Marriage Misnomers: What's Good for You

Marriage is self-emptying. It requires self-sacrifice. It means unity. But does unity mean morphing into the other person? Does it require spending every minute that you can together? Does what's good for you have to be good for both of you? Some would say it does. I disagree. While marriage does require a lot of selflessness, it also requires a measure of self-care, and that means at least at little attention to self.

I tried for a long time to be completely sacrificial in my marriage, to give my husband as much as I could of what he wanted and stuff down what I wanted. Sure, I did some things that I wanted to do, but I often served him out of a sense of obligation and grudging. I often refused to let him help me, feeling guilty if I wasn't doing absolutely everything I could ever be capable of doing. And I fell apart. At some point, I realized that I wasn't serving my husband in refusing to admit my needs or care for myself. We were one flesh, and if I wasn't doing well, he wasn't going to do well. He had been asking me to ask for help, so I started doing it. It was freeing.

As I continued to practice asking my husband for help, I started taking some time for myself. Time to check in. Time to recharge. Time to care for myself. I needed my life back! I couldn't give life to my marriage when I was stifling my own life. I started trying to plug back into my intuition and start respecting the still small voice inside. The path was rocky, accentuated by that familiar voice of guilt, and not comfortable, but I had to do something.

Not coincidentally, as I did things that were good for me, I found that I had more energy to give to my husband. I could tolerate a little more distress. I had more grace and an increased sense of understanding when my husband wanted to do something for his own good, such as spending time with friends or pursuing a hobby. I realized that sometimes what's good for you individually is often good for the unified you.

On the flip side, does what's good for both of you always feel good for you? No. Again, sometimes marriage requires sacrifice. Marriage is, after all, a sanctifying process. But if you individually are full of good and are pursuing good, it is easier to make sacrifice.

Things are good for you only if they're good for both of you? No, do good things. Purse your own good. Pursue your spouse's good. Pursue your unified good. Pursue God. He defines the ultimate good.

Self-Care As Survival

I stopped doing self-care for awhile, at least most of it. It was work to fit it in. It wasn't fun. I didn't feel like I really deserved to spend time caring for myself when I wasn't even keeping up with what had to be done, with what I wanted to get done. I had responsibilities to others. So I cut out the fun, or at least I tried. It was painful. I had to sit with my emotions instead of finding a way to ease them. I craved and missed some of the joys that self-care activities had given me, even if I hadn't recognized their joys at the time. Maybe it was good to take a little break from some of my personal interest activities, to push on and prove to myself that I could do it. But then my self-proclaimed "fun-fast" fast stopped working. I found myself more and more unable to move forward, stuck, and certainly lacking in motivation. My husband had been harping on me to practice self-care for a while, warning me that I would burn out if I didn't. I was on the cusp, so despite my misgivings, and even some feelings of guilt, I started taking small steps to add back the fun, to practice some self-care. In so doing I realized that sometimes self-care is a matter of survival.

I think there's an idea out that that self-care helps you achieve your highest self, that in it is some measure of self-fulfillment or self-actualization. You'll be your best self and your happiest self if you do it. You will feel calm, centered and relaxed. You'll be energetic and full of life and purpose. But maybe, like I've found, you won't. Maybe self-care will take effort. Maybe it will be drudgery. Maybe it will not create noticeable benefits, but rather keep you at baseline. Maybe practicing self-care is a matter of not dipping into deficit.

Self-care is a good habit, if nothing else. It leaves a little space to ponder. It can help connect with one's body and thereby help notice if there is anything wrong. It can help recognize a need for rest. It can highlight what is lacking in life. Self-care might not fulfill a need, but it might help prevent even more needs, and sometimes, hopefully at some point, help you have more to give towards the needs of others. So here's to self-care, because our lives, and the lives of others depend on it.

Super Simple Granola

There's the fancy-schmancy granola. Then there's the chock full o' health food kind. Then there's my kind: four ingredients, 15 minutes, out of the pot and into the bowl (if you want to eat it warm, which I recommend doing with cold milk at least once). A few friends and family members have asked for my recipe, so without further ado, here it is!

Ingredients:

1 T oil (I use olive oil, but canola or coconut or vegetable oil would also work.) 
5 c oatmeal
1 T cinnamon
1/3 c oil
1/3 c honey

Directions:

1. In a large pot, heat 1 T oil over medium heat on the stove. 

2. When oil is hot, stir in 5 c of oatmeal mixed with 1 T cinnamon.

3. Toast oats for 4 minutes, stirring every minute or so.

4. Pour out toasted oats into a sheet pan, or into a large bowl.

5. To the pot on the stove add 1/3 c oil and 1/3 honey and stir together.

6. When oil and honey are bubbly, add back toasted oats and stir until all oats are coated.

7. Turn out oats back onto the sheet pan and allow to cool, or place it directly into a bowl that can be covered. (Covering the oats when warm may result in more clumping of granola.)

*Recipe adapted from All Recipe's Cinnamon Stove-Top Granola.

Tips:

1. I measure the 1 T cinnamon into the 1 c oatmeal measure before measuring the oil into the pan on the stove. This reduces the dishes I use.

2. Like add-ins? Feel free to stir in oat bran, wheat germ, or flax meal with the oats. Note that this may make the granola drier, however. Stir in dried fruit, chopped nuts, chocolate chips, etc. after turning the oats onto the sheet pan for the final time.

3. Like crunchier granola? Bake it! Just omit the beginning 1 T oil and stir together remaining ingredients, baking at 350 degrees for 15-30 minutes. (Still stir periodically.)

Afghans 61 and 62

Apparently I'm falling behind on my afghan blogging game. I've actually finished two since I last posted, a chevron blanket in January and the Katie blanket this past weekend. In all fairness, I have two other blankets started, but not finished. This is probably the most blankets I have started at once! I've been working with scrap yarn, as you will see below.

The Chevron blanket

I made this one with my same trusty ergonomic hook and some leftover Red Heart medium thyme yarn along with some random white and blue yarn we had lying around.

The Katie Blanket

The color for this one is Red Heart pumpkin, started with scraps from a fall project and finished with yarn I purchased before the color went out of style. Bright, but I still like it!

I've been working off this list of 20 baby blankets as a guide. I don't know if I will do all 20, but it is a fun project, for sure! 

--

Which blanket it your favorite? Please share in the comments section.

When Tragedy Strikes

Members of our extended family suffered a tragedy, a terrible tragedy, a little over a month ago. The details are not mine to share, but the effects on my husband and I are. I have said that life is hard. Well this was a whole new level of hard, but one that provided perspective nonetheless. Though I would never, ever wish this tragedy on anyone, I am grateful for the things it revealed to us.

Tragedy revealed our priorities. My husband had to make some hard decisions in the matter at hand. I had to make decisions about whether or not I would support him, or whether I would go my own way. I was stressed. I was scared. I wanted to run and hide. I wanted to go seek support for myself. But when seeking that support meant choosing between my husband and my own wants and desires, by God's grace, I was able to choose my husband. He also chose me. Praise the Lord!

Tragedy reminded me of the need for grace. I am not a very patient person. I want what I want when I want it. I have some understanding, but I fail to give grace with it, especially to my husband. This tragedy softened my heart. Praise God, it made me want to have more grace, show more grace. I pray it will continue.

Tragedy gave me new eyes. I looked at material things differently. I pondered what really matters. I considered what would happen if I lost "everything," and what it would take to rebuild. I considered the greatness of God as refuge. 

Tragedy made me more grateful. I was able to see more as a gift, even as I realized that all is a gift. I entered this world with nothing and will leave this world with nothing except my soul. I could due to have this perspective more often.

Tragedy brought about good. As I wrote initially, I would never, ever wish tragedy on anyone, but we saw, in very tangible and powerful ways, God bring about good through ours. We saw redemption and restoration. We clearly saw God's provision. Grieving brought to our marriage new levels of intimacy and oneness. We longed and prayed more deeply for the salvation of those we love. Against the darkest of backgrounds, the joys of life, and life eternal gleamed brighter. We looked forward with more eagerness to the day of Christ's return, when all things would be made new, when there will be no more mourning or crying (Rev 21:4-5).

--

When tragedy strikes, we have choices. Will we let it teach us? Or will will wallow in our sorrow? Will we look for joy, or will we nurse our pain? Will we reach out or reach in? Will we seek God or curse Him? Will we rejoice in life forevermore or more fully pursue a hedonistic enjoyment of the things we have? Choices. Tragedy seems to take them from us, but in reality, it sets more clearly the choices of life before us. What will we choose? 

Real Life Marriage: Pursuing My Husband

I've been realizing something lately. I have as much responsibility to pursue my husband as he does to pursue me. Yes, I still believe in traditional complementarian gender roles. Yes, I still believe that the man should make the marriage proposal. (He does, after all, bear responsibility for the family according to God's design.) As a wife, though, part of my job as "support staff" for my husband is loving him well. Loving him well requires some pursuit.

What got me thinking along these lines? Well, a friend gifted me the Wife in Pursuit book earlier this year, and man, did it rock my world! The author, Selena Frederick, writes in that book about the wife's responsibility to initiate in areas such as words of affirmation, quality time, etc. Before God, the wife has the responsibility to add positivity to the marriage, to show love, to prioritize. These things have nothing to do with gender roles.

After one particular challenge in the book and a season of limited time with my husband, I realized something else. Sometimes my pursuit of my husband means making myself very available. I am a doer and can make myself constantly busy. My husband values me enough to not want to interrupt me, which often results in us having little quality time together. Yes, I think to myself that he could ask for time at any time, but his asking is not my responsibility. My responsibility is to take care of my responsibility. And that sometimes means pursuing my husband by literally sitting on the couch asking my husband what he wants to do, and then waiting until he decides something. This is hard for me to do and requires patience, something that's hard for me to practice. My husband is important to me, though, and when I wait on him, I show him that I value him. That is pursuit.

Marriage is not a tit-for-tat, quid-pro-quo relationship, but ironically, when I pursue my husband, it generally results in what I want and crave: more quality time and more of his attention. I guess in pursuing my husband, I show that I value these things more than I value my busyness, and I thereby encourage more of them.

Married life is not always easy. Pursuit isn't easy. Being selfless isn't easy. But it's all necessary. The hard is necessary if I want my marriage to be better. And I do. The pursuit of a better marriage is not only about me or my husband, either. It's about God's glory, and pursuit of that is a lifelong goal!

How Fasting for Lent Affected My Relationships

I have practiced Lent for roughly 12 years or so. (I started fasting during Lent after I learned about it in college.) I have fasted from a variety of things, and each year learned something new. I took time this year to read the book, A Hunger for God by John Piper prior to Lent. Though I will confess that the book caused me to struggle with wanting to fast for ascetic and legalistic reasons, it did remind me that the purpose of fasting is to drive me to Jesus, to make me appreciate the giver more than the gifts. This year, I chose to fast from bread, or more specifically from bread, flour, gluten, and all together things made with wheat. (Jesus says he is the "Bread of Life" in the Bible.) Though I had to decline some foods I wanted, I did not find the dietary part of the fast very hard. What I found difficult was how fasting affected my relationships.

My husband usually cooks breakfast and dinner for us on Saturdays. He makes amazing pancakes and we enjoy them thoroughly, when I am not fasting. I shared my idea of fasting from bread with my husband before I started, and he okayed it. I do not think either of us fully considered its implications, though. Fasting from flour eliminated Saturday breakfasts, which meant more hodge-podge eating and less intentionality. Our diets did not suffer, but the specialness and time we spent together took at least a small hit. My husband likes to cook with flour for dinners, too, and my fast cramped his style. He honored my fast, but also noted that it saddened him. While he did not fast from flour completely, he was subject to no flour in the things I cooked as well. He noted several times that he preferred flour and missed it. My fast affected my marriage relationship.

Fasting from flour kept me from sharing in relational activities outside my marriage, too. I did not eat the pasta my husband made for a family dinner occasion. I said, "No" to pizza and potlucks at work. I had to work around flour that presented itself when we got invited out. I could not share food with my husband as I am prone to do. (He may have seen this as a benefit, though!) The fast was possible, and through it drove me to Jesus, it also drove me slightly apart from the people Jesus has placed in my life.

How did my fast drive me to Jesus? Each time I found gluten in a product, it reminded me that Jesus should be part of everything in life, every fiber of my being, every moment of my day. When I found no good substitutes for flour in some recipes, I recalled that there is no substitute for Christ. I am saved by faith through grace and only on Christ's merits. When I craved flour-y things, it reminded me that I should want Jesus more than anything. It reminded me that Jesus sustains my life. And when I could not share meals with others, my fast reminded me that a relationship with Jesus is a joy I should want to share with others. That was perhaps the most poignant learning.

Lent is over for this year. I am eating flour and gluten and all things wheat again. (I thank God that I am able to do this since I have no allergies to them.) I probably won't fast from bread again, at least not for a while. God calls me to be faithful to him, and also faithful to that to which he calls me. He has called me to be a wife and a co-worker and a sister and a friend, and bread is part of what sustains those relationships. So now I eat and celebrate, and fellowship, even as eat and fellowship and seek eternal sustenance from God.

Remembering My Nana

(My nana at age 29, on her wedding day)

My nana would have been 94 today. She has been gone just about six years now. I still miss her, though the ache has grown less with time. So today, on her birthday, I remember her not with grief, but with joy and gratitude for the wonderful woman that she was:

An extremely educated woman who chose to serve (two degrees plus additional training, but she followed the call to be first a Bible translator, and then a wife, a mom, and sometimes, a teacher)

A silly woman who was serious about her prayers (She was known to be quite a prankster, but when she prayed, she prayed. My mom prayed, too, but I think it was in part my nana's prayers that got me to marriage.)

A woman who loved and appreciated pretty things, but was also unassuming (I inherited her china and marvel at its beauty, but never saw her flaunt it while she was alive.)

A kind woman, even to the end (Nana suffered from dementia, but never got angry that I saw. She just got anxious when she missed her loved ones, especially her dear husband, my granddad, who spent over 50 years of life with her.)

A diligent and devoted wife. (She literally went with my granddad all over the world, and did it joyfully.)

A doting mother and grandmother (She raised two very smart kids, my mom and my uncle, and hosted us kids for many fun activities when we lived near her.)

A doubter, but a believer (Nana shared with me her failings and doubts, but also head steadfastly to her faith in Jesus as Savior despite them.)

An example and a legacy (My dad said he knew he wanted to marry my mom when he met my nana, not because he didn't love my mom, but because he saw what Mom could be like down the road.)

I got to spend 27 years getting to know my Nana. I am not sure I will ever attain to her greatness or godliness, but I hope to at least follow in her footsteps towards those ends.