Building a Marriage

My husband is home after his mission trip in Brazil and boy does he have stories to tell. The girls and I missed him so much. This is the longest we’ve been apart, EVER. Of course it got me thinking about how much I love him. They were in Brazil building a church brick by brick and it reminded me of one of the turning points in our relationship. The year I learned how to build a marriage.

Our second and third years were definitely the hardest. That first year we truly were just in that honeymoon period where you ignore the stuff that’s not working. The second year, the frustration set in. I didn’t realize it but going into marriage I had a lot of expectations. I wanted the perfect Christian marriage that I imagined so many others had. Most days we didn’t line up with those expectations and I didn’t like it one bit. My husband began to withdraw to a place where he was accepted just as he was and encouraged for doing things right, his work. The more he withdrew, the worse it got, and the vicious cycle continued. Thankfully, I would soon learn that the “perfect” marriage doesn’t exist. When things between us were at their worst, a good friend intervened and gave me a talking to that I’ll never forget.

Our friend used a great analogy. He said that it was as if I had these blueprints for the perfect marriage but the problem was my husband didn’t have access to them. Every time he put a brick in the wrong place so to speak, I was frustrated, disappointed, and just downright disrespectful. He said that building a marriage was like deciding together each day where we would lay a brick. That it was only at the end of our days that we would look back and see the beautiful one-of-a-kind marriage we had. Somehow that made sense to me.

I threw out the blueprints after that. I embraced the idea that our marriage wouldn’t look like anyone else’s as a good thing. We began to figure out what worked best for us. We started getting to know each other again. And most importantly, we put our trust in God to be the architect and builder. It took some time but we began to build something that by God’s grace would last. I think we’ve got some interesting and wonderful and unique design elements to our marriage.

Eight years later, I was delighted to see a similar analogy in the Beth Moore Bible study we just finished called Stepping Up. Remembering that Jesus was a carpenter by trade she says, “Keep in mind that Christ is a custom builder...Let Him tell you how He wants your house to look instead of the other way around. He alone has the blueprints.” Wow, I knew exactly what she was talking about.

The church they built in Brazil is a very basic, one room structure, but one day during a lunchtime devotion, they felt the Holy Spirit fall on that place. In that same way, I want the Holy Spirit to be our guide and work in us to build a marriage that honors and glorifies Him. That would be…well…perfect.

I Might Be Weird

Well, I'm back from visiting my sister and boy did I miss blogging! There are so many things to write about but I'm going to start with the dumbest. While I was there, I discovered something...I might be weird. I really think of myself as a pretty normal person but those late night girl talks after dealing with three high maintenance screaming little girls revealed some weird things about me. I've kept them mostly to myself but it's time to come clean...mostly out of a desire to find out if you might be weird too. Here it is.

DREAMS
I dream all through the night and I almost always remember my dreams. Sometimes I wake up tired because I felt like I didn't sleep at all. When I have nightmares, I always wake up on my back and have to actually turn on my side to be able to go back to sleep without continuing to have bad dreams. My most common bad dream is that I am driving a car at night on a windy road and the headlights keep going out. I can't see where I'm going and I can't stop the car. One of my favorite dreams is flying. This is not so weird, however, my other favorite dream is where I am stretching and I'm super flexible. In my dreams I can sometimes look in a mirror and decide I want my hair to be longer, my body to be thinner, I want to wear something different, etc. and make the change happen immediately. Just imagine what I can do! I have discovered that the often circulated idea that if you dream you're falling and you land, you will die is not true. I dreamt once that I fell off a building and then hit the sidewalk. In my dream it didn't hurt, I just couldn't move and I felt like I was pancake thin. And obviously I didn't die but maybe it did make me weird.

FOOD
I love to eat something dry and salty that really makes you thirsty and then having something cold and refreshing to drink. Just to do it. Somehow creating that desperate thirst and then satisfying it feels so good. I also like drinking water with no ice. That way I'm able to drink more of it and I don't get that brain freeze. I always eat peanut butter on my waffles. No butter, just peanut butter and then once the peanut butter gets all melty I put the syrup on. YUM! I like dipping my pizza in mustard but only when it's frozen or homemade. Somehow, when it's delivery (not DiGiorno), it's good enough on it's own.

THE REALLY WEIRD
I constantly trace things with my eyes. When I'm driving or riding in a car I am constantly tracing signs, the back window of the car in front of me, the billboards. All lines. When I watch TV I'm totally tuned into the program but I'm always tracing the letters of any words that appear on the screen, collars on shirts, jawlines, hairlines, everything. It's always best when it's something symmetrical. And it's always best if I can trace something in one continuous line. Again, I'm not thinking about it really while I'm doing it, it's just sort of something going on in the background all the time. When it occurs to me that I'm doing it I get really irritated and try to stop but before I know it, I'm doing it again. Does this mean I'm cuckoo? Maybe it means I'm a genius! No, probably cuckoo. I just discovered on this last long road trip that when I am actively listening to music, like singing along, I don't trace things.

So now that you're a little scared I have to ask. Am I weird or does anyone else do these things? What secret weirdness are you hiding? And don't feel bad, hey, maybe weird is the new normal.

Fear - Part 2

The last time my husband went out of town I had one of my battles with fear. I can't really put my finger on it but I had some weird dreams that last night before he came home and I woke up feeling...weird. I couldn't even remember what I dreamed but I just had that sense of foreboding. For some unknown reason, I started to be afraid that my husband was never coming home. I almost felt sick. I had such a hard time shaking that feeling. It was like other very realistic dreams I've had. Have you ever dreamt your husband cheated or that you had a big fight, and then woken up mad at him? Have you ever been snappy in the morning because, how dare he and he's like, "What did I do?" and you're like, "I dreamed that I saw you having dinner with your old girlfriend," and he's like, "What? You're mad at me because of something I did in a dream?" Anyway, it was kind of like that only I couldn't remember the dream and I was not mad, I was afraid. It would have been better if I could have remembered the dream because then I could just remind myself it wasn't real. But instead I was just left with this bad feeling.

I used to be the kind of person who would worry myself to death by thinking through every possible horrible scenario ahead of time. I used the excuse that this way, I'd be prepared for whatever happened. Then nothing would happen and I'd think about all that time I wasted. I remember one time specifically trying to do 2 Corinthians 10:5 which says,

We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.

I was trying to take captive these worrisome thoughts but I just kept thinking that it was better to "be prepared". Then the Lord spoke to my heart words that were as loud as any time I have ever had the Lord speak to me...My grace is sufficient for your unpreparedness. BAM! It smacked me right in the face. Just two short chapters later in 2 Corinthians 12: 9 is another verse.

But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore, I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me.

I'd heard that verse a thousand times and would try to meditate on it in times of trouble but for the first time the Lord spoke it into my heart in a very personal way. My grace is sufficient for your unpreparedness...my grace is sufficient for your failures as a parent...my grace is sufficient for your unemployment...my grace is sufficient for your sickness...and on and on.

I think one of my favorite passages in William P. Young's The Shack articulates this struggle with fear and the reason for it really well. In this particular passage, the main character, Mack, is having a conversation with Jesus about how people spend too much time in their minds in the future, mostly fear of the future. Jesus says, "You try and play God, imagining the evil that you fear becoming reality, and then you try and make plans and contingencies to avoid what you fear." Boy could I relate to that. And the reason? "Because you don't believe...To the degree that those fears have a place in your life, you neither believe I am good nor know deep in your heart that I love you. You sing about it; you talk about it, but you don't know it."

You know, I'm not afraid of my husband physically hurting me. I'm not afraid that he'll run off with another woman tomorrow. I'm not afraid he'll gamble away our paycheck each month. Why? Because I know him. Now he's not perfect and we're certainly not immune to these things but I think you get my point. I'm not afraid because I know him better than I know anybody. It's easy to trust him in these things each day because of my personal relationship with him, the time I've spent with him. And so I got to thinking...maybe this is my problem. Maybe I have fear because I don't know God. Not the way I want to know Him. Not as well as I know Jeff. I know God loves me but maybe I don't really know how much He loves me. Knowledge may not equal depth...but in some sense I think it does equal trust. And I want to trust God completely, without fear. Now don't get me wrong, I'm still going to set the alarm, check the kids before going to bed, and pray. But I'm going to try to remember that God is present in the reality of today, not my imaginations of tomorrow. And that His grace is sufficient, period.

30-Something and Lovin' It!

A friend of mine just turned 30 this past Saturday and she wasn't exactly excited. So...this is for all my young friends out there turning 30 and dreading it. Girls, I don't get it. I was standing in line at my favorite store, Walmart, and saw a young actress on the front of a magazine and the headline was "When I turned 25 I had a quarterlife crisis." Huh? Is 25 considered old now? I looked forward to turning 30. Am I the only one? I was so foolish in my 20's that I saw 30 as a brand new start. I felt like I was finally a woman and not a girl. I felt mature for the first time. I felt like I finally knew something about life and the world we live in. Here are just a few things I've learned since turning 30.

1. People take me more seriously now that I'm 30.

2. I have been through enough to find out who my real friends are and now I can be pretty sure my friends are for life.

3. I have finished the "trial and error" twenties and now I know more about what I want and how to get it. I'm still dreaming but now I'm also doing.

4. I have experienced enough loss and heartache to appreciate life more and not take so much for granted.

5. I'm still cool but I no longer care whether or not other people think I am cool. :) And I'm still young but not near as stupid as I was.

6. I'm more certain of myself and less certain of myself. I'm more confident in some areas and some things I spoke so confidently of in my 20's I have since been humbled about which has been a good thing.

7. One of my mentors once told me that the longer you live, the more you trust God because you've seen him come through again and again and again. I think this is probably true. It seems to be so in their lives. Think about those older women you respect and admire. Is this true of them?

8. In Jewish writings, 30 is considered to be the age "worthy of leadership". The bible tells us specifically that Joseph was 30 years old when he entered Pharaoh's service and it is estimated that Jesus himself started his ministry at age 30. I figure if it's the best age for Jesus, maybe it's the best age, period. My older friend Nancy has a theory that we are all 30 in heaven because she says it is the perfect age.

Anyway ladies...I have to say that I didn't have children when I was 30 so maybe it was different. I did celebrate in style though. My wonderful husband arranged for some of my friends to surprise me. We rode around Nashville in a limo, visited some hot spots, I rode on the back of a Harley with a stranger, and I wore a tiara and a big pink boa the entire night. We spent the night in a hotel suite where my husband had 30 roses waiting.

It was a blast so I recommend fully embracing your 30's. I plan to for the 2 1/2 years I have left before 40. I'll have to get back to you on that one. I plan to celebrate even bigger for SURE! Any word on turning 40 from some of my more experienced friends out there?

Finally I'll leave you with this funny quote I found.

Turning 30 by Andy Rooney
This is a partial excerpt written by Andy Rooney from CBS 60 Minutes

Andy Rooney says: As I grow in age, I value women who are over 30 most of all. Here are just a few reasons why:

A woman over 30 will never wake you in the middle of the night to ask, "What are you thinking?". She doesn't care what you think.

If a woman over 30 doesn't want to watch the game, she doesn't sit around whining about it. She does something she wants to do. And, it's usually something more interesting.

A woman over 30 knows herself well enough to be assured in who she is, what she is, what she wants and from whom. Few women past the age of 30 give a damn what you might think about her or what she's doing.

Women over 30 are dignified. They seldom have a screaming match with you at the opera or in the middle of an expensive restaurant. Of course, if you deserve it, they won't hesitate to shoot you, if they think they can get away with it.

A woman over 30 has the self-assurance to introduce you to her women friends. A younger woman with a man will often ignore even her best friend because she doesn't trust the guy with other women. Women over 30 couldn't care less if you're attracted to her friends because she knows her friends won't betray her.

Once you get past a wrinkle or two, a woman over 30 is far sexier than her younger counterpart.

Older women are forthright and honest. They'll tell you right off if you are a jerk if you are acting like one! You don't ever have to wonder where you stand with her.

So let' hear it from my 30+ friends out there! What have you learned?

Back From The Beach And Needing Motivation

Well, we are back from the beach. It was pretty chilly except for two days where we actually got a little bit of sun. We had a great Easter with my mom and the girls and a good time overall except for one thing...putting on that bathing suit. Every year it's the same thing when I unveil the pasty whiteness. I'm disgusted. This year is particularly bad because I could only fit into one pair of shorts that I own and they were tight. My fat jeans are tight for crying out loud. Now, this is not me saying I'm a big fat whale. This is me saying I either have to lose weight or buy a new summer wardrobe. And I will NOT buy a new summer wardrobe.

I wrote an earlier post about an episode of PRIMETIME where some people lost weight because otherwise they faced the threat of their spandex photos being shown on national television. Jeff and I came up with a credible threat of our own and I lost the weight last year. I kept it off for about 3 months only to go on a couple of great vacations in the summer and send myself spiraling back into tight jeans. I also recently wrote a post on gluttony and while I have been less of a glutton on most days (not including of course my vacation on the beach...why is this always my excuse?), it hasn't been enough to lose weight.

So I was pondering this as Jeff and I walked down St. George Street in St. Augustine and Jeff had a great idea! What if this time, he could offer a credible reward? I couldn't imagine something he could offer that wouldn't be something I could give myself or be cost prohibitive. But he did! Now just to make it more fun I'm going to keep my reward a secret until I receive it but it's goooooood. So I have my motivation and I'm ready to go. I started yesterday with Slim Fast. Slim Fast is hard to do but it's very clear cut and I'm hoping to do it for two weeks in order to jump start the process. I'm going to have to really exercise this time as all my previous weight plus five extra pounds came back. I have eight weeks to undo as much damage as possible in order to get my reward. I do wish it was as easy to develop good eating habits as it is to go back to bad ones. I wish it was as easy to exercise as it is to stop. I wish broccoli tasted like chocolate cake. I wish, I wish, I wish.

Anyway, I'd love for you to share two things:

1. Your best diet/exercise tip for getting started and staying motivated.
2. Any scripture or quote that is inspiring and motivating towards this goal.

Please don't try to give me any of your leftover easter candy. Don't invite me to chik-fil-a for the next eight weeks. And if you catch me consuming a Starbucks peppermint mocha...feel free to give me that "look". Let me know if you have a weight loss goal in mind yourself. Memorial day weekend is eight weeks from now. Anyone want to join me on this quest?

Easter Antics

Well, another Easter has come and gone and it was definitely not without some antics. It all started on Saturday night. Before putting the girls to bed we had them sit their Easter baskets out so the bunny could fill them up. They went to bed with visions of chocolate eggs and marshmallow peeps dancing in their heads. After a night of March Madness, I was the last one up. A little after midnight, Jeff popped into the den and said, "We forgot to do the Easter baskets! Where's the stuff?" I thought of the near tragedy of the girls waking up and coming to the living room only to find empty baskets, the joy of the Easter bunny ended at the tender ages of 4 and 2. I'd like to say I forgot about the baskets because I was deeply meditating on the true meaning of Easter but the truth is that I have submitted for a couple of days now to the March Madness and after everyone else was asleep I sat down in the TV room with my computer and some headphones and finally caught up on LOST. This is what I was meditating on well into the night. Thankfully, Jeff was jolted out of a deep sleep with the reminder of the morning to come. I had to wake my mother to find out where the chocolate was. I had enlisted her help for the chocolate portion so that we could avoid melting on the way down to Florida. I suffered this tragedy as a child. My sister and I took our baskets to church when I was 5 or 6 so we could take them to Grandmother's with us and when we came back out to the car, those hollow bunnies with candy eyes were nothing but an inedible mess that coated everything in the baskets.

Anyway, we filled the baskets and went to bed and all was good and right in the world. The girls slept through the night and woke up cheerful and sweet. They enjoyed digging through their baskets, eating jelly beans for breakfast, and hunting for the eggs that the Easter bunny "hid" around the room in the most obvious of places.

Amazingly we were all up early enough to make it to the sunrise service on the beach. We dressed in sweats, packed up some blankets, poured some coffee and headed out. In St. Augustine you can drive onto the beach. It was a very well organized event. There were hundreds of people and the cars were directed by volunteers with orange lights to perfect rows on the wide beach. There was no wind and it was the warmest Easter morning I can remember in a long time. The service was wonderful, the sky was beautiful, and I was reminded of the significance in scripture of the sun and the son rising in the east....I was also reminded that the tide was coming in and our van was parked precariously close to the edge. Jeff ran back to move the van and was able to move it right next to an exit, much closer to where we were sitting. So when the service ended, we were one of the first ones off the beach and one of the first ones to arrive at The Oasis for breakfast. The Oasis is a great little bar/restaurant just off the beach that has great cheeseburgers. This was my first time to eat breakfast there. We weren't quite quick enough to get a table downstairs in the restaurant area so we ended up sitting upstairs at the bar. Yes, I had my two young children sitting on barstools at 8:00am on Easter morning. We were served breakfast by the bartender. Do you have visions of "Sweet Home Alabama"? It wasn't as bad as it sounds I swear. We had a great breakfast and a great morning all the way around. Basically, for the first half of the day we were batting a thousand. Our plans were to hang out back at the house until 2:00pm when we would take the girls to the clubhouse for a big Easter Egg Hunt.

That's where we had our first strikeout. We got all gussied up in our Walmart dresses (yep, Walmart) and emptied the Easter baskets so the girls could fill them up at the big hunt. When we got to the clubhouse we realized something wasn't quite right. There was a curious surplus of older people eating a quiet meal and a curious lack of screaming young children scrambling for eggs. Turns out, the big event was on Good Friday. Suddenly, my heart started pounding as I had visions of two small girls in pink dresses with empty baskets being drug kicking and screaming back to the house. Thankfully, the manager had a box of about 20 leftover eggs. I assume these were the eggs that were hidden a little too well and were left on the lawn to be discovered over the next couple of days. She let the girls grab them up and they were left thinking this was the easiest egg hunt in the history of the world. We played on the playground for a few minutes, and then headed to the cheesy beach shop to buy Big Sister some flip flops. So I'm thinking, "Wow, we spent an hour getting everybody dressed up and hair fixed just right to go buy flip flops at WINGS." Anyway, everyone was happy in the end. We had a great Honey Baked Ham for dinner, a great visit with some friends, and went to bed early.

With all the fun and craziness that comes with two little girls and any imaginary holiday character I think they are starting to get what it's all about. We did the Resurrection Eggs with them a couple of times at home and by the time we got to Florida, Annie was able to go through them with my mom and tell her the whole Easter story. The sunrise service was my favorite part of the day. There's something about that very literal sun rising that stirs your soul to the meaning of the literal SON rising. The sun rising in the east is such a significant picture all through scripture so I will leave you with Ezekiel 43:1-5 because it perfectly describes those moments on the beach with my family.

1 Then the man brought me to the gate facing east, 2 and I saw the glory of the God of Israel coming from the east. His voice was like the roar of rushing waters, and the land was radiant with his glory. 3 The vision I saw was like the vision I had seen when he ^[a] came to destroy the city and like the visions I had seen by the Kebar River, and I fell facedown. 4 The glory of the LORD entered the temple through the gate facing east. 5 Then the Spirit lifted me up and brought me into the inner court, and the glory of the LORD filled the temple.

Kids Say the Darndest Things

Kids say funny stuff all the time. I try to write the really memorable ones down in a journal for my girls but today just took the cake. Big Sister said so many funny things in the span of two hours my cheeks hurt from smiling. But first you need some background.

This past week we were riding in the van and listening to a kid's praise CD. We were listening to a song that went:

We fall down, we lay our crowns at the feet of Jesus
The greatness of mercy and love at the feet of Jesus
And we cry holy, holy, holy
We cry holy, holy, holy
We cry holy, holy, holy, is the Lamb

Okay, now if you read my earlier blog on forgetting lyrics you know I'm no expert but Big Sister heard me singing loudly and corrected me by saying, "No mom! It's hony, hony, hony." Yes, with an N. I tried to argue with her but she wasn't having it and all week she's been singing hony, hony, hony. Another thing that happened this week is that she's learning the ten commandments at school. This week she learned Don't commit adultery. So naturally, I asked her, "What does that mean?" Her answer, "It means that when a mommy and daddy are married that they always stay together and love each other and don't go apart." Well, I guess that was right in a sense...right for a 4 year old anyway. That brings me to today.

Today I took Big Sister to see The Music Man at The Coach's school. In the earlier part of the show, the main character, Marion, and her mother have a little spat. Big Sister looked at me and loudly whispered, "They are talking mad like me and you in the car when I said hony, hony, hony and you said holy, holy, holy. Remember when we were talking mad at each other?" Obviously, her perception of arguing is "talking mad". No comment. Anyway, at one point, I don't even know what they said on stage but she leaned over and said, "Did he say crap? I think he said crap." I didn't even know she knew the word crap. Later in the show when Harold Hill and Marion the Librarian met at the footbridge, Marion had changed into a white dress. Big Sister, in her loud whisper again, said, "Look! They're getting married!" About a minute later, when they parted ways, she exclaimed, "No! They can't go apart! That is adultery momma!" I mean, what do you do? I stifled a laugh and said, "SHHHH! It's okay." All throughout the show she initiated all the applause for each number, horse-laughed whenever something funny happened, and at the end turned to me with a head tilt and big smile and said, "I just LOVE happy endings." I just wanted to squeeze her. At the end of the show she wanted to go up front and tell all the actors hello, so I walked her up to the front. The actors were gathering on stage for some pictures. She was in awe of them and they were all very sweet to her. As we left the auditorium she said, "Mom, they all thought I was SOOOOO cute." I know, I have my work cut out for me, but attending the musical with her was such an experience and I can't wait to take her to another one.

On the way home, I asked her what her favorite part was. She said, "When they got married. And I know what your favorite part was mom. The kissing part. Because you and daddy kiss all the time." I just agreed. After all, there's no "talking mad" with her. And I think it's pretty great that she thinks momma and daddy are kissing all the time. As for the rest of it, I have no idea where she gets it. :)