Author: Lily

Cookies for Jesus: a Club for the Very-Worst-Christians

We sit in a lop-sided circle on a couch or a bed or a blanket on the bare floor of an apartment. We spread out our offerings – fresh bread and fruit, dumplings and chips and juice. We all admit we’ve been eating too many carbs lately, but we still polish off the plate of cookies together. Then we gather around a laptop and listen to a man talk about God.

We’ve come from different parts of the world, from families that are close and families that are broken, in relationships and single, churched and unchurched. Some of us Believe, some of us aren’t sure if we do, and some of us are just starting to wonder if we want to. We are strangers in a strange place without a lot in common, but together we are part of something beautiful.

For a long, long time Bible study has been the last thing I have been interested in. In college, Bible studies were academic – interesting and instructional, full of references to things we learned in class or in chapel, often including a breakdown of what the passage said in the original Greek. I learned a lot in college, but I also felt inadequate. It was impossible not to weigh my insights alongside someone else’s or compare the depth of my spiritual life to the girl who woke in the middle of the night and prayed for hours, burdened for the lost.

After college, there were a few Bible studies organized by churches I attended. You know, Women’s Bible studies. Just those words conjure up an image of church-ladies in floral dresses and too much perfume making vague statements like, “You’ve just got to ‘Let go and let God.’” I knew a lot of “right” answers, but I was as tired of giving them as I was of hearing them. And no one seemed prepared to deal with my doubts – “I believe in God, but I’m not sure if God is good.” “The Apostle Paul comes off like a really arrogant SOB sometimes.” Maybe you already know this, but these kind of statements aren’t warmly welcomed by many nice church-ladies.

Suffice it to say, I was surprised by myself when I agreed to join a Bible study one of the girls was starting. I was nervous. I didn’t really know any of the other girls and I wasn’t sure what to expect. We met for the first time and realized that we were coming from wildly different backgrounds, and were wrestling with different aspects of our faith. We were messy and confused and blunt and unsure. But we were open. And I got SO excited. Because I knew that this was what I was looking for.

We ask questions. We tell our stories. We laugh at and with each other. We offer suggestions and encouragement, but we also admit frequently that there are a lot of things we don’t know. And sometimes we just complain together. But mostly, we offer OURSELVES to each other. Not just our opinions or our knowledge or our advice. Ourselves. We sit in our circle and spread out our arms and say, “Whatever you are, you are welcome here. Whatever you brought to share is a gift. Whatever you have to contribute will be valued. Whatever you need to say is safe with us.” There is maybe more cursing than you’d expect at a Bible study. But there’s also more laughing. There is more joy. There is more room for grace. There is more abundant LIFE.

Strange, how the most beautiful part of my life right now might just be a group of semi-heathens who really love cookies. And maybe also Jesus.

This is Jesus. Eating cookies. (Sort of)

This is Jesus. Eating cookies. (Sort of)

To Tell You the Truth: In Which I Introduce the Real Me

I often have readers comment on my blog with something along the lines of, “Thank you so much for your honesty.” Or “Thanks for being willing to be so open and honest.” I am very moved when people take the time to comment on my blog and to tell me that something I wrote was meaningful to them. I often feel like I’ve left my heart here on this webpage, never really knowing if it’s going to reach anyone much less if it will mean anything. And sometimes it feels especially risky since what I write is often deeply personal. It can be incredibly discouraging to pour your heart into something and get no response—or worse, a very negative response. I am so thankful to the people who encourage me that my story matters.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this whole idea of honesty. I write openly about fears and struggles and doubts and opinions, even the ones that don’t show me to be the intelligent, thoughtful, grace-filled person I wish I was. I write this way because in many ways, this blog is for me. It is my space to wrestle. I write this way because I deeply value authenticity and because I don’t know any other way to be.

Lately though, I’ve begun to wonder if I have misrepresented myself here. See, it’s relatively easy to tell the truth about what you think and it’s easy to tell truths about other people. It’s easy to have an opinion about what other people should or should not be doing. It’s easy to be honest about things that annoy you or things you find very meaningful. It’s especially easy to do this from behind a computer monitor. You can write exactly what you think, hold nothing back, and send it out onto the interwebs. People you know and people you don’t know can read your truths and respond. Some will agree with you, affirming you in your righteousness. Some will disagree, and you will feel indignant or misunderstood. There is certainly risk involved in sharing your thoughts and your feelings. Especially if they don’t line up with the standard opinions of your particular culture. But these things are still relatively easy (for me) to be honest about.

What isn’t easy for me is being honest about who I am. Because when I am honest about who I am, it scares people. Sometimes they actually run away, but sometimes they just ignore me. Like if they pretend they didn’t hear me it will go away.  So I’ve learned to be honest about what I think and what I feel, but to be guarded about who I am. Because who I am is just too much for most people.

But the more I write and the more readers I get, the more compelled I feel to present myself as I really am. I don’t know what’s going to happen when I do this. Probably some people will be uncomfortable and some people will laugh it off and not care about what I’m offering. Maybe some people will decide I’m not worth listening to anymore or will call me needy or self-indulgent. But maybe one or two people will see me and love me anyway. Because to be fully loved we have to be fully known.

Who I am is messy. Who I am is broken. And who I am is also glorious. Who I am is sometimes-hopeful, sometimes-depressed, sometimes-angry, sometimes-thankful, sometimes-ugly, sometimes-gracious, sometimes-wrong, sometimes-smart, sometimes-selfish, sometimes-patient, sometimes-loving, sometimes-beautiful, sometimes-cruel.

Here are the things you probably know about me:

I love my husband, I love to write and read. I love to travel. I love both making and eating food (also smelling food and thinking about food and writing about food). I love Disney. I love my family. I have a lot of questions about God and my faith and about the church and I’m asking them. I believe in Grace – for myself and for others. I love beautiful things. I am conflicted about having kids. I don’t know what I want to be when I grow up. I hate cable cars. I sing all the time.

Here are some things you probably don’t know about me:

I crave approval. I care A LOT about what people think of me and there are very specific qualities I want them to see in me. For example, I would rather people think I’m smart and authentic and a good writer or a good cook/hostess than think I am kind or gentle (though obviously, that would be good too.) I am so concerned with people not seeing me as judgmental that sometimes I am not honest with them.

I also crave appreciation and if I don’t feel appreciated enough, I stop working hard, even though it’s the right thing to do.

I complain. A lot.

I insist on believing (although he has many times told me this is not true) that my husband can and should read my mind and meet all of my needs without me having to verbally express them. And I get angry when he doesn’t.

Yesterday I waited until my coteacher left the classroom and then wolfed down the entire strawberry cream cheese muffin I brought from home while she was in the bathroom so I wouldn’t have to share it.

Before I left for Korea I met my birth dad who I hadn’t seen in 17 years. He said, “I love you.” I didn’t say it back.

When something doesn’t work out the way I planned it to (the movie is sold out, we missed the bus, the plane tickets are too expensive) I blame someone else. Usually my husband.

I get incredibly annoyed anytime someone states their opinion as though it is the incontrovertible truth. EVEN IF I AGREE WITH THEM. If I think they are arrogant and judgmental I won’t listen to a word they have to say. Which I guess makes me arrogant and judgmental

Sometimes I lie. (That wasn’t a lie just now, btw).

There’s a part of me that still thinks, contrary to all evidence, that I’d be sublimely happy if I were skinny. Not like, “A healthy size for my body type,” or “lean and well-toned.” Just straight-up skinny.

Sometimes (God-forgive me) I DO think I’m better than other people.

Sometimes when my husband or a friend is talking, I nod and smile at the right times, but I’m really just thinking about what I want to say next.

I still get jealous when my parents seem more interested in one of my siblings than they are in me. Because I genuinely believe (though it’s a deeply hidden and seldom acknowledged) that I deserve to be their favorite. That’s not a knock against my siblings at all (because they are awesome). It’s a sort of embarrassing admission that I still think that following all the rules, having a college degree and a job, marrying an approved spouse, and never going to jail should have earned me the most love points.

I resent being told what to do. Especially by men.

I am so self-centered that I just made a list of my positive and negative attributes, convinced that I am interesting enough for all of you to want to read about me.

Also last night I left dirty dishes in the sink because I was hoping if I just left them there dear husband would do them for me.

Hi, I’m Lily. It’s nice to meet you.

*****

P.S. I tried to figure out how to format this into a cool dance/song like  this one from Bring it On so you would think I was funny and awesome and had a lot of skills and ignore the rest of what I said, but I couldn’t think of any good rhymes for “selfish.” And also I am the Very Worst Dancer and my husband says there are some things even a very honest person should keep to themselves.

 

What I’m Into: April 2014 Edition

Linking up with Leigh Kramer again this month for her What I’m Into series.

What I’m Reading:

I actually finished Words of Radiance this month even though I slipped into last month’s round-up, but now I sort of regret doing that because my book list feels short. So I’m just going to re-mention that I finished Brandon Sanderson’s Words of Radiance this month and it was even better than the first one and I cannot recommend it highly enough.

bread and wineBread and Wine by Shauna Niequist is a book that had been on my digital bookshelf for a few months. This month I finally got around to reading it. Let me tell you, this book was a balm for my soul. Through years of struggling with my “relationship” with food, I have come to believe that there is something deeply significant about what we eat and in the communal aspect of sharing food with others. Niequist’s book made me feel validated in these feelings. It especially helped me to articulate for myself how I feel about food and my consumption choices in a world where more and more people are becoming ardent food-evangelists for a particular way of eating. (I wrote about that here). At it’s core though, this book is about food as an avenue for community and about hospitality, both of which are increasingly important values in my life.

cuttingThe Cutting Season by Attica Locke. I’d seen this book on a lot of bestseller lists and was in the mood for something different. Genre-wise I’d classify it as a literary mystery. The plot is built around a murder, but the book isn’t designed as a classic detective or crime novel. Overall, I thought it was a good book, not a great one, but the basis of its appeal for me was that it’s set in the present day on a plantation in South Louisiana, actually just an hour or so from where I grew up The plantation is kept as a historical site and the main character is in charge of renting it out for events and running tours. I’ve rarely read a book, even one set in Louisiana, that brought me home so completely. This book made me miss Louisiana, which is strange for me since I’ve never felt particularly tied to it

thousand daysThe Book of a Thousand Days by Shannon Hale is a YA fantasy book I decided to read this as a quick and relaxing story while I tried to decide which larger book to get into next.. It served its purpose. No great shakes, but it was mildly entertaining. I’m generally a fan of the retold fairy-tale genre when it’s done well.

I’ve just started reading The Wise Man’s Fear which is the second book in the Name of the Wind series by Patrick Rothfuss. So far it is just as enchanting as the first one was.

What I’m Watching:

Divergent: Jonathan and I saw Divergent in theaters a few days after it came out here in Korea. In his words, “I liked it more than I thought I would.” Having read the books, there are a lot of gaping plot/logic holes to the story which can be irritating if you think about them too much. But if you can put all of that to the side and just go with it, the movie was entertaining and the acting was pretty good. And Shailene Woodley’s hair was absolutely the star of the show.

Noah. I know a lot of people have strong opinions about this movie. Frankly, I don’t understand the people who were getting their panties in a wad disowning it because it isn’t biblical. What did they expect? These are secular filmmakers making a movie they hope will entertain people and make money. Their goal was never to make a biblically accurate story. All of that aside, there were a few things I really liked about the movie – like the way that God speaks to Noah once and then he is left clinging to that, forced to have faith that his encounter with God was real and meaningful. There are times when God doesn’t give us constant amazing displays of his power and presence and sometimes we have to trust God and have faith in our past experience of God even when He is silent. What I didn’t like so much is the portrait of this t God who doesn’t intervene even when Noah gets fixated on the idea that they aren’t meant to survive. I didn’t like how the other characters, even Noah’s family, treated the whole thing like it was Noah’s God who only existed in his head rather than a God that they could also communicate with. I heard many complaints about the strong environmental message, but I didn’t find that problematic personally. I think Christians, more than anyone else even, should be concerned about how we care for the earth and could stand to think about conscientious consumption and what it means not to take and use more than we need. All in all, I didn’t think it was a terrible or offensive movie, but I also didn’t think it was a great movie. I was just like, “Meh.” Though the special effects of the actual flood were kind of cool.

As far as television goes, I can feel summer coming as we reach the season finales of New Girl, Mindy Project, Parks and Recreation, and Modern Family.  I’ve continued to be hooked by Nashville and am completely emotionally exhausted after this season of Parenthood. And of course, there was the series finale of How I Met Your Mother which I had conflicting feelings about and which left me feeling like I’d lost some of my best friends. Is that sad? I’m also more than halfway through Call the Midwife which I am both fascinated and repulsed by. During ever labor scene I swear I will never, ever do that and then every time they successfully deliver a baby, I cry at the miracle of life, so I don’t know where that leaves me on the baby thing…

 

What I’m Listening To:

Ingrid Michaelson’s new album is wonderful (like everything about Ingrid). I also stumbled onto this gem recently and have become completely obsessed with it. This is an unrecorded song that she sings at live shows sometimes with her husband, fellow musician Greg Laswell. I can’t even deal.

 

What I’m Eating:

I’m still loving the zucchini lasagna, but strawberries being in-season here led me to try a strawberry cream cheese chocolate chunk bread recipe that I cobbled together out of a few recipes I found on Pinterest and then turned into strawberry cream cheese muffins. They were a rousing success. I also turned my love of adding zucchini to things to my baking and tried a lemon zucchini bread. I don’t like using oil in my baking, but there isn’t any applesauce here (which would be my normal substitute) so I used sour cream instead. It made the texture slightly gummier, but it also cut out about 800 calories, so I say worth it.

zucchini bread

Check out my Pinterest boards for the basic versions of these recipes (I always end up changing things). I’m also obsessed with pistachio ice cream right now. I can’t get enough of it. But sadly, I think I bought the last pint from our local grocery store this week. I may be the only person who ever bought it so I’m not confident they will be re-stocking any time soon. So much weeping…

Best thing I’ve read:

One of my favorite writers, Addie Zierman’s, wrote a courageous post about depression.

And Emily Maynard wrote this beautiful, thought-provoking post about God and gender. Parts of this really resonated with me. Parts of this were confusing to me. I wasn’t 100% sure what she wanted us to take away, but i think it’s worth a read. I’m still mulling it over.

Finally, my friend Briana Meade’s post about tricking the YMCA into thinking she works out so that she can take advantage of a few hours of childcare and free coffee cracked me up. I’m obviously not a mom yet, but I’m pretty sure I’ll be doing things like that too.

 

Best thing I’ve written:

My most-read post this month was the one I wrote about the sacramental nature of food and why I don’t really believe in Paleo. The thing I am most proud of is probably my spoken-word poem from the beginning of the month that was a guest post for my friend Briana’s blog. I don’t think it’s the best thing I’ve ever written, but it was way out of my comfort zone and I felt good about trying something new.

***

In other news, we are kicking off May in Korea with a bang. My parents have arrived in Korea for a visit! They’ll be here for the next 10 days and we are off of work on Monday and Tuesday for Children’s Day and Buddha’s Birthday respectively, so we’ll have extra time to gallivant around the country.  And in case you missed them, pictures from our trip to the green tea fields and cherry blossom season are up on Two Sore Thumbs!

There’s No Place Like Home-If Only You Can Find It

I am 3 years old and Home is a duplex I share with my mom and my brother. I love because it has an upstairs and a laundry chute that goes straight from the floor of the upstairs bathroom into the laundry room below. Before this there were other homes, but I only remember them in singular, faded images. A rocking horse. A brown basket full of books. But this home I remember in its entirety. My brother’s hamster Conan, and the witches I knew lived inside the air condition vent. This is my mom’s home, but not my dad’s, which is a little confusing for me. Sometimes my brother drops me down the laundry chute for fun.

I am 5 and Home is a long brick house with an eggplant-shaped pool in the back yard. I don’t like it as much as the duplex because there are no stairs, but I do love that pool. And I like that this home has more family in it. My mom and my brother, but also my pop and the new baby. My imaginary friend, Sammy the Squirrel, lives in the backyard and my maybe-boyfriend Christopher lives next door. This is the home we board ourselves up in for my first major hurricane. I’m confused because the hurricane is named Andrew, like one of my cousins, and I can’t figure out what they have to do with each other. One night at dinner, my spaghetti is too hot, so my pop takes it outside and runs around the pool with it to cool it off. Then it’s just right. I’m sitting on the tile floor in the kitchen eating my milk and cookies (because we aren’t allowed to eat on the carpet in the living room, but from here I can still see the TV) when my mom and pop tell us that we are going to have yet another baby. “I guess the new baby will be the old baby now,” I think, and they tell us that we will move to a bigger house before the new baby comes. I am devastated to leave my true love, Christopher, but am consoled when I consider that the new house might have a window seat.

I am 7 and the new house does not have a window seat or any stairs either, but it does have a two-story wooden playhouse in the backyard and a neighborhood full of kids my age. Now we are six: my mom and my dad (because I realized nobody else has a pop and I didn’t want one either), my brother and my two little sisters. I was confused by the arrival of the second sister. I’d been certain she would be a boy to even things out demographically. I even pre-filled out the book my parents gave me about being a big sister with these details. “I have a baby brother. His  name is Gus.” I wasn’t so sure about another girl, but she grew on me. Home is the place for dress-up and fairy tales. The place where I live out a hundred storylines in my imagination and read books out loud with my dad before bed each night. It’s the place where I start growing up – where I have my first sleepovers and learn how to shave my legs and wear a training bra.

I am 11 and Home is shifting again. We are moving to a new place with lots of land. A place where we can breathe, my mom says. There’s a spiral staircase in the living room that leads to the second floor. When we first move in, my brother lives upstairs, but after a few years he moves out and the tower is mine. I spend many hours reading in my tower room, listening to the sound of rain on the tin roof, wondering what it’s like to fall in love. I am Home when 9/11 happens and we watch the towers fall over and over again on the TV in the living room. Home is the place where I chronicle my first serious crush and where I cry when my brother is deployed to Iraq.    In those volatile teenage years, Home is a place full of internal turmoil – a refuge from the daily torture of high school, but also a place where I feel I can’t do anything quite right. Where I fear I’m always in the way. In those years it is a place where I haven’t quite grown into myself. Where I am a child, but I no longer want to be.

I am 18 and my concept of Home has been ripped in two. Home is Louisiana. It’s a white house with a tin roof and oak trees all around. But it’s also a dorm room in a little town in Illinois. It’s the girls that I live with who are helping me become me. It’s a triple set of bunk beds I always have to be on the bottom of because I’m afraid of falling off. It’s the commuter train to Chicago and the little parks dotting neighborhoods full of dear old houses full of stories. It’s the college itself, alive with new ideas that challenge me and with laughter and with love. And lately it’s also becoming a red-headed boy from Indiana.

I am 22 and in the space of a few sacred moments at an altar what was Home is now “my parent’s house” and my Home is wherever this red-headed man is. But, of course, it isn’t quite as clean a break as that. It takes a while to break the habit. To stop thinking of my childhood house as Home. Our first apartment together in Illinois is small and sweet. In the winter the bedroom window leaks so badly we sleep in layers of sweatshirts covered by a pile of blankets so thick, the weight of them makes it hard to breathe. It’s here that our family grows to include two cats – animals I’d always believed I hated until those two darlings stole my heart and changed my mind. For a year we live here and we learn so much about love. But Illinois never feels like it could be a forever home to me. And after a year we know it is time to move on.

I am 24 and Home is Raleigh, North Carolina. For the first time I feel my heart is tied to a place itself instead of just the people who live there. My heart belongs to North Carolina. Its lush green hills, the trees everywhere, the lakes and the creeks and the impossibly glorious fall. The bluegrass music and the hipsters with their micro-breweries and the sweet clean air in my lungs. This is Home. This is where I learn to run. Mile after mile along the winding greenways. This is Home  – the place where I both land and quit my first real job. The place where I learn to take control – where I become strong and healthy and focused.  The place where so many people I love are close enough to visit and where my best friend lives just around the corner. This is Home. This is where I want to grow old. But I’m not ready to grow old just yet.

I am 26 and Home is a fragmented thing. Sometimes Home means an apartment in South Korea, covered in bright floral wallpapers and growing mold in spite of aggressive attempts to keep it at bay.  This Home is full of love and adventure and a willingness to try new things, to change and to grow. But in many ways it doesn’t feel like Home at all.  Home is also America. All of it. The sights and smells and tastes and people that mean comfort and joy and love and belonging. Home is each other, just the two of us, wherever we may be. But home is also the family, the friends, and the pets we’ve left behind. The places we have lived and loved. The places that have shaped us.

Sometimes Home is a dorm-room, an apartment, a house, a city, a state, an entire country. Home seems to be an ever-changing creature. But always it is a feeling. It is the place where love is given and received. It is the place where you are free to be and to become yourself.  It is the place where you are known.

The Sacrament of Eating: Discovering Food as Holy and Why I Will Never Eat Paleo

I love food. I don’t mean that I really like food or that I have a few favorite dishes that make my mouth water when I think of them. I don’t mean that I (like many people) have a sweet tooth or that I really enjoy a nice meal after a long day. I mean I LOVE food. I wake up in the morning thinking about all the things I will eat that day (or even later that week). I spend my free time making lists of the things I will eat when I return to America, drooling over pinterest recipes, and watching cooking shows. During our last vacation, we spent several perfect days doing nothing but moving from one café or coffeeshop or gelateria or restaurant to another- eating, drinking, talking, and reading in each one. For a while my dream was to own my own bakery (though the business side of things always keeps me from pursuing that too realistically) because I am absolutely captivated by the way sugar and butter and flour and eggs combine in endless variations to make a thousand different cakes and pies and cookies and custards and cobblers and crumbles and brownies and sweet breads.

Admitting to loving food feels a little like to admitting to watching porn or non-ironically liking Real Housewives. Why is that? Because as a woman, I’ve often felt ashamed of my appetite. Because I can easily eat the same amount as my husband even though he’s 8 inches taller and 50 lbs heavier. Because I have never in my life said, “I don’t think I can finish this ice cream cone.” We live in a culture where women are expected to have dainty appetites unless they are naturally very thin, in which case they can eat as much as they want and people are amused that someone so thin can put away so much. But when you’re on the rounder side of things, you are expected to go to restaurants and order a side salad with no dressing, not the bacon alfredo pasta and a glass of wine.

Breakfast Bagel from my amazingly talented fried at "This Wild Season". Click for the recipe and more gorgeous images.

Breakfast Bagel from my amazingly talented friend Asharae at This Wild Season. Click for the recipe and more gorgeous images.

I freely admit that much of the time I don’t love my body. Not because of the way I’m shaped so much as the incredibly fragile balance I have to strike to maintain a healthy weight. I have always lived on the cusp of what is medically considered overweight for my frame and height and I gain weight very easily. I can gain a solid 6 lbs in one week of vacation. I have done the diet thing. I have struggled with self-loathing because of my weight and shed tears over the size of my thighs. For me, the problem with gaining weight is not just being unhappy with how I look or feel, it’s truly a health issue. I believe that my body is a gift and am convicted that I should treat it with respect by maintaining a certain level of health and fitness.

There’s a saying that I’ve heard dieters use for motivation, “Nothing tastes as good as thin feels.” That’s one of the most ridiculous things I’ve ever heard. I can think of many things that taste so good I would rather have them than have smaller thighs. (For example, cheese. Could I live without it? Sure. But why would I want to?) For me to have smaller thighs, I would have to consistently say no to some of the things I love most in this life. It’s simply not worth it to me. I’m ready to find another way.

Lemon-Glazed-Blueberry-Donuts_This-Wild-Season-8

Lemon-glazed blueberry donuts from This Wild Season. Click for recipe. Now, imagine not ever eating these. A travesty.

In the past, I thought the crux of my problem was that I loved food and if I could just stop loving food so much I would be able to choose being thin over eating. But I’m beginning to wonder what it might look like if, instead of trying to change this part of myself, instead of trying to curb my appetite or denying myself certain things I’m not “supposed to” eat, I embraced that food is something I love. That creative medleys of flavor make my soul sing the way music moves the violinist. I am coming to genuinely believe that loving food (like, really loving it) is part of being me. It’s part of what makes me uniquely myself, as much as crying all the time and loving words are part of who I am. And that part of myself is GOOD. *

Chicken-Tortilla-Soup_This-Wild-Season-6

Chicken Tortilla Soup from This Wild Season. Click for the recipe.

It seems we all have people in our lives who have been sucked into the Paleo craze. Many of my family members and friends have jumped on that bandwagon. I have heard them use the language of addiction to describe my kind of passion for food. If you aren’t familiar with it, the basic premise of Paleo is that we were biologically designed to eat a certain way and that through modern technology we have come to eat many things that our bodies were never intended to process. All of this “unnatural” food causes a variety of health problems (not to mention obesity) that can be resolved simply by cutting out the foods we were never intended to eat. Paleo diet adherents eat grass-fed meats, fruits, nuts, and vegetables. No grains or starches, no legumes, no sugar, no dairy, and nothing processed. The diet (and it’s a lifestyle, not a temporary diet) is essentially the diet of a caveman (hence the “Paleo”) and is based on eating only things that would have been available to the caveman.

I deeply admire and agree with the concept of eating natural things that have grown from the earth and aren’t full of chemicals. I also am sympathetic to eating less grain and starches as my own body doesn’t process these things well.** Where I get tripped up is the assertion that we shouldn’t eat these things because they go against our nature. Because we weren’t intended to eat them. I reject that. And the main reason is Jesus.

I think about the Last Supper and I envision Jesus and the disciples gathered around that table, coming together for this holy meal that their fathers and grandfathers and great grandfathers for generations back had eaten, every bite dripping with significance. I see Jesus picking up, not the lamb or the herbs or the vinegar, but the bread and the wine. Holding the crumbling bread in his hands, saying, “This is my body.” Staining his lips and tongue purple with wine saying, “This is my blood.”

I simply can’t accept the idea that the bread-eating, wine-drinking God-made-flesh was knowingly “poisoning” his body with what he ate. I understand that Jesus lived embedded in a particular cultural context. But even still – I don’t think he would have chosen bread and wine as the sacramental elements to represent his body and his blood for all future generations all over the world if they were things we were never intended to eat.

wine and bread

Here is the bottom line. I don’t believe we were meant to live part of a life. I believe in living a full, rich, abundant life. And for me that includes tasting everything. There are times when I choose to cut out some sweets or starches for a while because my body is telling me that’s what it needs in that season. And it is important to me that I honor and respect my body.*** But I will never stop eating those things completely. Not because I can’t, but because permanently removing those things takes away some of what abundant life means to me. Shauna Niequist**** puts it so well when she describes her life on a rigorous diet of no gluten, dairy, caffeine, alcohol or sugar:

“I felt great. I lost some weight, started sleeping better, didn’t ache at all. Success! But at the same time I felt like I wasn’t living in the same world everyone else was living in. It was like choosing to live with the volume turned all the way down, or going to the beach and not being able to put my feet in the ocean. My senses were starving. Eating such a restricted diet on an ongoing basis wasn’t going to work for me…There has to be a way to live with health and maturity and intention while still honoring the part of me that loves to eat, that sees food as a way to nurture and nourish both my body and my spirit.”

I couldn’t agree more. I have come to believe that there is something holy and sacramental about food itself-the way we nourish our bodies with the gifts of the earth that God has provided for us. And the more I’ve thought about this, I’ve been struck by the sheer beauty of food as a sacrament. Could the act of eating itself be worship? Could working with our hands to prepare the gifts of the earth for the table be a form of gratitude for God’s provision that spills glory out into an ordinary moment? Could savoring the common elements of paper-thin pizza crust covered with sweet pears and creamy gorgonzola and spicy arugula, drizzled in balsamic be a way to experience uncommon grace? After all, why do we speak words over our food and call it grace if not because there is grace there to be received?

“You say grace before meals.

All right.

But I say grace before the concert and the opera,

And grace before the play and pantomime,

And grace before I open a book,

And grace before sketching, painting,

Swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing

And grace before I dip the pen in the ink.”

G.K. Chesterton, “A Grace,” Collected Poetry

________________________________________________________

*Of course, I don’t believe that any amount of love for and enjoyment of food excuses overeating or gluttony. I would never try to make the case that I should feel free to eat as much as I want of whatever I want unchecked. I think it’s wrong when I eat far beyond what I need, or when I eat to try to satisfy some appetite that isn’t really physical. These things don’t get a pass just because I am embracing my love of food.

**A few years ago after many doctors and a couple of years of tests, finding and removing polyps, and chalking up lots of digestive issues to the all-inclusive “IBS,” I tested off-the-charts positive for a bacterial overgrowth in my small-intestine (SIBO). This was treatable by an unbelievably expensive antibiotic, but according to my doctor, once you have this problem, it almost always comes back. No one knows what causes it, and there is no cure that prevents it from ever coming back. However, the bacteria feeds on starches. So when it is flaring up, one of the best things I can do to manage it is to cut starches out of my diet. Also, like many women, there is a direct correlation for me between the amount of starch I eat and my weight.

***I am learning to find balance by listening to my body. If the SIBO is active and I’m not feeling well, I stop eating starches until the cycle is over. If my clothes are tight because I’ve been letting my appetites run out of control, I treat this as a physical symptom I need to address for my health. Obviously, if you have some sort of serious food allergy, you have to listen to your body in that as well. Believe me, I’m not advocating that someone with celiac should think having regular bread is more important than being healthy. I’m talking about my own feelings for my particular situation.

**** This is from Shauna Niequist’s excellent book, Bread and Wine: A Love Letter to Life Around the Table.

Everything Makes Me Cry and I’m Not Ashamed to Admit it

I used to be ashamed of crying. I’ve known girls who were what you’d call “sensitive.” The kind of girls who get their feelings hurt so easily that everyone walks on eggshells around them. When I was young my cousin showed me how to make little rockets by filling plastic film canisters with water, dropping in an alka seltzer, shaking vigorously, and setting the canister cap-down on the pavement. After a few seconds the pressure would build inside of the little canister and blow the plastic body up into the air, separating from the lid. That’s what these girls remind me of. That plastic canister full of fizzing alka-seltzer water, poised to explode at any moment.

When I first started dating Jonathan I felt it was incredibly important not to be a “sensitive” girl. I would be cool. I wouldn’t get my feelings hurt easily or be whiny or clingy. And I certainly wouldn’t be one of those girls with extreme emotional highs and lows that affected everyone around her. I would be even-keeled. Steady. Relaxed. Hah.

Here is the truth about me. I cry all the time. In the shower. At my desk at school. At the movie theater. At coffee shops and restaurants. In the fitting room at department stores. At church. In the kitchen. At the beach. On the bus. Into my pillow. Actually, it might be easier to make a list of places I haven’t cried. When I say I cry, I don’t always mean hours of gut-wrenching sobs (though sometimes that is the case and when it is, it’s UGLY). And it’s not always because I am sad or my feelings are hurt. In fact, I’d say I cry less often out of sadness than for any other reason.

I come by all this crying honestly. A few years ago, my mom came to visit Jonathan and me when we lived outside of Chicago. We went to see the Lion King musical which was playing in the city. The moment the cast started singing the first note of “Circle of Life,” both my mom and I instantly burst into tears. Jonathan thought this was both weird and hilarious.

Most of my family is hyper-emotional. Sometimes going home is hard for me just because being around other people who feel so much makes every conversation potentially gut-wrenching. Because we love each other so deeply that we cry. Or we feel so proud that we cry. Or we feel misunderstood so we cry. Or we feel nostalgic for something that’s been lost so we cry. Or we laugh at each other so hard that we cry. And then it turns into more crying because we miss each other so much. Here is a short list of things that make me cry:

  • Anything involving soldiers being reunited with their families
  • Anything really sweet – old people who still love each other, sweet romantic gestures, random acts of kindness
  • Spoken-word poems (Like this one. Or this one I wrote myself and cried while writing).
  • Babies being born
  • Adoption
  • Talking about my family
  • Talking about God
  • Incredible food
  • Social injustice/violations of human rights, particularly towards women and children
  • Books or movies in which the characters suffer some sort of significant loss or fear or experience some sort of great triumph.
  • The following TV shows: The Voice, the Biggest Loser (though I don’t necessarily condone it), What Not to Wear, So You Think You Can Dance or any other show that involves people accomplishing something they never thought they could, or coming to feel proud of themselves for the first time in their lives.
  • The Olympics – Again, it’s the great human achievement thing. Basically, I am moved to tears anytime I see anyone do something hard particularly well.
  • Running. In particular, running my first half marathon and marathon were very emotional experiences for me. I cried all along the way as well as when I crossed the finish line.
  • Talking about anything that’s really important to me
  • Being surrounded by friends
  • The moment when you get to the top of the mountain
  • Witnessing accidents or people getting hurt in some way
  • Music, especially bluegrass/folk music for some reason. So basically every time I hear Mumford and Sons played anywhere.
  • Watching dancers
  • Traveling and experiencing new cultures
  • Missing my cats.
  • Seeing people getting engaged (even rando strangers)
  • Weddings (even the weddings of rando strangers or fictional characters)
  • The time I saw the Shamu show at SeaWorld (I was 18)
  • Disneyworld. And Disney movies. And Disney songs.
  • Seeing The Lion King (or many other musical productions) onstage
  • Also this video of the Lion King cast singing on an airplane

I used to be deeply ashamed of this. I spent a long time trying to hide those unwelcome tears. But I’ve learned something about myself in the past few years. Crying is my physical response to any overwhelming emotion – frustration, sadness, pain, anger, exhaustion, confusion, anxiety, fear, joy, excitement, pride, tenderness, compassion, empathy. I cry equally for the things that are broken and for the things that are too impossibly beautiful. Crying is the response of my body to truths in my soul – often truths I feel too deeply to articulate well with words. If part of who I am, deep in my core, is best expressed through tears, why would I try to suppress that?

Admittedly, crying so much can be exhausting. It is emotionally draining. And it can be overwhelming to the people closest to me. Particularly Jonathan, who I have known for seven years, but have seen cry only once (and by cry I mean the corners of his eyes became moistened). But here is the thing—I cry because I am moved. Because I am human and because there are moments when I feel so deeply connected to the world around me – to beauty, to God, to grace, to the suffering or the triumphs of other humans like me—that I am moved and it wells up inside of me and leaks out of my eyes and onto my face. And I am not ashamed of that.

I want to be moved by this wondrous and brilliant, aching and breathtaking world. So let the day that I am not moved by a haunting melody, by an act of courage, by a shattered heart, or by a sky full of stars, be my last. And until then let me live a rich, gorgeous, marrow-sucking life with tears dripping off my cheeks.

Friendship in Seven Movements

I’ve never been someone with an overwhelming number of friends. I’m not the sort of person who can’t stand being alone. I’m not that person everyone knows, or the person who can make friends with anyone effortlessly. I’m not the smartest, the prettiest, the funniest, the kindest, or the most fun to be around. And yet, I have been honored with some extraordinary friendships throughout my life. And when I am loneliest, here on the other side of the world, I remind myself that through no virtue of my own, through only the goodness of God, my life is rich and full because of these women. Beautiful women. Strong women. Talented women. Women who inspire me with their creativity, their passion, their perseverance, their grace, and their courage. This piece to remind myself and to make sure that they know.

Friendship in 7 Movements

I. Rachel

You are one of my first friends. Kindergarten is a scary place when you’re the girl who can’t stop talking, suddenly thrust into a classroom where you are expected to sit quietly and LISTEN.

I don’t remember the first day we met, but I remember so many days afterwards. Hours of dress-up, for some reason obsessed with re-enacting the movie A Kid in King Arthur’s Court and swimming in your above-the-ground pool. I was jealous of your pool, but more jealous of your bangs, which I begged my mother to cut like yours. She said if I had bangs I’d just have to grow them out by wearing one of those fountain ponytails on top of my head. You moved away before you grew yours out so I never got to see if that was true.

When you moved back in middle school we discovered that all those years apart we’d been growing to love the same things. We had so much in common – books and movies and a somewhat severe sarcasm we seemed to encourage in one another. Maybe we actually had too much in common? Sometimes in high school we seemed to rub up against each other like two flints whose friction created sparks without meaning to. We were trying to figure out who we were and sometimes it was like we both wanted to occupy the same space at the same time. Sometimes it felt like there wasn’t room for both of us.

And yet…somehow, we made it through. You extended grace where I was selfish and l Iearned that we could be alike and also different and there was room for both.

We both moved away to college and you came to visit me. You sent me cards on my birthday, and we still borrowed each others books (and I’m sorry that I never returned A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius). When I got engaged, you hosted a bridal shower for me. And for my wedding, you welcomed all of my friends into your home and counted them as yours.

We have lived apart for the last seven years – in Texas and Chicago, Honduras and North Carolina, Washington DC, Denver and South Korea. We’ve been apart, but we’ve continued to grow together. Discovering some of the same things in our own ways. Catching up on skype is full of, “Have-you-read? Have-you-seen? Have-you-heard?” and “I feel the exact same way!” That thing that was too alike when we were pressed up against each other, each of us trying to spread our own wings, is now the thing that keeps our hearts connected across continents and years.

Your mind challenges me, your heart inspires me, and your generosity humbles me. (Also, the fact that you are smarter than me humbles me, but this might be the only time I admit it. ;)) You’ve been my friend for more than twenty years and you still seem to like me. What a rare gift.

Winter 2008 (I think?) in Chicago

Winter 2008 (I think?) in Chicago

 

II. Leigh

I know it’s a cliché, but really, who would I be without you? We are the most unlikely friends. You are closer in age to my little sisters than to me, but somehow that’s never mattered. It didn’t matter when I was 8 and you were 5 or now that we are 26 and 23. Maybe it should have mattered when I was 14 and you were 11, but by then you were my family.

You gave me the freedom to play when I was too old for it. Together our imaginations took us to places far beyond the blue house by the train tracks. My most vibrant childhood memories are wrapped up in those worlds that we created. We played Mandie and Annie, The Sound of Music, and American Girls. (And, OK, I went through that one phase when I was obsessed with Steve Irwin, Crocodile Hunter). For several years we addressed each other by various fake names (the longest-lasting I remember were Annette and Annelise). When we were little we ate hot pockets for lunch and cookie dough straight from that tub in the freezer. Eventually our tastes grew more sophisticated and we splurged on virgin pina coladas and filet mignon.

Your family became my family. Not just your parents, but your aunts and uncles and cousins, your family friends and even your doctor. Each summer I came to DeRitter and stayed at your Aunt Mel’s house so I could see you in whatever production the Little Theater was putting on that summer. I went with you to your grandfather’s funeral where I wrote an inappropriate poem to slip into his casket. For a while, I had crush on your much older cousin David. When you were sick, my mom drove me down to New Orleans to visit you in the hospital. We overtaxed your poor swollen belly with laughter and trips around the nurse’s station. I’m sure you couldn’t walk for days afterwards. Your mom and I both cried at your high school graduation when you were named Sacred Heart girl.

Your family helped me to love Louisiana for its history and unique culture. You took me places like Abita Springs and Maringouin – tiny towns I never would have known existed without you. Before my wedding, you took me on that  overnight getaway to that precious B&B in Abbeville that our younger selves would have just died to stay at. Together we explored the world and learned to appreciate our heritage.

All of these moments are beautiful memories for me, but the real beauty of our friendship is how it has grown. It never mattered that we were in different life stages or lived in different places. We understood each other at the soul-level. So even though we have changed from the people we were when we first met, our friendship has always stretched to accommodate those changes.

You have become this confident, elegant, accomplished, independent woman You are focused and organized and you work hard for the things you want. You are the very definition of charming. You are warm and kind and incredibly fun to be with and people listen to you because you know how to communicate with both wisdom and grace. I want you to know, I would love you now, even if I hadn’t known you most of your life. But I’m so glad to have had you these18 years. One day, we will be old lady friends together. I can’t wait.

Record of us once being young and beautiful - something we will reminisce about when we are grumpy old ladies.

Record of us once being young and beautiful – something we will reminisce about when we are grumpy old ladies.

 

III. Lanise

You are a beautiful soul.

We met in the high school youth group. We were both designated as “leaders” (whatever that meant) but we quickly realized we were also kindred spirits. We waded through the murky waters of evangelical purity culture together wearing safety shirts and spending most of youth retreats and summer camps trying to keep teenage boys and girls from flirting, hell-bent on saving them from their own sinfulness. And somehow, we both journeyed out of that world and into a place of grace.

We talked for hours and hours about our hopes and our fears and our dreams, the way teenage girls do. But we also laughed a lot, watching old movies, listening to music, drinking coffee and eating brownie batter straight from the bowl. We both fell in love. You were a little ahead of me in that process, but we both got engaged and then married within a year of each other. We’ve walked together through seasons of excitement and wonder and seasons of brokenness. Your capacity for empathy has always inspired me. Throughout our friendship you have encouraged me, you have celebrated with me, and you have grieved with me. You call out beauty in me that I don’t see in myself and you make me want to be the person you see in me.

These days we hardly see one another and we don’t talk as often as we should. But when we do, I am instantly reconnected, like we’ve never been apart. Our hearts beat to the same rhythm. You inspire me. Your hands create beauty all around you. The home you have built with your husband is a refuge of peace in a chaotic world.

You are lovely. Your creativity, your sense of humor, your gentleness, and your wisdom make my life and the lives of others more beautiful. And, girl, let’s face it, you’ve got some of the best damn hair God ever put on a head. 😉

I know this isn't our most flattering photo together, but it's probably the most accurate.

I know this isn’t our most flattering photo together, but it’s probably the most accurate.

 

Here's another one so people can appreciate your bridal beauty and your awesome hair.

Here’s another one so people can appreciate your bridal beauty and your awesome hair.

IV. Christina

It is possible that you are my other half. I know people usually say that about their spouse, but you are the only person in the world who can join in with a song I am making up on the spot. You are the only person in the world who understands that when I say I want to live in Disneyworld, I mean that in the most literal way possible and I am not joking even a little bit. And you totally get it. You are also the person who will listen to whatever ridiculous fear or frustration I am having without judgment and will say, “I love you, but I think you’re really wrong about this.”

When I first met you in college, I didn’t have any idea what God had just dropped in my lap. It was the beginning of college, you were my suitemate, always there on the other side of the bathroom, but frankly, there were hundreds of new people to meet and I knew that just because the college assigned people as roommates and suitemates didn’t mean you were destined to become best friends. But over those first couple of months we started to click. And then, a few months in, when you started moving your mattress into our room instead of yours, the magic happened. Midnight runs to Wendy’s without my pants on. Waking up to birthday pancakes with candles in them the way my mom always did it. Crawling into your bed in the middle of the night when I had a bad dream, you rolling over without questions to make space for me.

And after our first international trip to Russia together the summer after freshman year, the deal was sealed. Something about traveling together, something so sacred to both of us, cemented the bond between us. Now we have been in six countries together (7 if you count Disneyworld as its own country, which I sort of do.) We have been together for some of our biggest moments – my wedding, your grad school graduation, our first marathon. And we’ve been together for some of our weirdest moments – laying on the floor inside your dorm room closet, almost being trampled by an elephant in Africa, spending hours making ourselves tutus.

Nobody is as stupid with me as you are. Sometimes it’s like we speak our own language and I don’t even realize it until someone who isn’t us comes into the room and the look on their face seems to say they don’t understand anything we’re saying even though I’m pretty sure we’re making perfect sense. Our combined ability to rationalize and justify absolutely any decision (especially if it is related to why we really need Chinese takeout and fro yo again) is both a powerful and dangerous tool.

You have become an essential part of me. When you are happy, I will celebrate, when you are hurt I will be indignant. When you have to make a big decision I will help you weigh the pros and cons. When you are sad, I will cheer you up, and when it’s too heavy for cheering up, I will sit with you and share your sadness so you don’t have to carry it alone. I can say with confidence that I will do these things for you because you do these things for me.

You freely give of yourself more than anyone I have ever known. I’m pretty sure that nobody in the world (not even Jonathan or my own mother) would go to the lengths you are willing to go to just to make me happy. The people you love are some of the luckiest people in the world. I am one of the luckiest people in the world. You are a once-in-a-lifetime friend (maybe a once-in-many-lifetimes friend) and I am profoundly grateful for you.

 

One of our most recent pics together.

One of our most recent pics together.

V. Taylor

The story of how we met makes me laugh every time. It started with a boy. A boy you had dated and a boy I thought maybe I wanted to. I was jealous that he was still hung up on you. And you were (maybe?) jealous that he was hanging out with me. I thought, “Who does she think she is?” I decided to talk to you –figure out what your deal was. It took all of one conversation to realize your “deal’ was that you were awesome and we were going to love each other forever.

You taught me so much about having friends who are different from me. It’s easy to appreciate people who have all of your same interests, but with you I learned to appreciate new things simply because you loved them. Without you I can guarantee I never would have cared about whether or not Wheaton had a poms squad. And I’m sure I never would have gone to an NFL game.

I love that you are adventurous and always up for whatever life throws at you. Remember the time Christina and I hid all your bras and made you a treasure map to find them? You didn’t even bat an eye. You just followed the map giggling in that cute way you do when you are about to laugh so hard you cry.

I sobbed myself sick the night in November when you got married and I was a world away. I’m sure my absence in no way ruined your wedding, but I was overwhelmed by how wrong it was for me to miss it.

Watching you do the hard work to build your photography business over the last few years has been inspiring. Not only do you create stunning images that speak for themselves, but you have vision and you are able to invest and be patient, even when it takes years for your dreams to come to fruition. You have taught me so much through the way you manage to make life work for you wherever you are – in Seattle or in Ecuador or in Charleston. You are independent and wildly talented, but unrelentingly kind.

Last week I got a package full of sweet and thoughtful gifts. You had chosen each thing for a specific reason and put them all together with notes explaining why you wanted me to have them. I am moved by your thoughtfulness and by how intentional you are in making the people you care about know they are loved. Thanks for making me one of the people you love.

Remember that one time your hair was straight and dark and we were twinsies?

Remember that one time your hair was straight and dark and we were twinsies?

 Interlude

Check out these pictures, guys.  It’s so weird to put them all together like this! We’ve changed so much. Especially our hairstyles, haha.

Ok, earliest picture I can find with most of us in it. (Sadly, no Anna) This is sophomore year, spring of 2008.

Ok, this is the earliest picture I can find with most of us in it. (Sadly, no Anna) This is sophomore year, spring of 2008.

Graduation 2010

Graduation 2010

Roomie Reunion 2012

Roomie Reunion 2012

Roomie Reunion 2012

Roomie Reunion April 2013

Roomie Reunion/Taylor the Bride party 2013

Roomie Reunion/Taylor the Bride party July 2013

VI. Asharae

Sweet friend. I can’t think of a single fault in you. You are gentle and graceful and you dance to some beautiful music of your own creation. You make me want to love simplicity and see beauty everywhere I look.

I loved living with you in college in our stuffed-to-the-rafters room with the squeaky fan. I loved when we made that painting, barefoot in the parking lot of Northside Park – my car speakers cranked up as far as they could go playing music while we danced in the paint under the stars. I loved that we got to be roommates while we were both engaged – planning weddings and futures. And I love that we ended up in North Carolina together, finding Home in the same corner of the world.

Here is the thing I love most about you, Asharae. You are yourself. Always.. You are ok with being unconventional. You are unconcerned with the expectations of others and you don’t allow anyone to pressure you into fitting into a certain mold. And who you are is lovely.

I am deeply moved by the intentional way that you and Tim love people – your family, your friends, and your clients. The way you are willing to slow down and just BE with people is tremendously rare. You have a unique capacity to make others feel valued and important and to capture the things that matter most to them in your photographs and videos.

You are so supportive and so encouraging to me in every venture I’ve undertaken. You continually speak words of grace and hope into my life. I’ve often wondered where that never-ending fountain of hopefulness in you comes from. I wish I were more like that. Thank you for the way you always open my eyes to beauty I can’t see. In the world and in myself.

 

Asharae the Bride!

Asharae the Bride! And I’m pretty sure this photo is Adam Pratt’s work.

VII. Anna

You are one of the most loyal people I’ve ever known. When you love someone you love them forever. When you love someone you will defend them, you will stand with them, you will fight for them, and you will never lose faith in them.

You (and your family) have welcomed me so many times. Some of my best memories of college and afterwards have been the times we spent at your family’s lake house. I got the unfair advantage of getting to go more than the other girls the summer I spent in Wheaton during college and the year Jonathan and I lived in Naperville. So many happy moments spent tanning on the deck, waterskiing on the lake, eating the enormous spread your mom always prepares, and, of course, drinking too much tequila at Taylor’s little bachelorette weekend. Your constant friendship has been a gift – in times we’ve been together and in times we haven’t and I’ve gotten cards in the mail or an email in my inbox just to remind me that you’re thinking of me.

I see amazing resilience in you. There have been difficult moments for you over the years that we’ve known each other – struggles with your health, or with family circumstances that weighed on your heart, or with questions about what direction your life is meant to go in. Through all of those things I have seen a faith that is unshakeable. This especially inspires me because I am not that way. I find cause for doubt in the tiniest circumstances. But you are steadfast.

The last few times we’ve spoken or have seen each other, I have seen something new in you. A joy and contentment has welled up in you and it spills over. It’s beautiful, and I hope for my sake that it’s catching. Know that I think of you every time I see an adorable coffee mug or a killer pair of shoes, and I’m in Korea, so that’s often. 🙂

Brandon and Christy's wedding, August 2011

Brandon and Christy’s wedding, August 2011

****

This piece couldn’t possibly encompass all the people who have touched my life, who have shown me love and have taught me better ways to be. Rachel A and Julie and Mary and Christa and Julia and Jerusha and Laura, you have all been gifts to me.

To all of you: You have served, you have loved, you have challenged, you have encouraged. You make my life rich and full of beauty. And I am truly, deeply grateful.

Sometimes Love: A Spoken-Word-Poem Guest Post

Today I am excited to be over at my sweet friend, Briana Meade’s blog with a guest post for her For Better or Worse series. I am also excited/incredibly nervous to be debuting a little spoken-word poem.

When I heard about Briana’s series on marriage I had just published a more traditional post on the topic here, so I decided to take a risk and do something very new and different (for me) in this post. Not only did I write a poem, but it’s a spoken-word poem AND I decided to record it for you. I don’t usually do this (and by don’t usually I mean NEVER) so please bear with my lack of expertise both in performance and videography. I hope you can see past those things and hear my heart in this piece. And I hope maybe something you hear will move you. Because I believe we need each other’s stories to understand our own.

So…(slightly panicking)….here it goes. Check out the video (and the rest of Briana’s awesome blog) here. Let me know what you think! Unless you really really hate it. Then just don’t say anything. (Also, sorry, Mom, about the cursing.)

 

Little baby Jonathan and Lily.

Little baby Jonathan and Lily.

Grown-up Jonathan and Lily (well, sort-of). And don't be confused by this picture. Buddha has not granted us a son.

Grown-up Jonathan and Lily (well, sort-of). And don’t be confused by this picture. Buddha has not granted us a son.

 

 

What I’m Into: March 2014 Edition

I am linking up with Leigh Kramer for her What I’m Into series (a few days late). Since the new school semester started at the beginning of March I have been much busier than I was in January and February which means I’ve done a lot less reading/watching/listening, etc. than I would like. So, I’m including a few from February as well to round out the list. I am very excited to have a guest post for Briana Meade coming out very soon, so stay tuned for that!

 

What I’ve Been Reading:

Way of Kings

Words of

Blue Bike



 

 

 

 

where'd you go bernadette

girl

Name of the Wind

 

 

 

 

 

 

  1. Way of Kings and Word of Radiance. Books 1 & 2 of Brandon Sanderson’s Stormlight Chronicles. Oh. Em. Gee. Some of the best books I have read ever. Period. And I have read a looooot of books. Beautiful writing, stunning world-building, interesting plot, complex characters, twists and turns. These books have everything. The only downside is that the second one just came out this month, so it will probably be another three years before Sanderson churns out his next 1,000 page masterpiece. Also, I’m cheating a little bit because I am not quite done with Words of Radiance, but maybe you can cut me some slack.
  2. Notes from a Blue Bike Tsh Oxenreider’s new book about living simply and creating the life you want to live. In many ways I was inspired by this book to evaluate and define what it is I want out of life. What are my priorities? What are the things that matter most deeply to me? What are the values I want to build my life around? And how do I make those things reality. You only live once and you can either whine the whole time about how life isn’t the way you wish it was, or you can find ways to intentionally create the life you want to live. Tsh gives examples from various times in her family’s lives when they have been  living in Turkey, in Austin, Texas and in a tiny town in Oregon. I mostly really enjoyed this book and its message. But then she wrote a chapter about traveling and how it’s important for their family and so they have found a way to make it work even after having kids. At first I was like, “Hurray! It’s totally possible, see?!” And then I read about how they spent a week in Paris with their kids and made compromises like barely seeing the Louvre and stopping at playgrounds so their kids could get out energy and foregoing a romantic picnic by the Eiffel Tower. And that’s where she lost me. Because all I could think was, “That sounds great, except for the part where your kids were there and you had to go to all of the playgrounds in Paris.” So, this confirmed for me that I need to go to Paris before we have kids.
  3. Girl at the End of the World. This is Elizabeth Esther’s memoir about growing up in and leaving a fundamentalist cult. It was equal parts heartbreaking and hopeful. Although not many of us have experienced the level of fundamentalism and abuse Esther experienced, I thought her story shed light on what spiritual abuse looks like in an extreme case which helped me understand what it can look like in milder situations. I also drew hope from the way Esther and her family were eventually able to make peace with God and find a way back to the Church. If anyone had a reason to give up on Church entirely, it was Esther, and reading her story gave me hope for my own.
  4. Allegiant– Veronica Roth. I read this because I read the first two books in the Divergent trio and felt compelled to finish the story. It’s easily the worst of the three books. In this book the narrative is told by two first-person narrators (Tris and Four) and chapters alternate between them, but the voices were so similar I constantly had to flip back to the beginning of the chapter to remember who was supposed to be speaking. The plot feels very fragmented rather than cohesive and in the end I still wasn’t sure what I was supposed to be hoping for.
  5. Gone Girl –Gillian Flynn. I read this as a quick read at the end of my vacation and I can’t say I liked it all that much. Without ruining the ending (even though I don’t really recommend reading it) I’ll just say that in my opinion, the author sacrificed an opportunity for complexity in the characters and some insights on relationships for the sake of sensationalism. Not a fan.
  6. Where’d You Go, Bernadette? – Maria Semple. I read this book as a light vacation kind of read and I was not disappointed. It’s fun, it’s clever, it’s well-written. I didn’t guess the ending from page room. The characters are unique and interesting. If you are looking for something light but not mindless, I’d recommend it.
  7. Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss. This is another long fantasy book, but the prose is stunning and the characters are great. In simplest terms, it tells the story of a young boy who loses his family to some mysterious forces and spends a lifetime trying to find out what happened to them and seek justice. With about a million plot twists along the way. If you are at all into fantasy, read it.

 

 

What I’ve Been Watching:

Movies:

Captain America – Winter Soldier: This was another typical superhero movie and I found it entertaining as I generally like superhero movies. I’ve always found the Captain America character in himself a bit bland since he is just sort of an all-around good guy without a lot of internal conflicts. I did think this movie added a little more complexity to the Captain America saga. And he’s easy on the eyes.

The Grand Budapest Hotel – What to say…it’s a Wes Anderson movie. While I LOVED Moonrise Kingdom, this movie was harder to categorize as something I “enjoyed.” Some parts of it were deeply sad, but were mixed in with Anderson’s characteristic quirky humor so that it was also amusing. But it was hard to say, “Oh I loved it!” when there were some very sad or upsetting elements. I do always love the look of Wes Anderson movies. Each shot is like a painting and I find them very visually interesting.

 

TV Shows:

Since finishing both Sherlock and Downton Abbey, I’ve been keeping up with my regular shows including Nashville, Parenthood, Bones (out of loyalty, even though every episode is essentially the same), and The series finale for How I Met Your Mother took me through an emotional wringer I may never recover from.

Jonathan and I have also started watching the IT Crowd and are trying to catch up on Scandal which we just started watching a few months ago. (Are we the only people who don’t find Olivia Pope to be all that sympathetic of a character, btw? I just spend most of the show feeling really bad for David Rosen). We also watch Parks and Recreation, New Girl, and Modern Family as they air.

What I’ve Been Eating:

I made a zucchini lasagna for the first time a few weeks ago and I am absolutely raving about it. It’s hands-down the best thing I have cooked since moving to Korea. You use the zucchini instead of lasagna noodles so it’s much healthier for you (though it does still have all that cheese). I’ve actually made it twice since I found the recipe and talked about it at least once a day. I’m that proud of it.

Zucchini-Lasagna

Also, I am maybe obsessed with pinot noir. I can’t seem to stop myself from buying it every time we go to Costco or Homeplus (the only 2 stores in our city that sell wine). It’s like I’m stocking up for the apocalypse. This wouldn’t be such a terrible thing, except that Jonathan doesn’t really drink wine. So it falls to me to finish all those bottles. I bravely soldier on…

It’s finally spring in Korea which means cherry blossoms everywhere! We are headed to the Jinhae Cherry Blossom festival this weekend and running a 10K in our city which we will hopefully write all about soon (with many pictures!) on our Two Sore Thumbs blog.

What about you? Anything you are into that I am really missing out on?

Chock-Full of Ugly: Discontentment, Depression and Making Room for Joy

Last August my husband and I packed up our apartment, stored our belongings, sold our cars, crammed everything we thought we couldn’t live without into 4 suitcases and took a one-way flight to South Korea. We were going to teach, something neither of us had any experience doing. We didn’t know anyone in Korea and we didn’t speak the language. The plan seemed foolproof.

After three years of marriage and three years of working dead-end jobs – watching friends finish graduate school, start the careers they dreamed of, and begin buying houses and starting families, I felt stuck. I felt stuck in spite of the fact that we had moved across the country, just to try something new. I felt stuck in spite of my changing jobs every summer since college, consistently growing to hate whatever my current job was and searching for something better. I felt stuck even though I loved North Carolina, lived within meters of my best friend, had two fantastic cats, and had been able to do some traveling each year. In spite of all of that, the disquiet inside of me was unrelenting.

And so, we struck out across the sea. To a continent neither of us had stepped foot on before. To a country I’d honestly never even considered visiting. We went in pursuit of adventure and new opportunities and a fuller life. I thought living abroad would mean an end to boredom. An end to feeling trapped in the tedium of the jobs I’d held before. An end to the monotony of the ordinary American life, and an end to unhappiness and discontentment.

It took only a few months for the newness to rub off and suddenly Korea was no longer a shiny and alluring dream to chase, but a somewhat dull and ever-present reality. The novelty of being immersed in a new culture gave way to the everyday challenges of being misunderstood and the frustration of feeling like a child again, unable to properly do something as basic as ordering food in a restaurant or answering the telephone. Every small aspect of life being just a little more complicated and a little more confusing than it should be soon became exhausting instead of thrilling. As the winter came and the weather became colder and grayer, I found myself, once again, struggling. Struggling to be positive. Struggling to pull myself out of bed and head to work in the morning. Struggling to care about blow-drying my hair and dressing nicely. Struggling to eat well instead of ordering McDonald’s delivery and lying in bed until it arrived. Struggling to connect with my husband instead of sinking into my own little Downton Abbey world at the end of each day. Struggling to go through the motions of another day that is as ordinary as daily life was at home, except that now ordinary includes not understanding half of what happens around me.

Although intellectually I always understood this, it wasn’t until we’d picked up and moved across the world that I fully realized that no matter where you are, the rituals of daily life just are mundane. Even in Korea I have responsibilities. I have to get up and go to work on time. I have to do the laundry and clean the apartment and cook dinner and buy groceries. Yes, there are new things for me to explore every weekend if I want to. Yes, I have a job that doesn’t feel as pointless and soul-sucking as my marketing job did. Yes, I have opportunities to travel and see new things I never dreamed I’d see. Those are the things that make this experience the best decision we’ve ever made. But in my day to day life I can find just as many things to complain about, just as many things that weigh me down or to make me unhappy as I did back home.

For years I have wrestled with discontentment. I have been the master of convincing myself (beyond all logic and in complete contradiction to the Apostle Paul’s assertion that he had learned “to be content in every circumstance”) that the reason I was discontent was because of one particular set of circumstances or another. That life would be better when the next thing came. That I would be better. I told myself I would be content once I went to college, had a boyfriend, graduated from college, got married, stopped nannying and found a real job, moved somewhere new, quit my new job, went back to school, lost weight, had more friends, took an exciting vacation, moved abroad…

Sometimes this was true. Going away to college made me infinitely happier than I was in high school. Getting married has been the richest and best experience of my life. Quitting my marketing job helped me realize that I am not cut out for a desk job. And moving to Korea and the travel we’ve been able to do since we came has made me feel alive in a way that nothing else ever has. But in the end none of those things were a permanent fix. Three weeks or four months or a year later, there was always something else for me to be dissatisfied with.

I’m not a “sad person.” I laugh easily, and often. But those who know me best can see that there is often an underlying sense of dissatisfaction with life and frustration with myself for being that way.

Because even though I have made change after change after change (and some of them have been wonderful) I have carried the root of the problem inside of me like a cancer. Living in Korea has objectively been a wonderful experience, but Korea doesn’t have the ability to make me happy. Because I brought pessimism and discontentment and a tendency towards depression here with me.

I understand the difference between happiness and joy. That happiness is temporary because it is affected by our circumstances, but joy is something you can possess even when you’re unhappy with your circumstances. But I also know that discontentment leaves very little room for joy. And for me, sometimes discontentment’s uglier cousin, depression, can fill up all the space inside of me until there isn’t any room for joy to grow.

Coming to Korea has changed me in some positive ways. I am no longer waiting for the next great thing. I no longer tell myself that I will be happier or more content when I reach the next milestone. I think of Korea, and this time living abroad, as our great adventure. I don’t in any way think life will be miserable after this, but I also feel that this may be the biggest and craziest thing we do. That there might not be a “bigger” thing after this. And I don’t want to live my life constantly looking forward to what’s ahead. I want to live a life that is full of wonder. I want to soak up beauty like a sponge and know wisdom’s voice. I want to know that things are real because I’ve seen them and touched them with my own hands. I want to be willing to give of myself with no thought to how tired it will make me. I want to learn to love the whole world. And I want to learn to love myself.

This is the life I want and yet, this winter has been dark, friends. Some days I’ve wanted to let it swallow me. To lay down in my bed and not get up again until spring. This isn’t because my life is horrible or even particularly difficult. This has nothing to do with my actual circumstances. This is because I am broken.

I’ve been depressed before. The scary kind of depressed. I’m not quite in that place. I’m not unhappy about my life– there are so many things that I am truly, deeply grateful for. I’m not incapable of feeling joy. There are many moments when I am deeply, wildly happy. The problem seems to lie in my inability to rest in that joy and let it color my more monotonous days. Many days I lack either the will or the skills to let those precious, joyful moments weigh heavier and count more than the gray sky and the sour smell of rotting kimchi on the street.

I wasn’t always this way. There was a time when the fight for joy wasn’t quite so hard. When I didn’t reach the end of each day exhausted from the energy it took for me just to smile, to be kind and to stay engaged that day. I’ve tried to change. I even tried to writing 1,000 Gifts like Saint Ann Voskamp and was pretty pissed off when I was not magically transformed by gratitude. (By the way, that is not a dig at Ann Voskamp who I think is wonderful person and whose book and blog you should read.) It’s possible that this is the result of chemicals in my brain or hormones in my body misfiring, keeping me unbalanced, my whole being in turmoil because of some rogue element. But even if that’s part of it, I know deep down it’s not the whole thing. I know there is a core to this problem that is spiritual. It is a disquiet that comes being dissatisfied with myself. From the questions I have been afraid to ask. The truths I’m not always sure I believe. The prayers I pray and the ones that I don’t want to.

Here in Korea, I have been given the gift of space and the time to do some of the deep work I need to do. To wade through the muck inside of me and to start giving a voice to the questions. To start expressing the doubts. To expose the darkness I see in myself. To admit how much it scares me. To see if Grace might intervene.

I want to live an extraordinary life. But I can’t do it when I’m crammed full of ugliness . So maybe it’s time to stop waiting for the next thing to come. Maybe it’s time to roll up my sleeves and get to work. Maybe it’s time to beg Grace to show me how to carve out space for joy.