Belonging

I am really lucky to have met my wife at nineteen.

Rarely, at various moments over the years, I have wondered what it would have been like to have had more time for dating, for total freedom and independence, for trying on different relationship identities, and growing alone. But the truth is, when I met G, I knew within months that I wanted to marry HER and have children with HER.

G and I have been really different people from the start. We shared a complimentary sense of humor, some common core values, and a few similar interests (a love of water perhaps the most critical), but our families of origin, our life experiences, our theological understandings, our educational interests and histories, our hobbies and likes, our approaches to everything from money to goal setting, and even the music we listened to most were vastly different.

Over the years, we've had many jokes about how different we were when we met. We used to say that if we had met just a few years earlier, we might not have even liked one another, let alone fallen in love. For a while, I joked that my family must be paying G to date me.

Now, over a decade later, G and I have found that while we've grown together in many ways, we've also grown in very different directions. We share more in common now, but this is largely because we've built a life together. As individuals, sometimes we have wondered if now we have less in common than when we met.

I no longer see many commonalities as necessary to a deeply fulfilling marriage. Not a day has gone by since the day I met G when she hasn't helped me in some way to grow as a human being. I am a very different person than I was at nineteen, not in spite of my marriage, but because of it.

More than anything, what I find in my marriage, is a "deep knowing." G knows me as fully as a human being as probably anyone ever will, and she chooses love. There is something that is deeply fulfilling in receiving true-knowing followed by true, authentic, willing love. In my marriage, in my home, in the family G and I have created together, I belong. That's a feeling unlike any other...belonging.

I am starting to think most people spend their lives in various emotional and mental states that relate to belonging. And starting to think that one of our spiritual tasks is finding a sense of peace in an eternal belonging.

My new hero is Emily Yeung!

Either that or I am really jealous of all the coool things she gets to do ;-).

I don't have a tv, so thanks to YouTube for this:

http://www.antiracistparent.com/2009/06/30/girls-can-do-anything-ask-emily-yeung/

And OMG I feel like snowtubing now after the end to that vid!

And Now Some Art From Our House

A park near our home features art sculptures in the summer. Today there was a special 12-hour event of community sculpture making. I took the kids and while we were there we contributed two pink prints the kids made and two tie dye fabric-like paper scraps. It was a great time! We took the bus there, and afterward we walked to the store where K. decided to draw a small crowd with some mad crazy ASL.

Tonight the kids were telling my mom all about our day over the phone. My mom asked if I took pictures of the sculpture-making. I didn't. Crap, that would have been such a good idea, but I didn't even think of it.

So, as a tribute to our day, here is some art anyway. This is a rainbow, by M. You can see he started to erase it, but I ran in and told him to stop the presses so I could take a picture.

We saw a beautiful double-rainbow on G. and my wedding anniversary, and the kids have been absolutely enthralled by rainbows since. We've done some science, making rainbows with a flashlight and jar of water. It's not as easy as I had hoped, but G. has become pretty adept at it.

Life is good. I want to live in an awareness of that.

"This Property Protected By Jesus Christ"

While dropping M.'s signed IEP off at the school district office, I noticed this sticker on the window of a car parked next to me. I feel like I've seen this before, but it has been long enough that the whole idea was quite novel.

I find the wording: "Warning: This Property Protected By Jesus Christ" a bit irreverent. Jesus isn't concerned with your property. In fact, Jesus himself said *you* needn't be concerned with your property.

That said, the rest of the text is simply evangelistic, and I don't see that as a bad thing. The idea is, "you might think what you want is material in nature, but in fact, you want something much deeper, something more intangible, and you *can* have that." Doesn't seem to be a bad message after all.

This hole you feel deep within, it can't be filled with material things.

On Sticks In the Car and Delights of Motherhood

This is what I always wanted, ever since I was a little girl. To be a mother.

I am a mother now, and I love the little delights this brings. My kids went to the park the other day and wanted to bring home some stray sticks with which they couldn't stand to part. Now, I get into my car, and while driving to work, find a stick on my dash. It's like a "your kids were here!" sign etched there. And it made me smile.