A complaint for the ages

I know I've led a semi-privileged life. Aside from the brief period when Joey and I were both unemployed, I've never gone hungry. I've never been (really) homeless, even though I don't have my own home right now. I tended to outgrow my snow boots every winter as a child, but have never gone without shoes, even if they were the wrong size. I rarely received the toys I wanted, but I wanted books more, and I was filthy rich when it came to kid lit. School came easily to me for the most part, and when math became too difficult my parents were able to get me a tutor for a short time. I didn't have a lot of what the world thought was necessary for happiness, but I had enough. My family loved me, I had a few good friends, and it was enough.

But I'm in a strange period of life now. This in-between-ness. I have enough... for now. And just for right now. The future is coming at me fast and I don't know what I'm going to do when it arrives. I just know that what I have now, which is enough for right now, won't be enough for later.

I miss my clothes. Maybe that sounds stupid, but I can't tell you how frustrating it is to walk between seasons and know that I own a coat, a really nice one, but I can't get to it. I also have lots of nice "professional" clothes but when I had an interview last month I didn't have anything. I had to improvise. I miss my blouses and my nice shoes and my winter boots and all of my many pairs of warm socks.

I have bought more socks in the last month than I've bought in the last year, simply because I cannot access my sock collection. It's a nice collection, too.

I miss my books. I brought only three books with me on the trip out to Seattle. This complaint is not about having enough reading material (I mean, I could always buy more, right? Or borrow some.) It is about the comforting presence of my own beloved books, the sacredness of their weathered pages and illicitly written-in margins.

I miss the treasure trove of coffee mugs Joey and I kept. It's strange to only have four mugs to my name. Two I bought at a thrift store out of necessity, and two I inherited from my grandmother's house.

On that note, I miss my grandmother. This is possibly a strange place to mention such news, but she passed away in late September. She was 92. I have no hard feelings about her passing--she led a good life. She filled us up with her love and wisdom. My grief is soft, like a blanket. I miss her because she was wonderful and warm and she loved me. I think perhaps her greatest gift to me was that she received my love for her so willingly. She wrote fondly of my artistry and appreciated every picture I drew for her, every card I sent her, every doodle I might have scribbled. She soaked it up. I suppose that's a grandma's job.

I miss my desk. I have a "new" one now ($5 at Goodwill) and it has its own drawers, but the surface area isn't as big. I also miss all my office supplies. I miss my white board calendar and my hot glue gun and my stash of fancy markers. I have a stash of less fancy markers now--and by less fancy I really mean they are just terrible markers. Just the worst.

I miss my church and my friends in Waukegan. I miss holding hands and standing in a circle with all my CNC friends, singing "I Need You to Survive" and wondering at the double meaning. I needed them to survive for their own sake. I needed them for my own survival. I still do.

And I miss my dog. I miss the quiet moments when she would rest her big floppy head on my feet. I miss her warm little body against mine in the bed. I felt her loss most painfully the first cold morning here in Renton. How she used to love naptime with me on a chilly day. She would be so happy snuggled under the blanket for an hour or so. She wouldn't squirm or grumble, she just pressed herself into my chest and sighed contentedly in that way that a dog sighs with their whole body.

But of course, missing things doesn't mean I'm unhappy.

Goodness gracious. I am so happy. I am so sad, and so happy, at the same time.

All at once my heart is so light, and yet so burdened. There is such joy at what has been restored to me and such heavy sadness at what I've lost. All at once.

If I had not come home when I did, I never would have been able to say goodbye to my grandma. I couldn't have painted her one last picture or held her hand. The last thing she said to me was, "I love you," and I remember that. I remember her face when she said it. I wouldn't have that memory if I wasn't here. I couldn't tell you the last thing she said to me, or when it was.

If I had not come home when I did, I would feel her death more intensely. I have spent many years being absent for funerals and memorials and it is pointedly awful. It is so isolating. Death is so much more ominous and somehow haunting when it is unapproachable.

I am glad to be here, home, to have my goodbyes. I'm glad to help plan the memorial and wade through the ocean of photographs that embody my grandparents' lives. I'm glad to be able to support my mama and be the daughter I've always wanted to be but couldn't, because I was too far away.

This seems like a list of complaints. It is, but it isn't. It's just the way my life is right now. These are simply facts. I am so happy, and so sad, and so excited for the future, but so anxious.

And the most beautiful thing is that God is sitting with me in all of it. He holds my hand when I drown in the photographs and sticker collection at grandma's house. He gives me sleep when I am reminded, yet again, that I can't say goodnight to my dog because she's gone. He does not expect me to only see the good in life, but doesn't want me to see only the bad. He does not expect me to toss off the life he helped me build in Illinois, nor does he wish for me to drown in grief. He allows me to be in the middle, between feelings, between stages, between periods of having and not having enough.

Having him with me, in darkness and light, is the greatest privilege of all.

Marriage Is: A Tent

I've been thinking recently about the words we use to define marriage. This blog series has allowed me to do that more freely, because I am dedicating real time, during real life, using my real marriage as a context in which to write this. We expect marriage to be so many things, and it is rarely any of those things all of the time--or sometimes it is none of those things, ever. We want it to be beautiful, but instead it's confusing. We want it to be glamorous, but instead it's messy. We want it to be interesting, and fun, and easy, but instead it's predictable and practical and--hard. 

And that's where people tend to lose interest--those sorts of words can cause people to disengage with things much less important than marriage. There is nothing romantic about messy, practical, or hard. Gosh, aren't those BAD things? Isn't it BAD for things to be hard?

If you think I'm making fun of you... I am. 

It is a childish perspective to believe that saying something is hard or difficult also means it is bad, or has some sort of negative aura. There are children I tutor several times a week, and at the end of each segment of the lesson I ask them their opinion about that particular assignment. "Was that easy, okay, or hard?" Most of the kids say "easy" 99.9999999% of the time. But occasionally a student says it was "hard." You might expect that these are the kids with dyslexia, or who come for lessons at 9am, but you're wrong. The kids who say things were hard are always my most academically-inclined students. When I ask them why it was hard, they tell me it was because they mispronounced "appropriate" once, or accidentally did problem #8 instead of #4 because they lost their place. I am not exaggerating. These students will get all of the answers correct, I will praise them for good work, offer encouragement when they get confused, and STILL if there was one slip up the entire process was "hard." They automatically connect "bad" things with the word "hard."

Isn't it silly to think that just because something is imperfect, it's difficult? And isn't is also silly to think that just because we say something is difficult, it's bad? And, to take it a step further, isn't it also completely ridiculous to think that just because something is easy, it's good?

There are plenty of hard things in life. Baking a pie, learning to ride a bike, driving in Chicago, making a tent, going to college, organizing paperwork, bathing your dog in a small bathroom, or being married. These are all things I actually quite enjoy, and they are difficult in varying ways, but today I am only going to talk about about two of them.

Today's topic! Marriage Is: A Tent.

I went camping this week, for the first time since my honeymoon (yep, we did that!) and man, was it fun. But it certainly wasn't easy! In fact, you might say it was pretty difficult. Some parts more difficult than others but for the majority of the trip it was all heartwarming difficulty with my best friend. 

First we organized our campsite by moving the picnic table and deciding on a good spot for the tent. Then we unloaded the car, and began putting up the tent. If you've never put up a tent before, you are seriously missing out. Maybe for some people this is a stressful experience, but for me, the work is very rewarding. (It would be more rewarding, except Joey likes to do a lot of it himself because it's manly, or something.)

So we dump the tent out of the bag, and for the next 20 minutes or so worked together to get it standing, get all the poles in the right place, and then we stood inside it to appreciate our efforts. Not a big deal, right? How the heck is marriage a tent? Where am I going with all of this? I'll be brief, this time. Promise.

1. You need 2 people to put up a tent. Sometimes you need more, if it's a bigger tent. During youth group retreats, we used to have these gigantic army tents. It took upwards of 10 people to get them up. A big tent like that can't be raised efficiently with just one set of hands. You've got to hold a stake here, stretch the canvas there, pull that pole this way. Marriages also need 2 people. You can't make one all by yourself--that's just weird.

2. Sometimes, you just have to trust the other person, even if they don't make sense. Joey is much more of a "tent expert" than I am. However, I am pretty quick at figuring things out, and I get a little thrill by figuring them out on the way. And yet, when he asked me to come hold a part of the tent or push something or find a velcro strap, I didn't argue. I just did it, because he was trying to build something with me, and if we both tried to put up the same tent separately, we would be intensely frustrated. In the same way, sometimes your spouse is going to ask you to do something that makes no sense, or something that you don't feel like doing. You might not want to take the trash out, or change a diaper, or get up in the middle of the night to make sure the front door is locked. But these are all important things, even if they don't seem like it.

3. Be patient. There are two people trying to do the same thing--but they can't read each other's minds. If that bungee cord snaps you in the face, it's probably not because your spouse was trying to give you a cool scar. In marriage, you will likely get hurt and assume someone did something on purpose--but they didn't! Don't jump to conclusions. Ask questions. Talk it out. Don't rush through the communication process.

4. When your tent is done, you now have a place of protection. You step inside, you zip up the door, and you are safe from the rain, sun, and raccoons. When you build a marriage together, if you've put all the parts together correctly, you have a place to come to when you need protection, or rest. 

Building the tent wasn't easy. It was hard. We bought this tent at a thrift store for $20 just a few months ago, so we'd never put it up before. I had to ask Joey to vanquish a few spiders. The pole for the door overhang kept coming undone. The canvas on top had all these tangled cords when we took it out of the bag. The whole process was difficult. But I loved it, and it was worth it. 

It was hard--harder than usual because it wasn't our old tent. But it wasn't bad. I don't look back on it and think, Well, I hope I never have to do that again.

Marriage is hard. It's hard because you have to step outside yourself every single day and love this other person with your whole soul. You have to deal with them rolling onto your hair while you sleep (Seriously, that hurts!) and not instincually punch them in the face because you're not quite awake. You have to remember to put the toilet seat down so your wife doesn't fall in (this is also a major catastrophe.) You have to make a very organized schedule because you share a car. You have to do so many things, and do them on purpose, and you have to say so many things on purpose (and purposefully apologize for the accidental things.) And it should be that way. Loving someone the right way should come naturally, because you love them and want what's best for them, but it should also require effort, intensity, and it should be intentional. 

I love my husband. My love for him comes second only to my love for God. He is my entire world. Loving him is not always easy, always fun, always glamorous. But it is always good, because God is love, and HE is good. 

Putting up a tent does not happen by accident. Building a marriage does not happen by accident. Love--the action, not the emotion--does not happen by accident. It's hard work. But it's GOOD.

**You may have noticed I'm not writing about singleness this week. But it's not hard to figure out. Singleness is a tent too... it's just smaller! Or, it's a huge tent for a big group of people. Then you have lots of hands. Either way, I find building a tent is incredible. : )