Imagine. Getting married. Without a hashtag. #thehorror

I don't even remember the exact date other than that it was the beginning of the Red Sox clinching the division in 2004, coming back heroically from many a loss. This was probably why my dad had spilled the beans--that man is just manic about baseball. My old man spilled the beans so I knew it was coming, and that bummed me right out.

I was bummed for my love who had moved heaven and earth to make it back from San Francisco to Boston to arrange for The Shaky Clinking Drink Talk with the old man. And the phonecall to the mom. And he'd done it all being so coy, but loose lips sank the surprise ship.

So there we were, probably talking about the Red Sox or about to watch "Pimp My Ride" in real time as one does on a Satuday night in 2004. He in pajama pants, cooking pierogies in his kitchen, which smelled always of onions and laundry.

He didn't even ask me. He just told me that he wanted to marry me. A declarative statement. Much like "I do." He didn't have a ring so he pulled some string from his pocket and tied it around my ring finger.

We were engaged. Engaged in a relationship that we were committing to for all the evers and evers. There were outward symbols of this inner commitment. But we had no rings (yet), no engagement photos in a landscape that evoked pastoral romance at the golden hour. There would be no bachelorette/bachelor parties with limos and a Snapchat reel. No Pinterest-inspired wish lists or official hashtags copyrighted for the occasion.

There was just a monthly plane ticket to visit our pastor and do the hard work of premarital counseling. Me with my paragraph answers because I was evidently trying to get an A in premarital counseling and Loverpants with his one word answers because he's just more evolved, I suppose.

Had Pinterest and hashtags been a thing some twelve years ago, I promise you I would have been all over it. Puns and planning tools, oh my. I'm just glad for my sake they weren't on the radar.

The trappings of wedding planning have long been about excess and show and tell in the First World. They masquerade as expressions of etiquette but the reality of having the resources for chair bows and gold-foiled favors smacks of elitism.

And none will guarantee a happy, healthy marriage.

I rejoice with the many couples who are getting married in the next many seasons. I hyperventilate at the gorgeous photos and I fully participate in the hashtag propagation. But the careful curation of images and scripts are almost an ironic prelude to the mess that is uniting one's life with another's for all times. I can only speak to my own marriage, obviously, but my seflishness has a way of betraying the consuming gazing at my groom that you'll see in my wedding album.

Marriage is a surrender, marriage is leaning in to the disagreements rather than pretending everything is phenomenally breathtaking beset with an Instagram filter. The day to day of marriage is not bathroom baskets; it is searching for the errant cap on the toothpaste your partner does not hold as a priority. Hashtag cliche.

To the newly engaged and soon-to-be weddeds, I simply offer this: let the time you spend coining a clever hashtag for your big day be a lovely exercise in creativity and compromise. Because, whoodoggies. You're gonna need a lot of it for the long haul.

Hashtag Honeymoon won't last forever. Hashtag And that's a good thing. Hashtag So grateful. Hashtag I'd marry this guy all over again. Hashtag seriously seriously seriously blessed.

What the bank teller noticed

The bank teller said he noticed how I didn't have a savings account. I said I noticed how he didn't have any manners.

Annnnd I kid.

But I'm glad he stopped there.

"I also noticed how you don't own your own house and are really at the age where you should. I know you don't have a firm command of two-digit multiplication or the discipline to follow through on any workout plan more than 3 days in a row, for the love of Jillian Michaels. I see you're without a strong comprehension of the Electoral College and do not own a single pair of hosiery that do not have ladders streaking up and down the sides. I see you don't even have a current passport. I noticed you don't have a lot of gumption when it comes to seeking the things you really want for yourself and you haven't rolled all the loose pennies in your pockets in ages. And what of greens in your diet--have any? Got Vitamin B? Got a living will? I noticed how you haven't captured a single Pokemon. I see you don't have any houseplants--no darling little succulents like all the pinners of Pinterest own--and I wonder if you can even really consider yourself alive...."

On and on he could have observed my shortcomings and inadequacies, forcing a long line to form in the queue of the drive-thru bank teller.

So goes the work of the Accuser. Pointing out all the places we fall short, don't measure up, will never be enough.

Unlike the bank teller, though, when I approach the One who knows my heart best of all, I see no account balance on my receipt. Only that my debt has already been paid.

Critiquing by creating: what our world seems to have forgotten how to do

My creative compass rarely points to things that scare the snot out of me. I favor creating things that I sense will make someone smile, that will make an otherwise pedestrian mail day a bit brighter. I create safely. I rarely create to bend rules or write new ones. But when I do, I recoil in fear that someone might come along and yank back the reins so that I'll never get to create again. You make people uncomfortable with your creativity. What was wrong with what we already had? This? This is too risky.

Over the past few months, though, I've been noodling around the idea of creating to critique. It's a motto attributed to Michelangelo, who no doubt pondered creation with a capital C for a good fraction of his life. I can't remember what dorkcast reminded me of the highest form of criticism, but I've been returning to it again and again. I wish the world would follow.

At its core, critique by creation aims to to either improve the existent model or invent something that never existed. Rather than simply evaluate the pros and cons of the unprofitable lemonade stand, critiquing by creation puts wheels on the lemonade stand and takes it on the road. We know this is not where the story ends, though. Because say the lemonade truck proves profitable. Then the critiquers will hover near. They will replicate. They may even rob. They want a squeeze of that lemon but rather than create their own mobile happiness, they are mired in their own jealousy which often leads to destruction.

The problem with history is that it holds plenty of shelf space for both the builders and the destroyers. It doesn't discriminate between the worthy and the vile, nor should it because we need to learn the lessons we're not meant to repeat.

If only those who critiqued through creation were more celebrated than those who destroyed.

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I cannot possibly fathom why I will spend the rest of my life getting choked up when I pass a baseball field and think of what plays Martin Richard might have designed. I cannot reason why Trayvon Martin doesn't get to draft new flight patterns as a pilot. Tell me why the city of Cleveland will spend $6M appeasing the family of the late Tamir Rice instead of sending him to college where he could dream, grow, learn, create. Why are the video tools that are supposed to advance our creativity so often used--by necessity--to capture brutal, senseless slayings by police officers or terrorist organizations?

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The story of Creation that I know begins with a God who always was and always is, who creates from nothing a world meant to be shared and enjoyed by His other beloved creations.

We do not truly create in this life but cull from the resources we are given things shiny and pleasing. We fancy ourselves inventors but we are only simply trying to get back to the Edenic place we began, when all was alive and good. This is the choice we have each day. It is not a choice as to build a block tower or knock someone else's over. We choose whether we will believe enough in a world that was meant to be life-giving for every man, plant, animal or whether we will be complicit in its destruction. What kind of critics will we be?

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