Category Archives: marriage

the point of the story: how journaling is a healing work

Posted on by August 14, 2023

I looked for a pen but there were none on my desk – none, except for the light blue one which is too pale for journaling, and the .005 drawing pen I have a crush on and am afraid to use up. But Vin keeps a bunch of pens in a mug on the shelf in our room, so I went there and found the motherlode of blue pens: That’s mine, and that one’s mine, and oh yes, that one’s mine, too. How did all of these get here?

the point of the story: how journaling is a healing work

When I finished pilfering it, the mug was still full of green pens – his favorite – and some black ones, but he knows I won’t touch black pens unless the end of the world has arrived, or blue pens no longer exist…which might be the same thing.

Someday my great-great-great grandkids will go through all my journals, and they’ll find a ridiculous number of entries including complaints about bad pens, missing pens, or favorite pens running out of ink. Some of those entries start like this:

A quick minute with an unfavored pen, waiting for Reagan to finish up on the potty at bedtime. (In terrible, thick black ink.)

Well, this pen might not work. (Ink fading on the upward strokes.)

Some quick thoughts with an ugly pen – my kingdom for some blue ink – before falling asleep. (There is no curse in Elvish, Entish, or the tongues of men for how I feel about black gel pens.)

Aaand we have a wonderful blue-inked pen! I found it hidden in the buffet drawer.

Other journal entries have remarks like these in the middle:

Wow. That was atrocious handwriting. Partly the pen’s fault – the good ball point is over at my desk. (Black ink should never be used on a particularly emotional day.)

And some entries end like this:

See? Handwriting. I really should find a better pen.

I think I despise this pen for journaling.

Aaand I hate this pen.

Journaling for me is like mental housework – twice this month I only got a short paragraph in before some interruption hit, and then it was almost two weeks before I even touched the journal again. Once I did, I dove in to grasp at all the emotional and spiritual clutter that had accumulated over those weeks to see what would emerge. Like neglecting laundry for weeks at a time, when I finally dug through the piles and straightened things up, I found treasures I thought were lost a long time ago.

Journaling is good for both normal tidying and also the occasional necessary deep cleaning. Writing is a healing work.

I thought that when we started writing full time I’d have more time to journal, but that hasn’t been the case because most days, all my writing time is done at the computer. But other times I end the week with journaling and get to start the next week with journaling, too, and it’s in times like those when I realize the weekend in between sometimes feels no longer than the thin line separating the two entries.

But there’s so much good to be had from sitting down with a good pen and lined pages, to force ourselves to slow our thinking long enough for our fingers to catch up with. It gives us the time we need to draw deeper things out of ourselves that we can’t always access while just typing – or worse, texting.

If those great-great-great grandkids ever go through my journals, they’ll also find that my published books left a lot of things out. Not every behavior was mentioned in Upside Down, and not everything God told me during that period was divulged in Oh My Soul.

And in the book I’m working on now, not every conflict, attack, and catastrophe that occurred during our adoption process and the first few years afterward is detailed out. Partly because it’s not meant to be some dramatic exposé. But mostly it’s to protect the guilty, and the innocent, and the misunderstood…and sometimes those are the same people, but not always.

I wrote a while back about the struggle to tell our story when it overlaps with the stories of others. And now, several months later, I can see that the process of filtering our story has distinct layers. First, pull all the material that might work, then go back through all of that and run it through a finer sieve. Whatever’s left after all the sifting is, so far, what gets to stay. Taking the time to work through that process generates an intuitive sense of what fits and what doesn’t.

The significant stuff that’s left out isn’t eliminated because it had no impact on the story. It’s left out because it’s not the point of the story. And sometimes (often) the things that were meant for harm don’t deserve all the attention the enemy wants them to have.

I couldn’t see it then when we were in the middle of it, but now I can look at the progress with a bigger, broader perspective and see the good that came (and is still coming) from awful circumstances, from walking through a season of darkness and brokenness. And part of the good that comes from it is the maturity and equanimity to see that those harmful issues, circumstances, and people were never the focus of our story, no matter how much they overshadowed it.

Those hard things were just ingredients, or seasoning, that flavored that time of our lives. Their effect was like bay leaves in soup – they influence flavor, but they’re indigestible. We’re not meant to internalize them. So we take them out so no one chokes on them or ingests too much of their influence.

And as I work through this project, that is one of the other ways that writing is healing me.

If these books…represent the new memoir at its best, it’s because they were written with love. They elevate the pain of the past with forgiveness, arriving at a larger truth about families in various stages of brokenness. There’s no self-pity, no whining, no hunger for revenge…We are not victims, they want us to know. We come from a tribe of fallible people, prisoners of our own destructiveness, and we have endured to tell the story without judgment and to get on with our lives.

– William Zinsser, Inventing the Truth: The Art and Craft of Memoir

We’re only meant to be an open book to God. Even our spouses can’t be expected to handle it all – and if you want to argue this out with me, first tell me how opening fire with all your unfiltered thoughts and criticisms is working out for you.

the point of our story: how journaling is a healing work

This stack is my current required reading for writing memoir, as opposed to the most recent crappy memoir I read – which I won’t call out here, but you can easily find it if you poke around my Goodreads page. And actually, one of these is a wild card, though it’s a highly recommended one. (I have known such wild cards to be terrible, but not often. See above reference to crappy memoir.)

The truth is that memoir writing, like every other kind of writing, comes in both good and bad varieties. That’s the only standard that matters. Whether the authors of certain notorious recent memoirs ought to have revealed as much as they did, breaking powerful taboos and social covenants, isn’t finally the issue. The issue is: Is it a good book or a bad book?

– William Zinsser, Inventing the Truth: The Art and Craft of Memoir

But these other three should be safe – you can’t go wrong with E.B. White and William Zinsser; you’re almost never sorry for reading them. They are writers for writers, who make you want to write.

These are the kind of books you shouldn’t read on your day off because you catch yourself putting notes into your phone for Monday, and those notes turn into sentences and the sentences turn into paragraphs, and a few minutes later you’re like, Oh, screw it. You grab your pen and notebook and start working in earnest.

And if you read Vin’s recent post, you know how dangerous that is. Those weekends, you know, are sometimes as thin as the line between two journal entries, and time for rest and Sabbath is important. So I might be at risk of having my books confiscated for the weekend.

Which, come to think of it…might be how I lost all those blue pens, too.

plowing through: finding grace and balance in seasons of crazy

Posted on by July 7, 2021

The weekend is here but the house is a disaster, so let me introduce you to our normal method of tackling it: The Quick Boogie.

For those unfamiliar with the concept of a Quick Boogie, it is when everyone launches into a five-minute clean-up – a few people pick up the floor and put stuff away, someone throws dishes in the dishwasher, someone wipes down counters, and we all take turns bossing Finnegan, who, as the resident toddler, made most of the mess in the first place.

plowing through: finding grace and balance in seasons of crazy

Usually five minutes is enough. At the very least, it enables us to sit on the couch without getting gouged by a pick-up stick.

But this weekend, to indicate how much (or how little) sleep I’ve had over the last few weeks with a teething baby, I announced it like this:

“We need to do a quick boogie, real quick.”

And then – don’t try this at home, husbands – Vince announced, “Watch out, kids. She’s using redundancies.”

I gave him a Look and told him to watch out himself, or I’d start using adverbs, too. (In a marriage of writers, this is how fights start.)

“In that case,” he said, “I’ll quickly leave the couch.”

“You’d better, or I will violently kick you off it.”

The night before, Kavanagh woke up right as I was going to bed, and he stayed awake until 3 am, all kicky and restless. The next day was a filming day, and it was hard. I couldn’t remember simple pieces that I knew perfectly the night before while rehearsing, sentences and phrases wouldn’t come out clearly (hence the new “vabucolary” I invented, mentioned in the last newsletter), and we just sorta plowed through it.

Toward the end of the day I was utterly unmotivated to do anything. I didn’t want to be productive, and I didn’t want to think.

I wanted to veg on the couch. I wanted to clock out hours early and be done. I wanted to take a bath and read, but I was so exhausted that would’ve been dangerous, at least for the books. (I’ve only ever dropped one book in the tub, but that was Gulliver’s Travels, and it deserved it.)

I was out of gas. But when I realized that, it felt less defeating than failure. It wasn’t failure, it was exhaustion. When cars run out of gas, we don’t scrap them – we refill their tank. And we learn to pay better attention to the gauge before we run on empty (some of us, at least).

It’s hard to be clever and helpful and hopeful when you’re exhausted. It’s hard to think clearly or to know what to do next when we are too tired to even trust our judgment on simple things, like our ability to pair socks.

I know people like to say “Sleep when the baby sleeps” but that only applies to newborns around here. If we followed that advice to its logical extension, such as “Fold laundry when the baby folds laundry” or “Write when the baby writes,” this place would be a wrecking zone, like a Fisher Price tornado ripped through a library after loading up at a taco truck.

So when Kav is napping, it is our chance to work with two hands – exhausted or not. There’s no guarantee how long a six-month-old will nap, or how long his three-year-old brother will let him. We do other important things when he’s awake, like answer email, package books, and swear at the internet for being too slow.

As a result, most of my journal entries begin with “Kav is napping,” and, also as a result, are very short. Sometimes they look like this, broken into several efforts throughout the day:

Kav is napping so we are working. The next three sentences are about children playing too loudly and our need to reestablish quiet naptime rules to prevent me from turning into Raging Dragon Mommy. But it’s too late for now because Kav is already awake…

The next attempt yields seventeen lines of family events and work stuff; coffee is mentioned twice. That entry ends with, But Kavanagh is awake again, fifteen minutes later.

And then, one more try:

Aaaand he’s back to sleep, now that it’s time to clock out for the day. But Vin took the kids to youth group so maybe I can squeeze in a few more minutes.

[Nine lines here, in which I gripe about a podcast I got sucked into that turned out to be a condescending sales pitch. Boo, and also, hiss.]

And Kav is awake again. See? It was just a few more minutes.

Don’t misunderstand me; I love these tiny days. I love his wakefulness and don’t want to miss it and his blue-eyed smiles. But every new season brings new structures and routines, and learning to steward our time best in that adjustment takes some trial and error. So when he sleeps, we plow through.

Today, it’s warm and he’s just wearing a onesie; he falls asleep as I nurse him at the desk, and I pull my flannel off the back of the chair and wrap him up in it. At six months old, he’s still small enough that it makes a perfect blanket.

We had thunderstorms all last week, and I was in the bathroom when the loudest clap of thunder I’ve ever heard shook our house. It must’ve been right on top of us; the lights flickered, and the subsequent rumbling made me wonder if we were having another huge earthquake.

My first instinct was to look at the battery on my phone and immediately turn it off. My phone was woefully undercharged the last two times we had a major outage, including when the earthquake hit.

My next move was to down the glass of water I was holding, and refill it. Then use the toilet, and flush. These are the things we regret not doing as soon as the power is out and we wish we still could.

So I did all those things and went downstairs, and the lights were still on and everything was fine. It was just thunder. But every so often it isn’t, and we’re caught off guard – unprepared, slacking off, or just undercharged and dehydrated. There’s a balance to be had in plowing through. And there’s no shame for seasons of craziness when you can’t help it, but there’s also no harm (and much good) in getting in the habit of keeping things refilled, and charged, and flushed, and ready. Like ourselves.

So I preach to myself:

Rest when you can. Work when the baby sleeps. Drink the glass of water.

Write the sentences when they are fresh and flowing. Keep short accounts, and forgive the person who hurt you.

Don’t overschedule, so you have room to be impulsive for the right opportunities. Do that thing you keep putting off. Or, if it’s not really not worth doing, take it off your to-do list.

Hug the kids when they pass you in the kitchen. Teach the toddler over and over and over, to the point of redundancy, how to clean up after himself.

Show grace to yourself and others, as we all plow through — even if we have to use adverbs.

order of business: what we do to win the day

Posted on by January 26, 2019

Somehow I forgot about this phase of parenting toddlers. The floor is covered in abandoned puzzles and piles of blocks, the couch is drowning in buttons he dumped all over, and throw pillows are arranged like so many lily pads across the living room. You can barely walk through here. The Floor is Lava was obviously invented as a way to avoid picking up toys while still navigating through a room without stabbing your foot on an action figure.

order of business: what we do to win the day

But instead of cleaning up, Finn is distracted by improvising new forms of gymnastics. Three-year-olds are geniuses; leave it to them to discover that a large couch cushion can be used successfully as both a slide and a pole vault.

And let me just confess that I’m not the cool, laid-back mom-of-many that some of you might give me credit for. No matter how simple or minimalist we endeavor to be, there’s no getting around the fact that nine people and four cats create a ton of noise, clutter, and movement. Multiplied by physical pain from nursing, and magnified by looming deadlines and not enough time or quiet space to meet them…all this at once makes fire shoot out my ears.

Or lava, whatever.

It’s a quiet, cold evening when the blood moon is eclipsing, and we get Finn to clean up all his messes without resorting to too much bribery, manipulation, threats, and gimmicks. The kids play outside in the dark, candles are lit inside, and this is the kind of atmosphere that fits us, that we long for: Dinner’s frying, the baby is burping, Crowder’s singing the whole world’s about to change and you can’t help believing him, but you’re also praying the change will be good. We resist fear and choose to walk in boldness to the future He holds.

And I need some good change. Because it turns out, part of living the dream of writing full time includes the nightmare of technical and administrative work. It’s been consuming my weeks lately and I’ve been so frustrated, feeling thwarted as a writer who almost never has time to write.

People talk about love languages all the time but, just for a second, can we acknowledge that there might also be such a thing as Hate Languages? Because if they’re real, red tape and techy stuff are mine. Hates them we does. The urgent tasks suck up the day and there’s no time left to create, and deadlines loom without content to draw from. Toward the end of the month, it’s Cutthroat Kitchen for writers – I’m trying to make a gourmet meal with only leftovers in a mostly empty fridge.

So the Lord keeps bringing me back to this concept of Quadrant 2, or what I’ve often called filling the lake: doing those beautiful things that fill us before we need to pour out, like reading, writing, studying, brainstorming, and investing in relationships.

And maybe it sounds dumb, but I needed permission to prioritize those essentials, simply because many of them are what I most want to do. I tend to put them off until the end of the day, and often there’s not enough of the day left to do them.

Quadrant 2 encompasses activities that are important but not urgent, and easily put off because of their lack of urgency. When put off for too long, though, they become urgent Quadrant 1 activities, messes that need cleaned up and fires that need to be put out (or lava, whatever).

Breakdown results from avoiding that kind of routine maintenance, and by then we have a situation that is more expensive, more painful, and more time-consuming. The work isn’t always performed as well because of its frantic nature. It’s the difference between reading books for fun because we want to learn (Quadrant 2) versus cramming for a test because we just want to pass it (Quadrant 1). Or the difference between picking up your toys when you’re done with them versus waiting until you’ve destroyed the living room and your mama has lost her ever-loving mind.

Urgent matters are usually visible. They press on us; they insist on action….Importance, on the other hand, has to do with results. If something is important, it contributes to your mission, your values, your high priority goals.

– Stephen Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

You can do it early or you can do it in haste, and we’re living it out both ways. There are so many things I’m glad I learned years ago so I don’t have to figure them out now (hat tip to my friends Microsoft Word, WordPress, and Mailchimp). But there are a million other things I still need to learn, and I wish I knew them yesterday. And to be honest, there are plenty of things I don’t even want to learn. Here’s looking at you, Photoshop.

But when I fill the lake and work with His priorities and my own giftings instead of against them, I do better work. I do it with joy. I’m a happier wife and mama, a better friend, and a more effective leader. It creates the atmosphere that fits me and fills me.

It is the difference between getting up early and pulling a 12-hour shift to get it all done, or getting up on time to spend the first hour in study and prayer, and finding that the work is finished an hour early.

And I’m pulling overtime on a Saturday, but if there’s an easy way to do it, it’s this: Sitting on the couch with a sleepy Kavanagh, with the same music playing that he heard so much in utero, and the biggest distraction I face is his occasional eruption of spitup. This quiet time is sponsored by Vince working through his own hate language – he has the rest of the kids downstairs, painting.

I can hear the paint rollers running back and forth and it’s a liberating comfort to know that progress is happening downstairs without me. It will be beautiful when they’re done. I am up here doing my part of the work, they are down there doing their part of the work, and we all enjoy the fruit of everyone’s efforts.

And looking back, I can see how He’s been telling me this for a long time. We had a worship night at church last weekend, and I heard a song I’ve only heard once or twice before, and wondered where it’s been all my life.

You go before I know
That You’ve even gone to win my war
Your love becomes my greatest defense
It leads me from the dry wilderness

And all I did was praise
All I did was worship
All I did was bow down
All I did was stay still

– Rita Springer, Defender

And I needed to hear it because even though there’s work that I can do, most of the big work is out of my hands. There’s breakthrough we need that only He can do. Just like last year, when we knew He was moving us but we didn’t know where or how He was going to do it. We never would’ve guessed the outcome. No amount of bribery, manipulation, threats, and gimmicks could have brought that kind of resolution, and it won’t now, either. We win through surrender, just like always.

On New Year’s Eve I was nursing Kavanagh on the couch, and suddenly the fireworks that had been sporadic for two days went off all at once, all around us, and I realized it must be midnight. I looked up and there they were, out every window; you could see them all the way from Houston and Big Lake in the east to downtown Wasilla in the west, and there were more than a dozen eruptions between – around the highway, up Vine, along Knik Goose Bay, Fairview Loop, all across the valley.

I had never thought of what fireworks would look like from this bluff overlooking the valley. It was magical and marvelous and riotous, and wholly unexpected. It was like the whole world was about to change. And God leaned in close and said, See? I’m not done surprising you yet.