Abide

Things I am good at:

* Planning

* Dreaming

* Organizing

Things I am not good at:

* Letting things be out of my control

* Trusting

* Waiting

I am soo not good at waiting. Zero patience for this girl.

I have a lot of dreams for my life right now. My eyes have been opened up into this whole new world that I so desire to be a part of, and I have been doing everything in my power to enter into it.

And I have... little... by... little. That's what writing for CinCHouse is about. And probably trying to write for more things like that. I love writing. It nourishes me.

So there's this book... that I wrote... and it has my heart and soul behind it. And I deeply believe in it and so badly want it to be published.

And that is what this Spring entailed for me- querying agents, sending in proposals, sample chapters, outlines, and one-sentence-summaries.

Mostly I get rejected. Which is fine. It's part of the business. All of the great authors have "I got rejected 30 times before my book became an international bestseller!" stories. Maybe that will be my fate too? Probably not. But maybe?

However, in early May I got my first non-rejection! They were so interested that this agent (who was my dream agent BTW) asked to see the full manuscript. Which was a big deal in my brain and dream world. Then Lane and I went off to Costa Rica and Every Single Day I thought about that agent reading my book and what she thought. The Second that I could check e-mail, I most certainly did, and.... there it was. The non-rejection had become a rejection. She gave me the whole "we loved your work, gave it great consideration in full-staff meetings, and while I do believe that it is a worthwhile and significant project I don't ultimately feel we are the ones to represent your work"... or something like that. Not like I've memorized that e-mail or anything.

So I was super bummed. BUT- I knew that I had prayed like crazy over this whole process and entrusted it to God when I sent my manuscript off to her over e-mail. So, she just wasn't the one. I'm okay with that. I trust Him.

Then. The Very Next Day, this other agent I had contacted like, 2 months ago, e-mailed to ask for my full manuscript. Seriously? Excitement mixed with hesitation. Excitement. Hesitation again. Maybe some doubt. Wonder.

And he still has it and I haven't heard back. So I'm still querying my little heart away trying to get in touch with other agents out there who just maybe possibly could believe in this as much as I do and see a place for it in our world.

In the meantime I try to sit back and be patient. Believe that there is a plan for me and that this desire and dream won't be wasted. And not chart this process out on my own schedule with a month-by-month checklist of when my Life Plan will come to fruition.

I'm trying to learn the meaning of Abide. Dwell. Just trust, let things happen, and sit on the promises I have been given. Hasn't the rest of my life all pointed to the fact that God really does have my best in mind and things ALWAYS work out better than I ever could have planned them, even if there was some heartache involved in the mix?

There is a Plan. I'm trying to trust that. Believe it, and cling to it.

His secret ingredient

I have to admit that I am a health-food addict. I'm not crazy psycho about it, but I do love it.

Whole grains, black beans, quinoa, red peppers, and spinach speak to my heart. My mom calls my recipes 'weird' and 'different'. :) They're actually really yummy, but don't typically include cream of chicken soup. I try to limit eating dessert to once a week- I make myself EARN those suckers!

Most mornings I'll make a smoothie for breakfast- the ingredient list:

Organic, nonfat, plain yogurt

Tofu

Pure orange juice

Banana

Frozen strawberries

And protein powder if I'm feeling extra wild

It has taken some time, but I have been able to teach Lane this very complicated recipe. I have entrusted my breakfast to him a little at a time, and some mornings he will take over the breakfast-creating responsibilities.

This morning I went out for a run and before I left he told me that he would make our smoothies while I was gone.

This is how it went down:

I come back in huffing and puffing, grab the waiting beauty of a smoothie out of the fridge excited to replenish my body with some healthy strong stuff.

I get about halfway through and look over at The Boy who is grinning ear to ear.

Me: That make me nervous... What?

L: How's your smoothie?

Me: Delicious...

L: I put a secret in there... ICE CREAM! A couple scoops of it! Isn't it great!

I have no words for this. Apparently we still need to work on what exactly does, and does not qualify as a health food.

Seriously, it was THAT good

Hi, friends! Happy Monday to ya. Hope y'all had a relaxing, restoring, and fun weekend!

Mine was wonderful.

I don't really have anything of much consequence to share with you, but there were a few highlights that were so unbelievably epic that I feel I would be doing a disservice to not share them.

My Saturday morning had to, of course, include Garage Saleing. Is that a word? My spellchecker says no, but Saling is so wrong as well. You know what I mean. Garage Saling speaks to my heart. The thrill of the hunt. Turning another man's trash into your treasure. For CHEAP! Not knowing what the day will hold... I'm getting carried away just thinking about it.

So we hit up our first one (which was labeled an ESTATE sale, so I was THRILLED, but they deceived me- it was just a normal sale and I was mad at them) and they had okay stuff, but they had doors. As in closet doors. I'm semi-addicted to doors. I'll show you a picture of what I've done with one of them- she's beautiful. I needed more. But they were asking for 5 bucks a door and that was just too much for me because I wanted two of them. I was thinking more like 2 dollars. I'm cheap that way.

So I bypassed them with a broken heart not knowing when I would find a garage sale selling TWO of my beloved doors.

THEN! Last night we were driving back home and I passed by this same overpricing, lying house and the doors hadn't sold so they had them out front with a FREE! sign next to them! The stars aligned, heaven opened up and GAVE ME MY DOORS! I am beyond excited. I made Lane go home, get our bigger car and stuff those two doors in the back like there was no tomorrow.

At first he got annoyed with my FREE! sign loving shenanigans, but now he just accepts it. Many-a-thing have we taken from someone else's Free/trash pile. I'm not afraid.

That was awesome thing number 1.

Awesome thing number 2 was waking up early this morning and going on a long bike ride towards the mountains next to the river in the not-too-hot-early-chill with my hubster. It was gorgeous. I am in love with Colorado deeply.

And church was awesome too. Way awesome.

THEN. I made these:

Yes, my friends. You saw that right. Those are homemade bagels. They are life-changing.

And just to back up that point, read the note that I left on them for L to read when he came home.

It is a true statement.

Never again am I buying bagels from a store.

I made different toppings: parm, onion, garlic, sea salt. Next time I might experiment with the dough more. YUM!

And, the best part is how super easy they are. If you have a bread machine it's best, but a KitchenAid does the trick too.

Here's the recipe of the yummyness if you so dare to click. This is my warning. It WILL change your life.

5 years!

Today is our 5 year anniversary!

Wow. What a fun, amazing, difficult, loaded, significant, adventurous, life-changing five years we have had together. It's been quite the journey!

In our still relatively young marriage, we have been through some major stuff. Looking at the marriage that we have today though, I am so thankful for the road that we have been on because of the strength that it has given us.

In honor of today, I am going to take you guys on a little picture tour of our relationship:

We met in October of our freshman year of college, almost 9 years ago. I was immediately in love but thought he was way out of my league, so it took 5 months of him chasing after to me to prove that it was me he wanted. Once we started dating, we were done for. Pretty much on our first date we told each other we wanted to marry each other- at 18 years old! We were crazy. It was really fun being able to share our college experience together; we had such an amazing community of friends, were Young Life leaders together, and did all sorts of fun Colorado stuff like tubing rivers, rock-climbing, back-packing, and camping together.

Here we are building our team work on a camping trip at the ripe ol' age of 19!

Fast-forward a couple years. The boy proposed.

He knelt on his knee and said he talked to my dad so I could go pick out a white dress. It's our love story so I just said yes.

I'm quoting T Swift for those of you not tracking... that is pretty much how it went though.

Engagement Pic:

The Big Day: June 3, 2005

After said Big Day, we enjoyed about 2 months of traveling and hanging out before Lane had to report for 5 months of training at Fort Sill, OK. Officer Basic Course is calling our name in this picture. Our entire life was packed into the back of his blazer, and we were hitting the road entering into Army Life. Oh man, I had NO IDEA what I was in for!

The youth. The innocence. The SKINNY people we were back then! So much has changed!

After OBC, we headed off to Fort Benning, in Columbus, GA. I taught high school social studies while Lane did his Army Thing and did it good.

Here's my man after graduating Ranger School. I'm pinning the coveted Ranger Tab on his shoulder. He lost nearly 30 pounds in his 12 weeks there. It was crazy.

Here we are enjoying an EXTRAVAGANT meal before Deployment #2. Maybe 1. Maybe 3? We definitely did not hold back on any of our final meals before deployments. They all blend together. That's what the Army does to ya.

And here we are in the backyard of our house in Georgia for our final day there. Moving to Colorado was the best decision we've ever made. We were very clearly called out of the Active Duty Army... but I do miss Georgia, the Army, our friends, our church, my work...

But... this new life together in Colorado has been good. In the deepest, most significant, fun, sacred sense of the word good.

These five years have held so much for us, it's hard to imagine what the next 5, 20, or 30 might hold! I wouldn't want to journey through any of it with anyone else in this world though- Happy Anniversary, Baby! :)

Happy Memorial Day?

Today is June 1st. 2010 is now almost half over. Is that weird to anyone else?

I hope you all had a great Memorial Day yesterday. Lane and I spent the day (which was B-E-A-utiful) at a park with my whole family:

I have two great older sisters who married awesome guys and they have awesome kids. L and I are the only ones who have not procreated yet which we sometimes feel sad and left out about. Just kidding. But seriously. Maybe we'll have to do something about that one of these days. Or months.

It was a beautiful, great day.

But after devoting so much of our life and our marriage to the military, it definitely was not lost on Lane & I what the true meaning of the day was. We have countless friends who are overseas right now, and we were home laughing, running, and playing with our family.

In fact, Lane spent our last Memorial Day in Afghanistan.

We know the significance of Memorial Day.

We got in the car and L told me that it was hard for him to hear people at the park exclaim 'Happy Memorial Day!' It's not like Christmas, Easter, or the 4th of July. We celebrate today because of the people who have gone before us, and given their lives on our behalf.

Lane's life was rocked last summer, much like it had been on previous deployments, when one of his buddies lost his life because of a combat mission. He has since exchanged some very meaningful e-mails and face-to-face conversations with that soldiers' mother who has handled that life-changing blow with such grace and dignity. Lane thinks of Ben's mom on Memorial Day... it's not a 'Happy' day for her.

I listened to Lane share his heart... and then I had to confess what I put as my facebook status update yesterday morning:

Happy Memorial Day friends! As we're enjoying family, parks, and bbqs, let us not forget the purpose behind this day and the sacrifices of so many. Thank You!

My heart behind it was right. I didn't want the significance and the purpose of the day to be lost in the ice cream, the hamburgers, and the day off of work. But, hearing a soldier's perspective on the day, my own husband's perspective on the day, helped open my eyes to how easy it is to throw around words without thinking of their impact.

With all of that said, I do hope you all enjoyed your day yesterday. If the meaning was lost in the chaos, that's okay. Take a moment today to recognize the gift that we have been given. It's just like Valentine's Day- showing love isn't limited to only that one day a year. So it is with Memorial Day. Recognize our country, the military, the families, the pride and the sacrifice any moment of any day.

2010-1983=

27.

27. 27. 27.

Say it with me. Twenty-Seven.

My birthday is not today, it was actually nearly 3 weeks ago. But I think that the reverberations of that shock are still coursing through my veins and I'm trying to process why I was, in fact, shocked to turn 27.

Now, to add a disclaimer, I know that some of you reading my blog are older than Twenty-Seven. Maybe much older? I humbly apologize.

But still.

I FEEL OLD.

I haven't had a birthday where this has happened to me yet. I would have thought that some sort of quarter-life crisis would have hit me at 25, and that would have made sense to me. But no, I had been telling people for a good 5 months that I was 25 when I was still 24. I was excited to hit Twenty-Five. It seemed mature.

It seemed like at 25 I would have everything sorted out, knew my life trajectory and how I would get there.

Um, no.

But still. It sounded wise, classy, prime to me. I loved being 25!

26 came and went without much to-do.

Then. It inevitably came, much like birthdays tend to do.

And I turned 27. Around The Birthday, I was reading a book where the main character was a cute little 25-year-old Miss Thang. She had an attitude, good clothes, good shoes, and boys chasing after her. And it struck me- I'm no longer a cute little thing! I'm nearing middle age! No longer am I a cute little college girl. I might as well already have crows feet around my eyes, a tire around my waist and saggy boobs.

Maybe I'm being a little overdramatic.

It makes me think of that country song "Strawberry Wine" where she goes: I still remember when 30 was old.

And I know that I will look back on being 27 as a beautiful age where I still had everything in front of me, was blessed beyond belief, and actually probably was a Cute Little Thing.

And I guess looking back now I have, thankfully, improved with my age. L tells me that he thinks I am more beautiful (and hot- his word, not mine) than when he met me 10 years ago. We'll see if that holds true in the next ten years, but it's a good reminder that the best is still in front of me and not behind me.

But still. 27? Ayiyi.

Best Invention Ever

This Wins.

Everyone, meet the Septacycle. Or, it is also known as the Conference Bike for the fact that everyone faces each other in a circle while biking through the streets. You sit in a circle, each person pedaling, but only one person drives the thing.

It was hilarity at its finest. We literally were stopped as we went along so people could take pictures of us and ask questions. It was the Most Fun Ever. It was quite the sight to behold because there were 14 of us so we rented 2 septacycles tearing up the streets of Fort Collins.

This is what I spent my day doing yesterday. Meeting up with a fun group of friends, simply because it was the last Tuesday in May. And we septacycled our little hearts out. All the way to New Belgium Brewing Company.

Then we took a beer tour. And drank free beer. Yum. And Fun.

This is our friend Landon. He's great. We all met each other freshman year of college before L and I were even dating, then he was a groomsman and sang in our wedding. Three Cheers to life long friends!

We have now officially declared the last Tuesday in May SEPTACYCLE DAY!

The best septacycle group a girl could ask for.