Today marks one year since Jim moved out. In so many ways I can’t even imagine him living here anymore. I can’t imagine being married to him. I can’t believe how much my heart has healed in these last three hundred and sixty five days. Earlier this week I went out to sushi with Jim… And the Children… And his girlfriend. My friends think that I’m a little bit crazy, but it just feels so normal, like we’re just this big, crazy family. There isn’t even a twinge of pain seeing him with someone else. I just hope they love each other well.
I think back on the last year of my life and I think that it will go down as one of the most significant in my life. The changes in me are hard to list, there are just so many. There were holes in me that I never thought would be filled and now I can’t really even remember where they were. I am so whole. So healed. So complete. So happy. If only I’d known that the temporary pain of facing, accepting and loving myself would bring so much healing… I’d have done it a lot sooner. And yet, I can’t really even regret anything that I’ve been through. I look at the last year and see how it has been orchestrated in such an amazing way. The timing of how everything went down is just amazing to me. The lessons I learn come at such perfect times and I am always in awe at how loved I am. I know that God is real because the way he healed me is nothing short of a miracle.
I continue to be so thankful for all the gifts I’ve been given. For the people that banded around me when I needed them (and who are there if ever I need them again). I’m thankful that I’ve come through something so terrible and amazing and now I get to share what it’s done to me (and that in sharing it, I am changed again and again – way more than the people who I’m sharing with). I’m thankful that the only way I could get through this was to look at myself and change. That, even though it was painful, it was easier to forgive than to hold a grudge. I’m thankful that even though I did everything in my power to save my marriage, I get the gift of a second chance. I’m thankful that I now know how to work though heartache and pain and rejection and confusion.
There is something about pain that causes us to live right on the edge of grace, where everything we feel is so vivid, brilliant and real. I think that we are the most pliable when we are there on that edge because everything is at stake and God can truly have his way with us. We aren’t in any position to play games because all we can do is hang on, clinging to what we know to be true. I never want to be so comfortable that I don’t skate that edge. I never want to forget what has happened to me and how I was rescued. When I feel lonely or impatient or worried I want to remember the amazing plan for my life, that we all have a measure of grace to get us through and that I can live through (not just survive) anything because I’ve already lived through my greatest fears.
A year ago I would never have thought I’d be here. By that point I knew I would be ok, but I didn’t know I would be amazing. I didn’t know that the product of my life falling apart could be so good. I put my life in God’s hands and he saved me so completely. And I am so thankful.
It seems really normal to me that Eden is now ten years old. The weird part is that I’ve been a parent for ten years. Um, what?
Eden celebrated her tenth birthday with a dance party in the living room with 8 of her friends. We had science spaghetti – she specifically requested that Jim make it – and neapolitan ice cream cake. For her present I replaced her broken iPod and she spent the day purchasing all kinds of pop songs with her iTunes gift cards. (I tell you, kids these days… every single girl knew the words to “sexy and I know it” which made me feel better about being such a terrible parent.)
At ten years old, Eden reads any and everything she can get her hands on. She picked up a copy of Coraline at the library the other day and finished it before she went to bed that night. She gets along really well with all the girls at school (something that I was never very good at) and is a peacemaker whenever conflict arises. She is also very good a writing. We are always cracking up at the stories she writes… so creative. She will participate in her second year of Girls on the Run and she is ridiculously excited about starting practice next week. Overall she is very responsible and fun to be around. She has her dad’s sense of humor and is always so good to give his sarcasm right back to him.
The Good Samaritan Clinic banner from our last mobile clinic.
We’ve been hosting free clinics every month and helping with some pretty serious medical issues. I feel that health care is a basic human right, not a privilege so it makes me happy that we can help people who wouldn’t be able to afford it otherwise.
Sometimes a kid just has to write some sentences.
The Beautiful Belle Handbag.
I ripped the whole thing apart because I thought the gathers looked stupid. I’m going to redo it with pleats. The fabric is Echino which I just LOVE. Can’t wait to re-sew it.
The funny thing is that neither of my parents raised me on football but both are pretty into it now. Upon finding out that I’ve been watching football, my mom immediately sent me this book. I laughed so hard when I opened up the package.
Gunnison at 6 months, wearing the sweater that I made him.
Testing out a new sock yarn for Tangle. Carrie in the background being sarcastic I’m sure.
Changes in me always happen in giant leaps rather than gradually. I’m always surprised to wake up one day and find that my life (inside my head) is completely different than it was the night before. Not that those changes happen magically, they always come with a lot of work, but it always amazes me to see them happen so dramatically.
Several weeks ago I checked in on one of my favorite blogs and discovered that the authors marriage was falling apart. Reading about her family falling apart was such a trigger that I had to promise myself I wouldn’t continue to read her blog. I was up at 3am that next morning trying to figure out why reading this was so devastating.
I think there are many reasons: I have been reading about her family for a long time and care about them deeply. She is a great author so her words captured those emotions that I felt for so many years – the sorrow, pain, heartache and gnawing emptiness. And I think it served to teach me a lesson that I was having a hard time learning.
I think God always gently whispers lessons to me and then, when I don’t listen, he smacks me upside the head with them. He has been telling me to embrace the season that I’m in and not look for the season ahead. He’s been telling me that I just don’t get to replace Jim, plugging someone else into the spot he once filled. And now I know why.
I can’t ever go through a failed marriage again. I can’t ever put my kids through a torn up family again. I just can’t do it. Not much scares me anymore, but that does. Reading about someone else’s marriage failing made me actually see that. There is a lot that I miss about the constancy of marriage, but I’m just not ready for it yet. This season of my life isn’t find-a-replacement-husband-season, it’s having-fun-dating-having-roomates-party-at-my-house-all-the-time-season. And if I stop to think about it, I am loving it! I have had more fun, laughed more, lived more than I ever have before. I’m the happiest I have ever been. Two years ago I certainly never thought I would be here.
While I think we’ve all looked ahead to what the future could look like for me, hoping that there will be redemption for what I’ve been through, it’s just not that time. Laying in bed that night at 3am, I realized this. I realized that I am completely content with what I have and completely content to trust God that my future will be amazing. And that feels SO good.
A few weeks ago I helped Seth with a commercial he was making for the Colorado Marriage and Relationship Center. It was an interesting experience, pretending to be married to someone in a video. But I’m really proud of the final product. Seth did such a fantastic job, don’t you think?
My finished quilt top. Although I think it’s too skinny and need to figure out a way to make it wider.
A couple weeks ago we had a band from Ft. Collins, You, Me & Apollo, come into town, play an awesome show and then camp out in our living room. The next day we all peeled ourselves out of bed (after a very, very late night) and went out to breakfast. Seth and Carrie were in their matching outfits again, so I had to capture the moment.
Me in my finished sweater.
not sure what I was thinking when I purchased this iphone cover…
There’s nothing quite like starting a new molskine.
I suddenly, and surprisingly, decided that I wanted to understand and watch football. Carrie, being the good sport that she is, went right along with it. So Saturday, before the big Bronco game, we brushed up on our football knowledge with a marathon of YouTube football videos. Luckily we had a couple football experts stop by to really set us straight. Turns out, when you know what’s going on in the game, it’s actually interesting!
And because when I decide to do something, I DO it, we made sure we were model fans.
Today I helped a friend bottle his beer, which I love to do! We have big plans to keep everyone stocked in beer now. If only I was eating (and drinking) wheat…
Destructive to marriage is the self-fulfillment ethic that assumes marriage and the family are primarily institutions of personal fulfillment, necessary for us to become “whole” and happy. The assumption is that there is someone just right for us to marry and that if we look closely enough we will find the right person. This moral assumption overlooks a crucial aspect to marriage. It fails to appreciate the fact that we always marry the wrong person.
We never know whom we marry; we just think we do. Or even if we first marry the right person, just give it a while and he or she will change. For marriage, [being the enormous thing it is] means we are not the same person after we have entered it. The primary challenge of marriage is learning how to love and care for the stranger to whom you find yourself married.
-Stanley Hauerwas, Stanford University Ethics Professor
Now I always worry about people’s marriages. I think because I know how fragile marriage is and how much work it takes to make one work (and how the reverse is also true). Someday I hope to have the chance to do it right with someone who is as dedicated to making it work as I am. But in the meantime I pray for the marriages around me. That the spouses surrounding me will be dedicated to doing what it takes to make their marriages work and that they will know that feelings don’t usually dictate reality. And that they will always choose love.
I sewed this picnic quilt quite awhile ago and just finally finished the “hand-quilting” on it. I use the term hand-quilting loosely because these giant stitches with embroidery floss don’t really count (but are as close to hand quilting as I’m gonna get).
It’s a really simple blanket of quilting cotton and laminated cotton with batting sandwiched in the middle. It’s just like this one I made awhile back. I think I’ll keep this one in the car for all of those impromptu picnics I plan to go on.
