Moving on.

Life has changed for me very rapidly and drastically. Within two months I will have lost my father and gotten married. Everything is off-kilter and makes me feel like I need to dye my hair or get a tattoo or something just to acknowledge that. Natalie says that I’m not allowed to do anything that would making me hate my wedding photos, so in a less severe move I’ve decided to change blogging venues. I’ve realize that with a more varied readership, I’m less likely to share openly and right now is a time when I have a lot to share about: good, sad, hard, confusing. Not all of it might be appropriate for such a public forum. If you know me, or just want to keep reading, feel free to send me an email. (You can also comment, if you don’t have my email address.)

Thanks for the memories.

Daddy.

Timothy Allen Cummings

August 2, 1956–March 14, 2010

Love in hard times (or, the importance of clean socks).

I have been back and forth from the hospital for the last few days. My dad is in ICU, and I don’t really feel like explaining why, but it’s very, very serious.

But that isn’t what I want to write about.

There are two things that I always forget to tell people when I’m in the middle of something heavy that I always wish I could remember, because when people ask me what I need, I always gape stupidly and then shrug: “I think I’m okay.”

In reality, there are two things I need, and in hard times, I think these two needs are pretty universal. At least, for introverted women–I won’t speak for everyone else (and if you’re an introvert and female and this doesn’t apply, sorry for misrepresenting you. Also, you are strange). So I offer these two things because a) I’ll never remember to tell you when you actually, you know ask and b) if you know someone who is hurting and desperately want to help, these are two totally appropriate and welcome ways that you can offer support.

Simple comforts:

such as clean socks and underwear and a cup of hot tea. In calmer moments a good book, internet access, nice-smelling moisturizer and a comb are good. These may seem trivial, but they are not; they are foundational for feeling sane. In crisis-time, everyone tells you “Just make sure you eat and sleep.” But you can’t necessarily. If you’re like me, you’re doing well to choke down a few crackers because you feel like your stomach is on a ferris wheel that occasionally gets stuck at the top before jolting forward again (though, I will grant you, Braden force fed me a piece of wheat toast topped with avocado yesterday because he said I needed my Omega 3s, and I did feel better). Ditto with sleep: you may want it, but that doesn’t mean that you’re going to get it or that it will actually do any discernible good even if you do. Clean socks, however, can make you feel like a new person.

Keep it to yourself.

When things are really, truly awful, people who try to be encouraging rarely make things better. The best thing you can offer is some iteration of “I love you” or “I’m praying” or “I’m here.”  Don’t say “look on the bright side” or “things will be fine” or “you’ve just got to keep hoping”–this downplays the seriousness of the fear and hurt a person experiences during a crisis. If you don’t have anything truly useful to say (you don’t), sometimes it’s best just to leave it at a hug.

What it comes down to is, if you want to help a hurting friend, bring them some cleans socks and then sit down and hush. I promise you, though it seems simple, to your friend it spells L-O-V-E in giant letters.

Dressy prayers.

I am currently beseeching the heavens to make Anthropologie put this dress on sale.

Reasons I want this dress:

A) I need something to wear to wedding showers and my rehearsal dinner.

B) It has airplanes on it.

C) It’s damn cute.

D) IT HAS AIRPLANES ON IT!

Now accepting donations for Catie’s Dream Dress Fund 2010.

Foodie favors.

The budget that I am working with for my wedding is prompting me to be … creative. As such, we’re simplifying a lot. One of the first items to go was wedding favors; I’ve been told that no one will miss them and that made them an easy cut.

If I were going to give favors, however, I think I would definitely lean towards something like the gifts featured on Design*Sponge this morning. I could get excited about jars of honey, canisters of loose leaf tea and antique spoons!

Alone.

I’m beginning to feel as if I’ve lost the gift of being alone. In thinking over the past months and weeks, I’ve realized that I have spent next to no time intentionally by myself. This is a big change for me–in high school, college and for a couple of years thereafter, I took myself on “dates” all the time. I went to the symphony, to coffee shops with a book in hand, to wine bars, to movies, to lectures, to the park … all sorts of places, just to be alone. I also stayed in quite a lot, with a movie or a journal and a pot of tea … anything that gave me space to be comfortable, creative, and alone. These days I’m either with Braden or a friend–usually one who is also a neighbor. I entertain every weekend. And I usually have something planned for every evening other than curling up with a book.

I think that means two things: 1. that I am finally with people who I am so comfortable around that my need for time away from them is less than it would be otherwise. 2. That I am not in touch with myself. With all the hoopla surrounding my engagement and my dad’s illness and people moving, dying, having babies, I haven’t stopped to catch my breath, much less think about what’s inside my own head.

Hmm. These kinds of revelations are no good when you’re looking at a fully-booked week, with birthdays, premarital counseling sessions and a need to reconnect with your fiance before you kill each other.

Catching up.

I had all sorts of pictures of Christmas stuff that I wanted to share, as well as anecdotes about the horrors/joys of wedding planning, but my busy season at work started a bit early this year. Between that and wedding planning, I find myself worn out and incapable of forming an interesting post.

However, there is something that is worth blogging about — I’ve challenged Holly to do the 30 Day Shred with me.

I’ve been feeling sluggish since Christmas, and my exercise has been sporadic at best, mostly consisting of walks and some yoga. Which is okay, but I’m feeling fatigued enough to know that I’m wearing myself out mentally and emotionally, but not physically every day, and therefore my stamina is going down, down, down.

I was expressing this to a girlfriend a couple of weeks ago and she whipped out her copy of Jillian Michael’s 30 Day Shred. “This is what I use to get myself back in the workout habit. It’s challenging, but you feel a change in your body quickly enough that it boosts your morale and energy and you want to get back on the wagon.”

The DVD sat on my bureau for several days until I read one of Holly’s posts in which she said she was going to start shredding too. One thing led to another, and we’ve decided to do it together … long distance, of course.

So here’s the challenge: I believe the way the Shred works is that you get ten days to complete each of the three levels on the DVD. However, some of the reviews I’ve read say that doing the exercises every day is too hard on the body. I’m giving myself two weeks to complete each level, and will continue with other forms of exercise, such as taking walks, doing yoga and some cardio–just to keep a balance. If I need to back off to 3-4 times per week, that’s totally fine. My primary goal is to finish all thirty sessions, with the hope that this new element in my routine will shake up my workouts and make me feel more excited about exercise again.

Would you like to join us? There’s no pressure to do this every day or five days a week–my only plan is to work my way through all thirty sessions over the next six weeks (or so). I won’t be blogging daily here, or anything, but I’m sure there will be updates.

Here’s to catching up!

Christmas gifts.

So … Braden proposed to me on December 22. We had planned to spend that day–a Tuesday–together before leaving town to visit our families for Christmas. I woke up late and did some yoga before he came by. We walked to the library together to pick up some books and then went for a late lunch before seeing Fantastic Mr. Fox at the new theater downtown.

After the movie, we were at World Market when a man walked up to us and said that he had two appointments scheduled for massages–one starting in fifteen minutes, one starting in thirty–at a spa nearby. His wife had gotten caught in traffic and couldn’t make it, and they were non-refundable. Would we like them? Braden discretely excused himself to call the spa and make sure everything was legit–it was! Poor Braden had a tight time schedule in his head of things he wanted to get done before popping the question, but he agreed to go along thinking that this was a divine gift or something. And it was wonderfully relaxing.

When we finished, we ran by the grocery store to pick up ingredients for dinner. After shopping Braden insisted on going by his house because he said that he had a “special ingredient” he needed to pick up. I, meanwhile, was completely oblivious. Back at my house, he made me an eight course meal. Yes, eight courses. And he served it with a wine we picked out earlier in the day–a bottle from a small, up-and-coming vineyard in France … the name of which I can’t remember! But it was all spectacular because Braden is a fantastic cook.

After dinner, Braden said he would like to do our Christmas gift exchange. I knew he had hidden something in my spare bedroom a few days before, and like a good girl, I hadn’t peeked. After giving him his gifts (books, fyi), we walked into the spare bedroom and I found a beautiful upright piano. While I was jumping up and down, he dropped to one knee. When I turned around he was holding out a ring and asking me to marry him!

I said yes.

In memoriam.

Dr. Nicholas P. Barker

November 25, 1937–December 24, 2009

A dear friend and a great man passed away on Christmas Eve. Even so, it is well with my soul.

Excerpted from Dr. Barker’s “How My Mind Has Changed” speech. (October 13, 2004)

I now turn from the how to the what of my changes of mind. I shall present these in the form of forty-one mostly unrelated aphorisms, each beginning with the expression “I have come to believe…”

1. I have come to believe that words hurt longer than sticks and stones.

2. I have come to believe that it is not important whether I wear a coat and tie when I speak in chapel.

3. I have come to believe that it is of very little consequence whether the Atlanta Braves win the National League Eastern Division title.

4. I have come to believe that though long-range planning is prudential, God designed us to live in day-tight compartments.

5. I have come to believe that I would do well to focus more on enjoying God than on anxiously attempting to glorify Him.

6. I have come to believe, in accordance with Proverbs 10:23, that wickedness is no more a sport to a fool than wisdom is fun for a person of understanding.

7. I have come to believe that I will probably never in this life outgrow my doubts.

8. I have come to believe that though it is not inferable from the Bible, retirement is a good idea.

9. I have come to believe that prayer is incalculably important.

10. I have come to believe that the traditional wedding vows say all that needs to be said at a wedding.

11. I have come to believe that “They got married and lived happily ever after” is an admirable goal and a dangerous illusion.

12. I have come to believe that, as Edmund Spenser wrote, “… blisse may not abide in state of mortall men” (Faerie Queene, I, vii, and 44).

13. I have come to believe that although ideas have consequences, so does digestion.

14. I have come to believe that what is new is not always progress.

15. I have come to believe that what is new is not to be rejected just because it is new.

16. I have come to believe that change is often necessary, is almost always painful, and usually comes with no guarantee that it is right.

17. I have come to believe that a zeal for control causes serious damage.

18. I have come to believe that those who recognize and are willing to work on the dysfunctionality of their families and themselves have a long head start on the rest of us.

19. I have come to believe that the influence of birth-order in one’s family is ignored at our own peril and the peril of others who are important to us.

20. I have come to believe that the people I know best and love the most (including myself) are the people I know the least.

21. I have come to believe that we dangerously confuse our finiteness with our fallenness.

22. I have come to believe that though we appropriately long for perfection, the inadequacies, the incompleteness, and the imperfection of this life aren’t always so very bad.

23. I have come to believe that one of my most serious sins is unthankfulness.

24. I have come to believe that it is less enlightened to pray, “Lord, help me to know the right thing to do” than to pray, “Lord, help me to do the right thing.”

25. I have come to believe that biblical single-mindedness resides no closer to the rigidity of the obsessive than it does to the scatter of hysteria.

26. I have come to believe that our thinking would be clearer and our discourse more gracious if we declared a two-year moratorium on the expressions “Reformed,” “Calvinistic,” “the integration of faith and learning,” “world views,” “the antithesis,” and “common grace.”

27. I have come to believe that those of us who are most at home in our own tradition have a lot to learn from Lutherans, Episcopalians, Roman Catholics, and Pentacostalists.

28. I have come to believe, with Lewis Smedes, that being right is not the most important thing in life; being forgiven is.

29. I have come to believe that the dogged pursuit of Cartesian certitude has been a devastation to my soul.

30. I have come to believe that many people, Christians and unbelievers alike, live a lot better than their theories and doctrines.

31. I have come to believe that many people, Christians and unbelievers alike, live a lot worse than their theories and doctrines.

32. I have come to believe that, as God designed Tiger Woods and Vijay Singh to be golfers, Barry Bonds to be a batter, and Greg Maddux to be a pitcher, He designed—not at such a lofty level but equally importantly—my wife to be a gardener and me to be a reader (and, who knows, maybe a poet).

33. I have come to believe that if I could produce 100 truly good poems, that would trump 25 years of college administration and 45 years of college teaching.

34. I have come to believe that being smart is not as important as being good—not even close.

35. I have come to believe that my obsessive desire for attention and approval has been a devastation to my soul.

36. I have come to believe that desperately trying in the wrong ways to be special has come close to shipwrecking my soul.

37. I have come to believe that I am special (as is each of you).

38. I have come to believe that self-deprecation, self-abnegation, self-abasement, and self-effacement are not the same as Christlike self-denial and self-sacrifice and are insults to our Creator and Savior.

39. I have come to believe that though without Christ I as a sinner deserved the wrath and curse of God, I did not deserve to be sexually molested as a boy.

40. I have come to believe that healthy life in the community, life in the body of Christ, fosters individuality but condemns individualism.

41. I have come to believe that, as Proverbs 29:11 says, “A fool vents all his feelings, / But a wise man holds them back.” And so it seems to me appropriate to conclude by quoting what is, I think, my shortest poem, a poem almost as short as its title:

Contrition

I
Regret
Words.

Office gifts.

This year for office gifts I decided to give out bags of homemade, spiced kettle corn. (I used this recipe.) I also had grand plans to make bags out of recycled felt to slip the cellophane bags into, but for the sake of my sanity I nixed that in favor of bags with a fancy print. Ah, well maybe next year.

However, I did try to get creative in the gift-tag department:

I wondered after the fact if I should have used “love” as my closing. Hmm. Let’s just hope that no one notices, shall we?