Friday, February 28, 2014

28 Days

Every year I thank God for the shortness of February; its container of 28 days always breezes by and makes me utter "Is it March already?" "Are we really changing our clocks in a week?" "Is spring really only 21 days away?" I tend to hold my breath and close my eyes through February and early March, fixating on how every second lived is just one second closer to spring; I keep my head down until I know that when I look up I will see blossoms. This technique is not one that I would suggest and I am slowly trying to change and lift my eyes from the ground during this season, finding gratitude amidst great anticipation. Here are some snippets of life and gratitude from the past 28 days.



Sun filled offices. Snowy train rides. Fresh clementines. King Street Station. Breakfast at the best place on the planet. Bitter cold hikes before the snow hit. Many days spent in Seattle due to my car breaking down, but at least that meant many days with my man. Back to work. Back to working out. Choco-coconut oatmeal and a down comforter. Iced coffee and a cookie on an unseasonably warm and sunny February afternoon.

Thursday, February 13, 2014

Hurricanes and Other Various Forms of Human Madness

In 6 months, I will walking down the aisle. I will become a wife to a wonderful man. Its all beautiful, it truly is. Yet, I find myself crying at night, and not tears of happiness, but tears of fear. I fear that I am not strong enough to give him the love he deserves, that I am not organized enough, not thin enough, not this and not that enough. I feel as if I haven't met the criteria of being a wife, and that if I don't, my marriage will fail. 

I know women who are strong, who are selfless, who are beautiful, who are organized, who are sane, who look great in bikinis, and who are so kind and selfless it's nauseating. These are the women that should be getting married. Not me. Not this “frizzy haired, can’t seem to keep her car clean, emotional mess" of a person. I am not wife material. I hate sewing, I hate DIY projects, I hate beauty products, and I refuse to wax hair off my body in places that seem absolutely ridiculous. I am strong-willed, feisty, selfish, and can be the biggest brat at times. I am insecure, body conscious, and really bad at forgiving.  I don’t pray and meditate on scripture everyday, I haven’t read a single book on marriage, and I have never done a Joyce Meyer bible study. I am currently making negative four dollars an hour and I have no clue what my future career will look like. I am unbalanced and confused and nowhere close to meeting my perceived criteria of being a wife. 
I am so far from perfection. I am so broken and messy and pretty much a disaster. 
But, I met a man two years ago in the middle of a hurricane, a season that was strong, bitter, and destructive. Since then the hurricane has passed, but he held on through the entire storm, even when I almost pulled his limbs off and let the floods run from our eyes until we were drowning. You see, he was in a hurricane as well, so we understood the feeling of ripping each other’s arms off and through it all we found the sweet relief of grace. The sweet relief of open arms despite one another’s imperfection and wrongdoings, we found Grace among the countless amounts of broken promises and hurtful words. The foundation of our relationship was built on Grace and perhaps that is why I am so far from perfection. This man, whom I love so deeply that it hurts, didn’t fall in love with perfection, but with grace. We fell in love while we falling down and it grew deeper every time we got back up again. We learned to love each other in the messiest parts of ourselves.

He fell in love with my inability to stay calm while he drives and with my tendency to make a mess of his room every time I come over. He has fallen in love with my crabbiness, with my tears, and with my inability to listen to anything he has to say when we are watching a movie.  And I too have fallen in love with his madness, with his impatience, with the way he would rather have plain peanut butter cookies than ones with chocolate chips. I have fallen in love with the way he will stop mid sentence to point out a car on the freeway and with his inability to remember a lot of things.

The thing is, I don’t need to be perfect before I get married. I don't need to be perfect, ever. And neither do you. In fact I would highly encourage imperfection before your wedding, because in reality, you will have plenty of imperfection for the rest of your life. As marriage reflects Christ love for us, remember that while we were imperfect little hurricanes, Christ loved us fully and gave up his life for us. That is my hope for us, that on our wedding day we will vow to love one another despite being unorganized and not waxing our awkward body hair; that we will encourage one another despite our crazy driving and crabbiness; and that we will hold one another despite the onset of hurricanes and other various forms of human madness; that the Love we know will weave us together and be our fountain of Grace, never running dry and always flowing over. 

Monday, February 3, 2014

Words: If my internship could talk 1/6

For my internship we are required to do a creative process each month to promote self-awareness. I have decided to use words as my median and start a series called Words: If my internship could talk. So here is month one in words.
all sources can be found here