Lovin' Eight

Every year there are 52 weeks (breaking news!). So it is a little cool/weird/statistically improbable that so many of my major life events managed to occur over the course of my existence during the same seven-day period:

Yesterday (9/30)was my 10 year baptism anniversary (public wedding to Jesus)

Tomorrow (10/2) is my 32nd birthday

On Monday (10/6) I am having what's known as "a baby."  Noa's Birthday!

But today, well, today (10/1) is extra special too. It's Jesse and My 8th wedding anniversary!

So from 9/30-10/6, we are locked up pretty tight with banner moments (our first pet, Chopper, the insane cowardly rescue mutt, was born on 10/3, but that one just doesn't seem quite monumental enough to put in the special list. Still, though, he is a Dukes, so we count it). 

Anything important that needs to happen for the remainder of my life should probably pencil in 10/4 or 10/5 because that is the only availability we have left. 

This streak is also why I am able to claim that October is "my" month more than any Ugg-wearing, Pumpkin Spice-drinking, sweater weather-gushing, born-in-the-wrong season little Autumn groupie, Just sayin'.

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Since we don't get a full mushy-gushy anniversary week to just schmoop all over each other (and something tells me we arent the type that would anyway), I want to isolate today and celebrating my marriage to Jesse.

When I was writing about the clutches in the previous post, I linked to a post from over 4 years ago.  It was a post about the state of our marriage that rather brutally depicted how rough things could be between my husband and I. 

After I had linked to it (which I had done just to give you a glimpse of my wonderful friend Natalie and how she had pulled me through that day), I went back and read the whole thing and found myself so shocked and sad. 

It's not that I didnt know that there was a HARD learning curve for us the first handful of years; I have always told people that despite understanding that marriage was going to be difficult from the moment we started, we still plowed headfirst into almost complete destruction of ourselves, each other, the relationship, and several physical walls. We went through blow ups like the one in that post pretty regularly for years.

What saddened me though, reading from the end of year 8 was how vividly I remember being that pregnant wife on the floor. How scratchy the carpet was under my cheek and how the tears and snot gushed. I remember the feel of, "This is impossible.  I can't do this anymore. There is no way out." 

Oh, my heart breaks for that girl.

morning of 10/1/06. Dont worry about putting on makeup...youre just gonna cry it all off in 4 years.

But what shocks me in reading those words is how far Jesse and I are from that place now. And how we haven't even visited its suburbs in several years. Maybe "shocked" isnt the right description so much as "redeemed" or "freed."

I don't know if it was that day in particular that did it, but it was around that time that we just tossed our frayed little scraps of a marriage into Jesus' hands and said, "Okay, we so don't got this. You're going to have to teach us how this is supposed to go."

And holy crap, it worked!

It's still hard. We still fight. But I couldn't tell you the last time I thought, "I hate his guts and never want to talk to him again," which sounds utterly ridiculous now, but was a place I ended up in often during these meltdowns. It has been years since we had a fight that turned into a promise of mutually assured destruction. Where we were truly, actually enemies.

yeah. rough stuff, ahead, little ones.

There have been a few things that have made the hugest difference for us in the past few years have been:

1. We are on the same team. Always always. We refuse to go to a place where the battle is me versus him (Ephesians 6:12). When we feel it drifting that way, we try to press pause and reconnect. This can be physically with a hug, kiss or handhold, verbally with a straight up affirmation, "hey, I love you, and I am on your team," or spiritually by praying out loud together, "Jesus I'm finding myself wanting to punch Jesse in the eyeball, please change my heart."  All three of these things have pulled our chestnuts out of the fire dozens of times, and kept us from starting an excruciating hours-long journey down a very ugly road.

2. Letting God manage our spouse's growth. Hey, you know what works like 0% of the time? Trying to change who people fundamentally are through the force of your will. It usually just pisses them off, makes you seem negative, nagging, controlling, or critical, and even if you get the outcome/behavior you're looking for in the other person, it has probably cost something to the relationship or their self-worth

Jesse 100% got the ball rolling on this one. When issues came up with how I would do/handle something, he would typically try to show my why my reaction or choice was bad/wrong (not talking about sin behavior here, so much as just unhealthy methods of relating/living. Outright sin needs to be rebuked and addressed). This would usually end with me feeling attacked, him feeling frustrated, and nothing changing--with a good chance for a Chernobyl-esque brawl developing as well. 

So instead, one day he decided to just pray for me. And after a while he heard Jesus saying, "You just love her. Give her a safe place to be vulnerable and to rest, and I will do the work on her heart." (Ezekiel 36:26)   Jesse listened and obeyed, and sheesh did it work. I felt so not-attacked and so incredibly safe with him,that I began to ask  for ways that I could love him better. I was so overflowing with love and security that I had ample heart resources to invest back into Jesse and to really hear what he needed from me, rather than feeling attacked and criticized when those moment came up.

Jesse shared with me this journey he had been on when, months after it started, I had said, "Dude, marriage has been ass-kicking lately. What's up with that?" And when he told me, I was all, "OH MY GOSH THAT IS SO TOTALLY IT! IT FREAKING WORKED!" Like when they secretly switched people's normal coffee for Folgers and then told them afterward. 

And since it worked so well, I started doing it too. Let me tell you, it isnt just a dream come true to receive this kind of love; giving it is just as eye-opening and freeing. Instead of trying to come up with strategies to manage/manipulate/nag/convince Jesse into stomping out something annoying or lame that I think I see in his character, I can just let go. To give it to Jesus and recommit to loving Jesse right where he is now. If it's something that is an actual problem, I get to trust that the Lord will work it out (telling me how/when/if to do my part). I'm pretty controlling by nature, so this one can be difficult for me, but it is extremely liberating. It's like delegating to the creator of the universe (not that the task was ever truly mine anyway). I think I can rest easy knowing Jesus is on the job. Jesse's heart is mine to love; his rough edges and stumblements (new word) aren't my really responsibility or jurisdiction.

Said better: "Not my circus, not my monkeys." 

3. Knowing when there may be more than a heart issue at play. Many of the most frustrating themes in our marriage have been greatly alleviated by treating a biological problem. Thank you, Jesus, for Zoloft.

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Eight years feels like a lot to me. But it's not a lifetime, and a lifetime is what we've signed up for. I'm not at all trying to say we've cracked the code or mastered marriage or that the work is now over because we beat the game. I know there are many battles to come and lots more lessons to learn in the rest of our years to come.

Today is about looking back on the eight that are under our belt. The belts are quite larger (and currently made of elastic in my case), but the love has grown exponentially.  I have always been really transparent about the hard times in our marriage, and blogging them has been very therapeutic.  I'm not as good at checking in to talk about the wonderful growth seasons. I have a fear of coming off as one of those people who only use the internet to share the sunny parts of their lives (absolutely okay! just not me).

I hope that the fact that I have never held back about the bad stuff can lend some credence to the fact that I am writing those posts so infrequently now because things have improved drastically.  As ugly and heart-bludgeoning and claw-my-face-off-frustrating as those years and those fights and those lessons were, it is so simple to say IT IS WORTH IT. I would do it all over again to get to where we are now; with a marriage that deserves the position of second place in our lives and hearts right behind Jesus. 

There were lots of hard times when I found myself saying, "Eff this, eff Jesse, eff marriage." Now, the mantra that comes out of me most frequently is "I effing LOVE marriage." When it's operating the way it was designed, it really feels like heaven.

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Jesse Dukes- 

You are my lobster. 

You and your big, brilliant brain thought long and hard and responsibly about the decision to ask me to marry you.  Boy did you get that one wrong! Well, maybe not, but it sure looked that way for a while there, didn't it? I wonder if you still would have done it if you had known what those first years would look like. I know you loved me as much as any boyfriend can love a girl before they are married, but still, we really had no flipping clue about love--we were just hot stupid little kids. 

I bet you would have though. Because your big old brain knew I was a little bananas, and that we have extremely incompatible natural styles of relating, and that these things would make it hard. But your heart followed Jesus and trusted that he'd always be enough to pull us through those trapdoors and to take our stupid scraps and knit them and us AND HIM together into something we never even knew enough to hope for. 

You are not my everything. And that's only because, Jesus-wise, I don't think you're supposed to be, and I  do try really hard not to make you into that. But damn, you're pretty close, and would make it just so easy to idolize you. When I try to bring to mind the amount of gratitude that I feel that I get to be your wife, my brain just flashes that calculator error where there arent enough decimal places to display the result. 

Nowhere in the rules does it say I have to like you. Loving you is non-negotiable, but I could fulfill all the vows and still never really like you (no judgement, but, this is kind of what I think Michelle Duggar must do, because Jim Bob is such a gooberhead!).  But you are easily favorite. Your personality and who you are just hit all the stuff on my checklist, baby!

Thank you for letting Jesus lead you in loving me like He does. Thank you for loving me enough to let me be weird, whacked-out, work-in-progress me, and for never withholding any part of your heart from me until I have become pretty enough to deserve it (spoiler alert: I may never get there anyway!). 

Thank you for how you constantly point me and our children back to Jesus. How you model the Father's love for them, and for how you're giving them a safe place to be grown by God, stewarded by us,  into the humans He wants them to be. 

I love you so much, I just want to squeeze you into my pores and fully absorb all the awesome. But hey, today isnt just the anniversary of our wedding day, and there's a highly decent way of absorbing the awesome that Jesus also invented and is all about celebrating. HIYO. (with 4 weeks of postpartum no-no looming, I'm trying to go all out here at the end).

fine. i'll marry you. hold a knife to my throat, geez.

love and haiti

I got an email from godaddy.com informing me that i have a blog. who knew, huh? sorry about that FULL MONTH long absence. Before the nesting/doing/making/preparing hormone rush of pregnancy, for me there is always an anti-all-of-those-things rush where i am pretty solidly worthless. That's over now...maybe probably. 

In other news, my Jesse boo-thang has been across an ocean for 6 days now but is coming home TODAY (trumpet fanfare: today, TODAY!). He is in Haiti leading a mission trip from our church. I was supposed to go on the trip too, but I came down with an acute case of Vaginarium Pregnitis. I was vurrrry bummed because in addition to being an awesome chance to serve with our church, this trip would have landed me within 5 minutes of my internet BFF/hero/mentor (bc she's way older than me), Tara Livesay (read her...she's beyond dope), and her fam who are permanent missionaries in Port Au Prince, and whom I have been dying to do more than electronically-snuggle with for nigh on 4 years now (fun fact, i found them through CNN.com who quoted them and linked to their family blog right after the earthquake).

living the Livesay dream. specifically, MY livesay dream. you lucky, magnificent Adonis.

Jesse got to fulfill this my internet-crush-become-IRL-friends wish for the both of us, luckily. He immediately reported that Tara's husband Troy is total BFF material for him too, citing his ownership of an electric tennis racquet bug-zapper as reason #1 and Troy's excellent theology and personality as a distant #2 and 3. Boys are weird.

 using "find my iPhone" was a fun visual this week.

I've made it no secret that Jesse is the score of a century. Beyond being the most likable human being I have ever known and basically the person with a DNA sequence most perfectly attuned to make me gaga, he is the most devoted, involved and committed dad and husband my greedy paws could have ever itched for. So hear me when i say his absence is FELT when he is gone. 

As much as I have been fervently praying that Jesse and the team wouldnt contract the nasty Chikungunya virus that is running rampant through the Caribbean right now, I think he has been praying just as much for extra grace for me as i pregnantly solo-parent this week while not taking time off from my job (jobS if you count beach bag etsy sweat shop employee). 

Thankfully grace has abounded in a crazy way and so many of our local friends have stepped in to make this time easier for me with meals, playdates, pool usage, babysitting and general body-of-christness that reminds me how utterly drenched with community and loving humans our little family is.

during the VBS our team put on. great gosh, those smiles!

The contrast between the infrastructure of resources and people that came together to make our family's life easier while Jesse was gone has been humbling and stark compared to what Jesse has seen in Haiti and the communities he's visited, where it seems like there is no help to be found for people with much bigger, realer problems than being a one-parent household for a week. 

He has been broken by how hard everything seems for them, especially in comparison to how easy the same things are for us--through absolutely no difference in anything other than the circumstances, geography, cultures and economies we were born into.  It's incredibly unfair to our little brains and stirs up gratitude, guilt, compassion and anger all at once. After hearing lots of these stories, you're just like, "bump this, Jesus, can you just come back--like NOW--and unbreak this world and our hearts for good and ever?" 

But that's probably not going to be happening today, so we have to figure out, and be led to, what on earth he wants two boneheads like us to do with the abundance we have (materially and in Him) in situations where nothing makes sense and there aren't easy answers.

if i wasnt positive he was just being himself and doing what he loved i would accuse him of flagrant intent to cause panty-droppage.

being hardcore with a friend.

face time. not surprisingly, it was very choppy and pixellated and mostly not worth it...except you can see his face...which is always fantastic.  #mesojowly

Just a glimpse into my insane brain: the whole time Jesse has been gone i have worn a tiny heart necklace. I dont usually wear necklaces around the clock so its presence has been a constant reminder to pray for him and the team. Last night, i was turning it back around (kiss + wish! not really) and it broke! Curse you, F21 $2 craftsmanship!!! I immediately started panicking because clearly this was my Apollo 13 moment! You remember when, on the day of the launch, Tom Hanks' wife drops her wedding ring down the shower drain, which obviously foretold the whole "Houston, we have a problem" scenario. So i'm like, "I broke our love necklace! WHAT DOES IT MEAN!?!?! for the love of everything, someone find me some tiny pliers!!!!" 

Jesse assures me that he, like Jim Lovell, will be just fine. Just to be safe, i DID acquire tiny pliers and the necklace is good as $2 new! I will have them check the FLANGES double twice though. (phoebs, anyone?)

if you know my BFF steph, who is our children's minister, you know that customs should check her luggage extra carefully because if anyone was going to smuggle 100 beautiful haitian orphans home in her bags, it would be her. Aint nobody loves a kiddo like our stephie.

In just a few hours, if you hear an ungodly screech coming from the general vicinity of the metro-Atlanta area, dont worry, it's just me spying my man as he emerges from immigration. No guarantees on my not shoving my kids down so that big mommy can get her hands on Jesse first. Sorry, chumps, you've got youth, perfect skin, and childlike wonder, but I've got preggo-hulk strength and a snarling rabidity for your papa. 

Stay classy, Hartsfield-Jackson International Terminal!

love is an open door (only one though)

It started with a brutal insult from me to Jesse. 

We were in the car and I was singing screeching out my favorite of the Frozen soundtrack songs, "Love is an Open Door," the duet between Anna and Prince Hans (doy). 

 

Jinx. Jinx again!

Jesse, rather understandably (to a rational person, at least) jumped in on the boy part. I immediately and violently shushed him and barked, "No, stop! I want to sing it with him. I like his voice better."

And almost immediately after it was out of my mouth, I was like

 

OHHHHHHHHHHHHH FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUDGE

See, I wanted to live out a little 2-minute fantasy wherein I play an ignored, shut-in, Nordic princess falling in love with a cartoon ginger prince (who, if you've seen the film....you know...) at my first ever ball. And in pursuing this little mental escape, I had just majorly taken a chunk out of the heart of my real life, forever husband AND managed to insult his singing voice in the process (he is a professional worship leader, soooo...extra wounding points landed there). 

It got me thinking about how often I do this. How often I innocently--for just a moment--wish my love story was something different, or had something more than what it actually does. It could be anything from "I wish I had met my husband in a really crazy, serendipitous way like Anna and Hans," to "my life would be so much more exciting if I was just Khaleesi Drogo."

 

Duh

Of course, we do this all the time. A huge part of the fun of books and TV and movies and putting yourself in the characters' place and imagining how you would walk through their story. There’s probably nothing wrong with that.

But I noticed in that one moment when I snapped at Jesse to butt out and leave me and Hans to our little interlude, in chasing that little escape, it had become wrong. I was actually resenting Jesse a little bit for being not that. "You aren't able to fulfill this little side-dream of mine, so just please shut up and let me pursue it elsewhere for a second, thank you."

I thought, "Isn't that just like a stereotypical American living in 2014?" (Maybe that's an unfair generalization, and I should just say, "isn't that just like me?"). In my actual everyday reality I have a husband who is faithful, attentive, hilarious, kind, hardworking (at home maybe even more than at work!), utterly committed to me, and also damn freakin' hot. I feel like 99.9% of women everywhere who have ever wanted a husband would be pretty happy to end up with a guy they could describe that way. And yet here I am trying to mentally cherry-pick for some fictional more, and being pretty lazily ungrateful for my real man in the process.

It made me see how dangerous it can be to look outside of your own love story for something that might be missing, for something more. 

Okay, sure, if it's 3 dragon eggs you're looking for, you're probably going to be alright. But what if what you're looking for is attentiveness because your husband never seems to have much time anymore for just pouring into you, but your neighbor or some guy at work hangs on your every word?

I think if that was me, I would be tempted to start to somehow convince myself that I could have both. My husband.....aaaaand maybe just the good feelings the attention from the other guy brought me too. And that just gets into a bucket full of yikes.

So after my horrible moment of insulting Jesse I decided to make a commitment to our love story. To stop daydreaming on "what it would be like if..." and spend time in and on our story. Our. One. Story. 

It might not be worth selling the movie rights, it might not have a single talking snowman or Targaryen in sight, and it--gasp--probably won't even make me "feel happy" a lot of the time, but it's the one that is real and it's the only one whose lead male character has actually vowed to give a crap about how that story turns out.

Maybe your prince or your love story isn't how you would have described him/it when you wrote the dream script of your life. Maybe you say, "yeah, easy for you to say, keight, since you have the guy of your dreams already. But what if I’m stuck in my story with someone i don’t even like anymore?" first of all, that has been me...LOTS of times. second of all, unless we are talking abuse or infidelity (and sometimes even then...y'all know I believe the restoring power of Jesus is seriously bananas and can do anything), I just don't see where it's ever going to be more profitable to pour yourself--your effort, attention, grace, everything--anywhere but back into your current marriage.

I know that this is a really simplistic view, and that it's far uglier, far more complex, and can feel far more hopeless than I’ve described. I just felt like, for a second, I got a really good glimpse of one of the ways satan can start to tempt my mind away from my own magical (that's not mushy baloney! 2 trying to become 1 is magic...straight up, playa) love story, and it was such a powerful moment of exposure to me, and so convicted me that I felt compelled to share.

It's hard. But I think it's always worth it. And that, my friends, is what she said.

We reclaimed that song, by the way. FOR US. It's officially a Keight & Jesse love song. So as you might expect, that track now plays a lot more like this in our car (except we don't call ourselves good-looking on YouTube).

the guy who wishes he looked like jesse

so that was a fun game. almost every actor that yall guessed was one that i think is pretty foxy and am therefore okay with my husband resembling. EXCEPT the elijah wood vote (that occurred rather too frequently for my tastes. come on, yall.)

here were my 9 favorite guesses (including the real answer). this was a fun collage to make. really took me back to my Tiger Beat days. i thought the guesser of Gerard Butler was WAAAY off until i found this picture (he's top middle) and his face really does favor jesse's. guess i'll just have to go watch 300 again with that in mind...and sign jesse up for a wax and a loincloth/cape.

but the actual actor that the casting agent called jesse about being a stand in for was:

PAUL RUDD!

right?!?! the beyond-yummy love interest from Clueless, AND  indispensable special features reporter in Ron Burgundy's News Team from the ever-quotable and classic, Anchorman.

i lost my mind a little bit when i realized he had JUST starred opposite Tina Fey in a movie and thought, "OMG maybe its a sequel to that movie and jesse will meet her and this is how we become BFF FINALLY!!!"

alas, the movie they're filming is Ant Man and the female lead is probably Evangeline Lily (Kate from LOST...another fave). and double alas...since jesse is too tall at 6'1 to stand in for the 5'10 paul (who is actually pretty tall for an actor!) and wont be taking the role anyway.

if this has taught us anything though, it's that jesse can maybe be a stand in for about 12 other big actors. we'll start filling out his resume and preparing the guest room (nonexistent) for our esteemed future BFFs.

congrats to everyone who nailed it. Tamara edged out Emily by a mere twenty minutes and will be winning a kids scarf for her little girl! 

stand-in

there's a HUGE movie studio (they made the hobbit, les mis, x-men, harry potter, james bond and lots more) opening up a location near us. they are in the process of building like a jillion sound stages very near to jesse's parents house, and our little suburb is soon gonna turn out blockbusters. yee haw.

as fun as it is to think of major films and pretty stars being right up the road, we didnt really see this movie-making industry intersecting with our lives. 

and then jesse got a call yesterday out of the blue. 

a casting agent nearby saw the "jesus hears the orphan" music vid that jesse and layla were in recently and thought he would be perfect as a stand-in for a leading man in a movie being filmed here this summer.

i about died when jesse texted me about because i've had a mega-crush on this actor since i was like 13 (there's a sort-of hint for you). 

anyway, it ended up not working out because my man is too tall by a good 3 inches (another hint) to be an accurate fit for this shrimpy star (not to mention that jesse has a full time job already), but for one glorious, hilarious night we dreamed of jesse and his big break...or at least an awesome instagram photo of him and his guy.

so my question to you is: who do you think the star is that jesse was "talent-spotted" to be a great stand-in for?

here's my boo as a reference.

some more hints: 1. this guy has been around for a while but hasnt been leading man status until the last 5 or so years. so you've probably heard of him or would recognize him. 2. i can almost guarantee youve seen at least one of his movies (and its a favorite if youre like me).

first one to guess it gets....something! like a real life prize. probably.

SOS

i had a massive breakdown today. if i actually wrote out what all it was about you would probably think i was being dramatic or overreacting. you'd probably be right because it really wasnt anything that should have caused a DEFCON IV level freakout. i know that in my rational brainparts. 

and yet it just took over me. like full force, relentless, all-consuming took over me. it felt like i was drowning in pure, undiluted toxic stress acid. 

i ended up having to take the morning off of work, made jesse take the kids to school, and then about 4 hours later, i was ready to talk about to jesse about it. i made a list of things that were causing this tsunami of overwhelmedness and we started sorting them into categories: 1. things i could take action steps to relieve, 2. things that jesse could actively help with and 3. things we didnt have any control over anyway and just need to pray about.. 

when i'm in a coping crisis like this, the littlest thing can threaten to sink me. the straw feels made of lead and i am a camel with a very brittle backbone. anything can further the downward spiral in my head to the point that it finally just obliterates my attitude, self-worth and peace of mind. so putting it all on paper was surprisingly helpful. whereas minutes earlier, it had had me in tears, seeing on paper, "my blush broke apart in my makeup bag and now there is pink dust everywhere" is slightly less intimidating (and almost funny...except that effing dust is EVERYWHERE). thats just one line of writing and 10 minutes of cleanup. writing it down is like turning on the lights when my imagination is running wild at night. oh, there is no monster in the closet, after all, that's just a sweater. i can deal with a big pile of sweaters a lot easier than i can deal with a horde of unknown monsters.

i also learned (for the 1,427th time) that my husband is AMAZING. i was feeling so guilty as he went down the list and said, "okay i can take care of this one. i will handle that one. i can do this while you take a nap." i was like, "that's not fair! i cant keep asking you to do things like this. then it's all on you and when are you going to finally break like i have?" and he just said, "i dont break." 

he wasnt being braggy or claiming to not have stress or get overwhelmed at times. he was just stating the fact that he doesnt struggle with this kind of issue like i do. instead of adding, "i feel guilty about putting my junk on jesse's plate" to my stress list, i decided to just shut up, believe him, and accept the blessing from jesus himself of having a husband who is able and willing to help me and who doesnt have the same personality type as me.

as i was finally headed into work i started thinking about this aspect of my personality. how insanely unhelpful it would have been to hear someone tell me, "well, you shouldnt be freaking out about such little things. you just need to calm down." solid advice, and true--for sure it's TRUE-- but completely useless in penetrating the fog or actually doing anything but making me feel worse. immediately my brain associated this idea with telling an addict that they "shouldn't" want drugs. and then i thought, "could i be addicted to stress?" 

i have heard alcoholics say that they hate drinking. hate how it makes them feel, hate how much it hurts the people in their lives; and yet they say they are powerless to stop going back to it. i usually judge these forms of addiction and pat myself on the back for being "strong enough" to not be a slave to anything so destructive. but today it hit me that i might actually be full of self-righteous crap when i think this way.  because maybe i do have an addiction that is just as destructive in its own way.

i am not trying to play the addiction card to one-up anyone or even to equate my struggles with something as serious as a substance abuse addiction, but after how fast and hard things went down today, i am also not willing to just write it off as harmless Type-A, frazzled mommy behavior. all i know is that it felt sinister, it felt hopeless, and it felt totally out of control. sadly, this was definitely not the first time i have felt this way (even in the past month) so i am going to be asking jesus about this pattern in my life and how he wants to heal it. 

another one of the items on my list of stressballs was "i havent been blogging enough." jesse talked me away from that bullet point (ha! literally) by reminding me that i dont get angry at my favorite bloggers when they dont write for awhile (it's almost laughable when i think of it like that). he assured me that the majority of people who read these posts dont do it because it's great content (though he thinks it is because he's #1), but because for whatever reason, they care about me/my story.  he said that the only reason people can relate to anything i write is because it  is authentic and real and that i cant force that just because my post frequency has dwindled lately. "when you feel strongly about something, youll feel like writing about it. just take a break until then."  um, ok? i'll try that. 

but he also encouraged me to see this as a community that could help in this very situation if i did write about it (and, two birds, one stone i'd actually be writing a post in the process!). that yall could help by praying for me. it feels a little weird to ask for prayer on my blog when it's not for something grabby, headline-making or heart-rending. but whatever, i'm not trying to win a sob-story contest. i AM trying to not destroy my fragile brain and my family in the process of making it look like i have my shit together when i ohsodont.

so i'm asking for some prayer. i'm deliberately choosing to set down the lies that produce guilt and insecurity about being an internet hot mess (even though they are so tempting to believe), and to just trust my weird, vulnerable heart to yall and be real with where i am and what i could really use help with right now.  

ok,and  this is me doing that. the end.

my 2 weddings

i stood in front of loved ones 9 years and 1 day ago and declared my "'til death eternity NOTHING do us part" love for jesus. this was my public and outward vow of faith in christ. in a very real way it was my wedding to him: a public statement of my intent and desire to remain with him for all eternity.

that worked out nicely...

i stood in front of many of those same loved ones exactly 7 years ago today and committed my entire earthly self to jesse. sickness, health. richer, poorer. brain-meltingly frustrated, googly-eyed smitten. every moment we're both on earth, we're each others'. 

oh you two hot stupid little fools. 

the marriage parallel is probably my favorite of all the ways that the bible likens our relationship with christ to other things (i also LOVE king/subject, btw). i think one of the main reasons i favor this one above all the others (coin, sheep, prodigal, etc) is because it's sort of backwards from the way the others are presented.

lots of time we hear jesus say "the kingdom of heaven is like..." and then he puts it in terms of smaller, everyday stuff that we have more experience and familiarity with than the all-encompassing glory of god. i dont super-understand the everlasting sanctification of my mortally sinful spirit through christ's work on the cross, but i can picture a tree giving crappy rotten figs versus nice delicious plump ones. (i'll take a bushel of sancti-figs, please!)

take a big awe-inspiring idea and use something more common to help us understand it. take a big magical mysterious thing and boil it into something simpler that we have real life experience with. jesus was helpful like this when explaining his ways to us pea-brains

these comparisons are illustrations and they kind of stop there. we arent going to become seeds, or sheep or fruit when we enter god's kingdom. it's just a little glimpse to help us understand until we can truly  see. 

but with marriage it's the opposite. he presents the thing we're more day-to-day familiar with first: earthly marriage, and then says: "hey, this right here, it's even more lofty and weird and cool than you had ever dreamed of. MARRIAGE is like the kingdom of heaven." it is a subtle difference but it's one that i think makes both the faith relationship and the earthly marriage relationship both more magical.

when "the kingdom of heaven is like..." something else, it's glory coming down to earth. to our level. god most-high becoming human. the mystery of god's word being like scattered seed so we can sort of/kind of understand it. the creator of ALL THE THINGS becoming a tiny middle-eastern baby so we could feel his love.

that is amazing and awesome. but the coolest part of jesus isnt that he came down. it's that he rose back up: out of the grave and back to heaven and he brought us with him.

marriage isnt something bigger becoming something more humble to get on our level. it seems to me that it is something already magical having the chance to become even more. marriage is like the kingdom of heaven. the promise of the chance to be more, to love more. to draw even closer to him.

because when we get to god's kingdom we ARE actually going to be brides. spotless and new. perfected and ready to enter into an even deeper and more intimate relationship with our groom than we could have even dreamed of before the wedding feast. charles spurgeon describes it so perfectly:

Then it shall come to pass that Christ will celebrate this marriage supper, which will be the bringing of the people of God into the closest and happiest union with Christ their Lord in Glory.  Even now the Lord Jesus Christ is no stranger to some of us, and we are not strangers to Him. Yet there shall come a day when we shall see Him face to face and then we shall know Him with a clearer and fuller knowledge than is possible for us today.

jesus didnt give us marriage just to help us understand his love for us and ours for him. he gave it to us to PRACTICE this love...in both directions. when everything is as it was intended (this occurs approximately 43 minutes per year in our house) my jesus relationship should constantly be informing and dictating my devotion to and love of jesse, and my marriage relationship should constantly be pointing me back to jesus and acting out a perfect christ-minded unity. like two mirrors face to face reflecting back to infinity. 

christian marriage isnt just LIKE the kingdom of heaven. when we give christ the centrality and sovereignty over our marriage that he intended, asks for and deserves, it actually IS the kingdom of heaven. 

mind: blown.

having my 2 wedding anniversaries within a day of each other is an awesome reminder for me every year of the high standard my marriage is called to and of the even more perfect promise of christ to come. it is also fun to talk about my "first marriage" and my "second marriage" happening concurrently like i'm some kind of polygamizing banshee.

happy 7 years of hilarious, face-meltingly weird, ass-achingly hard, and yet totally worth it earthly marriage, jesse! i love you

reWORDED

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remember that time that i revealed my struggle with (aka hatred of) reading the bible?

it was over a month ago, and i thought i'd give a little update on how things are coming now that i'm putting real effort toward getting that lamp unto my freaking feet.

this may be shameful, but (yeah right, when has that ever stopped me from telling yall?) buying new things gets me excited for a new activity. maybe it shouldn't but it so does. having new running shorts  MAKES me more likely to work out. having a garlic press or a pastry cutter makes me want to cook.

in that same vein, the first thing i did after publishing that post and deciding to change my habits was order a new bible. this one specifically.

i like that its a new translation for me (NLT, a good mid-way point between the message's easy-to-read, paraphrasing and the NIV's more literal, yet sometimes harder to understand, interpretation), and i am liking it lots. i also like that there are no notes at the bottom (beyond VERY brief translation options sometimes). and i love that its small and zip-uppable so that if/when i put it in my purse, i dont find chapstick smears, dirt granules and squished raisins between pages when i pull her out again. and i like that the design is pretty cool (i mean, for a bible and all. i cant be too picky; i'm just grateful that my copy is 0% vellum).

the second thing i did was to take cindy's recommendation from the comments section and to buy Jen Hatmaker's book, A Modern Girl's Guide to Bible Study: A Refreshingly Unique Look at God's Word. jen hatmaker is a million percent hilarious (not something i say about chicks very often because i am stingy and insecure), and sold out to jesus. these are my prerequisites if you want me as your bible book customer.

while i waited for these gems to arrive on my doorstep from the dark heart of the amazon (seriously, they should get some domestic distribution centers, right?), i sat down with my hubface and talked about what we could do in our daily life to make spending time studying god's word more likely (since a lifetime of pretty much just NOT trying and waiting for the fire to light hadnt brought me far).

we landed on the super obvious, yet avoided-for-years, solution of waking up earlier. i confess: i make sleep an idol very often. for years...YEARS, yall, my husband has been waking up with the kids and letting me sleep for an extra 1-2 hours EVERY DAY. he is amazing in that way and knows that i legitimately need sleep more than he does. i feel like such a spoiled brat admitting that in public, but it's true, and while i've appreciated this SO much, this "extra" sleep had started to be a serious stumbling block to a lot of things in my life.

we started small though. the kids usually wake up around 7-7:30 (so jesse informed me). i get to work around 9. so formerly i would sleep until like 8:30 and leave (taking care of only myself...shame!) at the last possible moment. we decided to try both of us waking up at 7 every day for a week (regardless of when the kids woke up) just to see if i died of sleep-deprivation and to see how life felt after our trial run.

miraculously i lived. it was a close thing though.

actually not really. it was pretty easy and made it all the more ridiculous that i have been avoiding being a wearer-of-the-big-girl-panties for so long now. but dont be too impressed (as if you would) with my panties just yet...i made jesse a deal that he has to set the alarm, and then he, his beautiful self, has to wake me up personally, WITH iced coffee in hand. (i KNOW that he is too good for me, yall, but good luck convincing him). these were my demands.

so the entire first week we did exactly that. the first thing i learned: WHOA COFFEE! hoo boy, i usually drink coffee as like a dessert, and then only rarely. i get it now. drinking coffee in the morning = life. i can almost literally feel the first molecules of caffeine making contact with my brain and sending it into action. and i see that it is good.

study buddies!

the second thing i learned: jesus is on board for this.

how do i know? BOTH kids slept past 8 am every day that first week. jesse was GOBSMACKED (and i do NOT throw that word out lightly because it is very heavy). he says that not one child has ever slept past 8 for him, much less both of them for five days in a row! it really was amazing to hear this. call me the Nutty Confessor (please?), but i totally believe jesus did this to show me that reading his word is something he really wants from me

*it should be noted they have NOT done this again since...but they are made to stay quietly in their rooms until at least 7:30 so that we get at minimum a half hour alone with our bibles*

so i read the first few chapters of jen's (we first name tight like that) book sunday night before my first day of actual reading (jitters! i hope the teacher likes me...oh wait, he died for me and i am his child...i'm so in. yeah, nepotizz!). 

i love that she had a suggestion and example of a prayer to pray BEFORE opening the bible. to ask for guidance, revelation and protection from distraction. this is a very helpful exercise as it reminds me every day before i start that it's not ON ME to find something meaningful in god's word. it's in his hands to unfold exactly what he wants me to receive. that's a load off already and it changes my mindset of how i view a daily devotion from work i have to do to a blessing i am going to receive. straight up. 

she also strongly encouraged journaling. i have ALWAYS sucked at this, vowing to journal my life so my daughter can read about young-me one day, and i always make it no farther than 2 days. despite my dismal track record, i do love an excuse to buy cool school supplies so i scored a sweet graph-paper journal from target that makes my heart really happy. it has triangles and awesome all over it. it's the really well-bound kind that you can open all the way flat without breaking the spine. you dont have to feel the same, but i've just never been a big fan of spine-breaking, in general. 

first i went all the way through the book of james, and am now in the gospel of john. 

so here i am 6 weeks in. i'm still totally NOT that lady who talks about her bible like it's a secret lover. i'm not getting visions or stigmata and havent met a single seraphim (yet!). sometimes all i write on a journal page after a morning's reading is, "um....what???"

but it feels right. it feels like the beginning of a good work in me that he IS going to complete. so i keep showing up because jesus does too.

and, doy, bonus: life is a million times better when you get out in front of your day rather than hitting the ground reacting to it. i'm a better mom, wife, worker, crafter, runner, citizen, humanoid with my new, more disciplined routine.

standing ovation, please, for the 30 year old who learned to wake up at 7 am (movie contract pending for this gripping tale of heroism, in a world).

so my final verdict on this experiment-turned-habit? hold on to your hats, because it's the shock of the universe, and you wont hear this anywhere else, folks, because i am dropping a cutting edge truth-bomb: reading this bible is good for christians

blammo. *throws down mic*

dukes out

heat it: UP

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our kitchen is probably the most made-over room in our house. in the past 2 years of being self-aware and DIY-ish (seriously, WTFRICKINGFRACK were we doing those first 4.5 years?!?!) we have:

-painted the walls (twice)

-tiled the backsplash

-painted the cabinets (KILL ME!)

-painted the countertops

-added custom beadboard

-upgraded every single appliance as the originals have died off (slowly and with 12-month no interest financing)

-DIY'd new barstools (already recovered for the second time)

this is what it looked like the last time it was photogenic (circa april)

and lest we forget how far we'd already come by that point-- here is may 2011, before we tackled the cabs:

quelle dommage :(    this actually makes me very punchy.

despite ALL of this work, we continue to find pretty significant projects for this room. certainly soon it will be utterly perfect and ready to cage-match any living kitchen to the death for supreme dominance. (we see you, Kitchen Stadium, we're coming for you!!!)

there are 2 underway projects that i cant show you yet (i am being assisted by the geniuses at shepard lighting for these) but i CAN show you the most recent one that we wrapped up, and it is just a raging little pile of OUTSTANDING.

it concerns this corner of the kitchen:

pay no attention to that egg. (though i should tell you: it was delicious).

bloggy people, meet our microwave. her name is Oster and we got her for our wedding. i think my aunt wanda and my 3 girl cousins gave her to us at a shower they threw me (isnt weird how you can remember things like this?!?! obsessing over a registry really sticks with your subconscious, i guess).

if you remember from  the top photo, there really wasnt anywhere else to put this microwave since she's girthy (it happens) and our counter space is limited. so we have had her nestled diagonally in this corner for nigh on 6.5 years.

then one unusal tuesday in may, i had a brain hurricane and all of a sudden just couldnt deal with the microwave being there anymore (probably something i should get checked out by a neurologist...).  we couldnt figure out any good option for where else to put it to recapture or better-utilize the counter space.

and then we realized: OVER-THE-RANGE-MICROWAVE!

i swiftly begged jesse to do the hard work of moving the cabinets and promised him i would score us a sweet deal on new micro with a coupon AND on sale AND with no interest for 12 months (this financing that we do is built into our budget for beneficial tax reasons with jesse being clergy). 

before he could really protest, we had ripped out the cabinets (carefully and with a screwdriver, for the record, but i would love it if you just pictured us doing it Hulk-style) over the stove and the vent hood (sold on craigslist in 3 days!). 

and now we are committed to this project! this is also a gorgeous tapestry of our kitchen's history. luckily that wallpaper was never seen by us in full force: it was covered by a frosty ice-blue when we moved in. the painters tape-looking blue is the former color we painted.  its just whatever.

i forced down the bile when i caught a glimpse of the old cherry veneer that had escaped the purge of last summer, and soldiered on bravely.

jesse did some genius math and some impressive electric work (seriously, this year he has taught himself all there is to know about creating, moving, combining and rewiring outlets in our house...it's AWESOME) and figured out exactly where the top cabinet would need to move to to seamlessly combine with the new microwave.

this was all the more impressive because he didnt have the microwave while he was figuring. we ordered it online and had to get the cabinets ready before it was delivered. using only the online specifications and his monster brain he was able to remount the top cabinet to perfectly accommodate the new micro...we hoped

the cabinet moved up by about 6-8 inches so that the bottom of the new micro would align with the bottom of the neighboring cabs, and it had to come out about 2-3 inches off the wall to flush up against the microwave's depth. he added a spacer piece of wood behind it to get it just perfect.  he NAILED it (see what i did there? oh geez, sorry...i've had coffee, and caffeine over-stimulates the pun-centers of my brain). 

he also had to instal a new plug behind the top cabinet since the microwave would need a place to plug in up there. boyfriend ROCKS.

the microwave was delivered two days later and when the delivery dudes installed it, we were tickled pink stainless steel to see that jesse had planned flawlessly!

the depth: like a glove! (hey, it looks pretty good with two microwaves in here!)

and the height is b-e-a-u-tiful! 

i quickly painted the exposed cherry around the edges (must hide our secret shame!) and extracted our old Oster-girl (another craigslisting). 

and just like that: about 4 extra square feet of counter space freed up and my no-longer stricken-kitchen has made me a smitten kitten.  (i hate myself)

i mean, it'd be awesome if i had like a gorgeous kitchenaid stand mixer to be featured in this new space, but our toaster and a loaf of bread was all i could muster at this moment.

now, when our food is cooked, we hear the microwave's "ding-dong" from merrily on high (MAKE IT STOP)

happiness is a lofted microwave. also: besides being in a way-improved location, the microwave itself is pimp-nasty and amazing. lest we forget...

this project was really very easy (who knew cabinets arent that hard to move?) and cheap (we only paid for the microwave, which was the final appliance to be upgraded in our home) and gives the kitchen a much nicer, expensive feel with the built-in microwave and "custom" looking cabinetry. i declare a hard WIN.

"I love you because..." chalkboard tutorial

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when i first saw the idea for an "i love you because..." chalkboard sign on pinterest, i knew that having one in our house to constantly remind jesse of his awesomeness would totally help me get some action. 

by "action," i, of course, mean, "you watch the kids while i eat cheese, read embarrassing fiction (seriously), and then fall asleep."

but i noticed that the price for such a wondrous item was about $50. naturally, i figured i could make a passable version myself for much less. (if you arent DIY-ish , but want one of these, go buy yours from this creative, lovely genius, who provided the inspiration for my own DIY twist on this project).

so not only did i make my own version for less than $5 (i already had the chalk paint), but it's actually more of my style than the one that is for sale because i was able to pick a font, frame and colors that felt like "me."

here's how:

supplies:

-an old frame (mine's from goodwill!)

-spray paint/primer in the color you want your frame

-acrylic craft paint in the colors you want your permanent lettering (sky blue and red above)

-chalkboard paint (i used this brand and it was a dream)

-paintbrushes (one medium size and one fine-tipped)

-ball-point pen

-access to a printer

1. remove the glass and spray paint your frame (prime first if youre extra awesome). make sure to get all the weird, hidden angles and crevices, and resist the urge to go thick. many light coats is always best.

2. pretend this piece of wood is the glass from my frame. continue to pretend that i didnt break the glass and have to custom cut this thin piece of wood as a stand in. luckily, both glass and wood worked just splendidly for this project. it's easiest to just use your perfectly-sized and smooth glass.

3. stir the chalkboard paint very well and then start applying it to the surface of your glass/wood with a brush (i used this modge podge one because it was cheap and i could toss it after...washing out paintbrushes is of the devil). you'll need a few coats and will want each to dry before applying subsequent coats. 

sooooo, while your chalkboard paint is drying:

4. set up a word doc (or whatever the cool kids use these days) with your chosen font and size/spacing options for how you are going to want your permanent saying to look. i used the free font "channel" and just googled "heart graphic" to get my chosen buddies.

print it out and place it behind your (empty, spray painted) frame to get an idea for the sizing. you may need to play around with it on your computer until it's just the right fit.

5. once you have the perfect-sized printout, you are ready to transfer the pretty writing onto your (now dry) chalkboard surface. lay the paper over the top of the chalkboard exactly where you will want the letters to be. tape to hold in place.

6. take the ball point pen and trace over the outline of the printed letters and heart. you want to push down very hard; the idea here is to dig into the paint with the tip of the pen, creating a nice outline to frame the paint. BE CAREFUL with the glass when you are bearing down. i'd recommend putting a folded towel under the glass plate just to be sure you dont crack it between the pen and your hard surface. (P.S. i learned about this technique from this blog)

7. check to be sure your entire phrase outline has transferred visibly into the chalk paint below. if you have a good outline you can remove your paper template.

8. get your fine-tipped paintbrush and start painting within your outlines. the indentations from the pen will make little paint gutters, making it easy to stay inside the lines of even a fairly scripty, finnicky font like mine (which i could NEVER freehand paint without tragedy striking). 

*i made two of these boards...that's why there is white here but a red heart in the other photos

 it may take a few coats if you've picked a light color

9. this is the hard part: WAIT THREE DAYS for your chalkboard paint to cure before you put any chalk on it. i had to hide mine in a coat closet because i lack the self-control it would have required to keep seeing the chalkboard and NOT write on it. after the three days, you are ready to put the chalkboard in its frame and then break out your box of dusty buddies and get to writing!

10. before you compose any sonnets to your sweeties, you need to "season" the chalkboard paint first to make it easier to write on. that just means you do this:

on your mark,

get set,

rub-a-dub!

11. after it's good and chalky all over the writing area, wipe it off with a DRY cloth or paper towel.

doesnt that look just as perfectly-seasoned as a grade-A steak?

now you're ready to tell your sugar-sweets just how he/she gets your motor turning. obviously the first thing in my mind involves cheese and sleep. 

true story: if jesse is waking me up from a nap, he has learned that i WILL be grumpy and has finally found a great way to avoid getting snapped at: he hands me a chunk of cheese immediately after waking me. this is to quiet the monster as i transition to human. not even joking.

it's like how divers throw chum in the water to draw the sharks so they can swim elsewhere without getting eaten alive. most of jesse's marriage advice comes from shark week. 

i hung our sign right over our keyhook/mailbasket by the garage door where we leave and enter the house every day.you could make your own key attachment by just screwing little hooks into the frame as well.

since we are the only two literate people in the house right now, there's no guessing about who wrote each note. (this one was me, too. is it possible that i only love jesse because he gives me food? how cavewoman of me).

that's it! now go get your dusty love-talk on!

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