Navigating.

Every few days, there are moments in which I think to myself: "Man, I'd love to write about that!"  And just as quickly as I think it, it gets pushed aside because something else is more pressing.

Here I am, a year since my last post, finally writing.

So much has changed.
I have been challenged.
I have changed.

Marriage does that to you.  It should do that to you.

I suppose it began before we even were officially married.  We were two very independent adults, living very independent lives.  Suddenly we were forever committed to a life that looked very, and naively unexpectedly, different.

I say "naively unexpectedly" because I thought I knew.  I thought I knew Jeremy well enough to know his flaws, to know how to respond well, and how to protect myself from getting hurt, because everyone who loves gets hurt.  I thought I had experienced enough, helped enough people, and maybe even learned enough to have a marriage without problems with conflict or strife, because I knew how to communicate well and to mediate conflict resolution.  Or so I thought.

I find myself, over and over again, marveling at and mourning over my own pride.

Marriage is not easy.  Not even a little bit.  Sure, the companionship and love are nice.  I like having someone to do life with, to find new hobbies with, to have fun with.  I like knowing that I get to arrive home to the arms of my husband to rest at the end of my far-too-often 16-hour weekdays of work and classes.

I also know that there are days I would rather spend alone, but I don't have that option anymore.  I know there are times when I'd like to go on a little shopping spree, but I don't have a full-time income and sole control of my finances anymore.  There are even times when I'd really like red sauce on my pasta, but open a jar of alfredo sauce instead, because I know Jeremy doesn't like red sauce.  I know it's a small thing.

Marriage changes things.  It means I actually have to give up what I want.  Not just be willing to compromise (because compromise is easy - I still get part of what I want) but willing to completely set aside what I desire for what is best for us.  Us is very different than me, because us isn't just about me.  It's about us together.

And for us it means a lot of changing.  It means that we work our conflict all the way through even when it's the hardest thing to do.  It means loving the other person enough to stop being defensive.  It means not always being right, even when you know you're right. :)

So we continue to navigate this marriage thing.  We continue changing and growing.  Walking over the rocks and around the boulders, sometimes being the helping hand, and other times needing the hand.  Sometimes burying the rocks, and other times building an altar of remembrance and praise.

This isn't easy, but it was never meant to be.
By the grace of God we will continue navigating. :)

the soundtrack of our lives.

More often than not, the radio is turned off in my car.
A year ago, this certainly would not have been the case.  Ten years ago, I would have been upset if I even had to turn it down from the ear-drum shaking level at which I preferred it.

Sometimes now I just feel too full, too loud, too anxious to even have it on quietly.
My thoughts certainly need more space than music allows sometimes.

I've heard it said that the music we listen to is the soundtrack of our lives.

What we choose to listen to shows the pace and activity of our lives.

And I desire for my life to be paced well.  To be slow and steady and peaceful.  So my choice of music, when I do choose to listen to it, generally consists of acoustic folk music and quiet indie folk.  The music allows my mind the space to think, provides the backdrop for real processing, and slows me down enough to really see what I see and to more fully experience what I experience.

Sometimes isn't that what we need, deep down?  Just enough slowing down that we really enjoy the things we experience.

So I choose a soundtrack for my life that exemplifies the kind of life I desire to live: intentional, peaceful, simple, quiet, communal.

What is the soundtrack of your life?

It's all interwoven.

When I'm at work, my mind is completely focused on my job.
When I am at school, my mind is entirely committed to the things I am learning.
When I am with Jeremy, my mind and heart remain focused on only him and our relationship.

Sounds nice, right?

Each part of my life only affects that one part of my life.
Ideally, anyways.

About a month ago, I was forcefully confronted by the fact that life cannot possibly remain compartmentalized.  That what happens at work, affects school, affects Jeremy, affects... everything.

Because our lives are messy.
And it is not our job to clean them up.

As much as my perfectionistic, logical, type-A tendencies would like to convince me otherwise, it's okay for my life to be messy.  It's okay, and even, dare I say... good for it to stay that way.  I would love for the stories I hear at work to have no effect on my relationships.  But they do.  I have new awareness, even fears, that have developed because of the incredible brokenness of women who have experienced certain things.  I would love for what I learn in my classes to stay in the realm of counseling and theology and stay there as a skill set, rather than as a pervasive mindset shift that is inextricably linked to every area of my life.

But maybe God wants our lives to be messy.  Perhaps there's beauty in the scattered, in the integrated, in the diverse.

The relationships I had in college still affect me today.  The things I learned in high school still apply to me today.  The way I learned to "parent" at Shelterwood still influences the way I set boundaries and interact with people today.  And that's okay.

God certainly designed us to pursue him in all that we do.  Everything.  Not just in the time allotted for church and small group.  Not only in seminary classes.  But in our time at the gym, our sit-down at the dinner table, our friendships, and our shopping.  And in our every day trips to the grocery store.

I am reminded of the Old Testament Jewish law, where God commanded the people of Israel not to harvest all of their crops, but to leave the edges for the orphans and the widows.  God's heart is to provide for his creation, and mind should reflect that.  So at the grocery store.  Purposefully choose the food items that have a portion of the proceeds donated to an organization.  Put some quality food in the donation bin, not just the cheapest box of generic mac and cheese you can find.

I am reminded that our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit and we should take care of them.  So instead of buying chips and ice cream, I buy fresh produce and whole grain bread - something my body actually knows how to use and to process.

Every part of our lives is integrated, even as we walk day to day with a Christian worldview.
As we pursue what is important to the Lord.
Even as we walk through the aisles of the grocery store.

changes, churning, blessing.

A woman prophesied over me a few months ago.  It was my first experience with this and I most certainly had my doubts.  I anticipated that she would speak in broad generalities and have a demeanor something like that of a "psychic".  She blew all of my expectations out of the water.  She began speaking into the lives of some people I know, making specific references to details of their past that represent their most protected memories, encouraging them that God is using those things for good.  She could not possibly have known those intimate details on her own. I saw that the Lord was - maybe, just maybe - working and speaking through her.  But my guard was still up.

It was my turn.  She took my hands in hers and began praying over me.  She prayed over and spoke into areas of my life that only the Lord and my counselor know about.  My guard dropped.  The tears flowed.  And the Lord spoke through her.

Among other things, she spoke of a harvest that was coming after a long and hard dry season of doubt and sorrow (with more detail than I care to share with the public, but that confirmed she was not just making a general statement that could refer to anyone).  It seemed as if this "harvest" was coming too quickly, like I needed to stay in that place of hardship longer to keep learning, to do justice to the hard place before stepping into harvest time.  The Lord knew my thoughts, and this woman spoke them aloud as they were spinning through my head.  I was amazed at the knowledge of God.  Never before had I felt so understood, so known.

Harvest.

I feel it.

The ground is churning.  Things are changing, shifting, falling into place.

The dry season is over and growth visible, vivid, rapid.


God is working in more ways than I can even comprehend, but I am so blessed.

- I am officially accepted into the Master of Arts in Counseling program at Covenant Theological Seminary, starting full-time in August.

- I am finally shifting into a position at work that will bring a taste of normalcy to my schedule, giving me my weekends off again!  It may take a month or two for it to become a reality, but I wait in anticipation.

- God has so blessed me to have a wonderful man in my life.  One who I feel honored to be with, who desires the Lord over everything else, and who exceeds any expectations I have had.

- Just this week, he was offered an incredible job working for an esteemed company, that just happens to be located only a few miles from my apartment!

In very tangible ways, things are finally changing.  They seem to reflect the ways in which I have grown internally over the last few months.  It was so agonizing to feel as if things were changing inside, and yet my circumstances were not at all getting better, as I had no new direction or hope for change.  And then the Lord brings the harvest - a great manifestation of the waiting season I have been in.

Finally.
I am certainly blessed.

hiatus over.

You may have noticed that I haven't posted in a while.  If not, don't feel bad, I'm not offended.  But you may have wondered why.

Well, here it is.

Sometimes things are hard.  I'm not fine all the time.  Sometimes things can't be fixed with an easy quip at the end of a blog post (ex. "So we press on").  And sometimes we just need time.

Any and every irrational thought, mis-timed feeling, and anxious leaning, I have learned how to replace with the rational and reasonable.  I look at a hard situation and tell myself that "I should be able to make it to the other side of it because obviously it's going to end.  Obviously it won't last forever.  Let's be realistic here."

In doing so, I denied myself of emotion.  I denied myself of being honest about what I thought.  I deceived myself and everyone around me into thinking I was a certain kind of person.

It was all a lie.
Unintentional, of course.  But a lie nonetheless.

As I'm honest about what I think instead of replacing my thoughts with ones I see as "better", well, it has brought up a lot of doubts.  My faith has been shattered and is slowly piecing back together.  My thoughts are raw and I see myself as the dirty, wicked sinner I am.  Real.  I feel like I'm finally being real.  With myself and with others too.

I didn't even know that I wasn't being real before.  It certainly was not intentional, but the realization wrecked me.  And now I'm healing from it.

In that time of doubt, well, I had to deal ruthlessly with my own soul.  To lay the axe to the root of so many wrong foundations.

I made some choices that I regret and wasted time doing what I wanted.
But I finally gave up the last piece.  The piece of my own desires that I finally surrendered.
And dang, it wasn't easy.
It never is, is it?

But I am so confident that it was right.  Giving in to the God who has had control all along and always will.
Lord, help me, because as much as this is right, it's hard.

It's hard to blog about what God is doing in your life and what He is teaching you when you don't let yourself see it.  That's why I stopped for so long, and that's why I'm starting again.

self-preservation

Self-preservation.  We all do it; in fact, it's universal among almost all living organisms.

Pain is the major motivator for an individual to withdraw from a damaging situation, to protect a damaged body part while it heals, and to avoid similar experiences in the future.
Fear causes one to to seek safety and causes a release of adrenaline, which increases one's strength and heightens senses such as hearing, smell, and sight.
Figuratively, self-preservation regards the coping mechanisms one needs to prevent emotional trauma from distorting the mind.

We have all experienced these things in one way or another.  The pain of being made fun of in school, of being spanked as a child, so one withdraws; or fear of rollercoasters or of moving away from home so adrenaline gets one going.  The most prevalent in my life, however, has been the figurative kind of self-preservation; the kind that isn't necessarily physical, but more emotional.

I've been repeatedly placed in emotionally-charged situations, ones that initially brought me to tears nearly every waking hour (my first few weeks working at Shelterwood...).  I heard heartbreaking stories of lives shattered and innocence lost.  I got yelled at, disrespected, cussed out, and ignored repeatedly and frequently.  While the experience was incredible and I wouldn't trade it for the world (in fact, I've written several posts about my time there that talk about the positive aspects of the experience) it certainly changed me in good ways and bad.

The constant apparent rejection from the little sisters (though inside they just longed for love and acceptance..), well, I stopped caring a whole lot. I guess it was my way of protecting myself.  I couldn't take the hurt that came from it, so now I just don't care if someone likes me or not and I became apathetic to most emotional attachments.  I expect to be disappointed, so I set my expectations low.  I don't express how I really feel to anyone for fear that the next moment they will turn around and walk away.

The reason why I did not continue to cry the way I did initially during my time there was self-preservation.  I could not possibly process and respond in ways to the situations in which I was placed, so I shut off.  Nothing would affect me at all and I was "fine" until I would break down and cry for a day seemingly about something minor, and then I would be "fine" again.  The crying was my body's way of telling me -"Something is wrong.  STOP!  Process.  You need it."  But I just kept going because I felt like I had to.  I had to be fine because everything else felt like chaos and nobody around me was doing well, so I needed to pretend for the sake of everyone else.  So I was happy, I was fine, and according to anyone's perception around me, I was healthy.

These perspectives are skewed, I know, and, without a doubt, unhealthy.

All of that "shoving down" I did over the last two years?  Well, it's catching up with me.

And now begins the learning.  Learning to process things as they come.  Learning to actually have emotions and express them as they come.  Learning that it's okay to dislike things, to tell people that you care without the fear of being shut down, to expect to be cared for in return.  Learning that it's okay to feel hurt - that it's a real feeling that doesn't need to be shoved down and ignored.

Learning.  A constant state or so it seems, because we are never finished.  And somehow the learning that comes after is harder than the situations themselves.  Processing is painful, but so necessary.  Evaluating these things about myself was and is really hard.  I don't like learning that what I always thought was a strength at Shelterwood has now become my greatest weakness and that it has marred or even ended relationships that were good, simply because I didn't allow myself to connect to or express things the way I really was experiencing them.

Strengths become weaknesses so quickly, and this process of growth never ends.  So I keep going..

advent.

I asked someone what she thought Advent was about.
Her response?
"Eating a piece of chocolate every day for the month of December because stores sell calendars for it."

Okay.  I get it.  Christmas is entirely commercialized and sometimes it becomes more about maintaining traditions than about the real "reason for the season."  We put up our Christmas trees, complete with handmade ornaments from our childhood, or perhaps perfectly color-coordinated and themed ornaments to maintain the "pinterest" look of our homes.  We frame our windows with white lights.  We bake peppermint treats.  We wrap gifts with paper and bows.  We sing carols and drink hot chocolate.  We may even make a birthday cake for Jesus.

 And it is all in the name of tradition.

I don't mean to say that tradition is bad.  In fact, my family covers the entire month from Thanksgiving to Christmas with "every year we ___!"  There is a lot of value to creating special moments and special memories by doing things regularly that you enjoy together and that celebrate well.  Not only do we celebrate, but we celebrate for an entire month!  How much better could it get?

But in the bustle of garland and frosted window-panes, it becomes far too easy to forget.  The why of the season gets lost in the tradition, in the busy, and even in the beautiful.

Last Sunday began the season of Advent.  It's a season of the church calendar that comes around every year.  And every year I need a kick in the pants to remember it.  How easily do we forget what Christmas actually celebrates?

Advent celebrates the waiting.  The anticipation.  The expectancy.  And here we sit in our earthly, sinful mess, anticipating the restoration, the redemption that Christ brings.  Advent celebrates it - the already (Christ came!  He conquered sin and death!) and the not yet (He's coming again!  And ALL the earth will be redeemed!).

So we live in the already but not yet and anticipate the coming of Christ in this season.