Sweater Weather

It’s planner season.
 
In this strange year of too much and yet not enough, I went ahead and bought a planner even though I haven’t had much occasion to use my planner since March. My head is all prepared for sweaters and pumpkins and sharpened pencils, even though of course my heart knows better.
 
My mind in late August always starts preparing for school, no matter how old I get, apparently. I found some of my old collages in my cleaning out my basement this summer and it struck me how these- especially the ones that I would put on my notebooks and book covers- they were sort of vision boards for that young Joy.
 
That young girl that I was back then, she had such dreams about what exactly life was supposed to look like- she always thought that she was eventually going to grow out of her awkwardness.
 
Long ago I realized that I was never not going to be this clumsy, much too loud person who never fails to realize two minutes too late that she has said the exact wrong thing. But this summer, this strange summer of forced introspection, has allowed me to make a peace with that in a new way. 

The Wondering Years and All Things Reconsidered by Knox McCoy

 

I consider Knox and Jamie (of my most beloved Popcast) to be friends who are much cooler than I am. (I often wish that podcasts had been around when I was in college and so at loose ends for what to do about my absolute inability to talk to anyone around me.) These two books by Knox speak so to my soul about what it means to remember with such fondness these pieces of my faith that I grew up holding to, while at the same time digging into and learning so much more to theology than I ever grasped as that young girl.

 

I grew up loving Brio magazine and DC Talk and I adored the Christy Miller series so much that I not only wrote a letter to my future husband at 16 (just as she did) but also I wrote a letter to him every single year on my birthday and presented them to Nick on our wedding night and genuinely never thought that a weird thing to do until two years ago.  

 

Knox (and Jamie and Erin) grew up in this same culture, too old for VeggieTales but a little younger than Salty, right in that McGee and Me, "Jesus Freak" hotspot. And frankly that’s not something that I talk about too very much- none of my friends in high school read or watched these things, and it was just sort of something that was a part of who I was but was also not something that I discussed with anyone. Finding these books spoke to that part of my soul, the one that remembers so fondly that world that I grew up in while reconciling it with my much deeper and more considered adult faith.

 

Knox writes, “I am a part of a generation of evangelicals who struggle to balance the simplistic spiritual perspective we internalized as children with the more complicated notions and cultural conflicts we experience now as adults.”

 

It was a delightful way to spend bits of my summer.

Untamed by Glennon Doyle

Everyone kept telling me that I needed to read Untamed. People who know me really well, and people I have only barely met. So finally I plunged in. 

And I get it- my co-dependent soul needs to inject some of her words into my veins. Becoming an adult in the middle of life, becoming who you were meant to be after what seems like the biggest bits of life have come and gone- it's hard and yet amazing, uncomfortable and yet freeing. 

There are pieces of Glennon's story that I just cannot relate to (breaking up her family, even though I completely and totally understand why that happened, and it's not that I fault her for it, but it is also far from my reality), and the old Joy would have internalized that as having done the wrong thing, not grieved or changed in the correct way. The Joy of 2020 takes that as different people living different lives and loving them and understanding that growth comes in all kinds of different forms. 

Glennon is a brave soul and I am all the better for having met her.

The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett

Brit Bennett is officially one of my favorite writers. The Mothers was amazing, and yet The Vanishing Half tops it. This novel is intricate in its examination of race and family and it has stayed inside of my soul, in the way that all the best books do.

This summer has been full of many more books and movies and rearranging the furniture. Full of reliving so much of who I was twenty some years ago, and at the same time listening to Folklore on a loop and falling in love with Sam Ryder on Tik Tok (his version of "What's Going On?" is perfect)  and absolutely loving The Baby-sitters Club on Netflix (much to my surprise, because I truly love my Baby-sitters on VHS tapes). 

This summer has been a reset, a time of quiet that has been healing to my soul. A time of learning and grace and trying to be kinder to myself in understanding that we are all figuring this out as we go.

Goodbye to Yesterday...

Last night on my walk I heard the sound of the cicadas and I suddenly realized that it is nearly late summer. This year has at once crept along and also flown by-very much like my years spent at home with my babies. The days would stretch on, especially in the very beginning when it seemed like I just finished breastfeeding and suddenly she would be hungry again and I honestly felt like I would be this lumpy mess of a human being who would manage not one thing in a day for the rest of my life.

I tell this story a lot, but when Betsy was about 2 a friend of mine was talking to me about her teenage daughter putting on her coat and I said, “I just cannot imagine that there will be a day when Betsy can just put on her coat.”

And now in the summer of 2020 we are teaching Betsy how to drive.

It goes so fast.

Anyway, this morning I was reading this insightful (and quite funny) piece on Grub Street called “Life After Sourdough,” and it reminded me exactly of what life first felt like 5 years ago.

I have a terrible tendency to loop everything back to my divorce- it is the prism through which I filter everything, I know, but the thing is, living through this unprecedented time feels like everyone is going through a grief so very similar to mine at the end of my marriage- as the year goes on, and we have to accept change that we did not want, we grieve so hard this thing that we have no control over, that we cannot change no matter how much we wish things were different.

This article, in which Rachel Sugar discusses how four months ago she was excited about her sourdough starter, about how she has tried to find a hobby that is useful and time consuming but also sort of easy- “That would require constant attention but also demand nothing.”

It hit a cord.

Five years ago, I wanted to fill all of my time with something- I tried so many different things. I took my life down to the studs and built it back up again, trying new things, pushing myself past old boundaries that I had invented for myself. It sounds sort of pleasant, stated that way, but it was hard.

I was unmoored from all that I knew myself to be. That is a scary place to be.

What has become of that is who I am now. I am a much more confident person because I have tried so many different things, and failed a lot, and I truly believe that most things can at least be understood if not mastered by reading and asking a ton of questions.

I’m never going to know the answer to the question that I’m searching for- as Rachel says, “It can’t stay like this, I’d said for months, but it turned out it sort of could.”

Sometimes I tell myself, “This is just a thing that happened. There isn’t any great mystery to it- people get divorced all the time.” And sometimes I look back at the past five years, and see all of this change in how I approach the world, and I’m just floored that I ever think that it just happened.

"It's no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then."
-Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll

Simple Kind of Life...

You know how I like to take a metaphor and beat it to death.

This is release. This completely full dumpster.

17 years ago, baby Joy bought this house that she had wanted for as long as anyone can remember while her husband was in Iraq. It was exciting and terrifying. I hated making huge, life altering decisions without Nick, but at the same time this was the dream. This house and babies. That was all I wanted or cared about having once I became a grownup.

This old house planted itself in my heart around age eight, and as such I love it despite a great many annoyances that come along with it- bugs love it; I have this incredibly annoying small leak in my bathroom closet that I have been trying to fix for months and every time I think I’ve got it, water gets in again; the person that owned it just prior to me raised the living room floor and lowered the ceiling at the same time, which seems like a weird combination.

Still, my babies came along inside of this house, and it grew right along with us as we finally gave up on the idea of having a dining room (that we never used) at all in favor of a game room; as we rearranged furniture to create the illusion of more space; as the babies’ rooms grew into the rooms of (much too messy) teenagers.

The house had come with a ton of stuff that the previous owner did not want, and it doesn’t seem to have occurred to me (or Nick, for that matter) to have done anything about it. As such, our basement and garage held bits and pieces of someone else’s life.

And then, 17 years of living happened, and Nick never met anything that he particularly wanted to throw away, and when he did leave, he left behind mounds of stuff.

It has taken 5 years for me to get to a place of release inside of my heart to want to claim this space as completely and totally my own. And here we are, and I feel ten times lighter just from letting go of everything that was taking up that space in my heart (and also literally inside of my house).

June normally undoes me. Try as hard as I might, June comes along every single year with her insistence on waking up this part of my heart that I’ve bandaged up and healed as best I can and reminds me that I’m a girl who was left behind. It brings fresh to the surface memories of what that sting felt like, of how helpless I felt and then anger at myself for feeling helpless at all and frustration with myself for any of it.

This year, though, that hasn’t yet happened. Oh, June came, and brought her memories with her, but somehow there wasn’t all of the emotions. There was just, oh, there you are. Welcome back.

Maybe physically releasing things is helping in ways I can’t quite articulate. Maybe it’s just been long enough that I’m used to it. Maybe it’s that I’m over it.

Whatever it is, I’m loving that I chose release.

Is It Cool That I Said All That?

The sun is shining, Michael is singing “I Want You Back” through my speakers…it’s that time of year.

And it’s finally (almost) time for me to declare five years.

You know how cancer survivors hold five years sort of out there, as a goal? Well, I have held five years out there since all of this began. There is no real secret to five years, I know. Wait long enough and time will elapse and that doesn’t necessarily mean anything. But here we are.

I’ve had many, many revelations about all of this recently, and I don’t know for certain if it is a matter of how much time has elapsed, or if it’s been this season of forced downtime with my precious girls, or if it’s an emergence of a new outlook on life- or, most likely, it’s all of those things.

Life just now is really right where I want it to be. As always, I wish that I could hold that girl from 5 years ago and tell her that. It all turns out okay. Better than okay. Promise.

(I honestly don’t know if this is interesting to anyone at all besides me. I realize that most people in this world move through things quicker than I do. Heavens, I know people who have been widowed who have remarried in the time that I have been slogging along in this. Which is fabulous for them, and I truly hope for all of the world to find love, and I’m here for all of it. It’s just not my truth.)

Here’s the deal: in the beginning (I have said this before), I simply assumed that life would lay itself out like a romantic comedy that I was unaware I was living inside. If Nick wasn’t the right person, then right person would somehow appear and all of life would fall into place. Not right away, of course. I spent a nice long year inside of searing grief, and then another year emerging slowly from that. Slowly beginning to notice men noticing me, and for a moment enjoying that. I dated a bit. I promised myself that at the least I would have a new friend in the one person that I went out with for a while, and that has completely turned out to be true.

But here’s my revelation in this year that I promised myself release- I’m happy with life the way that it is. I’m here for movie nights with my girls, for meals with my parents, for texts with my sister about books. I love being the one to make all of my own decisions about my house, about my paycheck-these are things that I take for granted now, but that it took time to get used to.

This time of heightened anxiety in the world has brought to the surface some gunk that I never properly dealt with at the time of my divorce. In the beginning, life was about surviving (truly). There was so much to mitigate then, and now there is space and time and healing and so coming to revelations about what someone breaking your trust and what that has created in its wake- it’s all easier to deal with. And, for me, it’s important that I’m dealing with it on my own.

Why does any of this matter? I don’t know that it does. But it’s where I am just now. And I sort of want to shout it from the rooftops- just exactly the same way that I felt when I fell in love with Nick Johnson and I wanted the entire world to know. I want the world to know that five years after life fell all to pieces at my feet, I’m feeling independent and strong and at peace.

Life has worked out just exactly like it was supposed to. Promise.

I used to be lunatic from your precious face
I used to be woebegone and so restless nights
My aching heart would bleed for you to see
Oh! But now...
(I don't catch myself bouncing home
Whistling buttonhole tunes to make me cry)

No More "I love you's"
A language is leaving me
No more "I love you's"
A language is leaving me exiled
No more "I love you's"
Changes are shifting me outside the words
-The Lover Speaks

Walk and Not Run...

It’s Star Wars week and Cinco de Mayo and a terrible lot of goodness here at the Watson Johnson house.

We are up to The Last Jedi (which I have never seen). Betsy wanted to watch them in actual episode order rather than chronological order and while I was initially very resistant to that idea, I must admit that I have enjoyed watching them in that order. (You simply have to put aside the dialogue and the fact that by the third movie Natalie Portman seems like she is being held hostage to a contract she signed at 18.)

Being a homebody is a definite asset to this shelter in place lifestyle. The girls and I have settled into a groove of movies and walks and board games. I have gotten Betsy as addicted to Days of our Lives as I was at her age, and there is just something about sharing something with her that I shared with my Grandma West that carves out this niche in my heart that I hope remains forever.

We have watched all of the music specials (Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood and Lady Gaga and Elton John all from my house- I am HERE. FOR. IT.), the NFL draft (my amazing Buckeyes breaking all the precedents), all the Tik Toks.

As the complete and total nerd/political junkie that I am, I look forward to watching the governor every day and truly would be down for these briefings long after all of this is over. That combined with Beth dissecting all of the recent Supreme Court opinions on the Pantsuit Politics Patreon feed are settling to my anxious soul. For me, the more information that I have, the better I can process the world around me.

Life is still anxious and scary and words cannot describe how heavy my heart is for anyone who has lost their life or their job. I can never quite convey how grateful I am for my local grocery store and bank and gas station, for my girls’ teachers for working hard to exist within this strange new boundary, for my co-workers and my friends who check on me and for my family, especially my parents who make dinner for me and the girls every day. How lucky am I?

Tonight, it’s all the tacos and Aggravation and then I get to see if I can understand who exactly Rey is.

Life in the Time of Coronavirus...

Just now, the sun is shining, and ABBA is playing though my speakers and I’m feeling light.

I’m trying to hold to all the good just now. It’s amazing how grateful one can become for seemingly simple pleasures that we mostly take for granted on the good days. Just this past week, I have thought how wonderful it is that we still have trash service.

I told my therapist that this is me firing on all cylinders- I have experienced my anxiety at this level exactly 3 times now- when Nick was in Iraq, when I lived through my divorce, and just now. It’s interesting, looking back at those times- Nick being in Iraq was the scariest time in my life. I can remember fighting back tears nearly every night as I drove home from work that year, promising myself that I would not allow myself to get accustomed to the idea that he was gone. I insisted to myself that I wouldn’t think of the house as mine, that I wouldn’t experience anything without him that came even close to joy. But, of course, I adjusted to him being gone because your body won’t allow you to live in such a heightened state of panic for long stretches of time.

I hold that thought now, and remind myself that eventually this (whatever this is) will become normal.

The girls and I have established a bit of a routine the past two weeks- everyday includes games (most especially endless rounds of Clue), a walk around the loop, and a movie (we take turns picking- Betsy is on a huge Brat Pack binge just now, which seems just about right and thank goodness because Felicity picks things like Angry Birds 2). Weekends are full of books and movies and cleaning-all in my wheelhouse.

Routines are my lifeblood. Adding in taking my temperature in the morning and watching Mike DeWine at 2 in the afternoon gives me some notion that I’m checking off the boxes of what I’m now responsible for.

Living with anxiety makes you question always if you are overreacting- after all, that is what anxiety is, being unable to parse out what is an actual worrisome event, and what is not. But this time I’m trying to lean into my anxiety, realizing that there is truly nothing that I can do but follow the advice of people trained in living through an epidemic, praying over bits I can’t control, and holding tight to the notion that eventually this will end.

Four years ago, no one could have convinced me that I would ever get over Nick leaving. I couldn’t imagine a day of not missing him. I couldn’t even imagine a day of not wishing that my life would just go back to what it used to be.

I don’t wish that ever now. My life as it is now is ten times better than my life ever, ever was in all of those years that I was (quite happily) married.

Holding those two contradictions- the notion that I adored being married to Nick Johnson and yet I am a better person divorced from him- those contradictions define who I am. If I have learned nothing else in the past four and a half years it is that your emotions are messy and complicated and they don’t always line up with reality.

Life just now is scary- I’m scared for my girls, for my parents, for the economy. I have read accounts of people who are sick that frighten me to my core. I worry for the doctors and nurses and what this could look like. I stress over politicians taking measures that I fear could be too little.

I could be wrong, of course. I pray that I am. In the meantime, I will be so grateful for what I have, and hold tight to the idea that we are all in this together.

Spin Me Out Of Control...

When I chose release as my word for 2020, I didn’t realize the ramifications. 2020 has been filled to the brim with so much feeling and it’s been a long time since I allowed myself to drown inside of what sometimes seems like mountains of emotion.

(Mixing metaphors…still my thing.)

When I chose the word release, I meant it in a sort of metaphysical way- like, I'm letting go of the idea that I'm going to understand all the things, or that I'm going to release my grip on my insistence on routine. I wrote things like, "When something slips through your fingers that you held onto much too tightly it takes a long time to forgive yourself for letting it go." That was sort of the gist.

Instead, the world turned upside down, and the idea of control has slipped from my grasp, perhaps forever.

I found myself saying to the girls at the bank the other day- people do crazy things when they think they cannot control anything. This blog is proof of that, again and again.

Everyone having big feelings right now is normal- whether they are trying to prepare, whether they are creating schedules, whether they are rolling their eyes.

My personal coping mechanisms include watching old movies (the girls and I watched Far and Away yesterday, and they loved it every bit as much as I do, and on Saturday I introduced them to both Ghost and Never Been Kissed and we watched Frozen 2); listening to podcasts- mostly happy, easy listens about books and pop culture; reading (Felicity and I are working through The Westing Game, which I read one time as a kid, but I remember nearly nothing, and Felicity loves a good mystery, so it's terribly fun); and, when I'm almost to a coma with my anxiety, watching HGTV and eating potato chips.

For the two introverts in our house, this is not a terrible pain. For Felicity, this is harder- she brings her Barbies into my room just to be in the same general vicinity, even if I'm doing something boring.

As my humble offering to your own sanity, I offer my podcast spreadsheet, complete with my favorite podcasts broken out into how often I listen to each:


Podcast Spreadsheet

If you need something to cheer you up, The Popcast is the best I can point you toward. 80s All Over and SSR are also two so high on the list just now- I crave anything from the 1980s/early 1990s like oxygen when I am stressed, and both offer up a balm to my harried soul.


I found myself twice this past weekend reaching for my wedding rings, a habit I had long since broken. Stress does strange things, sends your mind to odd places. Things seem scary, but also, I'm not, and never was, in control of this.

On the other side of that release, we will realize that it was faith carrying us all along.