Chief

There are times when this hideous aspect of my personality comes out and explodes all over the house. I hate it, every single time. It's upsetting and unsettling and I know it's a terrible example for my children.

Last night I was angry. And I unloaded this basket of anger and frustration and horrible words all over my husband. It was horrible and embarrassing. He, in his love and mercy, told me to go calm down. I didn't listen. I should have.

Finally, I listened to him and went to my room. When I went there, I knew he was upset with me. I knew I had earned his anger. I knew that I'd acted terribly. I also knew that I'd have to go apologize. Do you know what that man did!? Did he come in our room and demand an apology? No. Did he come in there and yell at me and point every single horrible thing I'd done? No. Did he stand in our living room and shout, or break things, or throw things? No. Did he slam the front door and take off to "show me" what I deserved? No. Here is what he did, dear reader: he cleaned the house. Do you know why? So that I could wake up in the morning and see it looking nice. He responded to all of my horrible behavior with love and mercy. He responded with giving me a gift.

I came out to the living room to apologize. My senses had returned and I had to go make things right. I was wrong and I knew it. I hurt the person I loved most in the whole world and I needed to make amends. I needed to reconcile. I am thankful that his forgiveness comes so quickly...

He teaches me so many lessons. His example and his behavior shows me how to be a better person. I have so much more than I could ever have deserved. He truly is amazing beyond my ability to express.

Hail and Farewells

Over the past few months I have been saying a lot of goodbyes. People have been moving on (and more are soon to follow) from this post. Our own family's possible departure was on, then off, then on, then off, then on again, now it's off (for now). My heart has had a lot of sadness, frustration, and agony as these goodbyes have come, funerals, and illnesses and I have certainly wallowed.

Today I am thankful. That might sound strange, but it's the truth. There's a song that has the lyrics: Out of the ashes beauty will rise, for we know spring is coming in the morning. Beauty will rise. Maybe I'm finally to spring (in my heart).

My dear friend AD (for whom I am MOST grateful for) reminded me (as is often needed...) that I needed to grieve. That I had a lot to grieve. It's beautiful to have people in your life who recognize your silly attempts to "stay strong" when they know you need to fall apart. It's even more beautiful that they have the balls to tell you that, and the heart to support you through it. Writing this simple paragraph is filling my eyes with tears of gratitude for which I can not adequately express. She's the greatest "pen pal" a gal could ask for.

I've also come to realize that the clearing out (not ending of friendships, but transformation of location of friendships), opens the doors for new friends to join in the circus. New connections can be formed, when our tight groups move away. New people whom you can support, and be supported by. New inside jokes, new kiddo connections, new bouts of laughter, and new experiences shared over cups of coffee (or tea. I really don't drink coffee, but it sounded better. HA!).

I am blessed. I am blessed with amazing friends. I am blessed with amazing Army wives that surround me with support, laughter, encouragement and prayer. I am blessed with Non Christian friends who accept my religiousness (and whom I hope know that I accept their lack of Jesus-ness) and still support my faith perspectives. I am blessed with people who are rooting for me, my children, and my husband to succeed. I am blessed with parents who give good advice, accept my emotional intensity, and pray for me constantly. I am blessed with children who are amazing individuals. I am blessed with women whom I admire, who allow me to pick their brains all the time for advice. I am blessed with new friendships where we share a mutual faith and pray for each other.

I am immensely blessed. I am thankful for this day where it is fresh in my heart and my mind. I am thankful for new beginnings and exciting adventures that are under foot.

Spring is here. :)

Chief

You and I have had one heck of a story, haven't we Chief? I mean, gosh, it's been over 10 years of this you-and-me saga. It's crazy to me that loving you is so freaking simple. Especially because it seems like everything else in my life is so freaking hard.

I am amazed by our similarities. You and I are virtually identical in almost all thought patterns, except complimentary in every necessary area. Jesus.

We work. And we're basket cases when we're not together. It's almost like one without the other is an unfinished sentence. We lose our clarity, our vulnerability, our safety, our light. We become just like the rest of the world, trapped in misery and pretending to be fine.

Thank you for being my warrior and my friend. Thank you for panicking when I'm sick and not taking it seriously. Thank you for showing me how much you love me by opening car doors, and constantly telling me I'm beautiful. Thank you for believing I'm beautiful, even though I don't. Thank you for accepting that I'm an asshole when I'm mad and I don't ever fight fair. Thank you for accepting me for who I am, instead of attempting to psychoanalyze my every thought, action, and belief. Thank you for trusting me with your heart, and being trustworthy with mine.

You are the joy of my day. I am beyond blessed. I am beyond grateful. I will love you 'til the end.

The Sisterhood

I hate Southern California. I really do. I hate it with an enormous passion and intensity that I can't even describe. Being there makes me feel ugly in parts of my soul that I can't wash out. Being there makes me miserable. People are rude. No one connects, really. Everything is a competition to look richer, thinner, more successful. It's all about image and status and humanity is only talked about in a complete BS "let's look like we really care" kind of way, but go right back to our selfish living. It's difficult to have compassion for someone who says they're struggling financially when they're carrying around a $500 purse. Maybe that makes me judgmental. Okay, not maybe. It does. And I hate that place because it draws out the old habits in me to think and act like that.

It is hard that my entire family lives there. And my relationship with my family is probably complex, in the best word. I have four sisters, some step brothers, and a half brother. I don't really have the best relationship with them, in the idea that we're all best friends and talk all the time. We don't really connect about very much, or have a lot in common, but that's okay. It's strange because they're the only people on this planet that I can absolutely not stand but at the exact same time, they're the only people I would drop everything for and come running, if I was needed. That's just sort of how it is. Your family is your family. It doesn't matter if you think alike, or live alike, or even understand each other. You will always have your sisters, you will always have the craziness that was your childhood, and you always have each others backs (at least when facing the world). 

My family has taught me a lot about love. They've probably taught me the most about grace. The hurts were deep and intense. It wasn't necessarily anyone's fault. It just was what it was. I was different. Not really in any group or category I grew up feeling like an outcast. I think they believed I didn't want to connect. Probably somewhere in the middle was the reality...

I know I've hurt them. I know I've made them feel unwanted. I know I haven't reached out as well as I should have, or worked as hard as I could to bridge the gaps in our differences. 

But I hope they always know that in spite of these things, I love them. I hope they understand that even though I suck at so many things and I hate the place that they live, I still like being around them. I hope they believe that even though I've midwesternized, forsaken my SoCal roots and can't stand pigheaded politics, I don't think they're idiots. I hope they always grasp that I would do anything I could for them, that I pray for them, and that I appreciate them, even if I don't say it. I hope they understand that I admire them, sometimes for the things that irritate me the most about them. 

So to the four people who understand things like Ani D lyrics, and what it means when we're writing them: 

hour follows hour like water in a river 

and from one to the next we don't know 
what each hour will deliver 
we just call it like we see it 
we call it out loud as we can 
and then afterwards we call it all water 
over the dam 

and maybe the moral high ground 
isn't as high as it seems 
maybe we are both good people 
who've done some bad things 
i just hope it was o.k., i know it wasn't perfect 
i hope in the end we can laugh and say 
it was all worth it 

i have had something to prove 
as long as i've had something that needs improving 
and you know that every time i move 
i make a woman's movement 
first you decide what you've gotta do 
then you go out and do it 
and maybe the most that we can do 
is just to see each other thru it

we make our own gravity 
to give weight to things 
and then things fall and they break 
and gravity sings 
we can only hold so much is what i figure 
we try and keep our eye on the big picture 
and the picture keeps getting bigger 

too much is how i love you 
but too well is how i know you 
i've got nothing to prove this time 
just something to show you 
i guess i just wanted you to see 
that it was all worth it to me

Electronically connected

Today we announced a day of family. It sounds weird to announce that because we are always a family, but it had to be done. The phones have to go away, and the games, television, distractions of life needed to be stopped. Today we announced that we would be the six of us, together as one, chillaxin. It has been interesting and awesome all at the same time.

It's amazing how quickly we can forget to spend time together. We become wrapped up in this illusion that if we're all in the same room then we're being together. It's a crazy lie that I will be honest, I succumbed to.

The truth is, there are many moments where I have to force myself to actively engage my children. Sit with them and talk. Ask them silly questions. Dance in the living room. Sing, as loud as we can, together. Look them in the eye and really pay attention to what they're communicating. 

Today has been a day dedicated to that. It's been great. It's also been challenging when my phone is sitting right there looking so lonely... It's pathetic that electronics have the ability to so completely corrupt my brain and my notions of human connectivity. But it's also really cool that today I was reminded that I need to be more available to the people in front of me and less "connected" to those far away.

Liberty

There are probably a thousand moments every day when I look across at him and say to myself I can't do this anymore. I can't say goodbye. I can't let him go. I can't handle the sleepless nights and the anxiety of not knowing... I can't handle the ache in my soul when his side of the bed is empty. I can't handle life without him. The truth is, there is no "life" without him. He is my life. To all my feminist friends that statement probably just sent them into a panic attack. But I say to you, there are those loves that come... Those once in a lifetime, soul wrenching, life encompassing loves, that are so rare, so unique, and so magical that they really do become your life. There is no reality of separating myself from him. There is no line where I can say "this is him and this is me." It doesn't exist. The supernatural beauty of God's powerful grace superimposed the two of us together and we are, together, one life.

I believe in finding one thing in your freaking universe and doing it so well that no one can stand to look at it. I believe in fighting, kicking, and screaming to be so good at it that no one can look at you and say "wow... not doing so well there..." I believe that this man, this "life" is my one astronomical thing. It's my one thing that no human being can say "Wow, she really botched that one." It's my one thing that I will go to my grave knowing I gave it all, I fought the fight, I surrendered my demons, and I loved.

He is completely imperfect. I am a basket case of insanity. And in the muck and the craziness of a thousand people who look at us as individuals and think to themselves wow... you're NOT awesome, the two of us joined forces and became amazing. My panic, my terror, my lifetime of nightmares and trauma, came down to the embrace of one man who was strong enough to be the man I needed. He snuck into my sleep and he fought off those demons that haunted me. He showed me what love, beauty, and self respect were. He stood up for me because he knows I'm too weak to defend myself. He protects me from so many people who take advantage of my kindness.

He and I are not very good at too many things. We're not good at being friends, or "sociable" people. We're not good at keeping in touch, or going out of our way for others. We're not good at superficiality, or ass kissing, or pomp and circumstance. We aren't good at playing along with party lines and saying what people want us to say, or being charming. But we know. how. to. love. each. other. We know how to do it in a way that no one else does. I know that when the kids are driving him crazy and he's so angry, sometimes the one sentence he needs to hear is "You're a good daddy, babe." He knows that when my feelings are all over the map I need to talk about it, be irrational, cry hysterically, and then I'll go back to normal. We both know how to make each other laugh, and we do it all the time. I know that he feels loved when I take care of him, defend him, fight for him. He knows the same about me.

And there are a thousand moments in every day when I think to myself I just don't want to do this anymore. I don't want to share him. I don't want them to get to take him away... Because when they take him away, they take me away, and send me off to a place that I don't understand and that I don't enjoy. The world gets dark, and everything feels bizarre.

There are a thousand other moments where I say to myself I'm in this for the long haul. I know what I have and I'm not going anywhere...

Knight in Shining Armor

I was recently asked what Chief brought to my life and I honestly somewhat struggled to answer that. In my head I was thinking what hasn't he brought to my life? and so I sort of fumbled out an answer about how he takes care of me. I didn't do Chief justice in my response. However, in the past 24 hours, a beautiful example has come to light and I want to document it for our kids, so I'm posting it here.

Last night, after being asleep for approximately 10 minutes (give or take) I woke up with a jolt. It was the kind of wake up where you're in so much pain you're gasping for breath and seeing stars. My back was. killing. me. I could barely move. I could barely breathe. I was panting (hyperventilating) and crying hysterically. It was agonizing.

What did Chief do? Did he give me a lecture about toughing up, and how much he needed sleep because he had to get up early? No. Did he get mad at me for waking him up with my hysterically sobbing and my agonizing plea of "help me" over and over again? No. He set to work. He dove into the mire and muck if his hysterical wife and he rode it out with me.

He got an ice pack. That made the pain worse. He rubbed it (so much so that his arms went numb from rubbing, but yet he kept on). He held my body in his lap and rocked me back and forth and side to side, for so many hours gently telling me "Try to fall asleep". He got bouncy balls so I could try rocking on there. We tried showers (worked the best, however, hot water eventually runs out...), everything. He begged me to go to the ER. He pleaded with me to take some Vicodin. I rejected both of those notions. I thought maybe this was part of the healing process and I was going to "tough it out." He accepted that, and continued on with me anyway. He prayed for me. He claimed Christ's healing on me. He did everything a knight in shining armor would do.

At 9am, I finally relented. I was in a sobbing mess of tears and I said to him "I need to go to the ER." He dressed me (literally. Couldn't move), essentially carried me to the car, called a sitter to watch the kids, and took me there. His 100% focus was on making sure I was okay. In the ER, he climbed in the bed to rock me back and forth because the pain was agonizing. He watched my blood pressure and pulse (which were both sky high from the pain). He helped me to the bathroom, change into the hospital gown, try to sleep, to drink water. He did it all. He went all day with not a single meal. No drop of food, because he wouldn't leave my "side until I know you're okay."

He made every aspect of this horrible experience better, because of who he is. He loved me beyond himself, his needs, his exhaustion, his hunger. He loved me more than anything else in the world. He loved me beautifully, perfectly, heavenly.

So when people ask me what Chief brings to my life, I really don't know how to answer simply. He brings everything to my life. He fights for me. He fights to make me better. He defends me. He honors me. He cherishes me. He loves me like every single freaking man should love their wives. It brings me to tears, really. Who am I that such a man as this would love me this way?

Thank you Chief for taking this huge ball of mess and making certain she didn't feel alone in this ordeal. You are everything to me, and so much more.