T H I R T E E N

Let's sidestep the part where I address the 22-month blog absence and instead consider today's post as nothing but an abnormally long Instagram caption. It's a blip. ("Blogs are out, but people are texting each other'" -Ryan Bailey Howard).

Today is our 13th Anniversary.  Or, to use Layla's favorite emphatic, we've been married thirteen frickin' dang years.

Lots of people stay married for 13 years. It isn't particularly impressive as a number. And even to say you've been happily married for 13 years isn't a terribly Big Whoop on the world stage of all whoops. Maybe a medium whoop. A grande at Starbucks. 

 Lucky and Plucky AF

Today becomes impressive for us only when you consider that Jesse and I were exceptionally--almost comically--ill-suited for having a healthy marriage to each other when we started out (in terms of temperament/conflict style/Enneagram type). It's a big whoop considering how much FREEEEEAKING effort and practice it took (and takes) to get us to this place where our marriage is now my favorite and most valuable thing on this planet.

SPOILER: the incompatibility had jack crap zero to do with how in love with each other we were. We were utterly obsessed with and committed to the person we were marrying and wanted nothing but the best and brightest and healthiest for one another and our marriage--and we still quickly pivoted right into making each other miserable. Precious.

Happy Anniversary, being in (what you think) is love is the stupidest thing you're going to have to overcome.  

Best wishes, SUCKAZZZZ.

I made a list of the 13 most important things we do and have learned. I will FORSHORE need to come back to this many times. It will also be worth the effort to write if it can spare at least one of you a failed dramatic exit from Outback Steakhouse in your own marriage (that example inspired by real events). 

1. Marry for LIKE

This is my #1 marriage advice. HEED ME, O ISRAEL.

Being in young, fiery so-called love is a trick of biological and evolutionary warfare waged by your DNA on your stupid, unsuspecting brain--the sole aim of which is to get your gametes together with another's to propagate the species and ensure your microscopic code pieces are a part of it. Your DNA doesn't care if  you are fire and they are ice, if all your disparate instincts and relational tools are incompatible--it just liked their musk and wanted to mate with it. It will wear off--and FAST.

"But we were so in love--TRUEST LOVE!" I proclaimed! Oh dummy, that wasn't actually love. It was lust and obsession and fun and adrenaline and dopamine--and it had to go away or else you'd never remember to pay your taxes or do the laundry because that feeling makes you a single-minded idiot. 

Jesse and I got lucky here (well, I did--he's not an idiot like I was). I had quite the history of being in love with people I didn't really like. *insert the face-est of palms.* But how many movies had I watched where someone you don't get along with, don't want to spend time with, or even actively hate, turns out to have been the one for you ALL ALONG. Awwww. 

No. This is a bad story. AVOID.

I don't care how good they look on paper, how hot they are, how much your mama likes them: if you don't enjoy talking to them (without touching or looking at their beauty) and want to change most of the things that come out of their mouth: IT ISN'T GOING TO WORK. 

Because that love-drunk, starting out feeling WILL fade. If you work at it, the REAL, enduring, deep magic kind of love will come--but in the meantime it makes things SO much easier if you actually like the human whose farts you have to smell. 

There were times in the first few years of marriage when we were over the crazy-in-love phase but were still figuring out how to build our real foundation. All the quick-burning fuel had consumed itself, and we didn't yet have a good stockpile of the clean, slow burning, renewable stuff to use. In these in-between times it was LIKE that saved us. 

When I didn't have grace to give or more effort to contribute to doing the hard or self-denying thing--the fact that I liked Jesse so hard was a marriage-saver. I'd want to be mad at him but he'd make me laugh. I'd be attempting to freeze him out and see a joke that ONLY he would get and have to share it with him. 

God makes us lots of promises about the power and immortality of selfless love and how we can have it infinitely for all humans everywhere. It can do just about anything and resurrect itself for sure. But I think He maybe left it more of a tossup when it comes to liking each other--some people you will like and some you won't. No big deal and it wont keep you from loving them like Jesus did, but go ahead and make sure you get it right in marriage because that ish is hard to conjure.

Just my frickin dang favorite

2. Say what you want, you idiot

We laugh now about the HOURS of our pre-children married life we wasted in a stalemate. We'd be in a fight and ALL I'd want was him to hug me or to just forget the stupid argument and go to dinner. But I wouldn't say it because that's not spontaneous or romantic. I'd just wait for him to think of it (IF HE REALLLLY LOVED ME HE'D KNOW) Again, I blame my poisoning at the hands of Hollywood for this. 

I'd be mad at him already for whatever, and then I'd double down in my head "and he's so dumb and evil he doesnt even know I want to be hugged right now as I'm actively pushing him away, what an unromantic fool; clearly we aren't soulmates, oh the injustice."

The first time I growled through clenched teeth with my back turned "canyoujusthugmeplease?" it almost physically hurt (SO UNROMANTIC IT SHOULD BE RAINING OR AT THE AIRPORT), but we saved like 2 exhausting hours, and I realized spontaneity and mind-reading are nice but I'd rather not get divorced waiting for them, so let's go ahead and speak up.

3. Go to counseling

It's 2019. There is no stigma. Find a mentor couple, an actual counselor, a trusted 3rd party and GO TALK TO THEM ABOUT YOUR JUNK. Go together and go separately.

You simply cannot be objective about yourself. You are the subject of your life and you are inherently biased. You cannot referee your own match just as you can't lift your own body.

You are riddled with blind spots and do not know best.  It won't work itself out on its own.  Get off your high horse and see a counselor. 

Also cannot dip yourself

4. Ask "How can I help?"

I get crazy overwhelmed. When stress hits me my capacity to take things on plummets. This stresses me out even more. The cortisol hits my brain and my fight or flight almost always picks FIGHT. I  get angry and lash out.

One day a few years ago Jesse hacked this situation like he was getting infinite lives in Contra for NES.  Instead of defending against my crazy venting at him or telling me to calm down, he asked "how can I help?"

KEANU-LEVEL WHOA. 

This stopped me in my tracks and forced me to analytically think about action steps rather than just unleashing a Jackson Pollack painting of stress rage AT HIM. I have to triage my current stressors to determine the most helpful thing I can let him do. Not only do I have one less thing on my plate when I give him one, but I have a more organized and rational picture of everything going on and how to tackle it.

This question is a gift. Give it and receive it.

5. Tell Reruns

This one is easy. Go back and retell each other your story. Indoctrinate yourselves with your history and legend. Parts of it, moments, the whole thing. Again and again. I make Jesse retell me about when he liked me and his secret thoughts from dating quite often. I ask weird and specific questions. 

We together try to go back and piece together timelines and situations from the early days. It's fun and puts a little of that early magic back in without the all-consuming-meth-addiction-like disregard for the rest of the universe that we had back then. Meth is healthy in small doses, after all.

6. Listen to the Fans.

Another easy one. Find people that adore your spouse and make them tell you why. When others start bragging on your other half, listen. Don't downplay it, lean in and hear. Coworkers, parents, friends, mentors, customers, whatever.  It's so cool to hear people love your person from angles you don't have.

"Jesse is an amazing dancer." Still waiting to hear than one.

7. Find Something to Lose About

It's natural for me in fights to amass a mighty stack of evidence against Jesse detailing his legion of wrongs. I will dig so deep to find more to blame him for. I have driven him to bitter tears of frustration doing this--when all he wanted was for me to see one way that I was hurting him and take responsibility for it. I just couldn't see it or hear it because it wasn't my mission.

It was after a Jesse had preached one Sunday about how "losing to win" was the entire essence and magic of how Jesus conquers that I told myself the next time we were in a frustrating, drawn-out stalemate of a disagreement, I'd attempt the mental exercise of TRYING to find something I could apologize for (very different from my typical "IT'S ALL YOU" method). I would purposefully lose the argument so our marriage could win. 

It was like dang sorcery. I said something like "I definitely could have done a better job hearing you and caring about what you wanted." Truly not that hard or humiliating but gahhhh it made things easier. 

Tons of energy is required when you're trying to convince someone that nothing is your fault and everything is theirs. When you admit that, okay, this one part at least was totally my bad, the pressure of defending your perfect behavior record disappears (surprise: it wasn't perfect), and it becomes much easier to keep finding ways you could love better. The first one is the hardest to see and admit. Dig for it.

What did I do?

8. Keep Choosing.

I like to tell Jesse " I choose you every damn day." I don't know when this started, but I do remember before. When things were impossibly hard, I'd get mad that some dumb 23 year old had "done this to me" AKA my younger self. She made the choice to marry him, and she's a skinny idiot. I blame her. Ugh, HER.

Instead of being some passive victim of the 2006 version of myself--living out the consequences of her choice--I decided to take active control and show up and choose Jesse again and again. 

I mean, I don't know what the alternative was, but this was a mindset shift for sure, and it helped me remember that this marriage and this dude were both something I have to continue to want and chase after. 

I'm not just married to Jesse because we said the things in 2006--I'm married to him every day still, by choice. I'm not bound by dusty old vows I said once and didn't really even understand back then; I'm purposefully renewing and trying to learn and live more of those promises every day (even when it's a pain in the ass to choose him and costs pride and ego and self). 

Choose each other every damn day.

9. Have the Sex

Non-negotiable (I mean as a concept in marriage-CONSENT ALWAYS, YALL. Come on). 

We have friends (male and female) who shave shared that they haven't had sex with their spouse in months and years. This is heartbreaking to me and I think fundamentally not how it's supposed to be. 

It's not always (or even often?) going to be earth-shattering, wake-the-neighbors level, but it IS almost always really important. For a few reasons. Some spiritual, relational, physical and some even animal in nature.  

I know you have a headache, I often do too. Just find a way at least weekly (and try to wake the neighbors a few times a year). I'm not a doctor. Don't @ me.

S-E-X

10. Request more info

"Oh look, Jesse put his used wet bath towel on top of my pile of clean laundry, CLEARLY he thinks his clothes and time are more valuable than mine, and even though we both work full time this is YET ANOTHER sign of the patriarchy in him and he's lazy and just doesn't care about me or the time I put into washing HIS children's skidmarked underwear because he doesn't love me enough to  even try."

And we're off to the races and the narrative is WRITTEN. Jesse's entire body of work from of loving me--decimated by a wet towel. Boom. 

Boy oh boy I can fill in some blanks. But maybe, just maybe, the actions that annoy me aren't evils on par with terrorism--even if that's where my brain goes  pretty fast and furious. Sometimes he IS just being lazy or careless, but other times he dropped it because Noa slammed her hand in a door and started screaming and he ran to her.

Maybe "hey, what happened with this?" is a better option than "YOU ASS!"

Maybe.

It's a little embarrassing that I had to learn to not throw someone's entire character into the flames before I asked them for the entire story, but here we are. I still get this one wrong more often than not (in all my relationships, you know who you are). I know that I'm ten times more likely to respond well if someone says "hey I have a question about something you did" versus "I saw what you did and I know exactly what you meant by it and YOU ARE OF SATAN." I appreciate deeply the people who have treated me this way, so I want to do it better.  Especially with Jesse. 

Because he often throws down wet towels but only rarely terrorizes intentionally, and I need to square these two facts in my life.

11. Get a Thing.

Oh a fun one. Find a thing you are both into and fangirl over it together. You don't even necessarily have to do the thing together at the same time, but you have to both be into it and enjoy talking about it. 

Example: about 2 years ago CrossFit  became one of our things (2 years is the longest a CrossFitter has ever gone on a blog without mentioning that they CrossFit). We rarely go to the same class, but even if he does the workout at 5am and I do it at 5pm, we can talk about it when we look at it the night before, he can tell me hints for surviving after he does it before I do, and we can fully debrief after I've done it. Then we can be horribly sore together for three days afterward and watch CrossFit videos on YouTube. It's A WHOLE THING and we share it and it's fun and awesome (and you love how much we are into it and need to come to CrossFit with us). 

It could be a podcast, a sports team, a board game, a TV show, a hobby. Find something that is not about your kids or directly about marriage, and nerd out over it together.

12. Jesus

Ok this one may be optional since I know many healthy marriages where the couple isn't about Jesus. And it's astounding to me that it's possible for them. Because it just isn't optional for us. And not in a "oh it's a deal-breaker" gross fundamentalist way. But in a practical "There's no way I could love you when I think you deserve my hatred if I hadn't been loved that way by God first and so much" way. 

I've said many times to Jesse "Efffffff I don't want to make this right with you and I'm so mad and think I'm totally right...BUT JESUS" (died for serial killers so I guess I'll forgive you).

He's the engine and example and authority over both of us and he says to never ever stop loving each other and that it's always worth it. That's a decent endorsement.

13. Keep Learning

This is kind of a cop-out because I couldn't think of a good last one, but it's also true. If i'd written this list at year 5, I wouldn't have known half the things on here yet. But if you'd asked me back then, I'd have thought I'd pretty much circled the basics so far. 

HELL NO.

It's crazy encouraging to know that we will keep learning each other and about marriage as we go. And it's reassuring that those same things that drove us to the brink years ago? we now have solid strategies for and experience dealing with--and can even laugh at (sweet Moses, they were NOT funny at the time--that Outback storm out was SOBERING HIGH DRAMA). I want to remember that when new trials and issue come up and FEEL hopeless. 

"I hate your guts and kind of want to murder you right now, but oh, how we'll laugh about this one day, darling."

Our fire-ravaged wedding album. Kind of perfect.

Lovin' Eight

Every year there are 52 weeks (breaking news!). So it is a little cool/weird/statistically improbable that so many of my major life events managed to occur over the course of my existence during the same seven-day period:

Yesterday (9/30)was my 10 year baptism anniversary (public wedding to Jesus)

Tomorrow (10/2) is my 32nd birthday

On Monday (10/6) I am having what's known as "a baby."  Noa's Birthday!

But today, well, today (10/1) is extra special too. It's Jesse and My 8th wedding anniversary!

So from 9/30-10/6, we are locked up pretty tight with banner moments (our first pet, Chopper, the insane cowardly rescue mutt, was born on 10/3, but that one just doesn't seem quite monumental enough to put in the special list. Still, though, he is a Dukes, so we count it). 

Anything important that needs to happen for the remainder of my life should probably pencil in 10/4 or 10/5 because that is the only availability we have left. 

This streak is also why I am able to claim that October is "my" month more than any Ugg-wearing, Pumpkin Spice-drinking, sweater weather-gushing, born-in-the-wrong season little Autumn groupie, Just sayin'.

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Since we don't get a full mushy-gushy anniversary week to just schmoop all over each other (and something tells me we arent the type that would anyway), I want to isolate today and celebrating my marriage to Jesse.

When I was writing about the clutches in the previous post, I linked to a post from over 4 years ago.  It was a post about the state of our marriage that rather brutally depicted how rough things could be between my husband and I. 

After I had linked to it (which I had done just to give you a glimpse of my wonderful friend Natalie and how she had pulled me through that day), I went back and read the whole thing and found myself so shocked and sad. 

It's not that I didnt know that there was a HARD learning curve for us the first handful of years; I have always told people that despite understanding that marriage was going to be difficult from the moment we started, we still plowed headfirst into almost complete destruction of ourselves, each other, the relationship, and several physical walls. We went through blow ups like the one in that post pretty regularly for years.

What saddened me though, reading from the end of year 8 was how vividly I remember being that pregnant wife on the floor. How scratchy the carpet was under my cheek and how the tears and snot gushed. I remember the feel of, "This is impossible.  I can't do this anymore. There is no way out." 

Oh, my heart breaks for that girl.

morning of 10/1/06. Dont worry about putting on makeup...youre just gonna cry it all off in 4 years.

But what shocks me in reading those words is how far Jesse and I are from that place now. And how we haven't even visited its suburbs in several years. Maybe "shocked" isnt the right description so much as "redeemed" or "freed."

I don't know if it was that day in particular that did it, but it was around that time that we just tossed our frayed little scraps of a marriage into Jesus' hands and said, "Okay, we so don't got this. You're going to have to teach us how this is supposed to go."

And holy crap, it worked!

It's still hard. We still fight. But I couldn't tell you the last time I thought, "I hate his guts and never want to talk to him again," which sounds utterly ridiculous now, but was a place I ended up in often during these meltdowns. It has been years since we had a fight that turned into a promise of mutually assured destruction. Where we were truly, actually enemies.

yeah. rough stuff, ahead, little ones.

There have been a few things that have made the hugest difference for us in the past few years have been:

1. We are on the same team. Always always. We refuse to go to a place where the battle is me versus him (Ephesians 6:12). When we feel it drifting that way, we try to press pause and reconnect. This can be physically with a hug, kiss or handhold, verbally with a straight up affirmation, "hey, I love you, and I am on your team," or spiritually by praying out loud together, "Jesus I'm finding myself wanting to punch Jesse in the eyeball, please change my heart."  All three of these things have pulled our chestnuts out of the fire dozens of times, and kept us from starting an excruciating hours-long journey down a very ugly road.

2. Letting God manage our spouse's growth. Hey, you know what works like 0% of the time? Trying to change who people fundamentally are through the force of your will. It usually just pisses them off, makes you seem negative, nagging, controlling, or critical, and even if you get the outcome/behavior you're looking for in the other person, it has probably cost something to the relationship or their self-worth

Jesse 100% got the ball rolling on this one. When issues came up with how I would do/handle something, he would typically try to show my why my reaction or choice was bad/wrong (not talking about sin behavior here, so much as just unhealthy methods of relating/living. Outright sin needs to be rebuked and addressed). This would usually end with me feeling attacked, him feeling frustrated, and nothing changing--with a good chance for a Chernobyl-esque brawl developing as well. 

So instead, one day he decided to just pray for me. And after a while he heard Jesus saying, "You just love her. Give her a safe place to be vulnerable and to rest, and I will do the work on her heart." (Ezekiel 36:26)   Jesse listened and obeyed, and sheesh did it work. I felt so not-attacked and so incredibly safe with him,that I began to ask  for ways that I could love him better. I was so overflowing with love and security that I had ample heart resources to invest back into Jesse and to really hear what he needed from me, rather than feeling attacked and criticized when those moment came up.

Jesse shared with me this journey he had been on when, months after it started, I had said, "Dude, marriage has been ass-kicking lately. What's up with that?" And when he told me, I was all, "OH MY GOSH THAT IS SO TOTALLY IT! IT FREAKING WORKED!" Like when they secretly switched people's normal coffee for Folgers and then told them afterward. 

And since it worked so well, I started doing it too. Let me tell you, it isnt just a dream come true to receive this kind of love; giving it is just as eye-opening and freeing. Instead of trying to come up with strategies to manage/manipulate/nag/convince Jesse into stomping out something annoying or lame that I think I see in his character, I can just let go. To give it to Jesus and recommit to loving Jesse right where he is now. If it's something that is an actual problem, I get to trust that the Lord will work it out (telling me how/when/if to do my part). I'm pretty controlling by nature, so this one can be difficult for me, but it is extremely liberating. It's like delegating to the creator of the universe (not that the task was ever truly mine anyway). I think I can rest easy knowing Jesus is on the job. Jesse's heart is mine to love; his rough edges and stumblements (new word) aren't my really responsibility or jurisdiction.

Said better: "Not my circus, not my monkeys." 

3. Knowing when there may be more than a heart issue at play. Many of the most frustrating themes in our marriage have been greatly alleviated by treating a biological problem. Thank you, Jesus, for Zoloft.

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Eight years feels like a lot to me. But it's not a lifetime, and a lifetime is what we've signed up for. I'm not at all trying to say we've cracked the code or mastered marriage or that the work is now over because we beat the game. I know there are many battles to come and lots more lessons to learn in the rest of our years to come.

Today is about looking back on the eight that are under our belt. The belts are quite larger (and currently made of elastic in my case), but the love has grown exponentially.  I have always been really transparent about the hard times in our marriage, and blogging them has been very therapeutic.  I'm not as good at checking in to talk about the wonderful growth seasons. I have a fear of coming off as one of those people who only use the internet to share the sunny parts of their lives (absolutely okay! just not me).

I hope that the fact that I have never held back about the bad stuff can lend some credence to the fact that I am writing those posts so infrequently now because things have improved drastically.  As ugly and heart-bludgeoning and claw-my-face-off-frustrating as those years and those fights and those lessons were, it is so simple to say IT IS WORTH IT. I would do it all over again to get to where we are now; with a marriage that deserves the position of second place in our lives and hearts right behind Jesus. 

There were lots of hard times when I found myself saying, "Eff this, eff Jesse, eff marriage." Now, the mantra that comes out of me most frequently is "I effing LOVE marriage." When it's operating the way it was designed, it really feels like heaven.

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Jesse Dukes- 

You are my lobster. 

You and your big, brilliant brain thought long and hard and responsibly about the decision to ask me to marry you.  Boy did you get that one wrong! Well, maybe not, but it sure looked that way for a while there, didn't it? I wonder if you still would have done it if you had known what those first years would look like. I know you loved me as much as any boyfriend can love a girl before they are married, but still, we really had no flipping clue about love--we were just hot stupid little kids. 

I bet you would have though. Because your big old brain knew I was a little bananas, and that we have extremely incompatible natural styles of relating, and that these things would make it hard. But your heart followed Jesus and trusted that he'd always be enough to pull us through those trapdoors and to take our stupid scraps and knit them and us AND HIM together into something we never even knew enough to hope for. 

You are not my everything. And that's only because, Jesus-wise, I don't think you're supposed to be, and I  do try really hard not to make you into that. But damn, you're pretty close, and would make it just so easy to idolize you. When I try to bring to mind the amount of gratitude that I feel that I get to be your wife, my brain just flashes that calculator error where there arent enough decimal places to display the result. 

Nowhere in the rules does it say I have to like you. Loving you is non-negotiable, but I could fulfill all the vows and still never really like you (no judgement, but, this is kind of what I think Michelle Duggar must do, because Jim Bob is such a gooberhead!).  But you are easily favorite. Your personality and who you are just hit all the stuff on my checklist, baby!

Thank you for letting Jesus lead you in loving me like He does. Thank you for loving me enough to let me be weird, whacked-out, work-in-progress me, and for never withholding any part of your heart from me until I have become pretty enough to deserve it (spoiler alert: I may never get there anyway!). 

Thank you for how you constantly point me and our children back to Jesus. How you model the Father's love for them, and for how you're giving them a safe place to be grown by God, stewarded by us,  into the humans He wants them to be. 

I love you so much, I just want to squeeze you into my pores and fully absorb all the awesome. But hey, today isnt just the anniversary of our wedding day, and there's a highly decent way of absorbing the awesome that Jesus also invented and is all about celebrating. HIYO. (with 4 weeks of postpartum no-no looming, I'm trying to go all out here at the end).

fine. i'll marry you. hold a knife to my throat, geez.

love is an open door (only one though)

It started with a brutal insult from me to Jesse. 

We were in the car and I was singing screeching out my favorite of the Frozen soundtrack songs, "Love is an Open Door," the duet between Anna and Prince Hans (doy). 

 

Jinx. Jinx again!

Jesse, rather understandably (to a rational person, at least) jumped in on the boy part. I immediately and violently shushed him and barked, "No, stop! I want to sing it with him. I like his voice better."

And almost immediately after it was out of my mouth, I was like

 

OHHHHHHHHHHHHH FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUDGE

See, I wanted to live out a little 2-minute fantasy wherein I play an ignored, shut-in, Nordic princess falling in love with a cartoon ginger prince (who, if you've seen the film....you know...) at my first ever ball. And in pursuing this little mental escape, I had just majorly taken a chunk out of the heart of my real life, forever husband AND managed to insult his singing voice in the process (he is a professional worship leader, soooo...extra wounding points landed there). 

It got me thinking about how often I do this. How often I innocently--for just a moment--wish my love story was something different, or had something more than what it actually does. It could be anything from "I wish I had met my husband in a really crazy, serendipitous way like Anna and Hans," to "my life would be so much more exciting if I was just Khaleesi Drogo."

 

Duh

Of course, we do this all the time. A huge part of the fun of books and TV and movies and putting yourself in the characters' place and imagining how you would walk through their story. There’s probably nothing wrong with that.

But I noticed in that one moment when I snapped at Jesse to butt out and leave me and Hans to our little interlude, in chasing that little escape, it had become wrong. I was actually resenting Jesse a little bit for being not that. "You aren't able to fulfill this little side-dream of mine, so just please shut up and let me pursue it elsewhere for a second, thank you."

I thought, "Isn't that just like a stereotypical American living in 2014?" (Maybe that's an unfair generalization, and I should just say, "isn't that just like me?"). In my actual everyday reality I have a husband who is faithful, attentive, hilarious, kind, hardworking (at home maybe even more than at work!), utterly committed to me, and also damn freakin' hot. I feel like 99.9% of women everywhere who have ever wanted a husband would be pretty happy to end up with a guy they could describe that way. And yet here I am trying to mentally cherry-pick for some fictional more, and being pretty lazily ungrateful for my real man in the process.

It made me see how dangerous it can be to look outside of your own love story for something that might be missing, for something more. 

Okay, sure, if it's 3 dragon eggs you're looking for, you're probably going to be alright. But what if what you're looking for is attentiveness because your husband never seems to have much time anymore for just pouring into you, but your neighbor or some guy at work hangs on your every word?

I think if that was me, I would be tempted to start to somehow convince myself that I could have both. My husband.....aaaaand maybe just the good feelings the attention from the other guy brought me too. And that just gets into a bucket full of yikes.

So after my horrible moment of insulting Jesse I decided to make a commitment to our love story. To stop daydreaming on "what it would be like if..." and spend time in and on our story. Our. One. Story. 

It might not be worth selling the movie rights, it might not have a single talking snowman or Targaryen in sight, and it--gasp--probably won't even make me "feel happy" a lot of the time, but it's the one that is real and it's the only one whose lead male character has actually vowed to give a crap about how that story turns out.

Maybe your prince or your love story isn't how you would have described him/it when you wrote the dream script of your life. Maybe you say, "yeah, easy for you to say, keight, since you have the guy of your dreams already. But what if I’m stuck in my story with someone i don’t even like anymore?" first of all, that has been me...LOTS of times. second of all, unless we are talking abuse or infidelity (and sometimes even then...y'all know I believe the restoring power of Jesus is seriously bananas and can do anything), I just don't see where it's ever going to be more profitable to pour yourself--your effort, attention, grace, everything--anywhere but back into your current marriage.

I know that this is a really simplistic view, and that it's far uglier, far more complex, and can feel far more hopeless than I’ve described. I just felt like, for a second, I got a really good glimpse of one of the ways satan can start to tempt my mind away from my own magical (that's not mushy baloney! 2 trying to become 1 is magic...straight up, playa) love story, and it was such a powerful moment of exposure to me, and so convicted me that I felt compelled to share.

It's hard. But I think it's always worth it. And that, my friends, is what she said.

We reclaimed that song, by the way. FOR US. It's officially a Keight & Jesse love song. So as you might expect, that track now plays a lot more like this in our car (except we don't call ourselves good-looking on YouTube).

baptismiversaday staycation 2k13: "gettin' DINKy wid it"

ohhhhhh mama, i am SO PUMPED for the next 5 days.

first, you'll be happy to hear that i heroically wrested control of this website back from the hostiles that overthrew it yesterday. jesse was punished brutally for fomenting rebellion--i normally love a good foment, but just not that kind. his punishment: me stepping on his bare foot and pivoting (thus twisting his surprisingly NOT gross, but still rather hobbit-like foot hairs). this is probably the only thing on planet earth that enrages my husband who has the temper of a filing cabinet (i dont know...? it's the end of the week and my metaphors are weak). 

seriously though, thanks to yall sweetums-poos who wrote mad-meaningful bday wishes. i dont like to advertise my bday too much. not because i am humble or dont want any attention, but because i dont want BS attention (like from 400 facebook friends who ignore me all year and then blow up my wall as if either of us really cares). i like to play hard to get and see who really loves me enough to know my birthday without a robotic reminder or to go beyond a 2 second wall blast. (yup, i sure do realize how psychotic and shallow this is of me. whatever. keepin' it real). anyway, the stuff i got from my bloggy internet family was my favorite gift! (huge props to jesse for knowing my secret, needy love language and setting things up for me to get some). 

ok so. 

my parents have a condo they own at the beach. ever since i was in 8th grade they have had one there, though they downsized when my brother and i graduated--to a one bedroom (we can take a hint!). well, they just sold the condo in hopes of retiring out west in a few years. so they are taking one last hurrah trip to the condo this week and offered to take judah with them. they said they could only take 2 kids at a time and  that Guinness, the ancient black dachshund, counts as one. sorry, layla.  so close!

luckily we have two sets of bananaramic grandparents, and the dukes offered to take layla during the same window.

so that means that on this, the biggest week of the year for me holiday-wise, i am kid-free for over 4 whole days!!!! 

hark those heralds, amiright?!?!

so when we got this childcare bounty all set up jesse and i took to the streets (of the internet) to find a sweet getaway. 

the last time we were kid free for this long, i annihilated jesse's brains (while pregnant) out with a MASSIVE surprise trip to mexico that he was utterly ignorant of until an hour before our flight. BLAM to the OH OH. 

so we looked. and looked and looked. but there was just nowhere calling to us louder than the sound of "YALL ARE POOR!" coming from our heartbrains. and rather than pulling a classic keight-move and forcing something just because (and paying the price next fiscal year), we decided to just be easy like sunday morning (which WILL be easy thanks to jesse also taking off a sunday at church: i havent seen jesse dukes before 9:30 am on a sunday in YEARS!!) and stay home kidless! .

we are staycationing. this is a term that is simultaneously so pleasing and yet obviously super lame, and i plan to use it wantonly over the next few days. yes. rather than packing up my suitcase, trying to remember all the small bottles of potion i need to hold my 31 year old acne at bay while not in my home territory and basically paying money to feel such stress, we are instead just taking a getaway to a simpler time: a time of D.I.N.K. (double income no kids) and newlywedship. 

the best part is, even though we arent as firm or svelte as we were back then, we are SMARTER. hardened  (in our souls if not our glutes) by battle (if not by squats), and ready to ACCEPT THE BLESSING of childless living. now, when we get a single child-free day due to amazing grandparents we will look at each other and go "WHAT IN THE EFF HELL DID WE USED TO FIGHT ABOUT!?!?! THIS IS THE EASIEST THING IN THE WORLD!!!!" so this special time is going to feel DINK+ since we know how precious that time is/was/should be.

because as actual DINKs, oh, we fought. we fought and fought and fought despite the fact that we only had one rectum's worth of wipe-responsibilities each. despite the fact that no one was drawing on the walls or dumping out 5 lbs of dry quinoa on the pantry floor. despite the fact that we were hot and (relatively) rich and bored and oh we  just FOUGHTSOMUCH. 

the immature part of me wants to just declare: married couples without kids: you are forbidden from fighting or complaining ever. your lives are so easy. youre basically living at sex camp.  majoring in sleep and minoring in freetime. be in love. the end.

but my higher-mammal brain does acknowledge (after a mental getaway at sex camp!) that you can only be where you are. that you sweet DINKs arent trying to waste the precious resource of young married life, you are just adorably stupid and you cant see its full worth (and wont until you've looked into the eye of the meconium hurricaine).

i can only appreciate quiet times with jesse now because i've moved into a place where they are so rare (that place is called 1200 square feet and two toddlers...or sometimes just "purgatory"). and i know it works both ways. i bet i could real quick make my current "crazy" life feel super easy by having triplets, or introducing a colony of wild badgers into the kitchen (either/or). 

so, whatever, DINK couples, do your thing. fight for HOURS and then sleep it off the next day because YOU CAN!  no sassy 2 year old mermaid ninja is going to come in at 2 am demanding you put her in a vintage sailor dress that she dug up from god knows where in the dead of night.  fight it out, learn to love each other right so that the ninjette and her parkour-enthusiast brother, far from driving you apart, will have a solid family foundation and model for marriage when they come tromping into your lives and your hearts eventually.

meanwhile, jesse and i will be secretly coveting your toned triceps and carefree dinner plans, not getting riled up by things that would have made us [re: me] nuclear 5 years ago, and only smiling maliciously a little bit when we think about how awesomely your asses are going to be kicked by those kids you "cant wait to have." 

but here is one thing i REFUSE to give grace to (very chrsitlike): DINK couples who don't DIY! for the sweet sweet love of Bob Vila, improve your home NOW!!! i get rage-gassy just thinking of the 3 years we spent loafing around our mediocre-to-nauseating house without using our hands and brains and the internet to make it OURS (not to mention that we could have become a saltier "young house love" first!) . we turned on our productivity right when judah was born and, naturally, have been impeded by our little love nuggets and could have gotten so flipping much done if we had been motivated back in the days when "i'm bored" was a nonfiction thought.

so yeah, the next 5 days are going to be amazing. hotels are exotic and fun and new, and it's nice to not have to clean them and all. but, oh man, just getting to do whatever you want in your very own house without any babytoothed productivity leeches getting in the way!?!?! that's downright naughty, naughty good. 

bout to get our three-way on with this big girl. (that's not inappropriate...i thought about it).

my 2 weddings

i stood in front of loved ones 9 years and 1 day ago and declared my "'til death eternity NOTHING do us part" love for jesus. this was my public and outward vow of faith in christ. in a very real way it was my wedding to him: a public statement of my intent and desire to remain with him for all eternity.

that worked out nicely...

i stood in front of many of those same loved ones exactly 7 years ago today and committed my entire earthly self to jesse. sickness, health. richer, poorer. brain-meltingly frustrated, googly-eyed smitten. every moment we're both on earth, we're each others'. 

oh you two hot stupid little fools. 

the marriage parallel is probably my favorite of all the ways that the bible likens our relationship with christ to other things (i also LOVE king/subject, btw). i think one of the main reasons i favor this one above all the others (coin, sheep, prodigal, etc) is because it's sort of backwards from the way the others are presented.

lots of time we hear jesus say "the kingdom of heaven is like..." and then he puts it in terms of smaller, everyday stuff that we have more experience and familiarity with than the all-encompassing glory of god. i dont super-understand the everlasting sanctification of my mortally sinful spirit through christ's work on the cross, but i can picture a tree giving crappy rotten figs versus nice delicious plump ones. (i'll take a bushel of sancti-figs, please!)

take a big awe-inspiring idea and use something more common to help us understand it. take a big magical mysterious thing and boil it into something simpler that we have real life experience with. jesus was helpful like this when explaining his ways to us pea-brains

these comparisons are illustrations and they kind of stop there. we arent going to become seeds, or sheep or fruit when we enter god's kingdom. it's just a little glimpse to help us understand until we can truly  see. 

but with marriage it's the opposite. he presents the thing we're more day-to-day familiar with first: earthly marriage, and then says: "hey, this right here, it's even more lofty and weird and cool than you had ever dreamed of. MARRIAGE is like the kingdom of heaven." it is a subtle difference but it's one that i think makes both the faith relationship and the earthly marriage relationship both more magical.

when "the kingdom of heaven is like..." something else, it's glory coming down to earth. to our level. god most-high becoming human. the mystery of god's word being like scattered seed so we can sort of/kind of understand it. the creator of ALL THE THINGS becoming a tiny middle-eastern baby so we could feel his love.

that is amazing and awesome. but the coolest part of jesus isnt that he came down. it's that he rose back up: out of the grave and back to heaven and he brought us with him.

marriage isnt something bigger becoming something more humble to get on our level. it seems to me that it is something already magical having the chance to become even more. marriage is like the kingdom of heaven. the promise of the chance to be more, to love more. to draw even closer to him.

because when we get to god's kingdom we ARE actually going to be brides. spotless and new. perfected and ready to enter into an even deeper and more intimate relationship with our groom than we could have even dreamed of before the wedding feast. charles spurgeon describes it so perfectly:

Then it shall come to pass that Christ will celebrate this marriage supper, which will be the bringing of the people of God into the closest and happiest union with Christ their Lord in Glory.  Even now the Lord Jesus Christ is no stranger to some of us, and we are not strangers to Him. Yet there shall come a day when we shall see Him face to face and then we shall know Him with a clearer and fuller knowledge than is possible for us today.

jesus didnt give us marriage just to help us understand his love for us and ours for him. he gave it to us to PRACTICE this love...in both directions. when everything is as it was intended (this occurs approximately 43 minutes per year in our house) my jesus relationship should constantly be informing and dictating my devotion to and love of jesse, and my marriage relationship should constantly be pointing me back to jesus and acting out a perfect christ-minded unity. like two mirrors face to face reflecting back to infinity. 

christian marriage isnt just LIKE the kingdom of heaven. when we give christ the centrality and sovereignty over our marriage that he intended, asks for and deserves, it actually IS the kingdom of heaven. 

mind: blown.

having my 2 wedding anniversaries within a day of each other is an awesome reminder for me every year of the high standard my marriage is called to and of the even more perfect promise of christ to come. it is also fun to talk about my "first marriage" and my "second marriage" happening concurrently like i'm some kind of polygamizing banshee.

happy 7 years of hilarious, face-meltingly weird, ass-achingly hard, and yet totally worth it earthly marriage, jesse! i love you

on vulnerability

.

it's amazing to see how all-in kids are. how wholeheartedly they live. if we discipline layla, she immediately says, "you huht mah feelins!" its precious and humbling to know we have that power and to see her hand it over to us so readily.

but oh how quickly they learn. how quickly this effed up world teaches us to harden our hearts. judah, at almost 4, has already learned to put on armor and not show "weakness." if we spank him (because, yes, we spank) he has started to go, "that didnt hurt me," even if i can see that his little lip is trembling from the guilt and conflict.

i can remember learning the elementary school lessons of never let them see you cry, and just pretend like it doesnt bother you. granted, if someone calls you a doo-doo face, this is a pretty expedient way of dealing with the dummy booger head. i dont fault the teachers and parents who taught me these things at all and i know that those lessons will probably be part of our parenting in some form too--just to get our kids through those magical doo-doo face years.

and it makes sense. this world is not a safe place for a tender, innocent heart. but i wonder if this is one of those things-that-dont-make-sense that jesus wants to call our hearts to. 

but as i have grown and matured, i have regretted this lifelong practice--which has now become an instinct--of putting on emotional armor. it took several years of back-and-heart-breaking work in my marriage to realize that i wasnt actually a crazed rageaholic-anger-monster after all, but that anger had become the armor i used to hide the fact that jesse's actions or words hurt me. 

telling someone that they have hurt you gives them power. plain and simple. this is the essence of vulnerability. you are exposed because they now know HOW to hurt you. uh-doy. 

i had to learn that i can trust jesse 100%. when i hand him my squishy, fragile heart, he does actually have the power to squash it and pulverize me. but, yall he never ever does. because a broken and hurting wife is about 50 million times easier to love like christ does than a snarling rage-demon. uh-doy

here is how an interaction would go:

1. jesse would say or do something that would hurt my feelings (unintentionally because he's a boy, uh-doy), but INSTANTLY (before i even acknowledged in my own brain, "ouch that hurt") i would get angry. anger was my armor. 

2. in my head he would become the playground bully, so i couldnt give him the power of knowing that he had/could hurt me, so through my anger, i would  now have the upper hand by being the aggressor first.

3. my anger would catch him off guard and he would immediately throw up his own walls to protect himself from my salvo.

4. this defensiveness would seem to justify my anger (if he's defending he MUST be guilty) and we would carry on fighting about the aggression/defensiveness for hours and completely miss the little sneaky heart issue that sparked it all off. 

this method of escalation is insane and frustrating beyond belief and never (or only after 3 hours of teeth-gnashing and crying) gets to the heart of the matter...which IS the heart.

as i learned to slow down ask myself the question, "why the crap did that make me so angry?" i began to realize that it was HURT that i was really feeling, and not the ensuing anger. i had learned in my first 20 years to hide hurt so it had become a knee-jerk thing: feel hurt-->get angry. 

so i decided to slow down the process, to cut the fuse between the teensy spark and the powder keg. i told jesus that i had no hope of doing this through my own efforts and told him to step up and please make it happen in me (obviously he loves a good pep talk).

the first time i tried this with jesse was terrifying. saying "you hurt me" in a darwinian sense is stupid and a great way to not get your DNA passed on. animals come with all sorts of camouflage, behaviors and instincts to AVOID letting predators see their weak spots, and here i was broadcasting mine. soft white underbelly has never been such an apt phrase...

but jesse isnt a predator, he's a knight in shining armor. so instead of his walls going up to protect himself from the she-dragon, when he saw that i was actually a damsel in distress he immediately threw down the drawbridge and came riding out to rescue me.  it was tender yall. AND SO EFFECTIVE. and more than a little bit Aragorn Sexypants.

rather than talking about himself--the way you do when you are defending--he was able to come to where i was, address my wounds, and say, "oh my gosh, i hate that you are hurting, i completely didnt mean for that to happen. i am so sorry."  this was great because it always made me SO mad that he wasnt hearing MY problem first and addressing it before moving on to his stuff (his stuff being, "I DONT KNOW WHAT WE'RE YELLING ABOUT!"). 

so thats where we've been for the past few years. it doesnt always go perfectly like that because there are scars and hurt on both sides of this marriage (jesus is like deep tissue massage a lot of times and he softens you by letting you be hurt and tended to by him), but it has brought us to SUCH a deep and real place where we dont feel like we have to walk around in a full set of plate and mail all the time, waiting for the other one to thrust and parry. (i read game of thrones...and i had coffee...sorry)

taking off armor has started to feel much more like taking off chains. living with my whole heart has made me so much less cold and shut down. dropping my pride and the facade of being bulletproof has been beautifully humbling and freeing.

since it worked so well in marriage, i have started trying to apply it to almost all of my relationships. observation #1: SCARY! holy moly. i know jesse dukes' entire story and trust him with my life...branching out to people who arent this intimate (even closest friends) is straight harrowing because they've probably never taken a vow to love and protect me the way that my husband has.

observation #2:  being vulnerable with unhealthy people (aka anyone, but specifically people who dont value maturity or chirst-like living) can be DANGEROUS. truth: i have gotten stomped a few times by doing this. and it hurt. 

but ever since i stopped making my priority "dont let them (or yourself) see your hurt" it's okay. crying stinks. and getting your heart broken is almost the worst. but at least i get to walk away from those moments knowing that i shared my real self and my real heart. RATHER than those interactions where youre like acting all cool and collected and just passive aggressively trying to back door zing one another. no one wins after those and you just walk away harboring poison for the other person that will eat you right up.

no matter how unhealthy the person i am dealing with, i am betting there are very few relationships where the other person cares so little for me that hearing, "i am feeling hurt by something you said/did" makes them salivate and want to go in for the kill. observation #3: if you hand someone your gelatinous, helpless heart and they--fully knowing that they can--stomp it, that is probably a relationship to get away from for now.

*disclaimer: there is a middle ground between "oh i never wanted you to be hurt," and "AVAST YE! I KILL YOU AND YOUR HEART!" where even well-intentioned, mature, jesus-loving people might not be ready to receive your vulnerability. in these instances, i just try to power through with, "i want you to hear me...this isnt about you, i am not saying you did something wrong, i am only talking about me and wanting to share with you where i am." it gets hard not to escalate or jump aboard the anger expressway when they dont get it immediately. stick with it. like playing dead with a grizzly. when they see youre not trying to fight, they usually stop trying to defend. either way...its not their fault.*

one of the first times that i decided to be vulnerable in a situation where i WANTED to be angry (outside of my marriage) was with one of my BFFs raechel. yes, it is weird at age 30 to be getting into "fights" with your friends (especially those that you met on the internet), but people are people and we are complex and i dont think there is anything to be ashamed of.

aaaaaanyway, we had been through some conversations where we both left feeling dinged up and un-cared for. my instinct was to just come after her and show her all the ways that she had done things wrong. but instead, we both decided to go to that mushy place and just share our hearts and where we were hurting.

it was HARD and it was pretty awkward at first, but it was AWESOME (that's what she said!...coffee). 

rather than one of us having to be declared wrong against some outside standard of right/wrong/rude we just got to care about each other. i decided to put my stuff down and really care for my hurting friend, and she did the same. it came to a point where arguing about the facts of what happened or what was said was irrelevant. because in the end, even if raechel 100% hallucinated it all (she didnt), she had still been hurt.

i had to decide that i cared way more about her heart (and sharing mine) than about being right. period (underlined, italicized and bolded...because yeah).

and thats really where i've landed on this thing. my whole life i have been fighting tooth and nail (and brass knuckles and sawed off shotgun) to be right. to feel vindicated and to feel justified. and it got me nowhere but stressed and frustrated and ANGRY.  when i stopped trying to be enough in some way where the judge in the courtroom rules in MY favor over others, i was able to just say, "here's where i am. how i'm broken. where i need love."  somehow me being up front with how jacked up and broken and breakable i am has given me the ability to love others and help them in their brokenness better. and the ability to say, "i probably did hurt you! i'm an emotional hot mess, after all!" 

its beautiful, but it makes no sense. it's backward jesus magic.

i'll never prove my way into god's grace by being more right than jesse or raechel or anyone. but i have his grace poured out and lavished on me when i say, "i am broken. i am hurting. i need to hand my heart over to YOU."

jesus is the model. he didnt care about being right. in fact, to the letter of the law, it often looked like he was wrong a lot of the time. he said again and again, "yall are missing it. its not about living up to some standard or being right. it's about your heart." he did the greatest thing in the history of all the things when he lost his trial, was declared wrong and then unhesitatingly gave us all his very heart. 

that's where i win. that's the only victory i am supposed to boast in or seek after. and it's his.  so is my heart, and he wants me to give it away no matter how it hurts. i'm working on it.