we fight for the vow we made 12 years ago.

…………….tears

sweat

……………………………………..more of the same

we fight because we have to but because we need too.

because this love between us is worth the sweat and the tears.

because the vows we made to each other to listen, laugh, love, encourage, strengthen mean even more today than they did 12 years ago.

you are still my best friend and my beloved and the one i want to share my life with.

happy anniversary my beloved!!

“There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.” ― Ernest Hemingway

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I’m noticing more and more silver strands highlighting my dark hair.  They’re becoming a part of who I am just as much as the faint lines that now map my forehead and the corners of my eyes.

Just as much as the words that I bleed here.

My intention with PrudyChick.com is to always write the truth of my life.  To not hide behind a veil.  That isn’t to say there aren’t things I don’t share with you here.  There are things in each of our lives that aren’t meant for public consumption.

I’ve struggle sometimes because my writing over the last year hasn’t been necessarily light.  But my life over the last year hasn’t necessarily been light.  It has been heavy with re-learning to stand and re-learning to hope and re-learning to trust God.  And I want to share this fight with you because I know we all at one time fight this fight.

In my Story 101 course, we’re focusing this week on writing the hard thing.  I’ve struggled the last couple days with what I need to write because I’ve tried so hard to be as transparent as I can be not only with you but myself.  The handful of things that have crossed my mind I usually quickly dismiss because they don’t feel as hard as what I know some of my other course-mates have dealt and are dealing with.

I struggle to accept the validity of my hard things because there are others that are so much worse.  But that doesn’t strip away the validity of mine.  Mine are hard things for me, just as yours are hard things for you.

Whether you have a blog that you share with the world, or write out your hard things in a journal that may one day be read by your great grand children, or you paint them out in an art journal do the one thing you can.  Simply bleed.  Pour your heart out.  Share the things you need to for public consumption.  Those that aren’t write out in allegorical prose or a shorthand known only to you.

These things make you who you are.  They have formed the DNA of your soul.

“I’ve begun to realize that you can listen to silence and learn from it. It has a quality and a dimension all its own.” – Chaim Potok

I’ve allowed more silence in my life since I got back from Moldova.  It’s almost as if my soul is craving it and who am I to deny it?

There is benefits in silence.  Not just for listening but for just being.  To strip away the noise of your day life.  It is, in a sense, like running a defrag on your computer.  Realigning yourself.  Getting rid of the junk and the garbage that takes up too much space not only in your mind but your soul.

Last weekend my husband and I went and saw a movie.  As the “pre-show entertainment” ended and the theater got ready to begin the previews I was struck forcefully by the amount of noise around me.  I felt as if I were drowning in it.  I wanted to close my eyes and block out the talking and the popcorn crunching and the rustling of whatever.  The noise was deafening.

I’ve thought of this repeatedly this week.  My class for Story 101 is currently exercising a week of silence.  An entire week of turning off the noise (e.g., social media & internet) and just allowing ourselves to listen and realign.  So I keep thinking about that noise in the movie theater, and how much that noise exemplifies our lives.  We don’t notice how much our mind and soul are getting bombarded with noise until one thing gets turned off, and we’re hit with a hurricane.

We forget that ten years ago we didn’t have all of this.  We forget that we existed for thousands of years without the entire world in our pockets or on a screen dancing in front of us.  We believe that were we to turn these things off, we’d not know how to function.  And maybe some of us wouldn’t.  And that’s more than just a little sad.

I encourage you to add some silence into your life.  Allow your mind and soul to realign.

“Quiet is peace. Tranquility. Quiet is turning down the volume knob on life. Silence is pushing the off button. Shutting it down. All of it. – Amir” – Khaled Hosseini

“We both believe, and disbelieve a hundred times an hour,
which keeps believing nimble.” – Emily Dickinson

i’m probably the last person you should come to for hope.  i mean i had an entire year i devoted to learning to hope again, and after 366 days of trying to do so i arrive at today and i still struggle with hope and i still struggle with trust and i still struggle with dreams and i still struggle with wishing.

but the fact of the matter is that we all do.  even the best of us find it difficult to trust over something.  we all face fears and resistance.  we all at one time or another want to give up.  we’ve all had a dream dashed to the ground and some of us still live with the fall out years later of hope deferred.  not that we’re dwelling there, but there is pain when our dreams don’t come true and there are some of those dreams that we will always feel pain over not seeing them come to fruition.

i once wrote about a definition of hope being a small haven.  i still love that definition because when my doubts become larger than my hopes i need some place i can feel safe in.  hope doesn’t always feel safe though.  sometimes we need to feel brave and courageous just to have a little hope.  but hope is still a place, even in our doubts, where we can abide.

so, maybe the only encouragement i can offer you in your doubts is that you’re not alone.  your mother, your father, your wife, your husband, your child, the lady in the cubicle next to you, the guy in the $70k car next to you at the stop light.  they’ve all known doubt.  they’ve all had dreams & hopes broken like fragile, priceless glass.

…and maybe that’s the only way you can see hope as a haven right now.  that you’re not alone.  and that’s perfectly acceptable.  and maybe you need to sit with your doubts for a spell.  and that’s also perfectly acceptable.  and one day after that season your hope and your faith will be a little stronger.  and that will be absolutely fantastic.

“And yet when I wish to explore how faith works, I usually sneak in by the back door of doubt, for I best learn about my own need for faith during its absence. God’s invisibility guarantees I will experience times of doubt. Everyone dangles on a pendulum that swings from belief to unbelief, back to belief, and ends – where?” – Philip Yancy

GIVEAWAY!!

it’s been a while since i’ve had a giveaway and i’m feeling rather giveraway-ish.  to enter to win this original art piece (by me) simply follow the rafflecopter’s friendly questions.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

today’s post is part of story 101.

I’ve become an expert at holding.

My breath
My feelings
My anxieties
My fears
My dreams
My worries
My clenched hands
My heart
My opinions
My cares

I don’t release very easily.  For a number of reasons.

I don’t want to be a burden
I want to be the strong one
My heart is just to fragile to trust again
I’m afraid

Maybe this is my problem with flying.  Toni Morrison once wrote that in order to fly you have to give up what weighs you down.  Only she said it with a bit more of a colorful description.

To fly.  To break the bond between my feet (heart) and the soil of this earth I’m going to need to release.  To exhale the all the things I’ve been holding onto.

I’ve become an expert in holding.

And maybe that’s okay for right now.  But one day I’m going to have to let go and release the things I’m holding.

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Today’s post is written as part of Story 101.

My evening yesterday was largely filled with digging things out of cabinets and shelves for a yard sale my in-laws are having this weekend.

My skin stained from years upon years of dust built up on the forgotten and unused.  My fingers stained from marker, pricing our possessions that at one time possessed us.

Staining marking the opening of grasped hands and the letting go.

My hands and arms have become more and more over the last year a canvas for paint & gesso, markers & ink.

Another opening.  Another letting go.

Hands & heart grasped so fiercely closed.

This life I long to live so so closed off to the sense of touch, the act of feeling.

With pain and ink I do my best to crack open this hardened and roughened shell.  To open my heart that has grown painful from the atrophy it’s learned while being so clenched.

These feathers that I’m attempting to unfurl, these wings I’m longing to put to use, there’s been pain in the opening.  There’s been pain in the choice to use them and not continue to sit in my pain on the ground.  Pain in letting go of my need to feel justified in my anger & bitterness.  In my self pity.

Yet, the opening has been healthful & good.

My friend Elora terms it “Playing in the pain”.  It’s the living it out in the midst of agony of redemption and sanctification.

And there is beauty there.

I was making popcorn the other day at work and as I stood there watching the bag puff up I realized that’s what I’ve felt like over the last week or so.  All this internal energy and combustion building, building, building, pressure upon pressure upon pressure waiting to burst me at the seams.

And it happened.

I exploded {figuratively…well…….sorta}.  I was done.  Remnants of every piece of me lay all around, shrapnel imbedded in my limbs and mind and heart, and I felt there was nothing to do but withdraw.  To tell the world in a shouting whisper that I was done, that I couldn’t take any more of her, that I needed to concentrate on ME for a change.

And that’s what I did.

I’ve talked about self care here before, and I’m learning how many different levels of self care there are.  How it can be anything from shutting yourself away for an afternoon to pouring your heart out to a confidant to cleaning your kitchen to abstaining from social media.

That’s where I found myself early last week.  Needing to shield myself and close myself off to the outside sources that come across my social media feeds.

I needed to give my neglected introverted soul a sabbath of quiet.

It’s been nearly a week and I’ve been loving the solitude I’ve built around me.  It’s been healing.  It has reminded me what is important to me and why I need to protect that.  I so often forget that my worth doesn’t come from the number of likes on a photo or the lack or responses to a tweet.

I believe the problem is that we don’t realize we need self care until it’s too late.  It’s after we’ve exploded at our husband or broke down in the kitchen after dinner came out of the oven burnt or we’ve threatened our kids within an inch of their lives.  We’ve been so conditioned – and rightly so – to be others focused.  Most of us have been taught from childhood to not be selfish, to think of others before ourselves.  And while this is inherently right, I think that we’ve missed an important concept.  And that’s what I love in learning about self care.

That self care doesn’t mean you’re selfish, it doesn’t mean that you don’t think of others needs above your own.  Instead…..instead it creates really the opposite reaction.  I’m learning that I can’t take care of my husband or my home if I’m not giving myself the care she needs.  I’m learning that some of the expectations I place on my husband on how he should treat, love, care for me are often times my soul simply telling me to take care of me.  To nurture myself.

I’m learning that when I take care of my soul, that one that is introverted, I love my husband so much better and find joy so much easier in our marriage.  Of course that isn’t to say that he shouldn’t love and care for me.  It just means that if I recognize a need within my soul and don’t tend it I’m much more likely to snap or explode at Shawn.  Thereby finding it much more difficult to have a joy filled marriage.

My challenge to you is when you find your seams at the point of bursting like a bag of microwave popcorn take some time to nurture your soul.

Are you good at giving yourself time for self care?
What are some of your favorite forms of self care?

I remember with vivid clarity the night when I shouted curses in our bedroom aimed at God.

I remember where we ate dinner that night, I could even show you where we sat.

I remember crying, sitting, kneeling on our bed, while Shawn stood in the doorway separating our bedroom from the short hallway of the rest of the upstairs.

Because that night was a pivotal change in my relationship with God.  Things would never and could never be the same as they were.

After years, literally years, of praying and asking God for a change in our lives, and seeing the hope of that change coming to fruition, when that door was closed words spewed from my lips accurately describing my feelings of being abandoned in the middle of the ocean.

I struggle to be honest with you here about all of this.  To be honest in just how devastated I was left.  How this devastation left my relationship with God in ruins.  Because I grew up in church and good Christian girls aren’t supposed to lose faith or hope or shout bad words at God.  Don’t get me wrong, I grew quite apathetic to the “Good Christian Girl” label in high school, and nearly 20 years later hasn’t changed that one bit.

After waiting and praying for years and having a hope of change snuffed out like it was a useless candle, trite statements I’d heard all my life about God’s goodness and faithfulness were just as useless and stupid as it seemed my prayers were to this God who was supposed to be good.

He didn’t feel good.  He felt distant, like he couldn’t care less about me or my husband or anything going on in our personal lives.  The anger I slipped on that night was a brutal anger.  It kept me up at night.  It swelled in me like a hurricane.  And to be perfectly honest, I nearly let it ruin a friendship.

Like I said it was a pivotal night in my faith.  God and I are back on speaking terms and I do my best to be honest with Him and re-establish my trust with Him.  Some days are harder than others.  Some days I still want to say bad words at Him.  Some days I do.

I struggle with my faith and I wonder if it will ever be as strong as it once was.  I wonder if I’ll always have pain with these scars.

If you’ve been here.  If you want nothing to do with God or the trite statements, no matter the good intentions, I know what you feel.  I know the frustration and the anger.  If you’re the one feeling abandoned, I’m not going to be the one to offer the sentiments you don’t want to hear.  I’ll simply sit by your side and hold your hand and say I know.  Because I know that any sentiments to God’s goodness at this point in your journey aren’t going to help you heal any faster.  And the healing takes as much time as it needs to.

I know there has been the sound of crickets here more lately than the sound of my voice.  I don’t write as much as I used to and that has been for a variety of reasons.  It’s been even longer since I posted 1000 Gifts and even that has been for a variety of reasons.  The hard days don’t often lend to thankful ones.  Your grey clouds are truly grey and show no hint of silver linings and so you take the clouds and the rain and in the rare moments appreciate them.

I made a declaration to live alive and I’ve admitted that it is at times quite difficult to break the bindings of the grave.  This morning, blinded by the dawning day as I made my way to work, I was gently reminded to just live.  To simply breathe in and out and let that be my focus and goal for today.

0521 Shawn asking me to lunch
0522 Late nights, dessert, coffee, and three of my favorite people
0523 Friends that encourage me to Fly and point me in the direction of the sky
0524 Gold painted feathers
0525 Gentle reminders to just live
0526 A bunch of pink Ranunculus in a purple vase
0527 Seven years at a job I like, & an increase in pay
0528 The warmth of the pre-spring sun on my shoulders
0529 Dinner with two of my Moldova teammates & their husbands
0530 Holding my newest niece

What are you thankful for on this first spring Monday of 2013?

I have to be honest and say that the choosing to live alive is a lot harder than I thought it might be.  One does not generally have to strive to live.  Yet I find myself having to put forth effort to give breath back to this life.  And during the hard weeks when simply getting out of bed to do the daily deeds of life is excruciating, the effort is all the more difficult.

In the last month since I declared my intention to live my life as what I actually am….alive, it feels as though all the smoky tendrils of death are wrapping themselves around my fingers and legs and arms with even more strength, trying to pull me back down into the grave.  Death is greedy.

Death was overjoyed at my willingness to lie in the cold rock tomb viewing the outside world in a faded black and white.  Death doesn’t like me to see things in color, to see the vibrancy and vitality of everything around me.  And so it pulls and it swears and it whispers lies of comfort to try and make me stay.

Choosing to be alive was really my first step in beginning to fly.  And both – the aliveness and the flight – wrestle with the contentedness of remaining where I’ve been for so long.

Bringing life back from death is a supernatural act, no matter how you look at it.  It takes breath that isn’t my own to restitch sinews of muscle and to fill lungs that some moments I’d rather not go through the pain of having my chest crushed just to have my heart restarted.

You have to admit, dead really is so much easier than alive.  But there are advantages to being alive, to feeling breath catch in your throat and your heart skip several beats as you inhale the ocean filled air.

And that life, the life that is truly lived as alive is worth the pain of resurrection.

And I’m choosing to hold onto and believe that, especially when it feels death’s grasp is digging deeper into my flesh and saying, “No, stay here.”