life

Do It Like a Lady!

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Yesterday, I cleaned out the fridge, put away the groceries, entertained my daughter, washed a sinkful of dishes, and then made dinner for our little family of three. I gathered them around the kitchen table and we had dinner and dessert together. Ben and I discussed our day and Elizabeth chimed in with whatever she so desired. Oh, and I also bought and arranged flowers for the kitchen.  In those moments of domesticity, I felt blatantly…female.

Now, don’t burn me at the stake just yet. Hear me out, please.

I am female by sex but I also identify strongly with the female gender and a lot of the roles that are usually prescribed to women. I do not believe that women (or men, for that matter) should be bound by “traditional” gender roles, but I cannot deny the fact that I get a warm fuzzy somewhere inside me when I am taking care of my family and friends, whether it’s a meal, a mug of tea, a load of laundry, or a needed hug or cuddle.

I had a career as a teacher before I had my daughter a year and a half ago, and I am looking at perhaps getting back into working. I’d rather stay home with Elizabeth, I can’t lie about that, but I also acknowledge that, in our current society, that is not a forever choice that I think I can make. Not if we want to accomplish some of the plans that we have for our family and home. I have some wonderful female friends who have gone back to work after having their children, launching into successful careers in their chosen fields, and I could not be prouder of them. I know some incredibly strong women, women who juggle work and families and hobbies with an aplomb to which I can only aspire, and I cannot help but admire them. I have friends who are adamant that they are no use with housework, can’t cook, etc. I am not aficionado at cooking myself (trust me, I’ve ruined many a dish) but I find a measure of peace and accomplishment in taking care of my home and my family. And, yes, I have cooked and cleaned in pearls and high heels before, just to say I did.

I am not entirely sure what my point was in writing this; I think I had an idea that was more coherent in my head, but that’s all right. Thoughts poured out on paper, right?

#LoveYourSelfie – What Do You See…?

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10178416_10152034445108133_1427553082_nThis week, the Today Show is rebooting their #LoveYourSelfie series, with the further tagline of “Reclaiming Beauty”. Yesterday morning, the TODAY anchors premiered this series with a segment of them standing before mirrors and describing several things, including what they see when they look in the mirror and what in particular they like about themselves. Many of them admitted that, when they look in the mirror, they often are looking for what they can change but Lester Holt’s assessment was that, for fifty-five, he thought he looked rather good and was encouraged in that he thought that all of his hard work is paying off. He did say, however, that he does not care for his receding hairline.

I know that I have written several posts over the years about my personal battles with self-esteem and body image, and it is an ever-evolving series of struggles and triumphs in my life, even more so now that I am a mother. I really like the #LoveYourSelfie series and it’s encouragement towards self-esteem and acknowledgement of a person’s individual beauty, in whatever form it may come, so I decided to give this exercise a try myself.

I stood before the mirror today and looked at myself and I noticed a few things. Firstly, I noticed that I checked to see if my hairstyle complemented; what did it do for me? I have my hair in pigtails today, pulled low behind my ears, and I think that they make me look younger than my thirty-one years. I remember when I first wore them like this in high school; I was called “Pocahontas” all day long and was even asked if I have (Asian) Indian in my blood (in genuine curiosity, to which I replied that I am pretty sure I don’t). But I also noticed that, after a cursory inspect, I almost always lift up my top and turn to view my profile, or, more specifically what my tummy and abdomen look like. I think I am looking pretty good for a woman who gave birth only sixteen months ago. I can always afford to tone a little more (would really like to get back into bellydance conditioning for that) but I am still pretty pleased with my progress.

What do I like about myself? I like my eyes and my hands. I am short but busty so my shape is very different now from when I was younger, even just before I got married almost eight years ago. I like my legs, how they are longer than one would expect, as I was told by friends in college when they saw me in jeans for the first time. I think, bit by bit, I am growing more and more accepting of my body and my self.

Sometimes, when I look in the mirror, I still see that seventeen-year-old girl that stepped out into the world half my lifetime ago, and, sometimes, I just cannot help but smile at her.

Annotation to a Birthday

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This is an annotation to “It’s That Time of Year Again”.

I finished the original post late last night but, even after I went to bed, it kept turning over in my head, this realization of happiness. I know that happiness is not only a feeling. It is a conscious choice. I realize that I am choosing to be happy. Is life always easy and a spoonful of sugar? No. There are days that are rough, difficult, lonely, and challenging. I know that, for Ben, teaching and pastoring can be a huge drain on his energy. Being at home with Elizabeth all day long, managing house and money, cleaning and errands and chores can all be a bit draining on me, too. Sometimes I do not know where to put my foot next, what is the next step to take, and that can be disheartening, the waiting. BUT I am choosing to be happy in the midst of it all.

We have so much to be thankful for. We have a home of our own, we have vehicles to transport us there and back again, Ben has good jobs, I am able to be with Elizabeth right now, and we live in a nice community with family close by. We are greatly blessed.  Granted, I could always want more, demand more in order to be happy – a bigger house, perfectly-manicured lawn,  a higher-paying job for Ben or myself, a different neighborhood. But I don’t want to put my happiness in things that can be taken away from me or lost. That’s not the point. Things or money or position aren’t happiness, they wouldn’t make me happy. I have a husband whom I love every single day, a daughter whom I adore, a family that is kind and generous and simply amazing, friends who bless my heart all the time…these are the things that matter in my life. It is for all of these things that I am thankful.

I am choosing to be happy every day. A friend of mine pointed out that choosing to be happy is a wonderful thing but so also is seeking out happiness. I don’ t know how much I seek it as much as cultivate it. As I consider it, I realize that I cultivate happiness in my writing, in trying to help and be there for others, being a helpmeet to Ben, teaching my daughter joy and encouraging her curiosity in the world, and in getting lost in the world of a good book now and again.

How do you cultivate happiness?

 

**EDITED 4-26-14**

It’s That Time of Year Again

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The day after tomorrow is my birthday. I will be thirty-one. And, as usual, I have given very little thought to it – well, thought as in planning anything for it. Such a change from when I was a child/teenager.

When I was little, I could hardly wait for my birthday. Birthdays meant breakfast in bed and the present that I had wanted most (or so I thought) before I went to school that morning. I also got to see my cake, made by a baker that I still buy cakes from when I visit home. That sort with the hard icing, the kind that was so delicious and sweet that you could smell the sugar when you opened the box. Lady Lovely Locks, Rainbow Brite, Care Bears, My Little Pony. She could do any design. Absolute confectionary happiness that I got once a year on my special day.

As a teenager, it meant a sleepover with my friends and not a single parental complaint as we stayed up late, at junk food, watched the sappy or silly movies, and listened to boy band music they had already heard ad nauseam almost any other day throughout the year, times about eight. My sixteenth birthday brought about a brand-new formal gown made by the best tailor I have ever had aside from Elen verch Phellip, and an all-expense-paid dinner for me and a handful of my friends and cousins, who ended up getting up on the live music stage at the restaurant and serenading me as a surprise.

In college, there were quite a few of us with birthdays in April so that usually meant a communal trip out to Applebees or the Chinese restaurant formerly known as BoBo’s for dinner and/or dessert, birthday cards in the campus and regular mail, and maybe flowers delivered with a card from my parents. And usually some teasing from my upperclassmen friends about me being “twelve”, as I was a year younger than the others in my class.

My twenty-fifth birthday brought about a surprise visit from my parents and a birthday dinner set up for me with the family and a goodly number of my best friends. My poor husband, the secret weighed heavily on him, as he was stressed to get the house cleaned the yard mowed before my parents showed up and trying to do so without telling me why was just too much for him. He finally told me the afternoon before, which sent me into a flurry of cleaning and raking the yard when he was done mowing. I was taking the next day off anyway. 🙂 It was a lovely dinner and time with friends and family.

My thirtieth birthday came along with several big changes in my life. I was a new mommy with a four-month-old baby girl. I was lucky enough to have some friends come up and take me and Ben out to dinner and dessert. It was really nice.

This year, I’m turning thirty-one, and I am terrible at planning things for myself. But, as I think about it, there is one thing that I have on repeat in my mind. Something I have to admit and do so with absolute gratitude.

I’m happy.

The Most Perfect Cuppa

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1005378_10151565595688133_1171989393_nAuthor William Goldman asserted that, since 1642 B.C., there have only been five great kisses in the history of world. For me, there are even fewer perfect cups of tea but, today, I had one. I cannot tell you how long it has been (or if even EVER) since I have made a perfect cup of tea but I did today.

Black tea, water, honey, lemon, and sugar, all melding together into the most exquisite cuppa I have had in many a year. It was so perfect that I took it and went back into Elizabeth’s room where it was quiet and rocked in the glider while I sipped it. It was all I could do to keep from heading all the way upstairs into my little garret (what I call the bedroom in our finished attic) and hiding there with my treasure in a teacup. But I sat, inhaled the heat and steam, and let the velvet sweet slip past my lips to warm my form. It not only soothed my aching throat but also my tired body and weary heart and soul. It was the sort of perfection that stops time and lets it just hang in the air around you like snow without wind. All too soon, though, I was looking into my cup at the last sip or two of golden brown that filled the bottom of the silver-lined porcelain and I actually despaired. I didn’t want to finish it because, if I did, that meant that I would have to get up and carry on with life again. But, eventually, I did. Because I had to. You can’t hold time captive forever.

The character of Edward Bloom in “Big Fish” tell us that “They say when you meet the love of your life, time stops, and that’s true. What they don’t tell you is that when it starts again, it moves extra fast to catch up.” What he did not tell you is that this is not only true of love but of those all-too-few moments of perfection and peace. Life may pause for a handful of precious moments, but then you are swept into the maelstrom again, longing for another bundle of minutes as sweet as that . For me, right now, it’s that perfect cuppa.

Soul-Lift

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How often we wish for another chance
to make a fresh beginning.
A chance to blot out our mistakes
And change failure into winning.
It does not take a new day
To make a brand new start,
It only takes a deep desire
To try with all our heart.
To live a little better
And to always be forgiving
And to add a little sunshine
To the world in which we’re living.
So never give up in despair
And think that you are through,
For there’s always a tomorrow
And the hope of starting new.

Author – Helen Steiner Rice

Not the End of the Story

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1491606_624325770975867_589373496_n What is the part of the story that most readers fear/enjoy most?  That’s right: the end. Sometimes, the end of the story is satisfying, with all the ends tied up in a way that makes sense and gives a feeling of closure to the tale. Sometimes, the ending leaves us wanting to tear our hair out and going, “WTH did you just DO?!” But something that all of us realize throughout the reading of the book, – the ones that are the most impactful, the most life-changing – is that it’s not the end until the end. So when the characters, such as Eleanor of Aquitaine in Alison Weir’s Captive Queen, are going through hell, we as the readers know that it’s not the end, not yet. So we keep reading. We don’t just stop, because the bad times are not the end of the story.

That was the sentence with which I began my week: Bad times or wrong things are not the end of the story. I was sitting in church, this past Sunday, letting my brain and heart work back over the past few weeks, searching the Bible for guidance and encouragement. Honestly, I felt a bit downcast and distraught. But, then, during open worship, a member of our church stood and said something extraordinary that has stuck with me all week. She said that she was so thankful that the bad times or the wrong things that happen to us are not the end of the story. We don’t have to give up because we aren’t at the end yet and we can trust God to carry us through. And that lodged itself in my heart and has stuck there all week. I emailed her that evening to tell her thank you for sharing, that what she said what just what my heart needed to hear, to be reminded of.

A few days later, the above picture showed up in my Facebook newsfeed, posted by a friend. I couldn’t help but smile and say to myself, “I guess this is my theme this week. Bad times are not the end of the story.” And I found myself using that phrase over and over again throughout the week in attempts to encourage others who have been having a rough time. It’s not the end of the story. You’re not done in yet. Just hold on, hang on. Just a few more pages, a few more chapters. The story is not done. Choose each day to end the story as well as you can. End well. That is another phrase that kept popping up in my life this week. The story is not done, you can choose how the next chapter looks. Yes, there will be things in our lives that throw us for a loop, hurt our hearts, and oppress our minds. But we can still choose to write the next pages well, even if it is just in little ways – choosing to give a smile, asking someone else how they are doing and trying to give an encouraging word, spending some time in the sunshine. Little things, day-by-day choices, words on the page. Words add up to sentences, sentences to pages. Bad times are not the end of the story. Keep going. It’s not the end. Not yet.

Defending My Peace

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Originally posted on The Well Written Woman, “Defending My Peace”.

Let it go, let it go
I am one with the wind and sky
Let it go, let it go
You’ll never see me cry

Here I stand
And here I’ll stay
Let the storm rage on  – “Let It Go”, Disney’s Frozen

Lately, I have been surrounded by situations that provoke my helplessness. Even more so than my helplessness, though, they provoke my desire to take care of things, to help, to fix things, make everything okay. I have thought, I have written, I have prayed, and I have indeed found guidance and followed it as best I can. So everything is supposed to be good, right? Everything is supposed to fall into place, isn’t it? Yeah, not so much.

I feel like a storm, a maelstrom, is roaring around me, and, every time I think it has abated somewhat, that I have made progress or taken a step forward, it blows up in my face again, roaring and bashing against my heart and mind. I take step after step forward, trying to do what I feel convicted about, what I feel God has laid on my heart and led me to do, what’s important and right. When I follow through, it brings me peace. But then, as I try to walk forward, I feel like my feet sink into the snow, into the mud, and the cold. My peace is threatened. I war against my own mind, my own tendency to doubt myself, to doubt my worth, my actions. But that peace glows and warms me like a coal, a feeling that is often so fleeting in our lives these days. I don’t want to lose that, so I have resolved to defend my peace, to fight for it. And that involves something that is very difficult for me, something that is hard to admit and even harder for me to say to myself.

My peace does not depend on others. My peace depends on me doing what my heart has been convicted is right, what I need to do, and resting in that and in God. My peace is on me, not them. While it may be true, it is something that takes me reminding myself every day, moment by moment, prayer by prayer. But those prayers are not just for me; they are also for those in my life, those in these situations. Prayers for peace for them as well in whatever capacity in which they need it.

There are days, the not-so-great days, when my peace is threatened by things inside and outside of these situations, but I will continue to fight and defend and hold on to my peace. It’s a constant work. Worries threaten, as they always have, but I am working on weighing them out. The things that I can control, I will do the best I can with them. The things I cannot control, I have to just let them go because they are not mine to deal with. And it’s hard to let go; specifically, to let go of my desire to fix the things around me and make everything hunky-dory. I can’t do that. It’s not my place nor my job to fix everything. I can deal with things in my own life, in my sphere, but I recognize that my emotional and mental tendency is such that I want to fix everything for others, too. Family, friends, the people who I care about in my life. Admitting that I can’t, that sometimes I am helpless to affect such a change or a fix, is hard. But, if I constantly worry and fear and flail, all I will do is cause myself pain and guilt over something that I realistically had no control over in the first place. Control, true control, over our lives may be an illusion, as some have suggested, but that doesn’t stop me from trying to grasp at it, to not feel quite so helpless in it all. Endeavoring for balance is where I find myself at one point or another in my life. “Let go and let God” is the saying that comes immediately to mind, and that is where I am right now, as I sit in the dark of my quiet house writing this while everyone else is asleep.

I find myself praying more and more lately, when my mind turns towards the maelstrom, when it threatens to drown me again and I feel helpless. That helplessness swells up so strong and hits without warning. I don’t know whether I’m coming or going or standing on my head or my feet, where to turn or what to do. It’s why I follow my gut, that voice within, when I feel led by God to do something, when I feel that sense of direction in my heart and my soul. I follow it because, in that moment, the next place to put my foot is clear to me. Maybe just that next step and only that next step, but it’s there. When I feel that it is the right thing for me to do, it’s not a sense of control necessarily, it’s a sense of “yes, this is right” and that’s where I try to step. It might not make sense to anyone other than me but I believe that it is God’s metaphoric thumb in my back, which I cannot ignore, or, at least, I try not to. When I follow through on that leading, the peace that comes with it more than amazes me in its comfort. I don’t want to lose that.

So, to echo Elsa, here I stand, and here I’ll stay. Let the storm rage on! The cold may bother me but I won’t let it beat me. I won’t let it, let my peace, go.

Resurrecting Dead Poets

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I am not a huge fan of Walt Whitman but, now that Robin Williams’ quoting of his poem “O Me! O Life!” from Dead Poets Society is the background for Apple’s new iPad commercial, that poem has once again become imprinted on the front of my brain.

O Me! O Life!
BY WALT WHITMAN
Oh me! Oh life! of the questions of these recurring,
Of the endless trains of the faithless, of cities fill’d with the foolish,
Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?)
Of eyes that vainly crave the light, of the objects mean, of the struggle ever renew’d,
Of the poor results of all, of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me,
Of the empty and useless years of the rest, with the rest me intertwined,
The question, O me! so sad, recurring—What good amid these, O me, O life?

                                                                     Answer.
That you are here—that life exists and identity,
That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.

I, as a human being, cannot help but ask myself sometimes, what good am I? And the honest truth to that is: I don’t know. I don’t know what good I am, what grand purpose I have in the scheme of life, what – if any – legacy I will leave after me. All I know is that I am here and whatever verse I am contributing, I am trying to make it a good one, a sound one, one that will encourage and edify. I don’t really know what I am doing but I’m trying my best to do it well.

The End of A Decade Draws Nigh

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When I was in college, my girlfriends and I (lovingly known by the upperclassmen as “The Gaggle”) would sometimes sit together and talk about what we expected or hoped to do during our “decade”: the ten years between age 20 and 30. Now, I am 42 days out from my 30th birthday and I find myself thinking back over my decade.

During my decade I have:

  • Traveled to Russia on missions for 9 weeks
  • Completed undergraduate work and graduated magna cum laude with a Bachelors of Science in Education
  • Completed graduate school and earned my Masters of Arts in Literature, cum laude
  • Had two papers on J.R.R. Tolkien’s literature and archetypes published,
  • Presented a paper about John Fowles at a local literature conference,
  • Dated for the first time,
  • Lost three family members to cancer,
  • Bought my first car, a white Plymouth Voyager
  • Lived in my own apartment, by myself, for three months
  • Got married,
  • Started teaching full-time,
  • Began bellydancing,
  • Bought my first house with my husband,
  • Traveled to New Orleans (I had never been there before),
  • Began blogging,
  • Learned to be more honest, with myself and others,
  • Earned my Library/Media Specialist addition to my teaching license,

and, last but not least,

  • Had my first child.

When I look back on it, I have, honestly, accomplished a great deal, even though it may not feel that way a lot of the time. In fact, I have accomplished everything that we discussed “should” happen in your decade: get married, start a career, buy your first house, start having children…I was rather surprised when I realized that. And, yet, I feel now – with Elizabeth – that my life is only beginning, that is, with a new decade, a brand-new chapter, nay, a brand new book is beginning.

Right now, I plan on going back to work as a teacher in August. However, at the moment, I am thoroughly enjoying being home with Elizabeth and I wouldn’t give up this time for anything in the world. Needless to say, I’m very much looking forward to the summer: sun and warmth and nature with my wonderful husband and my little girl. Now I get to share all those wonderful summer experiences with a new life and continue creating a whole new cache of memories. Can anything be more wonderful than that?