow, her 34 year old husband having passed 6 months before from a heart attack.  So, one morning she woke up and found herself with a young son and an elderly mother-in- law to care for.  And then decided she'd take in two naive stranger-girls from America and treat them like family.  While we were there, it was home.
Is there a word for that?
Hospitable, selfless, kind maybe. But those kinds of things tend to not fit very neatly inside of our vocabulary.  Because God, he uses people to define what can't be found in Webster's book of words.

You won't find this woman next to the definition of "lady" in any dictionary, maybe not even in a telephone book.  But she's more a lady to me than one with a straight back and high collar.  Shoulders hunched from mourning can be the strongest there are.  And I could go on and on about this.

Is that it really?  Is the measure of a lady the amount of people at her dining room table rather than the length of it? Or the space between the doors opened to a couple of well-meaning girls from a world of wealth?

I think it's okay that we come unglued sometimes.  Because at the end of the day, if we throw a hairdryer across the room, does it take away from the Grace that's already measured our worth and counted the cost and enables us to do the above? No, thankfully it doesn't.
That goes for those of us who can sip our tea and whisper our madness too.