Our Marriage Project

Somehow I’ve managed to live my life in one year increments. Ever since high school, there’s either been a job change, a house change, or a change in marital status right around once a year. I think it has something to do with the structure of academic semesters and summer holidays, but breaking yourself of that pattern as an adult can be quite difficult. I call it the one year itch, Kyle calls it baffling, but my desire for something new is satiated in semi-major life changes every 365 days or so. And yet I sit here in our little apartment and feel nothing major occurring within my heart or outside of it. After completing a full year of blogging once a day, we’ve both started to wonder what the next year will hold. It’s funny how there have been days I haven’t been able to think of a single thing to write, and now I’m inundated with enough ideas to fill up a month’s worth of posts. My darling journal will finally see some action once again. Or at least more action than the scotch taped pictures I find from catalogs to fill its pages.

I know I said back in January that Genesis and I were finished with our meet and greets, but I’ve started a one year bible reading plan. Two people inspired me in this recently- Chelsea is on track with day 140 something and Nathan is in the second year of his one year plan. I figure that I’ll either succeed or I’ll fail, but I’ll just push through, even if it takes me three years. The fact that I’m already on day 8 offers me a little encouragement, plus it’s been really fun. Come on bible, let’s focus.

The husband has started a blog project in the world of sports, and even though it’s not an every day project, he ends up blogging sometimes 2-3 times a day. This, as we’ve discussed, will either be a two year fun project or someone will eventually pay him money to do it. It’s unfortunate for him, but I’m not the type of wife who can be patient for more than two years while her husband works a part-time job without getting paid for it. I might not even be that patient if he was getting paid for it, but that’s really just showing you too much of my heart.

Sometimes we want to do things like open a snow cone stand (Dallas has a shocking lack of them) or spend all our savings on a mobile living space and travel the country (that’s only me) or start our own businesses or write a book or move to another country just for fun and blog about it as though everyone wants to read it. But for now, our hearts are rather settled on taking it easy and figuring things out one day at a time. Maybe living life one year at a time has decided it isn’t for me.

Or maybe it will just become a two year itch.

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Sometimes we look at the past year and wonder how it’s gone so quickly. Other times we wonder how we’ve only been married for one year and not ten. With eleven days left to go in our “Julie and Julia” blog project, we’ve got a bittersweet feeling that comes with the end of any era. We’ve been praying about what to do with this thing since January, and we both feel like the Lord has given us much closure in moving on, in letting it be a digitally tangible example of how we lived, what we ate, and who we met during our first year of marriage. The husband is already on to new projects, and the wife can’t possibly stay out of writing for long, though God only knows when she’ll commit to doing anything for longer than a week. We pray for that daily.

All that to say, we’d like to use this post as an opportunity to answer questions about marriage, about blogging, about anything you’d like to know from us (silly or not). If no one participates, it will just be like every other post on this blog. But at this point, with eleven days left, we’ve really got nothing to lose!

Have at it: If you could ask us one question, what would it be?

I think a lot about words. In fact, I spend most of my days thinking about words: the ones I read, the ones I try to write, the ones I want to say to people. Words are, in many ways, are the currency by which we trade ideas, thoughts, and even feelings.

So why is it that so often I find my movements, the things my body and my eyes and my hands and my feet and my mouth do, stray so far from the words I write and think?

I write that I love my wife and yet the words I say to her belie that. I think I’m disciplined and yet my ability to hit find the “snooze” button without touching the “OK” button on my iPhone is unparalleled. (Seriously- if that were an Olympic event I’d be representing the U.S. every four years). I blog on here that I am this or I do that and yet, nine times out of ten, I find my actions betraying that which I believe.

Paul wrote on this extensively in Romans, I know, it just seems so…other…to me that I, in all my humanness, am unable to overcome such things.

We are taught from a young age that we can overcome, that we can be stronger than the strength of the world, that we can outlast the daggers of sin and shame.

Which is why it seems so foreign to me that I need God in such a simplistic way, and yet I do. I always do.

If there is a more easily distracted person on the planet, I know not who it would be.

Ever since I was quite young, I’ve found myself always looking toward the next thing. The moment I get bored with something, I start looking for something else to do, usually to the chagrin of family, friends, teachers, and employers. Sometimes it takes ten minutes, sometimes a year, but eventually, the only excitement my heart finds in my tasks is thinking about the next one.

Sometimes it affects me in small ways. Only half the dishes are finished when I get the divine inspiration for a new skirt that gets laid aside when I run out of thread which leads me to Joann’s to buy more where I get the inspiration to make some new pillowcases which leaves the skirt in my unfinished project box. The pillowcases take me longer than planned, which leads to me thinking about cooking dinner which leads me back to the fact that our dishes aren’t all clean and that I need to get food from the store. This leads to half a table of dinner and half a table of random sewing projects.

And sometimes it’s much bigger than that. I get a job that’s exciting for a few months and then it becomes monotonous. I start thinking about the next step which leads me to questions like, “What if I went back to school? What if I had a child? What if I started my own business? What if we moved to [insert state or country of your choice here]? What if I wrote a novel?” usually all in that order and within a five minute timespan.

My husband is so driven. He sets his mind to something and he sticks with it, seeing it to fruition with discipline and unshaken devotion. I. Don’t. Understand. It. I only wish I could decide on any one thing and finish it. As it is, I feel destined for nothing but a swirly, unsettled life.

Oh, to have a heart less restless.

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I stopped trying to follow 928 blogs every day. It was killing me. I’d try to read all of them but if I couldn’t do that then I wouldn’t read any because I was so overwhelmed. I was overstimulated with information. So I pared that down to about ten (plus my own new one!) and if I don’t read one day it’s OK because I can easily catch up on all of them in about 30 minutes. I would suggest that all our readers do the same (as long as OMP is one of them) but this wasn’t supposed to be a post about social media etiquette.

One of those blogs I read is written by a guy named Chris Brogan. If you haven’t heard of him he’s probably one of the five most brilliant social media minds in the world right now. His business ideas are outstanding, his discourse concise, and his follow-through unparalleled. The kind of guy who makes you wonder what you do with your 24 hours every day. Anyway, he has this thing he does every January where he picks 3 words that are going to represent his year. They can be any three words, he just has to understand what they mean and how they relate to the work he does.

I thought it was a pretty good idea so I told Jen about it the other day but I gave it a slight twist.

Me: “If you had to pick three words to describe me in 2011, what would they be?”
Her: “Uhh, Oklahoma State, writing, and why are you asking me weird questions?”
Me: “That was eleven words and only two answers.”
Her: “Just go put your headphones on.”

OK, I embellished the last part just a hair, but sometimes it feels like that’s how our conversation goes…

Really though, what I wanted to get at is what three things I’ll do my best to value for the next 365 days (and beyond that, what I’ll value for the rest of my life).

So we talked and here’s what I came up with for the three values I’ll keep closest to my heart in 2011 (and beyond):

1. Integrity – This has always been my big one. I’ve always felt a sort of tug on my heartstrings when I know I’m not in line with what the Lord would have for me whether anyone is watching or not. I have to say my vigor towards this has been dulled by the sandblaster that is Western society over the past few years but my knowledge of it never waned. Praying my head and heart meet up again soon.
2. Discipline – It’s something I struggle with. I have so many friends whom I look up to in this area that I sometimes feel less than adequate in my pursuit. It’s a dull pain too. There’s nothing sexy about going to the gym at 5:30AM every day (not that I would know). There’s not a lot of fun to be found in eating what’s right rather than what’s tasty. Even to sit down with the Word sometimes feels like a grind. The journey is good and worthy though, one I should (and sometimes do) revel in.
3. Wisdom – Andy Stanley did a sermon series a few years ago entitled “the best question ever.” I’m not a real big topical sermon guy but he nailed this one. He said we should simply ask ourselves in any and all situations, “what is the wise thing to do in this situation?” It’s a simple concept with a profound effect.

A father tells his son in Proverbs, “Get wisdom, get understanding; do not forget my words or turn away from them. Do not forsake wisdom, and she will protect you; love her, and she will watch over you. The beginning of wisdom is this: Get wisdom. Though it cost all you have, get understanding. Cherish her, and she will exalt you; embrace her, and she will honor you.  She will give you a garland to grace your head and present you with a glorious crown.” [my emphasis added]

So these are my three things, for better or worse. Jen said they were all such boy things to say or something like that…I wasn’t listening. Boys. You know.

What are your three biggest values?

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