loved into existence

I was reading Lauren Dubinsky’s

post on “10 Things I’ve Learned about Sex in Six Months of Marriage”

and the part that really stuck out to me was thing #3

Expectations Are a Bitch

“I’ve been noticing that our expectations not aligning with reality that are causing more pain and heartbreak in our marriages than our ‘problems’ actually are.”

Lately, I’ve been learning that my unhealthy expectations are detrimental to my relationship with my fiance for different reasons, for which I’m not going to go into detail right now. 

Yesterday, I went and tried on bridal gowns in a store with my mom and tried on beautiful, gorgeous gowns, but couldn’t find “the one,” you know? And I know I’m not that girl who is going to scream/cry when she finds her dress. I’m probably going to say “Yup, this is it.” But I am facing the realization that I may never have the overwhelming realization fairy tale/ rainbows moment. I might just have to pick a dress and be happy with it. 

So now that I’ve picked my mate, I need to be happy with him as well as  the person he is becoming and accept that our relationship isn’t static and that life isn’t a fairy tale.

It’s far more beautiful and complex than that. 

Again, I return to gratefulness and contentment. 

God, I have been doing a tremendously awful job at choosing to be happy recently, so let me stand back and remember what to be grateful about rather than being a stress muffin. 

gratefulness

-engaged to marry the love of my life on September 28. yay! 174 days to go. 

-got a new job that I’ve been wanting for a year and a half. I finally get to see what working in a hospital is really like. 

-I’ve living in a house with a family. Mark and Del are probably two of the friendliest and kindest people that I have ever met in my life, and their daughters Lili and Gigi are so dang cute. 

-I get to learn more about the details of having kids and what that is really like. And I get to save up some money since they aren’t charging me much for rent. 

-in five days, I have three whole days off of work. 

- I have a lot of food and it is food that is healthy and mostly organic. 

- my fiance lets me use his car everyday to get to work. this is huge. I wouldn’t have been able to apply for jobs around a lot of places if it weren’t for this. 

The world is looking for your humanity.
Your connection.
Your vulnerability.
It wants your presence.

What does being present and available look like for you today?

I this today on this blog

and it is going to inform my actions for the rest of today. 

Connection

Vulnerability

Presence

inspired

I’m inspired by my friend Dani’s blog after having a little pouty session today. 

You see I recently left my job because it was something I dearly felt that I needed to do. I’m scared of being trapped in another job I don’t like instead of focusing on the positive of knowing that God will use this situation to my benefit. 

I would like to quote what most stood out to me in her post even though you should just read it yourself. 

“We take risks because it’s necessary to fully live. Otherwise the resistance we face will always dictate how we live. And how much of living will we miss out on! We wouldn’t ever fall in love, make new friends, end unhealthy relationships, have new adventures, start families, help others, understand ourselves, etc. What a suffocated life, living in fear.

When I see how Jesus lived and taught, he was constantly taking risks and inviting his disciples to do the same. He experienced a lot of resistance: people thought he was crazy, he was abandoned by even his followers, and ultimately was executed. But he never wavered in his identity or purpose, throughout the gospels, we see him revealing his identity, sometimes secretly and other times publicly:

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” (Luke 4:18-19, NRSV).”

the first time

I went to this new restaurant Tap and Table that opened up in the Corn Hill neighborhood of Rochester, my friends and I noticed this squiggly tattoo lining a server’s wrist and wrapping around her arm. 

it looked like a city landscape all jagged and angled lines jutting up and down. 

and when we asked her about it, she said that it was the famous quote by Socrates “the unexamined life is not worth living” designed in a friend’s font to look like a city landscape and be unreadable. 

and yesterday, while I walked through the rain to Joe Bean Coffee, I saw her walk up behind me and she also came into the shop with me. 

the quote rang through my mind

the unexamined life is not worth living. 

I apologize

for the spam that has been on my account lately. It’s rather obnoxious. I promise to post something more of substance soon. 

thinking positive. (so much possibility in my life.)

If you asked twenty good men to-day what they thought the highest of the virtues, nineteen of them would reply, Unselfishness. But if you asked almost any of the great Christians of old he would have replied, Love. You see what has happened? A negative term has been substituted for a positive, and this is of more than philological importance. The negative ideal of Unselfishness carries with it the suggestion not primarily of securing good things for others, but of going without them ourselves, as if our abstinence and not their happiness was the important point. I do not think this is the Christian virtue of Love. The New Testament has lots to say about self-denial, but not about self-denial as an end in itself. We are told to deny ourselves and to take up our crosses in order that we may follow Christ; and nearly every description of what we shall ultimately find if we do so contains an appeal to desire. If there lurks in most modern minds the notion that to desire our own good and earnestly to hope for the enjoyment of it is a bad thing, I submit that this notion has crept in from Kant and the Stoics and is no part of the Christian faith. Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. 

“No heart is as whole as a broken heart and I would say no faith is as solid as a wounded faith.” –Elie Wiesel

resonated with me today.

Now my soul can sing a new song,

now my heart has found a home

Now Your grace is always with me

And I’ll never be alone.