Archive | love looks like

In which (love looks like) an unsteady Mother’s Day and an anniversary at Wal-mart

May 12, 2013

The tinies filled our mantle with letters in childish printing and smudgy footprint butterflies or handprint bouquets in bright poster paint on construction paper. You gave me a gift and a beautiful card. We kissed in our pajamas on the couch but we were late for church, and I missed breakfast and a cup of coffee, there was whining, and I yelled at everybody. So much for that Mother Halo on Mother’s Day.

Between me and a couple of the tinies, I’m pretty sure an entire six row radius at church joined with me in wishing we had just stayed home. After several incidents, one tiny tried to make a break for it, probably to evade my repeated hissing to sit still, and I reached out, quick as a flash, and snatched the back of a t-shirt and frog-marched a kid straight out of church for a time-out. I felt my lips narrow to a line about to break. I was sweaty and embarrassed and frustrated. Then I stood around, feeling sorry for myself, feeling like a terrible mother because the tinies usually love church and today, of all days, of course, well, this.

We taught Sunday School together. You’re so much better at that stuff than I am. So I just read books aloud, and pass out crayons, and I pray. I remember names and I hope that counts for something. We came home for a few more time-outs, and melt-downs, and once everyone was fed their lunch and settled for naps, I snatched up my purse and ran out of the house for my own little time-out. Really, all I wanted, even more than any gift or party is for just one day to pass without anyone needing anything from me. I wanted everyone to pick up their things without being asked and stop bickering, happy mother’s day to me. I curled up in the corner of a crowded restaurant on Mother’s Day, alone, and I read an Oprah Magazine and ate carbs until I felt like a person again.

This season of our life is so full, too full, and I’m not always steady. I know this about myself. I know how hard it is for someone like me – someone who loves order and a slower pace, quiet and beauty – to be the matriarch to a busy houseful of loud confident little people with places to go and thoughts to articulate and so many needs.

I confessed to you that sometimes I get so mad at the Inklings. (Bless you, you didn’t even blink at my craziness.) I feel resentful because C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien and all these other writers, real writers, had luxuries like housekeepers and pubs and colleagues, they had creature comforts and every time the Muse arrived, they didn’t have to shush her, plead with her to come back later because, right now, Muse, can’t you see? preschool, supper, diapers, bath times, and everything wonderful in my life needs my attention. I cried in self-pity and I said, “Hell, anyone could have written the Narnia books if they had a housekeeper and sustained silence. I could construct Middle Earth if my greatest concern was my own schedule and interests.”

I felt misplaced today.

I was not proud of myself. I was spoiled and a bit rotten, petulant and thankful for the sanctuary of thoughts and the discipline of silence. Thankful even more for you. Always you. You pull me out of my head, and you help me see with my real eyes, instead of my selfish eyes. Thank you, darling, for always leading me to grace with laughter.

The tinies threw me a homemade party when I came home an hour later. They turned on music, and even though I was tired and hot, I danced in the kitchen to pop songs, and I felt like barking with laughter-crying because all three of them were dancing with me, and their faces were upturned to me, they were having so much fun, and I thought, Oh, my God, I’m it, aren’t I? This is it. I was spinning in our tiny pink kitchen, with a baby on my hip, and this is still my favourite thing in the world to be their mother. It’s different for everyone but motherhood is how God has marked me, this is my thin place between the heaven and earth. I’ve parted ways with the lie of Balance and the illusion of Doing It All. Maybe I wasn’t a great mother this morning, but right now, I’m twirling little girls and breakdancing with a little boy to Katy Perry’s Firework, and I’m singing all the words out loud, and I’m pretty sure I’m the best mother in the world for them.

It’s also our twelfth wedding anniversary today, darling.

I never wanted to get married young, I had other plans. But, then, you. And as the oracle Nora Ephron wrote, when you realise you want to spend the rest of your life with someone, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible. We were babies, we know that now, but we have loved growing up together. We’ve changed well into ourselves, we’ll probably keep it up, I imagine, all this changing, refining, falling in love with each other’s new incarnations.

We decided to clear the air, start over, with a fun family drive. We took our passports and headed for the United States. At the border station, the guard said “What is the purpose of your trip?” and I laughed when you said, straight-faced, “We need to have Sonic for supper.” We drove straight to the Sonic and we splurged by ordering fruit slushes for everyone. Evelynn nearly died of delight. We toasted our anniversary with tater tots and then we went to Wal-Mart. And I had more fun in three hours in the car, with you and our babies, than I think I’ve had in months. The tinies are old enough now to get our jokes, and that one when Anne saw a guy wearing a racoon hat and you pulled the car over and hollered about how you couldn’t wait to see a racoon in a hat made me nearly cry with laughter. Because they were laughing, and it felt like, okay, so we’re okay. We’re it, you and me, Brian. Those babies in wedding clothes from twelve years ago have built this life, and this family, we’re the Mother and the Father, this is their childhood which feels like a lot of pressure sometimes, I’m unequal to the task. But I can do tonight, and I can drive anywhere with you. We’re still laughing, and we’re still yearning for each other, and there is nothing else for us but this, it’s beautiful and it’s tiring but we keep showing up.

Thanks for buying me tater tots tonight, and for kissing me in the minivan.

Now we’re home. I opened the windows and everyone is sleeping. The rain is falling, and I’m probably going to stay up too late because this is my only quiet, my only stillness. This is the season of Writing After: after supper, after bath times, after stories, after kitchen dance parties, after bills are paid, after groceries are put away, after laundry is folded, after madcap craving runs for fast food in another country. I’ll write after those things. I write after it all, because this life is what I’m writing about.

I remember when we were dating in Tulsa. We would walk across the old Mabee Centre parking lot to get to Nordaggio’s Coffeehouse or Walmart. The parking lot was beat up and old, cracked and pebbling. And we’d end up sitting on a curb in the parking lot by the light of a street lamp, listening to night cicadas or cars going by, and we would talk about how no one had ever, could ever, have been in love like we were in love, and we would kiss until we were dizzy before walking back to the dorms, just in time for curfew. I remember once how you said that our walks to Wal-mart were the best dates anyone could ever have.

Twelve years later, you were right. You were right.

Continue Reading · brian, journey, love, love looks like, marriage, parenting · 69

In which [love looks like] maybe but probably not but maybe

March 13, 2013

After a long and dreary winter, the sun is the big event. We tumble pell-mell out of our houses and condos for the feel of the light on our upturned faces, the city parks are overrun, everyone we meet smiles and says it’s a beautiful day, isn’t it? You love this about our city in the country: your biggest complaint about city living was how no one makes eye contact or says hello to a stranger.

Sometimes our life can feel like one long task-list, a never-ending catch up, and a full calendar page. These are the day-after-days of needs and bathtime and fingernail clipping, dish-washing and tidying, spelling tests and working and loving to the corners of the mundane moments.

I joke that the vast majority of my life is spent moving both things and/or little people from one place to another place.

So we headed out on a Sunday night, you and me and our little gang. I tossed a few apples into a my purse, filled up the water bottles, and we loaded everyone into the minivan. We drove to the nearby ocean. Anne quickly filled a shopping bag with seashells, she’s part magpie, mostly fairy. Evelynn tried to eat sand (because of course, that is the type of thing that Evelynn does – regularly). Joseph explored and talked to himself: he’s the only one so far with an imaginary world of his own creation always nearby. I like to be outside with the tinies, and the further we are from a playground the better for all of us.

We talked a lot about the whole new speaking thing that’s developing as part of my work. I was nervous. And conflicted because I don’t want to contribute to the noise. I’ve rejected the “person at the front having all the answers” model. (I’m more a “beside” person than an “up front” person.) Some people are born preachers or teachers. I’m not – clearly. I’m just me. And I don’t like the industry side of McChurch … and yet … it’s nice to get a couple bucks for doing the work I’ve done for free all these years. Two more speaking things are booked, a few more already scheduled for the summer, book edits are due soon, and you’re rearranging your life for the unexpected direction my life is taking. Life is changing again, another new season for us.

You told me to relax. And watch the sunset happening right now. So I did.

A while ago, I was thinking about writing through a Practices of Marriage series on my blog, much like my old Practices of Mothering one. There seemed to be fair interest when I mentioned it on my Facebook page, and I was trying to be “strategic” with my work here for a change.

But the more I thought about it, the more I felt it wasn’t right to do. I’ve never approached this place or my work or my writing in that way. And more importantly, we’re just us. I’m losing my appetite for instruction manuals. Marriage is complex and intimate; I haven’t any business stomping through the mystery. I can’t tell anyone how to be married because all I know about marriage is what we’ve done together here for all these years. It’s tempting to make a rule out of my own experience. But it’s a temptation I’ll let pass for today.

I can only tell my own story of how love looks for us today. (Most of the time. Sometimes. Not all the time.) Love looks different for each of us: for us, it looks like this, for tonight anyway, it looks like holding hands in the minivan, and a bit of fresh air and wilderness, it looks like making each other’s dreams come true.

We’ve changed a lot over the past 14 years. Ten years from now, our marriage will likely look different again. We’ll keep finding the faithful way to love each other in every moment, whatever comes, I hope.

You’re turning quite grey, you know. Not that I’m one to talk.

We stopped at a sandwich shop for a bite of supper. You sat in the corner of the fluorescent chain restaurant while the older two balanced precariously on those tall bar chairs, Evelynn hollering for more of your ham sandwich from her highchair, we were all windswept and alive as birth. This is all you’ve ever wanted – a little tribe of our own, eating sandwiches together, smelling like the ocean with sand in our sensible shoes, another day together. It’s tiring and crazy and, God, we love it. We are so done having babies, but I catch your eye, and you raise your eyebrows and grin at me, and I blush like I’m still 19, and I think, well…. maybe one more.

Maybe. Probably not. But maybe.

Probably not.

I write now and then about what love looks like for us.

Continue Reading · brian, love, love looks like, marriage · 36

In which (love looks like) room to change

December 19, 2012

You’ve been away for a week now, and I miss you so much more than I expected. I say “expected” because we both know what it’s like in this house: how busy, how loud, how full, oh, these days. I mean, I knew we would miss you, but we have school and preschool, get-togethers, family, friends, church, work – life is still furiously happening. Surely I’ll be too busy for longings. Two nights in, I was standing in our closet, with my eyes closed, smelling your clothes. I did all the laundry, and I cried because I missed your gigantic jeans with the frayed hems filling up our old washing machine. I haven’t cooked a real meal all week, we’re subsisting on grilled cheese and pancakes, I guess you’re the one for whom I cook.

This week, I’ve been remembering the years of spiritual disunity between us, particularly around community and church, calling and vocations. Maybe it’s because you’re back with our beloved friends-like-family in Texas, and the Great State was the scene of one existential crisis after another for me (or maybe I was just too hot, we all know how grouchy I can be when I’m sweaty).

So I remembered how burned out and broken I was ten years ago, then, you joined me seven years ago, and we moved, then we went different directions somehow.

Remember this?

I railed against institutions and organizations, wouldn’t darken the door of a “real” church, became fluent in fault-finding and cynicism, the word “orthodoxy” made my left eye twitch, while you tacked hard the other way, steering towards seminary, conservative denominations, structures, authorities, you longed for accountability.

Many saw me, and my questions, my wonderings, my wanderings, as a liability to your calling, they felt badly for you, I was holding you back. Why couldn’t I fall in line? I know this. (I felt badly for you, too.) And others on my side couldn’t understand why you were going back into the old ways, when God was moving as a fresh wind, beyond boundaries and walls.

Even though we were so far apart on so many seemingly vital things, we were so happy, weren’t we? we were still us.

People would raise eyebrows at you: What about your calling to pastor? The years were going by. They were concerned. And you would say, I’m trusting God with that one. And then you would laugh and say, Well, I’ll just send them Sarah’s blog, and if they still want us – you always said “us” not “me” – after that, I guess we’ll know it’s a good fit.

We were moving towards each other. But it took a while. You moved, and I moved, and God was moving, and we were meeting at a thousand points in the sky. Today, we stand together, all these years later, in harmony and in step, in agreement, in unity, oneness, even in the places where we disagree (still) (yes, still).

I looked back on that season of our marriage, the season when we were so different, and I remembered you telling me that this was not going to change us. We could give each other the gift of time, and space, room to change without fear.

And when you were faced with the choice between full-time vocational ministry or a strong marriage, right in the middle of those years, you chose me.

Don’t think I’ll ever forget it.

Don’t think I’ll ever forget how you chose to stay here, in a small city in Canada, for me, for our tinies, even now.

Don’t think I’ll forget how we each let the other be wrong, for a long time.

I had a friend ask me: but how? How do you disagree so strongly on something as vital as your spirituality or your expression of faith? How do you fall away from everything you believed, and yet, yet, not fall away from each other? because don’t you have to solve all your problems before the sun goes down? don’t we have to stay at it, marriage is hard work after all, until all is resolved and everyone is singing from the same sheet of music?

Maybe.

But we didn’t do it that way. The sun has set on our disagreements, many times over.

We’ve gotten a lot of practice at living in the in-betweens, we figure that’s where the life happens, and we figured we wanted to love well, even, especially, here.

The sun went down, we still disagreed mightily, and we kissed in our old bed anyway.

I remember you saying it to me, over and over: meant to be, Sarah Lynn. Meant to be. We were meant to be, we built it down in the foundations of our story, and so we were safe there.

Somehow, we knew that if we were faithful to God, faithful to each other, then we would end up where we were meant to be all along, together, eventually, even now.

God gave you to me, darling, and he gave me to you, for this journey, and we figured we both had a lot to learn, and so we gave each other the room to change.

You’ve given me so many gifts but I think of one often: you just aren’t afraid. You are never afraid, you walk in such trust, and expectation, in bold gentleness.

Bri, this part of our story would have looked so differently if you hadn’t been so fearless.

But because you weren’t afraid, I was not afraid, and we simply rested, even danced, there, in the in-between, and we talked a lot, and we waited. The Spirit moved me, and the Spirit moved you, and we moved together always, to now. We’ll move somewhere else – literally, figuratively – someday, I imagine.

You’ll be home tonight, we made you muffins. I call sleep-in tomorrow morning. Thank you for letting me change. Thank you also for changing.

Photos by Tina Francis Photography

I’m taking some time off from blogging to finish my book. In the meantime, I am reposting a few of your requested favourites.

Today’s post originally appeared on 30 September 2012.

It is part of an ongoing series called [Love Looks Like] in which I write about, well, what love looks like for us in these days.
Want to help build a school in Haiti? Click here to do some good.

Continue Reading · love looks like, marriage, Uncategorized · 19

In which {love looks like} the room to change

September 30, 2012

You’ve been away for a week now, and I miss you so much more than I expected. I say “expected” because we both know what it’s like in this house: how busy, how loud, how full, oh, these days. I mean, I knew we would miss you but we have school and preschool, get-togethers, family, friends, church, work, life still happening. Surely I’ll be too busy for longings. Two nights in, I was standing in our closet, with my eyes closed, smelling your clothes. I did all the laundry, and I cried because I missed your gigantic jeans with the frayed hems filling up our old washing machine. I haven’t cooked a real meal all week, we’re subsisting on grilled cheese and pancakes, I guess you’re the one for whom I cook.

This week, I’ve been remembering the years of spiritual disunity between us, particularly around community and church, calling and vocations. Maybe it’s because you’re back in Texas, with our beloved friends-like-family, and the Great State was the scene of one existential crisis after another for me (or maybe I was just too hot, we all know how grouchy I can be when I’m sweaty). So I remembered how burned out and broken I was ten years ago, then, you joined me seven years ago, and we moved, then we went different directions somehow. Remember this?

Even though we were so far apart on so many seemingly vital things, we were so happy, weren’t we? we were still us.

There wasn’t an urgency of trying to convince each other, was there? I didn’t feel the need to make you believe and think in my ways. I understood why you were there. And you gave me the same grace, didn’t you? You even gave me the extra measure, the freedom to explore my struggles and ideas and weaknesses in a public place, you were not threatened by me. And when you were faced with the choice between full-time vocational ministry or a strong marriage, you chose me. Don’t think I’ll ever forget it. Don’t think I’ll ever forget how you stay here, in a small city in Canada, for me, for our tinies, even now. Don’t think I’ll forget how we each let each other be wrong, for a long time, each.

Maybe. But we didn’t do it that way. The sun has set on our disagreements, many times over. We’ve gotten a lot of practice at living in the in-betweens, we figure that’s where the life happens, and we figured we wanted to love well, even, especially, here.

The sun went down, we still disagreed mightily, and we kissed in our old bed anyway.

I remember you saying it to me, over and over: meant to be, Sarah Lynn. Meant to be. We were meant to be, we built it down in the foundations of our story, and so we were safe there. We knew that if we were faithful to God, faithful to each other, that we would end up where we were meant to be all along, eventually, even now.

God gave you to me, darling, and he gave me to you, for this journey, and we figured we both had a lot to learn, and so we gave each other the room to change.

You’ve given me so many gifts but I think of one often: you just aren’t afraid. You are never afraid, you walk in such trust, and expectation, in bold gentleness. Bri, this part of our story would have looked so differently if you hadn’t been so fearless. But because you weren’t afraid, I was not afraid, and we simply rested, even danced, there, in the in-between, and we talked a lot, and we waited. The Spirit moved me, and the Spirit moved you, and we moved together always, to now. We’ll move somewhere else – literally, figuratively – someday, I imagine.

You’ll be home tonight, we made you muffins. I call sleep-in tomorrow morning. Thank you for letting me change. Thank you for changing.