Brave, Anyway

Tag: bravegirlwannabe

  • Love, Genuinely

    Love, Genuinely

    When I was a young girl I heard my first real bit of advice about love, and it went something like this: if you read 1 Corinthians 13 and cannot replace the word love with a special someone’s name, then that’s not your person.

    Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

    The New Testament, An American Translation, by Edgar Goodspeed, Professor of Biblical and Patristic Greek at The University of Chicago, 1923

    I dismissed that advice, and I’ve thought a lot about that in the last couple of years. And as the month of February approached, the month of love, I decided to actively focus my thoughts on what love really is. How it behaves. What it looks like.

    We celebrate a day of love in the middle of the month and almost everything about how we celebrate that day is not really about love. Chocolates, flowers, dinner, and sometimes jewelry. One of my clever young pals pointed out those things all fall into one of three categories: (1) what’s expected, (2) what’s lazy, or (3) what’s safe and won’t send the wrong message. I thought he was being silly, but upon further reflection he’s actually quite right.

    As February began, I made a decision to look each day for acts of love and to keep a list of my observations in my phone – and I was completely moved day after day with my findings. I found that focusing on love is not unlike focusing on your blessings in that the more you look for examples the more you will notice.

    • Fanning the back of a neck after noticing a spouse is warm and not feeling their best
    • Holds eye contact, even with phone buzzing
    • Spouse upset on phone – how can I help? (not tell me what you want me to do, which is another task, but an offer and a genuine understanding of all they do and that they are overwhelmed)
    • Proudly telling others about their spouse when they are not around – proud of who they are as an individual
    • Starting a car and cleaning off the windshield so that a spouse comes out to a warm vehicle
    • Voicemail: I know you’ve got a lot, just leave me a message so I can hear your voice and I’ll know that you’re ok.
    • Looks down at their phone to see spouse calling, and smiles – a display of love the recipient didn’t even see
    • Mutual reaching out to grasp the other during a prayer
    • Speaking a truth in safety: I’m exhausted
    • Receiving a truth in safety: I get you need space
    • I can’t help, but I can give you a hug.
    • Using a walker but holding hands
    • Good morning quote message, Ralph Waldo Emerson: Most of the shadows of life are caused by standing in our own sunshine.

    What did I learn this month as I observed and as I experienced? Love is in the noticing. Love is not offering silence, or tacit approval, when we see someone we love behaving in ways that hurt themselves or others. Love is not needy; it’s giving. It works on equal partnership, instead of taking advantage of inequity. It’s in the celebration of another without jealousy. It involves effort. And respect. It honestly values the thoughts of the other. It sometimes sacrifices personal wants for the needs, or even just the wants, of another. Love sets boundaries. Love doesn’t need to sell itself. It’s not in a display. It doesn’t compete. It doesn’t race. Love embraces. It believes the best. It trusts. Love shares and confides.

    When you Google the word genuinely you’ll see it means “in a truthful way” or “to the fullest degree; properly.” Love is and does a thousand things in addition to what I saw and recorded this month, but I think perhaps most importantly I learned this…

    Love genuinely smiles and love smiles genuinely.

  • Good Humans in the Middle

    Good Humans in the Middle

    It’s Presidents’ Day, and this year we’re going to elect a President. As I’ve gotten older, our choice of leadership has seemed more and more important – not just because I think we chose so poorly last time, but also because 20 years ago I would have told you that I wasn’t sure all our votes were counted. I guess five key things have changed since those days:

    1. I became a mother, and now I feel the responsibility to do something about the world my girls live in.
    2. I have encountered children, including one of my own, who will be categorized as pre-existing condition when they reach adulthood and will desperately need health care after their parents can no longer cover them.
    3. I have seen first-hand how the privileged have access to better everything. Better legal services. Better education. Better health care. Better chances of getting a second chance. Better chances at being given the benefit of the doubt. Money and education make a huge difference in the kind of treatment and care people have access to, and ultimately their odds of survival and their quality of life.
    4. The world has changed. People with guns enter places that used to be safe and they take the lives of others, including our nation’s children.
    5. Al Gore lost the presidency, and I truly started to believe that votes are counted and they matter.

    The more I think about this coming election and all the craziness in our country right now, and the more I encounter people of all backgrounds and who vote in a variety of ways, the more I’m convinced that the majority of America is not represented by what we see in Washington and what we see on the news. The majority of us are not just right or left, or Republican or Democrat, or liberal or conservative. The majority of us are somewhere in the middle, in an area defined by shades instead of absolutes. Our life experiences move our political needle, and hopefully also our empathy needle, as we make mistakes or get to know people not like us or get a diagnosis or someone we love is hurt.

    But the candidates we’re presented with right now seem to either fall at the far sides, where the absolutes reside, or act like they do simply to secure votes.

    It’s absolutely crazy to me that someone would say that any political party has no room for someone who believes differently. You can’t be a Democrat if you believe abortion is wrong? Or you can’t be a Republican if you think access to guns should have limits?

    That. Is. Stupid.

    And incredibly short-sighted.

    You know what else is crazy and short-sighted? Our thoughts on instances or events have suddenly started getting us lumped into an absolute value type of category.

    I can see a video of police brutality and think the officer in it is an asshole while also believing in the goodness of other law enforcement officers. I can kneel during the national anthem and still love America and care about our military and be thankful for their sacrifice. I can think that abortion is wrong and still respect the right of others to make different choices or even just believe that government should not have control over those sorts of things.

    You can vote Republican and believe in restrictions for assault rifles or funding for climate solutions. You can vote Democrat and believe in prayer in schools or not want federal funding for Planned Parenthood.

    What most of us can agree on, I think, is what makes a good person. Someone who is kind, who tries their best, looks for the truth, helps others, has empathy, and does the right thing when no one is looking. We are not all ever going to agree on the issues of the day, but it seems like we could at least agree on the need for our country’s leaders to be good humans – and to vote accordingly. In all the years I’ve voted I have never seen so many good people get caught up on opposite sides instead of focusing on the simplicity of who’s qualified and who’s a good human?

    This is not the time to not vote. It’s not the time to stick our heads in the sand and worry about our hair while we let the rest of America figure this out. As the old saying goes if we don’t stand for something, we’ll fall for absolutely anything – and that’s true in our personal lives, in our professional lives, and in our politics.

    It shocks me how many people can listen to our current President and think there’s a good human. Set the political issues aside – really look at a person who laughed about grabbing and mistreating women, who belittled the family members of a fallen soldier, who made fun of a former POW, and who made fun of someone with a disability. I challenge you to then look at yourself in the mirror and say I want my children to be like him or I aspire to be like him.

    A number of people, including our current president, are interviewing for the job of leader of our country. It’s our job to decide who gets that job and that decision is not just about key metrics, but also, and most importantly, about each candidate’s goodness or lack of it.

    The supreme quality for leadership is integrity.
    Dwight D. Eisenhower

  • Mourning and its Messiness

    Mourning and its Messiness

    Three little girls lost their Dad and sister today. A woman lost her husband and child today. A number of teenagers lost a classmate, and are thinking about death and the afterlife for the first time. Many people lost a friend, a family member, a teammate, a mentor. Even more people lost someone they cheered and perhaps idolized. And there’s one woman out there who is listening to the world tell wonderful stories about a man she was frightened of. A man who hurt her – physically, mentally, spiritually.

    Tonight I cannot stop thinking about that woman. How hard it must be to listen to the testimonies of so many supporters. Does she want to shout, is she hiding from the TV, is she angry or sad or relieved or all of it?

    Death at a young age scares the hell out of all of us. Death of someone who is larger than life reminds us all that we mere mortals will certainly succumb at some point. Death of a person with a young family tugs at our heart strings, and we feel for those girls and their Momma.

    And yet, the woman.

    The woman, and all the women like her who just want or wanted someone to believe them. The woman, and all the women like her who know what it feels like to watch someone who’s behaved so badly be loved and believed by all the world.

    All people, all of us, are a combination of good and bad. Sin and virtue. Obedience and transgression. Truth and lies. And yet some of us have seemingly sinned worse than others – have hurt people more than others. As a child I was taught all sins are equal. As an adult I believe that all sins are definitely not equal, but they have a commonality and that’s that they keep us alone and separated from God.

    A person who volunteers in a food kitchen can have too much to drink, get behind the wheel of a car, and kill someone. A person with a wife and daughters he loves and cherishes can also be someone who, from another woman and perhaps only that one time, didn’t take no for an answer.

    We like to conveniently forget or even completely deny the sins of people who’ve done great things or that we love, but there’s no question that even he recognized how he’d really behaved. His public apology said in part, “After months of reviewing discovery, listening to her attorney, and even her testimony in person, I now understand how she feels that she did not consent to this encounter.”

    Read his full apology here.

    The woman. I don’t even know her name. I imagine she feels confusion today. More accurately, I imagine she feels tremendously today – that she just feels a lot of all kinds of different feelings.

    In death, almost all of us will leave people behind. Mourners. To mourn means to feel deep sorrow, but it can also mean regret and disappointment. In that light, I think mourn can apply to all of the people left behind, in all of their varying and complex situations and feelings.

    Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Matthew 5:4

  • Praying for Peace

    May our troops in harm’s way be protected. May their loved ones at home be comforted. May the children listening to bombs and explosions and gunfire know in their heart that that’s not the way it’s supposed to be nor the way it has to be – may their fears be calmed this night and in the coming days and nights, and may they grow up to believe in and seek peace. May peace take control of the hearts and minds of all the people who want to wage war. May all who need to be held accountable be held accountable.

  • I Believe

    I Believe

    My youngest is eight years old and all throughout this season I’ve been a bit melancholy. I suspect this is the last Christmas where she’ll believe in Santa, and it makes me a little sad. I’m frankly surprised we made it to this age with that magic intact.

    In years ahead there will still be the shaking of packages throughout the season and Christmas mornings filled with anticipation, but it won’t be the same when there’s no one one remaining who believes. In some ways it will be better – I truly envy those of you posting pictures of fancy dinners with wine with your adult children. ONE DAY, I think, each time I see one of your photos, as I sip hot chocolate after a meal that included french fries.

    Earlier this month, I had a few long seconds of panic and thought this would end up being the year that the magic of Santa disappeared. Audrey came home from school and announced that not everyone in her class believes in Santa. My heart sank. I knew it was coming, and I really should have been prepared. But unprepared, and way outside of my comfort zone, I gave an answer that I had not thought about or considered all the positives and negatives of. I winged it, or whatever the right tense of winged is. (Wung it?)

    You know how not everyone believes in God? That Jews believe in God but not really Jesus and Muslims believe in a different god and some people don’t believe in any god? Not everyone believes in Santa. We believe in Santa and we believe in Jesus.

    And then I waited another very long few seconds while she considered my answer. “Oh. OK.” And then off she went on her hover-board.

    So simple, really. She just accepted my answer and moved on. For about a minute I thought I was Mom of the year. I had successfully avoided a Christmas season “what do you mean there’s no Santa?!” catastrophe, and I had answered her in a grown up way with grown up words. And then came the internal panic: What the hell did I just do? Why, why, why did I do that? Why would I compare Santa to Jesus and connect God and faith and Santa? Dumb, dumb, dumb. Once she loses faith in Santa then she might she lose faith in Jesus.

    THIS is why I am person who likes to be prepared and who likes to think about what she believes. I cannot handle all of the tragic possibilities of winging it. The reason I obsess about thinking about why I think something and what I should say about something is to avoid situations exactly like this. UGH.

    A full 24 hours passed before I realized that I once believed in Santa and Jesus, and I still believe in Jesus. And that’s true for millions of other people as well, so probably it’ll all be OK.

    At a craft fair at the start of this season, I picked up a sign that I love. It has Give Thanks on one side and Believe on the other, and it’s a perfect fit in our farmy antique-filled family room.

    I’ve stared at it many evenings this month thinking about what I actually believe about some things. What I actually believe is most important. How I show the girls what things are really important, and how I convey why I believe the way I do about everything from abortion to Noah’s flood and ark. Because I believe that one of my greatest responsibilities as a parent is to show them that I really think about what I believe and that they should, too. They need to think about what they see and experience and think and believe, and about the why – not just believe what I believe. And I want them to know that God, I believe, delights in us even when we have doubts and we’re not sure what we think, and He encourages our learning and our thought processes.

    Jesus said to doubting Thomas, “Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.”

    It doesn’t say Jesus was frustrated or exasperated or at the end of his rope with all of Thomas’ questions. It says he asked Thomas to touch Him, to seek the answers to his questions. Jesus wanted to help Thomas find the proof he needed.

    I believe in Christmas. And I believe in love. I believe that the story of Christmas is a story of a parent’s love, a spouse’s love, a family’s love, a neighbor’s love, and a child’s love.

    I believe in the magic of Santa and of elves, and of tooth fairies and of Easter bunnies. I believe they have made countless children smile over the centuries and I believe in and love the power of that.

    I believe in reciprocity. The world gives back what you put out there. The more you give, the more you will be given. You reap what you sow, which can be either ominous or glorious.

    I believe that when you don’t know what to do, the thing you should do above all is simply plant. Sow seeds. Positive seeds. And, I believe in what Elsa has to say on this topic: just do the next right thing.

    I believe our choices always reveal our priorities and our character.

    I believe in healing. The kind that comes in miraculous God-moments, the kind worked by doctors and caregivers, the kind that comes with time, the kind that comes with travel and in amusement parks where we just let ourselves have fun and relax, and the kind that comes while driving along country roads with the windows down and the radio on.

    I believe effort, not time, heals some, but not all, wounds. Those who have been wounded can choose help and choose healing, or they can choose to focus on pain or disappointment or self. Faith is what can heal all wounds.

    I believe words have power. It’s why I held a chubby little baby and whispered, “Audrey Grace is cancer free” thousands of times before it was actually true, it’s why I like to mention how smart or clever my girls are when I also comment on their appearance, and it’s why I keep journals – an outpouring of words reveals what I truly think in a way nothing else can.

    And I believe in the voice of music and art and doodles. Specifically that they can reveal to us and others what we think and what we believe and what’s important. I love that Ella’s go-to music isn’t something you’d hear a snippet of on TikTok, but it’s worship music. I love that Audrey’s journal and sketch pad are filled with heart doodles and words of affirmation.

    This morning I sat down at our desk to check all my notes for today and found a doodle Audrey left behind. It speaks volumes about what’s in that little 8-year old heart and mind, and it was like getting a Christmas card from heaven.

    I believe and am thankful that God is constantly and patiently working to reveal Himself to every doubting Thomas, that He’s constantly present in my daughter’s lives, and that He’s constantly maneuvering ways to calm the hearts and minds of Mommas like me who fret too much.

    This isn’t the last year for Santa or for Elf on the Shelf or for Jesus. Just because we all eventually learn that our parents buy all the Santa gifts doesn’t mean we don’t believe in Santa. We choose what we believe, about literally everything, whether we actively think about it or not. And this house believes.