Life on a Fairy's Wing...

This past weekend was Homecoming in the place that I call home.

(Can you call it homecoming if you have never left?)

When I was a senior in high school, I walked around with a video recorder every day (much to the embarrassment of my friends). I wanted to capture what life was like for me at that age, the edge of eighteen. I wanted to videotape all of the people, not just the popular kids, I wanted to remember the fun bits- my friends and our weird sense of humor.

I was always watching, making up stories, imagining the life that all of these people around me were leading. I was too quiet at times, and much too loud at other times. I was often just too much, and the only way I knew to avoid that was to shrink back and hide behind the camera.

The video shows all the things you might expect. Football games and pep rallies and me and my friends putting on makeup for homecoming. It shows every assembly and concert. I made scrapbooks (4 of them) filled with every newspaper article about our class.


What I don't have anywhere but inside my skin is that feeling, that anxiety that I carried, that notion that if only I would do all the things perfectly, I would somehow become a confident, more popular girl who might just catch the eye of a boy. (Not to spoil the ending, but that never happened, in high school anyway.)

I see the parallel- I'm still that girl so filled with an anxiety that threatens to overtake me, still trying so hard to do things in the proper manner, thinking that somehow this will fix all of this panic over the idea that I have no idea where life is headed.

Most of my life is deliriously happy. Most of my life is filled with blessings wholly undeserved, family and friends and a job that I love, movies and books and interesting conversations with a particularly special person. All amazing.

I can never quite pin it down, though. Never quite convince myself it's not all just about to crumble. And then I feel guilty because, after all, I am blessed with so much and this still persists.


Anxiety sucks. That is simply the point of this post.

"They were a satisfactory hint of the unreality of reality, a promise that the rock of the world was founded securely on a fairy's wing."
-F. Scott Fitzgerald

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.

"Precisely in the deepest and most important matters, we are unspeakably alone.”
-Rainer Maria Rilke

This blog, quite accidentally, turned into a blog about grief.


Sometimes I try to write exactly why that is, or what the point of writing about it is, or just get my arms around a loss quite as confounding as a divorce. I find myself-still-when I tell people that I’m divorced feeling like I want to somehow convey that I took my marriage vows very seriously, but also that I’m a much healthier, much happier person divorced than I was particularly at the end of my marriage. Why I stress over this, I don’t know-it’s beyond silly.

"We must trust in what is difficult.”

I have found myself recently trying to explain why this time of solitude, this time of falling into a sadness that had, to my mind, no conceivable end, why that is the ultimate grace of grief?

Here’s the thing: I wouldn’t trade it. I wouldn’t, if I could somehow reverse time, do anything differently. Being still was important. Not knowing the ending is important (as hard as that remains for me). Being alone is important.

Learning to be alone has been the biggest grace of all. Going to football games and sitting by myself, going out to dinner by myself, to the movies and shopping and all the things that I dreaded to do alone for some reason-I can’t quite remember why that seemed scary to me 3ish years ago but it did.

"I believe that that love remains so strong and intense in your memory because it was your first deep aloneness and the first inner work that you did on your life.”

I’m not quite eloquent enough to state this in the way I want to, but my point is this: grief is a gift of grace. And it doesn’t seem like it at all, and it only seems sad and lonely. But, for me anyway, figuring out who I am when you strip away all that I defined myself as, it’s such ultimate joy.

I honestly intend to pivot the blog into a new space-and I always worry when it’s this sort of piece that insists itself to be written that I am again only seeming like that sad, lonely girl when I promise, I am anything but-but I want to give this a voice. I want my little corner of the universe to be stamped with this truth, always-holding the pieces of something that you loved is sad. It just is. But it’s also the beginning of who you get to become.

Ultimately, I grieved not only Nick and the loss of our family, but the loss of who Joy was as a wife. Taking the time to sit inside of that empty space and just let it live-it’s hard. But the reward of figuring out, well, okay, if I’m not that Joy, then who the heck am I? It’s worth it.

“Love consists of this: that two solitudes protect and border and greet each other.”


*Quotes from Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke

But Do You Have A Plan?

Planning is my love language.

Sincerely. It’s my act of service to the world. It’s taken me 39 years and some therapy to learn that not everyone wants to be organized-this was a revelation to me. I knew that not all people were organized, of course, but I assumed that all people in the world deep down wanted to be organized, and have everything in its place. Coming to terms with the idea that not everyone is at least striving for order-it was (is) a mind-blowing thought.

For me, order is my coping mechanism. I would have been adjusting the drapes as the Titanic sank. The more out of control something feels inside of my life, the more I place my routine around it. See: my hair.

So anyway, this is one of my favorite times of year, middle of August, weather just starting to turn a bit, planning out all of my fall decorating and activities-and, of course, the girls and I getting back into the routine of school and sports and dance and piano. Even though summer is gloriously fun, and it is so nice to have a break from homework and just lay around and swim and read a lot, the three of us do best with a routine, and fall provides that for us.

(We have learned to lighten our schedule in the past year, and concentrate on only the activities that are bringing us joy. But that’s a different blog post.)

Because I basically live my life on a school calendar schedule still, fall is when I buy my planner for the year. In the past four years I have bought an Erin Condren paper planner. I loved the look of Erin Condren. The paper planner lives on our kitchen island, to serve as a reference point for the girls (and sometimes my parents) as to what is going on when. Everyone has their own color so you know immediately if the activity includes you. This suited us.

However, this year when I began my planner shopping, I wanted something a little different (not a lot different). I still wanted the look of the Erin Condren planner-spiral bound and sturdy paper and the vertical layout-but I wanted to customize the layout. I wanted each of the girls to have their own space-I didn’t want to be wedded to using the different colors because, while it’s pretty to look at, it’s time consuming to write everything out in different pens, and really, we are the only people who ever look at it.

I ended up getting a Plum Paper planner and I am delighted with it. It has a similar look to Erin Condren (the only thing I really miss is the rose-colored spiral binding). I was able to break each day out into a space for me, Betsy, and Felicity, as well as a space for work, meal plans, and the blog, which was exciting and somewhat grownup. There’s also space for anything extra that might not fit those categories.

When I added in all of our fall activities, I did use the colors, but I’m fairly sure that going forward I’m not going to-it isn’t necessary anymore, and I actually like the look of the black pen on white paper.

Plum Paper was significantly cheaper than Erin Condren as well (I spent $40 as opposed to $80). Overall, I’m very pleased with it.

The other calendar that I use on a regular basis is the Cozi app. This lives on my phone, and also on Nick and Jenifer’s phones, and Betsy’s phone. It’s a shared calendar so that we know when the girls’ activities are-it would work well for anyone that you want to share your calendar with, but I would especially recommend it for co-parenting. It saves us a lot of back and forth about when the girls are available.

I could go on and on. For me, laying something out is the best and easiest way to know what is coming. It’s cool if planning isn’t your thing. But if you are struggling with balancing your schedule, those are two of the easiest ways that I know of to get your arms around it.

And for now, I’m super excited for football Friday night and the idea that it’s nearly time to get out all the pumpkins and I am most blessed to be going into another school year with my favorite girls, which will surely be full of all the things, and we will hope for more good than bad, and savor all of this time together.

Fear of Falling...

Remember in January when I said 2018 was going to be my year of being brave?

One week ago today, being brave was climbing a rather rickety ladder up 25 feet in the air and flipping around on a trapeze as if I had the slightest notion what I was doing.

The old Joy would probably not have tried. She definitely would not have actually succeeded in doing a backflip off on the bar. Why is that?

Certainly part of it is that I am in better shape than the old me-that cannot be denied. But also I have become a tad bit fearless. As I climbed that ladder I told myself that even if I fell down and made an idiot of myself, what did it matter? I would have tried. I would have proved to myself that I am willing to take a risk. That’s a tricky thing for me, trusting that risks won’t always end in hurt. Or that even if they do, I won’t break from said hurt.

Two weeks I got to hear Lysa TerKurst speak (because of this sometimes amazing thing called the internet). Lysa is the most profound speaker and teacher that I have simply stumbled upon on my own journey through this maddening grief and rebirth cycle I’ve been on. I’ve mentioned the First 5 app that I use for my devotions a couple of different times-Lysa is the head of Proverbs 31 ministries, of which First 5 is a part. Lysa’s teachings reach some part of my soul that is aching to understand my faith in the context of loss.

Her teaching, the one that I was listening to as I was washing my hair two weeks ago, her teaching was about continuing in the face of disappointment. I listened as she weaved a tale of theological teachings and grand ideas about faith and sin and ultimate redemption, and then she got to the bit where she tied this into her own story of loss and disappointment. Her story of her husband’s betrayal, and of what that sort of disappointment does to your soul, and how on earth you take that and move on and change somehow for the better.

Sometimes I feel so ridiculous for how hard my divorce was on my heart. In reality, my divorce was a healthy and necessary part of my life. I don’t go into all of the bits and pieces of the bad in my marriage. But rest assured, I do know, somewhere, in the back of my mind, I’m this new and different person, physically and emotionally and even somewhat spiritually, because…because. How many different ways can I teach myself that I’m a better person for letting go of this notion that holding onto something that was causing me nothing but hurt and pain and misery in the end was a brilliant idea?

I’m none too sure. But flipping around on a trapeze bar, being told by the instructor that I’m flying so well-somehow that’s a piece of it. My sister and my brother-in-law at one point said to me, “This is the new Joy.” And I know that seems silly-I know that my family in no way at all blames me for ending my marriage-but it’s like, it means the world to me that they have my back. That they have embraced all of these changes, even the ones that probably seem a little crazy and somewhat vain.

Spending an entire week in a fifteen passenger van with your entire family can get a little hairy. You’re cramped, you only have certain snack foods, and, if you are me, you only have a little bit of data on your phone that you have to hoard for uploading pictures. Tensions run high. It can be especially easy for me to feel like a kid, the only one on the trip without a spouse, without someone else to act like my crazy is somehow divorced and different from the rest of my family’s crazy. I drive everyone a bit batty because I can’t quite help myself from talking so much and so loudly.

But on a trapeze in the middle of absolutely nowhere, Massachusetts, I flipped and flew and served as some sort of metaphor for figuring out life 3 years after a bomb detonated and tore life all to bits.

Maybe there is no real difference between flying and falling.