Seven: Media Fast Day 26

Holy smokes, the closer we get to the end, the more I'd like to just cheat and say I did it. It's just two days early, right? I've learned through this experience that my husband is a rule follower of all rule followers. Therefore, cheating is not worth it if I feel the need to confess, which I usually do.

So here's my confession for today... I looked on Facebook, but only for like 5 seconds after looking up what I needed to (one of my friends from Haiti is in the hospital and the best updates on how she's doing are on Facebook - merited...). But after I saw how she's doing, I just browsed like the top 5 posts on my news feed today. Like I said, I'm over it. And I don't really feel guilty - I only will when I have to confess tonight.

Something great I'm learning through this - there's no way in heck I could do this without community. Jen said it in the book and I thought I could do it alone, no problem, but people - a month is a LONG time. For real. And having Jarred do this with me has been a game changer because it reminds me that People magazines are media and YouTube links in a text message are media and it's worth it to power through the last two days. So very worth it. I've needed him. Without him I would totally have cheated more than once or twice by now. He's been my person and it's made us more of a team; for that I'm incredibly thankful. Truly.

A sad thing that's happened during media month? I COMPLETELY forgot to call not one, but BOTH of my grandmas on their birthdays. I blame Facebook, but seriously I do. Facebook reminds me of those things and my iPhone update didn't transfer all of my birthdays and then my grandma's felt unloved and forgotten. Yuck. So ready for those reminders to be back in my world. And it's ended up costing a pretty penny to send something nice with an "I'm sorry" card to make up for my brain fart(s). This part made me really sad and even maybe made me say, "It's not worth it." But I can't blame media month - only myself.

One of the greatest things we've learned is what Jen's husband Brandon says in the book about their experience:

"The dangerous part of our social media and technologically saturated world is not it's existence, but what it distracts us from." pg. 116

We are loving learning things we've never known about each other - going for walks, talking more, watching each other's personalities, spending time with our pup - all because the distractions have been removed.

This is decidedly good for us - more distraction free lives and more time with people we love. Absolutely nothing wrong with that.

Stay tuned for the grand finale post for media month. I'll talk about our plan to implement this beyond one month as well as what challenge we've chosen for October. This whole Seven thing is really hard. And good. And hard. But we love it.

Listen...FMF

I've decided to jump on an a new bandwagon. I'm trying out Lisa-Jo Baker's "five minute friday" business. (I know, it's Saturday, better late than never... don't tell). There's a prompt, you have five minutes, you just write and then you post. Done. Fun huh? Come play!

Listen...

Lately we've gotten a little lazy with listening skills in our house. We've gotten good at talking, defending, explaining and waiting until the other person's done so that we can speak our piece. When this happens, we go in circles.

We all need to be heard, but more than that to be understood - to know that the people who love us most know where we're coming from and why we feel that way. We need empathy and grace, we need to have them ask questions instead of give opinions, suggestions or answers. We lose so much when we stop listening.

This weekend, I will set my alarm for 5 minutes and just listen to my husband - hear what he has to say and say nothing back. I will then set my alarm for 3 more minutes and think before I formulate a response. I want to be more intentional about my tone, my questions but more than anything - my listening skills.

Bullets - Part 1

Well friends, it's been a little while or a long while. While I'm discovering that marriage + a full-time job + doing ministry = awesome, it also equals not much free time (you know, with someone living in your ish constantly - in your bed, in your used to be but not anymore clean house, your time - you know). Because of these things and other things you'll read in the bullets, you're getting just that for a little while - bullets. They're effective for a busy life, right? Maybe I'll elaborate on them when I have a moment to myself, speaking of, there are days when I'd like to be a stay at home wife. Key word, wife - not mom. When I have kids, I'll need the heck out for a minute, you know what I mean? But as a wife - plenty to do around here, quiet house, I think I could dig on that for little bit. Maybe if we lived in Delaware or Oklahoma or something... I digress.

Bullets of things I dig right now:

- my husband's 30th birthday weekend, promise to give you a full post on this, but man - it was delightful - friends, wine, country music, surprises, the whole bit





- hikes in this stupidly gorgeous place








- this girl, enough said








- this crazy thing called Young Life and the 80 college leaders that come with it - the love I have for these people is so deep and so fantastic and the way they love high school, junior high and special needs kids is phenomenal




- a weekend in Napa with my dearest friend and her husband - soul food, I tell ya




- this guy... still totally into him, I got a good one - also loving our weekend getaways while we have them - sonoma for a work conference? i kinda love that.




- friend visits - totally into friend visits (shameless plug)


- cuisine-themed girls night once a month - this is the only picture I have from it - sorry I'm not sorry


- this house we bought, no big - i dig that and the droves of paperwork we're drowning in


in other news... still working on our wedding photo album, and a post about our wedding. just feeling guilty so I thought I'd say it outloud.

.our love story part 3 - our "first date".

just friends, right? until... our respective airplanes touched down in california and texas and he started texting me ridiculously frequently. and i started checking my phone ridiculously frequently. who could blame me really? so in perfect timing (as God is oh-so-famous for), i headed off for a few days of solitude sans cell phone. i needed to process my time in haiti- what i'd learned there, how God had changed me, what i was being asked to do out of that time. it's another story for another blog, but some incredible things came out of those 3 days listening to the still, small voice of God. crazy what happens when we stop and seek.

i turned my phone on monday morning only to find a voicemail from jarred asking me to call him back. so i did and we talked for my entire one and a half hour drive home. 40 minutes into the conversation, he tells me he'd ended his relationship. in girl speak, to me, this meant "he's totally into me and wants to date me." in his mind - i learned later - it meant "he made a hard choice to end something unhealthy and he needs a break from dating, but he wants to build a relationship with me because there's something about me..." oh men & women and their brains :)

throughout the next 2 weeks i learned two things 1) that there was a "haiti reunion" party/debrief at my parents' house two weeks later and 2) that Jarred was going back to haiti for 5 weeks. i'm no fool. i knew that if i didn't see him before he went back to haiti, the chances of us actually developing any sort of relationship would be decreased because of the lack of communication in haiti. i also needed to at some point talk to the organization we went to haiti with about future plans there, so i decided there was no time like the present & i missed a great friend's wedding and booked a plane ticket to texas.

i told him i was coming and he said he'd come too and stay the whole time with me at my parents' house (the perk of having spent 8 days with my parents in haiti). excitedly nervous didn't even begin to describe how i felt getting off that plane. i actually don't remember much about him picking me up from the airport and what i can assure you was an awkward conversation all the way to my parents' house. that night we'd planned to have dinner with a few of his friends and my cousin and then go out two-stepping. dinner was great, but i wasn't sure how to read him because he paid for my dinner as well as his friend's (a girl) because he owed her for something, or maybe because he's just nice that way, but it confused me. were we on a date? i still don't know. but we had a great time dancing and went home to my parents house. we were getting water and a midnight snack in the kitchen and he kissed me. in my parents' kitchen, am i 12 or 30? who knows, but that was the point where i knew this was our first date, he was into me and it was totally worth coming home to figure that out.

the rest of the weekend was an awesome blur with our haiti team, the medical missions board of directors and some time spent with my brothers and their wives. we met the guy that infamous "texas friend" said she was going to marry while lamenting over relationships in the ft lauderdale airport - they are married now :)

we even made a lunchtime stop at my niece's class to hang out with my favorite girl. he was a champ and won her over right away.

he took me to the airport and then 10 days later left for a month in haiti - absence makes the heart grow...

.our love story, part 2 - i blame haiti.

we arrive in Haiti and begin to dive right into ministry. mind you, many of my family members are on this trip and noticing how much time jarred & i are spending getting to know each other. i even at one point said to my sister-in-law, "i'm going to intentionally not hang out with him today. i am in no way wanting a relationship with anyone and i don't want hanging out with him to get in the way of why i'm on this trip." she just gave me this little chuckle and said, "okay!" in her most excited voice - i love that girl... this baby-snuggling guy was unintentionally putting off the "i'm awesome" vibes. the bottom baby is our future niece :)

we proceeded through our week filled with medical clinics and time at the mission (the orphanage), chats on the beach and in the hotel lobby in the evenings and time spent with family and friends, getting to know one another. the ignoring didn't work out so well for either of us. i mean how can you ignore a darling man in scrubs sewing up fingers and treating babies?!??! impossible.

it was evident by mid-trip that we really dug each other - friend or future spouses, whatever it be, we dug each other. my mom was walking with a friend by the pool and sandi said to my mom, "that's your future son-in-law, you know that right?" what sandi failed to realize is that jarred was within ear shot of her :) neither of us had any clue at that point how true those words were. for me, it was just a camp crush - we'd go home and it would all be over.

after many late nights talking on the above beach of amazingness, we decided the last night that we finally needed to talk about this "thing" that everyone around us was talking about and we were avoiding - because neither of us were in a place to be in a relationship... what we determined was this: we dug each other, we wanted to stay friends, he had some loose ends to tie up at home & some choices to make so the idea of dating was tossed out the window, we planned to see each other about 3 months later when he made his way up the california coast.

i look back now and i am incredibly thankful that neither of us were relationship-ready because we'd have been much more worried about impressing each other. instead it was a simple friendship of kindred spirits - sweaty, gross, exhausted, full-hearted kindred spirits, serving in haiti. we traded seats to sit together on the flight home and made each other playlists on our iphones just like crushing junior highers and went our separate ways. that's how we left it where we'd met - at the DFW airport. just friends. until...

.our love story, part 1 - how we met.

***pre-post disclaimer: i promise to get to the wedding part... for my own sake more than yours, i want to have our story recorded here with pictures so i thought i'd start about 18 months ago and keep the suspense going :) march 2011 - DFW airport food court (most romantic meet-your-husband spot in the world) i roll in at 5am on a red eye flight from LAX. go ahead and picture me post all-night travel on my way to haiti for the first time by way of DFW. go ahead, i dare you. it's not pretty. i'm 3 weeks post-breakup, traveling to haiti on a scouting trip for work, mostly excited to spend 8 days with my parents, my sister-in-law, my aunt and a good friend from texas who i was meeting up with for the rest of the journey. my parents come and find me, we walk to get some breakfast at the food court where the rest of the crew was. i hug the 8 people i know and i very briefly meet the 5 i don't know (including my now husband). my initial thought is, "he's cute, but probably either married or too young for me and i'm not interested in him either way because i am anti-relationship right now and maybe forever. being single rules, you don't get hurt or waste time if you stay single." i proceeded to have an obnoxiously loud conversation with said texas friend over breakfast and think nothing more of jarred's presence. (below is our first team picture and is said to be the only picture from the trip where jarred & i are not standing together)

we get stranded in fort lauderdale. we sit, on the floor, for hours and i end up sitting with him and texas friend reading endless entries of "damnyouautocorrect" and laughing hysterically while other, more responsible adults (a.k.a. my parents) try to figure out how to get us to haiti.

we then sit in our same triad and start talking relationships, naturally. texas friend and i are both in/out of relationships and completely frustrated by it though at this point she tells me, "i think i'm gonna marry this one." we let out a girlish squeal and jarred looks at us like we're bananas. we are, but at least we're being ourselves. we then ask jarred about his relationship status and he says he doesn't want to talk about it. after much prodding from relentless women, he tells very little except that he's in a rocky relationship. i remember thinking, he's cute, but he's technically unavailable and i am so not dating anytime soon. i remember being charmed by his sarcastic sense of humor and impressed with the way he tolerated the girl talk. and i remember intentionally choosing to not hang around him because there was something about him i liked and i wasn't about to get hurt.

turns out our "stranded in fort lauderdale" story ended up being an overnight stranded. so we went to dinner and i remember sending my best friend a text after dinner saying, "uh-oh, i have a crush on a guy on our team. camp crush, i promise it won't go anywhere because neither of us are in a dating place." i had to confess to someone, right? i felt better having confessed. after dinner, 4 of us ended up going to the beach in fort lauderdale and opting for a midnight fully clothed swim in the atlantic.

at this point i was drawn to his adventurous spirit and realized how much i enjoyed spending time with him. i decided that the week was either going to be really good or really difficult. i mean who has a crush on a guy that's in a rocky relationship day one of a mission trip? (keep in mind we met when i was 29, not 15...) who does that?

haiti, here we come...

.the spotless kitchen.

***pre-post side note: our wedding was FLIPPING AWESOME. hands down best day of my life to date. will post pictures/thoughts when i have a moment to gather them without feeling overwhelmed.

day 1 of post-honeymoon wife-ness. my kitchen is spotless... why, you might ask? well, let me explain... when your husband of 5 days moved in while you were already at your wedding destination, it is a very bad thing for the house you come home to. i am SO loving being a wife and i think it's the greatest thing to wake up with a man with a ring on his left hand in my bed and drink coffee with him in the morning. i love wife life. what i don't love is a messy house. when said husband moves in and all then soon-to-be wife receives is pictures of every room in the house sprinkled with piles of clothing, kitchen gadgets and creatine, boxer shorts and clothes from high school, wife wants to cry.

when we got home from (mini) honeymoon #1, my sweet little teensy bit ocd heart was overwhelmed.in his defense, he did the best he could with the time he had and i'm thankful he showed up for his flight to the wedding. however, i'm swimming in laundry, clothes & need-to-be-re-organized cabinets and closets. when i get overwhelmed, what do i do? oh i make sure the kitchen is spotless... all the time. i think it's something that's small enough that i can control and something i see multiple times a day so i have yet to touch any piles of anything else, i simply just keep going from the kitchen to the computer - thinking about the piles. my poor little overwhelmed wife brain. the best news? tonight we're going OUT for dinner so i don't have to clean the kitchen again :) soon enough, i'll get a handle on this wife thing.

.learning to accept gifts.

i am getting married in 9 days. holy moly. i'm really getting married in 9 days. here are a few things i've learned in this season and i don't want to forget i've learned them so i'm writing them down: - i've learned that i'm lame at accepting gifts - i've learned that no matter how many times i say "thank you" it rarely seems sufficient for all that my family & friends have done for jarred & i in the last few months

- i've learned that i had NO IDEA how much work planning a wedding would be

- i've learned to say LOTS of "i don't care's" - it's just how this bride is coping these days - i've learned about true friendship, true family ties and that those people bring so much life and light into stressful situations

- i've learned that loving someone is so much more than saying "i do", that forgiving quickly is not an easy thing and that marriage will indeed be the hardest, best thing i've ever done

- i've learned that beginning a marriage is a community project and i can't do it without the people God has oh-so-graciously placed around me

but i think of all those things, the hardest one for me is accepting gifts. i still haven't totally learned that. i felt awkward at bridal showers, i feel weird when things show up to our house and we didn't pay for them. i feel really really badly that i won't see a bill for our wedding, nor our couches, nor our honeymoon because we have ridiculously generous parents who love us more than words on paper could convey. i feel bad about these things because i have an over-active sense of responsibility and in these last 4 months, i've not been allowed to take care of myself or anyone else - i've been doted on, pampered, showered with prayers, gifts and love and spoiled rotten. and i'm still working on accepting it. i have not doubt that my wedding day will be the best day of my life to date and no doubt that it will all be 100% worth it, but sometimes it's hard to let others give and give and give.

i think what my Creator is trying to teach me is that all these things - just a TINY glimpse of his grace, his gifts, his forgiveness, his mercy. all these huge things that others are unselfishly doing for us - just little bitty glimpses of how he loves. and i'm learning to accept the awesomeness that Jesus gives by being forced to accept the awesomeness of his people unselfishly giving in my life. and all i can say is, "i'm overwhelmingly grateful."