5 Things I Stopped Saying Since I Got Married
It was 2007 and we were all sitting around the kitchen island, the shimmery July heat shielded by half-drawn blinds. Six of us – myself and the other three older kids, all slamming the swivel chairs into the countertop, laughing hysterically. Someone had found a pair of wind-up chattering teeth and they were gnashing their way across the counter to our utter delight. Even Anders and Laney, just little at the time, were giggling from their places below the counter.
Now seven years later I’m in my mid-twenties, married… and sometimes I feel like that set of chattering teeth. More than sometimes, really. I saw this picture on Pinterest:
And it’s true. So true.
I’m an external processor. I figure out what I believe, think, and want to accomplish by talking things through. I love intellectual discussion and argumentation. I even like a good ‘fight’, if it gets me thinking.
That may be great for classroom debate, but it’s not very conducive to a peaceful marriage. My idea of ‘family time’ would be everyone talking at once, shouting out some new story or information. Silence is both boring and uncomfortable to me, unless of course I am alone… and even then I’m known for talking to myself (I’ll see a counselor right after this).
Since marriage sanctifies, there are at least five things (and probably many more) I’ve stopped saying since I got married because of the tension these statements cause. We all bring different personalities and quirks to marriage so maybe your sentences look different from mine – but perhaps your reasoning is the same. I’m no master. I still struggle. But eliminating these phrases has drastically improved our communication in the last six months!…
5 Ways to Date When You Only Have Weekends
I rewrote that title just five times or so. I still don’t like it.
Whether you are dating long distance or have a traveling spouse like I do, for some of us, traditional ‘dating’ is crammed into the two precious days of the weekend. The problem remains… those two days also contain all my deep-cleaning, homework catch-up, meal planning and even some errand-running.
So Mr. M and I find ourselves spending the weekend playing house: laundry, cooking, taking out the garbage, vacuuming, and ending it with a movie on Saturday night. While there is nothing wrong with this, we’d like to spend the few days we have together during travel season in a more productive, fulfilling way.
Here are a few ideas we’ve found helpful as we keep the house spic-n’-span while getting quality time together.
1. Use Friday night for chores, homework, and household clean up – then plan a surprise day out all day Saturday.
Is your impulse to use Friday night as ‘date night’? Ours too. But we’ve found a little switcheroo that helps make the most of our time: one accelerated evening of household maintenance! …
Type A Diaries: He Should Be Able to Handle It
“Turn around and do it again!” My coach yelled from the fence.
“Tighten your legs!”
“Heels down! Look at the corner!”
“Turn around and do it again! Pick his hind feet up!”
Over and over I steered my horse along the fence rail and pushed him into a canter. Over and over I adjusted my seat, pressured him in the ribs and tried to force him to change his lead. His ears flicked between my murmur and my coach’s yell.
“That’s it, boy, come on, you can do it,” I said softly. I tapped his hindquarters, pushed him forward and twitched my ring finger. I felt the slight jolt of his shoulders and his stride changed. Immediately, I stopped him and patted his neck; his chest was heaving from thirty minutes of repetition.
The relationship between a horse and rider is more of a partnership than anything else: the rider asks something of the horse, and the horse responds in turn, with the reward of pats or pasture for his efforts. He may not always like the commands he receives; he may buck and pull and resist, but it is the rider’s job to train him into submission so the horse is fulfilling his full potential.
Husbands are not horses, but sometimes we treat them like they are.
5 Things God and Coffee Have in Common
My friend Leigh and I sustain a mutual coffee addiction of obnoxious proportions.
We celebrate cold brewing at home. We talk about french presses versus percolators. We send each other pictures of coffee.
Pictures. Of coffee.
We firmly believe that coffee counts as a vegetable, because it grows on a plant. (Okay, a tree, but it’s in the vegetative family.)
The day we found the article that said coffee was the best pre-workout beverage… we almost sang the Hallelujah Chorus together.
So really, we share two life priorities: Jesus, and coffee. As I was having my devotions with pour-over Chemex-brewed cinnamon-and-orange-peel decorated beverage in hand, it dawned on me: the Creator of coffee actually has a lot in common with this beautiful drink. And it makes perfect sense, considering how positively divine coffee is…
Type A Diaries: It Takes Strength to Be Sweet
“The scale is cute, sweet, nice, then precious.”
My sister blinked on her mascara, leaning against the sink. I was leaning against the other, powdering on my blush.
“I think ‘cute’ is the death knell of fashion, ” I replied. “We could use that word in the movie Emma – ‘when I don’t know what to say, I just call her ‘elegant’.”
“Elegant is too good a compliment in this day and age to waste it as a word for mediocrity.” Autumn returned, capping her mascara and widening her hazel eyes.
I don’t know whether we read it in a Southern Lady’s Handbook or in Stacy and Clinton’s What Not to Wear, but during our bathroom pow-wows my sisters and I decided words like ‘cute’ and ‘sweet’ were secret, womanese insults. It became a running joke betwixt sisters – and if you came downstairs and your sister said you looked cute… might as well give up on life. Maybe not life, but at least that outfit.
Our childhoods form much of what we think about life as adults. I still have a hitch about ‘cute’ and ‘sweet’, even now as a working, married woman! So when I read a book that encouraged me to be ‘sweet’ to my husband, my first thought was me, in a pink jumper and a french braid, greeting him at the door like a giddy schoolgirl. And I bristled.
Type A Diaries: Love Is On the To-Do List
Type A Girl here.
In a world of ‘love’, some Christians fear the sacrifice of holiness in the name of peace. So, to avoid riding the pendulum into realms of compromise and Kumbaya, they ride it the opposite direction into stoic, emotionless piety.
It looks strong, but this kind of faith is a reaction to fear.
Love according to the world means accepting anyone regardless of what they believe, what they’re doing, or whatever their values are. It would mean blurring lines of morality and ignoring grievous sins, claiming exclusive faith is judgmental. Love, to the world, means no absolutes.
In my early days of apologetic training I was zealous to stand against this false kind of love. Though my intentions were good and I was readily able to defend and argue my positions with Scripture and logic (never caught with my pants down theologically), I misunderstood what biblical love was.
“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.” (1 Cor. 13:4-8)
Is There Forgiveness for Repeated Failure?
So when I failed – whether in word, thought, or action – I would go through days of spiritual turmoil attempting to figure out whether God would forgive me, if I had jeopardized my salvation, and if I was worthy to even call myself a Christian. Sometimes I wondered if I was even a Christian at all. Whatever the sin, I saw my repeated failure as mounting evidence that I very obviously did not love Jesus, and because of that, Jesus must not love me.
Sexual Freedom and the Christian Girl
Sometimes I wish there were a Christian Cosmopolitan magazine. I know – it’s an oxymoron. But bear with me.
What if there were a magazine for Christian young women that had articles not only about being your best at work, how to wake up in the morning, modesty and fashion – but also about birth control options other than the pill? About what sex looks like in marriage? Articles about the questions young women are asking that the church and family refuse to answer in a Christian context?
While plenty of books have been written, I know there are many young women who have questions they didn’t dare ask, and those questions were eventually answered by an eager world of Cosmo, Self, and Elle. The girls find their answers – but from the wrong people, and in the wrong places, with the wrong worldview.
So we find girls who started out with every tool necessary to build a future bright with hope and blessing, and watch them throw it away to prove nothing to nobody. We see little daughters grow up into young women, their innocent eyes now lined with anger because they believe the purity ring prevented them from experiencing real life. But as they go about experiencing, experimenting, and finding themselves, they lose something far more precious.
In the grocery store check out line we’re told that sexual freedom is being in control of your own body and giving it to whoever you please, whenever you please, and in as many small pieces as you choose to meter out at a time. But Cosmo only tells girls about the night before, not the morning after…
The Purity Ring is Not the Problem
In my early teens, my bookshelf included such titles as:
Before You Meet Prince Charming by Sarah Mally
Becoming a Young Woman After God’s Own Heart by Elizabeth George
Beautiful Girlhood
When Dreams Come True by Eric and Leslie Ludy
Why I Kissed Dating Goodbye by Josh Harris
I liked to read about relationships (in that sense, nothing has changed; I’ve just developed a more grown-up taste of biographies of famous married couples) and read all the above titles, plus more. I grew up at the height of the purity movement: a church-led initiative encouraging commitments to abstinence, intentional relationships, courtship and purity rings. My dad gave me my ring at age 13, and most of my friends had one, too. I thought I had relationships figured out.
And then I got into a relationship, and I discovered that not only did I not have it figured out, but there were capabilities within me directly contrary to all I had ever learned…
Lust and the Christian Woman
The tears spilling onto her keyboard – I could almost see them.
I could hear the anguish in the words she typed, backspaced, and re-typed.
I could feel her heart, aching and burdened, reaching out to me – the faceless Internet name – just to have someone to talk to. Someone who might understand.
“I feel like I’m sinking deeper in sin and further and further from God. So many women disguise their sexual sins because it is so taboo and “unacceptable” for Christian women to be sexual beings. So many women have secret sins because of these expectations… So please. Do you have any advice? Thank you so much for your time.”
I received that email a long time ago now, but she – the writer – has been housed in the back of my mind since that day. I know she isn’t the only one who feels this way. I know there are many more girls out there – good, Christian, by-the-book young women – who have the same questions she was asking. But they don’t dare ask.
There is a stigma when it comes to lust, as applies to the life of a Christian woman…
Does It Really Matter How I Live?
I overheard the girls talking at a table nearby.
“Ultimately the gospel is what matters. We all just need to quit trying to say this is right and that is wrong and be at peace with each other. People keep drawing too many lines in the sand… Forget the peripheral and concentrate on what really matters: the gospel.”
I stirred my coffee and blinked at the dark bubbles on the surface. Was she right?
In the comment stream of the blogs I follow, women – moms, especially – continually postulate about peace. “Stop telling us what to do and how to live,” They say. “All we need to do is love God and each other.”
Is that true?
I set out to discover the truth for myself.
—-
Church history is laced with ‘trends’ of Christianity. During the Enlightenment of the 18th century, reason and intellectualism were very prevalent; but the next generation sought to understand the emotions of God, which gave rise to the spiritualism of the Quakers, Shakers, Mennonite and Amish sects. Over the years these trends rise and fall, many times caused by children reacting to the influence of parents who were either too ‘free’ or too ‘strict’. Whole church movements are caused by generations who see a need for a fresh understanding of the gospel, and this renewed seeking results in new behaviors. Today’s culture is no different: we have the ‘young, restless, and Reformed’, the YWAM-Toms-and-beanie worship leaders, the time-resistant homeschool purity-ringers and many more pockets of Christian belief. The church appeals for unity and demands we get rid of the ‘periphery’ – those divisive parts of Christianity – in order to unite….
Can Girls Have Guys as Friends?
With a stack of books about John Calvin at one elbow and a higher stack of commentaries for the Book of Daniel at the other, I collapsed into my laptop face first. Mr. M looked over the edge of his iPad. “Is something wrong?”
“No… I just finished this infernal commentary on Daniel 9. If I ever hear the words ‘seventy weeks’ again, I might do something inappropriate.” “Well, we don’t want that,” My husband replied with all the concern of sleepy pigeon (don’t ask me where sleepy pigeon came from… but now that I’ve compared him to one, I can’t stop chuckling).
I opened my personal email as a reward for such academic labor and was greeted by an email from Bria of Germany. She asked:
“I’m single, and know how friendships function from my singles’ perspective, but I wonder how you view them now that you’re married? Do you feel it’s easier/harder/better/different having male friends when you’re single versus married?”…
You Must Use Words.
I leaned forward on the bus seat, staring forward through the massive windshield. Every College For a Weekend (one of four major campus events we do per academic year) I ride and monitor a charter bus shuttling students to an offsite camp for outdoor activities. And...
5 Ways to Survive When Your Husband Travels
Being married when your husband travels is tough. The first two years of our marriage were spent with an irregular schedule, the aforesaid traveling husband, and me working full time while also finishing my degree. If your husband travels, chances are you’ve run into loneliness, boredom, and the usual catastrophe that waits until he’s gone to arrive.
That Day I Wore White: Our Wedding
I couldn’t tell if it was the nerves, the corset, or the box of Sour Patch kids I consumed the night before, but my stomach was in shambles. I tried to breathe. The dressing room mirror ricocheted my feelings like a boomerang and I busied myself with my hair.
Why I Don’t Take ‘Hot’ as a Compliment
“Join us for our upcoming event February 10th and 11th! There will be food, fun, and even a fashion show! Bring your daughters, sisters, mothers, and friends for this – ”
I punched the radio off.
“Modest is hottest…” I muttered under my breath, turning on my blinker for the gym. I get the alliteration; it’s really catchy. The mission itself has accomplished much good. But the name is an utter contradiction.
Three Ways to Give… When You Really Can’t
If she looked like she needed something, I might have stopped. But there was a hardness in her eyes that said, "Don't touch me, don't come near me." So I didn't. She sat on the bench clutching that bag, challenging the world with her expression. I saw another one...
21 & Married: 5 Reasons to Support Young Couples
I don't believe in standing against, but in standing for. This is why I typically refrain from writing posts refuting other bloggers' opinions; both for this reason and because the blogosphere is a typhoon of free speech; a buffet of opinions from which readers will...
Five Friends Every Woman Needs
"Next week: Pride and Prejudice night!" My roommate announced from the living room last week. I was more than on board with this idea. Every Friday night is 'theme night' - Western night, Baseball night, Christmas night - complete with circumstantially correct food,...
Sacred Sacrifice: Bringing Christmas Alive Every Year
"Merry Christmas - your last one unmarried!" My friend smiled and said goodbye. I stood there a moment, surprised by what he said, letting it sink in. My last Christmas unmarried! In forty days, I will be the wife of Josh. Twenty-three Christmases have passed by:...
The Muse and the Moor [Engagement]
I was so excited I bounced in my seat. "I love them! I love them ALL!" Just this morning we had our engagement photo shoot with Jessi over at White Daisy Studios. This morning she did the shoot, this afternoon the edits, and this evening handed me a flash drive with...
God’s Gifts Put Dreams to Shame [Proposal]
He blew in the door forty minutes late, shirt untucked, with a rumpled paper Olive Garden bag in one hand. This is the man who is always five minutes early - the man who anxiously jingles the keys by the door before church so we leave on time. And here he was, forty...
Are You My Future Husband?
I stumbled through the door of the gym at 4:30 AM, frizzy hair jerked back in a stripey highlighted bun, no makeup, and barely awake. I smiled wanly at the desk attendant, rattling off my ID number - "13447." - like a sleepwalker. He looked different than the usual...
Sometimes the Step Is ‘Stay’
Let me start this by saying my blog posts are designed to be transparent. But today I want to tell a story that fills in the details left out of many blog posts from the last nine months.
Josh started job searching last December as he was approaching the last semester of his studies in computer engineering. As we moved into the final semester, I began assisting with the search, looking up jobs, filling out applications, and editing resumes and cover letters. Josh put much effort into the search while also balancing senior projects in one of the hardest programs Liberty University offers (fun fact: the program requires the highest level of ability in math above all other programs. I can barely add 6 and 7. We’re a good match).