Tag: love

Just you wait

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“Just you wait,” people say.

Wait until you’re an adult and you have to pay your own bills. Your rent. Your car insurance. TAXES. 

Wait until you’re as old as me and your body betrays you.

People say the best age is 17 or 21 or something, but I’ve lived better. People say your wedding day is supposed to be the best day of your life, but I’ve lived better. 

Because I think it’s actually 32. It’s the days you barely remember, the days you worked and ate nothing fancy for dinner. 

We celebrate three years of marriage right around the time I get the urge to sort through every drawer in our house – and he wisely heads to work. I find our old notes to each other. 

Growth is too slow to capture in real time. It’s astronomical in hindsight – and on lined paper.

Just you wait, people say. And I’ve said it to myself. You’ll both change drastically. 

And they’re right, in all the wrong ways. 

We celebrate three years and I have given up all doughnut shops, but one – where the dough is truly blessed. I only buy well-made leather shoes that live up to my now-German last name. Occasionally, in the spirit of unity, I attend a garage sale. I even force my pragmatism aside and purchase an additional raffle ticket to increase our chance of winning 40 bred heifers. 

Just you wait, people say. But they don’t warn you how your confidence grows when you know there’s someone to pick you up when you fall. How you’ll start to see yourself in the eyes of the person who loves you and thinks you’re amazing. You’ll share your ideas more. Speak in public. Nominate yourself for president. 

And you’ll always be eager to get home. 

“The things we fear are almost never the right things,” she says over the phone before we pray about future decisions.

What other good things am I missing for fear of living a one-dimensional version of someone else’s story? The best people I know have lived nightmares, but watched for grace at dawn.

Just you wait, people say. 

Will do – for all of it. Years and years of every bad and good thing. Every disagreement and reconnection. Every death and resurrection. Every forgettable journal entry. And every bit of growth. 

Maybe it’ll be great. Just you wait.

The gift of limits

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The first warm spring day. You remember those. Don’t you? Across the years.

When you’re a kid and you beg to stay up late because there are too many things to do in the last light. Cheeks flushed. You have to ride your bike, kick the soccerball, a couple somersaults on the trampoline. 

Sure, your dad sees snow on The Weather Network. But the hours you have, you have them in high resolution. 

The last campfires of summer. You remember those, too. Don’t you? Across the years.

When you’re a kid and you cook golden brown marshmallows for your mom and watch her squish them between chocolate cookies. Or when you’re a teenager and you watch the boys build the fire bigger and bigger on the beach. Just a bunch of pyromaniacs. When you’re an old woman in your thirties and you crack a cold one and talk budgets and babies with the best of them. 

“I’m tired of being busy,” he tells me over the phone. 

I don’t have the heart to tell him I’ve looked at our shared calendar and I’m pretty sure we’re booked until 2088. 

It’s almost halfway through the year and my New Year’s resolutions have come back to haunt me. They crowd my brain in the middle of a conversation with my mom. In the middle of a prayer before we drop off to sleep. 

Some would call it productivity. A friend calls it “anxious productivity” over the phone. “Good thing God commanded us to rest,” she laughs.

Did He really tell us that? Really? To go out there and get nothing done. 

THE SKY IS THE LIMIT. (But so is my bedtime.) So is my brain and my budget and my energy and my time. What a gift.

I don’t have to do everything, but I can do some things. For example, I don’t have the time to Google the history of rat eradication in Alberta, but I could sit on the riverbank on Sunday night and finish zero books. 

Put it on my tombstone: She always dropped everything to do nothing with people she loved.

Embrace the limits God gave me. Watch the boy build the fire bigger and bigger. Just a bunch of pyromaniacs with front-row seats to world-class sunsets.

The great story arc

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There’s nothing less interesting than fake perfection. 

I laugh at Craig Wall’s review of The Glass Castle, a memoir: “Jeanette Walls was given the ultimate gift as a writer. A dysfunctional family packed with eccentrics.”

The problem is most of us like to hide the dysfunctional mess under our bed. Or under loose clothes. Behind a solid resume, good shoes or an active social life.

There’s nothing less interesting than fake perfection. 

But there’s nothing more legendary than redemption. The great story arc. Pauper to princess. Outcast to esteemed. Poor to rich. Lost to found. Lonely to loved. 

How will the story resolve, though, when I never admit when I’m fearful? Never admit I give my body the judgmental side-eye in the mirror or I have an irrational fear of loud noises in the night. 

I still remember when we were new to each other. “I have to tell you something.” I took a deep breath. Laid it all out on the table. 

“It’s okay. I got you,” he said. Simple as that.

Two years after our vows – and more times than that, I say it again, gripping his hands tight. 

“I got you,” he says. Simple as that.

All I want is to be fully known and fully loved. All anyone wants. Cinderella. Jane Eyre. Ebenezer Scrooge. Our neighbour Tim. 

How will the story resolve, though, when I never admit when I’m weak?

Like he does, standing knee-deep in the baptismal tank, not even a year after his daughter died. “Weak is not a strong enough word to say where I’m at,” he says. Hardly one eye stays dry in those pews.

Submerged in grief – the whys, the hows, how could this be. We watch him go under the water. 

“I got you. It is finished.” Simple as that. 

Like a resounding ending to the world’s greatest story. 

“But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me.” 2 Corinthians 12:9

Day nineteen of the new year

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Maybe the snow will never melt. It will leave its layers on the street, one week after another, until we can’t get out the front door. 

Maybe we will never be as close as we once were. Have the time we once did.

These are my thoughts in the third week of January, the worst of all weeks.

I HAVE NO FRIENDS, I tell a dear friend. 

I HAVE NO COURAGE, I tell my husband. 

Really I am just forgetful. 

I forget last July, sitting on her front steps long after the stars and the bugs came out – long past our butts going numb against the cement. Reluctant to head inside, to cut a good conversation short. 

I forget that feeling we had waking up in our very first house, that very first Saturday morning. The trip to Home Hardware and the excited discussions about sitting on our patio, cooking hamburgers, unpacking the fine china and serving cocktails to a long line of guests.

But I remember the eight months of house hunting – do I ever – going to listings, making offers, getting outbid. 

I should be studied – the way I forget the good things in the third week of January. 

As if we never had those late nights fishing where he put his hand on my knee and said, “These are the nights we’ll remember.”

But I don’t. Not on day nineteen of the new year. 

I don’t remember I’ve felt this way before, trapped between seasonal depression and hormonal chaos. And the best approach has always been to wait and see. 

Wait and see if the snow melts and the temperature warms and the trees grow green leaves again. Wait and see if we have another late summer night, catching up on the years we haven’t lived close to each other. See if we catch another monster fish – another story to tell our kids someday.

We are people who wait. Wait to see if death will die. Sickness will be a tale we tell about the past. Evil will be outlawed and heaven will be home. 

It feels hard and holy in the third week of January. 

But I will wait and see, with the screen off and the earbuds out. No scrolling to the end. Minute by minute, trusting and hoping that I will taste and see that the Lord is good.

That awkward moment when…

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Are we all just freaks, trying to connect over the latest report on The Weather Network?

Or maybe some of us are more freaky than others?

We’re pumping ourselves up in the bathroom stall at every party, gearing up for some light banter – and hoping it doesn’t show that we might have a touch of social anxiety. 

Sometimes I watch him at social events. He always seems to have something witty to say and I find it fascinating. But I guess he married me because I can bring up the topic of terminal illness while we’re all sipping beer in a hot tub, having a grand old time? It is one of my coolest party tricks.

What was God thinking when He decided to enter into the human experience – attend weddings and go to dinner at other people’s houses – ALL THE TIME? 

Willingly choosing to enter into the misunderstanding of it all.

“Everyone struggles,” he always tells me. 

That’s why we convene on a riverbank in July, sipping beer and eating chips. There’s the person taking the selfie – half of us are not looking. Someone shares something personal and another person interrupts at exactly the wrong time. We are all working through different things in our minds. 

But we come together in misunderstanding. 

I have friends who are twins. One has always been the initiator – inviting people over and planning the big events. The other is the noticer – always aware of people on the fringe and ready to bring them into the conversation.

“I want our house to be a place where people feel they can come anytime,” he says the week after we buy our first place. And I know, he’ll be the initiator. I’ll be the noticer. And both will be necessary. 

I tell her how I’m giving speeches often now – at Toastmasters. I’m hosting events and speaking on panels, even if my hands shake when I hold the microphone. I’m trying, in spite of myself, to be seen.

And to get past my own internal monologue to see others. Enter into misunderstanding. Carry each other’s burdens. Give the clumsy side hug. Offer up a scattered prayer out loud in the parking lot. Really listen and not know what to say. 

And when all else fails, look up from my phone to say hi and talk about the weather.

“If the whole body were an eye, where would be the sense of hearing? If the whole body were an ear, where would be the sense of smell? But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose. If all were a single member, where would the body be?” 2 Corinthians 12:17-19

Old boring people potential

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I knew life would never be boring if I married him. It would be filled with many wild ideas I would feel the need to veto. But never boring. 

I knew this early into dating, when we were exploring abandoned buildings and jumping onto moving trains. 

It would be filled with a lot more small talk with strangers and minimal use of the self checkout at the grocery store. 

But never boring. 

Maybe there would be live lobster to cook and that would freak me out. Maybe there would be spontaneous road trips to the Arctic that would give me preemptive nightmares, but there would not be boredom. `

“We have nothing in common,” we often joke. Also: “We make a good team.”

I love to read. He rarely does. He likes to instigate adventure. I like to expand on it. He likes to buy things. I like to save. He likes to chit chat. I like philosophizing. I overthink some things. He overthinks the other things. 

On our two-year anniversary trip, he leans toward me and says, “You just married me to keep life entertaining.” I laugh because it’s partly true.

But I also thought we had old, boring married people potential. The potential for growth. We’d keep the adventure, but cut the drama. Apologize earlier. Forgive easier. 

Sure enough. We’re only two years into marriage, but every Sunday after church, we buy groceries at Costco – those dill pickle salads and a bag of apples. Eggs. Greek yoghurt. Fruit. We are faithful to the weekly list. 

And many nights, after dinner, we go on a 1.82 km walk in the dark. We talk about what houses we like along the edge of the neighbourhood pond – the one on the edge with the big patio. It’s not very exciting at all, but it’s one of my favourite things. 

We still run unplanned half marathons on a Monday and take last minute trips to the Northwest Territories, but we stay home too. We eat the same meals. Watch the same shows. Go to bed at the same time. Assume the best of each other, more often. 

I knew life would never be boring if I married him. But now I know, boring moments make some of the best building blocks. 

“But we urge you, brothers, to do this more and more, and to aspire to live quietly, and to mind your own affairs.” 1 Thessalonians 4:10b-11a