I Think My Bangs Might Have Magical Powers...

So despite my initial hesitation regarding my new heavy bangs I’ve come to really love this new ‘do.  I haven’t felt so good about how I look in a long time.  This may be due to the fact that having bangs has forced me to shower more frequently because slept on bangs look, well, not cool.  And as long as I’m showering I might as well put on real clothes (read: not yoga pants) and throw on some mascara.  And voila!  I look 95% better than I ever did pre-bangs.  Regardless, most days I actually kind of like what I see in the mirror and that is huge. 

Recently though I’ve come to wonder if maybe my bangs even have magical powers.

For example, tonight I went to a yoga sculpt class at the hot yoga place.  I love yoga sculpt and I love it even more when it’s done in a heated room.   Yoga sculpt is like yoga on steroids with weights and cardio and none of the “Om” meditation crap.  Add all the extra sweating that comes when you do it in a heated room and I leave there feeling like I’ve actually worked out. 

Last week I saw someone that I thought may have been a sorority sister in college.  I wasn’t totally sure, and we never made enough eye contact to know for sure if she saw and recognized me.  So I left without saying anything.

This week I saw her again.  My instinctive reaction was to keep an eye on her during class without making eye contact and hope she approached me afterwards to say, “don’t I know you?”  I know it’s silly, but I always do this.  If I see someone I recognize I avoid all eye contact and let the other person make the effort to come to me.  I could try to make an excuse for this, pretend that it’s because I don’t want to bother this person, or put them in an awkward position if they don’t recognize me.  This, however, would be a total lie.  The truth is I don’t ever make the first move in situations like this because I don’t want to give someone else the power that comes with being recognized by someone you don’t remember.  I don’t want to risk letting someone think they’ve made me insignificant.

** This is where I would add a footnote, if blogs had footnotes, to say that this exchange of power is absolutely real and you are lying if you think people don’t secretly revel in it.  I know because I have.  It was in the toothpaste aisle at Jewel.  I got the “Colleen?  Is that you?” from a girl I knew in elementary and middle school.  She once belonged to a group of “friends” that hurt my feelings for most of grades six through eight.  (Middle school is brutal pals.)  And when she approached me in the grocery store after seven years I couldn’t place her.  I played it off, stalling and asking generic questions until I figured out who she was.  And then I left, taking no small amount of joy in the fact that this person who had once made me feel so bad and unimportant, was now someone I didn’t even recognize amidst tubes of Colgate and Crest.  In jr. high I would have put a bazillion dollars on this exchange going down the other way, myself being cast as still small, unimportant and unrecognized.  I know, I know.  This makes me a horrible human being.  But middle school wounds, man.  They run deep.  Ok. Footnote over.**

Any way, at some point during yoga I looked up into the mirror and saw that my bangs miraculously still looked pretty good.  This was no small feat considering the amount of sweating going on in there.  And with that discovery I thought- I’m going to approach her after class.  Who cares if she doesn’t recognize me?  That doesn’t make me insignificant. 

And that right there is huge pals.  Her response does not determine my worth.  After spending years allowing others’ reactions to me completely influence how I feel about myself, this sweet freedom feels just like that.  Freedom.  It’s a Christmas miracle.  Or maybe it’s the magic of the bangs.  Or probably just the normal maturing that comes as I approach thirty.  Regardless, I’ll take it.  

Accountability is a Dirty Word

She sat across from me at my favorite campus coffee shop.  The night before she’d casually asked me to meet her to “discuss some things on her mind.”  She was my mentor, my role model and my friend.  I looked up to her and valued her opinion more than anyone else on campus. 

To say I was blindsided would be an understatement.  When she pulled out her notebook and opened to the list that chronicled all of my shortcomings and misdoings of the past few months, I could literally hear my heart pounding in my ears.  She loved me, she said, and she wanted to help me be better.  For Jesus.  Accountability is a necessary part of Christian community.

And I sat and listened.  The tears flooding in my eyes made it difficult to make out all those things on her list (she’d wanted to make sure her thoughts were clear and she hadn’t forgotten anything, after all), and 10 years later I still don’t recall many of the specifics of my failings as a Christian.  I do recall the way I left, after she had finished saying everything she came to say, on the verge of body wrecking sobs, with a hug and a “thank you.”  I thanked her for that wrecking ball of judgment.  I didn’t know any better.  In an instant I had become everything on that list.  I deserved that judgment.

I spent the rest of the evening experiencing a “dark night of the soul” if you will, wrestling with her words, allowing them to become truths, transforming them beyond her words, attaching them to Christ’s words.  I cried, and hurt and bled.  The wound created that afternoon was dug out a little more and suddenly guilt was a part of my faith.  Guilt was the part of my faith.

Months later she apologized for that afternoon.  Maybe she hadn’t handled it the best.  She didn’t have bad intentions; she thought she was helping.  Years later she apologized again.  Turns out someone had brought out their own list, regarding her shortcomings.  She finally understood what she had done all those years before.  She was so sorry.

Each apology acted like a bit of Neosporin on a gunshot wound.  A quiet whisper that there was healing that needed to be done.  A small sense of vindication that I did actually deserve to feel hurt, that I didn’t deserve that wrecking ball.  But Neosporin cannot heal a gunshot wound and while I quickly accepted her apology and moved on to happier topics I found my heart longing to go back.  To speak aloud how much that list haunts me.  To rehash and reopen.

It wasn’t until I participated in a ministry internship where I found myself in small groups and therapy like mentoring that I was finally able to do just that.  From the beginning I felt nervous about attending the small group.  I found myself waiting, tense and edgy, for someone to whip out their notebooks and reveal their lists.  I dreaded the accountability I knew was coming.  My memory of that day kept coming to the surface and I knew I needed to examine it.

When I went back to my journals from that time there is a clear distinction of before and after that dreaded accountability.  Before my prayers were filled with praises to God, joy in his love for me, wonder at his grace and goodness.  Did I write this?  I thought.  Did I once feel this way about God?  I don’t remember this relationship.  After my journal is filled with the shoulds and not enoughs.  I berate myself for not living up to all God wants me to do.  I am so undeserving.  I need to do more, earn more, give more.  God is the list maker and my faults are many.  These thoughts were familiar.  This relationship with God was familiar.

As I revisited and rehashed this experience I found myself asking what God’s heart was towards me on that day, and what it was towards her.  I started to see myself as God saw me.  I was not a list of failings.  I didn’t have to fix my faults in order to come into his presence.  Finally the wounds began to truly heal.  I began to have grace with myself for the first time since “After.”

And I realized something else.  His heart broke for the pain his children were inflicting on each other.  It broke for me, and it broke for her.  Forgive her too; she knew not what she was doing.  And I truly know that she didn’t.  She had bought the lines that had been fed to her.  Accountability is important.  Iron sharpens iron.  She was loving me the best way she knew how in that moment. 

We are still friends and we’ve revisited that day once more in our friendship.  I was able to finally articulate just how much that encounter had damaged me.  I spoke truth to how it shaped a misunderstanding of God and tainted the way I saw myself in his eyes.  And I told her how I’m working through it and changing my story.  And she was finally able to really apologize for the fullness of her mistake.

Accountability man, it’s a dangerous thing.  Used incorrectly it can have life altering effects.  Thankfully I would find that there is another way of accountability, a beautiful, necessary, life-giving way.  But that’s another story for another day.

Vacation from No

I have incredibly fond memories of our family vacations as a child.  My parents, having met as employees of United Airlines, instilled in us an appreciation for travel taking full advantage of our ability to fly for free.  And fly we did.  I accumulated more stamps in my passport by the age of 18 than most do in a lifetime.  With my family I saw the leaning tower of Pisa, sang old Irish tunes with a live band at Oliver St. John Gogarty’s pub in Dublin, and sat in our car in the middle of a pack of elephants on the move in South Africa.  (I do also have incredibly frustrated family vacation memories.  The image of my father’s backpack clad backside, some 20 feet ahead of us, determined to see all of Rome in one day, his family’s fatigue or hunger be damned is forever seared in my brain.)  It is an incredibly great source of sadness for me to know that I won’t be able to provide my own kids with as many trips to new and interesting places as I experienced growing up. 

On the other hand my husband has less than fond memories of family vacations.  His memories include mostly arguing, driving, more arguing and eating at restaurants where no one wanted to dine.  His parents didn’t love to travel; it seemed a general lack of comfort served to bring out the worst in everyone.

So my inability to provide vacation experiences like the ones I grew up with, coupled with my husband’s desire not to provide experiences like the ones he grew up with, left us five years into marriage having taken only one vacation as a singular family unit: our honeymoon.  We’ve traveled, yes.  We’ve visited friends, traveled with my family and have taken vacations with another family, but we had yet to spend an extended amount of time as our own family unit exploring some place new.

We set out last weekend to change that.  Out of the blue my husband booked a long weekend away to Sheboygan, Wisconsin to an indoor water park and resort.  I anticipated this weekend like a child yearning for his birthday.  I counted down the weeks, flipping up the calendar to smile at those words, blue harbor.   I spent the days before our departure running errands to ensure our three and a half days together were special: movies and books from the library, forbidden junk food and treats from Target.  I deeply wanted this weekend to feel special and set apart.  I wanted my family to feel that this was sacred time to relish, enjoy and relax into.

And so it was.  I realized during the planning and preparing process that I had an opportunity to set the tone for our vacation.  My husband and I are both pretty go with the flow, so when we travel with others we often let them set the tone.  We travel with great people, so it’s never really a problem, but I was excited to be the ones to drive the ship.  As I thought about the feeling of the weekend I wanted it to feel like saying yes. 

For better or worse I am a parent who tends to say no more than yes.  Often it’s a necessary no ("no you may not run out into traffic") but I am not above saying no because I just don’t want to deal with the mess (no you can’t use markers- here’s a crayon) or to keep our routine (no buddy, it’s naptime and you’ve already had 3 stories.)  Truthfully, sometimes I say no simply because I fear being over-indulgent.  So this weekend I took a vacation from saying No.  Our routine was loose and I didn’t stress about it. 

Taking a vacation from No meant eating Cinnamon Toast Crunch for lunch. (And pop tarts and pizza and Velveeta shells and cheese)

while wearing your sister's hair clip of course

Going down the water slide

and around the lazy river 15 times.

It meant watching the big trucks work for much longer than Mommy wanted to.

It meant eating corn on the cob even though it was messy,

and watching as much TV as we wanted.

It meant staying up later than usual and sitting on Daddy’s lap during meals and buying crayons at Target because your coloring book from Chili’s is so awesome.

And it was wonderful. 

(Of course if I’d written this post on Saturday night it would have stopped there.  By Sunday I remembered that saying yes to everything creates a monster.  A cranky, ornery, entitled monster.  Still worth every single “yes” though.)


I linked up to the parent hood with this post!  This is my very first link up (and pretty much the first time I've even really shared my blog!) Head over to Fried Okra to see other links in the parent hood!

Questions for God

I spent the evening with my middle school youth group talking about doubts.  We discussed the pros to doubting, to wrestling with God.  I told them a faith that has honest questions for God is the best kind of faith; God can handle those questions, invites them even.  Breaking up into groups, the students brainstormed some doubts and questions they have for God.  We wrote them down on yellow poster boards and put them on the wall of the youth room under a sign that says “Questions for God.”  Their questions ran the gamut from “did Adam and Eve have belly buttons” to “why did you make me so ugly” to “why do you allow some people to hurt so much and others to live without the hurt.”

I have been a long time doubter and wrestler with God.  I find myself constantly staring down a reality of life that seems to contradict the truths I’ve been taught about God.  On the day I finally get to sit down across the table from him I will have a million questions for God.  Why do you constantly allow your reputation to be tarnished by people who do evil things in your name?  Why weren’t you more clear in your word about all these topics that tear your believers apart?  How can you create someone with an attraction to members of their own sex and then leave them in a world that is so, so cruel to them?  Where are you?  Why didn’t you?  If you created us and loved us and wooed us during all the days of our lives why do we still hide in our gardens from you like Adam and Eve did?  How have I been so fortunate and blessed and sheltered from pain when others have received ten times the curses?

My heart can literally ache with the doubting.  It stops me short and leaves me dejected, despaired, faithless.  The doubting paralyzes me from the doing God has asked of me.

It would be so much easier without the doubts.

And yet as I told my students that night, and as I truly believe deep in my bones, doubting is good.  We must examine life and face our doubts.  Questioning God works a muscle in our faith.  This muscle must not lay dormant but rather needs to be worked, exercised, prepared.  Because this muscle will be our lifeline.  When that darkest of tragedies comes crashing into our world it is this muscle that will push us through it with our faith intact.  This muscle will allow us to face our grief and despair and still claim that God is good.  The doubt muscle is the only thing that will keep us running to the arms of a loving God.  But if we never worked it during the days of light we will find ourselves woefully unprepared for the deep dark.

And, as I told my students, doubts are best exercised among community.  We put our questions for God on the wall for all to see because it’s important to wrestle with God in the community of others.  When we are too tired and unable to believe in the goodness of God our community can tap it and take over.  When we are in the thick darkness of doubt our community can shine the light on truth.  When all we see is the bad and ugly and hard of life our community can remind us of the lovely and beautiful and true of God.

Without others our doubts threaten to overtake us like the avalanche tumbling faster and faster, scooping and burying all in its path.

But sharing your doubts is vulnerable. I fear the weakness my doubts convey.  I believe the lie that my doubts will taint my faith and leave me untrustworthy.  I fear the avalanche will scoop everyone around me up as well, burying them under its weight.  I believe the lie that my doubts are too great for another to bear.

So I must practice the discipline of doubting in community.  I must give name to the worry I hold that God isn’t bigger than this doubt.  I must work that muscle even though it would be so much easier to let it atrophy and hope I never need to use it.  I must invite others to witness wrestling match that leaves me exhausted, spent and pained.  I must now because I know it will be the lifeline later.

Like all true things of God, doubting is hard but so, so good.

Sweet Dreams. You’re a Good Boy

Monster is starting to talk so much more these days.  It’s amazing to watch him imitate and mimic and communicate.  Last night, as we sat snuggled together on the couch for pizza and a movie night, I gave him a kiss and said, “I love you buddy.”  He responded with a sweet, soft, “I love you Mommy.”  Oh my heart.  He hasn’t said those words strung together like that ever. 

Out of the blue the other day he took my husband’s hand, shook it and said, “Hi, how are you?”  I’m fairly certain he got that from my dad, as Granda shakes his little hand and says “hi, how are you” whenever he comes over.  It amazes me that, days after Granda’s last visit, Monster remembers this detail and tries it out on someone else.

Recently all has been made right in the world by another act of mimicking.  Despite my initialsadness about our silent bedtime routine, I discovered that if I put my mouth right up to Monster’s ear and speak loudly he can hear without his aids.  Thus began our new goodnights.  Now Monster cozies up in his big boy bed and I lean over him with my mouth to his ear and say, “I love you.  Sweet dreams.  You’re a good boy.  I love you.”  Somewhere along the way he has taken to repeating back each phrase.  “Wuv you.  Weet Weams.  Good Boy.  Wuv you.”  It is all enormously comforting to know that he hears me.  That the last words he hears before slumber takes are words that speak to his worth and general loved-ness.

At speech therapy the other day he was playing with a baby.  At one point he rolled the baby onto it’s tummy (his preferred sleep position), patted it’s back and said, “good boy.”  And I know he gets it.  He remembers these acts of love throughout the day.  They carry him beyond the moments before slumber.  They carry him through his work and play and fears and joys.  They teach him how to love others.  They teach him how to love himself. 

He gets it.  

New Look

Inspired (shamed?) by Saturday's post about leaving the house looking like a homeless woman, I set out to change my story.  Truth is the 5 extra pounds I can't get rid of, and the balding/too long hairstyle I've been sporting are taking their toll on my heart and confidence.  Taking a page from the "if you look good, you feel good" playbook I made a hair appointment for yesterday.  Then I went super bold and asked for heavy bangs. Motivated by this and a need to change my part and cover up the bald spots, I told Antoinette to have fun and go for it.  While your at it, chop off 6 inches.  Ugg.  Why do I exist in extremes?

Anyway here's the bangs

To be honest, I'm not sure how I feel about them.  I'm hoping they just feel a quarter of an inch two short and in two weeks I will love them.  But maybe I'm just not a bangs person.

Luckily my hair has Harry Potter magic growing abilities and in two weeks it will end up looking like it aways does.

Which is to say, the hairstyle of a tired, homeless mom... :)

On Leaving the House Looking Like a Homeless Woman

I distinctly remember the drive home from a babysitting gig at age fourteen when I noticed that the Mrs. Brown* hadn’t shaved above her knee.  Below the knee it was clearly shaven, but her thighs revealed fine blond hairs, shockingly long in my early teenage opinion. 

I remember being baffled and somewhat judgmental.  Why wouldn’t she shave the whole leg?  It takes an extra ninety seconds.  Could she really not have ninety seconds to spare?  And how is she ok with hairy thighs in the summer?  She’s wearing shorts.  People can see.

Fifteen years and two kids later…I totally get it.  To be fair, I probably stopped regularly shaving above the knee before I had kids, but now- let’s just say I only remember to shave the upper part of my legs when it starts looking like I have man thighs.  At fourteen the novelty of shaving my legs had not yet worn off and the embarrassment factor surrounding exposed hairy legs was high. 

Nowadays I sometimes marvel at what I look like when I leave the house.

It starts in college I think.  8am classes give way to the roll out of bed sweat suit look that I was incredibly fond of.  (And really, the multiple “sweat” items I owned emblazed with my sorority’s letters made it so, so easy to do.)  Post-college affords you a few years of career life where it is fun and exciting to get dressed for the work world (followed by some years where it’s not and you push the limits on “work appropriate sloppiness”).  And then, for me anyway, pregnancy and motherhood hits and it all goes to hell.  For the last three years I have been pregnant, post-partum, pregnant and post-partum again.  After Monster’s pregnancy I enjoyed about 5 months at my pre-preggo weight before starting all over again.  Five months after Toots’ entry into the world…I’m still working on it.  Add to that the whole breastfeeding factor wherein I must always wear something that allows for easy access to the boobs.  This means friends that for three years the only things I can count on fitting in are elastic waistband pants and nursing tanks.  Enter my best friend, the yoga pant.

Then there’s the whole showering/hair/make-up issue.  The discovery of dry shampoo has greatly improved my overall look, but still- it’s pretty dismal.  On most mornings the only make-up I wear is the mascara I put on the last time I wanted to look a little presentable (mascara that could be anywhere from 12 hours-2 days old).  My hair is in that awesome postpartum falling out phase, so it’s nice and thin and straggly and I’m in dire need of a bang trim.

So yeah.  You could say I’m looking pretty good.

The hard part is that I think I look ok.  I’m sporting a casual, low-key cute mom look.  I’m just a hip mom out running errands.  In my head I look like the girls who work at lululemon.  But then I catch myself in the mirror on these days and think, “how did I leave the house like this?  Was I so busy that I couldn’t have done something to improve this look?  What do other people see when they see me?”

How do others do it?  I don’t want to buy new clothes for a size that I don’t want to keep, don’t have time to get all done up most mornings, don’t have the kind of job that requires me to gussy up.  Someone please reassure me that this is just a phase that will pass once I’m done birthing and nursing babies.  Please tell me I won’t be sporting homeless chic at my son’s graduation.

*names changed to protect the hairy