two things. one is happy, the other is hopeful.

 
today is friday. and there's a little sliver of sunshine dancing on the bushes outside my office window. it's a precious reminder that though there are storm clouds above the oaks, there is hope. i gave a presentation last night, in a big city two hours away. i got up to the podium and for all my practice, special ear device and big deep guttural  breaths, i completely bombed. i felt my face flush and my stomach sink to my ankles as about twenty eyes watched me stammer.

i cried all the way home as robert championed my ability to fight my fears. to stand defenseless in a room full of lions. i didn't do as i wished. as i planned or hoped. but i did it. i stuttered my way through an eighteen minute humiliation. i left to a room full of crickets.

i sank into the bathtub at one in the morning and hugged my knees to my chest. i read somewhere that when lady gaga gets lonely or sad, she rubs her feet together. one day, she said she rubbed all day. holding my knees to my chest in an old ceramic tub full of hot water is my similar defense mechanism. that and a good sob. i got  both.

but as robert reminded me on the ride home, i have a sweet life. i have a family and a little plot of land and a warm home. a pup whose heart bursts when i walk into the door.

and i have sweet, beautiful friends who lift me up to unimaginable heights. one such friend is diana. in talking to diana over the blogosphere, her heart for christ and for others is immediately transparent. not only do we share a favorite movie (the last kiss), her blog is so well written and she challenges me and her readers to love like Jesus. to be thoughtful and considerate and celebratory of the little moments.

diana has sweetly featured me on her blog today. go on over and check it out.

and do have a beautiful weekend, xoxoxo.

relationships series: first post & link up: expectations

as part of our five-week series on relationships, gina, morgan and i are posting today on expectations. link up below if you'd like to participate!

my best friend pulled her legs beneath her and sat indian style on the sunday school couch.

she asked if i knew that boy robert, the tall fellow who hung around with her boyfriend. who starred in school plays, sat on the bench outside our third period class and worked with my cousin at the golf course. of course i knew him.

well, he’s interested in you. and he drives a BMW.

say no more, i told her. say no more.

he picked me up a few minutes early that warm, windy summer in august . my entire family huddled around the living room, pacing around and making small talk waiting for him to arrive. though i’d seen him in passing, i had never spoken to robert in person until our first date.

as promised, he did pull up in a BMW, all right. his parents’ white one. he apologized as i climbed in, noting the towel on my seat. i spilled water on the way over. i’m so sorry, he muttered.

that night, he took me back to his house and showed me his real ride. a 1985 volkswagen vanagon. tan brown with faded leather seats and a fridge in the back. not quite the BMW, not quite what i was expecting.

that wasn’t the first time robert would challenge my assumptions. the first time he looked into my eyes and told me he loved me as he kissed me against his car, i expected he would never break my heart. that i would never call him ugly things and hurt him. a few years later, we both broke that expectation in college, with late night phone calls and fights in the dorm room corridor. 

i expected he would grow to love my cute way of nagging and pestering. and i would learn to see how cool his velcro shoes were.

on a cool afternoon in november, i expected we were just going on a saturday drive. when he pulled out the boombox with our song and dropped down on his knee, i knew i was wrong.

truth is, i’ve been wrong a lot. expectations limit our ability to love someone for their true selves. their faults and hang-ups, and their beautiful quirks.

when i was in middle school, i made a list of the qualities i wanted in my future husband. down to eye color, hand shape and voice depth. i expected robert would somehow, though the years, become this man. i expected i could change every little piece of him to fit my requirements. sort of like a mr. potato head. just swap out the parts i didn’t like and replace them with bright, shiny new ones. ones that would never fracture or bend or fade.

but robert was never supposed to be the dreamboat. an unobtainable vision behind smoke and mirrors.

he is real. he is huggable and dependable and rugged and smells like old pipes, which has become my absolute favorite smell in the world. he is grumpy sometimes and i am rude sometimes. i wear holey sweatpants to bed and his favorite t-shirt is a thrifted hertz auto rental one in a faded tangerine shade. his characteristics are solely his, from his penchant for sleeping in on the weekends, to his love for the rambo trilogy. 

his parents sold the BMW and we now own a new vanagon. some things never change, thank the good Lord above for that. but some things do, and that’s what makes this flexible, bendable, often breakable, life worth feasting upon.
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what about you? did you go into a relationship or marriage with expectations? how did it turn out? 
 join us next week as we tackle communication. the schedule for the remainder of the series is as follows:

• Week 3: Comparisons (Or, Keeping The Passion Alive- you pick)
• Week 4: Loving Through (when the unexpected happens)
• Week 5: A Strong Marriage While Parenting

link your blog posts below and be sure to check out gina's and morgan's perspectives on expectations:

to be vulnerable

xxx

in my high school english class, we had an assignment where everyone went to the whiteboard and wrote one word that described humanity.

i wrote vulnerable.

and this week, i've seen exactly why i felt that way back then, and how it still rings true to me now. i received the sweetest compliment from an elderly woman at wal-mart. a simple, "i just love your dress" kept me elated for the next few days. it was enough to get me through pressures at work and growing demands at school that threatened to swallow me whole this week.

but i've been put down, too. called down, pushed down, and gently placed down off my invisible pedestal. and that's been enough to ruin me for weeks at a time. it's a vicious, yet altogether worth it, two-sided coin, this being human.

because at our very nature, we are interactive. yet, as the Bible reminds us, we are also flawed, imperfect creatures. so on this earth, we correspond every day with people who can never, no matter how hard they try, be 100% good, 100% of the time. we're going to hurt each other, there's no getting around that. but we're also going to lift each other up to unexpected heights, too. because as humans, we have the power to do both.

sometimes i forget the weight of my words. their heaviness and impact. their power to leave scars or to erase them. it's a huge and overwhelming responsibility. but scanning through the cold freezer aisle of wal-mart, i was reminded.

that it's also a beautiful gift, bestowed on us by a God who believes in our ability to do great things, and say nice ones. to lovingly reach for that perfect goodness, even if it's always right past our fingertips. because in the reaching, we love, and in the loving, we lift.

the pains and gains of womanhood

she seemed glad to see me when i appeared in the kitchen, and by watching her i began to think there was some skill involved in being a girl.

-to kill a mockingbird

 xxxx

it happened on wednesday. standing in line for my frappe. white chocolate mocha with a shot of caramel. at a new coffee shop. across the street from the post office where my dad works. a little lunch break reprieve.

i felt a tiny hand on my shoulder, and turned around. a middle-aged woman, with graying hair, modest slacks and an oversized sweater looked through her glasses into my eyes. "i just don't know how you do it," she spoke to me in her southern voice not unlike my own. "those high heels. don't they hurt your feet?" 

i looked down at my shiny brown pumps, a little bit of toe cleavage emerged, then sunk back into the leather, as the tips of the shoes made a sharp point. she was right. they were uncomfortable. too high. too pointy. a bit too small. "i don't know..." i trailed off. "the things you do for fashion, i guess!" i smiled to close the conversation, grabbed my sweating coffee, and hurried out the door, careful to walk precisely, to demonstrate to her that i could, indeed, navigate my way on the cobblestone wearing these awful shoes.

it happened again on thursday.

i came home yesterday evening and even before kissing robert or rubbing pablo's ears, i unzipped my dress. and took a deep breath. for the first time all day. a real, good, from-the-gut inhale. and it felt delicious.

because all day, i had squeezed my upper body into this outfit that hugged me, squeezed me, controlled me.

robert just shook his head. "i don't know why you girls torture yourself like this" he said as he helped me lift the dress over my curls.

but what he doesn't know, what he can never realize, is that i do it because i want to.

because that dress was from h&m. it was silver and purple. flowy and ruffly on the bottom. only seven dollars on sale. one of my favorite new finds. heck, one of my favorite new dresses period. and i was willing to suffer a little for it, i suppose.

because femininity is sacred, and takes many different forms.

for some, it's sinking into a bubble bath, nose deep. it can be cooking. dancing. wearing your husband's button-down shirt. rocking babies.

it can also be playing sports. getting muddy. dirty. sweaty. 

for me, it's all these things. and more.

and on some days, especially days like this week--with all the stress over family health, starting graduate school, and work pressure that came with it--yes, it was high heels and a terribly uncomfortable but ultimately beautiful dress.

and who cares if no one understands or appreciates it besides me? that's what makes it special.

and, i suppose, pretty skillful.

a universal truth

"We may not be able to stop all evil in the world, but I know that how we treat one another is entirely up to us.  I believe that for all our imperfections, we are full of decency and goodness, and that the forces that divide us are not as strong as those that unite us."

there's nothing i can say today, no words i can think up, quotes from favorite books or songs that i can recite, or musings i can drone on about that will match the heart, beauty and truth of last night's presidential speech in tucson. i'll be honest. i don't always watch televised speeches, and when i do, my attention is divided, scattered at best. 


but republican or democrat, regardless of how you feel about his policies, practices or the way he runs our country, last night wasn't about that. it was a tribute. plain and simple. to the lives lost and the people--real, flesh and blood people with histories, presents and futures--that were affected. and that universal truth transcends political boundaries.


i hung to every word. and i'm certain it was one for the history books. it was even worth missing half of modern family for, and i don't say that lightly.


find the full transcript and video here.