I thought I was just changing the sheets

Ya think about changing your sheets. Whether you do it as a disciplined thing or you wait until the sheets peel themselves off your bed and beg you PERMA PRESS ME, STAT, you are so glad when change comes. The clean sheets feel so crisp and fresh. But then the cycle repeats itself and you are rolling around in bed wishing the Snuggle bear would just do you a favor and toss you some new linens. Change happens again, exchanging the dirties for the cleans.

The thing about moving from Boston to Tennessee for me was that I naively thought I was just changing a set of sheets. It was time. The city living, I was ready to wash ourselves clean of the endless traffic, the population density, the high priced everything, the pollution. And so we did. We not only changed the sheets, we moved the whole bed and caboodle to the South wherein we were no closer to family and were now without friends. The soft scent of the new sheets wore off quickly as we battled real estate woes back in Boston for well over the first year.

Had we not experienced what we believed was a very specific calling to change our sheets at the appointed time and to come live with some new ones in an appointed place, I think the experience would have been much more fraught with doubt and fear.

And now, here we are. We have changed so much more than our sheets. My children pull bricks from their driveway to find potato bug colonies, they sing sabbath school songs in the car, they know about cherry limeade at Sonic, they chase butterflies on our acreage like a couple of Smurfs for crying out loud. They are Southerners. They have no concrete memories of the urbane streets we strolled everyday in their former city, splashing in the Frog Pond on the Boston Common, riding the T from Shawmut Station to Harvard Square.

These memories are becoming faint for me, too, like illustrations of someone else's enchanted life who was able to do the unthinkable: walk to get a chai latte on her way to work.

I thought I was only changing the sheets, you see. I thought I got to retain all the things I still liked about my life as I traded the excesses of the city for the simple pleasures of the country.

Not so. I just exchanged all the maladies and woes of my former geography for a new set in my new geography.

I am still uncomfortable in the South. I am still the weird girl in social circles. I am still too direct in most settings, and totally uninterested in pleasantries. I am intense, honest, generous, clumsy, and self-deprecating. I have a flair for brightly colored fabrics. I am a product of a Midwestern upbringing, a MidAtlantic education, and a New England professionalism. I cannot disinherit these sheets that have wrapped me up for twirtysomething years. I can only clean them and make them presentable.

My one comfort, other than the amazing Mr. Loverpants who should win a best supporting role in the play about my yammering, is the promise from Psalm 46:

God is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved; God will help her when morning dawns.

Can I get a li'l 'Bless her heart' from y'all?

On being an introvert who is not shy

I read something last week by psychotherapist Martha Crawford whose brain clearly operates at a higher frequency than mine. I posit this because I read the piece and then I thought about it ::makes thinking sound with mouth DURRRR:: and then I read it again and thought about it some more and the flickers sparked like a strand of Christmas lights and my brain nodded yes. YES! Yes. There I am. I am over there, with the introverts.

Here is the illuminating thought from that read: I am a tricky kind of introvert because I am an introvert who is not shy. I masquerade as someone who is interested in the exteriors because, as the author of the piece writes, I am good with words and enthusiasm is in heavy supply in my pocket. I am witty and not awkward {all the time}. I am an introvert who is not afraid of talking to people, who never had a goth phase, who has friends on and off the internets. Crawford says there's no other career but psychotherapy for her. For a long time I doubted myself as a journalist because I'm not a news junkie like a journalist should be. But put me in a room and let me probe the mind of a career criminal or a Miss California--tell me how you really feel--and I am in my element.

I have always preferred to exist in the inner sphere, to be involved and to spend long hours pondering and keying into the inner worlds of others. Large crowds make me so nervous and interacting on surface level drains my battery like woah. I know this is not a flaw, I know this is how I am wired and it is to be celebrated. I've taken the Myers-Briggs tests and I know how all about Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking. I know how much I should be embracing the introvert within.

The problem comes in having been pegged so often as an extrovert. My sister and I attended an all-girls high school (shout-out to MHS Blue Streaks--holla!). Do you know what it looks like to spend four years with 800+ mostly overprivileged suburban not-yet-womens? It looks like a huge sorority, built on the pillars of overachievement and preppy clothes. It is really hard to be an introvert because your social survival depends on extroversion. There are no boys to spur the extroversion, shouting with their suddenly deep man voices through the halls, pulling you out of a crowd, clowning around in class. It's just you, the body politic of the teenage girl. Extroversion is rewarded. Introversion is just too weird; go take that to the poetry club.

So I faked it until I made it in high school. I had many acquaintances. I had very few close friends who knew what was happening in my inner world.

When I got to college, the jig was up. I had to live in community, to share showers with 30+ women on my floor, to coexist in a cinderblock cell with a complete stranger (shout-out to ya, Tiff!). I was so desperately lonely my freshman year and to be honest, I had no idea why. I was motoring around trying to extrovert myself and I could not make any of the flies stick to the honey. My saving grace came the next year when I became an RA. I got a single room to myself where I could stare at my Christmas lights for hours and listen to Counting Crows "Long December" on repeat. I could go out of my room and interact with any number of amazing women. And then I could retreat back to my sanctuary of books and dim lights.

Just a couple of months before we got married, I was doing yoga in my underoos on the floor of my single girl room and I realized: this would soon end. Like, forever. I was lamenting this to my co-worker Kamau at the time and Kamau was all, "Um, Kendra? You know he's going to see you in even less than your underoos, right?" And I was, Yes. That's not the part that bothers me. The part that is so disruptive is the part another person being there, blowing up my meditation spot with his snoring.

Loverpants and I had a good first year of marriage to adjust to each other's need for quiet (me) and interaction (him). Um, WHO AM I KIDDING? I cried the entire first year wondering why I was such a jerk and why didn't I like to talk to my husby. Well, I'm still a jerk 8 years later, but I'm also an introvert and maybe the two aren't mutually exclusive of one another, but the latter involves some self-care.

Having kids has broken down so many introversion allowances for me. I am neither allowed the physical space nor do I need the thought space that I once was afforded, and it's good. My kids are two wrecking balls against the edifice of my introversion, and I wouldn't have it any other way. The soundtrack of my life MAMA? MAMAAAA! reminds me that I am not alone. Their love, especially, with their downy little cheeks against my face and their whispered pleas for more snuggles and marshmallows, have a special power to penetrate, and remind me that I am not alone on the outside, and their love is there keeping me company even on the inside.

P.S. Last day to enter the Easy Canvas Print contest!

Marriage is not hard.

I must be a slow learner, because eight years have passed and I am just awakening to this truth: Marriage is not hard. Marriage, the equal yolking of two well-matched individuals for life, is not so difficult in principle and practice. You know what is difficult? Overcoming selfishness. Constantly squashing the urge to serve one's own desires, to not eat the whole pint of Ben and Jerry's, because, puhh, I want to. Marrying someone, and being married to someone is not the hard business. You say, I do, and then you say I do, I do, I do, over and over and over again, every day, until death do us part. But the hard part is not saying I do, also and simultaneously, to 401 other commitments that, in themselves, are not inherently wrong. However, the leading parent-teacher council and the working overtime, the agreeing to bake 3 dozen cupcakes for the party--they all steal energies and consume time and wring us out like dirty dishrags from the demands of married partnership. Marriage is not so hard. Marriage is not the enemy or the whipping girl. Marriage is good, it is so so good. Our selfish, guilt-filled, distracted parts are the ones that make marriage bad and hard and toxic and weak.

I've also learned that marriage doesn't need us to define it. And believe it or not, that's not a political statement. Even though marriage is mired in politics, especially in this country, marriage has been doing just fine since God had the idea to pull Eve from Adam's rib so that man would not be lonely, so that he would be in the good company of equal partnership. Marriage, as institutions go, is pretty strong. I can't think of too many more that have been keeping on, by the same name, since their inception like marriage has. But it seems as though we're spending a lot of our time trying to define the bounds of this marriage thing than actually living out our calling as married people.

My role in marriage is to make mine strong, care for, and enjoy my marriage. If others ask how I feel about cohabitation before marriage, or culture clashes in marriage, oh sure. I can tell them. Truth be told, though, on any given day, I find the maintenance of my own marriage is an immense task. To see marriage as anything but hard is hard for me. Is anything worth defending that I am not already treasuring? My desire is to be good to my marriage, but the temptation is forever to be good only to myself. I can barely fathom having enough time to judge the adequacy of others' marriages. I cannot spare the energy that defining someone else's marriage requires when I should be busy about finding God in my own little marriage pond and keeping the distractions at bay. Marriage does not need me to define it. Marriage needs me to be in it, 100%, and eight years have taught me that task alone requires my 100% dedication.

Eight years has also taught me that marriage is not long enough. Supposedly Loverpants and I have surpassed the "seven year itch." Last week I told the mister that this last year has taught me the most about my husband. That's seven years after we walked down the aisle and THIRTEEN years after we first became cookies n' milk. This past year we have faced foreclosure, bankruptcy, the traumatic loss of an animal, major family crises, cancer in our family, and we have grown closer and become stronger through these trials. Seven years is considered a symbolically long time in the Bible. Yet it feels like a drop in the bucket to me! Matthew 22 says we will not be married to one another in Heaven, but to Christ. In this way, marriage is for eternity, but from my flawed human view, I don't want to imagine living without my husband. I know that marriage is intended to be a foretaste of God's total devotion and unconditional love for us. I feel as though I fall so short of that kind of love for my husband. I basically fight the urge to tell him to figure out dinner every.single.day. Occasionally I will joke and tell Loverpants that I am doing such a great job preparing him for his second marriage. And in a way, I am right. We are all, you and I, preparing each other for Heaven. Married couples are preparing one another for the ultimate marriage. Maybe that's why marriage right now feels so hard. And yet, so important.

Happy 13 years together Happy 7 years married Happy 2 years as Southerners Happy almost anniversary, Lovey Loverpants! <3

photo credits to Steven Mastroianni, the best.