Tuesday Nights

Tuesday nights.  Tuesday nights were breakfast food: dad eating eggs or Grandpa forking Belguim Waffles.  Mom swirled new recipes to dollup oatmeal pancakes and Kelly stirred her famous cheese eggs.  We'd gather at the big wood dining room table and listen to dad tell stories, and eat our "breakfast for dinner" with orange juice and all.  I loved Tuesday nights.

Tuesday nights turned intentional family, when mom watched Jaxson each Tuesday and Josh came for dinner.  I drove in from Grandville or Grand Rapids, and Grandma would often come too.  Tuesday nights were everyone come, everyone served.  Tuesday nights were open table, open conversation, full of lingering coffee and voices mulled and stirred.

Tuesday nights were Josh growing, seeing him blend and become family, flourish at being a dad.  Tuesday nights were his purposed spot at the table, and his chuckle interwoven with dads.

Tuesday nights were Melissa.  Melissa modeling mom to cook and befriending in the process.  Tuesday nights were the two of them preparing and sharing meals, figuring grocery list, and all of us coming to take part.

Tuesday nights were all of us.  Learning grown-up family.  Being together.  Being fed, in heart and body.  Tuesday nights were no one rushing out, were real estate discussed, cars bought & sold, and laughter all around.

One of the most difficult things about getting married, is absense of giving Mark Tuesday nights.  Is the space void of his place at the table, his knowing of our memories, his viewing of how we all reminisce, his understanding of the men's interaction.  I wish I could give Mark Tuesday nights -- for him, and for me.  I wish I could give him the taste of my moms homemade blueberry pancakes, of rides on the quad out back, of hugs walking in the door, of the smell of fresh-mowed Homerich grass.  I wish I could give him wild rides on the boat, where hands grip the handles, and days rocking on the green chairs at the lake.

I wish I could give him Tuesday nights.  I wish I could give him that understanding of me.

To Those Who Say It's Good.

These are the ones I lean into.  They are the stories I long to hear, the messages I take notes from, the carols I memorize to repeat, the friendships I hug into.  They are the words of people I hold dear, the words of wisdom, of smiles, of goodness.  The words of years won, of hands still held, of enjoyment continually shared.

People say marriage is hard.

I know that.  I know that I know that I am naive.  But that's okay.  Let me be that way.

Let me hope for tomorrow.

Let me hope for good.

I watched my parents.  I watched them laugh and share and boat and travel and errand and eat.  I watched them enjoy.  I watched them: I watched hope; I watched good.

Some warn, some paint furrowed pictures.  But I crave and listen in to those who say it's good.

In this season of planning, in this particular time of preparation, what I am most thankful for, is those who say it's good.

~~~
Thank you Bekah and Patricia and Kate and Amy and Rachel and Heidi and Aunts and Sisters and WLT...  all those, who say it's good.

Waving Transition.

I live a life of transition.  Always moving, always changing, always growing, rarely knowing.  In a 10 year span, I moved more than 30 times (move=unpacked into drawers), lived in 3 states, traveled to 5 continents, endured family reconfiguration, and worked 13 different full-time jobs.

I used to feel jolted by every transition.  I can remember crying the days I packed boxes to move from one house to another.  Now, life has taught me to brace myself, and ride the waves of transition.

I stand in camp between multiple phrases.  Between single and married.  Between teacher and nanny.  Between roommate and lifemate.  Between individual and couple.  The cognitive shifting, the psychological process, the physical preparation all live in limbo between what was, and what comes, and struggles to find a sandbar of what is.

Files fill boxes of school supplies to keep, rooms are tested with paint color to rotate, budgets are examined and restructured, weekend activites move from "me" to "we", student letters are stashed in binders with degrees, registries for new lead to releasing the old, and I live between what was, and what will be.

What was, what is, and what will be.  The transitions find me in waves, both in the pace of the flow, and in the depth of thought.

Yet, I have learned to "wave" at the waves.  Not clutch for shoreline, or sink in overwhelm, but feel the movement, then raft on faith.

Transition has taught me, is teaching me still, to wave from waves.