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.

Life In The After...

Summer is my downtime.

In the past three years of life, my girls have spent the majority of their week in the months of June and July with their father in Columbus. Which means that I spend the majority of my week at home, reading, cleaning, and trying not to be bored. (I don’t find reading or cleaning boring. But this past weekend, I cleaned the entire house, part of the garage, and read two books and started a third.)

I’m an introvert and so I readily admit that I enjoy time spent alone. But the past three years I have discovered that I am an introvert who likes to talk. Rather a lot. It’s an adjustment. So, I place strict boundaries around my day, I crave my schedule, I recognize when I need to talk to my sister or my friends or the guy. Of course, just because I need to talk, that doesn’t mean that they aren’t insanely busy. So I do talk to myself quite a lot as well.

When the girls come home, life is busy and loud and full of all the talking. It is also much harder to transition that I ever would have imagined. When I put myself in their place, though, I understand-switching between houses and families and pets and rules and bedrooms and all the things-it’s a lot for a thirteen year old and a ten year old. I am grateful that they have each other-Felicity leans on Betsy and Betsy takes care of her sister.

And even though we all adore each other, and the girls are always so glad to get home to their rooms and their grandparents and life as we know it, it is also just tricky. The emotions of moving between their parents, even as we have done this for such a while now, I think is just bubbling under the surface. We nearly always get into an argument about the state of their bedrooms (I try so hard to remember that I used to have a messy room, but it’s difficult sometimes to even find a path through their rooms, and I fault myself for that, but at the same time I don’t want to spend my time picking up after them only to have them wreck it again). There are days that I miss that old Joy and her strict ways.

When life fell apart, the girls saw me fall to such a state that I could barely function. I think-I think that broke open something inside of me. I’m not making excuses for it. But I am laying out a truth in our life. I’m not that strict Mom that I used to be. I want to spend the time that I have with my girls making memories, watching old 80s television shows, eating macaroni and cheese and all of the kinds of potatoes, obsessing over The Brady Bunch and Spin and Marty and Annette Funicello and all of the things that I treasure and somehow got lucky enough to have girls as geeky as me who love these things too.

It’s a balancing act.

And the truth is, it’s a tougher transition than I expected when all of life changed. But I think that I have at the very least gotten to a place where I anticipate and expect the transition to be tricky, and I make room for us to have nothing planned so that we can just pile on my bed and watch Perfect Strangers and sometimes talk about things that happened while they were gone, and sometimes not, and just readjust.

One of the most amazing things about being forced to change all of life after a lifetime preparing for a quite different life is that you realize that you aren’t going to break, you will survive life falling apart, and there will come a time of after. Life will turn into all kinds of befores and afters. Grace, for me, just now, is the gift of change. Life in the transition may not always be exactly perfect, but it’s exactly where we need to be.

Honor the space between no longer and not yet.
-Nancy Levin

More What I Had In Mind...

I have sort of repeatedly said, falling all to bits and piecing yourself back together can be a fascinating process.

(It can also be overwhelming and exhausting, but that’s not the point of this blog post.)

I’m one of those people who likes to know where life is headed, and I always have been. When I was a kid I knew that I would grow up to have girls and live in the exact house that I live in. My life unfolded exactly as I planned it all out, down to the age I was when I got married and when I had each of my girls.

Then, you know, life diverted. Two roads diverged into a wood and all-only not quite the sad longing of Frost, but more of being shoved onto a path that you weren’t expecting.

Of course, in the beginning, I panicked. I mean, I was wrong about the cornerstone of this plan, I was wrong in where I laid my trust and my future, and nothing seemed like it was ever going to make sense ever again. You can’t trust yourself because, after all, it was your trusting nature that got you into this predicament.

Three years on, I still have a lot to come to terms with. I’m not done figuring all of this out yet.

But, about six months ago, a path opened up in front of me that I wasn’t expecting. My initial reaction was to pull back and question everything and not trust myself at all to make any sort of decision. But I did manage a tentative step and braced myself for sure heartbreak and so far, we are still walking and talking and figuring things out.

I don’t exactly have a plan. I have a sort of broad outline, and we exist inside of as much margin as we can. But what I found myself telling someone recently is this-this part of my life, this strange path that I have found myself on in the past half a year or so-I am loving it because it wasn’t a part of the original design. I wasn’t planning on life taking a turn that was quite so unexpected and out of the blue.

“There is pleasure in the pathless wood-“ I don’t know that I quite agree with Byron on that, I’m much too in love with my routine to just throw all caution to the wind. But I can say with all certainty that sometimes spontaneity can be just what your heart was longing for all along, that opening yourself up can be frightening and fun all at the same time, and that finding yourself existing outside of the lines can be just the thing that eases the worry that you have that you haven’t the foggiest idea what you are doing.

Piecing yourself back together is a delicate dance in which you get to question every last little thing. But perhaps the person that emerges is worth this strange journey.

Go Your Own Way...

“And hope that someday I am able to write down how I figured all of this out.”
-Me, last summer

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the blog and its purpose and how it has morphed so far from what it started out to be. About the things that I write about, and the things that I don’t, and why exactly I do any of it.

I love to write. I love to write like I love to breathe-it’s my favorite thing in the world to do. Often when I write something down, it’s the first time that I’ve ever realized that particular thought and it sort of catches my breath and I go oh. Huh.

So anyway, naturally, most of my writing doesn’t end up on here. And some of what I have written here is just the loose ends of a girl grappling with a great deal of fear of where to go and what to do next. When life fell apart, I didn’t write anything on the blog for 6 months. I spent 6 long months wondering if I would ever find the words to tell the world about anything happening in my life ever again. And then I wrote that first post after we decided to divorce, the post that told the world, yes, my marriage has ended (and there are many things about that post that embarrass me now) and it broke open a dam inside of me-it was my way of saying, this happened. This mattered.

I don’t know how common my feelings are to other divorced people, but I know that I felt like I was taking an eraser to fifteen years of my life. Like we were saying, oh, we didn’t really mean any of that. And writing down anything-from the shame that I felt over getting divorced to the overwhelming fear that I had of what to do next-it gave this chapter of my life some meaning. I know, of course, in my head that no one thinks that my marriage meant nothing, but I just didn’t know what to do with the pieces that existed in my hands.

Many people at the time came to me and told me that I shouldn’t panic, that I needn’t worry about dating, that the only thing that mattered was the girls…they were words of kindness, but they only served to make me more insecure. I was scared to death of never falling in love again, of living all alone forever, of not having any kind of a plan other than getting up every day and breathing in and out.

So, I wrote it down. I wrote down how scared and all alone and bereft I was. I wrote down guilt and fear and shame and joy and bliss and wonder. I wrote it down so that I could process it, so that I could own it, so that I could understand any of it.

Sometimes I worry that the blog seems to only perpetuate the idea that I was sad and scared and alone. I’m not that anymore (I’m not sad and alone-scared I’m working on). I write about the things that overwhelm me so that I can get a grip on why I’m feeling that way. I write about things that I am ashamed of to allow myself permission to let go of the shame.

I don’t know exactly why this journey took this particular shape. I do know that whenever anyone has told me that they enjoy my blog or relate to some aspect of it, it makes me feel like it is serving a purpose bigger that just me navel gazing. Maybe that’s ludicrous. I have no idea. But what I’m meaning to say is that writing led me through this maze of grief, and now it’s leading me into this brave new world of whatever it is that comes next.

”I do not know what lies around that bend, but I’m going to believe the best does.”
-Anne of Green Gables

Wake Up. Be Amazing. (That's What Betsy Says...)

Routines are life giving.

I am resolute in my belief about this.

People are constantly teasing me about my quite ridged ways, and I will agree that not everyone needs to be as structured about life as I am, but the fact remains that routines are life giving. Having a routine, first of all, ensures that you get everything done that you were intending to do. It frees me of the notion that I forgot to do something.

But more importantly, routine gives a structure to my days that I crave. I have written about my anxiety a lot-and some days are better than others-but having a routine just allows my brain that little bit of space to breathe, like, we got this.

I have spent the past three years perfecting my morning routine. Prior to life flipping all upside down, I was much more of a night owl and my mornings generally just consisted of getting my kids ready and out the door rather than worrying over my own self. Such was the life of a stay-at-home mom. (That feels like lifetimes ago.)

But I have managed, somehow, to turn myself into a morning person. I honestly enjoy waking up every morning, which was certainly not the case in my old life. Some of that, I’m sure, is like everything else-I am such a different person in so many ways now. (Hopefully good ways.) But some of it is due to figuring out a routine that gives me the space I crave to physically prepare for my day.

A couple of people recently picked my brain about my morning routine, and so I thought that I might share a few of the highlights here, just in case anyone else remotely cares. I don’t pretend that it’s perfect or anything, but so far, it’s worked for me.

The first, and perhaps single most important piece of this blog, is my Philips Wake-Up Light Alarm Clock with Colored Sunrise Simulation and Sunset Fading Night Light. Oh, my goodness. The life changer. This alarm clock basically simulates the sunrise for half an hour before waking you up-you can chose to either wake up to the radio or to the sound of birds chirping. I have it set to the birds, and I tell the girls all the time that it makes me feel like I’m Cinderella, waking up to her forest friends. It is the loveliest way to wake up.

I journal first thing in the morning, and then I use the Headspace app for a meditation exercise for 10 minutes. I will admit that I was a little weary of purchasing that app because most of the time when I have tried meditating in yoga class, I always find myself realizing when we are almost done that I have been thinking about a hundred other things, rather than concentrating on my breathing. But what I like about the Headspace app is that it is guided meditation, meaning that it helps me to focus on what I’m doing. I have tried a few different packets and I really loved the anxiety packet-imagine that.

While I’m making my coffee and getting my breakfast, I pray. It feels strange to me to write that down, and I’m not quite sure why, but that’s what I do. Starting my day by covering my family and friends in prayer has been my habit since college, and it is one of the few bits of life that didn’t change after my divorce.

While I’m drinking said coffee, I read my devotion. I have been using an app that my sister recommended called First Five, and I absolutely love it. I get an infinite amount out of those five minutes of my day (on the weekends there is a video wrap up with about a 10-minute lesson and I have found them to be incredibly eye opening and interesting).

I have the same thing for breakfast every day-hot water with lemon, a banana, coffee, and Greek yogurt (usually strawberry or raspberry). I know, it’s super boring. It’s okay-that’s who I am.

And then we get to my workout. All told, it’s an hour and a half. I do yoga, cardio, weights, and I run. Here’s the thing-getting blood moving to your brain is the best possible thing that you can do for your mental health. It’s changed my life-clearly, it hasn’t dissipated my anxiety or my depression, but it has changed my ability to get a grip on them, to keep my head above water when I want to fall under waves of sheer panic.

Like a year ago, Betsy showed me how to make a playlist on YouTube. (I’m sure there are cooler apps for this, but I am like an old lady with my phone, so this works for me.) I have a yoga playlist and a workout playlist. My yoga playlist is a mix of Sarah McLachlan and Jewel and the Black Crowes and my favorite song, “Hallelujah.” Just what you would expect out of the angst ridden 90s teenager that I still think I am.

My workout playlist is more upbeat, more probably what you would expect out of a woman trying her best to do things that scare her. “Fight Song.” “Whatever It Takes.” “Part of Me.” “Praying” by Kesha is my cool down song and the lyrics there (“Cause you brought the flames and you put me through hell/
I had to learn how to fight for myself/And we both know all the truth I could tell/I'll just say this is I wish you farewell”), they are a healing balm to my soul *every* *single* *day*.

And from there, I just get ready for work. It’s sort of a lot for a morning (I’m up at 5 and to work by 8, so it’s basically 3 hours all told). But I can’t really overstate how lovely it is to have that workout done and out of the way before my day really even begins. Whenever I have tried to move my workout to evening (for whatever reason), it just doesn’t work for me. I’m tired when I get home, and all I want to do is read my book.

Embracing truths about myself has been one of the best parts of my life in the past 3 years. One of those truths is that I am far from perfect. But one is also that this life I lead may seem super boring and predictable to some people, but for me, this is a part of my weird existence on this planet.

It’s a beautiful life that I get to live.

All Endings are Beginnings...

Kind hearted people often tell me that they admire me for being able to be friends with Nick and Jenifer. It’s a lovely thing to hear, but I don’t always know how to respond. Because really, there’s a lot to unpack there.

People often say something along the lines of, “It’s great for your kids that you are friends.” And it is, it is a great thing for my kids to witness. But my head usually reels to people that I know that are divorced who either don’t really get along with their ex-spouse, or who honestly have no choice about it either way because their former partner is completely out of the picture.

And this is the thing that I want you to know if you read my words ever and think that I magically knew just how to handle my husband having a whole other family and how to approach that with any kind of grace at all-I didn’t. I made up everything as I went along, and I did a few things correctly, and I also messed up a lot, and suppressed a lot of my feelings, and therefore ended up stuck in waves of grief for what seemed a long, long time.

I approach everything in my life, always, with the questions, “What would a good mom do? What would a good daughter do?” and so on. So, when all of this came down the pike, I asked myself, “What would a good ex-wife do?”

The answer to that, of course, is simple. A good ex-wife would let her husband go with as much grace as she could muster, and wish him all the best, and hold tight to her kids while understanding that they need to have a good relationship with their dad, if only because everything that you read during your divorce makes a point to tell you that children who have divorced parents are more likely to go down dangerous paths of drug use and promiscuity and all kinds of lovely avenues. It’s super fun.

But the reality of living that answer is not that simple.

Sometimes people will say to me, “I would stay friends with my spouse because that’s the {fill in the blank}.” Father of my children. Mother of my children. Person I first fell in love with. You name it, there’s a reason. And in the abstract, yes, of course. Nick is the father of my children. He was my first love. Heavens, Nick was my first real and true boyfriend. Can’t go much farther back than that.

But here’s the deal: divorce changes people. There are all kinds of things to maneuver around. There are the reasons that you are getting divorced, to start. There are feelings of abandonment, of loss, of fear. There are new people coming into your life who get to have a say in this new reality. There are decisions to be made, and wounds to be healed, and dreams to lay to rest (I want to write dreams to kill right there, but that seems passive aggressive).

My point with this particular post is simply this: this friendship is hard won, and it’s not perfect, and I worry constantly that it’s not enough. I have issues with boundaries, you know. But I’m working on it.

There isn’t an easy way to say any of that if someone says anything, good or bad, about my continued friendship with Nick and Jenifer.

Divorce is a messy thing. Nothing about untangling yourself from someone that you loved is easy or simple. But eventually, perhaps three years later, you will find yourself excited about being brave, and learning all kinds of new things, and getting yourself tangled up in new adventures, and just feeling forever grateful for whatever grace existed to get you to this place where all of life feels shiny and new again.

To make an end is to make a beginning.