On Having It All Together

We are less than a month away from deployment #3, and if you ask me how I'm doing, I'll be all like, "We're used to this" and "We just want to get this over with" and "I'm okay, thanks."  And all of that is true.  We are used to this.  And we do want to get it over with.  And overall, I am doing okay.  But I'm noticing some little things.  I'm noticing that small struggles like not finding the right dress for J.'s homecoming this weekend, or running out of my favorite tea this morning, are throwing me off more than they should.  Yesterday I was practically in tears over a frustrating text.  Today I had a lump in my chest all afternoon because I was worried about a work thing that, really, is no big deal.

And truthfully, I'm exhausted.  The knowledge that I'm going to be doing everything I do now, and more, while D. is over in the Middle East for the next year makes everything more exhausting.  I can't focus at work, and my poor boss is so wonderfully forgiving.  But I don't want to not do well.  I want to be strong and capable, and I want to handle all this upheaval in a way that will cause people to be amazed.  I want them to admire me.  I want to excel.  I want to rock this deployment in a way that causes people to marvel at my capabilities.

We do this.  And by "we", I mean women.  Or moms.  Or Army wives.  We are constantly striving to do more, and to do it all perfectly.  I can work all day, drive my kids to their respective activities, and still have a healthy, organic, whole foods meal on the table when my husband gets home from the office.  I will make my own laundry detergent and window cleaner because it's better for the environment and for my family.  My children will be showered, dressed, and well-put-together for church on Sunday morning and I will be smiling and friendly and helpful.  My house will be perfect and my car will be clean and I will fit in yoga and book club and a night out with girlfriends.  My bills will be paid and my children will have the latest styles and I will have my hair professionally highlighted.  There's no reason we can't just do it all.

Except there is.  There is a reason.  The women we see on television or in magazines or even among our friends on Facebook?  They're not showing the whole story.  They don't have it all together.  The picture of the smiling family in front of the perfect Christmas tree?  That kid is covering the grape juice stain on the carpet and you can't see the five baskets of unfolded laundry behind the couch.  But we hide those things, even though we all have them.

So I'm calling foul.  I'm telling you that I don't have it all together.  There are dust-bunnies under my bed that are bigger than my dog.  I don't think A. had a shower last week because I forgot to tell him to take one.  We are flat broke right now.  And I have a zit on my chin that just won't go away, no matter how many essential oils I slather on there.  There are weeks and months when I take things one day at a time, and I fall into bed at night knowing that I failed again.  And it's okay.

So back to deployment.  I will survive.  My kids and I will support D. through all of it.  We will travel a little while he's away, and I will keep up with the bills and the house and car maintenance.  I will work hard at my job and I will smile and be friendly.  I will still have book club and small group and go out with my girlfriends.  But I will also tell you that things suck sometimes.  I may cry for no reason.  I might cancel our plans just because I want to sit in my bed, eat ice cream, and watch mindless reality television.  I might lie and tell you that things are okay even when they're not.  And I might even hibernate a little because I don't have the energy to be a good friend.  Because I'm strong enough to show you that I don't always have it all together.  I'm capable enough to know when I've had enough.  And I'm going to rock this deployment in such a way that is honest, and real, and completely me.  I'll ask for help when I need it.  I'll cry because I'm stressed and exhausted.  I'll cancel our plans because I  know you love me anyway.  And I'll be okay.

And maybe next time you need to fall apart, you'll know it's safe to fall apart with me.  Because I don't have it all together either.  So then?  We can NOT have it all together, together.

Meatless Mondays--Michael Symon's Fettuccine Alfredo

You guys.  This. Stuff. Is. Amazing.  I'm not even really a big fan of Fettuccine Alfredo, truth be told.  It's always too rich for me.  But this looked easy and quick, and I decided to try it, and Oh. My. Gosh.  The crazy thing is that you don't even use cream.  It's just butter and cheese, salt and pepper.  Amazing.

We're not really a "meatless" kind of family.  My husband D., especially, is a meat and potatoes kind of guy.  My daughter J. gave up meat for Lent, though, and hasn't actually eaten a real meal in weeks.  She's been surviving on salad, cottage cheese, and cereal.  I decided tonight, after track practice, she could use some carbs and an actual, you know, dinner.  

This is the first recipe I've made from my new cookbook Michael Symon's 5 in 5, and I'm impressed so far.  I used fresh pasta that I bought at the fruit market, but I forgot to buy really good quality butter and just used Land O' Lakes.  It was still really good.  Also, do yourself a favor and buy real parmesan cheese instead of the icky kind in the green shaker.  It's totally worth it.

So here's the recipe:

And here's how it turned out:

We just finished eating, and I'm already looking forward to having it for lunch tomorrow!

Thank you, Michael Symon!!

On Bread & Wine

Once in a while, I read a book that doesn't feel like a book.  Instead, it feels like a conversation with a friend.  It feels like I'm curled up in my favorite chair with a glass of wine or a cup of tea, and having some girl time with one of my favorite people.  It feels comfortable and real and effortless and life-changing all at the same time.  That's how I felt when reading Bread & Wine by Shauna Niequist. 

I've read Shauna's other two books, Cold Tangerines and Bittersweet, and both of them were amazing.  Both of them made me laugh and made me cry, and I had a sort of life epiphany while reading each of them.  Shauna has a raw, familiar way of writing that just pulls you in and doesn't make you think as much as it makes you feel.  You don't read a chapter and then think about it.  You read a chapter and it affects your soul so that you can't help but reflect. 

In Bread & Wine, Shauna (and I can call her simply Shauna because I feel like we're best friends, or should be!) adds to her usual reflections by expressing her love for good food and sharing that food with friends.  This is the best of both worlds for me as it's two of the things I love most in life:  amazing food, and good conversation.  In the introduction to this book, Shauna writes:

What's becoming clearer and clearer to me is that the most sacred moments, the ones in which I feel the goodness of the world most arrestingly, take place at the table.  The particular alchemy of celebration and food, of connecting people and serving what I've made with my own hands, comes together as more than the sum of their parts.  I love the sounds and smells and textures of life at the table, hands passing bowls and forks clinking against plates and bread being torn and the rhythm and energy of feeding and being fed.

Yes!  I often think about how life revolves around food, and yet the world tells me to place strict limits around my eating.  Holidays and outings and time with friends usually have to do with food:  we celebrate and mourn and pass time with food.  We comfort and console and congratulate with food.  The evidence of each of these shows on my hips and thighs and belly.  There has to be a balance.  And Shauna acknowledges that balance:  feast, and fast.  Eat, and play.  And love...God, friends, family, ourselves.  He made us to do all these things...to fast and to feast and to love.  He gave me my love for good conversation and He gave me my love for good food.  One line that made me burst unexpectedly into tears:  I am God's plan A. 

Shauna Niequist feeds us with this book.  She feeds us emotionally with her words, encouraging from the pages and soothing us with her real-ness and just-like-me-ness.  She feeds us spiritually by taking all that we eat and linking it back to the bread and wine of communion.  She feeds us intellectually by challenging us to change the way we think about food and friends.  And then, she feeds us.  She gives us recipes of all sorts....scrambled eggs and biscuits and turkey burgers, cookies and salad and steak and risotto.  I plan to work my way through all the recipes in this book, though I've only made three of them so far.  I love to cook and am pretty accomplished in the kitchen, and what I love is that these recipes are elegant and guest-worthy, yet easy and do-able for even a novice cook. 

Bread & Wine is a book that will often be found on my kitchen island, either because I've pulled it out to try another recipe, or because I wanted to read that one section just one more time.  It is a book that speaks truth and soothes my soul, feeds my body and challenges my heart.  It is real life at its best.  Shauna wants us to feel and think and eat and pray.  She wants us to bring our friends and family back to the dinner table and to see how many parts of us can be nourished by this simple act.  In her own words:

I want you to invest yourself wholly and deeply in friendship, God's greatest evidence of himself here on earth.  More than anything, I want you to come to the table.  In all sorts of ways, both literally and metaphorically, come to the table.

Come to the table, indeed.

On Picking Up

A couple of days ago I called my friend A.  I had heard that she was interested in joining my Book Club so I gave her a call, even though I hadn't seen her or talked to her in, oh, maybe a year or so.  But A. is one of those friends that you pick up with wherever you left off.  We were laughing and catching up and it was like we had just talked yesterday.  We laughed about our houses being a mess and our kids being obnoxious and sassy.  We remembered moments we had been together before and how great it was.  We picked up right where we left off and it was like we were the best of friends again.  I love that.

A. and I are in different seasons of life.  She has four kids aged eight and under, while I have two teenagers and an almost-ten year old.  She's still doing diapers and finger foods while I'm back to working part-time and thinking about high-school graduation. Things are different for us, and as a result it's not quite natural for us to hang out together on a regular basis. 

And yet...we've vowed to talk once in a while.  We've determined to call or get together for lunch every so often, because someday....when her kids are all in school and life is a little less, you know, Mom-ish....we will get together often.  We will be close, amazing friends.  Because it's there now, that friendship.  It's just hiding behind all the other stuff of life. 

I think it's cool how friendships morph over time.  Especially those deep, lasting friendships. There are times when you talk every day and tell each other everything.  There are weeks when you're both busy and exist only on a quick text checking up on each other.  It's life.  But if you trust the friendship...if you trust the friend...you know that someday there will be time for each other again.  And it will just pick up right where it left off. 

On Wanderlust

I love that word--wanderlust--because it so perfectly describes how I feel about travel.  It's not just that I love to travel.  It's not just that I enjoy seeing new places and experiencing new things.  It's that I lust for it.  It feels like I need it like I need air.  I value it as an important part of my life. 

D. knows that I can only go a couple of months without going somewhere.  He knows that as life gets crazy and we spend all our money on those pesky bills and food and gas and stuff, I can be content in our home for a few weeks before I start to get the itch to go somewhere else.  Of course, I would love for that somewhere else to be London or the Caribbean or Seattle or Denver.  But it doesn't have to be.  It could be as simple as an overnight trip to the other side of the state.  It could be a weekend camping.  Or, in desperate times, it could just be a day trip somewhere different.  A change of scenery, so to speak.

For the last couple of weeks, my Wanderlust has been particularly insistent.  Many of those close to me have been traveling, while I've been here plugging along in my everyday life.  My friend C. was on a cruise in the Caribbean, as were my parents.  And my husband D. was on a work trip to Africa of all places, seeing new things and having new experiences.  And I needed to get Away.  However, our finances and time being what they are right now, there was no Away in sight.  So, I asked D. if we could do something different over the weekend, and then I planned it. 

Ann Arbor is not far from us...only an hour away...but neither of us have spent much if any time there.  But it's a college town (obviously...U of M) and I knew we would find something fun and different to do.  And part of the fun is the research.  I found a Natural History Museum on campus and decided that was the thing.  I put a shout-out on Facebook looking for fun places to eat, and my fellow foodies came through as always. 

It was only a few hours, but we had a great time.  We played:

 That's A. pretending to get hit by the massive club-like tail of an ankylosaurus.

And here's D., J., and A. in a hollowed-out canoe.  Fun! 

We explored the museum and saw the planetarium, which was a surprisingly good show.  Poor D. had two little boys next to him who wrestled the entire time, but he still learned where the phrase "dog days of summer" came from along with the rest of us. 

And then, of course, we ate.  We went to a fun little restaurant called Prickly Pear Southwest Cafe, which my friend M. recommended, and it was delicious!  I had something outside the box for me:  Chicken Poblano Rellenos. 

 It was unbelievable, and I was so happy with my choice!

We even got home from our outing fairly early...by 8:00, and had time for a family viewing of this week's episode of Survivor, but my Wanderlust is temporarily satisfied.  Sometimes, all it takes is a day away doing something different than you normally do.

Oh, and eating good food.  For me, travel is almost always about the food!!

On Giving Up

I haven't always practiced the tradition of Lent.  When I was a kid, all my Catholic friends talked about it, and gave up things like chocolate or Atari, and I didn't really understand the point.  But then, I thought it was just a Catholic thing, and I didn't pay much attention.  It was only as an adult that I started to understand the concept of Lent, and it's only been for a few years that I've been practicing it myself.

Last year was pretty tragic, if you want to know the truth.  I jumped on the church staff bandwagon and decided to go with The Daniel Fast,.  While it was a great experience for many of my friends, I found myself focused more on food than ever before, leaving myself little time to focus on God.  My husband D. decided to do it with me, and he's a picky eater in some ways.  So while I could throw some refried beans in a whole wheat tortilla and eat that for lunch just about every day, I had a hard time finding enough non-meat protein for my meat-and-potatoes-loving, non-refried-bean-eating honey.  I couldn't figure out what to cook for dinner every night and it seemed like ALL I could think about.  Well, and then there's the whole thing about how it put me in the hospital.

Okay, okay.  It's entirely probable that The Daniel Fast didn't actually put me in the hospital.  That was actually the fault of my gallbladder and about 30 small gallstones that gave me gut-wrenching, cold-sweat-producing, I-can't-breathe-because-of-the-pain problems.  So really it was my gallbladder that put me in the hospital for a week and on the "nothing by mouth" diet for just as long.  It's just that my first gallbladder attacks happened to coincide with my self-proclaimed "end of The Daniel Fast", and now the two are forever connected in my brain.  So, right...no Daniel Fast for me this year.

I've been praying about what it will be for me this year...what God wants me to "give up" for Lent.  And while I don't have an answer quite yet, I do have a few ideas.  One idea that seems like a good thing for me is to give up listening to music of any kind while I'm in the car.  For me, this will be rough.  I like nothing better while I'm driving than to plug in my iPod and sing along to my music.  Some of it is secular music, but a lot of it is praise music as well, so it's not that the music itself is bad.  It's just that maybe for those six weeks, I will use that time differently.  Maybe I will use it to count my many blessings, or to pray for my family and my church and my leaders, or to think about my morning Bible reading.  Maybe giving up music in the car is an intentional way to enrich my prayer life. 

Every year, I also mention to my kids that we're coming up on the season of Lent, and I ask them if they're planning to give anything up for it.  I don't force it on them; they're all old enough to make their own decisions and make it part of their own faith.  They've done well in the past, giving up fast food or whatever.  None of them have made decisions yet as far as I know, so it will be interesting to see what they come up with. 

What about you?  Do you practice Lent?  What does it look like for you this year?

On Hospitality

Last week I read a novel for my book club.  It was a good book all the way through, but one very insignificant line in the book took me off-guard.  It was just a simple comment, but one that has stuck with me and that I've thought about over and over again since then. 

The author was contrasting a large group dinner in India with one here in the States.  She compared our Thanksgiving dinner with a family dinner in India.  When those in India get together with family, often on a weekly basis, it usually consists of huge groups of people, cousins and neighbors and in-laws numbering well into the twenties and above.  The women all get up early, gathering to cook together, laughing and talking and discussing everything while making dish after dish after dish. 

Here, when it's Thanksgiving, we all stress out about everything that needs to be done.  We get up alone at the crack of dawn, making lists and freaking out about what we're forgetting or how moist the turkey will be.  Everything has to be perfect or it will ruin the entire holiday.  Sure, we have fun eating together and watching football and playing games after the dinner, but the preparation is nothing if it's not stressful. 

What's the difference?  Why does the preparation in India tend to be full of joy and community, while for the most part Americans cook seperately in their own homes and then bring their "I hope it's good enough" dish to a dinner cooked by a sweaty, stressed-out host who is anxious for the whole thing to just be over with?

I know I'm generalizing.  I know it doesn't always happen this way.  There are many families in America who love cooking Thanksgiving dinner and who do it joyfully with friends and family.  I'm sure there are also Indian families who stress out about what they're cooking.  But something about what the author wrote rang true for me.  I want that joyful community dinner experience.  I want to gather in a kitchen with friends and cook whatever it is we're cooking while laughing and chatting.  I want there to be less stress and more fun in entertaining.  I want to invite people over even if I haven't mopped my kitchen floor in weeks, knowing that they will care more about the conversation than the cleanliness of my chaotic home.  I want to bake cookies for a friend's visit and laugh together with her about how I burned the bottoms.  Too often, I stress about the "stuff" and don't take enough joy in the "who".  I want it to be about the people, not about the food. 

I'm pretty sure that's what hospitality really is.