10 Things To Tell You...

10 things to tell you:

I grew up in the house just beside the house that I live in now. I experience the same seasons, the same smells, the same neighbors, the same humid summers, the same snowy winters…my road home has never changed in 39 years.

Someone who has influenced me is my mom. I thought long and hard about this prompt, and I can think of many people, people that I know in real life, and people that I have never met, and people that I love more than life itself…but the very top of all of those lists is always my mom. My mom is who I have always wanted to be when I grow up-she excels at everything she does (and if she doesn’t excel at it, she just doesn’t do it), she always buys the perfect gift for every situation, she knows who she is and she stands firm in her beliefs. Making her proud has been my job since the day that my birth interrupted her Christmas in 1978.

A thing that changed my worldview was my divorce (we knew we would get there). My divorce changed the way that I viewed my own personal little world, and what my future looked like, and just literally everything that I hold dear to my heart got turned upside down and flipped inside it-it’s still there, it’s just different. But it also allowed this shift inside of me, a way of looking at other people, and seeing the world through a kinder lens, through a more tolerant lens. Basically, happiness became something that I truly wish for every person, however that appears to them, in whatever form. And of course, I learned that sometimes the ending that seems the most painful can lead to the most beautiful beginning.

I am strangely good at organizing a bookshelf. Creating a spreadsheet. Cleaning a closet.

I have mixed feelings about most things. Nothing in my world is black and white, and sometimes that makes for wonderful dialogue, and sometimes that makes for frustration. And while there are days where I wish there wasn't quite so much gray in my thinking, I also know that it's simply the way that God made me.

A defining moment of my life was becoming a mom. All I wanted to do, ever, in my whole life, was to become Betsy’s mom. It’s all I ever talked about. The day that they handed her to me, and I looked into her big blue eyes-it was like winning the lottery times 1000.

A recent discovery I can’t stop talking about is my ability to make playlists on YouTube. Because you type the song in and there it is. We live in the future. (And yes, I'm well aware that I'm late to the party. And that the party is on Spotify.)

Right now I’m struggling with not creating a 5 year plan. I have a general outline for life in the next few years, dictated mostly by my children’s ages and interests. But for my own goals, my own direction, my own dreams…I have no idea. I’ve never not had a plan. Even the past 3 years of riding those waves of grief, they had an end goal. But just now, I don’t really have any idea of what exactly I want life to look like. It’s scary.

My magical reset button is reading about Elizabeth and Jessica Wakefield. Or Kristy Thomas, Mary Anne Spier, Claudia Kishi, and Stacey McGill. Or (sigh) Joe Garbarini.

In 3 months, will you ask me about...okay, I understand the point of this prompt is to hold me accountable. But see that whole "what am I struggling with" question? I'm none too sure what to ask me about. Ask me about life and routines and not being able to control the future? Maybe in 3 months I'll have a really pithy answer to all of that.


*Taken from Laura Tremaine's 10 Things To Tell You challenge

Only the Horses (Can Find Us Tonight)...

My life is pretty purposefully quiet.

I’m an introvert, big time, which I used to mistake for being shy. I was shy, so very shy, when I was in college-I barely spoke to anyone for four years, which was as lonely and painful as it sounds.

I’m not shy anymore. But I am still an introvert and that lends itself to books and music and podcasts. (My idea of a perfect Friday night when the girls are gone involves a glass of wine, a good book, and sweatpants.)

Some of what I’ve been loving recently:

Books

Us Against You by Fredrik Backman

I read Beartown last year and while I thought it was well written, the story really didn’t do much for me. I felt like nothing really happened that I wasn’t expecting. This sequel exceeded my expectations-it is beautifully written with some profound observations-it explores and mines the tragedy from the first novel and offers up some searing truths.

Clock Dance by Anne Tyler

I loved the first half of this book. I love stories told as characters age through time and the beginning half of this book delivers on that.

The Ensemble by Aja Gabel

I loved most of this book-there were some cliched bits here and there that could have stood some finessing, but mostly this was an enjoyable read. I listened to the playlists at the beginning of each section as I read the book, and I think that helped to understand the complexity of the music.

Bachelor Nation by Amy Kaufman

Disclaimer: I don’t watch any television anymore that isn’t either sports or the occasional Hallmark movie. That sounds pretentious, I know-it’s not that I don’t want to watch tv, but that I just don’t have the time. Eventually I will get around to it. But I say that to explain that I really only know the basic premise of this show and not much more, and I still thoroughly enjoyed this book.

You Think It, I’ll Say It by Curtis Sittenfeld

I love Sittenfeld, mostly. And I love short stories, nearly always. So this worked for me.


Hey Ladies! The Story of 8 Best Friends, 1 Year, and Way, Way Too Many Emails by Michelle Markowitz and Caroline Moss

A perfect beach book, told through emails and text messages-I think most women can easily identify with being inside of a passive aggressive email chain. It’s not deep, it’s broad and funny and not especially life changing, but not all books need to be.


Podcasts:

Pantsuit Politics

This podcast prides itself on bringing nuance to its political view, and if I had to describe my own politics in one word it would certainly be nuance. I listen to Sarah and Beth every week and enjoy that they each have a distinct way of viewing the world but can speak to each other in a way that is respectful of the other. They have been doing a series on 9/11, digging into the history going back all the way to World War I and bringing it forward, and it has been excellent.

Overdue

I love the Overdue podcast and use it as a tool for learning the spine of books that I just know I might never get to (I mean, I honestly believe I’ll eventually read everything but people who are good at math are constantly telling me that it’s impossible). Right now they are doing a series for their patreon supporters called Stop! Homer Time where they are going book by book through The Odyssey and they release it on the main feed as well. It has inspired me to order my own copy and (fingers crossed) maybe I’ll actually understand all of it.

Typeology

I am a personality junkie (this drives my psychologist sister a bit nuts as she mostly thinks it baloney but let me tell you, she is wrong). I’m a 9 on the Enneagram, and knowing this helps me to come at life from a different place of understanding and acceptance of other people. If you are at all interested in the enneagram, I would recommend both the book The Road Back to You and this podcast, both of which are by Ian Morgan Cron.

The Bible Binge

I have gone on and on in several posts about The Popcast with Jamie Golden and Knox McCoy (they are, as Jamie would say, a delight). They are in their third season of The Bible Binge, which is sort of their take on the bible, so it’s funny and topical and also theological and inspired.

Also, if theology is your thing, I again am going to tell you that the First Five app is wicked cool and all sorts of awesome.

It’s not my weekend to have the girls, and so that means lots of cleaning and rearranging the furniture and getting lost in a book and being grateful for solitude. Of course, I miss the girls, and I do have some really fun things planned this weekend that involve other people. But, when life first flipped upside down, weekends without the girls dragged on and on. Embracing the fact that I genuinely enjoy time spent alone with a good book-for as long as I like-it’s a gift that I am given every other weekend.

Choose Joy...

This year of being brave has been a bit life changing-yes, doing the brave things has (mostly) been super fun and eye opening. I’ve managed to try some new things and be kinder to myself if I mess up because, after all, being brave is about taking a risk.

The girls and I have learned to be brave together. Which I highly recommend, because nothing makes you braver, truly, than being the only adult in a situation and so you just have to act like, oh, I got this.

We have also let go of several things in this past year, and the result has been (to me at least) a bit surprising. I have always prided myself on being the mom that does all the things. So, somewhat naturally, this lent itself to kids who did all the things.

I want to preface this entire post with this: I truly admire everyone out there who is volunteering their time and energy to all the things. The years that I spent as the room mom, the Sunday School teacher, the Girl Scout leader, the Cloverbud advisor, all of it-they are some of the best memories of my life. In no way at all do I want to suggest that people out there who graciously give of their time should feel that I’m dogging on them.

But this past year, the girls and I have shed a lot of activities. We have purposely curated a schedule filled with only the activities that are bringing us joy. And this has led to more fun than I quite imagined.

When life first flipped upside down for me, my instinct was to insist that nothing change in the girls’ life. That they would keep all of their activities and that I would just somehow manage (with, of course, help from my parents). They had done nothing to cause this eruption in our lives, and I was bound that they not feel that they were missing out.

So, we tried to keep up. We continued to do all the things. I did have to cry uncle at physically being in charge of so many things, but as far as the girls’ schedules, they were as full as ever.

But what I have come to realize is that, for us, doing all the things is just not what we need anymore.

This past year, we have said goodbye to several activities that we enjoyed at one time, but that were just draining us anymore. And, just like when you clean out a closet and only keep the clothes that you actually want to wear, when you clear your schedule of all the things that you are doing just because you think you should be doing it, and instead only concentrate on the one or two activities that you truly want to be doing, you find that you are enjoying life more.

Or at least we are.

This new schedule allows us to have down time, for each of us to be alone for a bit each day, which we all need. It allows us to have game nights and to watch movies and spend time together at the end of a long day. For us, it’s lovely.

The thing is, our lives are different than they would have been if life had not been interrupted three years ago. And part of making peace with that reality is accepting that we are all three just a little bit changed-we all three need each other in a little bit different way. Spending time together, just the three of us-it’s important.

I worry about writing this post because I know that there are people in the world who truly love all of the busy of life, especially life at the ages of my girls. And that’s totally cool and I understand that. But I also felt like I needed to put my truth into this space because I also know that there are plenty of people who don’t yearn for busy, especially at the ages of my girls-and I do feel like there is a bit of a pressure that, if we don’t do everything now, we won’t ever get to do it again. Which indeed may be true-but movie nights and game nights will be a thing of the past in a few short years as well.

Choose joy. Whatever that means to you. Choose it again and again.