Joyfully Eating My Stupid, Stupid Words

A few years ago, I was eating dinner with my friend Erica and her husband.  I was in town (near Nashville) for a journalism conference, and we went out to Chili’s. 

 

At the time I was dating a guy we’ll call ‘Schmuck’, who, at the time I thought was interesting and…well, I can’t really remember what else.  Even now, four years later, I have no idea why I dated that guy for two years.  No. idea.

 

Anyway, I was out to dinner with Erica and her husband, Todd.  (I don’t really know Todd that well. They met after she’d moved away, and the first time I met him was the day before their wedding.  I’m positive he’s a great guy, I just have spent almost NO time with him.)  In an attempt to get past the pleasantries and really get into LIFE… he asked me how it was going with Schmuck and if he was ‘the one’. 

 

I had never really considered this.  I mean, WHAT? 

 

Very quickly, my brain started buzzing to appropriate, but true, answers.  I could have said I didn’t think he was the one… but that would sound ridiculous.  I mean, WHY would I still be dating him?  I could say he IS the one…but….he isn’t.  Wait.  He. isn.t   Whoa.

 

Somehow… my mouth started muttering words like…”I’m not sure there is a ‘one’ for everybody…” and “love is hard, maybe you just find the person you’re willing to work at it with…” and terrible things like that.  It was kind of a blur… I remember my mind working really hard to stay well-ahead of the words I was saying, and then hearing the words I was saying, and my mind being very confused about how they could possibly be coming out of my mouth. 

 

Todd very politely responded with something like “well, I hope you’re wrong” and hugged his wife to him in a don’t-listen-to-your-crazy-friend sort of way.  Really, I kind of wish Erica had smacked me across the face and shouted “WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOU?!?”

 

Because it literally took me months to sort through that.  Months.  And then the break-up.  But that’s when it started.  At Chili’s in Nashville.

 

I’m thinking about that conversation a lot today.

 

I literally couldn’t breathe last night thinking about the fact that this person… Duncan… is not only ‘the one’ (he is)…and not only the person I’ll work the rest of my life to have a great marriage with (he is)… but that he was made (by God!) FOR ME… and that I was made (by God!) FOR HIM.  And that we never would have found each other without God’s design. 

 

I’m resting in his arms, with tears of joy in my eyes, all these things pouring in and out of my mind… and I think “How could you have said those things in Nashville?”

 

How could I?

 

There are many, many, more regrettable mistakes I could have made at that time in my life.  And I’m so glad I didn’t. 

 

Now, all I have to regret is that, for a time, I stopped believing in love.  It’s not an easy thing to admit for a girl who grew up watching Cinderella.  In fact, I’ve been sitting here staring at the blinking cursor after that sentence for several minutes.  But, it’s true.  I can’t erase it.

 

It makes me who I am.  It makes me the woman who was made for Duncan.  Through DNA, and church, and Sanders-style parenting, and music, and dreams, and tears, and laughter, and friends, and prayers, and broken hearts. 

 

Mostly, last night, and definitely today, and the rest of my life, it makes me deliriously grateful.  Can’t-breathe, laughing-through-tears grateful.

 

 

Standby…

Cute Kiddie Stories

You all remember I volunteer with the kids at church, right?  Okay, just making sure.

Cute story #1:

There’s a little girl in my pink room I call Little Stephanie.  Her name is actually something else I won’t put on the internet because I’m not in charge of her.  But over the last several months, and even though I’m not supposed to, she’s been becoming one of my favorites.  She reminds me so much of me.  Not 26-year-old me.  Seven-year-old me.

She loves singing and doing all the motions to worship songs in chapel (okay, that’s 26-year-old me, too!).  She LOVES her brother, and talks about him all the time (okay, so forget that part where she isn’t like 26-year-old me).  She isn’t always wearing the highest-fashion clothes, or the newest clothes, but she always looks comfortable and cute.  She’s a little shy at first, but when you break through those first few questions about her week and school… she warms up quickly and has a smile that just… brightens your day.  

This week, she even had a little dry skin rash around her mouth (sound familiar, mom and dad?).

Anyway, this week Little Stephanie was coloring their Bible verse of the week, and was only using two colors.  Only using two colors is strange because we’ve both bonded and had many conversations about how it’s awesome to use lots and lots of colors.  So I asked her if she wanted me to grab her some more crayons from the bin at the other end of the table.  She said no, thanks.  I was curious, so I asked why not. 

She looked up at me, holding her purple and blue crayons in her upturned palms, and smiled and said ‘because THESE have SPARKLES!!’  And giggled and went on coloring.

Friends, I didn’t even know these glitter crayons existed, but that’s exactly what I would have done if I had known.

 

Cute story #2:

One of my favorite things to do with my six-year-old girls is to sit at the table and color together.  (NOTE:  this can only happen if there are a lot of grown-ups working in the room that day, otherwise, I have to be on Sammy-stop-hitting-Jimmy-in-the-face-with-the-foam-ball duty or please-stop-destroying-the-doll-house-with-checker-saucers duty.)

Coloring is a special way I can pull some of these girls out of their shells and really get them talking about what’s going on in their lives.  It kind of reminds me of the old days… a group of women sitting around knitting together in the drawing room (shout out, Jane Austen!) or a family of women sitting together sewing a quilt… something keeping their hands busy… but their minds are free to float around… free to open up… free to bond with the other women in the circle.

This week, while prying critical birthday party information out of a new seven-year-old, another little girl said she was trying to talk her mom into getting her an elephant for her birthday.  Not at toy elephant.  Not a stuffed elephant.  A real.baby.elephant.

I thought that was pretty awesome, and smiled to myself at the mental picture of this girl’s mom wading her way through that one.

Then another girl at the table looked at me and said “Tell her she can’t have an elephant for her birthday!”, her big eyes demanding affirmation, “Little girls can’t have elephants!”

I chuckled.  I couldn’t help it.  She was so wound up about something so ridiculous.  Then I looked at the upcoming birthday girl, who was awaiting my verdict, her big eyes filled with apprehension.

“It’s not up to me which little girls can have baby elephants and which ones can’t,” I said.  They both were subdued.

Wow.  So many things I never thought I’d say….

 

Cute Story #3

At that same table, several minutes later, and with an almost completely different group of girls, one girl exclaimed that her mom was going to have another baby!  She said she hoped it was a girl, and I said, yeah, I always thought it would be fun to have a sister, so I hope she gets a sister too.

The two girls across the table said they wanted sisters too (both had two older brothers).  It’s not unheard of, but if they’re both the youngest, and they’re both six or seven, there’s a good chance no more kiddies are coming in that family.  So I seized the opportunity.

“Listen girls,” I said (they instantly knew something important was coming, and stopped coloring), “I hope you have sisters too, but in case you don’t, I have to tell you something important.”  (pause, big eyes blinking…) “No matter what, it’s really, really important to have really good girl friends in your lives, okay?”  (they nod.) 

“Your mommies are really important, too, but you have to make sure you have good girl friends in your lives always, okay?  We don’t learn how to be the women God wants us to be from boys… we learn that from girls.  So always make sure you have good, Christian, girl friends.”

(blinks)  (I come close to tearing up, thinking of…

 

 

(and they went back to coloring)

 

 

 

Standby…

 

 

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Twitterings

Maybe because I'm reading and writing about 187% more news than usual, and radio news is built around short sentences, I've been thinking a lot of one-sentence thoughts lately. This makes me want to start a Twitter account. (for those unfamiliar with Twitter, it's basically a mini-blog, where you just write one or two sentences, post it, and it goes out to all your other friends on Twitter. I know, it doesn't really make sense. Why do we need something like that?) Anyway, this week I've been pretty sure I'd have a pretty funny Twitter feed, and I've been fighting the urge to start one.

I don't know why, but I want to fight Twitter and Facebook with a passion. I can't really explain it. Part of it is that they're just too trendy. Part of it is that I like to maintain a certain level of anonymity. Part of it is that I'm worried I'll get fired over something I post. Part of it is that I'm fairly certain it will be fun, and then suck up A LOT of my time.

So in an effort to purge my Twitter-leanings this week, I'm going to share of few of my Twitter-worthy thoughts here:

- I need people to stop kidnapping their children. (yesterday morning after two AMBER Alerts.)

- How can birds be so happy when I'm so sleep-deprived? (yesterday afternoon after a crappy nap and chirping birds.)

- Flounder doesn't stay together very well. Need a spatula. Or a big spoon.

- Is John King (CNN) sexy? He acts like he is, but I don't see it.

- Louisville's Metro Council is possibly the most ineffective governmental body in the history of the world. That, or the UN. It's close.

- Of all the grammar and spelling things I'm good at, knowing when to use 'lie' and when to use 'lay' is not one of them.

- I shouldn't call people when I've just gotten up from a nap. My mom is a champ.

- One years since Bear Stearns? Dang. I've said the word 'economy' every day for a year. Exhausting.

- I think it says a lot about my journey as a recovering control freak that I'm completely willing to let my fiance' plan our entire honeymoon.

- Or a lot about my fiance'.

- 'Ranunculus' (flower I'm considering for the wedding) sounds a lot like 'redonkulus' (a phrase used on Cute Overload a lot for 'ridiculous').

- The engagement ring is starting to feel like part of my hand. About five times a day, I have a brief panic attack when I don't feel it on my hand. And it's there.

- Does it make me a terrible Christian that I pray for God to shape my heart on something and then I'm surprised when He does?

- It's hard for me to concentrate when the national radio feed uses a musical masterpiece (like Beethoven's 5th) as mere bed music for me to talk over. Barf.

- When your 'marriage advice' to me is 'don't argue', I wonder how you've been married 37 years.



Standby...


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The Sanders Girls Don't Mess Around

Eleven days ago, I got engaged.

So far, I have the ceremony site, officiant and reception site booked. And I have my wedding dress. Not bad, eh? (I'll also have a photographer selected and booked by the end of the week, I just couldn't get my last interview scheduled until this week.)

As you can see, Steph has been busy. Strike that. Steph and her mom have been busy.

I didn't want to waste my vacation and the extraordinary gift of a week of unadulterated wedding planning, and I didn't. Also, I knew I would be entering a month of weird work schedules this month, and wouldn't feel like keeping a bunch of appointments.

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You may remember a few posts ago, there was a little dust-up over a tiny little ice storm we had here in Louisville. I think I said something to the effect of "The ice storm tried to kill me".

Well, you should know, the ice storm and I have now made up. In fact, I'm friends with the ice storm.

I know. It's a very strange change of heart. Let me explain.

Duncan was also without power during the ice storm. In fact, he was without power longer than me. The first night, I camped out in the living room at home without electricity, but with the fireplace on (which, despite some reports, was NOT like the 'gates of Hades'), freezing my noogies off, and D got a hotel room with a friend. The second night, when we realized it would be many days without power, we refugeed to Paris (thanks Mom and Dad!). So we spent a couple of days staying at my parents' house... then when my power was back on, he spent a few more nights on my couch.

When his power returned, and he went home, he sat on the couch, trying to figure out why he was sad his electricity had been repaired. He looked around his house and felt sad. He said it didn't feel like home. Because I wasn't there.

That's when he decided he wanted to marry me. And that's why I'm friends with the ice storm.

=========

The best part? Unlocking allllll those thoughts I hadn't let myself have.

Yes, I'd been thinking a lot about marrying D. Yes, I'd been dreaming about what our life together might look like.

There were zillions of those thoughts zinging around in my head. And I hadn't let them out.

Why? Well, there's this thing called 'heartbreak'. And I was scared of it. I guess I thought if it didn't work out, it would hurt less if I hadn't let myself think those thoughts. That was silly, of course, but we all have defense mechanisms that sometimes operate incognito.

The good news is that now allllll those thoughts are zinging around happily, unencumbered by caution.

Zing away, happy thoughts! Frolic like baby deer!

Thanks for celebrating with me, guys...


Standby...



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