A Soft (re)Start

A few weeks ago, I was in Costco with all three of the kids - Amelia proudly sitting in the seat of the cart like a big girl, Timothy and Susannah sitting next to each other in the basket, finishing off their hot dogs from lunch.

A lady rounded the corner of the aisle we were in, and immediately began to oooh and aaaah over my adorable children. Nothing does a mother's heart good like hearing someone else praise their children. I, of course, know they're cute, but it's nice to have other people say it too, sometimes...

The lady paused her cart to watch the kids for a second (she gave me the impression of being someone who didn't have any of her own tiny people around, and missed them terribly).

Right as she seemed like she was ready to say goodbye and move on, suddenly Susannnah's lemonade somehow turned 180 degrees in her hands, and dumped straight through the grid of the cart onto the floor. As she is wont to do in these situations, Susannah froze and panicked all at once. I almost habitually began to reassure her and help her put things to rights, as I so often do.

When we had reached something like equilibrium, that sweet lady gently laid her hand on my arm and said, "Oh, you did such a good job!"

Part of me wanted to burst into tears right there at that exact moment. I had no idea, until I heard them, how much I needed to hear those words. I told my husband later, I was so thankful for her saying that because otherwise, I would have made it to the end of that day never remembering that small moment in which I did something right. My head would have just been crowded with all the moments I did the wrong thing.

It reminded me of my sister-in-law's recent experience in the grocery store where a stranger said something like "Your kids are so happy!" Then looked straight at her and said "That's because of you, you know."

These are the kind of things we need to hear and say more often. Maybe there's a time for platitudes like "the days are long, but the years are short" or "these are the best days" - those might be helpful during the infant days, but I don't remember if they were for me. They certainly aren't helpful when all day every day feels like one long battle. These don't feel like the best days when you're in the thick of it.

That sweet lady at Costco reminded me, though, to try to channel that difficulty toward pointing out the specific good I see in others in the moment when it's happening, rather than trying to soliloquize about the general "good" I see in an overarching phase of life.

We certainly all do this - I can't tell you how often I tend toward telling single young girls aching for marriage and companionship how much they're going to miss the days they're in (not helpful, even if it is true - I know this from experience), just because sometimes I personally miss things about those days. Next time, instead of a "you're going to miss this" comment, I think I'll try "What you're doing now matters, and here's why."

For What It's Worth

Last night, this blog post and the social media response I've seen to it so far were bugging me so much that I couldn't sleep. So I sat down with some graph paper and charted out everything in the original blog post into four different categories:

1. Important Truths
2. Unimportant/Unnecessary/Distracting Commentary
3. Important things that were left out
4. Falsehoods

Now, one thing needs to be gotten out of my system at the very beginning and I won't talk about it again.

Y'all, that was an extremely poorly written blog post. I couldn't even make it through the first time I read it, but when I began to see all these responses appearing, I realised I needed to read it all the way through, so I did. Honestly, though, it was so poorly written that I'm not 100 percent sure I understand where she stands on some things. I believe there may have been times (not many, but at least two) where she was disagreeing with a point made by someone else, but her writing and/or punctuation usage was just so poorly chosen that it wasn't evident. Let's be careful not to vilify her without fully understanding where she stands.

In any case, the blog post (and social media response) is something I've decided I want to talk about, so here we go.

Many of the responses I've seen come evidently out of a sense of personal injury or insecurity. I realize our personal experience does inform the way we view our world. That can't be avoided. I'm not saying we shouldn't share personal experience in response to this blog post - I'm sure I will base some of what I say upon my own life - but we should never let our personal lives guide whether or not we believe the scripture is true.

As to the blog post itself, first, let's address the title, intro, and conclusion, which comprise the majority of the second category on my graph paper (Unimportant/Unnecessary/Distracting Commentary).

The blog post begins with a question (meant to be rhetorical, I think) "Do you know how much more attractive debt-free virgins (without tattoos) are to young men?"

And it ends with "Stay virgins until marriage, out of debt, and don't get tattoos!"

Between these two sentences, there is a sprinkling of discussion about sexuality and debt, not another word about tattoos, and a whole bunch of talk about why young women should not go to college.

I could go on a rant about how this is very poor writing and would receive a C or lower in any basic college writing class, but I'm not here to do that.

I'll start off by stating the obvious: Christian or otherwise, if you're living your life based on what is attractive to the opposite sex, you're doing everything for the wrong reason.
Living for the good opinion of others is a dead end street and will never satisfy.

But what I really want to talk about is this: toward the end of that opening paragraph there is a beautiful sentence, completely overshadowed by the awful introduction, which I would urge upon everyone alike - young, old, man, or woman: "As believers in Jesus Christ, we need to live in a way that is pleasing to Him because His ways are the best."

That sentence was true and good. Living to please Christ is exactly what we are called to do as Christians, and it is the only satisfying way to live. 

The first sentence may or may not be true, but was certainly not good or scriptural.

What saddens me more than anything is that, in all the responses I've seen to this blog post, I haven't seen a single person acknowledge the good (though hard) truths that she pointed out.

Here are several of the other truths I found in her blog post as well as scripture references where applicable:

(By the way, my "Important Truths" category was by far the longest, and I haven't included all of them here)

1. Debt is a burden (Proverbs 22:7 and Romans 13:8)
2. God urges [commands] sexual purity (Hebrews 13:4)
3. Secular universities teach against the God of the Bible and His ways (This is obvious to anyone who has gone to college at a secular university)
4. Most young Christian women have not been taught to live in submission to their husbands (The biblical passage referenced here is most likely Ephesians 5, specifically verse 22. I think many young Christian women are aware of this verse, but have been taught to ignore it or misapply it. I'm also not positive I would agree with this particular blogger on what it means. I'll go into this in a little more detail later on.)
5. Older women are called to teach younger women biblical womanhood (Titus 2:3-5 is referenced here, but I'm not sure I agree with her main definition of biblical womanhood - also something I'll discuss in more depth shortly.)

These are all good, healthy, biblical truths, and if she'd stuck with these ideas and fleshed them out more in the context of living a life pleasing to the Lord, it would have been a great blog post.

Unfortunately, she chose to run off on a tangent against young women going to college, and I take issue with almost everything she said there.

Several of her reasons (and my arguments against them) are below:

She says women who go to college are unlikely to stay home raising their children.
There are any number of reasons why staying at home would be preferable for a Christian mother, so if this were true, I might agree with it, but I don't believe it is. I haven't seen statistics on this specifically, but I do know the number of stay at home moms in the U.S. has been trending upward in the last decade or more, and, as far as I know, there has not been a corresponding downturn in women deciding to attend college.

She also says the husband of a woman who went to college will need to take years to teach his wife the correct way to think since college will have taught her all the wrong ways.
(To be fair, this is one of those places where I'm not absolutely sure whether she's agreeing or disagreeing with this statement which was actually made by someone else.)
Here's what she's completely ignoring though - godly young women who go to college are not just sitting there with their mouths open, willingly swallowing whatever is placed inside. Perhaps some are, but most are weighing what is told them against the scripture, taking their questions to those who are older and wiser, and listening to the Holy Spirit within them, who teaches them to resist false teaching.

Next, she says "They will start having babies later in life. That is if they can still conceive naturally."

*Picture the laughing crying emoji dancing across this entire line*

What?

How long does she think it takes to get through college? Most young women who go to college will graduate by the time they're 22 or 23. For me, it was 24.
All I'll say here is if they're having trouble conceiving at that time, it has nothing to do with having gone to college.
An important thing to note here is that college does not equal career. If you want to talk about women putting careers before children, that's a different thing entirely. The argument she is putting forth is against women going to college, and that's what I'm speaking about here.
It may also be that she is equating going to college with accruing debt, in which case I could understand a concern that women would feel the need to work in order to pay off that debt and so put off having children. But the fact is, college does not equal debt either. I made it through a 4-year degree from a State University without any debt, and no, I didn't have a rich uncle who paid for it!

Next, she says "'They lost a handful of years of experience learning to cook large meals and learning how to work in the garden...' (Young women learn nothing about biblical womanhood or what it takes to run a home when they go to college. They don't learn to serve others either. They learn the ways of the world instead.)"

I'll admit I never saw a college course offered on "Biblical Womanhood" or "How to Run a Home and Cook Large Meals" and I definitely did learn a lot about the ways of the world when I went to college.

But you know what else I learned? Here's a sample list:
Take the trash out when it needs to be taken out
Inviting 5 people over when you live in a house with 4 other people means you need to cook a lot of food
You need spiritual mentors who will not only talk about scripture, but will enter into your daily life and tell you when you're neglecting things - it they don't find you, go find them

If that doesn't fit those requirements, I don't know what does, but let's take a closer look at Titus 2:3-5 to see if this is actually what biblical womanhood is about: "...train the young women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind, and submissive to their own husbands..."
That, my friends, is biblical womanhood, and it is a shaping of the heart and mental attitudes that neither years of experience cooking large meals and working in a garden nor a college education will ever teach. We only learn biblical womanhood from the influence of the Holy Spirit in our lives, being an active part of a biblical church, and being willing to learn from wise older women.

This brings me to another quibble I have with this blog post - I'm not positive, but it seems to me that she is disappointed in churches who "support college kids" - I'm assuming she is referring to college ministries and the like here. Goodness gracious! As we've just established, church is the only way most of us are going to learn biblical womanhood, college students or otherwise. Please, churches, keep supporting those college kids! (And also (which may be more her point) include the ones of college age who have chosen not to attend college - we all need to learn how to be God-honoring adults - it is not something that comes naturally for any of us.)

One last thing I want to say, and then I'll close. There is a lot of talk throughout this blog post about young women who want to be wives and mothers one day and how they should behave "until they get married."

Oh friends, I have talked about this before, and I'll say it again briefly. We do not know whether the Lord intends marriage for people or not. We cannot assume that all young women who want to be married will be married!

Let's focus on the truths found in scripture and allow them to shape our lives. Let's even follow the sound advice offered by the second to last sentence in that original blog post:

"Trust God with your life, study the Word, and take the narrow path that leads to life."

And I would add, ignore all the other stuff!

Y'all, my husband bought me a faucet!

And it may be my favorite gift from him to date.

Let me just tell you the saga of the faucet:

As you may or may not know, we live in a house (a gorgeous house, might I add) that was built in 1927. It has been well maintained and relatively untouched since that time. (Read: original hardwood floors and some original bathroom tile and fixtures, beautiful woodwork throughout, many of the original windows. Eeek! Dream come true, basically, if you ask me...)
Obviously, though, since people have been living in it all this time, the kitchen has been "updated" multiple times, and is in need of a complete overhaul at this point.
It doesn't fit the charm of the rest of the house at all in terms of appliances and it's not the most practical in terms of layout, but it is functional.
Soooooo, we're not making any decisions about "big" things until we really know what we love and what works well for us as a family.

Enter leaky kitchen faucet in the first week of our marriage...
I dont know if it was because I was washing so many new dishes or what. (Thanks everybody who gave me beautiful dishware for my wedding! That was the most fun I've ever had washing dishes, and you may have inadvertently contributed to my new faucet as well!)
I was honestly secretly glad when the faucet started leaking, because it was far from being my favorite thing about the house.

In fact, I have a very distinct memory from the first time I washed dishes in this house, when we were still dating. I thought to myself at the time "this may be the most poorly thought-out kitchen sink situation I have ever experienced."

You're not convinced? Behold the evidence:

The faucet is centered over the small basin so that it barely reaches into the large one, and it's so short that rinsing things without banging them against the side of the ceramic sink is nearly impossible.
Unfortunately, we discovered that it wasnt really an immediate need - the leak was mostly fixable by replacing some piping through the cabinet below and just not using my sprayer. It wasn't a perfect, long-term fix, but it worked for the present.
I just adjusted my dishwashing practices and went about life as usual.

But a seed had been planted in both of our minds. We wanted a new faucet.

Now, if we were going to make the investment in a nice faucet, we needed to know what sink we would want in the eventual remodel, in order to know what faucet would go nicely with it.

I'll spare you that process for a different day, but, suffice it to say we ultimately decided on a ceramic sink.

Now, what faucet finish would you put with a ceramic sink? Very early on, my husband threw out polished nickel as, in a general sense, a finish that he really liked. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm ashamed to say I shot him down real quick about that one. I'd seen brushed nickel and liked that, but I was just not interested in a shiny version thereof, and he was certainly not interested in brushed.

Quite honestly, I dont think I'd ever seen a single thing finished in polished nickel. He tried describing it to me, but it just sounded like stainless, which I was not interested in. I might as well have plugged my ears and sang "la la la la la" I was so not interested.

Ultimately we settled on oil-rubbed bronze and did piles of research, but still couldnt make a decision. The sink we decided on has only one hole, so we had to get an all-in-one faucet, because there was no way I would be living for the foreseeable future without a sprayer. So, should we go with a pull-down or a pull-out? Do we want one handle or two? What should we look for to make sure it's built to last? What warranties are offered by what companies?
You get the idea. With my Father-in-law being in construction and my husband being a researcher, we covered it all.

(Of course that's a very loosely-used "we" - I was mostly, if not only, concerned with how it looked...)

Once we had a pretty good idea of what we wanted, we started window shopping, casually walking through the faucet aisle at any home inprovement store we stopped in.

You'd be amazed at how hard it is to find what you want when you actully know what you want. (And, you know, when you dont feel like spending six hundred dollars...)

But then, last night, we were at Menard's, picking up some electrical stuff, and my husband casually led the way to the faucets, as usual. We stopped at the bronze finishes, as usual, and there was one I actually liked the look of, but not a brand we had considered. We pulled the box, and my darling husband began his researching. So far so good, but we were both hesitant, having never considered that brand before.

We pulled a box from a more well-known brand, and began comparing. We decided on the first one we'd pulled, and turned to go. Then my husband noticed a marked-down box just sitting under the displays. He opened it (somebody had already done so before us, hence the mark-down), and we both fell in love.

Friends, you've probably already guessed this, but it was polished nickel. And? The most beautiful faucet I could imagine.

Just to make sure our instincts were right, we carried it over to the sink aisle and held it against a ceramic sink, and yes, it was a wonderful complement.

We walked (well, I might have skipped a bit) out of that store with our marvelous find, and I looked it up on my phone to see if it truly was polished nickel exactly, and of course it was. And while I was at it, I accidentally discovered that we'd just saved THREE HUNDRED DOLLARS off msrp.

Everything we needed was in the box, the faucet is spotless, and I couldn't be happier. I'm assuming somebody bought it online and returned it to the store? This store doesnt even appear to regularly stock polished nickel.

I guess it was just meant to be.
We brought it home and installed it immediately (as in, my husband installed it immediately - I sat at the kitchen table copying down a recipe for French Bread and handing him a wrench every once in a while, and you know what? My amazing husband finished installing that faucet before I finished my recipe.)

And here's the picture you've all been waiting for: my new, gorgeous faucet, centered on my sink with a ready-to-use sprayer!

We do need to plug those holes in our sink, and it is awfully shiny, and will show fingerprints like nobody's business, but I don't mind polishing it up every once in a while, and I did have to compromise by sacrificing my desire for the touch-on/touch-off feature, but I am so pleased with everything about this whole kitchen sink situation!

I guess the moral of the story is: listen to your husband - he's probably actually got really good taste.
And also, possibly: do your research and be patient, but when you see a golden opportunity, reach out and take it!

An Experiment

Does this little old blog still generate its own traffic?

What do pictures uploaded from my phone look like?

On Not Pursuing "The American Dream"

You know who was a really wise man?

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

I'm glad we have a celebration of his life, because I bet he didn't really get celebrated much while he was here.

I sometimes think even if people had publicly celebrated him during his life, he was probably too busy humbly making things happen to allow himself to be celebrated.

I've never seen a quote from him that I didn't like, but today, one hit me extra hard with it's depth of truth:

"The end of life is not to be happy, nor to achieve pleasure and avoid pain, but to do the will of God, come what may."

I might be wrong, but I've always thought maybe his goal wasn't to create a political movement, but more to do what he knew God wanted him to do.  His boldness and gentleness sounds almost superhuman sometimes - he must have had more motivation than just a "cause."

I've been reading the Psalms lately, and there is so much there about our God being a God of justice - He never forgets the needy or afflicted (Ps. 9:18).

Dr. King did so much for America, but I don't know that he did it with America in mind, and he certainly didn't do it because society expected it of him (society in general didn't seem too keen on what he was doing).  He did it because he served a God of justice and he couldn't ignore that calling on his life.

To me, that's the bravest thing he did - he didn't do what people expected of him, but he did do what he knew he was supposed to do.

But what about when you're not called to bold action?

What if you're called to silent service?

Like me, what if you're working quietly and invisibly in the background?  I've been called to the background, and I'm staying there until I'm called to the front lines.

And if I'm never called to the front lines and I stay in the background for my entire life on this Earth, I will have done the best thing I could have possibly done with my one wild and precious life.

I wonder sometimes if we do our children a disservice by raising them to be movers and shakers just because that's what we do in America.

Don't get me wrong - I'm all for leaders and world-changers, but let's be sure we're not doing these things because they're what will help us be happy, achieve pleasure, and avoid pain.

Let's do good because it's right, even when it's hard and counter-cultural.

I'm a nanny, and I love those kids, and I would love to think that I'm helping, in some small way, to raise the next president of the United States (who knows - I might be), but I'm also totally on board with the kids' dad, who says frequently that he doesn't care what his kids do with their future - they could be ditch-diggers or garbage men, as long as they are being the best ditch-diggers or garbage men they can be.

The leaders and the world-changers will emerge, whether we raise them to be such or not, because they will know, just like Dr. King did, that they can't do anything but what they've been called to do.

Micah 6:8 says "He has shown you, oh man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you?  To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God."

Let's raise up a generation to do that, and see how they will change the world.

Today I Received a Thank You Note

For a hug I gave someone 3 years ago.

I'm not kidding!

Okay, so maybe it was for a little more than the hug, but seriously, I was kind of overwhelmed by the fact that she mentioned me hugging her on a hard day as a memory that has stayed with her this long. How wonderful to think that little normal everyday actions we make can so impact other people's lives.

Physical touch is a necessary part of my life - hugs are my thing. Sometimes I wonder if the main reason I give them is because I need them. Regardless of all that, though, giving someone a hug on a hard day is just my natural response to their trouble.

It was really amazing to realize that what seemed small and insignificant (and maybe even routine?) at the time was very impactful on someone else.

What a powerful reminder to keep loving on others in small everyday ways!

There Used to be a "Pretty-ish Kind of Little Wilderness" Behind MyHouse

I spent my childhood in a house on the dead end of the street. No, we're not talking about a neatly groomed cul-de-sac, we're talking about asphalt that gradually turned to grass, which quickly turned to woods.

It was really idyllic - there were woods on the side and behind my house, with little trails cut into them for us to explore, and, as the neighborhood slowly lost all other wooded areas, ours stayed.

Then, when I was 12, we moved to the "real" country. We had 4-wheelers, chickens, and multiple dogs and cats, and we sometimes shared our property with other people's cows. Again, idyllic - lots of exploring outside, turning trees into playhouses with only our imagination and nary a nail or board in sight.

Now, I live in a neighborhood again, and, again, in the back of the neighborhood with a little wood behind my house. One of my favorite things about this is that I get to look out the kitchen window and see green as I'm washing dishes.

But recently, someone has bought the property behind us and built a house, and it looks more and more like they're going to develop further.

Y'all , my heart is kind of breaking about this. I realize they were never my woods to begin with, but they sure brought me joy.

It's kind of like a very mild form of torture or something - every night, I go to sleep thinking, well, surely they're done now, but every morning I wake up and they're back at it again.

But there is no great loss without some small gain, and my consolation is that, if I get up early enough, I can now see the sunrise out of my kitchen window. Along with a house and the few scraggly trees they left behind...

What would you do?

What do you do when a solicitor or some such person comes unexpectedly to your door?

I always try to be as nice as I possibly can to anybody who shows up at my house, be they friend or... random person (of course I'm careful and safe too) but hey, door-to-door salespeople are humans just as much as I am, and deserve human decency and kindness just as much as anyone else.

Today, though, oh today, I got home from a lunch date and laid down on the couch for a moment, and the longer I laid there, the more I felt I could not be prevailed upon to do anything else for the rest of the day (don't worry - I did eventually get some things accomplished).

I've been having some pretty bad tension in my neck off and on since New Year's, and it returned in full force today, so I got myself a book and settled in - curled up under the warmest afghan in the house, by the fire and the Christmas Tree. I felt perfectly cozy.

Then came the knock at the door.

I propped myself up on my elbow and looked out the window of the front door.  I couldn't really see a person, but I saw a clipboard with some colorful pamphlets on it, and assumed there was probably a person carrying it.

My couch is situated in just such a way that if I'm lying on it, you can't see me from outside the house, so I just stayed right where I was because I did. not. want. to. move.

But y'all, I felt bad about it - it's the silliest thing, but I really felt sorry that I didn't answer the door for that poor person, from whom I certainly wasn't going to buy anything anyway.

This is my house, for goodness' sake, and my front door, and I can choose to open it or not as I so please, but I still feel a deep sense of obligation to open it to everyone who happens to knock.

So, what do you do?
I actually want to know if I'm the only person who feels this way.

I guess I'm just never satisfied with my hair.

***First, let me take a moment to solemnly apologize for the "apart" that appeared in my last post where the should have been "a part" - I was so ashamed when I discovered it.  I changed it immediately and am working on mending my sloppy proofreading ways.***

Now, onward: My poor hair has been in a constant state of change for basically my entire life - I can't learn to just leave it alone!  I've never done any chemical treatments on it at all, but other than that, it's been put through the wringer lately.

You may remember when I stopped washing it - that lasted about 6 months, just like no-poo before it.
(I cringe every time I type that...)

It's not that there was anything terribly wrong with not washing my hair.  My hair actually looked and felt about the same as it did when I washed it and it maybe even had a little more volume than with normal shampoo, but, honestly, I just really missed my hair smelling nice, so here we are.  I'm not going back to drugstore shampoos, though - I'm just buying high-end shampoos in large bottles when I see them on sale, and I'm pretty happy with it.

But, of course, you know I had to branch out into a new hair experiment, because, as we've already established, I can't just leave it alone.

So, now, I'm cutting my own hair.  Yep.  You heard me right.

Kids, don't try this one at home, because it really could have disastrous results, but, personally, I'm loving it so far, and haven't had any disasters.

Well, maybe I should say I've had minimal disasters?

The first time I did it was unexpectedly stressful.  I just got out of the shower one day and decided today was the day, and I went to town on it - chopped off about 8 inches.  That's kinda the way I generally do things - last minute, and all or nothing.

Then I stepped into the living room to model for my sister, who was sitting on the couch with her fiancee - the fiancee whom she was going to marry in two weeks, and here I was the Maid of Honor having just chopped all of her hair off too short to go into an up-do of any kind...

Oh man did I have a moment, but she was totally fine with it - she could not have cared less how I did my hair (except maybe if I had dyed it teal or something).

From that point on, I've just kept it fairly short and Ive thoroughly enjoyed it, but I'm getting antsy to grow it out again.  The thing is, though, for the last 8 years or so, I've had my hair in pretty significant layers, and I've had bangs just about every other year, so the amount of different lengths in my hair has been overwhelming.  I'm finally to a point where most of the layers are pretty long and blended together well, but those bangs, man.  They're taking forever to catch up with the rest of my hair.

I want to grow it out, but with almost all of it the same length.  I think I need to keep some layers in it, but I want them to be minimal and long.  My hair's pretty thin, and every time I've tried to grow it out in the past, it's started to look scraggly past a certain point, and I'm just kind of wondering if that's because I had too many layers in it?  So, we're going to try this, and see how it goes.

I'll keep you posted!

Small Changes

I'm tired of making promises I don't keep - not promises I can't keep, just promises I choose not to keep after a while, for whatever silly reason I choose.

I've never been one to make New Year's Resolutions (and I'm still not), but I do frequently shout forth giant plans and promises for my future, and then utterly fail at following through.

I'm the queen of not following through.

I've actually been feeling pretty discouraged about that lately - I guess that's part of the process of acknowledging that this is a part of who I am that still needs a lot of refining.

In order to cheer myself up a little bit, I decided that, instead of resolutions, I'm going to start doing a little review of various small things I set out to do, and actually accomplished, at the end of each year.
Uh-oh.  Did I just make a resolution by accident?

So, without further ado, 2015 in review:

1. I committed to a 30-day green smoothie challenge, and completed it (and I'm in the middle of another one right now...)
2. I committed to a 21-day cleanse, and completed it (and I'm starting another one in February)
3. I told Baby Sister I would knit her a hat, and I did (even if it did take me 4 months...)
4. In the last 4 months, I journaled more than twice the amount I did earlier in the year
5. I made a decision to pick myself up when I fail, and keep going, instead of just brushing my failures completely under a rug off in a corner somewhere, and I've tried to incorporate that principle in my life
6. I made a decision to use up all the makeup I have before buying more, and I've stuck with it
7. I dedicated my bedroom as a technology-free zone, and, while I haven't stuck with it 100%, I'm pretty convinced it's a good idea, and I'm still chipping away at my bad habit of browsing social media at all hours of the night - now I'm just reading books at all hours of the night...

That's a pretty good little list - here's to more small accomplishments in 2016

Also, can I just say, some strange girl has taken over my body today:

• She only snoozed her alarm once
• She actually went to the gym
• She came back home and did a small home improvement project (Project New Year - New Bedroom coming soon to a blog near you hopefully)
• She got to work on time
• She came home and wrote a blog post
• AND NOW SHE'S ABOUT TO BE IN BED BEFORE MIDNIGHT!

Who is this person?
If this is what happens when you decide not to make resolutions, put me on this boat for the rest of my life.

Such a Good Day

Baby sister is home. (FINALLY!)

Blue Bell is back, and just as good as ever.

I saw four shooting starts tonight, all while driving and not even looking for them.

And that's about all, folks!

Where I Want to Be

Y'all.  It's Taylor Swift's birthday today, and she's two years younger than me.

And she's built an empire.

I, ummmmm, well... I own a car, so there's that.

Of course, that's mostly a joke, but I do sometimes envy people the things they have that I don't, so it's nice to remind myself that I wouldn't really want to be in T-Swift's shoes.

Remember when I decided I just wanted to disappear for a little while and live life beyond a screen, with real people?  Yeah, I kinda doubt there's much in Taylor's life that she can just cancel in a flash and run away to spend time with friends.  I mean, maybe, but I highly doubt it...

I, on the other hand, have that chance more often than not, and that time showed me I should take advantage of it more often than I do.

I visited my dear friend Kae, who is just a fantastic hostess, among many other things.  I love to pop in on her from time to time, and just be a part of her life - we don't make big plans for our time together.  She just has a peaceful, quiet, intentional way of life that I, in all my rushing, overly-social, never-take-a-breath, unpredictable intensity, need to soak up every once in a while.

I mean, the first night I was there, we finished dinner, and sat around talking for a minute, then, when I went into the kitchen to get a glass of water, I glanced over at the tabletop and realized it was a perfect still-life:



Kae and her husband James have a little baby girl, Rose, and they like to carefully preserve and cultivate "Adult" things in their life after she's in bed by lighting candles and having long conversations over dinner.  They've done a good job of that from what I saw.

One night, Kae and I had a little tea party and read together - it was such a perfect re-set time and a reminder that this quiet little life is exactly where I want to be.



And one night, we made homemade pasta, because if we don't cook together at least once a visit, something has gone terribly wrong.



It's our happy place. Can't you tell?



One of my favorite moments of the whole trip, though, was one afternoon when Kae was washing dishes and I was in the living room (probably having just finished my 14,973,587th reading of Rose's favorite "Mary Had a Little Lamb" finger puppet book) and Rose was just floating back and forth between us - she went into the kitchen with Kae, and Kae began singing "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" to her in Chinese.

Just a normal moment in their day, but so incredibly poignant for me.
Yeah, there's something about music in languages other than English that gets me every time, but this was different.

When Kae and I first met, neither of us would ever have imagined we would be in that moment right then.  But somehow it was exactly right - exactly the way things were supposed to be from the very beginning.



I don't think either of us would trade to be where we pictured ourselves 7 years ago.

Cooking Club, Round 1

So, today was my first "cooking club," which I'm trying to model off of Shauna Niequist's concept (at least my understanding thereof). By the way, if you've never read any of Shauna's books, double-time it to the nearest bookstore now, and get both Cold Tangerines and Bread and Wine.

Go ahead! I'll wait here til you get back...

Or if you don't go buy her books immediately, at least please follow her on instagram. She is a really awesome human.

She's done this thing called cooking club for years now, where the same basic group of women gathers once a month in a different person's house each time on a steady rotation, and each person brings ingredients for parts of a meal, centering around a theme (Mediterranean food, for example, or miniature food). Then they all cook and eat together. It's a great purposeful way to cultivate vulnerability and community and also to learn how to cook new things from each other, and not get stuck in a food rut.

So a friend of mine hosted cooking club tonight, and there were about 5 of us, and most folks brought already prepared things, so it didn't quite go as planned, but it was a really good group, so I'd say all in all it was a good start.

Next time it's making homemade pasta and sauces at my house!

The Last of the Birthday Celebrations

Tonight, I went to a performance of excerpts from Handel's Messiah.

It is simply awe-inspiring.

Every year that I can, for at least the past 8 years, I've gone to this same performance, and for 3 of those years, I performed in it. There is nothing like that music.

It kind of accidentally became a birthday tradition for me, because it happens either the weekend before or after my birthday every year - one of those years, I even got to sing in it on my actual birthday!

Now I hope that, wherever I live for the rest of my life, there will be a production not-too-far-to-travel-to, because I honestly can't imagine the Holidays without it.

Overwhelmed

Sometimes I get to this weird place where I feel completely overwhelmed, and there are a million things I need to do, so I don't do any of them.  Does anybody else do this?

Today, I needed to:
Buy more chirstmas lights
Finish trimming the Christmas tree
Drop off a package at Fedex
Finish knitting a hat
Clean my bedroom and bathroom
Do laundry
Buy groceries
Cook soup

But did I do any of these things? Nope.  There were other things that I needed to do that I did do, but I felt like I was only functioning on a survival level and nothing above that.

Finally, I just sat down for a minute, because I was even having trouble prioritizing - my list was just too big for me to deal with at that point.

Then, my wonderful Mom asked if she could take me out to dinner, and I said yes, and, suddenly, all was right with the world again.  It's amazing how Moms can do that!

Happy Birthday to Me!

Confession: most of the last month, I thought my birthday was this Wednesday (as in today), but no. It was Tuesday...

Last week (on Cyber Monday, no less), I found a really great deal on a curling iron I've been wanting, but I wanted to do a little more research before actually committing, so I sat down and studied up on it, and decided that, yes. I wanted it.

Then, for some unknown reason, I decided I should get ready for bed before actually making the purchase, so I did. And, as I was brushing my teeth, I decided I needed an electric toothbrush, then and there, so instead of the well-researched curling iron, I bought myself an electric toothbrush.

It came today, and I'm interested to see if it was indeed a good decision.

I guess maybe this means I'm a real adult now? That I bought myself an electric toothbrush instead of a curling iron for my birthday?

An Absence and a Birthday

You guys, really wonderful things happen when you choose to put people in a higher place of priority than blogs, and that's about all I have to say about my recent absence.

Just kidding - stay tuned in the next few days for further thoughts from my time beyond the screen.

However, since it is my birthday, and I made a resolution to post every day in my 28th year, here I am...

with another resolution. I'd say this is going quite well so far, wouldn't you? How about I just introduce you to another resolution every few weeks for the next year?

Nope, sorry - these are the only two you get.

Oh, you actually want to know what the resolution is? (I think it's a pretty good one!)

I am resolved to spend 28 Saturdays this year outdoors. This doesn't necessarily mean I'll be doing great big enormous things like camping every weekend, though I do intend to do that some. It just means that I'm trying to get myself outside more to remind myself why I used to love being out in nature so much. It may just mean I explore some new trails or state parks near my home on day trips, or it may mean I make a weekend trip and stay with friends near Austin and hike up Enchanted Rock, or it may mean I go ride horses in a friend's pasture.

Whatever it means, I'm looking forward to sharing it with you!

How early is too early to talk about my birthday?

Three weeks ahead?  Too early?  Sorry - the train's already left the station...
I was on the phone with my sister earlier, and I said "Well, here we are, one day closer to my birthday!"
Can you say self-absorbed?

I don't know what it is, but I really love my birthday.  I always assumed I would eventually grow out of it, but nope.  Here we are, pretty much grown up, and I'm still going strong.  This doesn't really mean I ever throw a big shindig or do anything super memorable, but I get just as excited about it every year.  There's something special about feeling like there's a day that's actually about you...
One year in college, I discovered two birthday twins - same year even! - and I was kinda weirdly sad about it?  I don't know what to say. Im ashamed of myself, but it doesn't mean I'm about to pretend like I don't care that MY BIRTHDAY IS COMING SOON!

I guess it's kinda like Buddy the Elf and his affinity for Christmas.
Except, actually, I get just as excited about Christmas.

December, in general, is just one of the best holidays months.
Yep, I just accidentally typed holidays there instead of months, because, really, December does sort of feel like one big holiday to me.

And?  I get to go to Lights of Tejas twice this year.  I can't wait.
The things to be excited about just keep multiplying.

Let's Get Personal

You know what's really hard?  Facing yourself head-on, and saying "Self, you're afraid of these five things," then proceeding to talk about them.

Just as a note - I don't have a ton of "physical" fears.  I tend to lean very much on the idea that I am the Lord's daughter, and I'm immortal until my work here is done.  That doesn't mean that I'll jump off a cliff or drive my car down the highway at 120 mph, but it does mean that I'm not incredibly afraid of what people can do to me.
The fears I do have are ones I have to face pretty frequently, though:

1)Snakes.  I seriously have so much terror in my heart when it comes to these things - maybe it's because they are so incredibly unpredictable?  They slither, and their entire body is basically made of joints, so they can turn in any direction at any given time!

2)Guns.  They make me incredibly uncomfortable.  Like if I see one, even if it's in a cabinet or something, with no other humans nearby, I just want to quietly walk backwards out the door.  I live in Texas, where people carry guns around with them and in their cars, and I've had to face this fear frequently.  Thankfully I've never had to face a person with a gun in their hand, and I pray I will never have to.  I honestly have no idea what I would do.

3)Failure - and here we're talking specifically about failure in my own eyes.  It doesn't really matter if someone else would look at my life and say I failed in certain areas.  That already would have happened multiple times, honestly.  I'm talking about looking back and saying to myself that I failed at something and never redeemed it.  That would be a horrible day.

4)Not being liked - okay, so this one does have a lot to do with other people.  I realize that I have been incredibly fortunate to have a life where I've almost always been well-liked in the circles I've chosen to run in.  The more I've gotten older, though, the more I've realized I really don't like not being considered like-able.  Yeah, it's happened, and I've dealt with it, but, if possible, I'd rather never have it happen.

5)Not being a mother - probably the biggest on this list. I've heard people say they want to get married because they're "afraid of dying alone" or something along those lines.
I don't know - that's not really my reasoning for wanting to get married.  I have friends and family that love me and will be there for me, and that's not a big fear of mine.  I do want to be married, and I do want to have kids.  I want both of those things equally, and in very different ways.
Out of the two desires, though, the greater fear lies in not ever having kids.
And just for clarity's sake, when I say "having kids" I'm not really referring to the biological process of pregnancy and child-birth (though I think that would be a pretty awesome thing to experience, leading up to raising a child).  More than anything, I want tiny people in my life who call me mommy, and ask me crazy questions, who will grow up to be adult people in my life who still ask me crazy questions, because they know they can bring me their crazy, and still be loved.
In a nutshell, if I don't ever have kids, I will always feel like there was some part of me that was denied life.

Told you this posting-every-day thing wouldn't last.

I am pretty proud of the fact that I was able to do it as long as I did!
And don't you worry - I'm not leaving you for good.  But, really, the past couple of days' prompts for writing were just a little...immature(?)...for my taste (first love and first kiss/night of your 21st birthday/tattoos you have and their meanings [okay, so maybe that one wasn't immature - just not applicable here]).  I mean, I could tell you about my incredibly awkward first kiss, or about the recent realization I've come to that I've probably never been in love.  I could also tell you that I don't remember my 21st birthday - and not because I got drunk, just because I had no interest in celebrating it in a typical American-College-Student way, and probably went out for dinner with friends or something - but those just didn't feel like blog posts that anyone would get any enjoyment out of. Neither I from writing them, nor you from reading them.

So, we come to today's topic, which was definitely worthy:



I always hated the "Where do you see yourself in five years?" interview question, because my heart answer was always "In a happy little home with 2 or 3 kids," while my mouth answer had to be something more like "In [insert name of leadership position] with [insert name of company], hopefully having used my creative abilities to add [insert name of program that would advance company goals]."

Oh yeah, I knew how to do it the right way.  After all, I worked in career services, and coached everybody else on how to be successful in their job search.

But my answer to that question has changed significantly.  I'm not sure there will ever again be that significant of a difference in my heart answer and my mouth answer.  At this point in my life, I don't really have a desire to ever enter the 8-5 office job world again.  I enjoyed being in that type of environment, being able to serve and help make other people's lives a little bit easier, but the way I answer this question now has much more to do with my heart than logic.

If threre's anything the last four or so years of my life has taught me, it's that you never know how things will turn out.
No.  That's too mild a way of saying it: Things will turn out differently than you expect.

So, now, I'm learning that I lean very heavily toward creativity.  I've got enough life experience under my belt to know that I cannot possibly predict where my personal life will be in seven years - there's no way of knowing where I'll be living, and with whom, and why.

But I do know what I'm working toward in my "professional" life.  There are three specific areas I'm working towards, but they all need more work than I'm giving them right now, so maybe this is me writing it out to keep myself accountable.

1)  I've recently been given an opportunity to work with a writing curriculum as a training consultant, which basically means I'll go to schools after they've adopted the curriculum, and train their teachers to implement the curriculum in their classrooms.
Writing and literacy are my passions, so to be able to do this for a company that I believe in is beyond amazing, but y'all!  It's almost like I've been afraid to make it happen.  I'm in the middle of training, and the next part is completely in my hands, and I'm just petrified to complete it...
I don't know what it is, but it's almost like I feel like this is too good to be true, so I don't want to invest in it for fear of losing something I've been happy about - like I'd rather leave it in my future, because as soon as I put it in my present, it'll be headed into my past.
But that is the WRONG way to look at this, and the job itself is one that requires a lot of effort on my part if I'm going to go anywhere with it, so I'd better start making efforts now, at the beginning.

2)  In case you weren't aware, I have an etsy shop where I sell homemade earrings (and, hopefully, sometime in the future, more than just earrings).  You can find it here.  Or just type essiejean.etsy.com in your browser.
The thing about that is, just like so many other things I do, I started it, and it didn't magically bloom into a thriving business, so I just set it aside and didn't do anything actively to make it grow.  I've recently begun studying up on how I can be more intentional and strategic in building it up over the next year - learning from other creatives and using marketing strategies that work for me, so hopefully you will hear more about that in the coming months.  I had big dreams of doing a Holiday marketing blitz, but I feel like I need to focus on other things this holiday season, and just steadily build up my little etsy platform with the goal of maybe doing something huge next holiday season after I've learned more about what actually works for me and my little shop.

3)  Grad School is still on my horizon as far as I'm concerned, but it's probably going to have to wait at least another five years, if not seven, for too many reasons to list here.  But here I am, putting it on this list, because I really do want to make it happen one of these days.  The nice thing is that my goal isn't grad school for grad school's sake.  I want a Master's Degree because I would love to one day teach college writing.  I don't know what I mean by "one day" - Lord willing, maybe it won't be until after I've raised a passel of kids, and taught them how to write.

Nonetheless, someday I'm going to wake up and realize that one day is here, and when that happens, I want to have the skills to meet the day confidently.