 At Home, Cambridge, Massachusetts
I want you to be my love I want you to be my love 'Neath the moon and the stars above I want you to be my love I want you to know me now I want you to know me now Break a promise make a vow I know, you want me now Like I want you Like I want you I want you to be my love I want you to be my love 'Neath the moon and the stars above I want you to be my love 'Cause I want you 'Cause I want you I know all you All you've been through - Over the Rhine Dear Trey, We’re getting to the end of this. Very soon, maybe sooner than we anticipated, we will no longer be just the two of us. We will be three, a change we will never go back on. I’m crying as I write this, not because I don’t want us to be three, and not just because of the hormones that seem to rage through me these days, but because the last five years have truly been better and more beautiful than I could ever have hoped for or imagined. Our first dance song is playing right now and all I can think about is how afraid I was, even during that first dance. You have put up with so much fear. I hope I have not driven you crazy. But you have been my rock again and again. And you have been my truest friend. I am ready for this next step and more than excited to take it with you, but I also mourn the passing of this particular time we’ve had together. Our special little world is expanding, and though it is for the better good, I will always miss this world we have lived in for that past five years. I know you will be a good father, just as you have been a wonderful husband. It may be years, most likely decades, before our little girl truly understands what she has in you. But I will know, and I will encourage her to see and understand it. Thank you for loving me. Thank you for hearing me. Thank you rolling your eyes at me when I need them to be rolled. Thank you for laughing at me the way you do. Thank you giving me joy. Thank you telling me all about the weird, nerdy things you tell me about. Thank you for your stubbornness. Thank you for kind, sensitive heart. Thank you for being mine. Let’s do this.
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At Home, Arlington, Massachusetts
I am ok. And I am going to be ok. I have a lot to work through, but I am going to be ok. I need to repent of how I'm dealing with Trey. He really is sick. He was crying this morning when he woke up because he feels so bad and is frightened. This has just been really sucky timing for him to be so sick while I'm going through all of the emotions of a pregnancy “scare.” I love him and I need to try to be there for him. After all, he has been trying so hard to do the same for me. At Home, Arlington, Massachusetts
All I can think of is how happy I am that we have had this much time before I give birth to figure out sex. Seriously, we have amazing sex and it's because we've had four years to learn it and learn each other. Thinking about having a child before this point in our sex life is terrifying. I know many couples successfully work through damaged vaginas and postpartum realities just fine and that for the history of humanity, most women haven’t had the luxury of waiting to have children until they first reached this point sexually, but I am so so deeply grateful for these years. I am thankful that without any hesitation, without any uncertainty, without any blushing, I can say that sex has been a rich and luxuriant good in my life before a potential nine pound baby alters my physical reality forever. Thank you, Jesus, for this sweet mercy and kindness.  H. and D.'s House, Chattanooga, Tennessee
Parents are made for leaving behind. This is what I've been thinking about since Thanksgiving. It's been rolling around the back of my mind, but it's a thought that I've had a hard time giving traction to. During our visit to Pittsburgh, it really struck me again that I don't have to be my parents, that I can be different from them. I can be free without loving my parents any less. Connected to this realization, I thought about my own future children and how one day they will feel the same way towards me. I will never give them a perfect enough home that they should want to stay under me. They will feel as frustrated with me as I have felt at times toward my own parents. Frustration isn't even the right word, though. It's more the basic human need to differentiate oneself from those who have come before. I am not my parents, they are not me. I can't seem to find a way to express myself adequately here. My families all love each other deeply and we all want to be with each other. But there is still the issue of how the generations relate to each other. We get in each other's ways and often can't seem to understand what is truly service and blessing for the other. Parent and the child waltz around one another trying to figure out how best to love. It seems to me that at stake in so much of the parent-child dynamic is what must or should be done to maintain closeness. I want to feel closer to my parents who live far away, so I feel pressure to replicate their choices and selves in my life. We are all afraid of not feeling close to each other, because in fact we aren't "close" but live thousands of miles apart. In the end, I think more and more that what we have to accept is that parents are made to be left. Marriage is the most important relationship in a person's life – it is the only relationship where there might be some expectation of lifelong companionship. Parenting is a short-lived endeavor. It is in incubator – short, intense, and hot – and then it must be turned off. For me, I need to turn off my desire for my parents to parent me. I want to stay in the incubator, but the time to turn off the lights has long passed. That time has passed and is gone and we are no longer sharers of the same space. As I think about having children of my own, I do not need to contemplate how to keep them for the entirety of the rest of my life. I will give them life and then it will be their own. I will have Trey afterwards. Every family is nothing more than a succession of incubators, maintained and cared for by a pair of life-long friends. This should be a relief. I am not my parents; I am not my children. I am only myself. At Home, Arlington, Massachusetts
Last night, I made Trey a really nice dinner. I made Japanese pork and noodles. It's his favorite dish that I make and I finally perfected it, so it was quite lovely. It’s a little labor intensive to make, though, so I was pretty tired when we sat down to eat. Plus we split a large bottle of beer, so that added to the tiredness. We had a wonderful time talking and spent hours rehashing our college years at Covenant. We talked a lot about the dating world at Covenant and our experiences in it. It was funny and we laughed and enjoyed ourselves. We got into bed and the conversation kept going. Eventually I was so tired, though, that it became clear sex was not going to happen. We talked about it and decided what direction the few remaining minutes of the night would take (or not take) and kept talking. I don't remember how, but it wasn't long before I was expressing my fears about having kids and all of the dismay I feel about the world and bringing children into it. Our evening of fun quickly veered into a deep malaise as I expressed woe after woe related to mothering. Trey patiently responded to all of my fears, pushing back and refusing to let me wallow. I wasn't really listening to or embracing his counterarguments though. Finally, he bluntly stated, "I think you're just making up all of these woes because you feel guilty about not having sex tonight." I burst out laughing. I am so incredibly and deeply grateful for my husband. He understands me better at times than I can ever understand myself. I had been looking forward to the bedroom all day and when we finally got there and I was too tired from the week of work and cooking a complicated meal, my disappointment flowed through and became guilt and despair. When I'm disappointed about something, anything, in life, it often ends up being expressed in totally random ways. It's really hard for me to say that I'm just sad about something and that's ok. I project that sadness onto some big, important problem in the world because that seems a lot more justified than my small personal feelings. It's really good to have someone in your life who is close enough and loves you enough to see when your fears are legit and when they are the extrapolation of less significant, but more immediate disappointments. |
