Tropical Cure

We have been to parts further south, warming our toes and tanning our pelts in the tropical sun. The world is a much better place now. We are home to our beige and grey yard and it all seems shockingly wan but the snow is almost all gone, the garden catalogs are piling up in a heap on my To Read Shelf and the chickens are started laying like gangbusters. I feel a change in the wind. We 'gon make it!

My life has felt like a ridiculous tumult lately, painful and crazy and feeling out of control. I hate, hate, hate to even tell you that I know part of it has been hormonal woman-timing. PMS is so humiliating and it makes me feel so shammy and non-legit. Blech. Also, I think its a good year to just certify myself as clearly sucked under by Seasonal Affective Disorder and realize that the endless bland, bone-chilling cold and lack of sunshine has screwed with my ability to remain stable. (I am seriously considering getting one of those dorky lights to sit under, folks!) My world has also really been truly stressful. We are trudging our way through marriage counseling, one of those scary things that nobody talks about out-loud. Marriage is hands down the hardest thing, the scariest endeavor and the deepest learning experience I have ever, ever been through in my life. Honestly, it kind of terrifies me and I long for "easy" and "happy" in my marriage but its been everything but. Nobody talks out loud about marriage, you know? Its kind of this confidential, if you-have-one-you-are-supposed-to-feel-blessed kind of a thing. I don't want to make A feel bad or dump our relational dirty laundry but I do think its important sometimes to whistle blow and just be authentic and I know we both agree on the honest desire to be .

Marriage is hella hard, yo. I have never cried harder or felt deeper or worked more from the pit of my own soul than this. I am encouraged to know that people change, relationships are dynamic, that I am growing, that we love each other, that we have resources, and that we are not the first people to walk this way. Please know, if this is you in any way....not everyone marries their high school sweetheart and gets to post on Facebook that they feel so lucky to be married to their best friend. Lots of us out there are working out our marriages, its about growth and change and hard self-work and grace and patient turtle medicine in bucket loads. I have been doing some serious soul searching and I honestly believe that life belongs to the over-comers, to the learners and the doers, those who will not be defeated and will not give up, to those who humbly and vulnerably connect and believe in a spirit of change. I'm clinging to evidence of our progress and firmly planting myself in the committed but unwilling to be victimized category. I'm committed to our marriage, to the pain and the growth and the believing in each other, to preserving myself and encouraging him to do the same, to sacred advisors and the village that surrounds us, to showing our children and people who don't have it easy can be winners too and figuring all this craziness out. Please know that you, struggling married person of great worth, are not alone. I'm all about creating a new culture of humanity, openness and growth around marriage....I'm super over the trite happy-happy pretend that all is bliss or that all conflict is sickness.

This is what the tropics hath wrought. I read and prayed, and dreamed and saw things on the shore, talked and argued and made resolutions and said brave things, soaking in sunshine, slept and slept and slept, wrote lists, took photos and just *was* in a hammock on the seashore. And I'm more whole, more honest, more awake and determined to make it.

Rising Above, Y'all

Sometimes there are days when its all about kicking your own inner pain and vulnerability to the curb and refusing (even when you don't know if you can) to live in an identity of defensiveness, all strapped into a permanent victim name tag. Sometimes other people don't get you. Sometimes people hurt your feelings and leave you soaking in lonely. Sometimes you make what you think is an obvious plea for connection and understanding and you are rebuffed and told to grow up. But I don't wanna live there. I get that it hurts, even feels justified and its not about lying to myself. Its about the honesty that if I sense defensiveness in myself, then clearly I feel I have something to hide.

I am super over soaking in my bitter angst when I feel wounded. Its the most challenging mental and emotional muscle work I have ever encountered (short of the entire experience of being married and being a parent) but its the right, strong and healthy thing. Its the vibrant thing too, the compassionate thing, the warm thing, the thing that lets you lie down and sleep at night.

I'm trying to learn how to do this and its such a new technique that I have very, very few credits to my name yet. But today....today was one of them. Yes, I cried some hot tears, I ate some pastries I regret in bitter emo style, I angry texted, I snapped at my kids.

But, I also:

    ....got good advice, cleaned off a shelf in a cluttered closet, ate a fresh orange, took pictures of beautiful things, thought through ways I'd been clumsy in the conflict, I talked it out, I solved my own problems, I told myself that I mattered, I listened to spiritual comfort, I sat in the sunshine, I smiled and I drank more hot tea. 

And by the end of the day, I had clawed my way back up.

Its so hard but I'm really frickin' proud. Every little bit a tiny victory.