The Main Event

It's amazing how quickly time goes. It's been over a month since I last blogged and while I know there aren't many people who are avid readers of my blog, for those of you who are, welcome to the main event. 

Marriage. There it is in black and white. 

Wow, I don't even know where to begin. What an amazing time of celebration! June 29th almost feels like a dream, and yet there are certain memories that are sharp in my mind. Putting on my gorgeous dress for the first time, praying with my bridesmaids before the wedding, coming down the aisle with my dad to Rob and his tear streaked face, the deep spirituality of our wedding ceremony (with just a dash of Kate and Rob quirkyness thrown in :), dancing at the reception, seeing so many people I hadn't seen in a long time, my dad telling me while we were dancing how the storm turned, stopping to look at our gorgeous tent glowing at the end of the evening, and so much more. Feeling the overwhelming love of all those people and my overwhelming love for Rob, my husband. 

It's true what people say -- that you experience such a wide range of emotions on your wedding day. I know I did anyway. And how can you not? It's a million things wrapped into one day and there is no possible way to ever describe what you're feeling every moment. For me, my wedding day was a culmination of many, many dreams. Dreams I've held since childhood. Dreams of coming down the aisle to my husband in a beautiful, pure white dress. Dreams of a perfect summer evening. Dreams of all those people there for us. Dreams of knowing my husband intimately for the first time. Beautiful dreams that did come true.

Reality has kicked in again now that we've been home for two weeks or so. Reality of jobs and bills and friends and hot summer days in our non-air conditioned house. Reality of this is what I signed up for and wanted. And I do want it. I love my husband and my marriage and am so happy to be home with him. 

(Home -- there's a topic for a different post -- a place I've longed for for many months now has finally become my reality and I love it) 

It's funny though to be on the other side of the wedding day. Gratefully, Rob and I did spend a lot of time during our engagement preparing for marriage and not just our wedding day. The wedding day is just that, a day, this marriage is for a lifetime. A lifetime of sharing a bed and a bathroom. A lifetime of doing dishes and making meals and having conflict and debt and all that sort of stuff. And I am so glad we talked through things as much as we did. It has made the coming together much easier. 

It surprises me sometimes how normal this all seems. Like we've been married for a long time. And then non-normal-something-different-than-when-we-were-not-married things will sneak in and I'll say, "oh, this is so much better now that we're married!" For example, we were out with friends at a baseball game very late last weekend, but it was such a delight to drive home and go to bed together and not have to say goodbye.  

That's not to say it's not an adjustment, because it certainly is. I feel overwhelmed a bit by all the "normal" stuff that needs to get done and how little time there seems to be to do it. We're still working on finding the balance of personal time and time together and how me, the introvert of the pair, can recharge myself and find time alone. 

I'm not worried -- I know those things will work themselves out in time. The wonderful thing is that I know I've married a man who understands many things about me, sometimes even more than I understand about myself, and who desires to serve and care for me so deeply and genuinely. He is a gift to me and I see him as such. I don't deserve to have him, but I do, and if that's something to be overwhelmed by, well then, I'm overwhelmed. 

So anyway, I'm sure I'll keep you posted along this journey. It's a good journey and I'm so glad for all the parts of it. 

Here's a few more pics if you weren't there, plus some from our honeymoon in St. John, US Virgin Islands. Amazing. You should all go there for sure. 

Blooms and Berries Festival

Those of you who know me know that I really don't like strawberries. It's not so much a taste thing, more a texture sort of thing for me. I always think the squishyness in my mouth feels gross. Anyways, those of you who know Rob know that strawberries are one of his all time favorite things.

So of course, when the Blooms and Berries strawberry festival comes to town, we go. I will say that I really did want to go because I love our little town and like to support the activities they put on. Plus, it's an absolutely gorgeous summer day with not a cloud in the sky -- one of those days you have to be outside. Bonus: we walked from our house and saved gas, never a bad thing.

You know you're at a festival, particularly in the midwest, when the first two food vendors you see are fried vegetables (definitely an oxymoron there) and huge, hand breaded tenderloin sandwiches. While we didn't partake in either we did buy a lovely little pot of flowers and two quarts of strawberries for us and three quarts for my boss and his family.

Overall, a beautiful day enjoying our little town and the abundant fruits. And yes, I did eat a few strawberries, but only after they were cut up and covered in sugar. :)

Rob proudly displays our finds of the day

Our Town

This past weekend Rob and I were home for the first time in several weeks. So we set out with a list of goals to accomplish on Saturday and ran into some adventures along the way.

I'm a big fan of shopping local and supporting the "little guy" if you will. Plus, with gas hovering around $4 a gallon, there's no need to travel far away for things you can buy locally.

So we did our part this weekend to help the little guy starting with a visit to our local hardware store (an ant infestation in our kitchen and a missing trash can because of the storm prompted this stop), then the bank, the post office, a visit to our local CSA farm (check it out -- www.victoryacres.org if you live around us) to pick up our weekly supply of produce, rounded out by a visit with friends who are building a new tree house for their kids. I wanted to throw a few garage sales in there, but it was raining too hard and I figured they wouldn't be set up anyways.

But the highlight of the day was getting our new mattress. We drove by this store in the next town over from us a few weeks ago on our way to Chicago and since I am all about shopping local we decided to check it out. Plus, we figured since they were close by they could deliver for us and that was definitely something we needed.

Little did we know we were going to encounter our newest friend Vic, also known affectionately as "grandpa." Vic was a stocky, white haired fellow with a Nike basketball shirt and basketball shorts and white sneakers. He showed us all around his mattresses, touting all the benefits of each like any good salesperson would. He kept calling me "young lady" and celebrating our upcoming marriage with us. Then he'd say, "well, this is the part where grandpa leaves you kids alone and lets you make the decision," and off he'd go to some other part of his mattress fortress.

It would be hard to put Vic in a nutshell, but he was one of those sorts of people that just make you love Indiana. So friendly and jolly, the kind of people who've lived in the same place all their lives and have a love for it. He wasn't afraid to share his faith and view of the world with us, which he quickly followed up with a, "I'm not trying to preach to you guys, but you know, young people today...." and off he'd go again.

We didn't mind his soapboxes and really agreed with him on things about life and the way some things are these days. He was so endearing. He made us laugh too by showing us this little game -- a toy mallet mounted on a frame that smacked down on a quarter and a cardboard piece of cheese. The idea was to guess what it was. (I guessed it was the economy getting it's butt kicked but that wasn't right.) The correct answer Vic informed us when we gave up was a "quarter pounder with cheese." Hahaha. Maybe you had to be there to see this little riddle, but it was pretty clever I'll admit.

Later Saturday afternoon he brought our mattress to our house ($10 delivery was just what we needed) and helped us set it on our newly constructed bedframe which just so happens to take up our entire bedroom. But hey, we figured a new bed and a large bed is pretty important in marriage. :)

I think what endeared us the most to him was as he was walking out the door he stopped and said, "Now I can't do this everywhere," and just started praying. It was such a funny, unexpected, beautiful moment where this white haired man with matching sneakers who we'd met just that morning was praying in our living room. And as he headed out the door he said, "One more thing, in your marriage, you keep God first, and then each other second. Do that and you will have a good life. Now I'm not trying to preach at you...." And off he went.

Those kind of people are the people that make the world go round. The Vics of the world who have devoted themselves to one woman, one God, and one job, in Vics case selling mattresses, for their whole lives. The kind of people who don't mind a good beer with their steaks (Vic informed us he couldn't really afford a good steak anymore with the price of gas, but it was certainly a treat when he could.) and who don't mind stopping to pray with a young couple in their living room 20 days before their wedding.

Life cycles and transitions

We spent the weekend celebrating with Rob's sister Lauren as she graduated high school on Saturday and had a grad party on Sunday. Congrats Lauren!

I really enjoy graduation time and remember my own high school and college grads so clearly. It's such an interesting time of the year for everyone. It is one of those things about life that is so constant. We will always have people graduating from something. Even preschools have graduations these days! Driving around Rob's hometown this weekend there were so many signs saying "Congrats Class of 2008!" and I just found it interesting that really the only thing that changes about graduations (besides the people graduating obviously) is the year. 2003, 3004, 2005, 2006, 2007....

The speaker at Lauren's graduation was one of my favorite people, author Lauren Winner. Read her books. Seriously. Girl Meets God, Mudhouse Sabbath, and Real Sex. She's great. When I found out she was the speaker I was pretty much beside myself. And I did get to meet her and talk to her afterwards which was a huge highlight. (Ask Rob how nervous I was and then of course she was soo cool and down to earth...I always seem to get myself so worked up about things like that...)

But besides just being in her presence, I was reflecting on what Lauren had to say about the reason we call graduations "commencements." The word commencement actually means to begin something or start something new. So while a graduation may seem like a finishing up, it's really the beginning of something new.

And so it is with many things in life. We begin something new and therefore go through a transition into that new thing or stage of life. Perhaps every time we start something new we don't have some big graduation ceremony, but there are moments and reasons to celebrate beginning something new.

The funny thing though I'm finding about life is that eventually, the cycle will start again and a new transition will occur and so forth and so forth. And to me that feels healthy and good. We see those types of cycles in nature with the changing of seasons. We see those types of cycles in our own bodies and in the bodies of animals and plants. It's refreshing to start a new cycle sometimes.

I'm getting married in 26 days and while I'm so excited, I know that it will be a complete change of life and time for something new. But you know, it's refreshing still to know that eventually an anniversary will come and we'll always celebrate anniversaries, and birthdays, and graduations, and weddings, and mothers day and the forth of July.............

Being an Adult

Rob and I are trying to figure out what to do about health insurance today. Frankly, I think health insurance is pure robbery. It's such a double edged sword because if you don't have it and something happens to you or someone in your family you're sunk for probably the rest of your life trying to pay medical bills. If you do have it though, you're paying through the nose every month for something you use actually quite rarely.

To me it feels like such a scam. And there is so much red tape and qualifications that it seems like if you've ever had so much as a hangnail someone out there would deny you coverage.

I guess the burning question in my mind tonight is how am I as Christians supposed to handle health insurance. If I stop and think about it, does health insurance become a crutch for me instead of trusting the Lord to protect me and sovereignly provide for my needs? I'm certainly not advocating stupidity and I know the Lord institutes such things as medical care and doctors to take care of us, but how much is too much? Where do we draw the line? Do we really need things like "umbrella policies" that protect us in case we get sued for some reason? Hurricane and earthquake insurance in Indiana?

Health insurance is certainly nice to have, but I guess I question becoming to dependent on something that is not as secure as our sovereign Lord.

Sometimes being an adult is just plain hard. I'm not complaining really because there is NO way I'd ever want to go back to say, middle school, but there seems to be certain times when being an adult smacks you upside the head and it's not very fun. And I think today is one of those days.

But as Rob just told me, "no one adds a day to their life by worrying." I know he's right too. So I guess we press on in this life through things that are hard and worrisome and knowing that in the end it will be alright.

A Hoosier Rite of Passage: The Indianapolis 500

On Friday my boss and I were invited to a suite down on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway for the day. At first I was confused because even I knew that the race wasn't until Memorial Day weekend. But my boss explained that the cars/drivers do time trials everyday and the track is open for spectators.

I agreed to go with him to the suite, partly because it was a Friday out of the office, but also because I know the motor speedway is a large part of Indiana culture and I needed to experience it at least once in my life. I really didn't know what to expect.

On the trip down my boss tried to explain what a big deal the race is and how people camp out for hours, even days, to get a parking spot on the field. How I should turn on the tv race day morning just to see the gridlock traffic pictures of people going to the race on the news. I blithely informed him that I grew up on the east coast; I know what gridlock traffic is. Ever try to go down the shore on the Atlantic City Expressway on a beautiful summer Saturday morning? Yea, you know what gridlock traffic is.

Anyways, my first indication that spending the day at the motor speedway would NOT be my idea of a good time was when we drove by a HUGE (we're talking acres here) field with groupings of port-a-potties strewn across it. My boss informed me that come race day that field would be jam packed with RVs and tents. Tents? Are you joking me? To see cars go really fast around a track for three hours? Seriously people....it's not worth it.

The suite was really high up and looking out over the track I must admit I was impressed. It's different than I thought it would be, almost like an airport runway with the huge tower. Here's a view from the stadium seating outside the suite. It was cool to to see the people work on the cars in the pits directly across from us. They really are fast at changing tires and such.

You can't even see to the other side of the track because there are more suites across the way so really you can see the cars go by for maybe 5 seconds? Like I said, not worth it.

At least the suite was really nice and they served us good food and gave us sound lessening headphones as gifts. (Saturday Rob found those work great hooked up to my iPod while mowing)

And then the cars started going round and round. Sheesh, it's really amazing there aren't more half deaf people walking around Indiana because those cars going around are LOUD! It's a sound like what I'd imagine a fighter jet taking off to sound like. You can feel the reverberation resounding off your insides and you get dizzy from jerking your head back and forth watching them go by. The fastest one that day was going 226.9 miles per hour and apparently that's a pretty good speed.

The cars themselves are pretty snazzy and of course support our consumer obessed culture by being nothing more than advertisements. Target, McDonalds, Motorolla, Penske, even one promoting the new Indiana Jones movie all had their own cars and drivers all decked out in logos. It's an interesting thought -- advertising on a car going 226 miles per hour -- on one hand the company is getting exposure to a very, very large market, but on the other hand the car is going so fast it's amazing anyone can read the ads!

The afternoon went slowly and I didn't really enjoy being there. You can only watch cars go by so fast and I didn't know anyone else in the suite to talk with. Finally my boss asked if I wanted to go down into the pits so we did that and it was pretty neat. Here's a picture of the Target car (I think) getting serviced.

I suppose being at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway is a once in a lifetime experience, especially for an aspiring Hoosier. But that doesn't mean I get the appeal. It really attracts an interesting group of people and I tried hard not to stereotype (ok maybe I did a little bit), but wow, to think of all the people (an estimated 300,000 attend the actual race day) who invest time, money, and energy into watching cars go round and round......? What if we as Christ followers took the same amount of time, money, and energy to share the story we hold true and infuse a state, a nation, with passionate people in pursuit of Christ? Wouldn't our world be so different? I think so.

To Pennsylvania, Virginia and back again

This past weekend Rob, Luke, and I made the long trek across Indiana, Ohio, and Pennsylvania to my childhood home in order to then go down to Harrisonburg,Virginia to celebrate with Ben at his college graduation from Eastern Mennonite University.

I've found that no matter how many times I make that drive it never gets shorter. It always seems too that the construction in certain parts never makes much progress and we always hit the same traffic around Columbus. But it's ok and we always eventually get there with out much trouble.

You'll see from these pictures that Ben's graduation was warm and sunny and very nice. We all enjoyed our time together as a family, the first since Christmas. Virginia was in full spring, bursting with leafy trees and multitudes of lilac bushes. Harrisonburg is surrounded by mountains, something I definitely miss living in Indiana.

Being in Pennsylvania again made me realize how much I miss it there. It's so beautiful there and my parents house is safe and familiar. Whenever I'm there I always take time to wander around and look at things. I trail my fingers along worn banisters and stare at the familiar family photos (albeit some pretty embarassing ones of me from years ago!) and the new photos of friends and family my mom keeps updated on the fridge. I eat lots of my parents food and constantly marvel at how my mom makes the simplest things so beautiful. That home is the keeper and protector of hundreds of thousands of memories and it's like they all come flooding over me every time I'm there crying out to be remembered.

Indiana is becoming more familiar and safe too, but I still feel caught between the two places and can't quite figure out where home is still. I want it to be both places and it can't be. I think it's all part of the growing up process and that's good and healthy to move on. I know wouldn't want to be there away from Rob and my dear friends here in Indiana still living with my parents.

But there are some days when I want nothing more than to curl up in my childhood bed and wrap all those memories around me like a warm blanket. I suppose though that's why we have different seasons of our lives -- to enable us to move on and make new memories knowing that they are shaped by our old ones.

I can't wait to take my children to my Pennsylvania home someday, Lord willing, and let them make memories of their own there. And then we'll get in our car (NOT a minivan -- I refuse to ever drive a minivan :) and drive all the way across those long, long states, home to Indiana.