To The Girl Who Has Three Lives

Dear Girl Who Has Three Lives:
     (or more):
      I know how you feel.
There's the You who works in the coffee shop or the church office or goes to college or the You who stands in her first semester as a teacher with twenty kids who are calling her "Miss So-and-So" and expecting she'll actually teach them stuff about life. Or, if you're like me, there's the You who spends the majority of the week taking care of, playing with, and teaching two precious little girls whose boundless curiosity and ceaseless energy shows you what your Mom has been doing since the birth of your older brother (times four).
There's the You who comes home tired from that other You and wants peace and quiet and a harmonious family. But there is dinner to be made and chores to keep up with and the harmonious family has gone off-key for an hour or two and life is crazy. This was the first You, and is known so well that it fits like a groove, despite its eccentricities. This You has an amazing family that misses her and she misses them and the disjointedness of lives trying to click back together while spinning in hyper-speed--your days off coinciding with their days away--and it's tough to steal moments of normalcy. But this version of You craves those moments and sometimes wonders what it would be like to return to the time when it was the only You and there was time to hang up your clothes and bother to put the bobby-pins back in their dish and that stack of To-Be-Read books was actually diminishing at a discernable pace.
Then, of course, there's the You of dreams. There's the You who, while steaming that milk, folding those invoices, making those calls, or teaching those math lessons, keeps up a secret life behind the scenes of hopes and dreams and long-term goals. For me, that's my writing. A thousand words typed at an unholy hour because every sensible, conscionable minute of normal-people is taken up by those other two Mes. This You might be pursuing music, art, publication, photography, a business, or something else. This You is usually the one who falls, by default, into disrepair because it is the more quiet You. It is sometimes shy and always willing to bend to reality. Dreams can be pushed off, tabled, quietened. This You isn't really all that perishable and if you close down the Word document for three months, the repercussions aren't what they would be if you stopped showing up to work for the same period of time or shut off communication with those dearest to you.

For each of these Yous, You could justifiably devote a whole life, in theory. But theories bend to achievement and everyone realizes we can't claim seventy-two hours for a day in which to be all three. And yet, Girl, you are trying to be all three. I am trying to be all three. Is it wrong? Is it crazy? Should you give up the dreams or the job or the family?

No.

It's not wrong, it's only a little crazy, and you should definitely not give up your dreams, your family, and the job God has placed you in (unless He shows you otherwise). One life crammed into one's head is enough to make most people overwhelmed. But to those of use who are juggling three, how can we keep sane?

I've been thinking. I am barely home these days between one thing and another and weddings. On any given Saturday, my room is covered with cast off clothing that I was too tired to put away after coming home from a fifteen-hour day. My bobby-pins never make it into the dish. I wear jeans when the weather is eighty-five because I really couldn't spare the extra eight minutes to shave my legs and heaven forbid I get in the shower and find no shampoo because when you're showering at 6:30 a.m., there's no one awake to fetch it for you. So I've been giving more thought than usual to how the Three-Lived-Girl can keep sane and it comes down to Jim Eliot:

"Wherever you are, be all there."

When you're at work, be entirely at work. When you're at home, be entirely at home. When you're working on that painting, that story, that song, that product, be one-hundred-percent there in that moment. For me, that means shutting off my 3G data on my phone at work, leaving texts till a more convenient hour when I'm blogging or writing, or lesson-planning, and leaving my phone upstairs when I'm around the house. I love technology and social media has blessed me with a covey of friends I would otherwise have never met. But technology is deceptive in that it convinces you that things have to be done RIGHT NOW. And the girl already living three lives can't afford to have them bleed into one another. If I am trying to teach math concepts to a three year-old and answer a five year  old's questions about how Indians killed buffalo and answer a Facebook message about wedding plans and reply to a comment on a blog and to text the recipe I made up for fish tacos to the sister who is making dinner because I can't be home to help because I'm headed an hour into the city to go a bible-study and I'm trying to do it ALL AT ONCE, I will crumble. I don't know about you, but I can feel it crumble. I can feel my resolve weakening, my heart becoming downcast, and my soul overwhelmed. I decided to try Jim Eliot's theory out last week and give myself completely to the tasks at hand one at a time. What I found was a sense of joy in accomplishing that one task instead of angst over the twenty-seven others left to be done. Yes, there were still twenty-seven tasks, but one can meet a single foe on level ground far easier than being dog-piled by an entire company.

Wherever you are, Girl With Three Lives, be all there. In the mornings, give one hundred percent of your attention to Jesus and focus your eyes on Him from the start. At work, give full attention to the joy of building into the lives around you. When you're home, leave the virtual world connected to a charger and play a game of Scrabble or watch an old Disney film together. When you're pursuing dreams, friends, or long-cherished goals, give it your all.

That's how we keep all the balls in the air. Focus.

Pretty Mail

If you were anything like me as a kid, you would have had at least ten pen-pals over the years and lost just about as many through neglect, forgetting to send the letters your wrote, or just getting bored of the duty of writing back. As we learned to use the computer and the internet got more advanced and we learned how to type, writing letters dropped away almost completely. But you know me. I'm stubborn as anything and won't entirely let go of things I love. And I dearly love giving and receiving snail-mail. I have this passion for outwitting the post office. Doesn't that sound terrible? But seriously. I just weigh packages in my hand, slap stamps on, and stuff them in the mailbox. They always get to their destinations. Recently, I sent a copy of my book to a friend in Romania. I put five or six stamps on it, shoved it in the mail, and a week and a half later, it was in her hands. Now, if I'd gone into the post office and asked them what they wanted to charge me, that package would have cost something terribly like fifteen bucks.

All post-office regulations aside, sending and receiving mail the good old way will never go out of style. Who doesn't like getting a piece of mail? And furthermore, who doesn't like getting a piece of mail that is as much a delight to look at as it will be to read? Since I have three or four letters to respond to this weekend, I spent a little while on Pinterest last night browsing unique ways to address letters. Here are some of my favorites. May they serve as inspiration to you to send a surprise someone's way. <3

"Hi, I'm Single and I Have Blisters."

Most days I am quite content in the fact that it may be a longgggggggggg time till I get married. Mama always looks at me with mock severity and says, "You have no idea how quickly things can change." She's always right, but that doesn't mean I'm hedging any bets. I have a full life here without a fella. I mean, between work, my family, and my writing (yes, it is a thing that intentionally distracts me from self-pity) would I even have time for a relationship? Can't get much better than painting my toenails blue and watching Once Upon a Time with my sisters, can it?

This is my "Yayyyyy Daddddddd" face.

Not that I'd really know...

Some days it just kind of hits me. Know the sort? The fact that no man in my age-group has ever told me he thinks I'm something pretty awesome, that he wants to get to know me better, that I'm the person he looks for when he walks into a room, that I'm the girl he's been praying for. Whenever I have days like this, I'm hesitant to verbally recognize the yearning because I don't want to set off a stream of, "It's okay, you'll find a guy someday. Just wait patiently on the Lord. He is faithful."
Of course He's faithful. Of course I'll (probably) find a guy someday. But no one said that the boots aren't going to pinch now and then.

Yes, sometimes it gets annoying. Case in point: two more friends got engaged this week. I barely see my cousin anymore because he's got a girlfriend and a new job and chill-time doesn't happen. No conversation goes on at home without turning to someone's wedding plans. Sometimes the Love Bug victim-count seems like it's hacking up there with the Black Plague and I start wondering who slipped the Thieve's Oil into my pocket because honestly, they can have it back. I wouldn't mind catching that plague. If falling in love is sabotage, then I have a death-wish.

I've gotten to the point where I laugh on these days and message my equally-single best friend and together we compare notes about how fabulous we are. Chocolate is good too. I know this feeling of utter....futility isn't going to last. Handsome men will be toads from now till kingdom-come, tiny blondes will probably still rank top on the list of Quickly Married Women, and athletic, rugged, cowboy types will probably still want a wife who will go running (or barrel-racing) with him for the next forevermore. I'll still rumble along cheerily as ever, I'll enjoy my job, enjoy my family, and enjoy playing bridesmaid, florist, hairstylist, cake-decorator, and event coordinator for the friends who are getting married. I'll have adventures and love life and meet people and go to social functions and be me. That's how life is.

And it's good. But life can hurt and I guess what I'm here to say tonight is this: it's okay.

Girls: It's okay that there's an ache under your breastbone and an incapacity to look at another wedding picture in your Pinterest feed. It's okay that you feel like punching the handsome-acquaintance-who-drinks-and-smokes (as your just found out) across his perfect nose. It's okay that you feel like sitting down with a tub of gelato and eating it--all of it--with your best friend or a sister while wishing for a saved, sanctified Captain Hook. It's okay that you let fly a snide remark about the eighteenth saccharine Facebook post in a week from that happily almost-wedded couple. Besides--sugar isn't good for you.

Family: It's okay that we are having a rough day. It's not that we think we'll never get married. We don't think God has left us in the ditch. We don't think we're going to be spinsters, we don't intend to join a dating website ASAP, we don't intend to fall into deep depression, start wearing sweat pants constantly, and adopt another cat. We're very simply getting a blister from walking this far down the road of singleness. We know our lives are precious, that there is adventure around every bend, and that we are blessed.

So people, let's have grace. Grace with ourselves, our families, and each other. Grace for the God who is leading us on this road that can seem as empty as the Oklahoma sky. It sounds weird to say we need grace for God, because the only grace we have comes through Him. But part of owning grace is acting upon it, and believing with grace that what He says is true takes real courage and doesn't come easily, some days.

I'm single. Tonight it stinks. Tomorrow it'll be a blessing. That's how it goes with singleness as with every other topsy-turvy stage in life. I am so blessed that Jesus has the map to this weird road. I think I'd be tempted to look for a short-cut.

That Frank Churchill Life

Most of you know by now that I got a chop-job done to my hair. Actually, it wasn't as bad as all that. After deliberating on whether to get bangs or not, I decided to go with it and get a little length off at the same time. I am happy to say that, though the reactions have ranged from, "WHOA. You...really did that?" to, "It looks AMAZING!", I am happy with it. And that's really all that matters. The fun thing about having bangs is that I can leave it down and it looks styled, I can put it up and leave the bangs down and it looks styled, or I can brush the bangs to the side and it looks ... styled. Pretty good qualities to have when you live a life on the go. So I thought, "Hey, why not just do a blog post with a couple Ways to Wear my new hair?"

And then my bangs decided not to cooperate and to act flat and then split down the middle. Like, really. Why do they have to have a cat's personality? At any rate, I combed them somewhat-into submission and took my iPhone selfies for your viewing pleasure. Also, open shipping-container doors make pretty good backdrops. #factoid

It Can Go Down:

I love them. They tickle sometimes, but I love them.

"Half the time my hair looks awesome but the other half I look like a simple-hearted Catholic school-girl who says Hail Marys thrice a day." -in a message to my best friend

It Can Go Up:

'Dem bangs.

I can brush them to the side for a youthful hipster look:

I can pull an Audrey Hepburn Roman holiday lookalike:

Which of course must be followed up posing as the Italian Barber:

 It is a very good sort of haircut and I didn't even have to go all the way to London for it.

Why I'm Not All About That Bass

Otherwise Titled: In Which I Use The Word "Sex" Twenty-One Times

//Source//

As a self-proclaimed "curvy girl," I find the popular trend of embracing every body type quite encouraging. I was always that girl who knew it would be impossible, even as a skeleton, to fit the mold of "the fashionable figure" and as I've grown up and realized that such a standard is not the only standard of beauty, I've learned to love my body. For the most part. That isn't to say there aren't (many) days where I wish my arms weren't so flabby, my belly was flatter, my calves smaller, and so on. Because of this, I'm encouraged when I read an article like the one about a size 8 model who was angry when the company for which she modeled photo-shopped her down a few sizes, or when I watch a video like Colbie Callait's "Try", which features the singer-songwriter wearing no makeup and has has had over 21 million views since it came out a month or two ago. I think it's amazing that our culture (despite all the things in which it is failing) is finally scooting over and making room for girls with curves or without curves, tall, short, plump, skinny, shapely or dumpy, willowy or compact.
But for all this, we still have a problem. The problem is that the pop-culture is embracing body types all right...and drawing them right into the sex-appeal trap. There was an article published recently that made its rounds through my Facebook feed. This article was titled, "Modest is Not Hottest" and covered the fact that if you are looking to be thought of as "hot", then yeah, modesty isn't the place you'll look for it. She's really right. I agreed with some points this girl made and disagreed with others, but the thing on which I think we'd both agree is this:

The object of the positive body-image movement is totally wrong.

This problem was brought into focus for me a couple weeks ago, when my soon-to-be sister-in-law, Abigail, asked if I'd heard a song by Meghan Trainor called "All About That Bass". I had not but after she mentioned it and told me that the woman who wrote the song is fighting to "bringing booty back", I went online and looked up the lyrics, curious to see what a song by a curvy girl, about curvy girls, had to say to the world:

"Yeah, it's pretty clear I ain't no size two,
But I can shake it, shake it
Like I'm supposed to do.
Cause I got that boom-boom that all the boys chase
And all the right junk in all the right places."

Wow. The joke about this song is that Meghan Trainor thought she was being counter-cultural. She thought that, by defying the long-held view of "skinny is pretty" that she was defying culture, when in fact she was only replacing the wrong view held by sex-culture with another wrong view. In essence, Trainor is calling skinny girls names and saying, "You're not sexy. I am." And the whole entire point of this song that was meant to break out of the molds, is that it this song is playing right back into the same mold. Girls don't really want to be told, "You TOO can be sexy!" Sure, it's nice to know that we have "It", but deep down, having sex-appeal is not the thing that will satisfy us in our quest to find our identity.

Identity Crisis is practically the entire point of the downfall of modern culture. You want to know why traditional marriage is breaking down and we have states legalizing LGBT marriages by the bucket-load? Because we've been fed the lie and talked backward, forward, and from side-to-side that we are sexual beings only. Shoes are now "sexy." A huge floppy sweater colored like your grandmother's couch-covers is now "sexy." Morning hair is "sexy," breath mints are "sexy", Tropical islands are "sexy," chocolate cake (the cake, not the person eating it) is "sexy," and next up, they'll probably be telling us that eighty-five degree weather is "sexy". The adjective has come to mean the same thing that "beautiful" used to mean and that bothers me. When we, as a culture, believe that we are made for nothing more than sex, life gets super confusing. So I, as an unmarried twenty-two year old woman, am useless unless I'm sleeping around with men (or women) (or both)? Is that really what today's culture is telling me? Pretty much. I get angry.

Identity in our culture is changing ... only in shape. Skinny is being ousted by voluptuous and one day, skinny will reign supreme again, followed by another curvy-swing because nothing has really changed. Sex is still the goal of many of the people who are involved in the positive body image movement: "I am sexy, you are sexy, all God's children are sexy." There are some who are on the right mental track, but too many others are still stuck on the merry-go-round that is Trying To Be Sexy.

As a Christian, I've got a special identity because I know that I'm a spiritual creature and that I'm body, soul, spirit, and all the rest. Yeah, sex-appeal is probably shoved in there somewhere as one of my less-important qualities, but it's a tiny piece of the elaborate person I am...that you are...that each of us is. Taking out of the picture the idea that we're only sexual creatures, body-image would barely worry any of us. I mean, this current form is going to last only...what...eighty years out of the whole eternity I will exist? There's so much more to me than eighty earth-years, but according to pop-culture, that's all I have. According to pop-culture, my booty better matter or I'm completely sunk.

I think we've got something going on here. We've got people reevaluating standards of beauty and that's a great thing. But instead of purchasing "All About That Bass" and gloating over the fact that we actually have butts, let's fight to redefine beauty as something deeper than sex-appeal. Beauty is way more than whether a man will look twice at us or not. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines "beauty" as:

"the quality of being physically attractive; the qualities in a person or thing that give pleasure to the senses or mind"

The qualities in a thing. There are way more qualities in a woman than her measurements, her body shape, and her makeup. And we'll never really change culture when we settle for anything less than the whole picture.

Your world is pretty small if you're all about that bass.

Autumn Styles: Peeking Ahead

If I have one flaw in my relationship with summer (besides high humidity and mosquitoes) it is the fact that summer fashions don't thrill my heart as much as those belonging to autumn. Maybe it's because I don't have the fabulously toned arms to rock a sleeveless top, or the fact that I cringe whenever it's strictly necessary for me to wear shorts. Maybe it's the hellish temperatures that make me wish wearing no clothes whatsoever was passable in society. ;) Whatever the reason, by this second week of August, I am always ready to break out the jeans, high-heels, sweaters and my magenta trench. So what sorts of fashions am I looking forward to trying this fall?

I've recently been inspired by Ginnifer Goodwin in Once Upon a Time:

She's feminine, practical, and stylish -- all things I will be needing to consider while continuing my nannying job this fall. Not so much digging the pixie-cut, but it looks just fair on her. One thing I've learned with a summer of nannying: I want my clothes to be kid-proof and cute. Also, Ginnifer Goodwin is a fellow (albeit petite) curvy-girl so I can take styling cues! The costume designers did such a good job bringing her personality into her wardrobe ... love it. 

Skinny Jeans & Heels & Boots:

Inspired by many curvy fashionistas, I want to try a pair of skinny jeans this year -- especially with boots or high heels. Another curvy friend and I plan to shop for a well-fitting pair together. I hate the painted-on look; I want a pair that will go well with longer tops (I would love to get a sweater-tunic) and stuff well into boots. Also, you can't beat skinny jeans and a trench-coat or blazer.

Cardigans

Also inspired by Ginnifer Goodwin and my love of all things vintage, I want to get a couple of short cardigans to pair with skirts and dresses.

Silk Neck-Scarves

Always one for that Hepburnism, I have ordered a few silk scarves and will be styling them this fall as a way to expand the versatility of my wardrobe.

Say hey to the guy creepin' on Grace Kelly

Hats

I really want to get a couple of different hats to wear this fall. I will be getting bangs of some sort "put in", if that's how you say it, next weekend and I'm looking forward to trying different styles of hats/headbands/etc.

 Yes. I am ready for autumn. This is going to be fun.

In Defense of True Love

With three friends getting engaged just this weekend, I decided to write an open letter to all the couples I know ... in defense of true love. 

Photo Credit: Daniel Tate

I saw the ring.

I saw the hope, brighter than your diamond, flash out at him; at the world; at me. No, it was something deeper than hope.

Love.
True love.

People don't believe in true love anymore and I lose my patience--what little patience I had to begin with--for these so-called realists. Those people--the embittered, jaded souls that they are--don't believe in true love because I guess they've never learned all of its pieces.

I've never known what it is to share that connection with another person, to let my soul entwine ivy-wise with theirs till the slightest tug hurts like fractured bone. I've never known what it is to live in dread of dread ... to lie awake at night worrying that the one my soul loves will be worrying: a mutual incapacity to think of anything apart from what that person might think of the thing in question.

I've never known it but I have seen it. Seen it in people like you. So I believe in true love because you've taught me. And those who don't believe in it? Can't believe in it? They just don't realize that true love hides under the nettle-leaf of a thousand courtesies.

To see a cup of water in the night, given by a clumsy, sleep-drugged hand, they call kindness.

They see you give up your own identity, that name which had been yours since birth, and bind yourself with a round silver promise to another human. You take his name and his heart and they call it a ceremony.
He fixes the brakes on your car and they call it a "to-do list".
They see the cup of coffee he made just perfectly and they wonder aloud why it wasn't a dozen red roses instead.
They see you lose a heated argument and let him have the last word and cry tears of hot release by yourself as you drive to the grocery store and they call it proof that the charm of your chemistry has faded; they don't realize that love, like any living thing, needs buffeting to set down roots.
In a moment of breathless, faithless crisis--a moment when he doesn't show a sliver of the infatuation he lavishes now, a moment when life has become like Sinai's forty years-those realists will draw close and whisper poison-wise,
"See? His love wasn't true love. Go on and leave and look for it elsewhere."
They don't see that the greatest material of which true love is knit is commitment and tenacity.
Your everyday choice to do his laundry, his bills, to share his interests, his people, his bed ... they name it "routine" and scorn it as they scorn the goodbye hug and "I'm headed home" calls.
They dub your patience "being used to him" and his quick out-the-door kisses "absentminded."
And those times he makes you laugh till your sides hurt and mascara inks your tears they'll call "good days" as if all the days between had ignoble titles.

They mean well, I guess, in their worldly-wise, weary-boned way ... but they can't know it is true love. They don't see that the service, the ceremony, the coffee and car-repairs and arguments and desert-treks, the routines and familiarity and absentminded kisses and "good days" ... these are the truth in the thing we call true love.

True love as I see it, as you've shown it, is a breaking yourself in half and giving that piece over, a breaking of one into two, a fitting of two into one: two lives, two souls, two personalities and wills and throbbing hearts. To make this love work, one must be malleable and able to fold in a thousand pieces, to build pieces on a thousand pieces to become whole again. A constant breaking, a constant healing, a constant no-longer-me-and-you but 'us'.

A thing without a name--those thousand pieces--are soon forgotten, disbanded, dissolved. The realists stole the name and cast it to the four winds and they can no longer see. So bind yourself under one name with a promise, call what you have by its name: true love. Defy the realists and better yet, teach them to see the beauty of your threads as you weave them day by day by live-long day.

I saw the ring.

I saw the defiance.

It made me smile and hope.