Giving

San Diego has skipped winter this year. We experienced the worst drought California has seen in the past 100 years which has caused the lack of vegetation and all the fires. However one blissful weekend it rained all weekend long.

The wind blew causing all the leaves to fall off the branches and coat our courtyard inside our apartment complex with a carpet of foliage.

There were puddles everywhere and streams of water running down the streets. I even heard thunder. As a former Midwest girl this is a novelty now that I live in San Diego. It was a truly beautiful sound. Scott and I decided to start on a 1500 piece puzzle of Van Gogh's Cafe Terrace at Night. It is still in the works on our kitchen table. It more than just a "rainy day" puzzle. It's a "rainy month" and then some type puzzle. As the rain let up I decided to go on a walk that afternoon as I always do after a rain. Scott stayed home and worked on the puzzle since he has more patience for such things than I do. After a rain I feel an intense need to go out and find what rain has done to my surroundings, to nature, to my neighborhood and see what it has revealed.

In church we have been talking about giving. Scott and I have tried to become more intentional about praying for our neighborhood and asking God to show us how we can bless those near to us. Growing up I didn't live in a neighborhood. I lived out on the country on 30+ acres. I found solace and adventure in the space and freedom I had on this land. I had forests and trees to climb, rolling hills to run down and sled on and a pond to fish in. I had a fort, a canoe, and a fence to climb over. There were endless trails and endless possibilities out in the wilderness for me as a kid. I want to think about my neighborhood like that now. There is beautify to be found everywhere. Now instead of a forest and cows as my neighbors I have nail salons, the post office, bars, coffee shops, books stores and antique stores. There are beautiful faces and barking dogs and (sometimes honking horns) and the smell of coffee beans roasting. There are sidewalks and houses, yards, flowers, churches and there are still trees but I avoid climbing my neighbor's trees.There are spaces and places and lives that feel lost and alone.

         Scott and I haven’t done anything extravagant in our neighborhood. We have just tried to greet our baristas by name. I make eye contact with the people who do my nails and ask them about their kids. We talk to our neighbors about the weather. We try to make sure to tip well. We pray for the houses we pass on our walks.  It hasn’t been all Sesame Street. One day I was driving home and was waiting for a man to cross the street before I turned left onto my street. The big green truck behind me was in a hurry and honked at me. I was in no mood after a long day of work and a stressful meeting. I threw my hands in the air at said truck and seriously considered flipping this person off. Weirdly enough this truck followed me onto my street, onto my alley and into MY parking lots. Waittttt…..this person was my neighbord?!! She got out of her car and I got out of mine awkwardly and we both headed to the door to get inside our gate. She apologized to me and said she was in a hurry. I explained to her I was waiting for a man to walk across the street. Silence. It was painfully uncomfortable as we both walked to our apartments. This is the reality of living a human life when you pull back the curtains of the glamorous life real people don’t actually live.

I want people to see Jesus in me and I want them to experience this generous, irresistible and warm light. I am trusting that little acts of giving in our neighborhood are beautiful even if small. Some days it comes more naturally than others and other days I just want to flip people off.

At the risk of sounding too cheesy I am trusting that the time and prayers we put in on our ordinary days will create something stunning and extraordinary in the future. I pray the small pieces create a big work of art.  Hopefully like our never-ending puzzle J

21 things i know about love

In honor of Valentine’s Day I thought I would write a blog post. This was my first Valentine’s Day married. It’s crazy to me that Scott and I will have been married for a year come the end of March.

Sometimes we feel like fresh newly weds, bright eyed and bushy tailed and have literally NO clue what we are doing and other times we feel like we’ve been married for a long time because we feel so comfy and close together. 

As a marriage and family therapist I went into marriage terrified and wanting to do everything right. I figured if I studied for 8 years how to have the perfect and most healthy relationship surely I could do it! Education is a funny thing and so is book knowledge. Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE what I studied. I am grateful to be practicing therapy at the YMCA. However experiences can teach you things a bit faster than the books. There is no perfect formula.  Thankfully relationships are not like Algebra equations with only one answer. (if it was I would fail). Not one size fits all.  Here are a few things I’ve observed about love and being married over the past year.

1.    DON’T compare your marriage to someone else. This is not helpful on any level. My experience is my experience and that is what makes my marriage sacred. It is what we have experienced. Comparison only leads to shame. Scott and I like learning from other people’s relationships but we work hard not to compare ourselves because we are special and unique as we are.

2.    Learn to delight in the ways your spouse cannot be defined and the ways they cannot be tamed. I’m glad we are not robots. I’m glad there is madness, impulsivity, weirdness and creativity in my marriage. It makes the magic. 

3.    Do go to bed angry. Honestly sometimes Scott and I wake up the next morning and have no idea what we were fighting about. Trying to talk something out when you are angry, anxious and operating out of “limbic” mood is not a good way to resolve anything. Get some sleep so your brain has a minute to recover and the reasoning side of your brain will come back to life! It’s a miracle!

4.    Always, even when it’s lots of work, let your spouse love the parts of you that you would rather hide.

5.    Which leads me to my next piece of advice, don’t hide!!! As researcher and licensed social worker,  Brene Brown writes “We cultivate love when we allow our most vulnerable and powerful selves to be deeply seen and known”. To dare greatly is to be vulnerable.

6.    Have dinner together :)

7.    Make fun plans together and go on adventures. 

8.    Read to each other

9.    Be grateful for each other

10.   Be best friends

11.  Be ridiculous and impulsive

12.  Be your spouse’s greatest fan, loudest advocate, fiercest fighter and the one who can’t keep the confetti and balloons held back. Celebrate them.

13.     Enjoy the truth that you are bold enough to stand alone but embrace it when you’re tender enough to need support. It’s okay to need.

14.   Research continues to show that mutual physical affection creates a stronger bond by releasing oxytocin.  Affection can be very grounding after a hard day of work or after a vulnerability hang over. I enjoy “burrowing” as Scott puts it and I also enjoy “squishing” him.  I like it when Scott picks me up and twirls me around till we are both dizzy. I like it when we cook in the kitchen and slow dance together in an awkward rhythm.

15.   Buy each other prizes. Okay obviously this is my guilty pleasure but seriously this can’t hurt EVER. I love prizes. Sometims Scott comes home with chocolate or wine or flowers. Sometimes he buys me sharpie markers cause I am obsessed with them. He buys me Dr. Seuss books and candles. It makes my whole day.

16.  Have a date night.

17.  Write each other hand-written notes. 

18.  Take a deep breath and pray

19. Be attached.  Clinical Psychologist, Sue Johnson writes,“Although our culture has framed dependency as a bad thing, a weakness, it is not. Being attached to someone provides our greatest sense of security and safety"

20. Verbally affirm each other out loud. 

21.  “Love is not something we give or get; it is something that we nurture and grow, a connection that can only be cultivated between two people when it exists within each one of them – we can only love others as much as we love ourselves” Nurture your love. Be tender with yourself and your spouse.

Pale…(aka you must be ill)

I’ve been thinking about how enmeshed we are as a culture. We are not differentiated. If I look different than you, that makes me anxious. If you look different than me, that makes you sad. Stay with me.

After reading through Darling I found interesting facts…

"According to the New York Times Iran has become the nose job capital of the world in recent years as a large population of women shed their distinctly Persian profile for a ‘Western nose’

The most requested surgery in Korea is the double eyelid surgery so as to accomplish the round, wide eyed look.

Apparently in the Phillippines, it is estimated that four in 10 women use whitening agents on their traditionally darker skin…"

But in America, you know the drill, everyone is running to the tanning beds come winter and act like it’s a crime if you haven’t been tanning for months before your wedding. You have to look your MOST beautiful (which does NOT include fair skin) In American, Botox abounds as white women adopt more voluptuous lips often found across the globe.

I’ve been recently thinking about what a shame it is that we don’t like what we have.  If we are thin, we want to be curvy. If we have curly hair, we want straight hair, if we have light skin, we want darker skin. The advertisers are having the most fun ever. Want straight hair? No problem. Buy straightening spray, a straightener, the shampoo that straightens, and on and on and on. You want smoother skin? Well there are one thousand different kinds of creams out there.  All you have to do is buy buy buy! That gym membership will make your thighs more narrow but make your butt more curvy. This pill will enlarge your breasts. This bra will make them more perky. These heels will make you taller. This foundation will cover your freckles and beauty marks (aka blemishes). After awhile I have to wonder if we are just in a mad rush to hide ourselves. The best we can do is camouflage ourselves and hope that we just look like everyone else. We hope to fade out of the picture and hide our true selves behind our latest and greatest fad. 

This is where creativity is stunted. How can we be beautiful without some diversity? I don't want to live in a world without color.I have been studying my ethnicity and it makes me sad to think I have been resentful of who I am and what I have been given. The Bachelor was sued for racial discrimination because it seems the same looking people are on the show season after season. And now finally they have Juan Pablo who is the first non-Caucasian Bachelor in franchise history (17 Bachelors to be exact) 

Why do we define our beauty by how similar we are to everyone? Why does everyone have to be the same size to be beautiful? Why do we have to be the same weight to be considered gorgeous? Why do we have to be this height to walk with confidence? Why this specific type of nose or these type of eyes to be considered pretty and attractive? I don't want us to go back to black and white television. I hope we have evolved to something much more vibrant and bold and colorful. As I studied my heritage and the physical characteristic and traits I began to realize that I don’t have to be someone else to be beautiful. I have always thought dark hair, dark eyes and dark skin are not only stunning but mysterious and to be envied. No matter how I “tanned” I would usually end up with a sun burn. I studied my German and Irish and Finnish and Norwegian roots and found to my surprise they have pale complexions, they are fair skinned, and they are what some would consider pale! I don’t want to reject who I am. I don’t want to look in the mirror and say, “sorry, not good enough…” I don’t need to look like what the magazines, the advertisers and the media deem beautiful.  They aren’t after my best, they are after my money and they are stealing my contentment. Rather I want to come from a place of gratitude about what I have been given.

Don’t get me wrong, I fall for the new lotions and make-up products as well as the latest trends in clothing. My hobby is shopping so you can imagine how much I am influenced by the media. But if I can learn to embrace my own creativity and my own look without having to blend into what “society” tells me is pretty, I will be the better for it.  Maybe we can spend our money not on the latest beauty products but on a massage to help us practice gratitude for our bodies and all that they do for us. Maybe we can spend our money on an experience like kayaking or wine tasting because life is so much more than how we look, it’s about what we can touch, taste and smell. We are sacred humans on a beautiful adventure.  I want to be differentiated. I want to know that I am enough just as I am. Then maybe I can celebrate the differences rather than resent them. 

Enchanting Spaces

I just love a blank white page.  It’s Saturday. I am outside enjoying the sunny afternoon. I took Scott’s bike out for a ride and headed to the Carmelite monastery. It is my favorite place to think and be. It makes me want to always live in this neighborhood. I take a street called Hawley until it ends. It becomes more and more quiet the further down you go. Everything is so colorful as you enter the monastery flower garden. Colors of purple, pink, red, yellow, orange and white flowers surround me. Green bushes are manicured to perfection, a little path winds around the garden. There is a bench to sit on in the middle and trees that blow lazily with the breeze. The steps are a dusty red color. It is truly an enchanting little place I discovered. The monastery is white and ornate and has white pillars. The wooden French doors are carved with different pictures of ink, feather and quill, books, moon, stars , the cross, fish, leaves and flowers.

This is a place where there is really nothing to do but be. It’s calm and tranquil. I feel closer to Mary here and I feel closer to God here too. Sometimes I imagine the sister nuns watching me from their windows about the garden and praying for me. That alone fills my heart with solace. Sometimes I imagine Jesus sitting with me or praying for me. Sometimes I imagine what I would say to Mary if she and I could have a chat. There is a life size statue of her inside the monastery. I think I would ask her if Jesus was safe, if I could trust the Divine. I might ask her if females are really included and if we really are important in the Kingdom. I might ask her how she approaches the Divine or the Anointed, how she talks to God. I feel like I can come here and peer at Jesus over Mary’s shoulder where it feels safe and secure.There are yellow butterflies bouncing around me as I sit on my bench overlooking the garden and all it’s mystery.

I am reminded to ask Jesus to help me stay grounded and centered in who I am, that I am enough. That I can let go of striving. That Jesus needs me to be me. I am thankful for the many voices in my life that affirm my healthy decisions and cheer me on.

When I walk around our neighborhood I am reminded of my Grandma Moot’s daily walks and how she noticed all the details. When I was a kid I remember thinking that she walked so slow. I wanted to speed though everything I did to get to the next great thing.  Now I understand her wisdom in a slow walk. She celebrated every little thing. I can heard birds chirping and I can see hummingbirds zooming past me. I want to be a person who lives in color and celebrates all the good little things, the person who keeps knocking to open the mysteries of life; I will keep seeking and finding a way to be at peace with me.