Thursday, October 12, 2017



i am 12 days into being a married woman and i am finding more joy and more mourning than i expected. i changed my name last week and cried for four hours about it. when i come home on my lunch breaks and its just the dogs and i, sometimes i cry. i've been trying to process these feelings and talk to friends who are often better at processing things than i am and i have been met with resounding "me too's" which i think are the most beautiful words we can ever hear.

i am now certain that mourning is ok in the beginning of marriage but i am also certain that no one really talks about it unless prompted (this is based off several google searches...the least helpful was of a blog post a girl wrote about her first week of marriage and how it was the ultimately happy perfect week of her life...she was also on her honeymoon which i have not had yet so i do imagine if i was blogging from a beach somewhere not fresh from the soul sucking social security office and DMV i may feel otherwise too). my sweet friend is engaged right now and she just begun premarital counseling and she taught me the term "leaving and cleaving", which i had never heard. she talked about how you leave and cleave (to split apart) your own family and forge your new family with your partner together. she talked about how this concept was hard for her and she had to process leaving a family she was very tied to. i had never heard this term or thought about it much, but now that i have i think this is certainly another thing to mourn. another friend talked about how she cried when she gave her spare car key to her husband and not her dad, realizing that her new husband was the one who would be taking care of her from now on. these are all such good things, and i think we are quick to celebrate them, but people, let's mourn what we are losing. the mourning doesn't take away from the good things that are being created and knit together.

another friend and i were talking about my feelings this week and some thoughts spilled out of me. i think i am having a hard time processing all THIS (marriage, wedding, new husband, new name) because i honest to God never thought it would happen. this is not at all self-deprecating and i have proof from so many people in my life that they thought and believed otherwise for me. i'm not someone who dreamt of their wedding. i got a pinterest like three weeks ago to look up recipes. i never once got on it for wedding stuff. i remember one conversation i had with my mama in the grocery store when i was little and we talked about weddings and i told her that i was going to have an orange wedding dress and orange cake because it was my favorite color. praise the lord no one let me follow through on that. i never dreamed of a certain type of man or a certain house. if you asked my people what my life plans were most would tell you i was adamant about owning an RV and never owning a house because owning a house requires a lot of STUFF to put in the house and that i was ok chasing adventure forever. i'm fiercely independent. that's not to say i didn't want to be with someone, i did, but i never imagined the outcome being a bride and a wife. really, i didn't imagine this would happen for me. when i swiped on brandon on tinder i did not think oh hm this is my future husband that someday i will share a bank account and dishes with.

i heard this quote yesterday and it changed me. " if you don't mourn whatever story you had originally written, you're not going to be able to create a new one." chrissy kelly. i had written a story of deep friendships, having monthly goals to try new things, spending at most $100 on groceries a month, forging my path in the world and making a difference on my own. this quote realized it really was ok to give myself permission to mourn the old story and do the hard work of creating a new one. and whew, i am so grateful i get to create it with brandon. he's so patient and kind and i know the physical things of our marriage are the same as our not marriage, living together, dishes, groceries, but the other night we were talking about how different it really is. how different it just feels, like tectonic plates underfoot shifting (not the earthquake kind, but the change of things that until you take stock of differences you may not have noticed). how we are already differently making decisions, as one & as a family now. 

so friends, marriage is really beautiful and fun but there is some mourning to do too. and i'm giving myself the grace to do so. 

ps--i believe this quote applies to EVERYTHING in life, so give yourself the grace to mourn. after the hard things and after the joyful things. the new relationships, the new jobs, the new babies, the marriages, the movings, all the changes. and give yourself the grace to tell Jesus deeply and loudly the mourning feelings and the joy. this week i've been reading psalm 51 and i am so in love with the verse 8 that says Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones you have broken rejoice. i am certainly not a theologian and haven't looked any of this up but when i read that verse it also gives me permission to mourn and rejoice. i take it to mean that God is the one that breaks the bones-the hard things, the sin, the crap in our lives, but he is also the one who gives us permission to carry on after the hard breaking of them. we are allowed to rejoice after those hard things get broken and put aside. God wants us to continue the gladness and joy. he's like, yeah-these things-these bones, are hard and maybe bad or not great but let me break them for you and release you and then let's get on with the celebrating. so, i am letting my bones of the story i had originally written for myself break, and then the creating of new stories and rejoicing will continue. (if you are a theologian and my interpretation of this is 1000% wrong, feel free to tell me and tell me what it really means, i'm down to learn new things but i may still hold onto my interpretation because right now i like it a lot).

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