Keeping the faith.

I’ve recently been preparing myself for some big changes in life. My husband will be graduating law school in May and trying to decide our next step has been all but consuming our minds for the last several months. After spending the majority of the school year without any job offers, we had decided to take fate into our own hands: come July we would pack up and move back to Tennessee. More specifically, Chattanooga, Tennessee, a place where neither of us had lived before but that promised the lifestyle we craved. We spent about a month mentally preparing ourselves for moving to a new town, with not a ton of money and no job prospects for either of us. Psyching ourselves up with this crazy-adventurous-move-like attitude that it’ll work out because it did for Julia Roberts in Eat, Pray, Love type thing (yeah I know, not at all the same). However, like a typical storyline, life (and God) had other plans.

Have you ever had times where you were waiting on God to “take care” of something? Praying for a situation to work out, for some sort of sign to point you in the right direction. For us, we literally were wanting to be pointed in a direction: stay where we are and somewhat settle, or go chasing after our dreams in the good ole South? I feel like sometimes if God isn’t answering us when or how we want him to, then we bend the reality to make it fit into a different plan, our plan, not His. That’s kinda what I was doing…I was covering up our scared, hopeless thoughts with brave, adventurous ones. Not really a bad idea, but something that is truly hard to invest in 100%.  My thoughts were if life isn’t working out where we are, then we should move to where we want to be. Basically, if we don’t create our own opportunities by moving where we want to be, then nothing would happen. Obviously, God wants us to move because nothing is happening here. Right? Wrong.

A few weeks after we made our final decision to move, after we had looked at houses to rent, and after I had warned my patients that I wouldn’t be here in 6 months (yeah people get attached to their hygienists), we got a phone call. A phone call that Taylor had written off months before, but it was an offer for his dream job position as a federal law clerk in Indianapolis. It took us about 30 seconds to accept the offer and just like that, our shiny, brave adventure was thrown out the window.  

So of course after that, my thinking shifted, my faith shifted, probably back to where it was suppose to be. I learned, once again, that I have no clue what God’s agenda is for me, so I need to stop trying to obsessively plan for it. I shouldn’t have to convince myself that what I’m doing is God’s plan. I learned that I need to be patient. If something isn’t working out the way I want it to, at the rate I want it to, I need to chill out. Faith is my favorite idea in this world, and I believe it can keep all of us sane.

As a result of Taylor’s job offer, we get to stay in Indiana for at least two more years. A place that we are starting to feel more comfortable calling home. I get to stay at a wonderful office that I absolutely love working at with co-workers that I can also call my friends. But maybe best of all, we found a dreamy log home that we get to move into this summer and create lifelong memories in. A different adventure in its own right. 

So I guess my point is, things work out, and usually in ways we don’t expect. Keep the faith, friends.

25 things I've learned in my 25 years.

In a few short months I’ll be turning 26, so I decided to mark my quarter of a century here on Earth with some nuggets of knowledge. I am fully aware that by the time I’m 50 (or even 30), I’ll look back at this and laugh at how blissfully unaware I was, and I’m sure my 70 year old self will say I was just a naive dumbass, but nonetheless…! Below are 25 things that I’ve learned to be true in my 25 years of living: 

1. Keeping a good manicure can do wonders for your self-esteem.

2. Being genuinely kind is easier said than done, but so so important. Try harder.

3. Music heals.

4. Sometimes a good joke isn’t worth someone else’s feelings, so think more Ellen, less Tosh. 

5. It’s always good to have something to look forward to. Whether it’s a vacation 8 months out or a coffee date in an hour, it counts.

6. Someone is always going to be better than you at most things. Go ahead and get over it.

7. The batter is usually better than the finished product, so always leave some in the bowl for licking. 

8. Sex is good for your marriage. Lots of sex is really good for your marriage. 

9. Going outside your comfort zone, however far, usually ends up being a good thing and a great memory.  

10. Dogs are kids too. (sorry real moms) 

11. Let’s be honest, honesty is not always the best policy.

12. Family is the most important thing, really the only thing. And friends are family too. 

13. Marriage may not be a job, but you definitely have to work at it. 

14. Take care of your parents, they took care of you. 

15. Some of the greatest conversations take place around campfires.

16. Falling in love with a fictional character is totally acceptable. Just realize how much of a wreck you'll be when they die. 

17. It's okay to cry for no apparent reason. It helps me all the time. 

18. Food (and alcohol) bring people together.

19. If you get angry when you don’t eat, then eat. If you get grumpy when you don’t sleep, then sleep. Your loved ones will thank you. 

20. High school days are not the best days of your life. (Neither are college)

21. Don’t judge others. You’ve probably been there done that, or at least thought it. If you haven’t, then your best friend has. 

22. Money can buy happiness but that shit is expensive (and short-lived) so be careful. 

23. Sometimes you just need your mom. 

24. Dinner always taste better if someone else cooks it. (so does breakfast, so does lunch)

25. Don't be stingy with compliments. If you like something about someone then you need to tell them. They may need to hear it.

26. Faith will get you through. 

Okay, okay…yes I know I said 25!! I couldn’t narrow my list any more than I already had (originally had about 40 things- yeah I’m a fountain of endless wisdom over here). Item 26 happens to be the most important to me, and has kept me sane in moments of madness. If you take nothing else from this list, take that.

Stay tuned for the 50th year version. 

#27. You're never too old for a cookie cake and princess balloon. (me on my 25th b-day)

Dreaming of the PNW.

Lately, I’ve been on this kick. Let’s call this kick: The Pacific Northwest. Have you been there? If not, drop everything (except your phone because you’ll wanna take pictures) and go there immediately. We went there about 8 months ago and I still catch myself daydreaming about it. It’s this place of mystical-magical-ever greenness that should only exist in some prehistoric dinosaur heaven but it’s right here on Earth, and it’s just waiting for you to see it. Confession: Sometimes I get so caught up on the South (and all things Tennessee) that I forget there are other places in the United States. Spectacular places. 

Taylor and I visited the PNW this past year in May kinda on a whim, we wanted to trade in our annual Florida beach trip for something different. Thanks to a friend, we had a general outline of places we wanted to visit, things we wanted to see, but little did I know that I’d fall in love. Dramatic? Yeah, well this place will do that to ya. Everything was dramatic from the vastness of the mountains to the richness of the evergreens. 

Our first stop was Seattle. I feel it important to mention that upon arrival to the West Coast I was sick…very, very sick. I was feeling the worst I had felt in years, and I still loved every minute of our vacation, which says a lot. We spent a couple of short days in Seattle doing the touristy things like visiting the Public Market Center, going to the aquarium and drinking at breweries. Seattle was about what I expected: chilly and rainy but cool. 

Day two and three consisted of Portland, Oregon. Some of my favorite highlights were from Oregon: The Grotto, Mt St Helens, and of course more breweries. The best part about Oregon though was the absolutely beautiful scenery. If you ever want to immerse yourself into complete appreciation of God’s handiwork then take a drive through Oregon’s forests. It’s unfathomable to see nature’s creations there and not believe in some sort of higher power- it’s just that grandiose of a landscape. The waterfalls and trails we explored through the Mt. Hood scenic loop were breathtaking. I don’t know why or how, but seeing things like that bring you back to yourself, back to reality, and I don’t mean the housewife kind, but the kind that makes you laugh harder and love stronger. 

We spent the next couple days driving down the scenic highway 101. You could make a vacation out of driving down the Oregon Coast alone. The evergreens reach all the way out to the ocean as if they are dying to jump into the deep blue water. It was so different from any coast or beach that I had ever seen before, but in such a good way. It’s hard to pick a favorite moment from the trip, every day literally seemed more breathtaking than the day before, but the night we camped beachside at Coos Bay was probably my favorite experience. We were nestled right up against a sand dune, tucked under some evergreens with the ocean at our back. I remember watching the sun set over the ocean that night and thinking that nothing could be more perfect than this moment. 

The furthest south we went was the Redwood Forest. It was almost eerily breathtaking. I kept expecting a velociraptor to run by and eat me at any moment. I’m sure that really makes you want to go visit ASAP but seriously that’s how much of a prehistoric vibe the Redwoods emitted. We also camped in the Redwoods National Park, and that was my second favorite experience of the trip. Waking up beneath something so big can make you feel so inconceivably small, but it also has a way of weighing everything out to help you understand what’s important in life. 

The drive back up to Seattle was filled with more beautiful sites and a couple of hotels to even out the “roughing it” we had been doing. By the time our departure flight came, I wasn’t ready to leave. Usually a week away from home and reality is all it takes for me to be ready for the routine of every day life, but not this time. I was like a kid in a toy store (I always liked toys more than candy) and I was convinced that there was more to be seen around every corner. But alas, a vacation is a vacation because it lasts only for a limited amount of time, and our time was up. 

I recommend visiting the Pacific Northwest to anyone and everyone. If you need tall trees to ground you or mountains to lift you, it will do it. Hell, if you just need a good drive with good music or a good brewery with good beer, it’ll do that too. I’m convinced that God spent just a little bit more time on that corner of the country, when you go see it, I’m sure you will to. 

2015.

New year. New you. I say bullshit. Not because I don’t believe in reinventing yourself or starting over blah, blah, blah…but because I don’t think you need the start of a new year to do it. Sometimes I make resolutions but most of the time I don’t…why lie to myself? I actually did keep one of my resolutions from last year: wear more lipstick. Talk about some high standards. 

I feel like we should have daily resolutions. Sound exhausting? Yeah maybe, but that’s a more realistic route to becoming a better person. So i’m going to start 2015 the way I ended 2014, with daily personal goals that have realistic limitations.  

I want to become a genuinely happy person, to the point where people are happy when they are around me. Just being friendly and having good manners will get you so far in life. However, people who know me know that this won’t happen in the first hour (or possibly two) of me waking up, so don’t even try. I will work on the being mean when I’m hungry thing though (no promises there either though). 

I also want to be content, but not in a nonchalant passive way, just in a way where I'm aware of how truly blessed I am. I have an amazing husband. A loving and caring family. A great career. A roof over my head- with cute decor to boot. No serious health issues to speak of. My life is so damn good. I don't want to stop striving for more though, and I probably won’t stop having diva moments from time to time. I’m sure I’m not the only one who complains about having the lack of funds to fly to NYC at a moment’s notice or setting out on a yacht. I mean those damn Beverly Hills rich kids do it and they're just reality stars...I could be that. 

I want to be the best wife I can be. Which will mean different things on different days. I just need to remember this in the moments where my husband may be acting less than perfect (shocker, yes it happens from time to time). We’re all human, and tit for tat will get you nowhere, even though it can be fun. 

There are several small things I am continually trying to work on like keeping up with friends that are now scattered all over the country, being healthier (one day I will overcome the dollar menu but that day is not today), and maybe lowering my overall bitchiness a notch or two, possibly my sarcasm too for that matter. Like I said earlier, I have realistic limitations. 

I always think other people can say what I’m thinking better than I can, and in this case that person is Tom Ford: “I believe in living life the way you want every day, and if you do that, you don’t really need to have New Years resolutions.” 

Happy new year y’all. Remember to focus on the important things, like keeping your lipstick game strong.

Home.

“Home is where the heart is.” 

“Home is where you make it.”

“You can always go home.” 

“There’s no place like home.”

When it comes to quotes about ‘home’, I can hear them over and over again and they still ring true. After certain life events, I have come to accept that as much as I want home to be a backyard or a front porch that I’ve played on my entire life, that isn’t the case for me. My children will never visit their grandparents where I once grew up or play where I played. I envy people who grew up in one house their entire lives and will continue to take their children back there to relive memories, but I don’t have that, and in return that has made me appreciate seeing home in different forms.  

When I think of home, I first think of my brothers. They are my constant in life; the stability in my childhood memories; however, if I had to choose now, then home would be wherever my husband is. Isn’t it amazing that when it comes down to it, we stake our feelings of home in other people, not places and things?  

It’s memories and feelings that make us feel home. Certain smells and tastes take us back to being home and songs and movies will put us there too. Like my mom’s sweet potato casserole at Thanksgiving or watching the original Grinch on Christmas Eve. There are a million tiny instances that culminate our vision of home. Wherever we have a feeling of upmost content and happiness, feelings of safety and joy—that’s home. The physical place where we happen to feel these emotions is where we label it, and for me, that place is Tennessee. 

Tennessee is not where I was born. I was born in Kentucky and moved to southern Indiana before I was a year old. I lived in Indiana until I was about 9 years old and from there, moved to Tennessee. Tennessee is where I grew close to my brothers. Where our sibling relationships turned into the best of friendships. It’s where I met some girls that became my sisters and will be my forever friends. Tennessee is where God provided me with the love of my life in the form of a high-school sweetheart. I found God in Tennessee, lost Him for a short time, and then found Him again. It’s where my faith was created and developed and where I realized a church could be a home too. It’s where I hope to raise my children and where I hope my family will reunite for good. Tennessee is where the strongest of my relationships were formed and where every time I come back, I feel whole again. If that’s not home, I don’t know what is. 

What I’ve learned is, if you want to find where you call home, then move somewhere else. It wasn’t until I left Tennessee that I fully realized its significance in my life. So I guess that whole “you don’t realize what you have until it’s gone” quote rings true for me too. Moving has taught me to value home, but to also welcome new experiences. Appreciate what you have and where you came from, but strive for something more. Plant pieces of your heart everywhere you go instead of wishing you were somewhere different, somewhere more like home. 

Dorothy had it right, there really is no place like home, and just like her, I’ll find my way back there some day. But for now my husband, the pups, and our couch is the best home I could ever ask for. After all, home IS where you make it. 

Marriage according to Mindy.

I recently finished Mindy Kaling’s book, Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?, and I was obsessed with every word. The girl is hilarious.  Besides being funny, she definitely pulled at some heart strings too. There is a chapter in her book where she references marriage and there were two paragraphs in particular that I just started crying as soon as I read them (I’m ridiculously emotional like that). The first was: 

“I don’t want to hear about the endless struggles to keep sex exciting or the work it takes to plan a date night. I want to hear that you guys watch every episode of the Bachelorette together in secret shame, or that one got the other hooked on Breaking Bad and if either watches it without the other, they’re dead meat. I want to see you guys high-five each other like teammates on a recreational softball team you both do for fun. I want to hear about it because I know it’s possible, and because I want it for myself.” 

I mean, come on. Here’s a girl straight up saying that she wants what I have. That statement alone should make me want to stop complaining about my marriage and remember that life should be happy every day because I’m able to spend it with my best friend. Now I’m not someone who bitches about being married necessarily, but we all have those moments where we irritate the crap out of each other…him breathing too loudly, me slurping my cereal… 

Reading those words reminds me that at some point you and this one other person decided that each other was all either of you wanted. If it was you two against the world, that was okay because he was the only person you wanted on your team. Not only will you create a world together, but, if your like my husband and me, you already have your own little world that you live in and as long as he’s there and your there then nothing else matters. 

Yes, there are times that you forget the vows that you said or the first butterflies he gave you, but push through the day to day grind and you’ll realize that underneath the bills, the sex, the job search, the family drama…all that matters is having those few hours at the end of the day where you can both bitch about how the couple on HGTV just needs to get over the paint color on the walls and buy the freaking house. (I know we’re not the only ones doing that)

I often find myself thinking “Ughh if Taylor and I could just be at the beach together right now then life would be perfect.” Or…”Take me back to the Pacific Northwest and that perfect vacation where the only thing we worried about was the ipod playlist.” Then I realize that it’s not like I wish for those things because those are the only times we’re happy together, it’s just because those are the times where we have nothing to do but be together. Whether I’m on a beach or on our couch, I’m just happiest when I’m with him. I think that’s what Mindy was trying to convey as her hope for marriage.

The second time she got me bawling was with this:

“Married people, it’s up to you. It’s entirely on your shoulders to keep this sinking institution afloat. It’s a stately old ship, and a lot of people, like me want to get on board. Please be psyched, and convey that psychedness to us. And always remember: so many, many people are envious of what you have. You’re the star at the end of the Shakespearean play, wearing the wreath of flower in your hair. The rest of us are just the little side characters.”

She’s right. I can’t believe how blessed I am to have found my soulmate so early in life, or at all. I take her challenge to help save this somewhat sinking ship that is marriage. I chose to do life with this one person and enter into an institution that I myself have been skeptical of. Marriage can be scary, hell it fails 50% of the time, and believe me coming from someone who’s parents divorced after 29 years together, yeah seeing something like that can jade you on the idea of marriage. I never want to think of it as giving something up. I just think of it as having your best friend by your side for the rest of your life, because the alternative to that, to me, is just unacceptable. 

So the next time your going to the bathroom and you reach over to the toilet paper and you realize that once again, he didn’t refill it after his last shoo-shoo…don’t freak out. We need to learn to rejoice more in our marriages. Or in the words of Mindy, “convey the psychedness” that we feel. It’s a good day when we know someone will forever have our back…and they know they have someone who will always replace the toilet paper. I’m pretty sure that is, after all, what marriage is all about. 

My handsome husband on our wedding day. We got this marriage thing babe. After all, Mindy's cheering for us. 

A recommendation and a promise.

I recently read a book where the lead lady had an accident and experienced memory loss. When she came-to she had no recollection of the past ten years. Remodeling her fixer-upper, getting into great shape, the birth of her three children…none of these things rang a bell.

Throughout the book, though, she comes to realize that almost all of her relationships that she truly valued have completely changed. Her once friendly neighbor now snubbed her by their rose bushes. Her best childhood friend was merely an acquaintance—someone she sent a Christmas card to. Her sister was cold and distant and had very little knowledge of her current life happenings. The love of her life, her husband, was separated from her and couldn’t look at her without disgust. She couldn’t figure out how it happened. How all things that were important a decade ago were completely tarnished. Long story short: while being in her 10-year-ago mindset, she is able to set things right (or at least better) with her neighbor, her sister, and even her husband. The book makes you think. 

On one hand, it makes the phrase “forgive and forget” ring very true. You realize that if someone really had the ability to forgive and forget then we would all be much happier with our lives. That little snarky comments and grudges will build up and ruin relationships if you let them. We get so caught up in day to day drama that we let it rule our minds and sometimes our hearts. I am very guilty of this. I can let one little comment or look or dig completely ruin my mood. I can let a moody, miserable patient totally change my day. I hate it. People should not be able to have that much effect on each other, but they do. Why? Because at the end of the day, we all just want to be liked. 

But i digress, after reading this book you make one of those promises to yourself. Those promises you make after you watch a good movie or hear a song that makes you cry. Where you promise you’ll put effort into your relationships so they don’t fall apart, and you won’t sweat the small stuff. Ya know, you’ll really live life to the fullest, whatever the hell that means. So here’s to one of those promises, I hope it’s not an empty one. I would hate to have to lose my memory to remember how good I have it. 

Read the book, it's a keeper.