now about the *other* thing that happened june 26...

Sigh. I've had this post sort of percolating in my head for a long time. Like since before I had a blog. But also, I hate getting into it. So in general, I avoid the drama. But then something bizarre happened. While my husband and I were celebrating the anniversary of our marriage, the Supreme Court decided to redefine the word. And then my facebook feed blew up with pretty colors and not-so-pretty words. The response from my Christian friends has been mixed. Some use the rainbow filter. Some warn of doomsday. Some walk the middle, with a "love, despite disagreement" kind of attitude. Do I have an opinion here? You betcha. Do you care? Probably not. I mean, really. At this point, it's been talked to death (and it's only been a few days!) and you kind of scroll through, filtering folks into "like me" and "not like me" boxes in your head, because it is really not worth the energy of processing everyone's opinion on the matter.

I figure the only people that I'm actively leading on this point are my children, two of whom currently believe marriage is not a gender-based thing as long as the prospective spouses are either a.) stuffed animals or b.) relatives. (So I clearly have work to do here.)

So this whole thing... Where do we stand? What do we do? I kind of hate to add to the noise... but I'm going to anyway, because I haven't seen much attention to this obvious point: maybe we spend some more energy on the things we can actually change.

So while a huge portion of the internet and the country is flipping the heck out over the implications of this, I want to ask those who love Jesus and are married...

How's your marriage doing?

See, here's the thing.  

Marriage was designed by God to show the image of Christ and his Church to a world that doesn't know him. And we, God's people who live in the US, have been doing a generally terrible job of it. I know the divorce statistics are really not as grim as the 50% number we've heard tossed around for a couple decades, but it's still not great, plus some of the decline is because people have lost faith in the institution as a whole and are opting out, choosing cohabitation instead. And even within marriages that last, how are we doing? There's so much energy this week (and in general) being spent freaking out about the federal government's definition of the word, but how much energy are we putting into the thing we can actually change? I don't know about you, but my ability to change anything on a national level is very, very small. I have a vote, which I happily exercise (despite the hassle of all the preschoolers in a voting booth.) But seriously? That's not much. But you know what I can do? I can pour a lot of energy into obeying God in my own marriage. In doing that, I can encourage  couples around me and show others the picture God had in mind, however imperfectly we do it. Will my marriage change the course of the nation? Nope. But can you imagine what would happen if followers of Jesus everywhere started obeying him in their marriages? That would have some effect. People would notice. The beautiful picture God created to show Himself to the world would be so much clearer. 

So... 

• Do you love your spouse?
• Do you respect your spouse?
• What about porn? Is that playing any part in the denigration of your part of this marriage picture? (This isn't just about images... Romance novels? 50 Shades?)
• How do you talk to the person you married?
• How do you talk about  the person you married? 
• Demanding sex?
• Withholding it?
• Using it as a weapon or a reward?
• Do you keep score of wrongs? Of favors?

I could go on, but you get the point. I'm not saying ours is perfect or that yours has to be in order to have or state an opinion on the Supreme Court's decision. And I'm not against political activism or spreading awareness, per se. (I've gotta be honest- it's really, really not my thing. But if it's yours, I have no problems.) But can we please use this national facebook fight discussion about the meaning of marriage as a reminder to spend at least as much effort working on the one at home as we do talking and worrying about who else does or doesn't or may eventually have the legal right to get married? Because all of it is messing up the picture. 

We're all just spray painting on the Mona Lisa while whining about the mustache that somebody else sharpied on her. Yeah, the sharpie mustache is a problem. I get it. But can we please stop vandalizing the thing ourselves? Maybe spend some energy restoring it where we can? That'd be great, thanks.

So how about you? What can you do this week to invest in your relationship? Speak kindly? Give the benefit of the doubt? Serve? Love? Read a marriage book? Get off facebook for a few minutes? Speak positively about your spouse to a friend? Write a love note? Let's each make a difference. 

the simply tuesday of anniversaries

One of my favorite things of late has been the celebration of the ordinary Tuesday. Emily Freeman talks about Tuesdays as the smallest day of the week. And every week, there's a little party on Instagram where a bunch of people snap pictures of the ordinary beautiful and we all enjoy each other's small moments. (Here's #itssimplytuesday. At the moment, the feed isn't entirely representative of normal, because Emily has a book coming out soon-hooray!- and her launch team got it this week, so there are a lot of shots of that. It's still lovely and wonderful and good for a smile.)

Today, Andrew and I celebrate eleven years of marriage.

Oh, how I love that man.

Before "selfie" was a word. This a little bit past our first anniversary. I had to scan the thing in, because we're old and the first several years of our marriage were photographed on film.

And these later, not-divisible-by-five anniversaries feel a little like Tuesday to me. There's no newness and no big round numbers. Last year, we celebrated ten with a four-day trip out of town. This year, it's a simple night away in town. (Somewhere. He's not told me where yet. The magic still lives.)

Please hear me clearly: I'm not complaining. 

Just like Tuesdays have become a favorite because of their ordinariness, I love the smallness of an eleventh anniversary. I love the fact that we've had enough years for there to be ordinary anniversaries.

Ordinary is where we live anyhow. 

It's the little things that make life and the little things that make a marriage.

Quiet not-quite-awake workday mornings.

Not-at-all quiet Saturday mornings, when the kids are up before we want them to be, and asking for Daddyday breakfast. (This man makes hash browns that have ruined me for any other hash browns, period.) Better get them fed before somebody gets hangry.

Holding hands in the dark while we try to stay awake long enough to pray together.

All those times I get thirsty right after I settle in to nurse a baby and he gets up to get me my water bottle. (Usually without snarkiness.)

More than half a lifetime's worth of inside jokes. (We were friends long, LONG before we got married.)

Talking in code or spelling to sneak stuff past our kids. "I was thinking we could go for I-C-E-C-R-E-A-M tonight after dinner. What do you think?" This is rapidly losing effectiveness. 

Companionable silence. 

Doing dishes. Lots and lots of dishes. Sometimes he, sometimes I, sometimes we. 

Brief back scratches in passing. 

The way he works around my BIG FEELINGS and I work around his sometimes-crazy schedule.

Reading each other's faces and tones.

Apologizing for misreading each other's faces and tones. 

Arguments about nothing. Or the same something eleventy billion times.

Lots of grace to cover (and frequently avoid!) arguments about nothing.

Choosing to be on the same side, over and over and over again.

Learning to give the benefit of the doubt.

Diapers. Thousands of them.

Rubbing off each other's rough edges.

Growing up together.


For better and for worse. Until death do us part.

This marriage thing. It's a good, good gift. By God's grace, we're getting better at it. We're living the dream, Andrew. I love our very ordinary life.

Mostly mundane.

blessing for insult

So I need to start out by saying I'm totally embarrassed to share this... I'm going to look kind of like an immature brat a few paragraphs from now. But... it's been something I've been specifically convicted to share since the beginning of this process (when I was being an immature brat, but before I realized it), so out of obedience, I shall.

(Because real blogs have photos, and I like this one. Oh! Wait! Pussy willows mean springtime here and springtime is all about new growth! This blog is about growth! It totally goes. See? Plus maybe if I stall you with a random picture, you'll miss the bratty part.) 

Last week, I mentioned that we recently got help out at Family Life's marriage conference. Part of the the volunteering gig includes actually going to the conference, and it's fabulous. Also, the material is more or less the same as it's been since I first went in 2004, and actually basically the same as it was when my parents first went in 1978. It's solid, biblical stuff, and I come away with new insights every time (because that's how the Bible is), but also, I've heard it a number of times, so occasionally I check out just a little. But every year, there are a couple of points that seem distinctly for me and for now. 

Last year, the big take-home was "blessing for insult." 

1 Peter 3:8-9 says:
8 Finally, all of you, be like-minded, be sympathetic, love one another, be compassionate and humble. 9 Do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult.On the contrary, repay evil with blessing, because to this you were called so that you may inherit a blessing. 

The idea as applied to marriage is that God's plan for communication includes paying back an insult with a blessing. (Actually, that's fair to apply to communication anywhere, but this was a marriage conference, so...) If my husband says something mean to me, I can choose to be kind in return.

So that was my big idea from 2014. 

Which I pretty much instantly forgot.

But God is patient and reminded me again. So we circle around again in 2015. 

Determined not to let it slide this year, I started kicking it around a bit and have continued to do so for the last two weeks. And you know what my thought was?

My husband almost never insults me. 

Now, he's not perfect. But he's a kind man and it's pretty rare that he spits out something that could be considered an insult, even when he's angry.
However... I happen to have a special ability to read insult into almost anything he says. It's a gift, really. Except the crappiest gift ever. 

So as I'm pondering this idea of returning a blessing for an insult, I started to wonder what I'm supposed to do with the fact that like 95% of the insults I hear from him aren't really insults. They're just him talking, and me being weird about it. Really. (Don't you wish you lived with me?) So I hear myself asking (I warned you that bratty was coming)... So... if he's not really insulting me, but I feel insulted, is blessing really the best way to go? I mean, if I bless him when he pseudo-insults me, he won't catch that I'm returning blessing for insult, he'll just assume that's the response he earned (after all, he wasn't being mean) and carry on his merry way. Sounds like a good way to encourage behavior that, while not malevolent, isn't very considerate. I mean, he's coming off really rude to ME! Plus, won't that build resentment in me, if I just keep being nice and he keeps being [sort-of-not-really] mean? 

Seriously, y'all. It was like a week and a half I was having this huge conundrum. Are you annoyed? Because I totally am. Here's the [completely obvious] truth that finally hit me:

Who the heck cares?

It's not my job to figure out at that moment whether or not he was trying to insult me. And anyway, how backwards is it to withhold kindness if he isn't?!? (...If it's not legitimate "evil," I apparently don't need to return blessing? Mmkay.)

So here we are. My huge, genius, lightening-bolt idea from Weekend To Remember 2015, just like 2014:

Blessing for insult. 

And we're counting anything that feels like an insult.

Now I'm not saying I'm going to be good at it. (Hon, are you reading this? No promises this is going to be as great as it sounds!) I am the girl who forgot for a whole year. And what, exactly, does blessing look like in this case? I have no idea, honestly. But I'm committed to doing my best. Every single time I remember. And because depending on my memory basically guarantees failure (see: 2014), I asked for a some backup from the Holy Spirit... Because He's all over this kind of thing.

ten years.

So... ten years ago, my husband and I got married.

Not gonna lie, I feel a little old. Somehow this marker was reserved in my head for a crowd older than I thought I was. Definitely 30's. (Wait...)

The cousins who were the ring bearers and flower girl? High school and college. College.

My baby brother, then twelve, who wouldn't usher because, in his words, "I don't want girls holding my arm!"... He's apparently gotten over that phobia, we watched him marry a fantastic girl a couple of weeks ago. (Ryan and Amanda- sorry for the repeat here, there's a lot coming that was in your card.) (Also? I just considered the fact that when they celebrate 10 years, we'll be ready to celebrate 20. Because math. And I'm good at math. But still, framing it that way freaks me out.)

A lot happens in 10 years. 

There's a lot of learning and growing. 

I've been thinking about this, specifically, for about a month now... we are really, really happily married. It's good. Really good. Marriage? Well designed by a master Designer for our good and His glory and I couldn't possibly be more grateful. (Well, actually, I've said that before. And I was wrong. And I'm sure I'll be even more grateful, I don't know... tomorrow. But today, I'm as grateful as I can imagine for this amazing gift.) Also, as Andrew and I grow together toward holiness, we've learned a few things. And I need to write at least a few of them down so I don't forget and maybe, just maybe, to remind and encourage you.

Really quickly, here's why I'm not writing this.

I'm not writing it because we're perfect.

I'm not a perfect wife. Not by a long shot. He's not a perfect husband (though, in all honesty, I think he's a lot better at being married than I am... Most of the stuff I've learned, I've learned largely because he does it pretty well.) 

We still have our stuff. We fight. We have communication differences that have been issues for ten years. (Actually, we probably have some dating back a lot longer than that. Maybe 17 or 18 years? That's how long ago we met. And when I developed a crush on him. But that's a whole other story.) Sometimes it comes down to the simple and obvious: I am a woman. He is a man. Language differences make us crazy now and again. 

We don't have it figured out. (Which is why marriage is supposed to last more than ten years.)

But.

But God is good and his grace is more than plenty for all our stuff. 

So here's some stuff that I've learned in ten years of loving and living with this man.

We have to be friends.

We were friends for a loooong time before we got married. We're good at it. But it's not something that happens on its own.  The first couple of years, it was simple enough. We had school and work and stuff, but a lot of time was basically our own. We played. We talked. We worked together at things. We served together. We did all the friend things we'd already been doing for years. It was fun. And we got used to living together while still doing the friend thing, and life got hectic and being friends took a little more intention. Then kids came. Finding the time to connect and play (and prioritizing that over sleep sometimes) takes a little more effort now. 

But it's so, so worth it. 

(Post-bedtime is currently our favorite- sometimes we talk watch a movie or just sit and read our separate things together or play a game of Dominion or Sequence.) 

I have to work on me.

If mama ain't happy, ain't nobody happy.

Duh.

A healthy marriage is ideally made of a pair of healthy people.

It's really easy to go all martyr these days... My job is kind of round-the-clock and based on other people's needs. But when I just "selflessly" chug through, getting stuff done and people fed and bottoms wiped and laundry and All The Things... I do a pretty crappy job. (Honestly, this is something Andrew's probably been encouraging forever, but I'm only learning in the last year that he's right. That EVERYBODY'S right on this point: self care is not optional.) 

It's easy to scroll facebook during a nap and call it a break. But I've learned it's not actually that restorative. 

It takes a little bit more to discern what is actually a useful rest. For me, "useful" is writing, reading, running, talking with friends. Sometimes (um, last weekend), it's scrapping all of those things in favor of sleep. Despite everything in me yelling that I needed to go out and be alone or, at the least, check some stuff off of my list. Not sleep through my only window of "me time."

Anyway, my point... it takes effort and intention to figure out what is restorative and how to make it happen. And if I don't do that, my kids get dregs and my husband gets nothing. Well, he doesn't get nothing, he gets yelled at. Poor guy.

And it's not just me. Andrew needs time to process and be, too. And I'm not as good at encouraging and enabling this as I want to be, not as good as he is, but that's something I'm working toward.

Respect is a big deal.

We were fortunate to have been a part of a great small group from the start of our marriage, and one of the early studies was Emmerson Eggerichs's Love and Respect. It's not a secret that love is essential to marriage and that it must be unconditional. But in my early-20's head, respect was definitely on a lower tier in some hierarchy of needs. And totally NOT unconditional.

Glad to have learned otherwise, and early. It's not a small thing. I'm not always good at being respectful (especially when we're having *ahem* a "discussion") but I've gotten much faster at apologizing for being (or sounding) disrespectful! 

It's still hard to find things that are specifically respectful. It's easier to figure out what comes off as disrespectful. But I'm learning. 

We have to be generous.

This covers... kind of everything. I stumbled across a blog a few years ago that's all about this, and I've been kicking it around since.

When I'm generous in 

• loving and blessing my husband
• forgiving him
• giving him the benefit of the doubt (when I could otherwise assign him poor motives for something)

... everything goes much, much better. 

So there we have it.

Looking over the list, it feels like it should be longer and, I don't know... more earth-shattering. If I'd read this blog post 10 years ago (which I wouldn't have, because blogging wasn't really a thing then), Little Me would have nodded along. Yep. That's true. Check. Sounds good, I agree. But somehow actually implementing that list of things that I am sure I never would have especially disagreed with has taken ten years (and counting.) 

I'm hoping in another 10 years, my list of things that work for us will be a touch longer and I'll be a little better at the things on it. For now, I'm glad to have gotten it down in words. It'd be a shame to forget. 

Anything you'd add to it? What have you learned?

Valentine's Day thoughts...

Aw, look! Tiny toons version of us! 

So... Valentine's day is about here.

I know. I'm not much for the holiday, either. I thought of it as Singles Awareness Day all through high school and college, because, seriously? How much does it suck to be in a public high school on Valentine's Day when you don't date? It's so... dumb. 

Anyway, then I got married. And neither of us are big holiday people. This Friday marks our tenth Valentine's day as a couple, and we've never made it a huge thing. (One notable exception: the time he surprised me and took me to the B&B we stayed in after our wedding! A million points to him!) One year, I decided we'd celebrate a month late, to take advantage of clearance stuff, because who really cares if you celebrate a month late? (Pi day cares, that's who! 3-14 should be for pies. Not gross candy hearts.) He forgot. Because who does that?!? He didn't even have the stores shouting, "IT'S VALENTINE'S DAY!!!" at him in girly colors anymore. 

But here's the thing... Even though I said I didn't care, and even though I didn't make a huge deal about it when I got him a card and he didn't get me one, or he only got me a card, but not flowers, I was still buying in. Oh, I told myself I wasn't. I looked around at all the ladies who had these huge, unattainable expectations for their husbands and thought, That's really not fair. Your husband is nice all year long, and he *only* gets you a card and dinner and flowers and you're mad that he didn't get you jewelry? Or a pony? Cut the poor guy some slack. One day can't count more than the other 364.  But still, somewhere, I hoped for a card and flowers. And maybe a night out, or even (gasp!) away. And, eight out of the nine times we've done this, it didn't really happen. Or didn't quite happen like I'd hoped.

I was just a little disappointed. No, really. Like a watermelon seed-sized little disappointment. But when you swallow teeny disappointments, they tend to grow. (Well, when I swallow them, that's what happens, anyway.) (Did you ever get told when you swallowed a watermelon seed or an orange seed or whatever that it'd grow into a plant in your belly? Scary.) In my head and heart, teeny disappointments go like this: I have some expectation in some random, non-essential area of life. I don't voice it to him, it just sits there, unquestioned. He doesn't meet it, because he never knew it was there. I shrug it off and move on with life. But there's this little stash somewhere of these little things and at some point, he says or does something, and they all dump out on me, and I respond to him from under this pile of little disappointments. They become evidence that he really doesn't like me like I wish he did. Or he really does think I suck. He doesn't really care that much after all.

The poor man doesn't even know what hit him. He just walked into the kitchen and shut a couple cabinet doors, and I'm in tears or angry (or both) because Every. Single. Thing.  Because he didn't remember we'd agreed six years ago in January to celebrate Valentine's day on March 14. Or he didn't know you could buy a Mother's Day card for your wife who doesn't have any babies yet, except for the kidney-bean sized one in her belly. And he really doesn't care, and how can he not notice all the hard work I do around here, but still be bothered by open cabinet doors?!? 

So I've read a few blog posts this week about Valentine's day. Good ones. About taking your unfulfilled hopes to God and handling the Valentine's Day hangover on the 15th. But I'm hoping to more or less avoid all the sad, and here's my thought... 

People seem to know that the fun of Christmas presents is more in the giving in receiving, right? I mean, a lot of people get that. Not all of them. But a lot. Where do we get the idea that Valentine's day is about men spending 50% more than full price on flowers and dinner to make their wives feel loved? 

So my plan for Friday is to love my family as well as I can. To show them in extra special ways that I adore them. To bless my husband, and just enjoy that. (There may be muffins and Peachie-O's involved, which is safe for me to say, because I'm reasonably sure he won't see this between now and then.) (These are Peachie-O's, if you're not familiar.) I do have great expectations for this Valentine's Day, but I'm pretty sure I won't be swallowing any little disappointments, because loving my family is always a safe bet. (Also? Peachie-O's. Always a safe bet. Well, if you're married to my husband, anyhow.)

I'm hoping that this Valentine's day, I can give grace to my husband like I've received it. And that I can receive love from him (whether it comes in the form of a card, flowers, clean dishes, or a pony) with gratefulness.