Take Two or...Got an Hour?

Dear Anonymous,

Tish’s fish, Sadie, died last week. We’ve been through the passing of a fish before, but this time was special. My little man, Chase, experienced what I can only describe as an existential crisis. He cried and shook and begged me for answers . . . for two hours. He said things like, It’s not about Sadie, mom. It’s that everything we love is going die. How do we survive that? And - I know what you’re going to say about heaven, mom, but how do you know it’s real? You don’t. And I don’t know if I can believe it.

I didn’t offer many brilliant answers to my baby’s brilliant questions. But I was grateful to be able to tell him truthfully that Yes, I believe that there is some sort of heaven, though I doubt it’s like anything we’ve heard described. When he asked how I believed l told him that I believe because I have to - because if I didn’t believe, the terror that was gripping his heart, the terror of losing the people I love forever would overtake me and I’d have no joy or hope and I’d die inside. I told him that I believe because I have no other choice, because I was made to believe, because if I didn’t believe in life after death I wouldn’t be able to live life before death. I’d panic and then freeze.

When he asked me what I believed heaven was like, I told him that I believe heaven is a place where everyone loves each other perfectly.

When he asked me, Why, mom? Why does God send us here, where things hurt so much? Why does He make us love things that He knows we’re just going to lose? I told him that we don’t love people and animals because we will have them forever, we love them because loving them changes us, makes us better, healthier, kinder, real-er . . . stronger in the right ways and weaker in the right ways. Even if animals and people leave, even if they die- they leave us better. So we keep loving, even though we might lose, because loving teaches us, changes us. And that’s what we’re here to do. God sends us here to learn how to be better lovers, and to learn how to be loved, so we’ll be prepared for heaven.

When I finished this part, Chase looked right into my eyes and his tears cleared for a moment and he said, “Yes. I can believe that part. That sounds right. I believe that.”

And I agreed. I thought - Wow. Yes, that’s actually what I believe. I can buy all of that stuff I just said. That sounds True to me, thank God.

Anonymous, I am trying to become more loving down here. I am trying to learn. And you, willing or not, have been a teacher for me. I want to apologize for my response to you. It was a great essay. It really was. But this place has never been about great essays. This place is about Love. And I have learned that sometimes I have to leave a great essay unwritten in order to love better. Because it is better to be kind than to be “right.”

If I speak with the tongues of men and angels but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.

As I read and re-read my response to your comment, Anonymous, I realized that I must have sounded pretty clangy to you. Because what I did was announce that I was going to turn the other cheek, and then didn’t. At all. What I did, actually, was defend myself and then sweetly judge and attack you. My least favorite part was when I wrote “people like you.” I don’t even believe in people like you and people like me. I just believe in people. I’m sorry for using those divisive and unfair words.

To be clear, I don’t regret writing that essay, just like I wouldn’t change what you said. I don’t spend a lot of time beating myself up and I hope you haven’t either. I’m grateful for this whole process. We needed to go through all of it to get to here.

But now I know I didn’t really listen for the love in what you said. I listened for the judgment, so that’s what I found. Seems to be how it works…seek and you shall find.

If I’d really turned the other cheek, I would have simply tried to explain to you why I want to adopt, which is so hard for me to put into words, but would have made for an even better, kinder, truer essay. Less sassy, but better.

Anonymous, I am so in love with this brutiful world that I feel torn up a lot of the time. I find people to be so beautiful, so strong and this world to be such a painful mess for the brave people who live here. I tend to take on the pain of others as my own pain, because I believe it IS my own pain. Because I really, truly believe that we all belong to each other. I believe that heaven, at first, will be a revealing, a lifting of the fog when we will look back down on Earth and see that we were in fact, one big family. And that hell will be seeing that and knowing that while living our lives, we let our brothers and sisters and mothers and father suffer and starve and die, while we had more than we needed. That will be hell, I think, for awhile. Knowing the truth. Knowing we let our own family members die. But then God will wipe our tears, and forgive us, and make everything new, and redeem us all. And we’ll heal, and become whole and enter our eternal family with forgiveness and understanding and love for all.

That is my interpretation of Matthew 25:33.

And so I just want to be part of my eternal family now. I love being a mama, and I love other mothers. I am awed by our strength and sacrifices and bottomless love and passion and courage. And I don’t understand why I get to raise my babies and some mamas don’t. Why I have every resource I need and more, more, more and some mamas, dying of AIDS, have to travel miles in bare feet to beg for medicine for their starving babies. Babies whom they love and cherish every bit as much as I love and cherish mine.

Thinking about this disparity drives me close to what I would consider the edge of insanity. I hate it. I don’t understand. And I feel compelled to do something, to show my love for and solidarity with these women, these mamas who are just like me. And so I think, I can’t do what I want to do, which is to fix things, to make things fair so that these mamas can raise their own damn babies. But I can give one of their babies a home. I can offer one of these mama’s babies every good thing I have- which is my husband and my children and my home and my faith and my friends and my joy and my hope. I can do that part, I can beg God to use me to answer another mama’s prayers. I can care for her baby since she can’t. I can be part of the second best thing. And I can love that baby and raise him to know how much his first mama loved him too, and when I get to heaven I can put that baby into her waiting arms, because I’ll know her, and she’ll know me, and we will finally be a whole family.

And all of this- it still doesn’t describe completely or precisely why I want to adopt.

There is a book I love, called Pillars of the Earth. In it there is a man named Tom, whose dream it is to build a cathedral. He sacrifices everything -his family’s money, future, security, even health to realize his dream. Some people, even in his own family, decide that he’s a foolish, selfish, crazy man.

When he finally gets his big break and the man who holds the power to make Tom’s dream come true asks him: Why? Why do you want this so badly? Why have you sacrificed everything to build this cathedral?

Tom replies:

Because it will be beautiful.

That’s my real reason, Anonymous. I want to adopt because it will be beautiful, to me.

That’s why I’ll never be an adoption advocate, which has been requested of me several times. Because I don’t believe that everyone should adopt. I believe that everyone should discover what she finds to be most beautiful and then create it.

So anyway, that’s what I should have said, Anonymous. I should have tried to bridge the gap of understanding between us instead of building a bigger wall. I should have explained instead of defended.

Also, Anonymous.

I may have been extra sensitive for this reason:

Craig and I had to make the horrible decision of letting our adoption go last week. We were as close as a family can possibly get to bringing our baby boy home, but we had to say no, we’re sorry- we can’t. Please give our baby to another family.

My health, it’s getting worse instead of better- and there was a bit of an intervention from some people I love.

Glennon- you’re sick. You’re barely making it through the day. You can’t do this. You must take care of yourself and the family you already have. You must heal.

It was quite familiar to me, actually. I’ve been through a similar intervention before. That one was tough to hear too, but necessary. Good things came of it.

But you can imagine, Anonymous. It’s been hard. After all these years.

It’s been hard, but not impossible. I have a friend who’s doing impossible, and I know the difference.

We have some emptiness now, Anonymous. Empty space in our hearts where we thought that baby would be, an empty nursery, empty time, empty plans where shopping and decorating and nesting used to be.

But if there is one thing I’ve learned about empty, it’s that empty can be more exciting and ripe with promise than full. There is space, now.

What will come fill it? What will enter our lives? What’s next?

I hope that healing comes next. From this loss and from my disease. I hope that I will learn what healing is, what it means, what it looks like, and that I will be able to share the whole healing process with you. Because we are all healing, right? So we might as well do it together.

Love You, Anonymous sister.

G

Hard

This way of life - living out loud - is hard. It’s good, in many, many ways - but it’s hard, too. Most of the people who read this blog don’t know me, but many do. And it’s hard, sometimes, on the people who know me. It’s hard on my family, and my friends. Sometimes I wonder if it’s hard on my poor neighbors, who have to know SO MUCH about us. When I see them outside and they say, “How are you?” It’s funny, because they already know. It makes us closer and further apart somehow- I don’t know. At this point, when I meet a new neighbor- I know immediately, by her face, whether she reads the blog or not. It’s weird. When one of them invites me to coffee, I want to say, “Perfect- could you bring along four hundred extremely personal essays about your life so we can start on even ground?”

Anyway – I think living out loud is the hardest on me. I mostly love writing this blog, it serves me, heals me, and it satisfies the creative cat constantly clawing at my insides, trying to get out. It helps me make sense of things, holds me accountable to myself. Forces me out of my cozy, dangerous hiding places. Usually, I crave writing time because it makes me feel good. But sometimes it doesn’t - sometimes I don’t want to write at all – like today - but I still do. I write when I don’t want to write because I have learned that my writing helps my readers. And so I feel a responsibility, a calling, to keep showing up and keep telling the truth about my life and heart and struggles. But it’s not easy. It is not easy at all to allow yourself to be so vulnerable. But this is how I have come to understand that I’m supposed to love the world, right now. So I do it.

Loving tirelessly - doing your job - is hard.

I wrote an essay about Beyonce, about sacraments, last week and in it I mentioned that I believe I have four children, and that one of them is in Africa. Someone read that post and left this comment.

Anonymous said...

Hi Glennon... may I make a gentle reminder that you DO have four children? Please don't discount the one you chose not to raise on this earth. I'm wondering if that's part of your desire to adopt, to make up for that decision?

SEPTEMBER 18, 2011 7:52 PM

The commenter left it anonymously, as is her right. She left it hidden there at the end of the comments section so that not many people, other than me, would read it. I wanted to bring it out into the light today. It’s always, always better to bring darkish things into the light. They become less scary.

When I first read this comment, I felt …creeped out. Like I had looked down at my bright shiny sparkly heart and found a hairy, poisonous spider crawling all over it.

Obviously, the commenter is referring to something quite personal that I shared two years ago, in the Testimony that I gave to my church. She’s referring to my abortion. This stranger thought it was okay to bring this up two years later, publicly, attach it to my adoption, and suggest that my family’s effort to adopt a child is no more than an attempt to escape and redeem the guilt she assumed I must feel as a result of my abortion.

My, my, my.

First- Let us be clear, she had every right to make this comment. At Momastery, most of us have agreed to an unwritten rule that we don’t use the truths I tell against me. But no one’s forced to follow this unwritten rule. I walk onto this field everyday without armor or weapons, by choice, and so the risk is that every once in awhile, someone will ignore the rules and shoot, and I’ll be hit. It’s the way it goes. It happens. Usually privately, through email. But it seemed time for you, my Lovies, to know that it does happen. It hurts, and it always, always makes me want to quit writing this blog. But I don’t. When I want to shut off my computer, take my life back as my own, curl up into a protective roly-poly ball, I don’t. I come back here because I want to keep loving and remaining open, even though neither love nor openness are easy.

This is why each time someone says they can’t do the Monkee thing because they’re not into the “warm fuzzy, sticky sweet love thing” I want to say HUH? Trust me, Momastery love is not warm fuzzy sticky sweet love. It’s tough as nails love. It’s having your heart ripped out, putting it back together, and offering it back to the same world that just tore it up…the next day. It's running toward pain and grief and brokenness instead of away from it. It's turning the other cheek till you get whiplash. It’s resisting the overwhelming desire to quit, to save yourself for yourself. It’s exhausting and uncomfortable. Sometimes it’s ugly, like using your bare hands to search for gold in piles of crap. BUT WARM AND FUZZY, STICKY AND SWEET - IT’S NOT.

So, anyway. When I read this comment, I had many reactions, none of which I will discuss here. In general, I was surprised, creeped, angry…but less so than I’d have been a year ago, which makes me think I might be getting better at this.

I try to live my life the same way that a carpenter who lived two thousand years ago lived his. Once he stood on a hill top and explained how to love well to a huge group of people hanging onto his every word, shocked by the countercultural ideas he suggested aloud. And recognizing it as The Truth. He was telling them nothing new, actually. He was just reminding them of everything that was already written onto their hearts.

The first time I read the things Jesus said about love, it all rang so true to me that my heart about exploded. It rang hard, but true. Jesus said that when someone hurts you, you should turn the other cheek. He said that you should love the one that hurt you, and you should turn the other cheek over and over and over again. Seven times seventy- seventy times, I think. I’ve been writing this blog for over two years, so I think I’ve gotta be getting close to that number. Let’s just say that the five hundredth and thirty ninth person who tries to hurt my feelings is going to get her ASS KICKED.

But anonymous, you are not lucky five hundred and thirty nine. So, since my Jesus insists, I must turn the other cheek. The beautiful thing about turning the other cheek is that it forces you to break eye contact with the person who has slapped you, and this little turn changes your perspective. Now, all of sudden, you are looking away, forward, to something better, more beautiful, and your heartbeat settles, and your palms stop sweating.

So here I am. I’ve turned. I have a new perspective. I have tried to do what my friend Meghan often suggests, which is to “listen for the love” in what’s said to me. And so I am going to try to answer your pseudo-question, anonymous, with love.

I have no doubt that my abortion has something to do with my desire to adopt. As does my parents’ teachings that we belong to each other, and my Sister’s passion for the powerless, and my gift at mothering, and the extra money and other resources that God’s given me to steward, and my faith, and my relationship with my husband, and my teaching experiences with underprivileged children, and on and on and on. I, and my dreams, are the sum total of everything that has ever happened to me and everyone I’ve ever met and every book I’ve ever read and every song I’ve sung and every friend I’ve loved, and every mistake I’ve made.

So, I would be silly to pretend to be certain that the two - abortion and adoption - are entirely unrelated. Everything is related to everything, obviously. I will tell you that I’ve been discussing my passion for adoption since high school, years before I knew that abortion would become part of my life. So clearly the direct correlation you’re trying to make is wrong.

I would also like to address your suggestion that through adoption, I’d be assuaging my guilt for my abortion.

Please, let us address that presumption here. Anonymous: Let me be clear. I don’t have any shame about my abortion. None. I know that’s hard for people like you to hear, because if you are a Christian and abortion has been a part of your life, you are supposed to beat your chest and gnash your teeth forever and repent for the rest of your life and then join crusades to end abortion by any means necessary, and speak through tears to large and small groups of people and swear to them that abortion was the worst mistake you’ve ever made and explain that you pray for your dead baby in heaven every night. THEN your sinner-self will be embraced by Christian society and used as a poster girl. Literally, likely.

But I won’t say or do any of that that, ever. Because none of that is true, for me. I know it’s true for some, and I respect that Each has her own path. But it’s not true for me. I did the best I could at the time with the resources I felt I had.. I’ve apologized, yes- but mostly to myself. I feel sad sometimes for the lost girl I was and I am fiercely protective of that precious me who had to go through that scary day and the days that preceded and followed. Far from ashamed, I’m really, quite, quite proud of her for making it through. I don’t feel ashamed. I feel forgiven and whole and I know that God never let go of my hand before, during, or after my abortion. God and I are clear on this issue. We actually, believe it or not, worked it all out long before your counsel was offered.

As Maya Angelou says. “We do the best we can. When we know better, we do better.” Amen. There is no room for shame or regret in my life. I'm too full. I am too forgiven, too adored, too fully loved, too full of ideas and dreams and passion to waste my precious life pretending to be crippled by something that is imaginary. Shame is an illusion. It can disappear so easily.

To this day, I will admit that I have confused feelings about the abortion issue. I think that “issues” like abortion are really just “people” so it’s probably best to think of them as such. One at a time. One person at a time. I don’t feel shame about my abortion. But I don’t love abortion either. Both/And. I think there are probably better ways.

But I also think that if you really, really hate abortion, it might be a great idea to go volunteer at a Boys and Girls club, to meet and get to know young people, to become a mentor, to offer a kid another way to experience love and connection- so she doesn’t go looking for it in the wrong places. To try to jump into the mix before it’s too late. I sometimes feel like the picket lines at the clinics are a little too late. Offering unsolicited, creepy suggestions on a stranger's blog who had an abortion fifteen years ago is certainly too late.

As for me- in keeping with the one person at a time theory….I think that if a young friend confided in me that she was pregnant and was considering an abortion, Craig and I would hold her and love her and tell her that she was loved and that she had many choices.

I think we would tell her that she could live with us and we would make sure she was taken care of, physically and financially, and that if she wanted to keep the baby we would help her start her life.

I think we would tell her that if she didn’t want to raise the baby, we’d raise the baby for her.

And I think if she decided that abortion was the only way, we would hold her hand through it and love her afterward and demand that she know that she was as loved and adored the moment after as she was on the day she was born.

I know that’s not how everybody feels, and that’s okay. It’s just how I feel.

Love You, Anonymous.

G

How To Help

From Anna's blog... An Inch of Gray

How to Contribute in Jack's Name

Thank you so much for your love and support. I am almost, almost but-not-quite-yet ready to get back on here and write and rant and process and share and cry with you, my friends.

But first, I know a lot of you have been asking for ways to make the world a better place in Jack’s name. In addition to one of Jack’s favorite charities, Operation Christmas Child at Samaritan’s Purse –- (there is a button on the second page of the donation process to select a memorial card), there will be a scholarship set up in Jack’s memory at Dominion Christian School. If you would like to contribute to this fund, please send a donation to:

Dominion Christian School
10922 Vale Road
Oakton, VA 22124

There is an additional fund that our family will be able to use for future projects in memory of Jack. We are excited to include Margaret in these decisions. Any contributions to this fund may be sent to:

Jack Harris Donaldson Memorial Fund
Apple Federal Credit Union
PO Box 1200
Fairfax, VA 22038-1200

Thank you for your loving support during this heartbreaking time. Above all else, we are grateful and dependent upon your prayers as we figure out how to live and breathe. Your outpouring of love has been amazing, and we are thankful that so many of you have been touched by Jack’s life.

A New Thing

“Behold, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland.” – Isaiah 43:19

I’m not sure how to explain what has happened in our family during the past week.

I think it might be best to just report it, without commentary. I’m not real sure what any of it means yet, I just know that it means a lot.

Last week, one of my little ones had a full blown panic attack. Heart racing, drenched with sweat, vomiting, clenching my arm so tight that I’m still bruised….repeating “Mommy, I’m dying. I’m going to die.”

During the days after the attack, Craig and I came to believe that our baby’s anxiety is due to my deteriorating health. I’ve been sick for a month straight now . . . in bed by 8:30 every night and weak all day. The kids are noticing, and they’re afraid. The whole family is, but it took the ingenuity and courage of our little one’s body to make us all face our fears.

So one night last week, Craig and I sat down to talk. To really talk.

I will just tell you that we removed that “love barrier” I wrote about before and we finally told each other the truth.The whole truth, the broken and confused and resentful and lost truth. As we spoke honestly, without holding back, we came to know things that we’d each been avoiding knowing. We admitted that I was really sick. And that my illness was putting some stress on our marriage.

But we also admitted that my illness wasn’t the real problem between us at all. My illness was just making our real problems harder to avoid seeing.

We have come to believe that our real problems are that we’re not taking care of each other in the most important ways. We each have needs that the other isn’t meeting, that the other doesn’t even know about. Our problem is that we are not best friends. We want to be, but we lack the skills to reach each other. We are so different. Craig survives by skating gracefully on the surface of life and I live at heights and depths that he can’t see and doesn’t know how to reach. I do not skate. I crash and fly. So, the Truth of the matter is that within our marriage, we are each lonely. I am high and low and he’s in the middle and we can’t hear each other, we’re so far apart. We admitted this to each other. We said it out loud.

We admitted that we are good at taking care of our children, we are good at taking care of the world- but we are not great, yet, at taking care of each other’s hearts.

We admitted that we needed help.

Because we also agreed that we love each other so crazy much. We will die trying to take better care of each other. There are no other priorities for us. We will find a way to trust each other with our real selves, to become best friends.

So I called a Monkee whom I love and respect and is a therapist and I said, “Help me, please.” She drove from another state and met me at a coffee shop and let me talk for three hours. Of course she did, because We Belong To Each Other. She helped me find therapists for my littles, to help them deal with having a sick mama, and for Craig and me, to help us learn how to become best friends. That’s what we want. We want to learn how to know each other, inside and out.

We start therapy soon. We are afraid and excited. We have felt something shift between us already. We are on the verge of something new.

It’s kind of like we are deciding, once again, to marry each other. And by choice, this time. I mean, I’m not even pregnant. Craig must be wild about me, to start over like this. To want so badly to be my best friend. And he’s my favorite thing on God’s Green Earth.

Anyway, wish us luck.

Also, My Favorite Monkees:

Love You,

G

P.S. Thanks again, Lyme.

Anna

I know that you are worried and that you want to know. But I won’t discuss Jack, Anna’s baby, here. His life and his death are Anna’s stories to tell.

I can only tell you my story- what I saw with my own eyes yesterday.

I went to Jack’s memorial service. It was as brutal and beautiful as you might imagine, times infinity.

There were hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of guests there. The pastor said that in his thirty year career, he’d never seen the sanctuary so full. Most of the guests - children, adults, teens, elderly- wore teeny Lego cross pins.

And in the middle of the service, we witnessed a miracle.

Anna, Jack’s mother, stood in front of the masses of mourners and delivered a flawless, tearless, divinely inspired tribute to Jack and to the power of faith. I have never seen anything braver or more exceptional in my life.

Please, don’t respond by saying - “Oh my God. I could never do that.”

Because what Anna taught me yesterday is that a mother can do the impossible for her child.

Maybe you could do what Anna did yesterday. Because Anna is just a woman who decided that she would not stop mothering Jack, she would not stop honoring her son just because he left the Earth. And so trusting God to help her, she stood and spoke with power and love and her voice did not quiver, not once. And she honored her boy and proved true his belief that With God, Nothing Is Impossible.

She proved that scripture, her son’s life verse, to be true - in front of hundreds of grieving people. Many of whom, like me, had been experiencing a crisis of faith since hearing the news. Many of whom, like me, had spent some time shaking fists at God and then doubting His very existence. Many of whom, like me, walked into that memorial with less faith than they’d ever had in their lives and walked out full to bursting.

As I watched her, in utter disbelief, I thought-

Anna is a Mother. With a capital M. I am witnessing the essence, the transcendent power of motherhood. It seems, somehow, that Jack’s death did not rob Anna of her role as his mother, but intensified it. Capitalized it.

Anna Mothered all of us yesterday. She comforted us, she strengthened our faith, she ministered to us in her darkest hour. I don’t think she set out to do that. I think she just refused to quit mothering her boy. I think she just wanted to do justice to her son. He was her miracle and so she honored him by performing a miracle of her own. I will never forget it as long as I live. I will never forget her regal posture, her visible resolve, the mixture of tenderness and toughness in her face. Anna, standing on that stage, will forevermore be my mental image of “Mother.”

I have been praying for Anna and her family in a million different ways since I heard the tragic news about precious Jack. And I am still praying. But my prayers have changed since I saw Anna speak yesterday.

Now my prayers sound less like “Help them.” And more like “Help them. And please help me find the strength and faith that they have. Help me Mother like Anna does. Help me believe like she does. Help my son learn what her son knew. Help my daughters trust God like Anna’s daughter does.”

It’s like, this tragedy had me so afraid. So very, very afraid. I was having so many selfish feelings - if it could happen to her, it could happen to anyone. It could happen to me, to my son. Terror. How would I survive being separated from my only son?

Anna taught me yesterday to quit being afraid, because nothing can separate us from our children. Not even death. I don’t understand it, I’m just telling you that Anna proved it.

I know that Anna will hate this, but I have to say it anyway.

All of my other heroes have been bumped down a notch or seven. Anna is at the top of my hero list, now, and forever.

Her name is Written In Blue.

Anna.

If you'd like to leave words for Anna...please head to her blog.

For Jen, Who Misses Her Daddy

My church created a memory wall this morning.

It was brutiful.

May God help us love each other.

Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down his life for his friend. – John 15:13

Nine

For I tell you this: At the critical junction in all relationships, there is only one question. What would love do now? - Neale Donald Walsh

Tomorrow is our anniversary. Nine years – Craig and I have been married for nine years. Craig always says - God, it feels like so much longer, but he means it sweetly.

Some of your most frequently asked questions are about my marriage. I get oodles of email about Craig, about how good we are together, about how supportive he is of my wild self, about how lucky we are . . . and the word perfect gets thrown in there every once in awhile. You know I shudder at that word. Scary, icky, meaningless word.

Craig and I are good together. We are lucky. And Craig is ludicrously supportive. Also, let us get it out of the way . . . yes - he is quite hot as well. I personally believe that God made Craig extremely hot so he would not take it personally that his wife is constantly too tired to make out. So that he can look in the mirror and say to his chiseled self, “Clearly- her issue. Everybody else wants to make out with me.” I really do imagine him talking to himself like this in the bathroom after I’ve passed out cold. I’m grateful God thought through this hotness plan. Helps us both out tremendously.

Since I’m always talking about looooove - You will probably be surprised to learn that I am not at all romantic. I don’t even understand what romance is, really. . . the closest definition I can muster up is thoughtful. I am incredibly practical about love. I don’t believe in love at first sight. I believe in “wanna make-out” at first sight, but that’s certainly different than love. I just think that Love is something you do, something you choose . . . I don’t believe in love as magical sensation that comes and goes like the tides.

I definitely, definitely agree with Toni Morrison when she wrote that… physical beauty and romantic love are the two most dangerous ideas introduced by man.

I know, so sorry. Seems kinda harsh. But I do, I believe that to be true.

I don’t believe that God makes one person for each person. I don’t believe in a predestined soul mate for each soul.

I don’t believe that love is Victoria’s Secret and fluffy and stiletto and rosy and soft and destiny and new and steamy and ooooh and aaaaah.

I actually believe that love is hard as nails. I believe that love is strong and calloused and exhausted and ugly and painful sometimes. I believe that love is broken and old and shattered and stand up one more time and one more load of laundry and bite that tongue till it bleeds and

I.Will.Not.Take.That.Personally.

I don’t believe in movie romance. I think it's fun to watch, but I also think it screws us into believing that love should be easy and pretty and invigorating and so if it’s getting hard and ugly and exhausting, then it must not be love - so we should probably try something else. Someone else. But that’s sort of silly. We don’t think that way about other things. We don’t say to ourselves . . . “Man - this workout is hard so it must not be working!” No, we assume that if it’s hard, it is working. But not so much with love.

Important Disclaimer - Sometimes you just marry a douche bag. It happens. In which case Love tells you to hightail it outta there and then Love teaches you that after a short (long ) bit of hell, you are sassier and more beautiful and stronger and more helpful to the universe than you ever would have been if said douche bag never would have entered your life at all. In this case, Love Wins Still. Ha. You will know if your love is good hard or bad hard. We all know. We pretend we don’t but we do.

My marriage is a holy training ground to me. And Craig is training WITH me. Alongside me. We’ve got the same coach, and our coach is God. (You may substitute Love for God, if you so desire. God must think that substitution is just fine since He, Himself, insists that HE IS LOVE.) Out there, on the training ground called marriage, my job is to allow myself to be healed and transformed into a more loving being. To show up and do the drills and take the hits that this healing and transformation require of me. And that’s Craig’s job too. That’s what we’re here for. That’s why we got married. So we keep showing up. On the same field. Every day. Every freaking day.

But it would be ridiculous to think that Craig is responsible for healing me, for transforming me. Jeez, He’s working as hard as I am on his own self, his eyes aren’t even ON me most of the time. Our eyes are on our Coach. Craig’s taking the hits too, he’s exhausted, too. So we try to encourage each other. When I’m down, he offers a hand and helps me get my footing back. When he’s hurt, I help him to the side line for rest. We refuse to let each other give up.

Sometimes I feel like Craig and I are less committed to each other, personally, and more committed to Love. To the process. To the transformation. We are using each other, really. In the best possible way. As practicing partners. Teammates.

I can almost feel this dynamic when we argue. Neither of us responds, exactly, to what the other is saying. Because we are both idiots, especially when we are mad. So before responding, we each ask Love what the hell we should say next, and then we say whatever Love prompts us to say, because Love can be trusted, while angry, blinded humans cannot. Love always sees clearly.

And so it’s like there is always a buffer between the two of us, and that buffer is Love. It’s why we have a beautiful marriage. We do. But we are not soul mates. Jesus, no. We’re two ordinary foolish broken human beings training hard alongside each other, with our eyes on our couch. I mean coach. Coach. And that’s why our marriage works. We also, as a matter of fact, have our eyes on the couch. Ohhh, sweet couch. God, I love my couch.

Anyway –

That’s why Craig supports me in all my hair brained schemes. Because Love would. That’s why I write so highly of him all the time. Because Love would. That’s why he takes the kids away so I can write, even though I don’t make a dime from it for the family, because Love would. That's why we are patient with each other. Because Love insists.

We are in love with Love. So we consult her constantly. And we choose our words and make our decisions based on her advice and feelings. Not ours. God no, not ours.

We are careful with each other. Maybe that’s romance. I don’t know.

What I do know is that Craig and I have canyons between us sometimes. Love has, and will continue to be, the bridge that allows us to reach each other. She is our coach. We are the team.

Happy Anniversary, babe.

XOXO

G

Nine

For I tell you this: At the critical junction in all relationships, there is only one question. What would love do now? - Neale Donald Walsh

Tomorrow is our anniversary. Nine years – Craig and I have been married for nine years. Craig always says - God, it feels like so much longer, but he means it sweetly.

Some of your most frequently asked questions are about my marriage. I get oodles of email about Craig, about how good we are together, about how supportive he is of my wild self, about how lucky we are . . . and the word perfect gets thrown in there every once in awhile. You know I shudder at that word. Scary, icky, meaningless word.

Craig and I are good together. We are lucky. And Craig is ludicrously supportive. Also, let us get it out of the way . . . yes - he is quite hot as well. I personally believe that God made Craig extremely hot so he would not take it personally that his wife is constantly too tired to make out. So that he can look in the mirror and say to his chiseled self, “Clearly- her issue. Everybody else wants to make out with me.” I really do imagine him talking to himself like this in the bathroom after I’ve passed out cold. I’m grateful God thought through this hotness plan. Helps us both out tremendously.

Since I’m always talking about looooove - You will probably be surprised to learn that I am not at all romantic. I don’t even understand what romance is, really. . . the closest definition I can muster up is thoughtful. I am incredibly practical about love. I don’t believe in love at first sight. I believe in “wanna make-out” at first sight, but that’s certainly different than love. I just think that Love is something you do, something you choose . . . I don’t believe in love as magical sensation that comes and goes like the tides.

I definitely, definitely agree with Toni Morrison when she wrote that… physical beauty and romantic love are the two most dangerous ideas introduced by man.

I know, so sorry. Seems kinda harsh. But I do, I believe that to be true.

I don’t believe that God makes one person for each person. I don’t believe in a predestined soul mate for each soul.

I don’t believe that love is Victoria’s Secret and fluffy and stiletto and rosy and soft and destiny and new and steamy and ooooh and aaaaah.

I actually believe that love is hard as nails. I believe that love is strong and calloused and exhausted and ugly and painful sometimes. I believe that love is broken and old and shattered and stand up one more time and one more load of laundry and bite that tongue till it bleeds and

I.Will.Not.Take.That.Personally.

I don’t believe in movie romance. I think it's fun to watch, but I also think it screws us into believing that love should be easy and pretty and invigorating and so if it’s getting hard and ugly and exhausting, then it must not be love - so we should probably try something else. Someone else. But that’s sort of silly. We don’t think that way about other thing. We don’t say to ourselves . . . “Man - this workout is hard so it must not be working!” No, we assume that if it’s hard, it is working. But not so much with love.

Important Disclaimer - Sometimes you just marry a douche bag. It happens. In which case Love tells you to hightail it outta there and then Love teaches you that after a short (long ) bit of hell, you are sassier and more beautiful and stronger and more helpful to the universe than you ever would have been if said douche bag never would have entered your life at all. In this case, Love Wins Still. Ha. You will know if your love is good hard or bad hard. We all know. We pretend we don’t but we do.

My marriage is a holy training ground to me. And Craig is training WITH me. Alongside me. We’ve got the same coach, and our coach is God. (You may substitute Love for God, if you so desire. God must think that substitution is just fine since He, Himself, insists that HE IS LOVE.) Out there, on the training ground called marriage, my job is to allow myself to be healed and transformed into a more loving being. To show up and do the drills and take the hits that this healing and transformation require of me. And that’s Craig’s job too. That’s what we’re here for. That’s why we got married. So we keep showing up. On the same field. Every day. Every freaking day.

But it would be ridiculous to think that Craig is responsible for healing me, for transforming me. Jeez, He’s working as hard as I am on his own self, his eyes aren’t even ON me most of the time. Our eyes are on our Coach. Craig’s taking the hits too, he’s exhausted, too. So we try to encourage each other. When I’m down, he offers a hand and helps me get my footing back. When he’s hurt, I help him to the side line for rest. We refuse to let each other give up.

Sometimes I feel like Craig and I are less committed to each other, personally, and more committed to Love. To the process. To the transformation. We are using each other, really. In the best possible way. As practicing partners. Teammates.

I can almost feel this dynamic when we argue. Neither of us responds, exactly, to what the other is saying. Because we are both idiots, especially when we are mad. So before responding, we each ask Love what the hell we should say next, and then we say whatever Love prompts us to say, because Love can be trusted, while angry, blinded humans cannot. Love always sees clearly.

And so it’s like there is always a buffer between the two of us, and that buffer is Love. It’s why we have a beautiful marriage. We do. But we are not soul mates. Jesus, no. We’re two ordinary foolish broken human beings training hard alongside each other, with our eyes on our couch. I mean coach. Coach. And that’s why our marriage works. We also, as a matter of fact, have our eyes on the couch. Ohhh, sweet couch. God, I love my couch.

Anyway –

That’s why Craig supports me in all my hair brained schemes. Because Love would. That’s why I write so highly of him all the time. Because Love would. That’s why he takes the kids away so I that can write, even though I don’t make a dime from it for the family, because Love would. That's why we are patient with each other. Because Love insists.

We are in love with Love. So we consult her constantly. And we choose our words and make our decisions based on her advice and feelings. Not ours. God no, not ours.

We are careful with each other. Maybe that’s romance. I don’t know.

What I do know is that Craig and I have canyons between us sometimes. Love has, and will continue to be, the bridge that allows us to reach each other. She is our coach. We are the team.

Happy Anniversary, babe.

XOXO

G