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Do Not Worry

Almost two years after my first guest-preaching experience at my home church, I was invited to bring the message again today, this time on a topic of my choosing. Once again, it was equal parts humbling, exciting and nerve wracking. I'm so very grateful for the support I received from my pastors, Luke (who probably needs both hands to count all the various sermon iterations he was subjected to, not to mention my rehearsal of the final product), and family and friends who came, watched or offered encouragement. God is so very good to me.

Today, I preached on Matthew 6:25-34, also known as the "Do Not Worry" passage from Jesus's Sermon on the Mount.

Image of the worship bulletin:

And here's the transcript:

Good morning, everyone! Thank you to Pastor Elizabeth for asking me to bring the message this morning, and to all of you for having me. It was a busy week for Plainfield as we just finished our first week back at school, and towns around us are going on week two. My husband Luke and I have three kids; two boys in elementary school and a daughter who just started middle school, and leading up to the first day back, we had a pretty lengthy to-do list that probably looked like a lot of yours. Plus, Kara is new to the middle school, so there was an orientation for parents and students where she could get a lay of the land, try out the combination to her locker, walk through her class schedule and meet her teachers.

We were there for over two hours, and when we got home, we talked it all over, and she said, “I better take down some notes so I can remember all the things I learned tonight.” Classes hadn’t even started yet, but she already had the makings of her own to-do list to help her navigate the school day.

And we know the list only gets longer as we get older and deal with everything that life throws at us. It’s not just school kids who heave a big sigh on Sunday nights and wish the weekends could be just a little longer.

For almost a year now, all three of my kids have been obsessed with their dad’s old stash of Garfield comic books, and in the strips there’s a running joke that Garfield hates mornings, and especially Monday mornings. It’s not like he’s rushing to the office every day. But he perfectly captures our society’s attitude toward the start of the week. This one hits the nail on the head:

It's funny, but we can relate! A new day, a new week, brings a whole new set of anxieties. What do I have to do today, where am I supposed to be, what was I supposed to do yesterday that didn’t get done, what’s on my plate for tomorrow that I have to start thinking about today? And how do I feel about all those things?

And yet with all this busyness going on in our minds and in our lives, the Bible show us that no matter what trials we might face in each new day, we can face them without worry because we’re trusting it all to God.

“Do Not Worry” has always been one of my favorite scriptures, and one of the reasons I love it is that it’s so straightforward. No parables, no hidden meaning; Jesus does us a favor and spells it out for us — literally telling us to not be overwhelmed by fears in our daily lives. When Jesus came, he expanded the interpretation of a lot of those Old Testament laws around food, worship, Sabbath and so on, but “Don’t Worry” doesn’t change. We see it easily way back in the book of Exodus, after Moses leads the Israelites out of Egypt and God provides a daily meal of meat and bread to the people so they’ll have steady nourishment as they make their way to the land of Canaan. God even gives them a double portion on the sixth day, so they don’t have to collect food on the Sabbath. “Do not worry” isn’t a “nice to have”; it’s not something “other people do”; it’s not an aspiration to strive for “one day in the future”; it’s for us, and it’s for today.

I’ve had lots of lightbulb moments over the last few years reinforcing how important it is to live this scripture. One that stands out took place almost two years ago. I was going through a lot of change at work, and I was using up a good chunk of mental energy to just manage my emotions and get through the work day. I was also having something like a pre-midlife identity crisis; looking at my relationship with God, my career, parts of motherhood where I wasn’t doing so well, how I was showing up in my marriage. It was like I had gone back to school to study anxiety, and I was getting all As.

Around the same time, I noticed a tingling in my left jaw and a ringing in my ears that wouldn’t go away. I went to the health clinic at work and immediate care a handful of times over about six months. And at the end of every visit, the provider would always say, “If this doesn’t get better, you should really follow up with your primary care or a specialist.” But my life was already so full, my list was so long, that I didn’t have the mental bandwidth for this issue to take up any more space in my brain than it already was. So, each time I decided to wait it out, and take their advice only if things got worse.

Well, things did get a little worse. Two of my immediate care visits over that six months were to get checked out for intermittent chest pain. And each of those two times, they gave me an EKG, and thank goodness, all of my vitals would come back normal. Heart, good, lungs clear, everything all good. Each time, I would tell them about the other symptoms I was being seen for, and each time they asked me if I had any stress in my life, because it could be either causing or at least increasing the severity of my symptoms, and each time I would say, yes. I wasn’t really doing anything to change it, but I knew that stress was part of the problem.

After my second chest pain episode, it was February of 2018, and by this time, the tremors were spreading up my face. OK, I said, I get it Lord. I have to see someone.

So I saw my primary care doctor and an ear-nose-throat specialist, and there were two or three weeks where I had a lot of appointments. A hearing test, blood work, a brain MRI to rule out neurological issues. In the end, they found an iron deficiency that was most likely contributing to the facial tremors. They determined that jaw-clenching was causing the ringing in my ears, and that both of these symptoms were made worse by … stress. Bring up my iron a bit, nix the gum checking, literally stop worrying so much, and after a while, the symptoms should disappear. And they did.

Now, this was not a serious medical drama. “Gray’s Anatomy” is not going to buy the rights to my story anytime soon. In the grand scheme of things, I was fine. But it took a long time and a lot of money to figure that out. It also forced me to take a step back and examine my choices up to this point:

This issue took so much longer to resolve than it needed to because I was so stubborn. How much stress and money would I have saved myself and my husband and my health savings account if I’d seen those doctors in September instead of February and gotten all that information earlier.

But here was my problem: I had all these great ideas for these big changes I wanted to make. And they were good changes. Who would say you shouldn’t work on your parenting skills? Who would tell you it’s wrong to get excited about a different career? But I was so sure that my agenda was right, that I wasn’t noticing the signs God was sending me that I was going about it all wrong. I was so focused on the nitty-gritty details that helped me feel like I was in control, that I couldn’t see how they were distracting me from making progress on that deeper, harder work. And my thoughts were so “I” focused that I wasn’t giving God a chance to weigh in. Really, I was talking more at him, talking more, period, instead of giving Him the space and openness He needed to work in me.

Here are a few things that helped me get to a better place:

One: Reminding myself that a fear-filled life is not what God calls us to. He doesn’t need us to have a perfect plan, or figure it all out. He needs us to trust. To take things one day at a time. To follow him over everything else, and be receptive to his actual call for our lives.

Two: I needed to talk to someone. Actually, lot of people. For me, this looked like being more open with my support network about all the different ways I was struggling. I made it a point to talk to my husband more and reach out to close friends and family, and Pastor Ken Loudenback here at PUMC. But I also found a counselor, because I needed that outside perspective to help me look at everything I was doing, figure out what wasn’t working, and help me make healthy changes I could sustain over the long haul. I needed someone to tell me that you actually can’t work on every area of your life at the same time and to show me that, in a lot of ways, I was being my own worst enemy. Having that outside perspective really helped me pinpoint what triggered my stress, how to manage it when it showed up, and how to look at some of my situations differently so that they didn’t cause so much anxiety in the first place.

But the practice that led to these insights and changes was prayer. Prayer is always something I’m working to get better at, but when I start my days this way, it puts me in a better frame of mind to deal with whatever life throws at me. I had another lightbulb moment when I realized that I needed to change the intentions of my prayers — to stop trying to bend things to my will, and start asking for help in staying open to *His* will. So I now say all the time, “Your will, Lord, not mine,” because I need this reminder to stay focused on Him.

One of my *favorite* prayers to reflect on is Psalm 23, “The Lord is My Shepherd,” and there are two lines that really stand out. The first one is, “He makes me lie down in green pastures,” because I can visualize God standing in front of me, and putting His hands on my shoulders and saying, “Seriously, lie down. It’s going to be OK.”

The second line that stays with me is, “He prepares a table before me in the presence of my enemies.” I used to pass over that verse pretty quickly because I would think, “I don’t think of anyone as an enemy.” But when I started defining “enemy” in a bigger way — as unhealthy beliefs, self-destructive thought patterns — this verse held a lot more power for me. Here I see Jesus setting that table, with all those harmful thoughts and behaviors around us, and I can hear Him say, “Don’t believe a word. *I* am your Creator. You are made in *my* image and likeness, and I have a purpose for you. We’ve got this.”

Earlier this year, I saw the movie Groundhog Day with Bill Murray for the first time. I may have been the last person on the planet to see this, but it’s a movie about an East Coast weatherman named Phil Connors. And this weatherman is a jerk. Phil hates his job, he’s condescending and sarcastic to his TV crew, looks down on everyone, and he definitely hates going to Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, every year to cover the annual Groundhog Day festival. So of course, by some twist of fate, Phil is forced to relive Feb. 2 over and over and over until he gets it right.

Going into the movie, I figured it would be good but predictable. Phil Connors would fall in love, get out of the time loop, and find a new lease on life. And I’d laugh a lot because hello, it’s Bill Murray.

And those things do happen. But it’s about more than just a romance. The theme is actually a lot closer to “It’s a Wonderful Life,” but with a twist. George Bailey was a man who needed to be erased from his life to realize how much he loved it. But in Groundhog Day, Phil Connors needs to be trapped in his life, in this one awful day that represents everything he hates about humanity, so he could learn how to love it.

We’re going to watch a couple clips from the movie, and in this first one, Phil has already lived through several iterations of Groundhog Day, and by this point, he’s over the shock, he’s done manipulating the situation to his benefit, mentally exhausted from being stuck in this small town day after day after day. Take a look.

Start clip at 1:28 and play to 2:47:

It’s so easy to relate to Phil Connors, because at some point or another, we’ve all been there. Feeling trapped in your circumstances, worried that you’ll never get out, and believing there’s nothing you can do to change it. No matter how we got there — it’s so easy to give into despair when we don’t see another path forward.

Groundhog Day Director Harold Ramis said that after the movie was released, people from all kinds of religious and spiritual communities came out in support of it, because each group could relate it back to their own theological viewpoint. But, Harold Ramis said, it’s really a universal concept — exploring the idea of, “How many times do you have to make the same mistake in your life until something different happens?” He said, and I’m paraphrasing a little, “When you come to those moments when you could make the same mistake, the key is having the insight, courage, and energy to make a different choice. Because if you can change one little thing, then everything might change.”

And that’s what Phil does. The one little thing he changes is his attitude around Feb. 2. But not before he’s tried everything else, right? He was set on a way of viewing the world that ultimately didn’t serve him or others, and only until everything else failed did he resign himself to make that change. But that change has a domino effect on everything he does and helps him find a sense of purpose — even before he ever gets out of the time loop. Here’s the other clip:

Start clip at the beginning and play until 2:34:

So, what does this mean for *us*? I think these Groundhog Day type situations are where the rubber meets the road for us as Christians. They test our faith exactly because we have to put aside our pre-conceived notions, our best-laid plans, and our pride, and put our trust into God’s goodness and purpose for our lives. Jesus tells the crowd on the mount: “Do not worry, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear?’” He says, “Your Heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.”

But it’s hard to do this! Writer C.S. Lewis describes it really well in his book Mere Christianity. He writes, “The terrible thing, the almost impossible thing, is to hand over your whole self — all your wishes and precautions — to Christ. … That is why the real problem of the Christian life comes where people do not usually look for it. It comes the very moment you wake up each morning. All your wishes and hopes for the day rush at you like wild animals. And the first job each morning consists simply in shoving them all back; in listening to that other voice, taking that other point of view, letting that other larger, stronger, quieter life come flowing in. And so on, all day.”

So how do we make it easier for God to flow through our days?

One of the best ways is to start it with Him. Whether it’s before you get out of bed, or you’re taking your shower, or driving to work, carve out time to talk to Him. Find prayers that help you set your intentions for the day. Maybe you spend five minutes writing in a prayer journal. My sister uses a Sarah Young flip-book devotional that has a scripture and prayer for every day of the year. Find a Bible plan that gets you in the Word a little bit every day. The whole idea is to let God be the first thing to fill you up, before life starts rushing in.

It also helps me to remember that we worship a *loving* savior, who really does provide for us in ways we’ll never know or see. Who answers our concerns about physical and spiritual hunger by reminding us, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” It’s so easy to get caught up in all the things we have going on in our lives, and all the things we have to do — or think we have to do — but Jesus has already done, is always doing, all the hard work on our behalf. We just have to accept it, and follow.

I’m going to close with one of my favorite prayers from St. Thomas Aquinas, because it offers us a great mindset for entering our days with God:

Most Merciful God, order my day so that I may know what you want me to do, and then help me to do it. Let me not be elated by success or depressed by failure. I want only to take pleasure in what pleases you, and only to grieve at what displeases you.

For the sake of your love, I would willingly forgo all temporal comforts.

May all the joys in which you have no part weary me.

May all the work which you do not prompt be tedious to me.

Let my thoughts frequently turn to you,

That I may be obedient to you without complaint,

Patient without grumbling, cheerful without self-indulgence,

contrite without dejections,

And serious without solemnity.

Let me hold you in awe without feeling terrified of you,

And let me be an example to others without any trace of pride. Amen.

 

Year in review

In corporate America, first quarter is the time to look back on the last 12 months and project what you hope to achieve in the coming year. Recently, I've not done a great job documenting my personal post-ball-drop reflections, but I want to be more intentional with 2017, and since the business world is still closing out the year, why not me? I'm a grown-up woman, I do what I want.

Note to self: Ship the content. Done is better than perfect. The 10-minute walk you take is better than the three miles you never run. Just do it. Etc. 

See also: Unpublished drafts of "2015 in Review" and "2016 in Review."

Key milestones and insights

Women's March

For most of my life, I've shied away from politics. The landscape is so complex, and the dialogue often so polarizing, that I felt too uneducated and frankly, too intimidated, to join the conversation. To say I've progressed by leaps and bounds would be a gross understatement, but I was compelled to attend the women's rally in Indianapolis last year, and the experience touched my heart. I didn't agree with every sign that I saw or speaker I heard, but I was moved by the demonstrations of unity and vowed to do better in using my voice. For me, this has meant calling legislators for the first time, widening my news sources and simply being open to this uncomfortable process. Others are much further along, but that's OK. Baby steps.

Courage over comfort today! #WomensRallyIndy @StateofKate pic.twitter.com/8cxakBlpim

— Bree Dunscombe (@mrsfrema) January 22, 2017

Saint Joe fundraiser + closing

On Feb. 3, 2017, I along with thousands of other Puma faculty, staff, students and alumni were shocked to learn that our beloved Saint Joseph's College was closing in May due to nearly $30 million in debt. Saint Joe and the city of Rensselaer represent all kinds of home to me. I made lifelong friends there, lured my sister Samantha to attend school with me in the cornfields of northern Indiana, bought Luke, and took my first professional job after graduation. I was on staff when Saint Joe launched the branding campaign that led to our marketing refresh and "Involved for Life" tagline. I couldn't let it go without a fight. So I along with two other Indy-area alumni answered the call to host a fundraiser in March, in conjunction with events throughout the Midwest, in an effort to generate enough dollars that the college could stay open and assemble a long-term viability plan.

The chances of raising enough funds to keep the school going were slim at best, and our alumni association (now a separate entity from the college) returned all donations when we didn't meet our goal, but it felt so good to invest my time and money in a cause that was so important to me. Planning the event, working alongside other alums, soliciting prizes, sharing stories. It would have been easy to turn my eyes from the daunting task of raising so much money. It was an impossible situation, and emotions were running high. But there was so much support, even from friends without an SJC diploma (Jen, Raquel, Alyssa, thank you!). I'm so glad I said yes.

In April, I attended the last Little 500 go-kart race with one of my dearest friends. Here, Maura and I memorialize Saint Joe's signage on I-65:

And here we stand with our beloved English professor, John Groppe, who was quoted in the Indianapolis Monthly story I linked to above. John Groppe is the reason my Frema nickname exists! I left him a voicemail one day my sophomore year, to let him know I wanted to interview for the part-time secretary position he was trying to fill. I left my name, Bree Ma'Ayteh, and walked to his office. In person, John said he would be happy to interview me, but first he had to speak with someone named Frema, who was also interested. It wasn't long before we realized that Frema ("Bree Ma...") was me! I'm holding his latest poetry collection.

Auntie Donna

On July 30, my wonderful Auntie Donna passed away at 52 years old from a years-long battle with cancer -- just hours before her namesake, my youngest sister, gave birth to my sweet nephew Benny. Auntie Donna had a long, hard road for many years, but what a blessing that she wasn't alone. She lived with Samantha and her family for almost two years, and in her last months required constant care. I was so blessed to spend a few long weekends last summer in Chicago, stepping in briefly to help with hospice nurses and medication schedules.

When I was nine years old, my parents bought a two-story apartment; our family took the top floor, and Nana (my mother's mother) and Auntie Donna took the second. She wasn't on the peripherals of my life, but front and center.

She let me tag along on errands in her sweet Cavalier, and when I was 17 let me use it to take my driver's test (no coincidence that my first car purchase was a sweet Cavalier). She shared openly about her path to sobriety, hugged me while I cried over boyfriends, answered my questions frankly, and always had unshakeable faith in me. We were only in touch at family gatherings as I moved away, got married and had kids, so this time with her was truly a gift from God.

I've lost people who I loved with all my heart, but I was far removed from their actual deaths. Phone calls to Indiana when I was either in school or beginning my career, potentially months since my last trip home, with either no chance to say good-bye or a short "last" visit in the hospital. This was my first time sitting in the stillness of someone who was starting to die. To meet her eyes and rub lotion on her hands, have short conversations as she was able, or just poke my head in her room to make sure she was still breathing. It was intimate and horrifying and one of the most sacred things I've ever done.

In no way am I trying to inflate my part in this process. I was half a puzzle piece, substituting for much larger pieces, and Samantha was the frame holding everything together with such strength and grace. But our society isn't good at holding space for grief or sadness, and this was the first time I held it in a such a deep, prolonged way, and I want to express how grateful I am for it, and that it was for my Auntie Donna, who is so very special to me.

"Check the Box Sunday"

I posted the message I delivered at church in September, but what I didn't touch on was the process of writing it. One of our pastors approached me in early June, and for the first two months I didn't write anything, just let myself be excited while the idea of it marinated in my brain. I thought about the Bible stories I would talk about, fun movie clips I could show (the congregation was thisclose to watching a scene from "The Lord of the Rings"), and when I let myself get really carried away, I imagined that everything in my spiritual journey over the last two years had been leading up to this one sermon, and I really needed to knock it out of the park, to the point that everyone would hear me and think, "Wow, why isn't Bree up here talking to us every week?"

Truly the picture of holiness, I know.

And then I actually started writing, and of course none of my ideas were panning out like I wanted them to. At the end of August, I had a respectable draft that was an appropriate length and biblically sound. But it didn't feel like me because, for one thing, I wasn't trying to be like me, or even giving God a chance to work through me. I was imitating my pastors and falling short. Secondly, I was trying to give a message that was "finished" -- a story with a definite ending, like the last chapter in a book, because it felt like I should be far enough along in my faith life that I can tell those kinds of stories. It was hard to admit that I was (and remain) in the messy middle. But once I did, it got easier.

On the big day, I was ready to cry from nervousness (What? Bree never cries), but once it was over I was ready to do it again. How lucky I was, too, to have so many people cheering me on. Luke, my mother- and father-in-law, my sister Samantha, and my dear friend Jen and her family came to see me, and several loved ones watched online. And my church family was so gracious. Thank you, God.

Therapy, take two

I'm grateful for my first stint with counseling because it allowed me to catch a glimpse of its value. But I wasn't comfortable with my therapist and ended our sessions after my free six weeks were up (muchas gracias, Employee Assistance Program). The week after Thanksgiving, I tried a new therapist, and WHOA. Fit makes such a difference! We meet twice a month for an hour, and in between I am Doing The Work. Sometimes I fight The Work, or push it to the bottom of the pile, or feel like I'm above The Work. I feel like I'm missing the mark more than half the time. But this therapist can handle my sense of humor and ugly sobbing without missing a beat. She asks good questions and helps me make connections that I haven't noticed on my own.

I have a long road ahead, but now the right person is on the road with me, and that's something.

Me, practicing positive affirmations:

But also...

There were so many things to be happy about last year:

• Completing my second and third half-marathons, eight years after my first running of the Mini. Thank you, Jo Lynn and Jen, for being my race buddies!
  
• Finally finishing my Brene Brown online course.
• Diving into spring and fall soccer with Nathan for the first time.
• Taking Kara to see "A Christmas Carol" at Indy's local theater.
• Our baby starting kindergarten.
  
• Welcoming an actual baby into our family, my sweet nephew Benny.
• Finishing a "Jesus in the Gospels" study at my church -- definitely one of the bright spots of my year.
• Falling into the PBS British Telly Club rabbit hole. AND I'M NOT GOING BACK.
• Also falling into the gaming rabbit hole. Luke's and my level of intensity isn't so high that we're role-playing D&D, but it's not so low that I wouldn't consider it. It's a slippery slope, is what I'm saying.
• Our summer vacation in southeast Michigan, where we ate ice cream every day.
  
• Seeing Jen Hatmaker and Nichole Nordeman during the Indy leg of their Moxie Matters tour.
• Visiting Boston in the fall with my dear PR and corp comm friends to eat great food, enjoy a haunted bus tour, and oh yes, attend an industry conference.

Thank you, 2017.

2018, I'm coming for you.

"Check the Box Sunday"

Nearly four months ago, I was invited to share a message on the topic of spiritual gifts at my church. And, as it does, "upcoming" quickly turned into "today," and "today" is now "yesterday," and it already feels like a lifetime ago that I delivered a 20-minute sermon about a journey that played a large role in my sporadic posting here over the last couple of years. In Daring Greatly, Brene Brown talked about the value of checking your intention before sharing a personal story, particularly while wounds are still fresh, and I'm glad I heeded her advice, because it took almost all of those two years to fully process this experience, mature my thinking and share from a place of insight.

Giving this sermon was one of the scariest, most meaningful and humbling things I've ever done. I'll write on the process another time, but for now, here's the transcript. The scripture I spoke on was 1 Corinthians 12:4-11.

Good morning, everyone!

I want to thank Pastor Elizabeth for asking me to give the message today. The topic of spiritual gifts has meant a lot to me over the last couple of years, so my goal is to share my story with you, with the hope that it might help you when you’re thinking about how your own gifts fit into your relationship with God.

My journey started in the spring of 2015, at the end of my Disciple 1 Bible study. If you don’t know about Disciple, it’s a series of Bible study classes, and Disciple 1 is essentially an intro to the Bible that walks you through big sections of the Old and New Testaments. So, the big finale to the class was for all of us to take a spiritual gifts assessment to help us find our calling for service, keeping in mind all the examples we had of God using people to do his work, in ways that wouldn’t have been possible without God’s help.

So, before we jump into results, let’s start with what the church means by spiritual gifts. Disciple gave us some parameters.

Spiritual gifts are not talents. Talents are skills that we can pick up and develop in ourselves. We get them from God, but they fit more into the natural world that we live in. So when I think of talents, I think about music, cooking, gardening … something really tangible, that when we picture the skill in our minds, we have a clear idea of how it might be used.

They’re also not the fruit of the Spirit. Paul mentions these in the book of Galatians: Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. These aren’t skills; the fruits are more about shaping our character as Christians, and we’re all expected to live all of them to some degree.

So when the church talks about spiritual gifts, they are talking about special roles or abilities, but ones that come from the Holy Spirit, and we get these gifts to do the work that God says only we can do.

So, I was pretty excited about the assessment, partly because I love taking quizzes like this, that help you learn more about yourself, and partly because I really wanted the assessment to show me some new things about where God might be leading me in my faith life.

At this point, for context, my husband Luke and I had been members of PUMC for almost three years, and I had converted to Methodism after growing up Catholic, and I was finally at a point where the faith I learned as a child and my beliefs as an adult were all coming together, and it just felt like the right time to get a new piece of the puzzle figured out.

So, I took an assessment on the Ministry Matters website – I’ll share more on that near the end – and there were some really meaningful gifts like mercy, and serving, and wisdom, and I was so excited to see the ones I would get.

Maybe you can see where this is going. Of course, my gifts were none of those things! My top score was in … administration! Here’s how they described it:

• Organized and detail-oriented.
• Enjoy planning and organizing events or projects.
• Like working with issues involving systems, structures and procedures.

I think the creators of the assessment knew that getting administration would be kind of a letdown, because they added guidance in parentheses, like they were trying to spin it into something more positive, when really, it felt like the consolation prize of spiritual gifts. At least it did for me.

I didn’t feel like I was learning anything new about my path or what God wanted from me.

Also, I like being good at administration, and those gifts have gotten me far in my career, but I didn’t want those traits to be the main ways I served God, because honestly, they didn’t feel Jesus-y enough. Yes, that's a technical term.

It’s like, mercy and teaching and serving are no-brainers as spiritual gifts because we saw Jesus doing those things in the Bible all the time. But when you hear “administration,” you don’t think, “Oh, yeah, Jesus’s mission was all about being organized and detail oriented.” Those things aren’t unique to Christianity, anyone can be good them.

So, I had these results, but they weren’t the ones I was hoping for, and I wasn’t sure what to do with them, so I was feeling kind of stuck. Then, in May, about a month after Disciple had ended, there was a service that was all about listening for God's call in our lives, and instead of a sermon, we heard from different members of the congregation talk about their calls to a certain ministry or type of service. A couple of examples that stand out for me are, Teri Walters talking about the T&T after-school program we help with at Van Buren Elementary, and one of our pastors at the time, Colin Cress, talking about switching from something like an engineering major to go into the seminary, and I was just eating all of this up. After everyone was done talking, Pastor Charlie got up to the lectern, and he held up a connection card. And he said there was a special check box on this week’s card that you could mark off if you wanted to speak to someone about exploring God's call to service. And I remember sitting in the pew next to Luke, and feeling all the blood in my body rise to my face, and my heart stopped, and I knew I had to check this box. Now, I did not know what I would *say* to a pastor about God’s call, but I knew God wanted me to check this box.

So, I checked the box, but I'm a very emotional person, so I could already feel myself getting worked up in the pew, and I was starting to cry, so I did the only thing I could think to do, which was to get up, leave Luke without an explanation and hide in the bathroom for the last 20 minutes of the service. I don’t even remember what I said to Luke and the kids when I finally came out, but clearly I was not in a good place.

I think of that day as “Check the Box Sunday,” and about a week later, Pastor Elizabeth and I met, and she helped me think about things I could do to help me try on different leadership roles at church. I became a liturgist, and I joined the church council, and read books about work you could do in the church, and I kept taking Disciple classes. And I enjoyed all of it, but on the inside, I couldn’t relax into anything that I was doing. I’m very type A, I’m very take-charge, and I don’t like uncertainty, so being in this ambiguous place was really hard for me.

In essence, I was having a measurement problem.

Because as we know, in our society, we love to measure things. Measuring helps us know our place, gives us information that helps us form our identity, and helps us see where we fit in the grand scheme of things.

And the old saying, “You manage what you measure,” really is true. In school, we measure how good you are at reading, and math, and science, because we know you need those skills to function in society and be successful adult. So, if you’re not doing well in one of those areas, we measure that, so we can catch you if you’re struggling, and help you get better. And if you are doing well, we want to catch that, too, so we can encourage you to keep using those skills as you get older. So if Suzy is in high school and she’s great at science, we might encourage her to take biology and chemistry, or study pre-med in college, or do other things that make sense for kids who are good at science. The drawback is that the science label might make it hard for Suzy to think about herself differently as she grows up and has different experiences. But society doesn’t like uncertainty, either — so, we do the measuring, and then the labeling, and hope it all works out for the best.

So that’s school. But there’s no end to it. We measure your abilities in sports, art, music, parenting, work — you can even measure your happiness level! Author Gretchen Rubin wrote a book a few years back, it’s one of my favorite books, called The Happiness Project. She studied what scientists, philosophers, and academics had to say about the makings of a happy life, and then over the course of a year, she put those ideas into practice.

Now, you might not think you could track your progress at being happier, but Gretchen Rubin did it. She created a resolutions chart for each month so she could see how well she was doing. Here’s an example:

This is Rubin’s chart for the month of January, and that month she was focused on boosting her energy. So she listed all the resolutions she was following to help increase her energy level. One of them was “Keep a food diary” to make sure she was putting healthy things in her body to keep her energy up. You can see the others here. And if she did well with a resolution on given day, she gave herself a checkmark. So on January 1, if she was good at updating her food diary, she got a checkmark, to say, good job. And if she didn’t do well, she put an X in the box, almost like a strike, and it was reminder that she needed to do better tomorrow.

So, this is kind of funny, but it’s also a great example of how driven we are to measure our progress in whatever we’re doing. Without measures, it’s really easy to lose sight of what you’re aiming for.

But when it comes to our faith, how do we know if we’re being the kind of Christian that God is calling us to be? What are we measuring to help us stay on track?

That’s where I was stuck. I kept thinking, What do I do with all of this? How can I use what I’m learning to get from point A to point B in my faith? What I can personally measure that will show me if I’m on the right track?

So, in our scripture for today, Paul gives us a framework to help measure this exact thing.

The reading comes from Paul’s first letter to a church in Corinth, and the audience was mainly Gentile, non-Jews who had recently converted to Christianity, and they came from lots of social classes, and they were all still learning how to live together as a community. In this letter, one of Paul’s biggest themes is to live the life assigned to you by God. In chapter 7, a few chapters before today’s scripture, he says, “Let each of you lead the life that the Lord has assigned, to which God called you. This is my rule in all the churches. Was anyone at the time of his call already circumcised? Let him not seek to remove the marks of circumcision. Was anyone at the time of his call uncircumcised? Let him not seek circumcision.”

He ends that thought with, “Let each of you remain in the condition in which you were called.”

This scripture is important to me because it reminds us that it’s OK to be who we are. It’s not an accident that our bodies are different colors, that our ways of speaking are different, that we have different ways of making decisions, that we’re good at some things and not good at other things, and that we’re affected differently by all the grief we see in the world. God made us different, because it takes that many kinds of people to bring about His kingdom here on Earth.

Paul keeps this thought going when he talks about spiritual gifts. In today’s scripture we read, “Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and … it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone.”

You can’t measure how well you’re following Jesus by comparing your path to other people’s. God never intended us to use each other as measuring sticks. He wants us to do what only we can do.

So this is one very real way to measure our faith as Christians. Are we taking the spiritual gifts we’ve been given, and using them to bring people closer to Jesus? We can ask ourselves, How are we using our gifts to do the work that God says only we can do?

This was all well and good. But it wasn’t a help to me two years ago, because I was so caught up in trying to nail down God’s big calling for my life that I couldn’t move forward in anything.

Meanwhile, during all this exploring on spiritual gifts — I was also taking an online class about living a brave life and how to work through the things that get in the way of being our most authentic selves. One of the exercises was to write a manifesto. The idea was to write down how you want to make a difference and the daily practices that would help you show up in your own life.

So I did. Here’s a copy of my manifesto:

The best thing about this exercise was coming up with a framing statement at the top, where you articulated your core purpose. I struggled at first because I kept trying to fit in something about my talents and spiritual gifts. I’ve been a writer for as long as I can remember, I've always identified myself that way, and it's something I love to do, so I thought that had to fit somewhere, and now I had this administration label, and I still wasn’t sure how that fit in. But when I finally got quiet, and listened to God, He showed me I was making this too hard. So, what do you do when you don’t know what to do? You get back to basics, and for me, the most basic, fundamental thing you can do as a Christian is follow Jesus’s two main commandments. Love God and love neighbor. That’s it, just those two things. So as you can see here, the guiding principle of my manifesto is very simple, and really, it could be anybody’s: I’m here to love God and my neighbor and say “yes” to Jesus. But the way I carry that though my life, using all those framing statements – I choose to, I have the courage to, I give myself permission to – how I do all those things will be unique to me.

And if I don’t know whether to go back to school, or leave corporate America, or do whatever else is tugging at my heart, that’s OK, because as long as I’m finding ways to love God and love neighbor in whatever I’m doing, God will take care of the rest. And if God wants me to use writing and project planning and building processes and showing leadership, He will guide me toward a path that includes those things. But my talents and gifts aren’t the purpose of my life, and that’s what I lose sight of. It took doing this exercise to remind me that my gifts are the how, but God is the why. If I stay anchored in the why, and open to whatever God is asking of me, wherever I end up will be the right place.

So, here are next steps you can take on your own spiritual gifts journey:

If you’ve never done one, think about taking a spiritual gifts assessment to see what comes up for you. The assessment I took is on the Ministry Matters site: http://survey.ministrymatters.com/SpiritualGifts

You’ll need to create an account, but it’s free and pretty easy to do.

Once you know what your gifts are, take a look at what you’re doing on a day-to-day basis, and remember to leave some white space in the margins so that God has room to bring these gifts through in your life.

And today, you can visit all the displays stationed in the church lobbies this morning. Find one or two that look like a good fit and talk to the ministry leaders there. They can answer any questions you have. Or you can also reach out to any of the pastors.

Before we close out the message with prayer, I wanted to share one of my favorite quotes. It’s from C.S. Lewis, from his book Mere Christianity, which I’ve come to again and again over the last couple of years, and it’s got a great metaphor to describe the work that God is doing in all of our lives.

“Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on; you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make any sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of - throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself.”

Let’s pray.

Dear God,

Thank you, that your plans for us are bigger, and richer, than we could ever imagine for ourselves. Thank you for equipping each of us, with spiritual gifts we can use, to make your world a more loving and welcoming place. Please help us come to know these gifts, and use them to the best of our ability, to do your will.

In your name, we pray.

Amen.

It opened up my eyes I saw the sign

It was at my fourth session, probably right before Christmastime, when my therapist introduced me to ecomaps. A quick Google search says that ecomaps are used in social work to diagram processes and/or environments of families, communities, and other systems. In therapy, she offered it as a tool to not only help me get a bird's eye view of the people, social units and activities in my life, but also to gauge the quality of those connections.

My ecomap mirrors the example above, except the lines are varied and colored to display three relationship measures:

• Strength: Strong ties = straight lines (one or multiple depending on intensity), tenuous ones were dashes
• Quality: Green for positive, red for strained
• Level of importance: 1-to-10 scale, with 10 for highest priorities

It's the measurement aspect that prevents me from sharing a copy here, but I have to tell you about my ecomap because, for one thing, it's the only tangible takeaway I have from my six-week stint in therapy, and for another, it produced a brief "a-ha!" moment.

(Side story: I have mixed feelings about therapy. I'm deeply grateful for the opportunity to attend those six sessions for free, thanks to the employee assistance program at work. But instead of matching by specialty, the EAP shared recommendations based on zip code, so the professional I worked with had an office the next town over, which was super convenient, but she specialized in family counseling, and I was coming alone. Plus -- and this is not a critique of my therapist so much as a general observation on the experience -- despite my many, many, MANY type-A tendencies, on the couch I was eight years old, desperate for direction, and I didn't know what to do when the ball was in my court.

"What do you want to talk about?" she asked at our second session, and I balked. WHAT THE HECK, MAN. It took almost a year to screw up the courage to sit on this couch, and I've gone through a pack of travel Kleenex in 10 minutes. I should get an award for just making this far, and now I have to own the agenda?  I CANNOT BE TRUSTED WITH THIS MUCH ADULTING. Shouldn't therapy be more like court, where you wear me down with leading questions until I burst like a damn with personal growth?

So, yeah, only six sessions. But I'm not giving up. Condolences in advance to the next person who takes me on.)

Anyway.

We were reading my ecomap through a lens of scaling back and finding more places for "white space" in my life (my words and preference). When we came to the "Creative Writing" box, we stared at the broken red line with the 10 in parentheses, having just talked about my 10s for Luke, the kids, God, service, and my faith life. As the sole breadwinner, I ranked "Career" a nine.

"You'll have time to write when the kids are older," she said confidently, but I shook my head. "I don't want to wait," I said. "I want to do it now."

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It's not a coincidence that my creative pipes clogged up as my career advanced and self-reflection grew more complicated. My inner perfectionist shouts at me so loudly these days that I nearly convinced myself I had no right to be here.

You're a wife and a mother and you work in a building where half the people wear suits every day. YOUR THIRTIES ARE ALMOST OVER. Aren't you too old to play Frema? Shouldn't you be freelancing / reading the Bible / spending time with Luke / working on your Issues / volunteering / <insert more responsible task here>? Unless you want people to think you're immature or an overrated fraud, you can't write here anymore.

Hello shame triggers, is it me you're looking for?

I thought I could work on myself and come back to this space only when I had neat and tidy progress reports to share. The epiphany is, I can't. For me, staying active in this space is part of doing the work. Even when what I'm writing about has nothing to do with the work.

A weekly post is probs not in the cards, and I'll constantly check my intention to make sure I'm sharing for the right reasons (Thanks, Brené). But this blog is important to me. Not to fish for compliments or prove my writing chops, but because it helps me feel like myself.

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A couple of months ago, I was asking God about how this blog fits into his plans for me. Yes, writing is part of my path, but does it have to be public? Couldn't I meet the same need with private journaling? I didn't think so but wasn't sure. So I knew exactly why, on May 17, I received the following email from an old friend who I hadn't seen since 2004 or connected with in over a year:

Well played, Lord. Point taken.

(P.S. Thanks, Chris.)

Language that saves

It's not unusual for me to cry in church (or attempt to cover it up). But our pastor shared two stories on Sunday that broke my insides.

The first highlighted a Starbucks barista who learned American Sign Language to communicate with a customer who's hearing impaired. The second was about a 10-year-old girl who received an American Girl doll featuring a prosthetic right leg -- just like hers.

Both stories tied into the day's scripture reading from Acts 2:1-21, where the Holy Spirit comes down on the 12 apostles (aka Pentecost), enabling them to speak in foreign tongues so that people from other nations could hear their native languages mirrored back at them.

The important thing to note about the passage, Pastor Charlie said, is that non-Christians weren't changed to understand the apostles, it was the other way around. As followers of Jesus, we're charged with meeting people where they are and sharing Jesus' love in a way that others can see and understand.

It feels like I'm just now absorbing the impact of this sentiment, in my faith life and beyond -- looking inside yourself and knowing the onus is on you to dig deep and make change happen.

Practicing it has been another matter entirely.

My Living Brave class ended last month, but I'm still working through the last few lessons because friends, this stuff is hard. I'm dissecting shame triggers and physical responses to hard emotions like anxiety and fear. I'm simultaneously evaluating and trying to shed behaviors that stick to me like a second skin -- behaviors I still cling to, even when I want to do better; even when I'm in the moment and I know, know in my bones, I can make a better choice. Baby steps.

The importance of speaking other people's language has never felt more important. Since the primaries began, I've resisted the urge to deactivate Facebook at least twice a day, to protect myself from rash unfriending and/or producing a regrettable emoji in response to a Fox News article. Phrases like "20 minutes of action" are still used to describe heinous rape crimes because we haven't yet taught our children that their bodies are their own, and that you have no right to put your hands on another person, ever. No matter how good an athlete you are, or how drunk your companion is, or how little clothing they have on.

But while society is inching along, many people are taking great strides to change the landscape.

I spent 30 minutes at Nathan's piano lesson reading the courageous statement from Brock Turner's rape victim, my heart in my throat the whole time, and thinking, God gave this woman a gift -- to be able to articulate her thoughts and experiences so well that her message is reaching millions of people. And her story resurfaced this great letter from Ask Moxie to her boys about how to stop rape. All these words help to change how we talk about sexual assaults, moving us from defensive "no means no" messages to proactive conversations about consent. If a girl isn’t saying anything, that doesn’t mean she wants it. If she isn’t saying specifically that she wants it, then it’s wrong. I still struggle with my experience in the gray area. But I hope my daughter never does.

I cried again today when I reached the part of the Stanford rape survivor's statement where she thanked the two graduate students who intervened on her behalf. Those guys could have looked the other way, pretended not to notice what was going on, assumed it was none of their business. Instead, they stepped up and got involved. Their actions spoke courage and love.

I wish I had something equally inspiring to say about the presidential election; maybe once I've finished the course? In the meantime, I'll try to remember that I can't change the world through a deactivated social media account. I've got to roll up my sleeves and get messy. On the upside, Brene says, there's magic in the mess.

Living brave in 2016

Hello, Internet friends! I'll have you know that I started a post (though not this one) on New Year's Eve, around the same time I unveiled my latest blog banner:

The minute my coffee cup stained this notebook last year, I knew--KNEW--it had to find a way on my blog. Genius, I am!

But then my stamina tapered off and life got in the way, until last week I was breezing into church and grabbing the bulletin and ... huh. Well played, Jesus:

So here we are, together again. It's so good to see you.

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The reason I'm excited to write tonight (last night) is that I just today (yesterday, hello, 1:21 a.m.!) finished week one of Brené Brown's inaugural Living Brave semester, where 15,000 devotees from more than 60 countries are rolling up our sleeves and exploring what it means to show up, be seen and live brave in every aspect of our lives. For the first six weeks, we're tackling Daring Greatly, which I first read near the end of 2014 and never fully recovered from, the insights and implications were that overwhelming. It wasn't what I learned about myself that was so paralyzing; it was more about understanding what I didn't know and not being ready to figure it out. Plus, 2015 was another tough work year, some of it my own doing, some not, and I was too wrapped up in my immediate problems to surrender to long-term emotional work. Luckily, I'm in a better place now, but even if I wasn't, this class is just something I need to do. It's time to look in the mirror for longer glances, write down what I see (what I'm looking at) (DO YOU SEE WHAT I DID THERE) and make the changes I need to truly be "all in" in my life.

No pressure!

This week's most challenging exercise was to identify two core values that serve as your true North above all else. It was a huge struggle to work through a massive list of perfectly good and meaningful concepts in order to get to two. I mean, who doesn't claim love as a core value? Or compassion? Or integrity? But eventually I did whittle it down (cheating a bit to include a third), and once I did, oh man, what a sense of peace. I could easily see how all the values that define my being map to these three:

FAITH

Behaviors: Praying, reading the Bible, going to church, letting go of certainty, gratitude journaling, taking Bible studies, and service/volunteering

Brings to my life: Sense of purpose, belonging, grace, meaning, gratitude, integrity, optimism, kindness, joy, forgiveness (myself and others), and compassion

GRIT (aka I can do hard things)

Behaviors: Trying new things, trying again, not giving up, finishing/shipping my work, believing in myself and my ability to do hard things, setting boundaries and prioritizing to make sure I'm doing the right things at the right time, self care like exercising, eating right and getting enough sleep, forgiving myself when I make a mistake

Brings to my life: Achievement, balance, courage, forgiveness (myself and others), growth, making a difference, perseverance, risk-taking, resourcefulness, success, leadership, learning, initiative, teamwork, self-respect, creativity (writing and art) and innovation

Side note: Brigid Schulte talks about grit in her book Overwhelmed, and the word has stayed with me since I read about it last summer. Pulling grit out of my back pocket during the values exercise was a eureka moment; perseverance is similar but doesn't feel as proactive.

FAMILY

Behaviors: Living on one income, saying no to travel in my career, playing with the kids, making crafts, reading and praying together at bedtime, taking Kara to Girl Scouts and Nathan to piano, volunteering in the kids' classroom and for field trips, date nights with Luke, taking family vacations

Brings to my life: Gratitude, balance, patience, creativity, sense of adventure, LOVE, time, leisure, simplicity, and kindness

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On Twitter, I called this process obvious, eye-opening and comforting. It's also been inspiring. I hope to share more of this journey with all of you. Cheers!

Choosing brave in 2015, part one

Hello, internet friends! I have missed you. I feel a little like the prodigal son who came home after squandering his wealth on extravagant activities, if by "extravagant" we mean working, parenting and generally trying to maintain my delicate grip on reality. In this scenario, I will assume you are welcoming me with open arms, and wait, is that a fatted calf? You really shouldn't have. Let's just hug it out and move on.

I thought I would break my blogging hiatus with a recap of 2014, then follow up with my plans for 2015, but right now I'm more inspired to look forward. So I'm running with it.

This flamingo from the zoo is down with my plan.

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For the last few years, I've tried to focus milestones and goals around a key word or theme. Here's a quick recap:

2012: Leap

2013: Simple

2014: Steady

Leap was perfect; it was the same year I ended my seven-year stint with a local toxicology lab to take a new job in healthcare education, and lots of big steps were required of me during the search and transition. But these last two years, my themes have felt less meaningful - mainly because I ended up leaping again with another employer closer to home. Not ideal circumstances for pursuing simple or steady. While writing this post, I couldn't even remember steady; I had to look it up in my blog archives.

It's very possible this one-word business isn't for me, but I'm trying it one more time. Similar to 2012, this year's word is perfectly in sync with where I am at this point and where I want to go.

My word for 2015 is brave.

I want to be brave enough to live all of my values and be consistent in my actions. To quiet the lizard brain and create. To curb my leanings toward the analytical and be less afraid of my emotions. To just say no to anxiety.

Here are the guideposts I'll use to get there.

Get prayed up.

One of the hardest things I went through in 2014 was saying good-bye to the senior pastor at my church, who retired in July to focus on his health. Pastor Ted was the first preacher I ever grew attached to, and I so identified with his sermons. I even used them as a soundtrack sometimes on the weekends I brought work home. So in the months before he left, I had a hard time keeping it together in worship. He would talk and I would sob quietly, praying (no pun intended) that nobody would notice my tears and I could break down in peace, thank you very much, where do you think we are, church?

Anyway. That was January through June. In July we welcomed Pastor Charlie, and he is wonderful. In a recent sermon, Pastor Charlie talked about the concept of being "prayed up" - the state of being so in touch with God and in the habit of talking to Him that you don't have anything left in the vault. This is the state I want to be in. This area in particular is where I want to think less and feel more.

Practice patience.

This has never been a strong suit of mine. Unless I put myself in the best position possible to face the day - gotten enough sleep, prayed, allowed flexibility in my schedule - I get short tempered quickly and slack off on keeping myself in check. I don't want to lean on yelling as a parenting tool. I want to be less concerned with discipline when I don't get my way and focus more on understanding the situation. Even better - I want to think five steps ahead to reduce or even eliminate the stressors that throw us off our game in the first place.

Stop when it's time to stop.

Oh look, an area where I wanted to improve last year but didn't fully commit myself.

"I'll get to that when..."

"In five minutes I'll..."

"As soon as I do X, then I can..."

One of my worst faults is placing conditions on when I can jump into a new task or activity. Unfortunately, most of the time the next task is something like "get home for dinner," "finish my bible class reading" or "play board games with the kids."

My reasons for this make sense in the moment: It's easier to finish what I'm doing than walk away and hope I'll regain my momentum later. But the result is always the same: I spend five minutes basking in the glow of my accomplishment and the next two hours feeling like crap because I prioritized a thing over someone I love.

I became more conscious of this in 2014 but didn't work very hard to make real change. This year I'm facing it head on and holding myself accountable for respecting the needs of my family and my own emotional and spiritual growth. I know, so very Hallmark. Hopefully the prodigal son intro bought me a little leeway with you all.

But seriously, my feast-or-famine way of doing things is no way to build good habits. I need to start things when I'm not inspired and end tasks when I'm not ready. Stop when it's time to stop.

Don't force a finish.

A nice follow-up to the whole stopping bit. So often I push through thinking, I could totally get this done if I just keep at it for five more minutes. Except five minutes turns to fifteen and I'm still finessing that manager email and I just missed my window for getting home on time and WHY CAN'T I LEARN THIS LESSON ALREADY I AM DUMBER THAN A FISH SOMETIMES.

Suffer for fifteen minutes.

If I can keep tasks small, I have a better chance of finishing them. Kara's had her Daisy vest since May, but I'm so intimidated by all the damn patches that I still haven't sewed them on. And yes I know about the double-stick tape, what do you think has been collecting dust on my dresser since November?

I keep putting off the hour I think it'll take to get the patches on, when really I should set aside a little bit of time each night until it's done. Gretchen Rubin is a big fan of suffering for fifteen minutes, and I'm a big fan of Gretchen Rubin, so there's my starting point. And the time to start is now, because cookie season kicks off Friday, and if there's any time your daughter need a functioning Girl Scout vest, it's when peddling Thin Mints.

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A few more guideposts to come. You won't have to wait until 2016, I pinky swear.

Progress report, a revelation and a very important question

Tonight, after blowing proverbial dust from TypePad's login page and wiggling my fingers to unclog almost four months of supressed wisdom, I scanned unfinished drafts, hoping against hope that I could channel that wisdom into a spectaular finish and avoid a paralyzing start.

That's how I found this longish note on my taxing First World Problems in 2013.

On one hand, for a year that I pledged to focus on simplicity, I sure did complicate things. One of my biggest undertakings was launching a freelance writing business! In this case, "launched" means adding a section on LinkedIn, playing with fonts in Word and signing proposals as Dunscombe Creative instead of Bree or Frema or other such options.

Since I was already working on projects, it seemed the logical thing to do. In June, I was contacted about a website writing series for employees at a local university, with three presentations to give between early August and mid September. In July, an old friend from my tox lab days asked me to write a corporate website for his new employer. They were great projects to take on, but I knew from the beginning it would be too much. My kids saw me hunched over a computer screen more often than I would've liked - pajama clad, bleary eyed, coffee dependent and snappy.

There were many times where I hit and then crawled over my breaking point, not because I'm especially noble or virtuous, but because people were counting on me for a deliverable and come hell or high water, I was going to deliver. To put it mildly, I was not my best self.

Why I didn't publish this, I'll never know. So bright and cheery and totally leading to a point!

Anyway, since I really don't want to start a post from scratch, it seems fitting to give a progress report on 2014. Here's a short list of wins so far, in no particular order:

Reading

To date I've completed 19 books for #Read26Indy. Reclaiming my identity as a reader has done wonders for my soul. It feels great to lose myself in other people's ideas and use them as jumping points for my own; to prowl the Twitter hastag and my Goodreads feed for hidden gems; to engage in lively discussions about Wild (loved it) and The Fault in Our Stars (fought it, then loved it) and Eat Pray Love (tackled the audio book this year and re-loved it) and on and on and on.

Giving

The Bible warns against making a show of charitable giving, but just today the very bald and very wise Seth Godin discussed the importance of normalizing charitable behavior. I can cover both bases by saying that Luke and I elevated our giving this year to a new level, which has challenged our budget in new and exciting ways. Yes, exciting - to know that our money more closely aligns with our priorities than ever before.

Working

The job stress I've experienced in 2014 is different from last year's in many ways, but it still reeks of FWP. On the plus side, I've done a lot of things to put myself in a better place - shortening my commute with the new job, backing off aggressive freelance projects and resetting boundaries so I can do my job well without overshadowing my roles as a wife, mother, Jesus lover, writer, friend, etc. I lost my balance this summer but regained my footing, and I'm eager to see how my new strategy plays out.

Parenting

How can it be that a first grader and kindergartener live in my house? That my last baby is actually THREE YEARS OLD, uses the word "butt" at every opportunity and has no use for strollers, bibs or sippy cups? As Gretchen Rubin likes to say, "The days are long, but the years are short." This year I've been working on saying yes more to my kids - yes, we can play the Game of Life for the eighty-millionth time, yes, we can botch make Rapunzel biscuit braids from your library Disney cookbook, yes, I can sit with you for a few minutes while you fall asleep. It's not been as easy to stop raising my voice at the first sign of wrong doing, but still, there's progress.

Focusing

This is a tough one to capture in a neat little paragraph, but the gist is this: I've spent a lot of time this year thinking on how to funnel my energy and interests into a singular mission. Chris Brogan talks about focus a lot in his weekly newsletter, and my beloved Liz Gilbert tackles it on her Facebook page. Here's a screen shot of one of my very favorite posts from her:

The this she's referring to is:

 

The way I see it, my biggest FWP has been not knowing my yes. In this great big life, we have a ton of options, and without focus, everything worthy seems viable. Should I take this freelance job? Go out on my own completely? Nurture that friendship? Move now or later? Write my book or let the damn thing go?

Having a core yes isn't the same as having priorities. I have priorities. Spending time with my children is a priority and a huge focus in my life, but my role as a mother is one part of who I am, and I'm more than any one role. What is it that ties my roles together? What measures am I using to know if I'm following my right path or veering off course?

An answer did come to me last month, an answer that I'm still working through. I've written about it privately already, so instead of finding new words, I'll just share the ones that worked for me at the time.

I kept waiting for an answer to appear and also waiting to find the right amount of time to dedicate myself to the task of answering it myself, studying as if I were preparing for a test. I was making it too hard, but I didn't realize it until last week after hearing Pastor Charlie's second sermon about taking the long way around to appreciate the riches of a life with God. That's when I realized that the answer was easy - what is my mission? Jesus. That's it. That's all it has to be. If I keep my path aligned with Jesus, everything else will be as it should.

I was looking for a sophisticated answer like creativity or service or something that felt more in line with my newsletter subscriptions. Maybe sophisticated is the wrong word. Maybe just complicated. Or worldy - a mission based on things/acts that are based in the world, even if they are noble and important. But once I answered the question with Jesus, it felt like a light bulb went off in my head. YES. This is the answer I've wanted - and had - all along. I just never put the two together. Studying the question intellectually in some ways, praying at times for an answer that I assumed would be "other" - an answer that I assumed would help bring me closer to God, instead of realizing that God is the answer. I was so short-sighted. But now I feel much lighter.

This is a hard topic to work through on a blog. Talking about God is an easy way to alienate people, and that's the last thing I want to do. I'm not abandoning any of the roles I mentioned before, or quitting my day job, or trying to convert anyone to my church, or making outwardly radical changes to my life. I can't even tell you if I'll have more to say in my next blog post. But I am asking myself a lot of questions, and it feels right to explore those questions here when I feel like I have something meaningful to say. Plus, if I may quote the bald and wise Seth Godin again, great work makes us uncomfortable. If figuring out your yes isn't great work, I don't know what is.

How are you doing this year? What's taking up space in your brain? And perhaps most importantly: What's been your favorite read so far? My Goodreads list wants to know.

Normal-day milestones

Last month, for the first time in three years, I boarded a plane for work. For the first time ever, I landed in Las Vegas. It was never my dream to play three-dollar Black Jack or pose with celebrity wax figures, but when opportunity knocks, you have to answer.

He said he wanted to show me a few things.

Tomorrow marks seven months at my new job - can I still call it a new job? - and I am grateful. I work with smart people. I have incredible flexibility. There's still a lot I have to learn, and the growth is usually uncomfortable, but it took me a long time to get here. I am good.

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Last week, I registered Kara for kindergarten.

Being newbies at the formal school system thing, Luke and I weren't sure if you were supposed to bring your kid to registration, so I went to kindergarten round-up after work, alone. I turned in a bus form, vaccinations list and demographic sheets to the main office. I stopped by stations for the PTO and the nurse and food services and snapped a picture of a sample lunch tray with my smartphone. Oh, and I collected a zillion coloring sheets because guess what, dummy, you are supposed to bring your kid, it was like a pint-sized World's Fair up in there.

I blinked back tears as the secretary answered my questions about the school tour and teacher assessment and do the kids need to know how to use a computer? Will she be tested right away? I must have looked like a complete yuppie dufus, taking notes like I was on a job interview, but don't you see, they are taking away my baby. The same little girl who wants to live next door to me and work where I work and wear fancy clothes and have mommy-daughter dates when she grows up.

Back at my car, I sat in the driver's seat fully prepared for an ugly cry of Angela Chase proportions, only my initial weepiness caused my left contact lens to FALL OUT OF MY EYE. The reinserting of the lens put a damper on my plans, so I just drove home.

To prevent robbing Kara of preshus childhood memories, Luke took her to the round-up the following day with the boys in tow. She wasn't terribly impressed, but she does like her Girl Scouts pencil.

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My reading progress has been respectable. I devoured three Anne Lamott books over the winter and picked up The Year of Living Biblically, which is moving more slowly. The book I turn to most these days is the Bible. This is fascinating to me because I never wanted to have a relationship with it until very recently, for which I credit the amazing pastor at my church. At the beginning of the year I decided to tackle the New Testament beginning with Matthew, but during Lent I started going back to the Sunday gospel readings, which brought me to John, and now I've got a bookmark in Acts. I'm finding wisdom and relevance and a new interest in my relationship with Jesus.

I look at my faith life now and I'm in awe. Ten years ago, I couldn't have predicted that I would look forward to going to church, keep the Bible within arm's reach on my nightstand or pray in my car. I'm not a model Christian by any means, but I finally feel like I'm going in the right direction. That I'm wanting the right things and that God is moving from the fringes of my life to the center. 

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My book progress isn't as evolved, but it is there. I have a notebook for writing pages, and there are entries, but forming the habit has been hard. I'm not beating myself up about this, but I don't want to sit in limbo forever, either.

This article from Anne Lamott on making the time to write is a great kick in the pants.

"Time is not free—that’s why it’s so precious and worth fighting for."

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Simplicity is still my aim for the year. I resigned from my alma mater's volunteer board for this very reason. I still don't get work email on my cell phone. Luke and I are holding on major asthetic changes to the house and a new car.

The hardest part is fighting my natural tendencies. I like to be involved and go after new challenges. It's hard to step back when I want to raise my hand. But I don't regret any of it.

Normal day, let me be aware of the treasure you are. Let me learn from you, love you, bless you before you depart. Let me not pass you by in quest of some rare and perfect tomorrow. Let me hold you while I may, for it may not always be so. One day I shall dig my nails into the earth, or bury my face in the pillow, or stretch myself taut, or raise my hands to the sky and want, more than all the world, your return.

- Mary Jean Iron 

 

Ground rules for 2013

Last year was all about taking risks. And that was good. I needed to stop operating on autopilot and shake up certain parts of my life. But I have a different goal for 2013.

This year, my word is simple.

"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler." - Albert Einstein

I love this quote because it speaks to the bigger picture. Identify where you find meaning and commit yourself to those things. On the flip side, realize what keeps you away from those things and cut them out as much as you can.

Own that you are not powerless over your life, that the busy trap is not inevitable. Fight for your inner calm. No excuses. 

(There is a small chance I have hijacked Albie's quote.)

This year, I'm aiming to drown out the noise. More often than not, I'm going to trade easy distractions for long-term joy.

Here's what I want simple to look like in 2013. Warning: you will not be impressed. It isn't rocket science, you know?

MAKE FEWER COMMITMENTS. Free time is precious and not something I'll offer up on a silver platter. I need to stay active in networking, but I don't have to go to every event in town just because "it's good for my career." I'll give myself permission to skip a family birthday party because it's on a school night or I have a big meeting the next day. I will NOT pick up a new TV show even though the Fringe finale freed up a time slot and The Following looks really, really good.

WRITE. I'll do more head-banging against the keyboard, pushing through creative paralysis because I love getting words on a page. Being published would be great, and it's still a goal, but right now it's secondary.

READ. I want to devour more books this year. I'll pick ones that speak to where I am as a working mother of small children with a short attention span and ignore the inner voice that says to go for something more enlightened. If I'm not feeling it, I'll put it down and move on.

HELP OTHERS. Leave people and places in better condition than I find them. Luke and I have credit card debt, but the monthly check we write to our church is money well spent. Volunteering in the nursery every third Sunday isn't the same as taking a mission trip to Africa, but it means something to parents who want to hear a sermon baby-free. Send care packages to the soldiers in my life. Hold my tongue rather than put someone in their place. Not every gesture has to be big. At the same time, there will be times I need to play hard or go home, even when it's inconvenient. I'll know them when I see them.

PRAY. I want prayer to be more intuitive. I'm good at thanking God, but not daily. I've mastered the ugly cry, but I don't know always know what kind of help to ask for. I want to read the Bible and not be intimidated by it.

WANT LESS. "You don't need to go to Harvard to get into Heaven," my pastor once said. Swap out "Harvard" with "401k" or "529" or "property retail value" - same thing. These things are important, but just like publication takes a back seat to writing, so do material things have a proper place. My house doesn't have to be bigger (though I still want a different one). I don't need to be a VP of anything. I don't have to kill myself to avoid college debt for my kids.

Along those same lines, I won't go after something just because I can, whether it's a door buster, committee seat or promotion. Understand the price I'll pay to have X and ask myself if it's worth it.

LET GO MORE. Avoid power struggles. I can do my best, but I can't control someone else's opinion of me. I can regret a mistake, but I can own it and shrug it off instead of wearing it like a rock in my backpack. Not everyone will like me or agree with my choices, even if they're the right choices. People will get the wrong impression of me. That's okay. Only a few precious things are really worth fighting over.  

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When I'm at a crossroads this year on how to spend money, time or energy, I will come back to this list and realize there is no spoon crossroads. Life isn't supposed to be easy, but it can be easier, yes?

Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.

Here's to simple.

One for the "First World Problems" File

Game on! Today I begin the third of an 8-week training program to run the B&O Express 5K in September - my first race since fall 2010. Registration's done and everything! I'm following Hal Higdon like I did for the Mini a couple years ago, mainly because his novice program measures distance instead of time and the thought of switching my pace at the bark of a sports watch is about as appealing as watching paint dry.

I'm going after this thing, no excuses.

In an effort to strike that elusive balance of family, work and self, I'm attempting again to score the majority of my runs in the morning, even during the work week, which thankfully is much easier in July when the sun shines at 6 a.m. It also helps that Luke is running, too, and on the cusp of starting training for his first half. It's nice to swap notes and offer encouragement knowing your passion comes from a shared place.

It's also refreshing to rediscover something that brings me joy on such a grand scale. I read an article a few weeks ago on the importance of leisure and the dangers of the busy trap that made an impact on me. Some of my favorite lines:

"The present hysteria is not a necessary or inevitable condition of life; it’s something we’ve chosen, if only by our acquiescence to it." 

"More and more people in this country no longer make or do anything tangible; if your job wasn’t performed by a cat or a boa constrictor in a Richard Scarry book I’m not sure I believe it’s necessary."

(Luckily, businesswoman is considered an actual vocation in Sally, Huckle and Lowly's world, though I doubt a more detailed description would rank any higher on the legitimacy scale than those "What my mom thinks I do" memes on Facebook)

"I suppose it’s possible I’ll lie on my deathbed regretting that I didn’t work harder and say everything I had to say, but I think what I’ll really wish is that I could have one more beer with Chris, another long talk with Megan, one last good hard laugh with Boyd. Life is too short to be busy."

Amen, Tim Kreider.

For the most part, Luke and I do a good job of prioritizing our lives. We're selective with RSVPs and intentional about giving the kids plenty of unstructured time to play Legos, build block towers and narrate stories with their artwork (no lie). This is also true from a financial standpoint: low mortgage, zero car debt, no cable or landline. We certainly have room to grow (Emergency Fund, is it me you're looking for?), but we're on the right track.

When it comes to the "little moments," though, I personally am terrible with letting distractions get in the way of spending time on things that matter. I can waste an hour on Facebook while Liam has no baby book. I can click through my blogroll (still no reader, Jen!) but let my own site collect dust. I check work e-mail when I shouldn't. I watch TV instead of going to sleep.

I often let my long-term goals take a backseat to busyness that, in the end, doesn't amount to anything.

This week was somewhat of a new start. I followed my training schedule, gave a reference for a friend, assembled two care packages, caught up on some reading, and had lunch with Luke and the kids at work. That's what I want to do more of. Those are the moments that make a happy life. There are no prizes for Quickest Responder on Outlook or Most Scrubs Episodes Watched. 

I want to send more care packages. I want to finish a book in the same season I started it. I want to copy favorite quotes into a two-dollar notebook and scrapbook (GASP) and help others outside of just writing a check.

It's not that I never do any of these things (I even have a commonplace book for quotes, remember?); it's about rearranging my life so I can do them more.

I also want to make more time for God.

One of the reasons Luke and I love our church is that the pastors deliver amazing sermons. Today, Pastor Ted talked about communicating with God - how to know when He's speaking to you and how receptive you are to hearing what he has to say. This is something I struggle with. While I love talking out ideas and scenarios with family and friends, I'm very independent and usually pretty confident that I can figure out my own path. I'm good at thanking God for the blessings in my life, but I suck at welcoming guidance. 

On one of my early runs last week - it couldn't have been later than 6:15 - I passed the retention pond next to my trail that joins several of the nicer subdivisions in my neighborhood. By chance I noticed one of the teenagers who lives on my block sitting on a bench in front of the pond. Usually I see him after work riding his skateboard or walking with his friends, but that morning he was alone, quiet, just staring at the water.

That image came back to me at random points throughout the day and again after today's sermon. It reminded me that I need more stillness in my life so I can hear voices other than my own. I need to be open to guidance.

That's a life worth choosing.

98 and 3/4 percent guaranteed

Lately it feels like I'm leaping in place. Like I'm stretching my limits and expanding my comfort zone, but not moving forward. At least I'm learning some fantastic life lessons on patience and perspective. I'm quite excited about this.

One of our current library reads is Dr. Seuss' Oh, The Places You'll Go! I owned a pocket-sized companion in my early twenties but never realized it was incomplete. As a result, I came across this part for the first time last week. Can't nobody say Theodore Geisel didn't understand a thing or two about people.

The Waiting Place...

...for people just waiting.
Waiting for a train to go
or a bus to come, or a plane to go
or the mail to come, or the rain to go
or the phone to ring, or the snow to snow
or waiting around for a Yes or a No
or waiting for their hair to grow.
Everyone is just waiting.

Waiting for the fish to bite
or waiting for wind to fly a kite
or waiting around for Friday night
or waiting, perhaps, for their Uncle Jake
or a pot to boil, or a Better Break
or a string of pearls, or a pair of pants
or a wig with curls, or Another Chance.
Everyone is just waiting.

NO!
That's not for you!

So onward I go.

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Last week I came across a commencement speech that really knocked my socks off. Neil Gaiman, a super-famous comic book artist and writer known by everyone in the world except me, addressed the graduating class at The University of the Arts last month. He talked for twenty minutes on doing what you love, the growth that comes in making lots and lots (and lots) of mistakes, and the best piece of advice he got but didn't follow. You can watch the video here, and I strongly recommend you do, if you're in the market for a healthy dose of inspiration or at the very least a dreamy accent. My new favorite English word is "proper."

Anyway, the points in Gaiman's speech that most resonated with me address my current layover in The Waiting Place. The first was his admittance that there are things you have to do to get where you're meant to be, and it can be hard to know if you're on the right path. His coping mechanism was to treat his dream like a mountain he was trying to climb and measure each step not on its own merit but against his own personal plan - the mountain. He would base job decisions on whether they brought him closer to his mountain, or farther away.

"There was a day when I looked up and realized that I had become someone who professionally replied to e-mail," he says at one point, "and who wrote as a hobby. I started answering fewer e-mails and was relieved to find I was writing much more."

Note to self: "Answering e-mail" is now the metaphor of choice when describing any kind of distraction, ever.

It's not very productive, answering e-mail. But it sure is safe.

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Somehow, Gaiman's speech led me to the one that Steve Jobs gave at Stanford University in 2005. It's a few minutes shorter but arguably more impactful - passionate words from an iconic business figure now gone from cancer, crediting death as the primary driver in his personal and professional achievements.

"Knowing I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever enountered for making the big choices in life," he said, citing a quote that went something like, "If you live each day as if it were your last, someday you'll most certainly be right."

There's no way my paraphrasing will do this speech justice, so put me out of my misery. Go watch it here.

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Meanwhile, as I work through what can only be described as a personal crisis of the First World variety, life goes on. Last weekend, Luke and I officially become members of our new church - a big step for us, since this is the first time we've joined a parish together, and a milestone for me, committing to a denomination considerably more progressive than the one I grew up in. Nothing about my core beliefs are changing - if anything, they're just better represented - and I hold on to the parts of the Catholic tradition I still identify with, but my initial emotions around this were complicated. A mixture of celebration and mourning, a heavy-hearted saying good-bye to a label I've worn like an old sweater, reluctantly acknowledging the thread's undone.

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Kara and Nathan just completed the third of eight swim lessons at the local rec center. They kick off the side of the pool and dunk their faces in the water, and as I watch them, I'm in awe. You can especially see the hesitation in Nathan, clinging to his instructor as they progress to the deep end, but even through his fear he outstretches his arms. Our kids are so brave, I tell Luke proudly after coming home from our lesson. I want to be like them.

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Last but not least, Liam turns one on Friday. I'm not ready to write about it yet, but his birthday is a powerful reminder that we really don't have a choice in moving forward. Whether it's graceful breast strokes or frantic doggy paddling, every day we age, leave an imprint on the earth, and pass on a legacy. It's scary when you're not reaching your mountain as quickly as you'd like, but also oddly refreshing, because it means the little things matter. We can't reach big without the small.

Poking

I am inspired.

Since the start of the year, leap has driven me to show up, connect with others, and give old dreams new shape. It's hard to write through this transition because I have all these ideas swirling around and no clue how to express them in neat little paragraphs. But surely I can leap through this, too.

If you follow me on Twitter, you've probably noticed my new fangirl crush on Seth Godin. I've known about Seth for years because of his impact on my industry, but it wasn't until I heard him speak at a marketing conference last month that he made a lasting impression on me personally. His talk of the post-industrial revolution, purple cows, and don't be a sheep MAKE SOMETHING HAPPEN brought me to tears. The whole conference was like that. Most of the presentations directly related to marketing but pulled in ideas that also resonate on a higher level. Some quotes from the speakers (and I'm paraphrasing):

"Embrace the weird."

"If someone asks how your day was, and all you can say is 'fine,' what opportunities are you wasting?"

"It's not about time, it's priorities."

"Where do I find the people who are waiting for me to lead them?"

Godin gave copies of his books to every conference attendee. As a result, I've been reading Poke the Box - "a manifesto of starting" - in snatches over the last three weeks. More than 10 pages per sitting and I literally might combust.

More quotes, because why not?

"If you have quality and they have quality and that's all either of you offers, then you're selling a commodity, and I'll take cheap, please. We have little choice but to move beyond quality and seek remarkable, connected, and new."

"Poking doesn't mean right. It means action."

"If you've got the platform and the ability to make a difference, then this goes beyond 'should' and reaches the level of 'must.' You must make a difference or you squander the opportunity."

"Part of initiating is being willing to discover that what you end up with is different from what you set out to accomplish. If you're not willing to discover that surprise, it's no wonder you're afraid to start."

All of this and more is setting fire to my heart and shining a light on my need to affect change. 

I've given myself a pass these last five years because living knee-deep in morning sickness and night wakings and temper tantrums is HARD, you guys, but most of you know that because you're living it, too. That said, I'm now at the point where I'm ready to step up. Even if it's baby steps, even with a young family and demanding career. If not now, when? 

Years ago, when talking with another mom about balancing civic and domestic obligations, she said (and again, I'm paraphrasing), "If all I do is raise smart, healthy kids, that can be good enough. Who knows what they'll go on to do because of what they learned from me?"

I appreciate her point, but I don't agree.

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Luke and I signed up for a membership class at our church as a way to get involved. One of our assignments was to take a spiritual assessment to learn what our strengths are when it comes to serving God. Hokey, sure, but the older I get, the more I appreciate hokey, so okay.

According to the quiz, my gifts are in administration, leadership, and writing.

The results didn't surprise me - it was the realization I should be DOING something with these on a larger scale. 

Around the globe, children die from hunger and disease. Pregnant women walk the distance of a 5K to access medical care. Teenagers are targeted and killed for wearing a hoodie.

What kind of person am I if I have resources others only dream of and yet do nothing? Do my kids' future accomplishments absolve me of personal responsibility today?

I may never find the perfect balance, but I have a platform. I have ability.

I have a voice.

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I am Dorothy Boyd, abandoning conformity, shouting, "I will go with you!" and crossing my fingers my hunky new boss offers health insurance. 

At the same time, I am Jerry Maguire, writing (blogging?) 20-page mission statements and stealing office goldfish, ready to lead.

(I am way more excited about finding the above link than is appropriate.)

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Even before Seth Godin's book, I've been poking the box with a vengeance. I rejoined the volunteer board of directors for my undergrad's alumni association after a three-year hiatus to get my baby on. Meanwhile, others around me are initiating change of their own. My dad is considering politics. My sister Ryan is going back to school. Obama supports gay marriage. Luke is blogging again!

We are all moving forward.

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What inspires you?

Happy is as happy does

After posting two entries' worth of pep talks, I wanted to share some of the ways I'm trying to bring more joy and perspective to my day-to-day.

This is especially important right now because Luke and I are too busy paying down debt to account for anything grandiose - we've already scrapped our plan to upgrade the family car, for example. Anything we take on over the next year has to be free or non-commital (i.e., pay-per-use or of the "cancel at any time" variety). So, really, free. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Journaling

l adopted this habit over the summer, inspired by Gretchen Rubin's stab at a gratitude journal. Her original intent was to write daily, but after finding it to be more of a chore than a stress reliever, she switched to writing one sentence a day about those in-the-weeds moments that tug at your heart but are likely to fade over time. Learning from her experience, I started my own journal as a combination of these ideas  - I focus on what I'm thankful for, but I don't write every day, and I don't limit myself to any kind of subject matter. Sometimes I've got pages of bullet points, and sometimes just a few lines. Sometimes they're big picture, like having enough money to pay our bills, and or they're as simple as the name of Kara's imaginary dog Bingo Benjamin (Bingo from Ladybug Girl, Benjamin from Liam's middle name; isn't that something you'd want to remember?). I don't want to lose these moments any more than Rubin does, and I can think of no better way to frame them than through a lense of gratitude. Plus, the fewer parameters I set for myself, the better my chances of keeping this up.

I do, however, have one restiction: I'm not allowed to pat myself on the back for house cleaning. It's important to me to keep up on things as best I can, especially now that Liam is frog-hopping everywhere and crams whatever he can into his pie hole, but I don't want to delude myself into thinking the ninety minutes I spend scrubbing down bathrooms is equal to an afternoon playing Memory with the kids. That's not what I want to reflect on when I go through these books five years or even one month from now. Not every "good" thing needs to be documented.

Quotationing, Information Collecting

Rubin had another reason for starting a notebook that I found really appealing. She talked about her love for the physical act of note taking and how journaling provided an outlet for this. She also talked about writing for its own sake and forgetting about results. As in, it's okay to collect information and not know what to do with it. It's okay to jot down ideas just because it's fun.

I, too, love note taking, and anyone who's known me longer than five minutes knows I have a pen in my hand almost all the time, just waiting to desecrate a blank piece of paper with my scribbles. (Remember my yada yada yada banner?) So I started a second notebook to serve as a random repository of all things Frema. I've written down books I want to read, movies I want to see, plot points for a TLF part three (when I thought about tackling National Novel Writing Month in November), and quotations. Pages and pages of them, mainly because I get Rubin's "Moment of Happiness" daily quotation delivered to my e-mail and ninety-five percent of them are ones I don't want to forget. Here's a gem from last week:

Also, no, I'm not being compensated for my repeated references to The Happiness Project, why do you ask? I've only cited it eighty million times in this entry.

Reading

One of my goals this year is to read more. Pretty lofty, right? And yet, there it is. Books have always been a huge part of my life, but with all the new demands on my time these last few years, I've been lazy in making them a priority. Part of the problem is that I think I need more time to keep up with reading than I actually do - i.e., I don't have to set aside an hour before bed to wind down with the Dalai Lama. I can grab twenty minutes at lunch or five on the john. (TMI?) All of those minutes will eventually lead to one finished book.

I'm not aiming to hit a specific number of books because that seems overwhelming, but I know that I need some measure of accountability to help me stay on task. Thus, my bookroll was born. Here's to tearing that bad boy UP come December.

I'm also trying to limit the amount of guilty-pleasure reading I do - less Soaps in Depth, fewer sensationalist blog posts that were clearly written to drive traffic or stir controversy. Half these sites aren't any different from the grocery store mags that recycle headlines every 18 months. This is much harder to do, because junk reading requires such little effort, but I'm trying to remind myself these things don't bring me happiness in the long run. I'm ready for something new.

Blogging

In case you haven't noticed, I've been trying to return to a regular posting schedule - as in, posting at all, period. This is mainly because I've always enjoyed working through my thoughts and feelings online, and I've missed being an active member of this community. I won't lie, though; I'm also still trying to figure out if this space can pave the way for other freelancing opportunities. Whether it can or not remains to be seen, but even if it doesn't, I'm having a great time, and that's all that matters in the end.

Churching

After almost a year-long hiatus, Luke and I are back in the habit of attending church, and we are both so happy about it. When Kara was a baby, we were going to an Episcopal church we liked a whole lot, but then we bought our house and moved to a new part of town where the Anglican congregation was wonderfully kind and generous but essentially in preacher limbo, having gone without a full-time pastor for almost two years, and it showed. When a pastor did finally sign on, despite her being a lovely person, Luke and I weren't as happy with the sermons or the way Sunday worship was organized, so we decided to explore other options. Since Kara and Nathan were already attending preschool programs at the local Methodist church, which is known for being super active in our community, we went to a service late last fall and have kept going ever since.

This is the first time in my adult life I'm continually excited and inspired by going to church. As someone who grew up in a conservative Catholic family with extended relatives who weren't exactly tolerarant of other faiths, even Christian ones, it's been an eye-opening process to evolve from Guilt-Ridden Catholic to Nervous Catholic Light to Full-Blown Protestant. The nice thing is that all three traditions? PRAY TO THE SAME JESUS. It's true! Plus, I can let the most fulfilling parts of each experience inform my overall relationship with God and faith. I never could have predicted the spiritual journey in store for me back when I first started debating my religion, but I couldn't be more thankful for where it's led me and my family.

Less Yelling

I constantly tell people it's a good thing tLuke is the at-home parent in our marriage because my level of patience fluctuates wildly when it comes to the kids. I'm making an active effort to find other ways to handle these situations, because when I do, the results are worth their weight in gold. I just need to do it more.

Sleeping, Exercising

Actually, these are the only ones I'm NOT doing yet, but I want to be. I'm sold on the why when it comes to both; it's the how that holds me back. How can I go to bed when there are pages to read / journals to update / blog posts to write? On the flip side, how can I get up to Shred when I was up until two o'clock reading, journaling, and blogging? You see where this is going. In the end, I need to accept that I can't do eight things in a day, pick the two or three that need the most attention in that moment, and hop to it.

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I am trying so hard to focus on improving the "little" parts of my day, because really, isn't that the bulk of our lives? It's not often we're keeled over by outlandish moments of grandeur; I need to enjoy each day for what it is and explore happiness in my current set of conditions, instead of hitting the pause button until all obstacles have been overcome. I've made significant progress in this area in the last year and a half, but I can always do better.

How are you doing on your 2012 goals and resolutions? What are you doing to keep happiness at the forefront of your life? I would love to hear from you.

Send me on my way

Yesterday, for the first time in over a year, Luke and I went to church.

Our hiatus wasn't intentional. We went once with Kara last Easter and fully intended to start going regularly until BAM!, knocked up again, and the morning sickness came with a vengeance, and it was all I could do to make it to work on time, let alone pursue "optional" activities like praising Jesus beyond the confines of my home. When we moved into our house last fall, we discovered a darling little Episcopalian church not ten minutes from our subdivision, and after reading more about the parish online we talked a good game about going, but we were overwhelmed with settling in and I was ginormously pregnant and then soon I had Nathan and excuses excuses excuses. I finally decided that if we waited to go until we were ready, we would never be ready. So after breakfast, I told Luke enough is enough. We quickly showered, wrangled the kids into the car, and arrived a few minutes into the first reading (a freaking miracle for us these days).

Sitting in the pew, Nathan strapped to my chest in the baby carrier (now that I've conquered my fear of all the straps and buckles, I am in love love LOVE with the baby carrier and use it all the time for walks, shopping trips, etc.) while Luke held Kara on his lap, I couldn't help but think about how far I've come in my spiritual journey. As a child, I hated going to church--the low lighting put me to sleep and I spent the majority of the time checking out neighborhood boys--and even as a young adult it often felt like a chore, going through the motions to pay tribute to my faith and/or trying to fit into the mold of the customized tradition I grew up in. It's taken me twenty-nine years, but I'm now in a place where I gravitate to God not out of fear or obligation but from a place of gratitude and an eagerness to learn more about my place in this world. The pastor gave a wonderful sermon about trimming the fat from your life, and she said something that deeply rang true for me. "There are two ways to get enough," she said. "You can gather more, or you can desire less." That's what I want to strive for, embracing the whole "less is more" concept; to live a life mostly devoid of clutter and outside noise and focused more inward. I want friendship and outreach and plenty of time for rest and reflection. (Clearly there is room to grow in this area.)

Can I do all this and still subscribe to regular date nights with my DVR? Only time will tell.

But I digress.

After the service, Luke and I were approached by several members of the congregation and given a brief tour of the facility. We saw the nursery where Kara can hang out during Mass if we so desire, and we learned about various ministries and received pamphlets spelling out the church's kid-friendly programs, and by the time we made it back to the car, we were hooked. I've already requested christening information because Nathan will be four months old soon and the former Catholic in me can't help but think we should have closed the deal on him a long time ago. But God gets it. At least, that's what Luke said when I commented on his opting out of the kneeling parts of the service to keep Kara at bay. "He has lots of kids. He knows what it's like," he said.

Now that Nathan has cleared the newborn stage and Kara is continuing to blow our minds with her quirky little-girlisms, I'm nervous but excited to venture beyond our comfort zones to become more community-oriented. On Friday night we had one of my new coworkers over for dinner so she could meet the kids, as she'll be watching them when Luke and I see Billy Joel and Elton John next week, and on Saturday we test-drove a Gymboree class for Kara, and amidst all the activity I started feeling a little sad because for the longest time it's just been Luke, me, and the kids, perfectly content to hole up and remain separate from the outside world, quietly enjoying our family. Now as we welcome more people and activities into our lives, we'll have to lose a little bit of the intimacy that goes along with doing everything on your own. Luckily, we'll lose the loneliness, too.

Also, maybe some pregnancy weight.

(OK, so that one's all me. But I can't complain too much when the end results are so damned cute.)

 

 

Jesus loves me this I know, for my baby slept during the entire composition of this entry

Holy crap, has it really been seven days since I posted here? I'd like to apologize for the lack of updates, but I always hate it when bloggers do that, like, do you think I've got nothing better to do than refresh your site? But then again, before Kara, I really didn't have anything better to do than refresh your site, and what the hell was going on in your life that you couldn't take five seconds out of your precious day to let me know you're still alive? You can appreciate the dilemma, no?

Anyway, things are going much better. In my last entry, I talked about how Kara had suddenly altered her schedule to accommodate less sleeping and more crying, to the point that her mother was crying because oh my God, if you aren't hungry and aren't wet and don't like your bouncy seat or transportable swing or the rocking chair or just bouncing around with Momma throughout the apartment, that's it, kid. There's nothing more I can do.

Now, though? I can take her restlessness in stride without taking it personally, and I've even figured out a few more things we can do together, like looking at blocks dressed in primary colors and reading picture books and paying more attention to tummy time. Don't get me wrong, half the time she fusses through those things, too, but there are moments in which I can see her actually paying attention, reaching for one of her blocks or following the duckie rattle with her eyes. She turned four weeks old yesterday, and I already feel like she's a completely different person from the one Luke and I brought home from the hospital. She's so much more expressive now, experimenting with various smirks and (gassy) smiles and working her hands together while she takes everything in. She also sleeps more predictably through the night, albeit in patches, but it's still enough that between ten and six I can hoard about five hours of sleep, which is more than enough for me to get through the day. This may sound silly, but I almost feel like the newborn stage is over, that she's already taking the appropriate steps to become her own little person and shift into some sort of routine. Time really is flying by.

Things on the pumping front are...almost nonexistent. My quality time with the Ameda is down to just once or twice a day, and I'm only producing embarrassingly tiny amounts of milk each time. I have a feeling that by the end of the week, Thelma and Louise will be all dried up and we'll be solely dependent on the makers of Similac and other formulas for Kara's nutrition. Oh, well. I'm proud that she received the benefits of breastmilk for four whole weeks and that I gave the whole boob thing my very best shot. Maybe my best wasn't as good as some of yours, but we all do what we can.

This past weekend was crazy for us, as we celebrated Kara's baptism at the Episcopal church we've been attending intermittently for the last year and my family was finally able to make it to Indianapolis and love on the baby. There was much chaos as Luke and I frantically tried to clean our apartment and get our daughter ready for her longest trip away from home. Sundy morning, we left the complex armed with individually packaged amounts of formula, two bottles of water, six diapers, two back-up outfits, a pacifier, and prayers to God that Kara would make it through the ceremony and luncheon without waking up the dead. And she did! She was a perfect angel, sleeping through almost the whole service and all of the pizza party we had afterwards. Auntie Samantha and Uncle Dan, her godparents, bought her a beautiful christening dress, and as Luke and I changed her into it minutes before Mass, I couldn't help but tear up because she looked so lovely and grown up and I was so proud of her for not pooping in her pretty new clothes. Also, she's not even a full month yet and already I'm losing my baby and thank you, God for blessing us with such a wonderful gift waaaaaah hiccup sob.

But enough from me. It's picture time! Hopefully they'll hold you all over until I'm able to post here again. (At least you've got my Parents blog to tide you over, though, right? In case you haven't been keeping up, I posted my birth story there. All four parts of it. You're quite welcome.)

(Also, thank you for the birthday wishes. My January 9th introduction to the ripe old age of 28 was marked with presents from Luke, wailing from the baby, and an episode of Deal or No Deal. I swear, NBC must've aired it just for me.)

I know I'm her mother, but honestly, this child is the most photogenic baby on the planet. For real.

Kara with three of the four members of the Lost A Sock family. No, Molly, you may not take her home.

Grandma and Grandpa Ma'Ayteh checking out their first grandbaby.

Auntie Samantha, Uncle Dan with Kara in tow, Momma, and Daddy. Now would be a good time to tell you that my sister is pregnant with her own bundle of joy, who's due in August. How awesome is that?! Everyone's got the baby fevah!

Kara getting smooshed by her fabulous aunties.

"I don't care what the law says, love is not limited by gender!" (Or: Kara with Uncle Geo and Uncle Dan.)

Look! Kara and Grandma Dunscombe match! Also, if I were just two inches taller, I totally could've captured the smile she flashed at Daddy D.

The guest of honor with her grandmas and grandpas. How lucky she is that all four are around to spoil her.

Kara giving that creepy girl from The Grudge a run for her money. Atta girl, sweetheart.

I think I saw Greg's wife on an episode of Murder, She Wrote when I was wrapping presents last week

Talk about a productive Sunday! Luke and I kicked things off by going to church for the first time since Easter and initiating talks with the pastor about baptising Freka in the Episcopal tradition. Long-time readers will remember that we come from different faith denominations (Luke grew up Methodist and I was raised Catholic), so neither one of us were sure how to go about preparing our baby for life in another religious community. The pastor was very easy to talk to and promised to get in touch with us sometime this week, which is good, because I can't stop obsessing over whether or not we're supposed to designate godparents for our child. Does anybody know how Episcopalians feel about this?

However, we did learn that the church's next scheduled baptism is January 13, so apparently we can get a head start on our invitations. Yikes.

This evening, I finally downloaded Suze Orman's will and trust kit (will share more details when I post my next Project Freka update, presumably this Wednesday), and Luke and I decorated our apartment for Christmas--nothing fancy, just the tree, stockings, and a festive tablecloth, but the place already has a much warmer feel. Holiday CDs have been dusted off, we're already going through half a gallon of eggnog a week, and my VHS copy of A Very Brady Christmas is ready for a spot in our rotation of seasonal movie staples, which currently include It's a Wonderful Life and Elf. Luke is less than eager to witness Mike and Carol spend perfectly good vacation money on plane tickets for the kids, their spouses, and their spawn, not to mention their poor treatment of Alice, who they allow to serve them breakfast in her FREAKING UNIFORM, even though she's no longer pulling in a paycheck.

Valid points, yes, but I still say bah, humbug. He clearly hasn't consumed enough eggnog.

What? It's Technically Still Wednesday

Geez, with only sixteen minutes left to Weight Loss Wednesday, you'd think there was bad news to report. But actually, I did myself proud.

LAST WEEK'S WEIGHT: 138.2
CURRENT WEIGHT: 137.2
POUNDS TO GOAL WEIGHT: 12.2

Not bad, right? I'm not sure how it happened, really, since not only did I move forward with my plans to indulge in a big, heaping bowl of spinach dip this weekend while my beloved was out of town, I did it TWO NIGHTS IN A ROW. Once on Saturday night while enjoying my long-awaited Sex and the City marathon, and once the night before at a quaint little pub with Jessi, a blog reader who works and attends law school in Indianapolis. I was so nervous about meeting someone whose sole perception of me was based on meticulously crafted entries and goofy pictures that almost always involve Photoshopping some of the acne off my cheeks, so afraid I'd look like an asshole when referencing something from my blog, as if I assumed people had nothing better to do then commit my archives to memory, but the minute I laid eyes on her happy smile outside the Aristocrat in Broadripple, I immediately relaxed and let myself be carried away by good conversation. Which lasted two hours. It was that awesome.

Plus, I felt a little like a rock star when we would delve into a new topic and she knew exactly what I was talking about, like when we were swapping stories about old boyfriends and I'd said only a few words about my second one before Jessi was like, "Oh, when you were Trophy Frema?" And I was like, "Oh, yeah!"

(How many of you have met other bloggers/blog readers? Did you have a similarly awesome experience?)

In other news, I can't deny my feelings any longer. I miss All My Children.

The Bible reading is becoming harder to keep up with, despite my intentionally leaving the Good Book in plain sight on the nightstand instead of tucked away on a shelf halfway across the room, but I still manage to get my time in more often than not. And I still enjoy it and feel like I've learned a lot. However, the absence of AMC from my daily routine is almost impossible to bear. No, I haven't cheated, thanks so much for your faith in me, that is, unless you count desperately flipping through soap mags in the check-out aisle at Target as cheating, which I don't, because I totally didn't learn anything about whether or not Krystal's had her illegitimate baby, Tad knows his own son is (unknowingly) (of course) playing daddy to the long-lost daughter he once thought died in utero, Babe's fake death has been brought to light, or Kendall is still carrying hottie Zach's child. Easter Sunday will indeed be a glorious day, because in addition to celebrating the resurrection of our Lord and Savior, I'll also be reprogramming my VCR to record channel six every week day at one o'clock eastern standard time. Let us rejoice and be glad.

On a related note, Carrisa asked me last week why I decided on AMC as my Lenten sacrifice, which was a perfectly valid question; after all, boycotting daytime television doesn't eliminate disease or help the poor or even make a difference to anyone but me. I really wanted to pick something, though, that hit me where it hurt, and if you had any idea how much time I spent catching up on episodes, lurking on message boards, and combing through character bios, you'd know that by the time Lent rolled around this year I was on the verge of obsessed. For my own peace of mind, I wanted to know that I wasn't as dependent on such a shallow form of entertainment as I thought, and when times got tough, I tried to remember how insignificant my sacrifice was when compared to what Jesus did for us, even though it was an insanely important part of my life. I love the history and the characters and the laughable plots and the inappropriate wardrobe choices made for Susan Lucci (how many times did she wear strapless dresses in November, girlfriends? How many?) and the guilty-pleasure escapism provided by the great and wonderful land of Pine Valley, but I had to prove to myself I could take a step back when that love got out of control.

How about the rest of you fellow Lenten observers? Are you happy with the choices you made regarding your own Easter sacrifice? (If in fact you gave anything up in the first place; I know not every Christian denomination does this.) How did you do? What did you learn?

P.S. Both Bethiclaus and David have decided to take the WLW plunge. Let's show 'em some love, shall we?

Life-Is-Good Wednesday

Seven days in and already I love March. The sun is out longer, there's less ice to scrape off the windshield of my car, and current temperatures are leveling out in respectable double digits.

When it comes to Weight Loss Wednesday, though, I much prefer negative numbers.

LAST WEEK'S WEIGHT: 135.6
CURRENT WEIGHT: 135.8
POUNDS TO GOAL WEIGHT: 10.8

OK, so I didn't lose the pound and a half I vowed to in last week's update, but I'm still impressed because, point-two pounds? Please. That's the (eight) handful(s) of M&Ms I scarfed down over the weekend. It's the fudge pop I had while watching The Departed last night. If I'd kept away from both, I'd be at 135 even. At least.

When it comes to eating, weekends at home are the epitome of temptation. Flipping through the pages of Marie Claire is more interesting with a package of Fig Newtons, and it's incredibly difficult to watch television without feasting on some sort of delectable treat, but I'm getting better. The biggest change in my habits this past week has been my recent befriending of the water bottle, which gives me something to grab on to when I don't know what to do with my hands and keeps the urinary tract sufficiently flushed as I strive to reduce the frequency of my UTIs. We go everywhere together, though his countless attempts to score during our trips to the bathroom have been unsuccessful. He's a fresh one, that bottle.

 

My new, sexually-aggressive BFF. I think I'll call him Wilson.

I'm ready for spring. I'm ready to hit the trails of our state parks and get moving after four months of sitting like a blob on the couch. Our annual pass has been purchased, the gym shoes moved to a more prominent position in the closet. It's time.

Since Weight Loss Wednesday and Ash Wednesday fell on the same day, this time of the week always seems most appropriate for filling you in on my Lenten commitments. Still AMC-free, though I did read yesterday's update in the paper and was surprised to learn Zach and Kendall have come face-to-face with Alexander Cambias, Senior, aka Zach's presumed-dead father, aka Pine Valley serial killer, and my first reaction was to rush to my desktop and pull up the soap's message board to get the full scoop. I didn't, but boy, did I want to. I'm still not sure what I'll do come Easter. I love my show, but I enjoy my newfound free time. Luke certainly doesn't miss it. We'll see.

The Bible reading continues to be one of the best parts of my day. It's a peaceful way to wind down before lights-out, and I'm constantly (re)inspired by Jesus's words and teachings. Challenging myself to put them into practice is another story, but at least I'm thinking about people and things in a way that I wasn't before, even going so far as to seriously contemplate repairing one of the family bridges that was burned a couple of years ago (even though the other person totally started it) (apparently the eight-year-old in me is not competely on board yet). Which raises a question: when you decide to forgive someone, do you have to let them know? I mean, I'm sure she isn't spending her waking hours gazing out the kitchen window, secretly wishing to be part of my life again. I don't even know if she's aware of how much she hurt me. Maybe it's enough to internally put those feelings in the past and plaster on a happy face the next time I see her, which might very well be years away.

On the other hand, I could've behaved more gracefully, and Jesus does talk about "making peace with your brother before offering your sacrifice."

What are your experiences with forgiveness? Have you ever had to forgive someone for your own peace of mind? Has anyone ever forgiven you when you didn't expect it? Or, when you didn't think there was anything to forgive?

This isn't how I imagined ending this post, but now I'm curious. Bring it on.

Oh, What a Beautiful Wednesday

Oh, what a beautiful day!

LAST WEEK'S WEIGHT: 137.8
CURRENT WEIGHT: 135.6
POUNDS TO GOAL WEIGHT: 10.6

I knew a loss was coming. After pledging to stop binging for Jesus exactly seven days ago, I've been stepping on the scale every other morning in anticipation of Weight Loss Wednesday, looking for proof that my efforts weren't in vain. Apparently my Lord and Savior is a more effective motivator than being able to button my pants.

There's so much to talk about, and I've been meaning to blog every day since Monday, but for some reason the words aren't coming like I want them to. I've been pleasantly surprised at my ability to exert self-control, to step away from that bag of salt-and-pepper potato chips, box of Git 'Er Done™ chocolates received from well-meaning neighbors, and coveted package of Thin Mints before doing serious damage to my waistline and self-esteem. (This is good news for Luke, who gave up cookies for Lent. Poor Luke!) (Also, how evil are the Girl Scouts for scheduling their deliveries after Ash Wednesday?) The progress hasn't been huge--turning down a third slice of pizza is grand, but it's still pizza, and dude, two slices!--but I'm happy. To make my ten-pound goal more attainable, I'm setting several mini-goals to help me get there. For example: next week I'll aim for an even 134 on the scale. If I'm successful, I'll have lost my first five pounds since moving forward with this whole "Fitness Schmitness" attitude last November. (Well, it would've been five pounds; either way, I'm counting it as a big deal, seeing as my lowest weight thus far's been 135.) And if that happens, there will most definitely be a picture, which might be scary for all of us, seeing as I'm three weeks overdue for a hair cut. March 10th can't come fast enough.

In regards to my Lenten commitments, I've been doing well in that department, too. Last Tuesday I deleted the Monday-through-Friday recording of All My Children from my VCR and took my New American Bible down from its dusty spot on my bookshelf, placing it on top of the cheapie plastic filing cabinet next to my nightstand (on top of Christopher Pike's Spellbound, which I found at Half-Price Books for a quarter and am just now reading for the first time, OMG) so that I'm more likely to pick it up before bed. So far I've touched on the first couple of chapters in Genesis and the beginning of Matthew's gospel (including the introduction), and for the first time, I feel like I'm really thinking about the life Jesus lived and what he went through before he died. Also, with all the religious exploration I've done in the last year, I'm more interested in studying this Good Book as a historical text. I used to think the Bible was just the Bible--one universal table of contents, one agreed-upon translation--when really each denomination embraces a particular version and all of these versions have nuances unique to their sect and oh my gosh, it's a miracle Christianity survived when we all can't even agree on the same damn manual.

Anyway, let's move on to the AMC thing, which, let's face it, is probably what you're really most interested in. Logistically speaking, the not-watching part of it hasn't been hard; since I'm not taping it, and I don't have cable, and not having cable means not having SOAP NET, there's no way to cheat on that one unless I make the twenty-five minute commute back home to plop on my couch and catch up on Zach and Kendall's progress with the Satin Slayer (seriously one of the dumbest storylines this show has ever done but I still want to see Alexander Cambias, Senior brought to justice) in real time. And since making two round trips to work five times a day would put a serious damper on my gas budget, there you go. No AMC.

Giving up the message board, however, hasn't been as simple. Before last Wednesday, I was checking that puppy at least three times an hour, reveling in the latest batch of spoilers and enjoying discussions on controversial plot points, like whether or not Krystal carrying Tad's baby and passing it off as Adam's is just as detestable as her helping Babe keep Bianca's baby for ten months, allowing Bianca to believe that Miranda drowned in a river minutes after her birth (close, but the "your baby's dead" thing still wins). I enjoy reading episode threads maintained by various posters and the lively commentary they provide. Those people have no idea who I am, but lurking on that site has been a fun way to stay connected with a show that in 2004 fast became my favorite form of escapism.

As fellow AMC junkie Dawnie can attest to, committing to a daily program is no easy task; forty-five minutes a day isn't too bad, but when you miss Monday's episode, you spend the length of a movie catching up on Monday and Tuesday. Miss Monday and Tuesday and you're going to start your Wednesday two hours and fifteen minutes in the hole. "I'll just skim through the scenes with JR and Babe and Tad and Krystal and ignore the rest," you think, but suddenly it's twelve-thirty in the morning and you're wondering what the hell happened to your evening, and hey, at what point did your husband go to bed without you?

So this boycott, it's been a good thing. Though I was flipping through the entertainment section of the paper yesterday and accidentally glanced at the weekly soap update. Nothing was revealed I didn't already know, but still, it was enough to peak my interest. AMC, what have you done to me?

In other news, today is the last day of the first month of Luke's and my new budgeting system. More details tomorrow.

Double-Duty Wednesday

I was pretty sneaky last week, huh? Going on about my teenage years and former flames, parental trials and tribulations, basking in the afterglow of the Internet's sympathy, all the while ignoring the white elephant that was Weight Loss Wednesday.

I didn't skip out completely--I did submit myself to the unforgiving nature of the scale, and I was neither pleased nor surprised with the one-point-two extra pounds of insulation I seemed to have accumulated watching all those DVDs from Blockbuster Online.

Things aren't much better this week:

LAST WEEK'S WEIGHT: 138.2
CURRENT WEIGHT: 137.8
POUNDS TO GOAL WEIGHT: 12.8

Apparently skipping out on my after-dinner ice cream indulgence last night was just enough to register a loss this morning. Go me.

After work yesterday I abandoned the business-casual khakis I wore to the office and slipped into a pair of my favorite NY&C jeans, and I was horrified to realize how tight they felt in the thigh. I could still button them without cutting off circulation to my brain and legs, but it wasn't a comfortable fit, and I didn't make it further than watching Monday's episode of Heroes before I was rummaging through my dresser drawers, searching for my favorite draw-string pajama pants, pants that probably deserve an Honorable Mention in my hypothetical top five, so often are we together.

As I mull over another week of missed opportunities to become a stronger, healthier person, I also remember that today is Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent, the first of forty days (forty-six, actually, thanks Wikipedia!) spent in preparation for Jesus's death on the Cross and subsequent resurrection. I can remember going to church after school with my mother as a kid to receive my yearly thumbing of ashes, contemplating a suitable sacrifice to show my thanks, which usually turned out to be something like cookies or chocolate (Chips Ahoy products being the ultimate tester, Mom loved to keep a package in the freezer) and I never made it past week two. Since stumbling blindly into adulthood, I can't remember making any Lenten offerings, but this year, in light of all that's taken place in my spiritual journey and how truly blessed I feel to enjoy this stage of my life with such a wonderful person, I think I have a special responsibiltiy to do something outside of myself, something to show God how appreciative I am for everything He's given me, which includes the body I spend so much time picking apart.

I complain and complain and complain about my rolly-polly belly, my alarmingly round face, my flabby back fat, and yet I continue to gorge myself on cookies and candy and handfuls of shredded cheese when I'm supposed to be washing pots and pans. I'm not thirteen pounds overweight because of a slow metabolism or gestating baby, but rather a lack of self control, and I've been so angry with myself for caring more about snacks than the importance of maintaining a healthy weight. It's not right, especially when I have an actual condition to control. In addition to wanting to be around for my husband and our future children for decades of years to come, I have an obligation to God to make smarter choices with this body He created specifically for me.

So, during this season of reflection, every time I reach for that bag of Keebler Fudge Stripes, every time I think of diving into a mountain of berry rainbow sherbet, I will remember what God has done for me and and treat my body with more respect. I will think before I open the pantry door. And I will remember that my spinach-dip recipe doesn't really need a full cup of Parmesan cheese. (Ah, cheese, both friend and foe!)

I am also giving up All My Children. What, you didn't think I'd take the easy way out, did you?

Since I've been dragging my feet over the weight-loss thing for such a long time, and since it's actually a personal benefit to slim down and eat better, it didn't seem right to offer my harmful caloric intake to God. I thought it would be more of a sacrifice to cut out a vice, something I genuinely love and encounter on a regular basis but doesn't add to my quality of life. Luke suggested spinach dip, but since I only pig out on a batch once or twice a month, that didn't work, either. Then he suggested my blog, and I laughed hysterically. AMC it is.

I also wanted to make a positive commitment during this time and settled on reading some part of the Bible every day. I like hearing scripture readings during church services, and though I studied scripture in high school and college, I don't remember a lot of what I learned, so I'm looking forward to reaquainting myself with the Good Book.

There's still one week to go before March, but already I'm experiencing a new beginning.

Football and Churches and Ducks, Oh My!

First things first: Did anyone watch either one of the two AFC games yesterday? Because oh my God, the Midwest is having a collective heart attack: for the first time ever, the Chicago Bears and Indianapolis Colts will face off in Miami at this year's Superbowl. While I'd never describe myself as a football fan---it took me twenty minutes to figure out what the hell AFC even stands for--but as a Chi-town native and current Hoosier resident, the anticipation over "the battle of I-65" has inspired me to save both the front page and sports page of today's paper in order to document this historic moment for my future offspring. Next thing you know I'll be wearing team jerseys and chugging copious amounts of Miller Light from a plastic hat. And I don't even drink beer.

It was a good weekend. I did file my work samples into three-ring binders and plastic sleeves and tossed out two garbage bags worth of trash and dusted and vaccuumed and almost orgasmed from the cleanliness of it all. On Saturday night, Luke and I rented Little Miss Sunshine and Snakes On A Plane. One of those movies had us guffawing and crying and celebrating the acting chops of one very talented Office actor. The other also induced tears, but for vastly different reasons. I'll let you determine which is which.

We also went to church.

Since the start of the New Year, I've been thinking a lot about how it's time for us to start searching for a parish of our own, one that provides a strong foundation for the core Christian beliefs we both share. With the Frema-Useless Clutter household currently subscribing to a complicated mixture of Methodism and Catholicism, our research revealed we might both feel most comfortable in the Episcopalian faith. We visited an Episcopal church together last spring and had a good experience with the Mass, though I was intimidated by the grand scale of the architecture. This time around, we chose a church in a neighboring town a little closer to home, on a Sunday when the streets were filled with snow and the plow trucks were nowhere in sight, but we made it, and our appearance was received in a manner similar to Howie Mandel at the Golden Globes, which is to say very, very well, or at least it would have been if I'd been stalking the red carpet.

Because of the snow, there were only a handful of parishoners in attendance, so we basically stuck out like sore, spiritually lost thumbs. We were bombarded with outstretched hands during the offering of peace and personally encouraged to take communion from one of the ushers. At the end of Mass, one of the priests invited us to have coffee and doughnuts in the church's kitchen, an invitation we originally planned to decline, so overwhelmed were we with all the warm welcoming, but the song in her voice was like an imaginary hand gently guiding our footsteps to the room where lukewarm Folgers and supermarket pastries awaited consumption, and soon we were visiting with other families, making small talk about the weather and how we found ourselves in Indianapolis.

All that to say we really liked the parish and plan on visiting again, though we still might check out a few other churches before commiting ourselves to any one place. I could feel those old feelings of sadness bubbling up inside of me again as I sat next to Luke in the pew, just like last time, at the idea of saying good-bye to the faith I'd grown in for so much of my life, and once again I reminded myself that the God I talked to and prayed to and wept with and thanked in the Catholic church was the same one waiting for me in this new Episcopal one, and I wasn't saying good-bye to Him, just worshipping with a new group of people who really weren't as different as I thought they'd be. At least, not in the ways that mattered.

After church, Luke and I went for breakfast and did some shopping. When we finally came home, we noticed this sight in the pond across from our unit:

We didn't think much of it until Luke peered out the window a couple of hours later and saw that the goose was still there, perched in the exact same spot. Figuring the poor thing must be stuck, we marched outside and tossed some stale bread crumbs his way, hoping the promise of food would provide ample motivation to free himself. When that didn't do the trick, Luke hurried upstairs to grab a broom with the intention of breaking through the ice with the handle. Before he could pierce the surface, though,the goose must've questioned the validity of our plan, because he made a clean break for the sky, leaving behind chunks of Market Pantry whole wheat bread as a tribute to his courageousness.

Since we still had three or four pieces of bread left, we circled the pond looking for other feathered friends with which to share our feast, partly against my better judgement. The ducks and I, we have a history, you see.

It started out calmly enough, with the whole flock keeping a respectable distance in the pond, perfectly content to eat crumb after crumb in the water, until they decided they needed to experience their snack up close and personal.

The farther away I walked, the braver they became. Which made me quite nervous. I hastily abandoned a half-piece of bread in the snow, hoping to distract them, but it only left them hungry for more.

I thought walking in the street would instill some fear, surely put them in their place. It didn't, those brazen bastards.

At that point, after many pictures were taken to document my fear, Luke (finally) came to my rescue. Thank God.

 

He makes it look so easy, doesn't he? Not scary at all!

And then the ducks blew him kisses of gratitude, and I began to feel a little silly.

But not TOO silly. After all, I did see Snakes On A Plane. For all we know, the ducks are just biding their time.

On the '06

My senior year in college, one of my professors said that with every choice you make, you become a little more free, as all the questions and doubts and fears once associated with that choice are now obsolete. This train of thought has always resonated with me but became even more meaningful the day I married Luke. Gone are the days where I wonder about our future, my ability to love another person both unconditionally and romantically, his ability to take all my idiosyncrasies in stride. This year we made the decision to love and honor and cherish each other for the rest of our lives, and doing so has enabled us to move forward and tackle new questions--harder questions, probably--but ones that acknowledge our past and honor our future. Instead of pestering Luke to move in with me and propose already, I get to nag him about making a baby and prepping ourselves for the responsibilities of home ownership. I'm definitely OK with the trade-off.

But getting married wasn't the only big thing that happened to me this past year. In reviewing the chain of events that occurred in 2006, I realize these last twelve months have shaped me into a different person: someone more independent, more emotionally adventurous, who isn't waiting for a family member or friend or Joe Schmoe on the street to validate her feelings.

I took a good, long look at my religious foundation and answered some hard questions about which aspects enriched my life and which ones I could've done without. I learned that pigeonholing God into limited definitions and avenues of grace doesn't help anyone, and his miracles aren't confined to a single denomination. At the same time, I learned how important the concept of community is in my faith and how deeply Luke and I want to pass that tradition on to our children. Nobody operates in a vaccuum, whether you're talking about religion, family, or society at large, and to live life ignoring your impact on all of those things seems naive. I severed a couple of once-important familial relationships last year, so even I don't measure up to my own standard of maturity, but who's perfect, right? I'm just proud of myself for not abandoning my convictions and refusing to sweep my hurt feelings under the rug. If that means I have to forgive others and myself for the results, so be it.

I finally grew the balls to say my online writing is important enough to take to the next level and I took it to the next level. I cursed and cried and beat my head against the PC monitor when I realized how much work it would take to meet my expectations, but I did it and now it's done and I'm so happy with the end product. I'm no longer disappointed in myself for admitting I don't want to write the next Great American Novel, that fiction isn't my bag, baby, and scribbling my thoughts and feelings on the Internet is the best use of my passion. I'm not ashamed that blogging is an insanely significant part of my creative identity; it forces me to put a name on my emotions and sort out my feelings, and it helps me connect with others without worrying if my new acquaintenance is paying more attention to my ideas or the zit that just started growing above my upper lip. I learned how to feel comfortable in my own Internet skin.

At the tail end of 2006, I also wet my pants in excitement over unique career opportunities. I've already been asked to conduct a one-hour workshop on blogging for a writing conference at Saint Joe this September, and if the stars align properly, I may even teach semester-long course in the fall. Blogging, it has been good to me, and I am so, so grateful.

While there was great joy in 2006, there were sad moments, too. One of my mother's sisters passed away after a long fight with brain cancer, and just when you think the grief can no longer touch you, you receive a Christmas card with three signatures, a Christmas card that once featured four, and you're reminded of the tangible effects of loss. My favorite aunt received a double whammy this spring as she was diagnosed with both breast cancer and brain cancer, a whammy that ushered her into chemotherapy and radiation and a horrible fear that she wouldn't live to see her eight-year-old daughter grow up. Today, she's almost cancer-free, something nobody in my family expected, but it's happened, and I'm grateful for that, too.

There's no way to predict the course of 2007, but there's no harm in working towards the following:

• Paying off our Cobalt three years ahead of schedule
• Finding a church to call our own
• Continuing to take our health and physical wellness more seriously
• Creating a financial situation that allows me to care for a child without the burden of a nine-to-five
• Counting our blessings, every one, every day

Happy New Year.

The Reason For The Season

During this morning's commute to work, the local pop radio station played an interview taped yesterday between the morning show's program director and one Robert Marley who, along with his brother Kevin, is staging a campaign to "save Christmas." His beef? That while retail stores all across the country take advantage of December holidays to peddle their wares, many of them are refusing to acknowlege that people purchase those products to commemorate a religious event, whether it be Christmas, Hanukkah, or Kwanzaa. "Merry Christmas," "Happy Hanukkah," and "Happy Kwanzaa" have been replaced with a generic "Happy Holidays," substituting a religious sentiment with a secular one to promote an increased level of commercialism. He reports some employers have even threatened their staff with termination if such greetings are uttered in their stores.

Robert Marley believes our country is under the attack of a secular progressive movement, a movement that is slowly eliminating any traces of religion--particularly Christianity--from our everyday lives. No prayer in school; no "Merry Christmas" displays in stores that nonetheless deck their halls with red and green decor, pine trees, and images of a jolly fat man whose original roots can be traced back to a Catholic saint. They don't support Christmas, but they have no problems using Christmas paraphernalia to make a profit. These thoughts and more are posted on his Web site.

However, the program director also posed some tasty food for thought as he argued for the plight of the retailer, pointing out it's not Corporate America's job to promote any religious denomination. In his eyes, attacking a secular money-making powerhouse for not promoting religious ideals is the same as yelling at a dog for not pissing in the litterbox. (Or something a little more eloquent.) He also said those religious groups have allowed their holidays to be taken over by mass consumerism, and if Robert Marley wants to fight for anything, it should be removing the gift-giving component associated with these events altogether.

Though I agree that businesses often exploit religious beliefs for financial gain, I find myself aligning more closely with the program director's stance. Maxing out credit cards and waiting outside Super Target at three o'clock in the morning to get a copy of The Notebook for five dollars doesn't and shouldn't encapsulate what the holiday season is all about, and whether or not an employee says "Merry Christmas" as you exit the premesis with a plasma TV in tow is the least of our worries. The world, our country, our cities and towns have homeless people. Hungry people. Abused and neglected people. Developmentally and educationally challenged people. (And many of them are children.) The idea of adopting a project to save a seasonal salutation when there are clearly a number of more significant issues to take on in Jesus's name is laughable. It's as if Marley believes those words are the only means of expression Christians have at their disposal. He's forgetting that when it comes to religion and morality, actions speak louder than words. They will know we are Christians by our love (by our love!), not the greeting we choose to use one month out of the year.

What do you think?

Contraception and Religion: Good Alone But Better Together

OK, so I've already failed my Recommitment to Emptying the Junk in My Trunk plan, seeing as I didn't make it to the gym in time for tonight's hip-hop aerobics class. (Will I ever make it to this class?) Instead, I came home and prepared the barbequed roast beef sandwiches as directed by my online dinner menu, courtesy of Betty Crocker's famous red cookbook. It turned out pretty well, and I was delighted to see the recipe categorized as both fast AND low-fat, though I still prefer the trunk-friendly Sloppy Joe.

But enough of this nutritional nonsense. There are more important things to talk about than what's simmering on my stove. For example....

(Per Silly Hily) What is one thing that Luke does that drives you nuts and he knows it, but he still does it b/c that's "just him"?

Before I answer this question, let me be clear on one thing: when it comes to pitching in around the house, Luke is The Bomb. He cooks and does laundry and scrubs mold out of the grout in the shower without making a fuss, runs spontaneous errands without blinking an eye, and packs a lunch for me every day. I know any questionable housekeeping tendencies he might keep are due to unintentional oversight or ignorance of their existence.

That being said, he tends to splash water everywhere whenever he washes up for bed, and when he engages in his weekly hair buzzing, those hairs somehow end up on the walls, in the sink, around the ring of the bath tub, etc. Perhaps they become invisible once they're detached from his scalp. Maybe they sprout minds of their own and embark on treacherous journeys from the garbage can to the previously listed destinations, just to the spite the bitch who's trying to bring them down. Who's to say? I've spoken to Luke about this, but apparently it's a mystery to us both. He also has a bad habit of spilling coffee grounds on the floor near the garbage can.

I'm going to stop now, lest my husband reveal to the Internet any of MY bad habits, like my resistance to showering after returning home from the Y because when I wake up my hair is clean, yes, but flat and bent at odd angles, so why bother taking a shower when I'll just have to take one again in the morning to combat it all?

Whoops.

Are you on birth control now?

That's the million-dollar question right there. Many of you will remember the freak-out I had over Very Mom's post about possible effects of The Pill. I had been happily subscribing to this method of birth control for approximately eight years, and it only took twenty-four hours for me to swear off chemical contraception for the remainder of my reproductive years. Some might view my stance as overboard, but it's what allows me to sleep at night, so there you go.

Luckily, Very Mom's post also offered information about natural family planning via Taking Charge of Your Fertility: The Definitive Guide to Natural Birth Control, Pregnancy Achievement, and Reproductive Health. It's similar to the rhythm method in that it encourages women to watch for internal signs that ovulation is about to take place, but it differs in that it dismisses the conventionally held truth that women's cycles are typically twenty-eight days, a truth perpetuated by many doctors even today. (I'm a thirty-four dayer myself, thank you for asking.) After discussing matters with Luke, we decided to purchase the book and use condoms while I gave myself a crash course in the significance of waking temperatures and cervical fluid.

In the last seven months, my "crash course" has translated into devouring exactly fifty-two pages, two of which are dedicated to detailed graphics of male and female genitalia. Meanwhile, we continue to pump hard-earned dollahs into the convenience and protection offered by the latex industry.

I'll be the first to admit the situation's less than ideal. Condoms are for teenaged prom queens who want to safeguard their chances of pledging to an Ivy League sorority, not college-educated, properly wed DINKS with the financial means to support a child. Right? I was never fond of physical barriers to intimacy before I was married. I certainly didn't want to implement them with the man who's promised to love me for as long as we both shall live.

Here's the sticky part: As much as I desperately want to have a baby, I also have expectations I desperately want to follow in terms of child rearing. Meaning, I don't want to have to utilize daycare, which admittedly has more to do with my own needs than the baby's. I know plenty of little ones thrive in structured environments where they're regularly introduced to other children and adults besides their parents. I don't think a woman's role is serving her husband barefoot and pregnant, and I don't think a mother who works outside the home loves her children any less. My friend Gina recently opened up her own dance studio, and during our last phone conversation I remember thinking, "If I had a job like that, there's no way I'd want to leave it." Though if I did, the whole dilemma would be moot because I'd be the boss and as such could keep my offspring at my side all the livelong day.

As a writer, I'm lucky. My current job, boring as it may be at times, offers a lot of flexibility, and good thing, too, because between Luke and me, I make more money, so if we received a surprise package from Mr. Stork, and it was necessary for our well-being to do so, I could definitely work from home, even though the idea of juggling newsletter deadlines and screaming babies on a full-time basis is less than appealing. I want to change the diapers do the feedings read Beatrix Potter stories dance to Baby Mozart anytime I want to, because babies are only babies for a short time, and I don't want to miss any of it. Not one single minute.

Until we can make that happen, until we're in a place where we can bring a brand-new person into the world and raise him/her in the way we're most comfortable, I don't want to take any chances.

(Now, I could have spared you all that drama and simply said yes, we use birth control, but what fun would that have been?)

Have you and Luke found a church or a common ground in that area?

Another happy topic! Last time I mentioned this, I gave the impression of freeing myself from the perceived restriction of religious labels, opting instead to embrace all the practices in which my relationship with God can be strengthened. Today? Luke and I agree that our family's spiritual formation will most likely take place in the walls of a Protestant church, and we agree we want to have them baptized as infants in said church, but that's been the extent of it because I'm terrified of the day I can no longer call myself a Catholic. There's no other way to say it, and I'm still not sure how I feel about it. I know Luke is the man I want as both a husband and father (not my father, you sick bastard), and I have no doubts that God put him in my life to fulfill those roles for me. Therefore, I imagine He's counting on me to find a way to make it all work. I haven't yet. And that's all I have to say about that.

Did you watch Sex and the City? If so, which character are you most like?

At last, a serious question. I was beginning to think Hilary wasn't interested in who I am as a person.

According to this survey, I take after Miranda, which I'm pretty happy about because she has the snappiest comebacks, hottest husband, and the ability to deal with an unplanned pregnancy. However, her reputation is slightly tainted in my eyes due to the name she chose for her son. Sure, it was a nice gesture to give the kid Steve's last name, but by the end of the show they were married, and even if she kept her maiden name, what about the boy? Did he remain Brady Hobbes, or did he become Brady Brady? Seriously, if anyone can shed some light on this very important subject, you'll be rewarded with dreams of furry kittens and gobs of raw cookie dough.

Of course, if you made it to the end of this post, you pretty much deserve that, anyway.

Keeping The Faith

A big thanks to everyone who had kind words to say after my last entry. I've been so caught up in which religious label to stamp on my soul that I forgot to ask why it was so important to stick to just one. No matter what church Luke and I choose to attend, there's no reason I can't take along all those aspects of Catholicism that have made a wonderful impact on my life. Which brings me to my next point: in no way was I trying to bash the Catholic Church or those who consider themselves practicing Catholics. First of all, I'm not so naive as to believe I'd be participating in such an uncomfortable process if my husband* were Catholic. Second, while there are teachings I don't agree with, there are many I still hold close to my heart. Just because I'm considering a membership with a Protestant denomination doesn't mean I'm eliminating the Hail Mary from my prayer ritual, rejecting the Sign of the Cross, or renouncing the saints as strong models of Christian life. There are also countless beliefs I was introduced to through the church that, while not exclusive to Catholics, have instilled in me a pride and fondness for my childhood faith: the sanctity of life; the inherent dignity of every human being; our responsibility to those less fortunate; the importance of family. For those and many other reasons, I will always consider myself Catholic. I will always be proud of where I came from.

I will also use this experience to teach my children how important it is love and honor God in a way that best encourages them to follow His ultimate teaching: to love Him and His people. They will not be intimidated into faith with threatening tales of demons tearing through the earth's surface to snatch bad little girls who fought with their sister before 10:30 Mass. They will not be afraid to sleep with their feet outside the covers because the devil might take it as a sign of their willingness to cross through the gates of Hell. If they're gonna be afraid of anything, it'll be Mommy's unforgivable habit of exploiting Private Moments such as our first sex talk on the Internet.

* Look at me, bein' all casual and nonchalant about the fact that I HAVE A HUSBAND! HOORAY FOR ME!

Twice The Drama Of An AMC Episode Minus All The Sex

So, after two glorious posts about wedding hoopla, I decided to drop off the face of the blogging earth. I've been reading your sites and commenting 'til the cows come home, but when it came to composing sentences for this here thing, I've been lost. Part of that's been due to Luke and I still working through "administrative" issues like bill paying, apartment cleaning, lease renewing, insurance subscribing, and name changing. However, it's also because this issue is once again plaguing my brain. And reading these entries--as well as the comments--have been wonderful signs that I'm not the only blogger confused as to how religion will function in my life.

What bothers me even more is WHY I've been so bothered: my "old-school Catholic" grandmother. Some of you might remember her as the one who scared me with Devil stories and sent my sister chastity literature for her 24th birthday. Now, she is also the woman who, according to reports from reliable sources (read: my sister Ryan), spread hurtful rumors that Luke and I were married in a pagan ceremony. As conservative Catholic as she is, though, I think her thoughtless comment has less to do with how we were married and more to do with not being invited to our wedding.

Some brief and possibly useless backstory: She and my parents had a falling out last year because she didn't believe in waiting to receive invitations for two-week visits from Arizona, and despite trying to keep the peace by sending her an invite to Samantha's wedding shower, I was still slammed with a three-page letter that tore my parents to shreds. If she was trying to get a rise out of us or instigate some sort of Family Hysteria, she picked the wrong granddaughter to air her dirty laundry to, because after relaying the letter's contents via phone to my parents, I did some shredding of my own. That's not the kind of heirloom you hope to pass along to your children, and anyway, I had more important things to worry about, like whether or not manicure sets were sassy enough prizes for Bridal Bingo and whose interests I was truly catering to when I selected the spinach dip appetizer.

After I had transformed her self-indulgent testimonial into a pile of confetti, I didn't give it another thought, except to think my grandmother was going out of her way to burn a lot of bridges, and the person really getting shortchanged in this scenario was Samantha, who'd had a great relationship with her until then, and maybe she would benefit from reacquainting herself with The Catechism of the Catholic Church, to search for the passage where it states writing hateful things about your son and daughter-in-law and sharing them with their oldest child via chicken scratch earned you free admission through God's pearly gates.

This year, when it came time to submit a guest list for my own shower, her name was purposefully absent. I had better things to do with my time then subject myself to more of The Crazy, and since she still hadn't contacted Samantha about her wedding, I figured she'd written us all off for good, anyway, so imagine my surprise when, a week before the shower, we heard my grandparents "just happened" to be in town. Curiouser and curiouser, as one Alice in Wonderland might say. But I refused to budge. For cripe's sake, her husband called Ryan on Christmas morning to send warm holiday greetings from her "ex-grandfather." I wasn't about to pretend all that $#@! and more never happened.

Seven days after writing about the big event, I received the following comment from an anonymous poster, probably my godmother, who told my father that if their mother wasn't invited to the wedding she would boycott it altogether, and who also played the starring role in that whole china incident:

Why was there a Grandmother leaving chicago, boarding an air plane in tears? Did it not seem odd that she just happened to be in chicago on this special day?

My answer somehow got lost in the deleting of "Anonymous's" post, kind of like the point of this entry, which was to originally talk about how badly my grandmother's remark hurt my feelings and how I've let her narrow beliefs color the plans Luke and I have for integrating our faith traditions in a way that'll provide a strong religious foundation for our family. However, I think it makes more sense to be honest with myself as to where these issues come from: my grandmother's and even the Catholic Church's viewpoint that worshipping God outside the perameters of Catholicism doesn't count--at least, not as long as you're Catholic--and my occasional, irrational fear they could possibly right. Luckily in those instances I recall the simple mantra our good pastor shared with us in our first premarital counseling session, "God can handle it," and remember that religion was created for God, and not vice versa. It's then that I experience peace.

Doesn't Your Pastor Have a Blog?

I mean, really.

Check it out, peeps.

Also, random AMC update: Dixie is alive! And Tad knows! And is engaged to her half-sister! Who's been hiding Dixie's whereabouts for months and met Tad by posing as Dixie herself! Very exciting. Know what else? Dixie's portrayer has a blog, too.

Spirituality and daytime television. I swear, if trapped in a burning building with instructions to only rescue one, I don't know what I'd do. How they speak to me!

An Easter First

I didn't go home.

Originally that was the idea, even though Luke and I hadn't figured out how it was going to work, because this was also the first time we've been together for Easter. Before he moved in, our roles in each other's lives during the holidays were constantly being negotiated. The first year we dated, I was a senior in college, and I remember us saying our good-byes as I prepared to leave town for my week-long Thanksgiving break. There he was, holding me, telling me he loved me, and then suddenly wishing me a wonderful gobble gobble with my folks back home. I remember standing with my arms around his shoulders, trying to blink my tears away before he had a chance to see they even existed. I was hurt because I'd assumed we'd be together, even if only for part of the day. Same thing that winter. It was Christmas Eve morning and I was moping at the kitchen table, trudging through the first Harry Potter and not feeling particularly impressed (anyone else agree that one kinda dragged?) when Luke called to talk about his activities for the next couple of days. Only after my shrill "Aren't we going to SEE each other?" was any kind of game plan established. The early days of a relationship are so hard, when you're with someone but have no real claim on his time. You've made a commitment, but it's delicate, one with lots of love but no track record, one that has yet to prove itself worthy of superseding all others.

As we became more serious it became more important to work our relationship in on major calendar boxes, but it was still difficult, as my roots were in Chicago, and his in Merrillville, a good forty-five minutes away. Plus, I worked for a Catholic college that was very generous with its vacation schedule, which included "soft" holidays like the Friday after Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve, New Year's Eve, Good Friday AND Easter Monday (and I left why exactly?). Luke was a reporter and thus had to be at work more times than not, so while he could get away for an afternoon with his parents, anything more than that wasn't doable. I often left family functions early to see him in Indiana and then drive back to enjoy the last few hours of the day with him at his apartment.

Once he moved in with me, everything changed. Holidays were no longer about fitting into a greater familial whole; rather, it was about re-evaluating whether or not our individual traditions were conducive to the new life we were making for ourselves. This year, we were all gung-ho about making the drive up north for Easter, even though Luke was tired from working nights and I was tired from going to bed at twelve-thirty because he was working nights. By Thursday night, we were both ready to drop and decided it might be better to simply stay put. It's a big step for any couple, to say what you have in each other is all that's necessary for a successful holiday. I'm proud we were brave enough to make it.

But the weekend wasn't family-free. My sister Ryan and her boyfriend, Jason, stopped in on their way to Chicago and slept over to avoid the rain and hail that seemed to remain about ten miles ahead of them. They also brought along some special guests.

Meet Bunny, Whose Official Name Is Sox But Is Only Referred To As Such. Ryan fell in love with him as he was hopping around her apartment but tried to tell my mother, who was afraid of catching Rabies or other stray-animal diseases, that she rescued him from Bloomington's National Wildlife Society. On Friday night she explained that she attempted to pass him off to a local animal shelter but was informed Bunny had been away from his mother too long to survive on his own. She's taken that as her free ticket to indulge him in carrots, lettuce, and Cheerios.

Spades, our second non-human houseguest, is Jason's dog and was actually adopted three days before he was scheduled to be euthanized. As you can tell from this picture, he's a frisky fella, and fond of the biting, but neither Jason nor his wrist seemed to mind. I also feared he might be fond of Sox, but Spades was content munching on the pepperoni slices from our late-night pizza.

Saturday and today passed by in a sort of peaceful blur. There was breakfast at my favorite pancake house, a trip to the zoo, two mediocre movies (the latter redeemed only slightly by the two glasses of wine), a walk on our favorite Indy trail, and an Easter service at a nearby Episcopal church, which laid the foundation for another first: receiving communion outside the perameters of Catholicism. Standing in line waiting to partake, I felt like a virgin all over again, only it wasn't my sexual innocence I was losing. It was something less tangible, less able to be defined as right or wrong. I knew Protestants invited all baptized Christians to take the Eucharist and Catholicism restricted it to those baptized within its church. But what about "away games"? Were Catholics allowed to participate with other churches? And did these rules even apply to me, a heathen who dared to think salvation could exist for a Catholic in the walls of an Anglican church? Was my soul clean enough to receive the host at all?

The closer we got to the altar, the harder it was to keep my legs from shaking. But I couldn't turn back. I can't explain it any better except to say this was the only way to validate my recent choices and revelations regarding spirituality. How could I say all denominations were equal in the eyes of God but refuse an invitation to his table because I was afraid of being chastized by a religion I didn't fully embrace?

I'm glad I did it. I cried from the minute I left the altar to the moment my knees bent to pray, but I'm still glad. It freed me in a way my Idiots' Guide to Christianity never could. For the first time, I was taking my relationship with God into my own hands.

I may not have gone home, but in that moment, home came to me.

Brenda's Ability To Do Good Hair: Denied!

By now, everyone who reads this site knows I heart Brenda, my Chicago hairdresser, because apparently stylists in Naptown can only shape and color celebrity styles for the likes of Eighties Madonna and Severus Snape. One of the first things I did when Luke and I got engaged was to make salon appointments for my bridesmaids, flower girl, and me, so there was no chance in hell that Brenda wouldn't NOT do my hair. I was on it like flies on that stick-paper thing my parents leave in the basement because, well, they don't like flies.

Guess what? Brenda's not doing my hair.

It's tragic, actually. On Friday the 13th, she broke two bones in her right hand, her magic hand, the hand that gives me bouncy layers and the side bangs I love so much. She's at work but limited to answering phones and sweeping up hair for the next four to six weeks. It's like having Mariah Carey pre-Charm Bracelet wipe spittle from Hilary Duff's microphone at the Grammys.

I called the salon yesterday and transferred my upcoming Saturday morning appointment to Kasia, a stylist with a great reputation for updos, and the other person scheduled to help Brenda with my wedding party, and there's still at least a slight chance she'll be in tip-top shape come May 12th, so all should be well. But I'd like to take this opportunity to brag about Gina, one of my very awesome bridesmaids, because she is the only reason I discovered this potentially life-changing information. Seeing as I discovered Enve through her seven years ago, she became aware of the situation at her own cut-and-color and immediately contacted me so alternate arrangements could be made. It's in instances like these that a wife-to-be truly needs her bridesmaids. Don't fuss over silly things like bachelorette parties or finding something blue. Just let me know if my hairdresser ends up in the ER.

This weekend will be a busy one, as tomorrow Samantha and my family are throwing Luke and me what is sure to be a beautiful wedding shower, and Sunday we have our first pre-marital counseling session with the pastor who will marry us. One of the subjects will be religion, which I really am feeling much better about these days, as Luke and I continue to talk openly about what kind of church life we want with and for our children. I also broached the subject with my mom last night, something I was pretty nervous about because I never want my parents to think that I'm unhappy with the way they brought me up. I didn't want them to become defensive of their choices, especially since they made some really great choices, and to be totally honest, I was also afraid they'd think I was ruining my chance at Eternal Salvation by even considering converting to a Protestant denomination. For better or worse, whether I get it or not, I will always seek their approval.

The conversation I had with my mother proved (once again) how little credit I give my parents sometimes. She reminded me about the similar faith journey she took around my age that brought her to Catholicism, years after she and my father got married. She said Luke and I are going to do the best thing for our family, and as long as we believe in God, everything will be fine. Well, that and infant baptism, which we do, so it's all good. For the first time in months, I'm at peace.

Note: the SVH contest will run through the weekend, because I'm leaving for Chicago today and don't want to make such a difficult decision in such a short time frame. So if you want a book, it's not too late to beg for one. And I promise not to give Luke any special consideration. Really. It's anybody's game.

Booked. Also, Slightly Less Freaked. I Think.

Two rooms at this hotel for the Sunday and Monday night after the wedding, with additional plans to stay over in Michigan that Saturday and Tuesday, to break the eight-hour drive up a little. Today I received permission from my boss to take a week-and-a-half break from work beginning with the Wednesday before the wedding, which allows me some time to sort through last-minute reception details and also have one week where Luke and I can simply enjoy our new married status. As I look at the calendar, I realize by this time in May I'll have been Mrs. Useless Clutter for almost two weeks. Wow.

And I'm feeling good. We've been doing a lot of reading on different Christian denominations, attempting to pinpoint our non-negotiables. It's harder than you think. For example, Catholicism believes in the Assumption of the Blessed Mother--that her physical body was transported into Heaven in addition to her soul. It teaches she was a virgin throughout her life, despite being a married woman. There are prayers for Mary, special devotions and stories about her appearing to St. Bernadette of Lourdes, the children of Fatima, and other faithful Catholics around the world.

However, in the Protestant tradition, Mary is regarded simply as another saint in the communion of saints. The "foremost of saints," according to this Web site, but Luke didn't learn the Hail Mary. He never prayed the Rosary. For him, there was no Assumption, no perpetual virginity on her behalf, because there is no basis for either one in scripture. And if there's no basis for this in scripture, why is the church teaching it? Where did these ideas come from? Church officials? Those who saw her? While we're asking questions, do I truly believe these miracles took place? If I do, how could I not raise my children in Catholicism, if it turns out no other denomination of Christianity supports them? And if I don't, how could I not leave the church?

I'm working ideas out even as I type this, so obviously I don't have any answers. For the first time in my life, I'm taking the time to question my beliefs and how they came to be regarded as truths by the Catholic church. Can you believe I got through parochial high school and college without knowing the whole perpetual virgin thing? I may not have given anything up for Lent, but I don't think it's a coincidence my religious exploration is taking place during the same time Jesus was dealing with some difficult issues of his own.

And throughout all of these hard questions, questions that might lead to answers that surprise us both, Luke still wants to be my husband. Despite my recent tendency to subject our relationship to the unforgiving glow of the pre-marital microscope, he's not once doubted his decision to make a commitment to me that will last the rest of our lives. "Are you sure you want to marry me?" I say after filling our apartment with post-sloppy joe flatulence. "Are you sure you want to marry me?" flys out of my mouth after sharing that I can't really consider other religions before I've thoroughly investigated my own. But no matter how many times I ask the question, no matter how many ways I ask, his answer is always the same. Yes. Yes. Yes. Words can't express how grateful I am that he continues to have such faith, in himself, in me, in us.

Even more earth-shattering than my personal spiritual journey is that we were able to enjoy drinks, steak, and ribs on Saturday night courtesy of Vibes Music, which shelled out EIGHTY DOLLARS for two stacks' worth of used CDs, the titles of which escape me now. I can, however, tell you what they *didn't* take: The Best of Piano by Candlelight Volume 2. Jamiroquai's Synkronized. Lenny Kravitz's Five. The Spice Girls' appropriately titled disc, Spice. Thus, I'll spend at least part of this week hunting down alternative sources through which my questionable musical taste can be savored by the masses.

Lastly, in regards to the SVH contest: forget about another quiz sure to stump friends and family alike, because I just took the damn thing again as "Frema" and only scored an 80. Apparently when I made the quiz last March I was still high on Spider-Man 2 and thought Toby Maguire had more sex appeal than Kiefer Sutherland; now I'm seriously wondering where my brains were at because who doesn't agree Kiefer Sutherland and his urgent scratchy voice are the hottest things ever to grace the Earth? If I had a list like this, he'd be number one, hands-down. If I had one. Which I don't, Luke. Just saying.

ANYWAY, the contest. Let's try this: Why don't you tell me about an important lesson you learned from Francine Pascal's endearing-yet-often-simplified-and-over-the-top series? Like, I just reread Forbidden Love, where Maria and Michael get engaged even though they're not supposed to be dating because of some Romeo and Juliet type feud their parents are involved in. They have to do this project for history class where they pretend to be married for two weeks and manage a budget and deal with problems facing their imaginary children. Michael learns that Maria doesn't want to be a housewife and Maria learns that Michael is comfortable using "belt therapy" to correct their son's juvenile delinquency. In the end, they break up, the families reunite, and Maria ends up dating Winston Egbert.

The lesson? Who cares? I still can't get over Sweet Valley High sanctioning the teaching of marriage and family values in history class. But you'll do a much better job than me. To the best answer, the spoils.

There Are Various Possible Titles For This Post

So Far Nine People Are Coming To The Wedding, Not Counting Me, Luke, the Pastor, His Parents, My Parents, Our Brothers And Sisters, Their Significant Others, The Bridesmaids, The Groomsmen, The Flower Girl And Her Mother, Who Also Happens To Be My Aunt And One Of My Favorite People, And Random Strangers Because We're Holding It At A Public Park

What Happens When Luke Works Nights

The Wakefields Made Me Do It

But first, a word on my hiatus. Things have been shakin' in the Frema/Useless Clutter household. In a nutshell, the freak-outs, they're getting worse. A couple of weeks ago a discussion about blogs turned into a discussion about Dooce, the Internet's most well-known blogger, which turned into a discussion about marriage, which turned into a discussion about clinical depression, which turned into a discussion about whether or not clinically depressed individuals should bear children, which turned into me crying actual tears because Luke will surely want to divorce me when I am diagnosed with clinical depression.

Last Wednesday I came home sobbing because my recent submission to this Web site led to frantic searches on the Internet about interfaith marriages and a train of thought that concluded Luke and I can't get married because he doesn't make the Sign of the Cross or believe in Purgatory. I'm not even sure that I believe in Purgatory, but one can only assume my old Catholic-school uniforms will prove equivalent to a "Get Out of Hell Free" card on Judgment Day.

When confessing all of these tidbits and more to Lost A Sock during a four-hour Steak-N-Shake marathon on Friday night, she shook her head in amazement and said, "What does Luke do when you say all these things to him?"

What does he do? He listens until I'm done, says something Calming and Insightful about God loving all people, not just Catholics, reminds me that we'll work it all out, and sighs, "I wish you would talk to me first before you get yourself so upset." And then he rewards my honesty with a trip to Wendy's, which is probably the best reason to marry anyone.

This weekend, though, was not about the freak-outs. It was about receiving the first RSVPs for our wedding. Watching our pastor and his new wife exchange vows in front of God and an entire congregation. Holding two babies two days in a row and kissing a nose that was only three days old. (Congratulations new Auntie Brooke and second-time Grandma Betty!) Looking through pictures with my mother and thinking about how brave my parents were to make such adult decisions before they were even old enough to drink. Digging out boxes from the basement to find the cases to my CDs, a dusty but necessary action in order to sell them for cash. Along the way I stumbled upon collections of books gathered during high school and college, the majority of which I'd obtained from a former English professor who would leave old books outside the door to his office, free for the taking for those interested in owning their very own copy of The Left-Hander’s Guide to Life. So I decided to sell them, too. My mother was slightly suspicious, as if a lack of funds had possibly forced us out of our apartment and onto the nearest highway exit ramp panhandling for change. "You guys are OK, right?" she asked. "You have food and everything?"

She would've been reassured tonight, as I used the $22.25 earned from selling my literary treasures and twelve dollars of my state tax refund to purchase a pair of old-school Nancy Drew hardcovers, two Christopher Pike books, three Choose Your Own Adventures, and sixty-nine installments of Sweet Valley High.

In my defense, Luke began temping again on Monday night and it's been very lonely and the Sweet Valley High books were only a quarter a piece. Plus, I want to share them with my own little girls, because any daughters of mine and maybe even sons will be required to know who the Wakefield twins are, which one is older, and what their dress size is, because these three facts are drilled into your brain by page five of every book in the series. Plus plus, their characters never engaged in premarital sex, used the Lord's name in vain, or subjected themselves to illegal drug activity—well, except one character. Regina Morrow, the deaf girl who dated flirtatious playboy Bruce Patman and was a kind and loving person until she found out Bruce was dating Jessica's best friend Amy behind her back. Blinded by Heartbreak and Betrayal, she attended a party where she was introduced to cocaine, had a rare adverse reaction to the drug and actually DIED. Then SVH had a memorial service where Elizabeth gave a Deep and Moving speech about Regina's life, and her parents took the day off work and the twins' older brother came home from college to talk about Why Drugs Are Bad but also The Importance Of Communicating With Your Parents If You Ever Feel That Drugs Are The Only Answer To Your Problems. If you're interested in sharing these lessons with your own children, you owe it to them and yourself to read Number 40: On the Edge and Number 41: Outcast.

To top things off, I said "Screw frugality!" and spent four ninety-five on a personal pan cheese pizza and five breadsticks from Pizza Hut.

Three fast-food splurges in a seven-day period. My doctor and my bank account must be so proud.

The. Freakin'. End.

Off to the Races

Last week, I knew Luke being sick would guarantee I'd sport some physical ailment before Monday, and whaddaya know, I left work early on Friday to become a permanent fixture on the couch for a majority of the weekend, except when the two of us ventured outside the apartment on Sunday for two meals and a trip to church--a significant moment for us, as it was the first time we've been to God's house in Indianapolis since I moved here in May. Actually, the subject of religion in general is a big topic, since I'm Catholic and he's Methodist and neither wants to convert but both want to raise our children under some sort of Christian umbrella.

When I was younger, I never even considered this as an issue for relationships; in my pre-teens, when life didn't exist beyond the boundaries of Hoyne Park and the local Jewel, I just assumed everyone was Catholic and of course I would meet a nice Catholic boy and of course we would raise lovely Catholic children who would have godparents and go to CCD and live in fear that taking the last pack of fruit snacks without asking would no doubt secure your seat on a one-way train to Hell. Then, after I actually started dating, I thought every man I'd meet in the future wouldn't be Catholic but in fact, an athiest, because the only type of guy I seemed to attract was one who thought religion was for those too afraid to face their own mortality. Those same guys also wanted to smoke pot and wear flannels with holes in the arms and own every issue of The Punisher; the flannel thing alone should have given me pause, but I was a late bloomer, so really, I was just relieved to find members of the opposite sex who weren't turned off by my holding-on-to-the-eighties bangs and who were willing to make out with me in the alley behind my parents' house. Good times.

Anyway, now I'm an adult and realize that 1) the world is not overrun with Catholics and 2) Luke and I will eventually have to decide whose faith our children will inherit, something that unlike eye color or sexual orientation, we can actually control. A baby step towards that was taken on Sunday, when we went to a Catholic church a few miles from our apartment, knowing that we'd be in Merrillville this weekend and therefore attend a Methodist service with his parents. And so on and so on. This plan of action will hopefully allow us to become more acquainted with the values and rituals associated with the other's faith, which will hopefully help us to make a decision when the time comes, which will probably be when we get engaged, because we'll have to decide who will marry us, and if you're married in the Catholic church, it is understood that any future children will be raised Catholic, and that's that.

Basically, this means that our religions are now in competition with each other, poised at the starting line, each bearing a paper crucifix attached to their tank tops, vying for the title of Who Will Get The Blame For Screwing Up the Lives of Frema and Useless Clutter's Offspring, because in the end, no matter what religion you are, somebody's going to attribute your math handicap slash bra size slash tendency to only eat Tic-Tacs in even numbers to which version of the Bible you read.

It's for that reason that, in the end, we're less concerned with denominational hats and more focused on making sure our precious, darling Amelia doesn't have nightmares about the devil taking the form of a rooster and ripping a hole through the earth's crust to capture little girls who are too fond of fruit snacks for their own damn good (thanks, Grandma).

And they're off.

Stripped - Part I

OK, since I received quite a few questions from Wednesday's meme, I'm going to break this up a bit. I'll answer Becky's, Painting Chef's, and Anonymous's inquiries today and the rest sometime over the weekend. That is, if I can find the path to my computer among all the boxes that will surely be cluttering my--er, I mean, Luke's and my--fabulous space.

And now, we delve into the depths of Frema's psyche.

From Becky:

1. If spinach dip were no more, how would you take to filling the void in your life and diet? That is to say, is there anything on the menu of Frema's Favorites that is comparable to the revered spinach dip?

Big fat YES to that one. I adore bacon sandwiches--not to be confused with a BLT, because I don't like lettuce and I prefer the tomatoes on the side. On the side is a very big thing for me. But I'm never good at actually cooking the bacon; my smoke detector usually goes off at least once each time I make it, so I'd probably just stock up on ice cream. Favorite flavors include Ben and Jerry's Chunky Monkey, strawberry, and cookies and cream.

And this is why my gut hangs over the belt of my pants.

2. What if you had one of those beds that sits directly on the floor? Where do you think the Devil would hide if he was driven out of his former home underneath your bed?

Silly Becky, he would have no choice but to burrow his way through my wall. When I was younger, I used to have a recurring dream in which I was sitting in a high chair (or is it height chair?) and the Devil came bursting through the wall and pulled me down into hell, chair and all. I drew from this experience to write a short story for my an undergraduate writing class and again as a grad student. (Since we're being honest here, I actually just took the undergrad version and made a few changes to it for my grad fiction class, so that "Cecily's" nighmares were really a way to deal with the sexual abuse she suffered from at the hands of her father. Had to make it fresh, you know?)

3. Every potential writer has a fantasty about what kind of writer he or she one day hopes to be. What kind of writer do you one day hope to be?

Throughout my life, I have defined my writing dream in a number of different ways. When I was nine, I wanted to be a writer with an audience. In the height of my authorhood, my third-grade teacher would set aside about twenty minutes after lunch two times a week and let me read my latest masterpieces to the class. Classics included Jane and the Lion, Playing at the Park, and A Collection of Fairy Stories (which really turned out to be just one story, so I had to mark up my pretty cover to reflect the singular). As I hit my teens, I pictured myself traveling the world, autographing copies of my books outside the local Jewel, and giving book readings of Love, Betrayal, and a Baby (BOTH parts!) in my old neighborhood, and people from my past would come to see me and marvel at how my words stirred their very souls.

Then I went to college, and it all went to pot.

Not really, but I did learn that my fiction days are over. I'm not good at making up plots, fleshing out characters, or even just giving the story a damn point. Did you not just read that I turned devilish nightmares into symbolism for sexual abuse?

It was in graduate school that I realized non-fiction was my niche. Still wrestling with that three-week bulimia stint from seventh grade? Write about it. Sad about the kind of relationships you once found yourself in? Write about it. Depressed because even a normally built woman shouldn't have a pouch? You get the idea. The source of material and the opportunities for growth are endless. And I still enjoy having an audience, because I'm vain like that.

So, to answer your question, the writer I hope to be is a writer who never fails to see the humor in her everyday experiences, and one who is always willing to share them with others.

From Painting Chef:

1. What three movies will you watch over and over and never get tired of them?

What a great question! But only three? I'll do my best.

When Harry Met Sally. My all-time favorite movie and one of the most quotable films out there. In fact, I've already quoted it once in this entry. Bonus points to those who can find it.

High Fidelity. I love that this movie deals with real-life issues that have nothing to do with sleeping in Seattle or getting mail or any of that other typical romantic comedy stuff. I love watching Rob go back to the women of his past and see why those relationships failed, and him consequently seeing why he is in danger of losing the woman he's with now. This movie speaks very honestly about the problems and power of love. And also the TRUE significance behind making tapes.

The Wedding Singer. I love that this movie deals with PG issues that have everything to do with sleeping in Seattle and getting mail and all of that other typical romantic comedy stuff. Also very quotable.

Honorable Mentions: Austin Powers, International Man of Mystery; While You Were Sleeping; Chasing Amy

2. Was there a teacher from your childhood who had a lasting impression on the person you became?

Mrs. Erber was the third-grade teacher mentioned in my response to Becky's third question; she really did let me read my dorky stories out loud after lunch. In fourth grade, Ms. Socha would place my stories on the reading table in the back, so that students could choose my story to read during recess. She also humored me when I wrote stories and turned them in for a grade, even though they weren't required for any actual assignment. (Of course, she gave me As.) In high school, my sophomore honors English teacher kept a plastic sword at her side during the reading of Beowolf, and when we read it out loud, she would raise the sword and sang his name each time it appeared.

I had great teachers who fostered my creative side and deepened my love for literature and overall just let me be me. I was very lucky.

3. What's the worst you've ever screwed someone over?

I don't think there's one definitive act I've done to another person that makes me recoil in horror. However, in the beginning of every relationship I've ever had, there is a horrible track record of me pretty much abandoning my family and friends to bask in the glow of infatuation. Kind of typical I guess, but not acceptable. I blame it all on my first boyfriend, the one who would go for weeks at a time without calling me. From then on, I was always secretly afraid that if I wasn't at the beck and call of the guy I was with, he would leave. And I wasn't comfortable enough in my own skin to deal with being alone.

From Anonymous (Auntie Betty, is this you?):

1. Would you ever consider changing your religion if you had the chance?

This is something I have given a great deal of thought to, as I am Catholic and Luke is Methodist; in the end, though, the answer is no. Not because I think the Catholic Church is The Right Church, or even because I am fully practicing Catholic, but because for better or worse, the Catholic experience is part of my identity. Also, I think that if I switched churches, I'd just be entering another situation where I held faith in some of the teachings and questioned the others. Religion is a man-made institution, and as such, there will never be a perfect one. Therefore, I'd rather explore the good, bad, and the ugly of Catholicism while loving God and doing my best to follow The Golden Rule instead of worrying about what spiritual label I should wear.

2. If there were no more Red Apple Jelly Bellys, which will be your second choice?

Oooh, another soul-searcher. How lame would it be for me to say Green Apple?

3. Which comes first in your life, true love or money?

Well, the love of my life is currently unemployed, so obviously, money.

* For those of you who made it this far, mad props. More to come soon.

Musings on How Johnny Depp Took Over the World

Warning: This entry has nothing to do with Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which I did see this weekend but did not very much enjoy. Gene Wilder will always be Willy Wonka to me.

At some point in my childhood, I began to dream about Judgement Day--that wonderful event where God determines if you're naughty or nice, worthy of Heaven or destined for Hell. How it happened varied; sometimes, all the lights would blow out and everyone would gather in their backyards, where lifespans of mistakes would appear on a huge TV for all of humanity to see. Others? Well, I can't remember others. Last night, though, I had a new version involving Johnny Depp and the Super Target near my house.

I think we knew it was coming. Luke was there, along with This Gal, Reggie from All My Children (apparently a good friend of mine), and dozens of other shoppers, all of us attempting to stock our refrigerators with supplies. Maybe in case It happened and we weren't armed with enough ho-hos to make it through the judging part. I was in the chip aisle (which of course is right next to frozen foods) when a huge wave of water suddenly flooded the aisles and started carrying people away. But it was a selective carrying away. The first wave went over everyone, but only certain people went with it. This Gal was one of the first to go (sorry, This Gal), and all I could was watch. Didn't reach out my hand or anything. Reggie? No more acting jobs for him. Luke was one of the last. We were holding on to each other when the water pulled him in. At that point I started to pray, but then it was over and only a handful of individuals were left. Then, suddenly, Johnny Depp. Coming up to me, holding on to me, his demeanor making it clear he was the cause of the water and the reason I was now alone.

His tone of voice was seductive, his eyes piercing, his sense was familiar. Not sensual, but hypnotic. Not what I expected of the Devil. He knew I was upset when he said I needed to go home with him, and he knew I was trying not to show it, though I did ask if it was OK to cry. He didn't answer. I didn't cry. I tried to act brave by pulling out bags of chocolate and peanut butter Nestle chips and eating right out of the package. I went home with him. Chris visited us. I remember wanting to escape and hoping he didn't feel it. And then I woke up.

My subconscious is constantly bringing to life the scenarios I am most afraid of. During the day, I do silly things like will for dolls to blink or smile at me, daring them to reveal their evil selves. In my dreams, I do these things and they happen. Last night it happened twice. One doll was as big as those life-sized Barbies popular about five years ago, but she didn't catch me. It also happened with a doll made of flannel. Luke grabbed her hands, and she didn't come to life until I started cutting her with scissors. Go me.

WHY do I freak myself out like this? Because my grandmother taught me I could go to Hell at any moment? I'm unsure of what God really wants? Early exposure to bad movies? If you have any ideas, feel free to pass it on. Or just say something funny so these images won't be burned into my brain.