I think that we can safely say that I’ve solidly entered the dating phase of my journey. Gosh, it’s terribly fun… so this is what I missed out on by getting married at 18 and skipping college.

I had a realization last night while on a date. We were talking about what it’s like to be alone and what we wanted and I couldn’t really even list something that I want. What do I want my life to look like? Umm…exactly like it looks. My therapist’s goal for me was to get to the point where I didn’t need… I didn’t need a person or people to make me complete. I didn’t ever really believe that I would get to that point because the need inside me felt so desperate and huge. But I’m here… not sure how, but definitely here. Recently I had a guy offer, “What do you want from me?” and I couldn’t think of one thing to ask for. I don’t need anything.

I think there is this sense where none of us are islands… that in a way we all need each other… that’s kind of the point of being here – to live in community, to share life with those around us. We need people to make it through life. But there’s also this sense that if we so desperately need one person to ensure our survival, we are in humongous trouble. Because that person can always leave and your survival is no longer in your hands but in his. What an awesome responsibility to put on someone else…

Last night we were talking about wanting to have someone to take care of us and I realized that as much as I have longed to be taken care of (and never really have in the way I’ve wanted), knowing that I can (and do) take care of myself is so much more comforting than having someone else to do it for me.

I’m sure the dating phase won’t last forever. I’m sure eventually I will find someone that I don’t want to live without, but I’m not really looking ahead anymore. I don’t long anymore for the next phase. Instead I’m just reveling in where I am. Soaking it up and enjoying every moment of it because this will be the only time in my life I get this chance and I don’t want to ruin it by wishing for what’s next.

Thankful. <3

I’m starting to think that the ways I’ve changed are pretty apparent, that they show on my face, in my skin. I try not to talk too much about my personal life to my customers, but sometimes it just comes tumbling out… with the safe ones. The ones who also share some vulnerability with me. Today I was talking with a customer who knows a little bit about what happened to me, telling her how I am so much like a man (traditionally) that I need something to conquer or I’m bored. And she said, Well, you conquered the last year.

Yes I did. And this last year, year 30, has been the very best and happiest of my life.

My lessons right now are about living in community and loving exactly where I am. I’ve seen growth in some of my friends lately, that gradual kind, like most growth is, that changes so slowly that you don’t see it at first until suddenly you are looking at a completely different version of the person you once knew. It’s been amazing to watch and walk through. It almost feels like those milestones and changes are happening to me. I imagine it’s kind of how they feel about me, especially looking back at all those months and months where they sat with me, a hollow shell of myself, waiting for the growth to creep into my life.

I had never really learned how to live in community… it wasn’t modeled to me, and I’ve always lived my life so privately, quietly, almost in secret. It’s amazing the freedom that comes from saying things out loud, admitting your fears and your failures and your heart breaks. It’s really easier than keeping it all locked up where it gnaws and claws it’s way to the light.

I can’t help but feel these lessons, and these changes, are some of the most important I’ll ever learn. I’ve come so far… so, so far from where I was. I came from total abandonment and feeling orphaned to a place where I belong. To people who love me and accept me and can argue with me and I don’t have to worry that they will leave because of it. I get the honor and pleasure of walking with them through their journeys, the happiness and heartache. I get to see God be God in their lives, working miracles tiny and large, gradual and fast.

I see redemption happening, the redemption that I’ve longed for so deeply for these past almost four years. Redemption, redemption, redemption… a word that I wrote over and over, a silent prayer that I begged for every day. It doesn’t look anything like I wanted it to or what I pictured it to be, but it is exactly what it should be, exactly what I needed it to be.

There’s a sign in the gym, above the weights, that says:

You’re getting stronger.

I usually don’t pay much attention to the signs at the gym as I think they are really cheesy, but I can’t count how many times I’ve been struggling to do my last bicep curl and my eyes focused on that sign and I believed it. I can’t count how many times I’ve been at the gym, with a hurting heart, and my gaze wandered over to that sign.

You’re getting stronger.

and I believed it.

I’ve spent a lot of time in my life being unkind to myself.  Wishing my thighs were smaller or my stomach was flatter or my eyelashes were longer… that I was a nicer person, more friendly or that I could be outgoing and charming in a room full of strangers.  I’m not exactly sure how it happened, but somewhere in the midst of accepting that my husband was leaving me, I learned to give myself a little bit of a break. I started appreciating my body for the curves that it has and I started really believing in my creative abilities, that they were something special.  I started liking the person that I was, seeing what other people saw, that I was fun to be around and actually pretty amazing. It’s amazing how much easier life is when we treat ourselves with kindness.

So I continue this practice of believing. When somebody pays me a compliment, I believe them.  When a friend admires a strength that I possess, I believe them. And when the sign at the gym tells me I’m getting stronger, I believe it.  Because, after all, it’s true.

In child birth classes they try to teach you to work with the contractions, to embrace them and let them wash over you. All I remember from child birth was fighting that pain tooth and nail, bracing myself against the hospital bed as each contraction came. All I remember from the majority of my life is fighting the pain tooth and nail too.

The week Jim told me he wanted to leave was horrible. The shock, the fear, the rejection, the pain. I remember holding all of those huge feelings at arms length for fear that I would sink so far into them that I wouldn’t be able to get back out. I was so, so afraid of feeling what his leaving me meant. It wasn’t until I started therapy, two years later, that I learned to work with the pain, to let it wash all over me and to feel everything. (And dammit, once I decided I was going to feel, I determined to feel the shit out of every single feeling that came.) It’s amazing how once you decide that you’re not going to fight the pain anymore, you start to heal so much faster. I lived with this festering wound for years and as soon as I decided to face it, it immediately started healing. (Now there’s barely a scar. It’s amazing how these memories are getting blurry with distance and healing.)

Here’s the thing about pain: It’s not like fear which is completely irrational and without any value whatsoever. Pain has a purpose. I believe it to be one of life’s greatest teachers and I think that’s why God doesn’t much care if we are in pain or not, because he 1. knows we can handle it and 2. knows that it is his very best tool. Actually I think that God hates seeing us in pain, but he allows and even welcomes it in our lives because he knows that sparing us the pain would rob us of the lessons pain brings.

The only way I could have gotten here – so happy and alive and whole – is because of the pain. There was no other way to learn these lessons. I had to feel it, see it, accept it and embrace it. And it was so, SO worth it.

I’ve noticed this theme in my life lately, in so many different areas of my life I’ve been asking the same questions:
What is our plan?
Who are we?
Where are we going?
What are we doing?
What is our message?
What is our mission?

I’m realizing that in these different areas of my life (the different organizations I’m involved in, Tangle, my family) I can’t move forward without these questions answered.

A few months ago a friend of mine told me about some advice she was given for her family. She and her husband were told to write a mission statement for their family: a governing set of rules and values and goals that determined the direction of their family. I was completely blown away by this concept and walked away from my conversation with her feeling like my world was rocked, my life was totally changed.

Since then I’ve been thinking about what the master plan for my little family will be. I’ve been thinking about what I want to define us: plans, goals, directions and values like grace and bravery and love and compassion. I’ve been telling my kids this – what defines our family. When they are afraid of something, I say things like, “Our family is a brave family. Even if we are afraid, we still do what needs to be done, even if it scares us.” It’s amazing how when I tell them these statements about our family they just accept them as fact.

“What? Our family is brave? Ok, then I guess I will be brave.”

Laying out our master family plan gives us something to refer to when things come up – decisions that need to be made or conflicts that need to be settled. And it gives each person a defining role – this is who we are and this is how and where I belong. I’m starting to see just how valuable this is to a family, a business, an organization. And I’ve started to wonder how anyone/thing functions without a master plan? It’s amazing that so many people/entities can operate without a vision. They are going somewhere, they just don’t know where. (How much of my life has been lived like this?)

So in all the areas of my life I’m starting to look for the big picture. I find myself asking these questions of the organizations I’m involved in because I don’t know how to move forward without knowing where we’re going. And in doing so, I get to be part of the process of defining their master plans. I get to dream and help mold where we’re going and it is SO fun.

In my family I’m still writing our master plan. It’s hard doing this by myself – I am such a collaborator – but I feel this is the single most important thing I can do for us. My kids need to know exactly how they fit into our family; knowing where they belong will give them so much security. And I need to know what defines us so when decisions get big or things get blurry, I know where I’m going, how I’m going to get there and what kind of values are going to get me there.

Proverbs says: “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” And I’m starting to see just how true that is. I am so abundantly thankful for these lessons I’m learning.

I’d kind of forgotten what it was like to live with someone… to have that constant companionship, constant feedback. Now that Carrie and Seth have been living with me for a consistent month, I’m starting to come alive in different ways. I am such a social person and even though I finally learned to be alone and really be ok with it, it is so good for me to be surrounded by a community. It’s so good for the kids too.

Earlier this week our neighbors opened up to us about something going on in their lives. As she told us their heartbreaking story, her voice broke and tears came to her eyes. And tears immediately came to my eyes too. There is something so significant about moments of vulnerability, when someone lets you into their pain, or their joy. When you’re vulnerable with someone you open up your heart to them and in turn give them a chance to open up their heart to you. When someone is vulnerable with you, it connects your heart in unexplainable ways and you start to see them differently. I think vulnerability is the only way to have real, deep relationships. The situation turned completely around for our neighbors and yesterday they were able to tell us their happy news, again bringing us all to tears.

The lesson that I’m learning is that more than anything, we were made to live in community. We were made to share in people’s heartaches and celebrations. We aren’t islands. Life is about mourning and dancing and so many times we are doing both at the same time. And that means that life can be really messy. I am eternally thankful for the friends who have walked with me through my mourning, who loved me when my life was such a beautiful mess…the friends who celebrated with me a month ago when a new chapter in my life began. I’m thankful that I’ve been learning to open my heart up and let people see my pain because that has connected me to them in amazing ways. I know now that this is the only way I can do relationships – everything else is a counterfeit to the real thing. It’s so hard to open yourself up and make yourself vulnerable. But it’s always, always worth the risk. Living in community is always worth the risk.

I’ve been thinking a lot about how through this journey I’ve learned what faith really is. When I was in that place of not knowing if my husband would stay or go I finally learned that the only way I could survive that uncertainty was to completely surrender. Anyone who knows me knows that I am bossy and that I like to be in control, so giving up control over my marriage, the most important relationship to me in the world, was about the hardest thing anyone could ever ask me to do. But that was the only way. And when I finally learned how to let go, completely let go, and take blind steps forward – that’s when life opened up to me. That moment of giving up, of saying, “Ok, God, you can do what you want with me. Wherever you take me is where I’m going. I’m going to stop questioning you and I’m going to start believing that you know better than me.” – that moment was when it all changed. Accepting that is the only reason I am here today.

What I’m realizing is that getting divorced wasn’t the end of my journey in faith. I still have no idea of what my life is going to look like. I have no idea of what God has planned for me. I still have to keep taking those blind steps forward and put all my trust in him. Because he still knows better than me. And I’m seeing that I’m going to have to live the rest of my life this way. I would so much rather have control. I’d rather have a plan that I can take step by step, crossing off each milestone with a sharpie. But if I want it to be really good, I have to choose the unknown. I have to lay my heart in his hands and see what he does with me. Faith isn’t just going to be something that got me through a horrible time of my life, it’s going to have to be my oxygen. If I want to live something truly remarkable, faith is going to have to be the new way I do life.

I think life is always going to be a little scary, because it doesn’t fit into a 5 point plan. It’s always going to be about risking just enough because without risk, we never get a chance to have something amazing. And for me it’s always going to be about placing one foot in front of the other, trusting that God knows what he’s doing with me even if I have no idea what that is.

My Grandma and step-Grandpa on his 90th birthday.

Last weekend the children, my mother and I drove to Wyoming by way of Denver (where we picked up my sister and the twinzies). We went to celebrate my step-grandfather’s 90th birthday. The life he has lived is pretty amazing, he was married to his first wife for nearly 60 years before she died of cancer. He and my grandma have been married for 8 years and have had such a good time together. He has been so good to all of us and has been such a patriarch to his family. It was amazing to see him surrounded by his children, grand, great and great-great grand children.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the legacy we leave and how when we view life with the long-view instead of looking at the short term, seeking instant gratification we end up with so much more: deep relationships that span decades, children and grandchildren that make us abundantly proud and a host of people who’s lives we have touched, who love us for it. I think taking the long view comes down to what has been my biggest life lesson – love is a choice. It’s not always easy and it doesn’t always feel good to choose to love, but it always pays off. Always. It was amazing to see the fruit of 90 years of choosing to love.

I’ve been thinking about how I’m going to have to live a really long time to be able to have 60 years of marriage under my belt. But that is something I want for my life. I want a legacy and a huge family that adores each other. Where so many families don’t survive and turn into hate-filled drama machines, I want mine to be full of life and love. I know I’m getting off to a rough start to fulfilling this dream, but I’m not giving up – I’m still holding onto hope that I can have it.

Something occurred to me yesterday:

I’ve been surviving, not living.

And as I’ve spent my time holding on, I’ve forgotten about my extraordinary ability to make things happen. And now I feel like my crazy 20’s are about to end – that time in life where I was too young to know any better. Too young to know that I was taking ridiculous risks or working to make the impossible happen.

Those years are gone – lost. And while there was value in that time – time I used to get myself in order and face my heart – I now have to account for it, how it was spent. I feel like I’ve been wasting time. I’m 34 days away from turning 30 and my life has been moving in front of me as I stood still.

I cannot live any more of my life standing still – surviving.

I do not get to waste any more time.

I’m ready to start moving again. I’m ready to start making things happen. I’m ready to tell an amazing story with my life. The best part is that I can.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the lessons I’ve learned. I think the real life lessons – the one’s that sear themselves into our core, that we will never forget – are learned under distress. These are the lessons that are forced upon us in situations we would never choose to place ourselves in. But I think this is exactly why we walk through fire and come out thankful – we are forced to grow. This is why I am thankful for the pain I’ve been through – I am not the person I used to be and that is SUCH a good thing.

Yesterday I wondered to my friend HOW exactly it was that I lived through the last three years. Now that I’m through them, I wonder how I made it that long hoping and wishing and praying and holding on? That was valuable time, but I am so glad I’m through it.

I learned patience. I learned how to hope and what faith really is – after so many years of being confused about it. I learned about who I am; I know myself when I never did before. I discovered that God is, indeed, real. And I learned about love.

Love is not a feeling. It might begin like one, but love, real love, doesn’t start until after the feeling leaves. You really love someone when you make a choice to love them. Loving someone is choosing to extend yourself for them. And loving can be really, really hard. Maybe the hardest thing you will ever do. Love is work – but it is the most fulfilling and worthwhile work you could do. There are not different kinds of love, just different faces to the same coin. When you do the work of loving someone – choosing every morning when you wake up that you will love them – your own heart is healed in ways you could never imagine. Even though you are emptying yourself to love, the process of doing it fills you back up.

Falling in love is magical. But the real stuff starts when things get gritty, when you see someone at their worst and you choose to love them anyway. Loving is giving someone the power to hurt you. It is very risky and it is worth the risk.

I’ve been hurt and I’ve been abandoned – someone didn’t choose to love me when the feelings disappeared – but I still believe wholeheartedly in love. I still choose to love. It’s love that healed me.