"relationships tend to challenge our security rather than reinforce it"
The quote was taken from my longtime friend's blog and it really made me think. I've always considered myself a confident, secure person, but since Ive gotten married, I've felt much less confident in general. This doesn't make any sense to me, since I've never been under the impression that a relationship will complete me or make me more secure. If anything, I was under the impression that I would be "fine": I'd always heard that if you get married and your self-confidence is low, you'll only feel worse, but if your self-confidence is high, then you will have a healthy relationship. I never heard anything about relationships challenging our security, but I think Joseph has hit the issue straight on. For me, life with another person is wonderful, first off, but it is also a bit confusing. Making decisions on my own was a fairly easy task, mostly since I was the only one to be accountable for those decisions. Married, each decision before God isn't only a matter of what God wants me to do, it's what God wants US to do...and that is a lot more complicated. Same with human relationships, time management, planning, money, etc. It is difficult for me to describe. I'm not saying that it is bad, just that it has surprised me and I'm still working out how to incorporate my self-confidence into our relationship-confidence (does that even make any sense?). It's surprised me in the same way that I was surprised after having a baby: everything was just as I expected except that there was all of a sudden three times the amount of laundry. I'd read all the baby books, been around babies and talked to other Moms - why hadn't this topic come up? Why wasn't I prepared for this? Life as an adult has also surprised me. I grew up in a healthy home, emotionally, spiritually, financially, educationally, etc. I've always considered my parents to be great parents that taught me well: I could budget, clean a house, do basic cooking, but the culmination of adding all those and the rest of life in full force and at the same time has caught me off guard as well. Five years, three houses and two children into this marriage, I'm still trying to get "caught up" with my feet under me. Why did I expect this all to be so easy??
Monday, May 3, 2010
Sunday, May 2, 2010
Painting
I feel so feminine!! I have black fingernails and red toes. The last time I had anything painted was before I was pregnant with my firstborn. When I told Mom I was pregnant, she flipped out that I had fingernail polish on, insisting that it would hurt the baby. Four years later and I haven't painted them since. I take that back. I had them done once and they were ruined a few days later. We'll see how long these last. By the way, Kendra's fingers are pink and her toes are sea green. She was the catalyst for all this nonsense. Surprised? I didn't think so.
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Chubby Bunnies
This video is from tonight at dinner. Video is compliments of Jess, who insisted that I post this especially for Eve and Drew to show Joseph's sense of humor!
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
Recent LIFE, more abundant.
This weekend we made a volcano, er, made a "volcano mess" because of Joseph's fascination with volcanoes. It was composed of homemade play-doh, specially colored by James, too much baking soda, too much vinegar, an attempt at an eruption to blow the house down (thank you, James) and lots more food coloring. I did go so far as to print out a cross-section of a volcano and try to explain it to Joseph. As a result, I think I've explained the core of the Earth and my limited knowledge of volcanoes no less than 300 times. I think he's walked away from all of this with the understanding that the Earth is like a ball. That's it.
At dusk last night while we were waiting for dinner, Joseph took a box to make a "house" outside. Then he needed a light and books and he was set for about half an hour, until he decided he needed a pillow to go to sleep in his house. (He slept in his bed last night, to his dismay. Will somebody PLEASE take this boy camping already??)
School is becoming an increasing problem. Joseph has taken on the proud title of "trouble child" and does everything in his power to maintain that title. Yesterday he spent naptime licking the floors and tables in the classroom: the teachers were unable to stop him. We made a chain that represents how many more days of school they have: 17!! (In the background of the picture on our calendar, you can see the "last day of school" card on the last Friday.) The kids watched me do the chain for a while and then got right to work on theirs. Joseph did amazingly straight cutting and Kendra's turned out very, um, artistic!
I am extremely NOT artistically creative. Colors don't work for me. Decorating, composing, editing, photography, shapes...I wish I could do more. My hope is that by getting these guy's creative juices flowing early, they might have more creativity by the time they reach, say, my age :) From the looks of things, that plan is going along swimmingly!
At dusk last night while we were waiting for dinner, Joseph took a box to make a "house" outside. Then he needed a light and books and he was set for about half an hour, until he decided he needed a pillow to go to sleep in his house. (He slept in his bed last night, to his dismay. Will somebody PLEASE take this boy camping already??)
School is becoming an increasing problem. Joseph has taken on the proud title of "trouble child" and does everything in his power to maintain that title. Yesterday he spent naptime licking the floors and tables in the classroom: the teachers were unable to stop him. We made a chain that represents how many more days of school they have: 17!! (In the background of the picture on our calendar, you can see the "last day of school" card on the last Friday.) The kids watched me do the chain for a while and then got right to work on theirs. Joseph did amazingly straight cutting and Kendra's turned out very, um, artistic!
I am extremely NOT artistically creative. Colors don't work for me. Decorating, composing, editing, photography, shapes...I wish I could do more. My hope is that by getting these guy's creative juices flowing early, they might have more creativity by the time they reach, say, my age :) From the looks of things, that plan is going along swimmingly!
Monday, April 12, 2010
Torture
I'm sitting here reading a blog from a 23 year old woman who lost her Marine husband in Iraq three weeks ago, while listening to Dixie Chicks "Come Home Soon" and 3 Doors Down "I'm Here Without You"from another Navy wife's blog . Yes, I'm crying, knowing that the possibility of J deploying this year is one that I'll most likely have to face. Why do I do this to myself? I should be studying...
Thursday, November 5, 2009
God is Good
In February of 2001, my husband enlisted in the Army. He joined to be a Calvary Scout. He joined for adventure, adrenaline and danger. He had nothing to lose. The average life span of a Calvary Scout at that time was 2 weeks in the field (or so he tells me).
Halfway through Basic Training, the Drill Sargent called him out of formation and told him that his clearance had come through and he was leaving Basic Training early to go straight to Intelligence School (crack the jokes about the Military having Intelligence HERE ).
He was shipped off to Intel school despite the fact that his military entrance test scores were all too low to be in this field and he had no interest in Intel whatsoever. He sat through this school for three iterations, failing, studying in the assistance lab every waking moment...failing some more.
They ended up passing him and sent him onto his first duty station. He struggled a bit, but found some people who looked out for him and found a job he could get by doing.
At this point, he was generally miserable in his job--no adrenaline, staring at a computer underground-and decided to try for Special Forces. After completing the assessment/selection course for Special Forces, he was not selected because his academic test scores were too low.
This is where I met him. The day before he left for Special Forces Assessment School (SFAS), I was sitting at the next table over from him in Starbucks. I thought he was cute, but I was there to read my Bible and felt really guilty about fighting distraction about a boy during my devotional. Wait! He was reading his Bible too! I fought distraction even harder. After an undetermined length of time, one of my friends came in and instead of sitting at the table with me, she sat next to him. I instantly forgot my devotional time!! We spent the rest of the night together. We finished at Starbucks and then he and some other friends came to the restaurant where I worked and hung out there until my shift was over. Afterward, they all came back to my house and stayed until 1 am the next morning. My overall impression of him that night was that he was a cocky and self-absorbed. I wanted nothing more to do with him. He left for SFAS at 5 AM...that morning.
The next month was supposed to go by as normal for me, but it didn't. Every day, I couldn't get that cocky kid out of my mind. I prayed for him everyday he was gone. When he came back, he was in pretty bad shape physically and we didn't even see him for about two weeks. After that, we were inseparable. Two weeks later, we were talking about marriage and freaking out that we were talking about it so soon. Five months later he officially proposed and we were married the following year. I fell in love with him for the depth in his heart, for his strength as an individual, for the way he never has given up on anything and the way he pushes through to finish a goal. I fell in love with him for his handsome face and his amazing body. I fell in love with the way he seemed to know the answer to every question I had about the world and life and whatever. I also fell in love with the way he loved me. He communicated with me not so he heard what I said, but so that he understood my heart. He pursued my heart and I fell hard.
My husband is an amazing man. Sorry for the digression.
A little bit of life happened that isn't really relevant to what I'm trying to say here, but after a short while, we ended up in Paradise as two-month newlyweds. The palm trees and the never ending beach were the exact opposite of the freezing island we just came from. One month later we found out we were expecting our first child. Life has only picked up speed, as you might have guessed. Twenty months later we welcomed our second child into our family. We've begun our family here, built the foundation to our marriage, grown stronger as individuals and as a family with a lot of support from our awesome church. Our time here as a family has been wonderful, with a lot of rough patches that has made us grow (and grow up!) a lot.
His professional time here has not been marked by many successes, but he's kept trying and kept pushing through. He's been back to SFAS and was not selected, again because of his academics. He's failed multiple job qualification tests and has been bounced back and forth from one job to the next. Nobody knows what to do with him or where to put him. He's been fine with that and has focused his energy on his academics; last week he received his AS Diploma. But it's almost time for us to leave and so it became time for him to contact the guy who decides which duty station each person goes to next. This guy is called "Branch".
Branch has one opening for James to go back to England. Our first choice, my home, is not available and will have nothing available in the time between now and when we are scheduled to leave. This slot that is open in England requires that my husband gets more advanced job training before he gets there. Okay, but he's struggled and not necessarily passed every job school/training/test he's faced. Nonetheless, he was up for the challenge and after a lot of prayer, gave Branch the green light.
It was supposed to be three weeks until he would be gone for 5 months of training. The kids and I had planed to go visit my family and my husband's family and travel around having a grand 'ole time.
Within a week, my husband's command pulled the orders to school and England. They refused his next promotion and promised that he would never get the next class to advance in his job.
It's been a few months since all this started. Each day has been a process of remembering to trust that God is more in control of James' career than the Army. His command has refused to submit his request to become a recruiter. His command has tried to pressure him into choosing another job in the Army. Obama hasn't released the funding to take tests, so James cannot raise his test scores to get another job in the Army or go back to Special Forces. Often, we feel trapped.
One day, three of his bosses (Commander, 1SG and Platoon SGT) pulled him into the Commander's office and shook his hand, congratulating him on the fact that he is getting promoted. They gave the impression that they didn't want to promote him, but another commander put James in for this promotion last year, and so James' current command can't do anything to stop the process, now that this paperwork has been found. All three of them said outright that the only reason he was getting promoted was because he was a praying man and they know that his faith in God is strong. Like I explained, they didn't want to promote him and there was nothing they could do about it. They clearly attributed this to James' faith in God. Yeay!
We are still waiting to see what will come of all this. One day we are hopeful and the next we are worried that they are trying to pull something behind James' back, but the one thing we know for sure is that at each point that we've felt scared about our future, God comes through really clearly and shows us that he's got it all under control. Looking back at James' career is perhaps the biggest thing that gives me faith that our future is secure. If the paperwork hadn't been switched, James could easily be a casualty number today. Instead, God put James in England, where we met. Hawaii has been the perfect place for us to find our feet as a couple, as individuals within that couple, as Christians, as parents, as adult friends. Looking back, we see very clearly how we have been taken care of each step of the way. Whatever happens, I KNOW that we will continue to be taken care of!
God is so good.
Halfway through Basic Training, the Drill Sargent called him out of formation and told him that his clearance had come through and he was leaving Basic Training early to go straight to Intelligence School (crack the jokes about the Military having Intelligence HERE ).
He was shipped off to Intel school despite the fact that his military entrance test scores were all too low to be in this field and he had no interest in Intel whatsoever. He sat through this school for three iterations, failing, studying in the assistance lab every waking moment...failing some more.
They ended up passing him and sent him onto his first duty station. He struggled a bit, but found some people who looked out for him and found a job he could get by doing.
At this point, he was generally miserable in his job--no adrenaline, staring at a computer underground-and decided to try for Special Forces. After completing the assessment/selection course for Special Forces, he was not selected because his academic test scores were too low.
This is where I met him. The day before he left for Special Forces Assessment School (SFAS), I was sitting at the next table over from him in Starbucks. I thought he was cute, but I was there to read my Bible and felt really guilty about fighting distraction about a boy during my devotional. Wait! He was reading his Bible too! I fought distraction even harder. After an undetermined length of time, one of my friends came in and instead of sitting at the table with me, she sat next to him. I instantly forgot my devotional time!! We spent the rest of the night together. We finished at Starbucks and then he and some other friends came to the restaurant where I worked and hung out there until my shift was over. Afterward, they all came back to my house and stayed until 1 am the next morning. My overall impression of him that night was that he was a cocky and self-absorbed. I wanted nothing more to do with him. He left for SFAS at 5 AM...that morning.
The next month was supposed to go by as normal for me, but it didn't. Every day, I couldn't get that cocky kid out of my mind. I prayed for him everyday he was gone. When he came back, he was in pretty bad shape physically and we didn't even see him for about two weeks. After that, we were inseparable. Two weeks later, we were talking about marriage and freaking out that we were talking about it so soon. Five months later he officially proposed and we were married the following year. I fell in love with him for the depth in his heart, for his strength as an individual, for the way he never has given up on anything and the way he pushes through to finish a goal. I fell in love with him for his handsome face and his amazing body. I fell in love with the way he seemed to know the answer to every question I had about the world and life and whatever. I also fell in love with the way he loved me. He communicated with me not so he heard what I said, but so that he understood my heart. He pursued my heart and I fell hard.
My husband is an amazing man. Sorry for the digression.
A little bit of life happened that isn't really relevant to what I'm trying to say here, but after a short while, we ended up in Paradise as two-month newlyweds. The palm trees and the never ending beach were the exact opposite of the freezing island we just came from. One month later we found out we were expecting our first child. Life has only picked up speed, as you might have guessed. Twenty months later we welcomed our second child into our family. We've begun our family here, built the foundation to our marriage, grown stronger as individuals and as a family with a lot of support from our awesome church. Our time here as a family has been wonderful, with a lot of rough patches that has made us grow (and grow up!) a lot.
His professional time here has not been marked by many successes, but he's kept trying and kept pushing through. He's been back to SFAS and was not selected, again because of his academics. He's failed multiple job qualification tests and has been bounced back and forth from one job to the next. Nobody knows what to do with him or where to put him. He's been fine with that and has focused his energy on his academics; last week he received his AS Diploma. But it's almost time for us to leave and so it became time for him to contact the guy who decides which duty station each person goes to next. This guy is called "Branch".
Branch has one opening for James to go back to England. Our first choice, my home, is not available and will have nothing available in the time between now and when we are scheduled to leave. This slot that is open in England requires that my husband gets more advanced job training before he gets there. Okay, but he's struggled and not necessarily passed every job school/training/test he's faced. Nonetheless, he was up for the challenge and after a lot of prayer, gave Branch the green light.
It was supposed to be three weeks until he would be gone for 5 months of training. The kids and I had planed to go visit my family and my husband's family and travel around having a grand 'ole time.
Within a week, my husband's command pulled the orders to school and England. They refused his next promotion and promised that he would never get the next class to advance in his job.
It's been a few months since all this started. Each day has been a process of remembering to trust that God is more in control of James' career than the Army. His command has refused to submit his request to become a recruiter. His command has tried to pressure him into choosing another job in the Army. Obama hasn't released the funding to take tests, so James cannot raise his test scores to get another job in the Army or go back to Special Forces. Often, we feel trapped.
One day, three of his bosses (Commander, 1SG and Platoon SGT) pulled him into the Commander's office and shook his hand, congratulating him on the fact that he is getting promoted. They gave the impression that they didn't want to promote him, but another commander put James in for this promotion last year, and so James' current command can't do anything to stop the process, now that this paperwork has been found. All three of them said outright that the only reason he was getting promoted was because he was a praying man and they know that his faith in God is strong. Like I explained, they didn't want to promote him and there was nothing they could do about it. They clearly attributed this to James' faith in God. Yeay!
We are still waiting to see what will come of all this. One day we are hopeful and the next we are worried that they are trying to pull something behind James' back, but the one thing we know for sure is that at each point that we've felt scared about our future, God comes through really clearly and shows us that he's got it all under control. Looking back at James' career is perhaps the biggest thing that gives me faith that our future is secure. If the paperwork hadn't been switched, James could easily be a casualty number today. Instead, God put James in England, where we met. Hawaii has been the perfect place for us to find our feet as a couple, as individuals within that couple, as Christians, as parents, as adult friends. Looking back, we see very clearly how we have been taken care of each step of the way. Whatever happens, I KNOW that we will continue to be taken care of!
God is so good.
Sunday, June 21, 2009
Father's Day
It's Father's Day. I have an exceptional father. Here he is:
I didn't realize until I was out of high school how hilarious my daddy is. He can always make me laugh. He can make us laugh so hard we cry, but here he is crying on a more serious, wonderful note:
They were crying after the wedding, but before the wedding, this is what Daddy was up to:
Thankfully, the kid on the left survived long enough to marry me. Now he's survived me long enough...never mind. Back to daddy.
I love the way his eyes sparkle when he plays with my kids. His eyes sparkle the same way when he looks at his own kids. He is a near perfect father. For the record, Joseph looks a lot like he did as a child, so I am hoping that there is some hope that the facial expression of my son will one day morph into the facial expression of my dad. Here's hoping.
This is the most recent picture I have of my daddy. His youngest child just graduated from high school last week. Two days ago she left for Ecuador. Two days after she gets 'home' she will move to Hawaii for college. He was crying today because he missed all of us.
Daddy's devotion to his family is legendary. His routine is set to time. His heart is deep. Really deep. He always gives you his full attention. He is brilliant. He is hilarious. There is not another man like him on the planet. Well, my husband comes pretty close, but that's for another post. I'm crying as I remember him and yet still unable to articulate all the many ways that he has touched me and influenced me. A million things come to my mind when I think of my daddy. A million things that all meld together to put a smile on my face , then it becomes an emotion that brings happy tears to my eyes, and then I miss him. No matter how old a girl gets, I don't think anything can replace a hug from her daddy.
Here's a hug on Father' Day, daddy. You mean the world to me.
I didn't realize until I was out of high school how hilarious my daddy is. He can always make me laugh. He can make us laugh so hard we cry, but here he is crying on a more serious, wonderful note:
They were crying after the wedding, but before the wedding, this is what Daddy was up to:
Thankfully, the kid on the left survived long enough to marry me. Now he's survived me long enough...never mind. Back to daddy.
I love the way his eyes sparkle when he plays with my kids. His eyes sparkle the same way when he looks at his own kids. He is a near perfect father. For the record, Joseph looks a lot like he did as a child, so I am hoping that there is some hope that the facial expression of my son will one day morph into the facial expression of my dad. Here's hoping.
This is the most recent picture I have of my daddy. His youngest child just graduated from high school last week. Two days ago she left for Ecuador. Two days after she gets 'home' she will move to Hawaii for college. He was crying today because he missed all of us.
Daddy's devotion to his family is legendary. His routine is set to time. His heart is deep. Really deep. He always gives you his full attention. He is brilliant. He is hilarious. There is not another man like him on the planet. Well, my husband comes pretty close, but that's for another post. I'm crying as I remember him and yet still unable to articulate all the many ways that he has touched me and influenced me. A million things come to my mind when I think of my daddy. A million things that all meld together to put a smile on my face , then it becomes an emotion that brings happy tears to my eyes, and then I miss him. No matter how old a girl gets, I don't think anything can replace a hug from her daddy.
Here's a hug on Father' Day, daddy. You mean the world to me.
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