Letters of Vitriol, Recognition of Humanity, and Messy ‘Ole Me

I got really mad this morning.

I felt that an injustice was being done to my husband.  One that has some historical roots to it.  One that has a bearing on some of the larger story of our life.  (As an aside, this had nothing to do with work….  Even I am smart enough to keep my nose out of issues in the Navy). 

And I was mad.  I wanted to take someone down for it.  I wanted to yell and scream.  I was using language that I only use when I am seriously channeling my  mother in a fit of righteous indignation.  And my mother had some language, folks.  I’m sure you’ve noticed that by now.  I was drafting letters and rehearsing conversations in my head where I would put people in their place and they would quake in the presence of my awesome command of the English language and my projection of force ashore (did I get that term right??). 

Husband didn’t want me to.  He didn’t want to take any action.  He said to let things lay as they were.  But I couldn’t just not take action.  So I made a phone call (calmly).  Left a message.  But that didn’t seem to pack the punch I had hoped so… 

I sat down to write a letter…  A letter designed to express my anger and disappointment.  A finger-pointing, red-hot, letter of vitriol.  And I revelled in it.  I mean….  I RELISHED it.  It felt SOOO good to focus anger at a single point and to compose a coherent message around that point and to imagine the response there.  The POWER I could pretend I had while writing it.

I got it finished and it was GOOD.  It was JUICY.  It was appropriate, but pointed.  It was virulent and scathing.  But I did not send it.

A few moments after I was finished writing it, still trembling from the thrill of it all, the phone rang.   I knew from the caller ID that it was the individual who has served as our messenger and go-between in this process, and that happens to be someone whom I have always particularly liked and respected.  I answered the phone and couldn’t help but smile and say, “It’s so good to hear your voice again!” 

And that was it.  My anger was gone.  The righteous indignation that I had felt so entitled to a breath before seeped out of my teeth when I smiled.  And suddenly I was simply a collaborator with this mediator to the process trying to find a solution.  A potential solution was proposed.  Promises were made to explore the option and I hung up the phone feeling…  Peaceful.

A mere seconds before I was reveling in righteous indignation, and now here I was with egg on my face standing not with two smoking barrels, but breathing a sigh of gratefulness for people in my life who I know will go to bat for us even though those particular people happen to play for the ‘team’ to whom I had just finished writing my letter of vitriol.  In the second it took for me to hear a real human voice and to picture this man who I like and respect in the place of the enemies I was concocting in my righteous indignation mode, I was totally disarmed.  My perceived ‘enemy’ became a real person to me again, and I couldn’t be mad in the face of someone who shared in the messiness of humanity right along with me.

So I sighed.  And I smiled.  And I felt relieved that my letter of vitriol wasn’t sent, but strangely I still felt glad that I wrote it.  I feel glad that I got it out of my system.  I feel grateful that for a second I had an enemy to focus my reserves of energy and anger and emotion on.  Yes, it’s great that I didn’t hang myself in the process by putting a stamp on it, but the catharsis of it all isn’t lost in the loss of the anger.

So I’m sitting here now, just laughing at myself.  Laughing at how easily I’m disarmed.  Laughing at how angry I was.  Laughing at how big of a mess I am.  I was apparently so desperate to be angry at SOMETHING that I feel better after having written a useless (but seriously beautifully crafted) letter of vitriol.  I’m laughing at the beauty I find in the realization of the humanity of our ‘enemies.’  I’m laughing at my delight in analyzing the layers of the situation and my reaction to each of them.

I don’t know if in the end I’m going to feel like my husband wins out.  It’s a complex situaton with no easy answers.  It’s entirely possible that a week from now I’m going to feel like sending that letter once again (though I may amend it with some good words for those who have gone to bat for my husband in the process).  I’m laughing at my bull-headedness and insistence of taking on the situation despite my husband wishing otherwise, and I’m hoping that maybe he’ll see the value in a meddlesome wife who at least is cool-headed enough to not immediately send her letters of vitriol.

Ahhh…  but it sure was fun to write….

Extravagance

One of the words that keeps coming at me over and again in this current season for me is “Extravagance.”  I feel absolutely surrounded by glorious extravagance.  Like I’m swimming in it.  We’re starting to settle into our new home.  I keep thinking there is no reason in the world that we should be in a house like this.  This house is special.  We couldn’t afford a home like this in a place like this in a million years.  This simply must be grace.

 

But it goes further than that.  Soon after we moved in here I started trying to get back into my walking/jogging routine.  I discovered that just up the road from  us is ‘the country’–the kind of country that reminds me of home.  Farms, and trees, and flowering plants, hills and fields.  It smells so good in those spots:  like dirt and flowers and baby leaves. 

Then I set out one day to see how close I could get to the water.  We could see it from our house….  But how close was it really?  And if there was access to it was it all in restricted ‘military base’ places? 

Imagine my surprise when I found 1/4 mile from our home, a ‘backroad’ beaten with potholes, that takes you to the beach.  So we’ve spent some time exploring there…  We took a ridiculously long beach walk two weekends ago, and while doing so we crossed paths with three otters.  We’ve lived here almost five years.  I’ve wanted to see a sea otter for five years…  Husband said he saw one the first week he was up here.  I’d stopped believing they really were here.  And then we saw three.  They played in the water, and then came up on the beach right in front of us, sunned themselves, played, noticed us and headed back out to sea where they continued to give us a show of playing and peeking back at us for at least 25 minutes.  Since then I’ve seen another otter in a completely different spot, and seen our family of three again while walking along ‘our beach’  another day.  Sea otters are my thing.  I’ve loved them since I first saw them in a trip to Alaska with my parents.  In my mind there is no other explanation for being inundated with sea otters lately except that God is, for whatever reason, saying I love you…  wooing me witih gifts he knows I find better than jewels…  showing me his extravagantly good heart.

I could go on and on about a park that I discovered in the town C goes to preschool in with sweeping views of the islands; about the 13 deer that I saw there  yesterday just milling about as I walked by with a stroller; about the way the sun has played on the mountains; about the storms blowing over the water, swirling around and then giving way to blue sky and sunshine.  I can go on and on, but it can all be summed up in one word:

Extravagance. 

Maybe two: 

Extravagant grace. 

Or another two:

Extravagant love.

 

There is no reason I should be so blessed.  I could sing deyenus (It would have been enoughs) for all time for the blessings we’ve been given besides any of these…  This kind of extravagance makes me nervous, makes me wonder if a downturn is coming…  If this is a season of beauty because I will need to store it up for a season of pain.  I have never done well with extravagance.  I feel awkward and unworthy and nervous around it.  But I am trying to remember that right now is what is most important.  That bad things WILL happen at some point, because it’s a simple fact that ‘in this world we will have trouble.’   I try to be mindful that worrying about them steals the joy of this extravagance.  I want to stay present.  I want to soak it in.  I want to breathe it all in, and store it up and cherish it.

Extravagance.

From Blah to Beautiful

I’ve wanted this blog to be about the holy ordinary.  I blog about the ordinary.  But how often do I endeavor to find the Holy there?  I want to work harder at that.

I can tell you today that I am blah.  I am in the greyest of blahs.  The sun is out.  It’s a beautiful day.  I’m planning on taking the girls out for a walk and to the park, but I am blah.  I want to escape some more.  Watch movies.  Putter on the Internet, eat cookies.  Stay in pajamas.   Burrow away.  Hide until all I don’t want to do or face goes away.

I made cookies yesterday as an activity to do with C, but also as a way to escape the every day crazies of yesterday.  I tried to make them healthier by substituting applesauce.  They don’t have that snap.  Or richness.  They are very unsatisfying.  I gorged on them yesterday trying to find the satisfying taste I craved.  I came up short at every bite.

My day today feels like those cookies taste.  It lacks snap.  It lacks richness.  My house is a disaster and there is a pile of laundry up to the ceiling.  My kids are energetic, but exhausting, and despite the extra sleep I got this morning I am tired.  I am just tired.

I feel  like shades of grey.

I want to seek out the richness and the snap.  I want a full-bodied taste to my day.  But I have to give a little, put out a little effort.  I just don’t want to engage.

I want to mentally transform the blah into beautiful.  Ann at Holy Experience again convicted me.  Convicted me about gratitude, about seeing with God’s eyes and not my own.  And truly, the spirit has been speaking to me about that.  About seeing with new eyes.  About living in the empowerment of the spirit.  About my spiritual life being about experience.

So today I want to see the miracle of pudgy hands on my thigh, instead of the drudgery of another request to be picked up by Mama with a tired back. 

I want to see the beauty of sisters sitting on a makeshift, very soft bench, made of one of those piles of laundry. 

I want to engage…  To be enveloped and inside of, and tasting the full-bodied richness of my children’s giggles…  And I want to see more than my annoyance and fatigue when those giggles turn into shrieks and screams.

I want to find the Holy in the Ordinary and see the blahs of today transformed into beauty. 

I will have to engage with the present and stop running away.  I’ll have to wade into the mess in front of me instead of trying to hide.  

I’ll have to see with new eyes.

Minor Gripes and Grrs

We have been scrupulously avoiding using our electric heaters this winter to save money.  I mean, to the point that the mean temperature in our bedroom at night is probably 42 degrees (we sleep under two comforters and a quilt–it works for us!).  We leave the heater in the girls’ room on at night, but that’s the only one we’ve run all year.

We’ve relied on our woodstove to heat the house during the day.  And really that’s a great way to heat our home.  It makes everything feel so warm and toasty, even if it is a little more work. 

We having record low temps this week on the island.  It hasn’t been this cold here in ten years.

And so, of course, when Husband went to start the fire this a.m, he discovered a problem with the wood stove (I will parenthetically add that he discovered said problem a week or two after *I* said, “Honey, I think something is wrong,” and he blew me off.  Oh well at least we got another week’s worth of heat out of it, right?). 

So we’re back to the money-sucking electrical heat.  And we get to call the Chimney Guy.  Which isn’t all bad.  The Chimney Guy is kind of a fun person.

Our (desktop) computer shot craps too.  Don’t know if it was a virus, or a power surge but the hard drive is fried most likely in a non-recoverable way.  Stupid us didn’t back up a lot of the precious photos that we had on that computer.  Of course, I was in the middle of several projects on it, most notably a collection of my Grandmother’s recipes to give to our family, and the scanning of her priceless heirloom family photos. 

And, while I feel infinitely better than I did last week when I had a sinus infection, and an infected/inflamed ear canal, I still can’t hear out of my right ear and it’s starting to hurt again.

Sometimes it feels like everything we touch falls apart.

I’m starting to feel a little Grrrbah about it.

So let’s see…  Where’s the grateful here:

1)  I’m grateful that we have electric heat to fall back on. 

2)  I’m grateful we have a home to heat at all.

3)  I’m grateful that we have Husband’s laptop so I can sit here and write and gripe and still do at least some of the computer tasks I need to.

4)  No one who owns TWO computers, even if one is small and slow, should really be able to complain, right?  And besides, it’s all just stuff. 

5)  The Chimney Guy really is pretty fun.  Carolyn gets a kick out of him.

6)  I might get to go see my sweetheart of a doctor whom I love and adore, and that always cheers me up.  Even when I’m sick as a dog.

And besides:

7) Our family is together.  For Christmas.  My heart isn’t stretched across the ocean and I’m not having to put on a brave face and a good show for my babies while we miss Daddy this year.  I love that.

8) We have snow.  And it’s sticking around.  And we’re supposed to get more.  That never happens here.

9)  My first Canning adventure was a successful undertaking and the house has smelled SO GOOD for the last few days.

10)  The home-made Christmas presents are almost all done, and they’ve been really fun to put together.

11)  Our housing allowance is going up, and if we can ever get ahead of these little crises and setbacks, it’s going to help a lot.

12)  Despite the money hemorrhages all of the above has caused, I still get to go Christmas shopping for my babies tonight.

So I’ll get over my Grrrbah and go on with my day.

The Santa Claus Conundrum–My Question for You

Seriously small potatoes in a world such as ours but I’m sitting here this morning, watching Christmas movies with my kiddos, and pondering the Santa Claus Conundrum.

My SIL is firmly AGAINST Santa.  She creates Christmas magic for her kids in ways that don’t involve the Santa stuff, but focus on the magic of Christ coming into the world.  We’ve adopted a lot of what she does…  But I’m resistant to throwing Santa out completely.

Another friend is firmly against Santa on the principle of not wanting to lie to his children.  I get that too.

I’ve heard the argument that teaching about Santa Claus only to have your children find out later that he doesn’t exist sets them up to believe that God isn’t real either.

But as a kid I loved the magic.  I tried to believe as long as I could…  Even after I knew better, I tried to believe.  I still love the magic. I love the history of St. Nicholas (which is what we try to focus on when we talk about Santa at our house).  I love the ways that the St. Nicholas story itself can point to Christ.  I love childlike belief.  I LOVED believing that I had a secret power that grown-ups didn’t, because *I* could belief, and sometimes I wish I still had that secret power (faith like a child, you know?).  I love Miracle on 34th St. and Yes, Virginia There is a Santa Claus.

So my question is–what are your thoughts?  What does your family do?  If you are a believer how do you approach the Santa thing?  If you don’t ascribe to the Christian tradition, what are your thoughts?  Does anybody else try for the middle road?  How do you do it?

Three bits of Crazy at Husband’s Re-enlistment

Husband officially re-enlisted today.

He chose to do so on Deception Island.  Which I kind of loved.  That’s crazy point number one.

The girls were crazy.  Adorable and crazy.  Crazy point number two.

Husband held his tongue during his minute of non-Navyness after being discharged, though he did mention that he was doing so.  We’re still a little bummed about losing out on most of the re-enlistment bonus and well…  Things are a mixed bag at the new command in general.  We’ll make the best of the next three years though.  Because he DID sign on that dotted line again today.  Back to the craziness.

But best of all, I accidentally mooned the officer, first class, and husband in attendance.

My skirt–which had elastic in the waistband, and which I was wearing over hose slipped down little by little without my noticing.  It was all the bending down and standing up to get pictures of the girls and Husband, I think.  After the honorable discharge, and in the midst of the raising of right hands and repeating of words, I reached down to smooth out my skirt only to feel nothing but pantyhose covering my backside…..

In the middle of husband re-enlisting, I shrieked out an, “Oh dear God” and pulled my skirt up.  Crazy point number three.

Husband didn’t notice.  I hope no one else did….  I’m thankful that I was wearing a long sweater.  Hopefully that kept the moonrise from being too noticeable.

We’ll chock that one up to my most embarassing Navy wife moment, huh?

Fleas are Good Teachers

The fleas have upped the ante on the already sky-high stress level around here.  Things have just been hard.  Nothing big has gone down, thank God, but the little things just keep wearing us down like sandpaper.   I watch the money leak out of our accounts despite our recent bare bones budget formation.  The girls have both been picking up on the tension and for that and other reasons we’re seeing a rash of really difficult behavior, especially from Little Miss.  Husband and I are trying to approach life together as a team again, but the work we are doing together and individually heightens everything.

I’m trying to keep a level head about it all.  I’m trying to ask questions and keep lines open between God and I.  I keep asking “What is going on here?” 

The fleas, I have found as good fodder for reflection:  How do they mirror the idea of being attacked?  Of darkness trying to squeeze out the light?  (I know–heady terms for a flea infestation, but I’m trying to take it to a metaphorical level and learn).

The forced cleanliness of the house has proven to be a lot of work for both Husband and I, but has also bolstered Husband’s spirits.  That’s a good thing.

And I find as an overarching theme in my heart, that though I’m stressed, and tired, and angry, and frustrated, and at times feel utterly helpless with the fleas+money+family stress scenario that I have this one underlying feeling when it comes to the work of ‘defleaification.’

It’s something Husband and I are doing TOGETHER.  It’s a progress that we’re taking on TOGETHER.  We’re both needed and essential.  He is HERE.  It is not just MINE to deal with.  I have HELP.  And as awful as it is to do 100 loads of laundry a day and vacuum and vacuum and vacuum and clean and clean and clean, something feels so good about doing it TOGETHER.

The fleas gave me the opportunity to flex my developing muscles of not overcommitting myself.  Not insisting on doing everything.  Not thinking I am the answer to every problem and that there is no wiggle room to my commitments.  Today was supposed to be my ‘helper’ day at Little Miss’s preschool.  I bought the brownies to make last night.  I thought over scenarios to get everything done this morning and to still be gone for those 4 hours.  And at 8 p.m. last night I cried uncle, and called another parent to trade days.  I am learning to put my sanity first.  This is good.

And best of all, despite the fleas and the stress and the knot of tension that has been lodged in my belly with ropes pulling against my shoulders…  Despite that suffocating feeling that I could just give in to, on the way home from dropping Little Miss off at school, I was called by the sea (or the maker of it) to draw close to the water’s edge and breathe.  And so despite the list of things I wanted to get done this morning, I took the turn to the beach instead of the turn to our house.  And I sat–just for ten minutes–and watched the crashing of the waves.  They were incredible today.  Filled with fury and as much tension and intensity as the stress of things right now.  But they unwound me.  For a brief time this morning I made just breathing my priority.  It was a very good choice.

In Which the Gremlins Catch Up With Us

Through our deployment and detachment days, I kept waiting for the gremlins to come out in full force.  I waited for the toilet to stop working, and the fridge to go on the fritz.  I waited for pay issues to rear their ugly heads and for our bank accounts to mysteriously drain.  I waited for flat tires and a failing furnace.  But our gremlins, as I have written here ad-nauseum, always took another form.  So we had family members in the hospital, or we had funerals to go to.  Our gremlins were of the familial crisis variety.  I wouldn’t call us lucky, but hey, maybe God knew that I could handle familial crises better than clogged toilets with Husband gone.  And of course there was always the sick kids.  So puke, poop, snot, and funerals–those were our gremlins.

We’re three weeks into Husband’s new command.  Three weeks into Shore Duty, things are falling apart around us. The normal wear and tear of household products is catching up to us.  Furniture, appliances (minor), clothes–Everything is just a little long of tooth, and showing the wear and tear of serving us well.  But everything is falling into the “NOW is the time to address this issue” category, it seems.

Just for good measure, I managed to trash the passenger side mirror of the goobermobile, and part of the paint job with it. 

Things are falling apart.  I’m starting to feel like everything I touch breaks or falls apart.

Husband suddenly has asthma.  Major asthma.  Scares me all of the time asthma.  And allergies.  The man feels sick and unable to breathe almost all the time.  Not. Good.

And then there is the….  How can I put this delicately….?  The ‘doinkage’ we’re encountering.

The day husband checked into his command we discovered a fiasco with his re-enlistment bonus that could only be engineered by the Navy gods (are you ready for this my Snarky friend?).  When Husband decided to re-enlist we were told his signing bonus would allow us to realize maybe $7000.  That’s not a huge singing bonus, but it’s something and we were ok with that. 

So the day Husband reported for his first day of work in his new command he was met with this information:  You SHOULD be getting not $7000, but $16,000 as a re-enlistment bonus.  But because of a bunch of wrong information and poor advice given by the career counselor (AKA the person who is supposed to know how to do these things), and several loopholes that lined up just so, we’ll only be realizing $1,500.  And that’s before taxes of course.  Husband was actually plainly advised to re-enlist and do check-in procedures in exactly the wrong way because according to the ‘experts’ we would realize a greater bonus.  Costly mistakes, at least for the R family.

Now I just want to assure all of those ‘so many people think they’re entitled’ folks of one thing.  We do NOT feel entitled to a signing bonus.  Any money is extra money, and we fully understand that.  But to find out that our  bonus should have been $16,000 and instead we’re going to get less than a tenth of that is a kick in the teeth.

Enter this month’s payday:  I am checking our accounts online as I do daily and I see that the alert that our next pay-day deposit is coming.  I look at the amount due to be deposited, and I’m stumped.  It’s $600 less than what we should be getting.

I pull up Husband’s handy-dandy LES (that’s military-speak for the breakdown of money we get each month) and see that our BAH mysteriously $600 less than it should be. 

This can be fixed, but it will be fixed on the military’s time which is required to be instant when you owe them money but that can take several eternities when they owe you.

So for now, $600 that we need….  very badly at the moment, that we’re not going to see for quite some time.  We’re still recouping from our expected and unexpected travels of the summer.  Things have been tight anyway.  This makes things even tighter.

It’s all these little things, piling up.  And all of these large sums of money that we could really use that we won’t be seeing.  And all of these frustrations and disappointments and worries.

It’s hard not to just let my heart grow cynical.  To just say, “Screw it.  I guess this is the way life works.”   Life is just supposed to be full of stress and disappointment and disillusionment.  That’s the way it goes.  I am trying not to ‘make agreements’ as John Eldgrege calls it, but I find it difficult. 

It’s especially disappointing because we have so looked forward to this season.  We have longed for this time to be together as a family.  For Husband’s job-related stress level to be lowered significantly.  For time to breathe and be together and not be constantly working through the next crisis or separation on the horizon.

We’re met instead with lots of gremlins, lots of stress, lots of familial tension, and several not-small disappoinments.

I’m just tired.  I’m disappointed.  I wish not to feel ‘entitled,’ but I really would like to catch a break.  I still don’t know if the challenges we’ve faced in our last five years are ‘normal’ or if they’re really as constant and wearing as they seem to me.

I’m grateful for so much, and so aware of our blessings and how fragile and tenuous they are.  I know of so many people who daily struggle with so many more truly devestating things than these.  I know how blessed I am that, thus far, my babies are very healthy.  I know how blessed I am to have a roof over my head, and to know that Husband has A paycheck coming in regularly–regardless of it’s accuracy.

But I am weary.  My heart is weary.  My family is weary.  In this greatly anticipated season we have so far met with only more stress, more frustration, more disillusionment. 

It’s not the end of the world.  It’s not anything we can’t survive, but it’s taxing our emotional and relational reserves.  My heart is weary.  Our family is weary. 

And that’s where I find myself today.  Whiny, and entitled as it may sound.  That’s where I am.

At least we are together.  At least husband is home.  At least we are working through it.

And circumstances or no, we have peace and joy that streams beneath the stress and disappointment, and it is from those streams that we must draw our renewal.

And we will.  Once I get the temper-tantrums out.

Engagement Benediction

**Note–the image above is a painting by Makoto Fujimura.  More information is below.

 

So seriously, could my last post have been any more whiny?  I don’t think so, Tim.  The planes REALLY WERE loud though.  They were.

And then, the night after I post it, Ann from  Holy Experience, surprisingly and humblingly linked back here in one of her posts after I joined the Gratitude Community.  Yeah, you wanna talk about feeling like a fraud.  *Puts brown paper sack over her face*

Anyway, I’m still fighting off the grumpiness.  We finally got some sunshine yesterday and for most of today and I can’t even tell you how much that helped.  I’m still cagey, I still miss Husband, and for whatever reason–possibly just the time of year–I am feeling the missing of my mother in a raw way once again.  But that’s ok.

That’s not even what I want to write about today.

Every so often, I rediscover Makoto Fujimura.  And it’s always a huge treat when I do.  He’s an artist, but better than that, he is an incarnational artist.  His paintings are acts of worship–vessels which point to the creator.  Husband and I have a particular fondness for Makoto Fujimura.  And I gotta tell you why.

So it was December of our senior year of college.  He who would be Husband was in an art class which he was loving (I  believe art literally saved his life, but that’s another post), and he told me that his class had been given the assignment to go visit the St. Louis Art Museum.  Of course he followed up with, “Want to go with me?”

The St. Louis Art Museum has always been a special place for us.  It was the venue of one of our first non-dates, and the venue of one of our first date-dates.  We knew one another’s favorite pieces and we weren’t afraid of sharing appallingly non-artsy comments with one another like, “OK.  Doesn’t that look like a jenga game?”

Of course, I agreed to go with him.  Upon arriving and after an emergency visit to the facilities, we agreed to begin in the Asian wing.  Now you must know one thing about Husband and I and our art-browsing techniques.  When we find a painting or work that we love, we can’t just stand there and say, “ooooo, ahhhh.”  We have to sit with it.

And so it came to pass that quite unexpectedly, we came to a painting in the Asian wing of SLAM (which had never really been my favorite wing) that made me literally gasp.  It was called “January Hour–Epiphany,” and I remember just wanting to drink it in.  We got closer to the painting and found that there were words painted very subtley in Gold leaf–specifically the passage from John 1 where John the Baptist is asked about his practice of baptizing folks and replies, “I baptize with water.  Among you stands one whom you do not know, the one who is coming after me; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandal.” (John 1:26-27).  I can’t tell you what it was about the painting that captured me so.  But immediately, I knew this was one we needed to sit with.  So we did. 

I continued to drink in the beauty of this painting (which is much bigger and even more stunning in person), when suddenly He who would be Husband was on the floor…  On one knee….  So my mind is racing and at first I’m going, “Why is he on the ground?  Is he ok?  Did he pass out?  No…  He’s upright…  Hmmm…  He seems to have something in his hand…  ACKACKACK!!!!ITSARING!!!!”

I can’t tell you what it is he said–how he asked.  I wonder if he even remembers.  I just remember not being able to breathe, and eventually choking out a yes….  Almost hyperventilating…  Not being able to believe that this was actually happening.  Husband asked if he could kiss me–just once–because we were one of those weird couples who didn’t kiss.   I said yes to that too, and I remember thinking how very soft his lips were.

We sat there a little longer.  When we weren’t staring gooey-eyed into one another’s eyes we continued to drink in the cool, breathtaking beauty of ‘our painting.’  And, ok, yes, occasionally, I stared down at the, also stunningly beautiful, saphire ring on my left hand. 

And that was that.  The rest is history, and five and a half years later, I’m sitting here, wishing that Husband was here with me.  In a couple weeks he will be, and a few weeks after that, he’ll be beside me again to stay, and a new chapter of our lives together will be under way (which is much better than Husband being underway, let me tell you).

So that’s why Makoto Fujimura is special to us.  But even if his painting hadn’t been there to witness the moment of our engagement, he’d still be an incredible artist, with incredible things to say about God, creativity, and community.  The more I learn about him and his take on faith and creativity and art, the more that I hope that being in front of his painting at that moment might be a sort of benediction over our marriage.  I hope so.

Personal Bumper Sticker Irony

After writing my last post, I’ve been thinking about myself and how hot and bothered I get about people being told to feel certain ways.  It’s kind of bizarre because one thing that really confounds me at this point in time is how in the heck I’m supposed to feel my feelings.  I’m so tied up in the knots of how I think I’m supposed to feel, and so conditioned by now to not let myself fully emote through anything, that  I seriously don’t feel capable of really being where I am and feeling it fully.  But I’ll be darned if I’ll let anyone deny me or anyone else the right to do so. 

So, in light of all that, I think if I were a car, my bumper sticker would read:

“Fighting for the right for people everywhere to feel what they feel, because God knows I don’t know how to!”