Elusive Contentment

I’ve spent so many years of my life at a quick jog, desperately trying to make it to the next point in my life. The next diploma, the next relationship, the next job, the next city. I’ve raced through every stage and every accomplishment, convinced that if I can just get to the next thing, it will make me happy. There is no doubt that my bouncing around is both a familial, learned behavior and a trait common to many postmodern-era millennials. When it comes to nature vs. nurture, I never did have a chance at peace no matter which factor ended up being dominant.

Easily one of the most frustrating things in my life has been my slow crawl through a college degree. I have been out of high school for almost eight years and as of this Friday, I have merely the most pathetic of associates degrees to show for it. I cannot tell you how many times I have stood looking in the mirror and lambasted myself for not finishing a degree four years ago. How could I have done this to myself? How could I have placed so many things above my education? Why didn’t I plan better? Why didn’t I foresee the pitfalls that would occur? How am I twenty-five years old and without anything to show for it?

The other deeply upsetting factor of my life right now is Morgan’s enlistment in the navy, which still has another three and a half years left. I know why he joined the navy: to take care of me. While I deeply appreciate his sacrificial love more than I can express, I’ll probably never be able to let go of this deep and abiding responsibility I feel for everything he has suffered and will suffer over this decade of our lives. Every time Morgan misses a meal or doesn’t get enough sleep, every time he has a nightmare about deployment or snaps at me with an anger that never belonged to him before the Navy, it adds another bullet to the list of things I will never even come close to making up to him. When he said he would do anything for me, he meant it. And then he did it. And I will never be able to thank him enough.

All of that to say: the last semester has been beyond surreal. I was required to take some spiritual formation classes that, at the risk of sounding corny, really changed my life. Not only did the classes make me reconsider my constant need to beat myself up over everything, but they also opened my eyes to many of the positive outcomes of the negative factors in our lives. While I would have loved to graduate four years ago, I wouldn’t give up my experience at Regent for anything. The professors say exactly what I need to hear, the students are encouraging and authentic, the entire university, in my experience, does an excellent job of living out Christian community in a way that I have not observed before. Regent has changed my life for the better. If I had graduated years ago, I never would have been able to sit in these classes, make these friendships, and experience this teaching, all of which are worth the wait.

The Navy, too, has served its purpose in our lives. Morgan has changed so much since we were eighteen. He’s still goofy and he still somehow thinks I am the very sun, but he has matured in ways I honestly don’t think would have occurred if not for the Navy. He’s experienced sorrow and the world, he’s dealt with impossible people and unbelievable temptations, yet he’s come through on the other side with a heart not hardened by age but softened by empathy and compassion. I’m so unspeakably proud of how mature he has become, how selfless and loving he is on a regular basis. If we had both chased our dreams to separate colleges, there’s a good change we would have never gotten married. I’m so glad that we did. There is no one I would rather have by my side, or emailing me from a planet away, than my corny, dorky, selfless, wonderful, handsome husband. And without the Navy, I doubt we would have ever reached this place of extreme appreciation, gratitude, and love for each other.

I was walking through my stunning campus to my car on the last day of classes and considering how far we have come, we being my husband and me, but also my mom and siblings. Out of the ashes of a life that could have ruined us, we have developed into a family that definitely has its flaws, but overall has turned their pain and hurt into love and compassion. Each one of us is driven, not to success, but to serve others. Instead of being hardened in a world where fear, anger, and unthinking prejudice is the norm, each one of us has a desire to love the unloveable, serve the marginalized, and speak out for the voiceless. I am so proud of how my hurting, broken, and bruised little family has turned their pain into something beautiful.

I do not want to be the kind of person who is never content, who is always seeking, but never finding. I want to be the kind of person who recognizes that the path through the past, no matter how rocky and bent, led to the present exactly as it was ordained to do so. And while we as humans certainly have a responsibility to plan to the best of our ability for the future, sometimes it’s impossible and sometimes we make mistakes. I’m going to endeavor to stop wasting my present time beating up my past self and setting my future self up for more regret. I’m not advocating a live-in-the-moment, fly-by-the-seat-of-you-pants mentality, but rather one that embraces the present as a weighty and beautiful gift. I don’t want to keep evaluating my life as a highway from point A to some elusive point B. I want to enjoy the view with the assurance that, ultimately, the navigation isn’t really up to me.

On Naming Years and Other Eastern Traditions

I was born in 1990, the year of the horse according to the Chinese. Supposedly, horses are fun and easy-going and love to laugh. Obviously those adjectives can’t possibly be correctly ascribed to every single person born in 1990, but I’ll go with it. It had to be a great year though, right? It brought me along. Cue the Hallelujah Chorus, Rachel has arrived, all is right with the world. I kid, kids.

I’ve decided to start naming our years of marriage. I haven’t gone back through and named all of them yet, but oh boy do I have names for 2014. Not all of them are kosher to print. I settled on the year of the dragon. Yes, I realize that to the Chinese, 2014 was another year of the horse but my year was neither fun, easy-going, or filled with laughter. 2014 was, without a doubt, the most difficult year I’ve ever had to live through. With Morgan deployed to the Middle East for nine months, missing all holidays (including my birthday…again), and being in perpetual real danger, I was pretty much panic-stricken for the greater part of the year. Add to that moving into our first house, painting and scrubbing and remodeling by myself, plus sleeping alone for literally the first time in my life. And then I started school…again. I sat in classes with babies who don’t even remember where they were on 9/11 and I pretty much felt like an idiot. “Of course I’m getting better grades than you in history! I was there!” Okay, so maybe that’s a bit of an exaggeration but that’s how it felt. I dealt with little things like Zillah’s everlasting ear infection and large things like “What do you mean there’s a possibility that the aircraft carrier will go into the Black Sea?! THAT IS NOT OKAY!” Little things like the fact that our leather couch ripped my beautifully green paint off the living room wall that took me sixteen years to finish to humungous things like my grandfather’s open heart surgery. It’s been a rough year. Even if Morgan had been home, it would have been a rough year…but I had to do it alone. So figuratively filled with fire, dark caves, and the sensation that maybe I was becoming a dragon myself, 2014 was absolutely not the year of the horse. It was the year of the dragon. And not the good kind of dragon that’s voiced by Benedict Cumberbatch and has some fantastic CGI that makes you care very little about whether he kills you or not, no. The bad kind of dragon that Eustace becomes in the Voyage of the Dawn Treader that is old and miserly and ugly and doesn’t have a silky-smooth voice. Also, the kind of dragon whose scales have to be painfully scraped away to ever get a new start. Because man alive, are we still scraping away the scales of that deployment. It really may be awhile before they all come off.

So many people have said, in what I’m sure was meant to be an encouraging way, “Isn’t it wonderful to have him home?! And now he doesn’t really work until he deploys again, right?” And I realize, of course, that people really just don’t know what being attached to an active aircraft carrier is like, at least for a nuke. They don’t just shut the plant down and go home. They’re always there. On top of working a “normal” 7am to somewhere between 2-7pm type shift every week day, they also have 24-hour duty rotations every three-five days. To add to the pleasure, in between deployments, they do these “underway” crap-fests that I had no idea about until Morgan left on his first one. They’re basically practice deployments that can last anywhere from a couple days (yay!) to thirty days (boo!). The longest they will be out unless something changes is thirty days. Not because they care about families, oh no. Oh no no no. It’s actually because once the ship is gone over thirty days, the Navy has to start delving out separation pay. And oh boy, does the Navy not like to give out pay if it doesn’t have to. In fact, sometimes the ship will go out for thirty days, pull back in for the thirty-first day, and then go back out. And sometimes, sailors aren’t even allowed off the ship for that day…but since they were “technically” back in port…no separation pay. It’s really a quality operation with a focus on taking care of its employees. That’s probably why almost every nuke we know gets out at six years, flips off the Navy, and never looks back. When it comes to employee retention, the Navy literally has no idea how to make itself appealing to enlisted nukes except for throwing money at them and hoping they suck so much at delayed gratification that they don’t realize after two years out, they’ll be making at least what they were making in the Navy, if not significantly more. And some of them do suck at delayed gratification (us, for example), and so they do reenlist. Stupidly. So so stupidly.

2015 is supposed to be the year of the sheep. Gentle, kind, unassuming 2015. However, I’m thinking that 2015 is really not going to be the year of the sheep for us. Maybe the year of the snake. Going into 2014, I was scared. I knew what was coming and I had no clue how I was going to deal with it. I dealt with it because I had to and was happy when it was over, but the year really knocked me around…as I knew it was going to. Going into 2015, however, I am petrified. I really have no clue what the Navy has in store for Morgan this year and it makes me sick to my stomach. From the significant worries like “Will he be safe?” to the insignificant like “Will he miss my birthday for the third year in a row?”, I’m just not confident that the Navy is going to treat him any better post-deployment than during. I don’t know whether to go in optimistic and hopeful or gird my loins and hunker down to withstand another year of constant barrage. So that is why there have been no encouraging, uplifting, “Let 2015 be the best year of your life!”-type speeches from me. I’m pretty convinced that it won’t be the best year of our lives…but who knows? I’m hoping to be surprised. Whatever the outcome, I seriously need some zen. So you know what 2015 will definitely include, if not my husband? All the yoga.

“Oh please, God, help me not to kill anyone this year.”

The Perfect Cottage

Morgan left months and months ago. I’ve spent the majority of 2014 living in my little house alone. It’s perfect for Zillah and me. We’re both fairly small beings (or at least short!) and we don’t take up much room. There’s not a whole lot of clutter, except for papers which are my achilles’ heel when it comes to organization. There’s not a whole lot of noise…in fact, I almost always have the TV on or music playing because I can only take so much silence in a twenty-four hour period. My life is quiet, studious, and fairly scheduled. My perfect little cottage is quiet, conducive to studying, and organized so that I know where everything is.

This is the first time in my life that I have really lived alone. I’ve always had family or roommates…or a husband. So for six months now, I’ve had my little cottage and I’ve embraced hermit-hood. I eat what I want to eat. I sleep when I want to sleep. Zillah and I are on a very good schedule. I run when I want to run. I bake randomly in the middle of the night when I want to bake randomly in the middle of the night. Everything in the house is mine, it’s placed perfectly for efficient use because that’s the kind of person I am. For six months, I’ve been the only presence in my house with the exception of the occasional visitor. I do what I want, man.

It’s been an interesting experience for me. I’ve always been fairly independent and capable, but I do have a tendency to become what people want of me. In most situations, it’s a really good thing. I can effortlessly shift into whatever role is necessary. For the most part, unless prodded and poked, I’m an agreeable, genuine person. But there is a negative side to this chameleon personality, I’ve been an adult for six years without knowing who I actually am, what I actually like, where I actually want to be, what I’m actually capable of. Don’t get me wrong, I know who I am for the most part. I haven’t been having a six year existential identity crisis…but I’ve spent seven years being Morgan’s chameleon. I became his perfect woman. I played through both Portals, I am competent at Halo, I know more about Star Trek than I ever expected, I fit Doctor Who and Monty Python references into conversation like a boss, I navigate gaming systems and computers efficiently, I can enjoy Catan jokes way more than the average person, I know most of the words to most of the songs Tom Petty ever did the world a great disservice by singing, I’ve spent an inordinate amount of time reading Clive Cussler’s insanely detailed, unrealistic novels, I belt out Queen, Boston, and Styx like I was raised on their music, I spend my spare time learning Billy Joel songs on the piano, I have a corny joke collection that defies reasonable need, I’ve seen Hellboy and Die Hard more times than I can count, I own an impressive amount of dorky t-shirts…basically, I absorbed all of Morgan’s obsessions. It wasn’t a far stretch, as I already was deep into Harry Potter, Star Wars, and Lord of the Rings, but who knows what I would have been like if I had started dating someone who liked…sports? I shudder at the thought, but maybe I would be an Ohio State T-shirt-wearing, watch football every Sunday and major holiday, shouting “yay!” for Lebron kind of girl. Who knows? Not I. But life didn’t go that way and so here I am, Morgan’s perfect woman.

None of these things are bad. I love my life. I love who I am. I love Morgan’s and my relationship more than I can express. But there was a part of me that wondered who I would be away from him…and then he deployed. I’ve learned things about myself. I do seriously love Star Trek. It’s not just Morgan. I absolutely love Portal and Halo, but not to the extent that I would play them every night. I thoroughly enjoy British TV. But I have to be honest, I don’t think I’ve listened to Tom Petty, Queen, or Boston willingly once since Morgan left. And I certainly haven’t touched a Clive Cussler book. I have, on the other hand, been reading Anne of Green Gables and books on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I’ve been listening to Emery, Good Charlotte, and Cute is What we Aim for. I’ve been watching Gilmore Girls, but also Arrow. I realize these are just shallow preferences, but for me, it was important. For years, when someone asked, “What is your favorite _______?” I didn’t really have an answer. Now I know what my favorites are and what I would rather not waste my time on.

So throughout this deployment, I kind of found my adult self. I learned that I am more than capable of reading instructions and fixing a car. I can handle negotiating with a contractor with an accent. I can sleep in a house completely alone without anyone attacking me or a horror movie occurring. I can paint whole rooms by myself. I can get all A’s with little to no support from anyone. I can do inventories and answer terrified emails and be an adult, for all practical purposes. I can manage a budget, I can skimp to pay the bills and fit in school. I can live on unromantic emails for weeks. I can be alone, and it’s okay. I can be.

I think the most important thing I’ve learned throughout this very rough year is that I can just be. I don’t have to be busy, I don’t have to prove anything, I don’t have to compare myself to others. Life is not a competition to see who can get the best job, or the best degree, or the first baby, or the happiest life. Life is not a competition. And busyness is not a sign of success or industriousness. It can be a good thing, but it is not always a good thing. And it is not necessary to a successful, joyful life.

That introduction went a totally different way then I was planning, but here’s the real point of why I sat down to write:

For literally eight months, I have not allowed myself to think about Morgan more than necessary. I haven’t shut down by any means, as anyone that knows me well could tell you. It’s been a very rough, very difficult, insanely hard year. No one can possibly understand how hard it is to have the other half of their being on the other side of the world and in danger unless they have experienced it. There are no words, nothing that can possibly give an accurate picture of the sense of panic, terror, and emptiness that deployment creates in a spouse’s life. It’s not fun. It’s definitely a growing experience, but it’s not enjoyable in any way. The nights I have spent curled up in a ball sobbing uncontrollably are more numerous than I care to admit. But I have tried valiantly to not dwell on Morgan for eight months.

Lately, though, I’ve been dwelling on him. He’s on his way home, as anyone who reads the news is aware, and I feel like it’s safe to let myself think about what it’s going to mean to have him back. I started thinking today, for really the first time, about what it is going to be like to have Morgan in my perfect little cottage. For those of you that don’t know my husband…or don’t know him very well, Morgan is not a small man and he is certainly not a small presence. He is big and he is loud and he is fun and he is happy. He is everywhere I am. He is a big person, and I don’t mean that as far as size goes, although he is fairly tall. He’s just…big. In my life, at least, he takes up a lot of room. He is always right next to me, right under my feet, with his arms wrapped around me and his hands laced with mine. He is always there, he has been there for a very long time, and I hope that he continues to be there for the rest of my life.

But…for eight and a half months, my home has been small and quiet and orderly and organized. None of those words could possibly be used to describe who Morgan is at home…so my life is in for some serious upheaval. Welcome upheaval, but upheaval nonetheless. I laughed out loud today thinking about Morgan in our hallway…it’s tiny. Thinking about Morgan at our bathroom sink brushing his teeth…he may have to get on his knees. Morgan in our kitchen, in my way. I laughed. I’m so excited for him to be here, for him to take up all the empty room in my life…but it’s definitely going to be an adjustment.

I’ve grown and changed over this year, as I know he has. I’ve developed a sense of independence that I’ve never experienced before. I know he has as well. We’ve both gone through things and lived through stories that the other one can never experience. We will not be able to go back to our same old relationship, as wonderful as it was, because we’re two relatively different people. It’s going to be a wonderful, absorbing challenge.

I am more than ready for some disorganization, some spontaneity, and some dorkiness in my life. I can’t wait until Morgan walks into our perfect little cottage…and fills up the quiet spaces.

Just a small town girl…

My very first boyfriend was very not serious. I was fifteen and it lasted for three months. I didn’t really know him that well and we never even kissed. I was still very happy-go-lucky and naive at that point, and I don’t look back on it with any regret whatsoever. I broke up with him because…I didn’t see our lives going anywhere together. I had goals and dreams, none of which included Canton, Ohio. His goals and dreams, at that time, did. I distinctly remember a conversation in which he told me that he wanted a big yard to mow and I thought, “I can’t marry a guy who wants a big yard. I want to live in the city.” So I broke up with him. 

Ironically, I’d now like a big yard with a garden eventually…just not in Canton, Ohio. 

Fast forward a couple years and here I am dating Morgan, seriously contemplating breaking up with him for almost the exact same reasons. Morgan and I had a really rocky dating life. We always were wild about each other, but never really had the same life plans and goals. We broke up on three different occasions through our almost three years of dating. Each time we broke up, we had an insanely serious conversation about how it just wouldn’t work for us to live our lives together. Morgan placed a high value on people and community. I placed a high value on education and traveling. (Ironic, right?) We just couldn’t seem to make our lives mesh for a long time. At some point, though, we decided that we placed a higher value on each other than anything else…and so we made it work. 

Marriage is all about compromise. I am not at all an advocate of giving up your dreams to be with someone…all the time. But each couple is different and relationships aren’t about getting every little thing you want, they’re about sharing your life with someone. Successfully. Sometimes, you give up on a dream…and most of the time you get an equivalent dream back, with interest. 

Fast forward a few more years, and here we are. I am sitting in Virginia desperately trying to figure out how I can complete a degree while not missing huge chunks of Morgan’s life. I haven’t really travelled. I have a ton of useless Bible credits. And I have a lot of great childcare references. There’s success right there, people. 

And Morgan, my small-town homebody is a Nuclear Engineering Lab Technician who just spent the day exploring Athens. 

Seriously, I do not enjoy God’s sense of humor. But, I am so thrilled with and proud of my husband. He has gone so far, given up everything he ever wanted, and worked his butt off to be with me. 

Over the last six and a half years, Morgan has taught me to value, above anything else, sacrificial love. And he’s taught me by example. 

Can I be Frank with you?

“…only if I can be George…” is the long-running joke answer in my family. You want to be Frank? I’ll be Fred. Are we fishing? Or shooting rifles at traveling salesmen from our front porch?

But seriously, can I be frank with you? I can. May I?

“Frank” is defined by Merriam Webster as “marked by free, forthright, and sincere expression.” It’s synonyms include candid, forthright, unguarded, straightforward, even sometimes blunt.

Frankness is something that I value highly. I don’t like to beat around the bush. Growing up, I was privy to an awful lot of manipulation and deceit. It strongly colored my view of the world. I watched people use family ties, guilt, religion, tradition, debt, duty, and a thousand other things to influence my immediate family. I didn’t like it. I did not appreciate it. And I very quickly learned to distinguish truth from fallacy.

I am not a fan of guile in my adult life either. I do not like to be manipulated. I do not like to be maneuvered. I would much rather face something head on, in person than play some sort of game in which I talk to my friends and you talk to your friends and someone says something on accident and now we’re not talking to each other. It drives me up the wall. If you want me to do something, ask. I’ll usually say yes. If you hint about it for two weeks, I’m going to ignore you…or ask you straight out what you want. If you have a problem with me, say something. Otherwise, I’m going to assume everything is okay.

Once you get to know me, I’m a fairly honest person. If you think I am quiet or reserved, chances are I’m just not saying what I’m thinking around you for fear of offending you. Blatant honesty, unfortunately, does not always work in real life. It can be offensive and hurtful. But with the exception of hurting people, I am usually on the side of transparency. I don’t like to pretend. And if you ask me a question directly, chances are that you’re going to get a straight answer.

All of that to say this, I think that being real in life is better than putting on a facade. And that brings me to what I’ve been thinking a lot about this morning. Morgan is deployed. They posted pictures of the ship headed through the Strait of Gibraltar last night. The photos were breathtaking, to say the least. But they were also heart-breaking. My husband, my best friend, the main person into whom I have poured the last six years of my life is on the other side of the world. The world.

While it’s good to stay positive and “just keep swimming” and “put one foot in front of the other” and recognize that “eventually it will be over” and “time will fly” and “this too shall pass” and “life goes on” and all the other terrible, horrible things people say when they are trying to be encouraging, for me…that’s all fake right now. Maybe I’ll reach that point, but I haven’t yet. And if I am acting positive and upbeat, that’s all it is. It’s just an act. It’s a lie. See the paragraphs above for how I feel about that.

It also frustrates me when people speak as though it’s not okay for me to be upset. My husband is on the other side of the world, he’s extremely sick, he’s run absolutely ragged, his division just lost holiday routine on Sundays (which means they will now be working seven days a week), and the world as a whole seems to be tearing itself apart as I type. And here at home, the last two weeks haven’t exactly been a walk in the park. I’m allowed to be upset. Yes, there’s definitely something to staying upbeat, getting up, and showing up. Which I have been. But I’m also allowed to be sad and lonely and frustrated. I am allowed to feel what I’m feeling without being told to sit down and be quiet.

I am not the kind of person to pretend to be something other than I am. I will do what I need to do and be there for other people, but personally, I’m not going to act like everything is okay if it’s not. And right now, it’s not. Last night, I sat in the drive-thru at Chick-fil-a and cried. The first song that Morgan and I ever danced to played on the radio, followed shortly after by one of his favorite songs from high school, both of which I haven’t heard in over a year. I sat there and bawled my eyes out. Not one of my finest moment, I’ll admit, but it was real. It was true. And I felt a lot better afterwards than if I had “put on a happy face.”

I am not saying that the world shouldn’t get up and do their best no matter how they feel or what they are going through. I’m not saying that there isn’t something to getting up and going out even when you don’t feel like it. What I am saying is that human beings were created with feelings. While some of those feelings may not be extremely productive, they are real. I think it only further compounds problems when you act like they don’t exist or they aren’t a big deal. I think our society is obsessed with having this Facebook-perfect life. It’s not real. And I’m not buying into it.

So for the foreseeable future, in real life, in my blog, on Instagram, on Facebook, through email, in my sleep…I’m not going to be the most upbeat and positive person. Yes, I am trying to focus on the positives and get through the next year. But no, I’m not going to pretend that it’s okay that Morgan is gone. It’s not okay. I’m not going to pretend to be fine, because I’m not. I’m sad, upset, and lonely. And honestly, if I weren’t, wouldn’t you be a bit concerned?

I’m going to be Frank. Feel free to be George. Otherwise, feel free to exit left.

The Little Things

Last night, I was laying in bed tossing and turning, attempting to fall asleep. It was way past the time that I should have already been out, but it’s so hard to fall asleep lately. It’s not so much that Morgan is not in bed with me, because that’s the norm for almost half our nights since we’ve been married. I can sleep alone. I don’t like it, but I can do it.

I can’t fall asleep now for two reasons. The first is that I don’t know where he is and the second is that I know where he is.

I don’t know where he is…exactly. If you showed me a map, I could give you a general area of where I have deduced that the ship is now, but no more than that. I really have very little knowledge about where on God’s blue earth my husband currently floats. If something horrible happened, there is very little in my power that I could do to get to him short of renting a sailboat and hoping to guess at the right heading. I can’t help him. I can’t protect him. It keeps me up at night.

On the other hand, I know exactly where he is. I know where he is, the kind of men he is dealing with, and how little sleep he is getting. And those things keep me up at night too.

I need noise to sleep. Morgan figured that out fairly early in our relationship. Even if I am just napping, I need background noise. A fan, a radio set in between stations, an ocean app on my phone…I can’t sleep in dead silence. It wakes me up. I can’t tell you how many times we’ve been in bed for awhile and I could not fall asleep. I couldn’t figure out why, but I would toss and turn and sigh and fluff my pillows, all the while getting more and more irritable. Morgan would sigh, stand up, walk into the bathroom, and flip on the fan. Oh. That’s why. I’d drift off immediately.

On weeknights, when we get ready for bed, we always brush our teeth together and then I get into bed while Morgan shaves. It’s a very comfortable, very tried-and-true routine that we have down. I love to watch him shave. The faces he makes crack me up and I find the whole thing fascinating. When I shave my legs, I motor through, skin be darned. I’m always in a hurry, always trying to get done. Morgan is always insanely careful. It probably has to do with it being his face, as opposed to my legs, but it also speaks quite a bit to our personalities. I rush through life. I’m all about the destination. Morgan slows me down and makes me smell the flowers. He’s all about the journey. He balances me out in ways I never knew that I needed.

His shaving has a kind of mesmerizing, sleepy quality to it. It is relaxing and familiar and comforting. When he is done, he turns off the light, turns on the fan, and pulls the door shut behind him. Usually, within a few minutes, we realize that the door is shut and it’s too quiet. Morgan always slides out of bed, opens the door, and slides back in. Then I fall into the deep sleep of the happy, the loved, the safe.

It’s silly. It’s not very romantic, but it’s comfortable. And I miss it so much.

Last night, when I got into bed, the fan in the bathroom was on and the door was wide open. Everything was exactly how I like it, but I couldn’t fall asleep. I just can’t fall asleep anymore.

Dear Christian Parents: Let’s Talk about Sex

And college. And marriage. And how your American ideals are edging out your Biblical ones.

I’ve been blessed (and cursed) with the wonderful (and harrowing) experience of working with middle school, high school, and college students for a very long time compared to the short time I’ve been alive. I’ve worked at camps, I’ve worked at churches, I’ve volunteered with every youth group of every church in which we’ve been involved. I’m also a big sister. Oh, and I was a middle school, high school, and college student not so long ago. I’m not claiming that I know how to parent better than you do because, frankly, I’m not a parent. But I am the person your kids talk to. I’m the person your middle schooler comes to when someone at school uses a term they don’t understand (but laugh at anyways). I’m the person your high schooler comes to when they find out they’re pregnant…or worse. And being married while in college gave me the unique opportunity to be the woman that every single girl on campus came to for advice…because I had an ‘in’ in the enemy camp. I’ve heard problems ranging from “I don’t exactly know what sex is” (The answer to which is always “Ask your parents”) to “I think I might have an STD…where do I go? (“Your parents”) and “No guy has ever asked me out and I’m twenty. Is there something wrong with me?” (“No. There’s something wrong with guys. Also, you might want to try leaving your dorm room.”)

While those are all problems that need solved, they are not the main problems that I see surrounding Christian parents and sex today. The main problem I see is Christian parents’ unrealistic expectations of their Christian kids. Christian parents want it all for their children, and I can understand that. They want their daughters to “kiss dating goodbye” and focus on college and then somewhere in that last semester, a wealthy, wonderful, godly, pure man swoops out of nowhere with a house and no debt and sweeps their pure, innocent 22-year-old daughter off of her feet. They date for two years while they both have empowering, purposeful careers, they have a long engagement, get married, and she drops her (successful, fulfilling) career to have their grandbabies. And neither of them kissed anyone until they had met each other…let alone had *GASP* sex.

And for the twelve Christian parents out there with your six abnormal children that found each other, bravo. You did it. Your child actually lived up to your unrealistic (and, frankly, not Biblical) expectations.

The Christian community has this idea that it’s no big deal for teenagers and young adults to put aside sex and focus on college and career. They are also convinced that getting married young is just about the worst thing that can happen to their perfectly groomed for the white-picket fence, American dream life child. And they want a little God thrown in. Just enough to get you to heaven. Just enough that you don’t do anything “bad” like drugs or alcohol or not having a money-producing job. But not enough that He might call their children to something other than America’s way of life.

Please don’t misunderstand. Having a good job to support your family and feel like a fulfilled, contributing human being? Good. Having a marriage that was thought-out and prayed over? Good. Waiting to have sex until you’re married? Also, good. Let me tell ya, very good. The problem comes in when you expect all of these things to come in the exact order you want them to as a parent. And then, in your children’s eyes, you link their worth to your dreams.

Even if you have a perfect kid, they’re going to struggle with waiting until marriage to have sex. Even if they never do anything “bad,” it’s going to be something they think about, something with which they struggle. And if they get the idea (from you)  that they’re worth in your eyes, and God’s eyes, depends on them doing college, marriage, and sex, in that order, it’s going to give them a whole lot of guilt. And a whole lot of unBiblical goals to hit. It’s also going to teach them that if they do everything “right” and there they are, colleged, married, and sexed (in that order) and they still aren’t happy…well, there’s something wrong with them.

The Bible doesn’t have a whole lot to say about when or how to get married. We’re pretty much told that if two young people are struggling with sexual purity, they should just get married already. (I Cor. 7:9) There is no “Biblical Age” for marriage. There is no parameter for how long marital counseling should be beforehand. There is no “Here are the ways you can tell if you are ready for marriage.” There is no instruction to get a degree first. There is absolutely nowhere in the Bible that says two people should have a college degree before getting married. And there is nothing in the Bible that says getting married young is forbidden, as most Christian parents seem to impress upon their teens and young adults.

There’s also this pervading belief among Christian parents that you “shouldn’t get married until you’re no more use to God single.” First of all, that’s not in the Bible. Second, if you really believe that God can’t use your kid just as much inside of marriage as not, your God is too small. Also, you are totally nullifying any working of Christ in your child’s life. “Mom, Dad, George and I feel like God is leading us to get married.” And your response is, “Nope, you’re totally wrong. God could not possibly have that for your life. He would have let me know first”? I don’t think that’s how it works. There is certainly something to be said for respecting your parents wishes. But there is also something to be said for letting go of the adult you raised for the last eighteen years and trusting in the God you profess to have faith in to take her from there.

I cannot tell you how many Christian parents have said things to me like, “Well, my niece got married when she was twenty-two! Can you believe it?” To which I love to reply, “I really can! I got married at twenty.” And that, dear friends, is usually greeted by either stoic silence and rapid change in topic or something along the lines of, “Well, you are both so much more mature than my niece and her husband.” And usually I just let it go. But let me tell you, we may seem mature…we were not any more mature than the average 20-year-olds when we got married. We fought through a lot of issues. We had a painful learning process. It took a lot of push and shove to learn what worked in our marriage…just like in any marriage where two people are thirty and have been dating for twenty years. We had to learn to put the other person first. It could have happened at fifteen, it could have happened at thirty. The only difference in getting married young? You hit more milestones together. You spend more years together. You learn…together. It’s not a bad thing, oh Christian parents. In fact, I would contend that it’s a very good thing of which you are depriving your children. Getting married young is a blessing, not a poor decision. And even when it is a poor decision, it can still be a blessing.

College is good. Marriage is good. Waiting to have sex is good. It’s all good things that you want for your children. But how about you start letting them do things in the order God leads them to? Is your faith in God so small that you don’t believe He can grow your 20-year-old just as much inside of marriage, as outside? Marriage is hard. It is. I’m not denying that. But it’s hard no matter how old you are. And asking your kids to wait fifteen years from the first time they notice the opposite sex to the day that they get married to put any of those hormones to use is just setting them up for failure. Maybe they will get a degree first and do everything in the order you wish. Maybe their life will be hassle-free and perfect. But maybe it’s better for everybody if you don’t put your giant boulder of expectations on your Pilgrim’s back before they even head out your front door. And maybe next time before you plop your expectations onto your kid, you step back and ask yourself whether your dreams for your child are from God and His Word…or are they from American society? If they don’t have Biblical backing, back off.

And for real, start telling your sixth graders the details of sex. If they don’t already know more than you do at this point, I’ll be surprised. But hopefully you can catch them early enough that they don’t hear about it from the nasty trombonist that sits behind them in band.

Finally, please don’t think that I have a problem with NOT marrying young. I have a problem with adults being told that they cannot marry when they feel God is calling them to.

The Emotional Stages of Deployment: Stage Get on with it

Lately, I am so done. So done with the Navy. So done with Morgan’s being gone. So done with going to bed alone. So very done…and he’s not even deployed yet. He’s just underway for a couple weeks. Because, honestly people, what’s better for getting ready for deployment than never having your husband home anyways?! Really, it’s a courtesy here. The Navy is just trying to help us get ready. 

Right. 

But in all seriousness, I’m doing surprisingly okay. I’m on a schedule. I keep my house clean. I’m practicing personal hygiene. I don’t break down and cry every time Mariah Carey sings “All I Want for Christmas is You.” I am eating things that are grown instead of chemically manufactured in a box. I’m doing alright. It’s just…I don’t want to do it. I can keep everything together. I can. I just don’t want to. And frankly, I just wish he would deploy already. I’m so sick of this waiting. I’m so sick of not knowing when he’s leaving for sure. I’m so sick of getting paperwork and power of attorneys and putting together a binder. I just want to get it over with. I want him to go, so he can come back. I want to stop planning for something I’ve never experienced…and really can’t plan for. I want to start counting down the days until homecoming. I just want him to go so I can cry and moan and whine and then get on a schedule and blaze through the next year. 

When Morgan joined the Navy, people constantly talked about how hard deployment would be. How it sucks to be away from each other and have no communication. How bad the hours are. How crappy the higher-ups treat your husband. How you will count down the hours until he never has to wear a uniform again. But nobody told me how miserable the months leading up to deployment are. How you feel like you have to make every second count. How you will feel like sleeping is a waste of time. How you will feel unprepared no matter how much you’ve done. How planning for an entire year of your life that, in some ways, just won’t count sucks. It sucks. It sucks. 

You know, I’m not super angry. I’m not ridiculously sad. At this point, I’m just done. I’m done preparing. I’m done saying goodbye. I’m done with the pre-deployment stuff. I’m ready for them to go. So can we please just get on with it? 

The Emotional Stages of Deployment: Stage Rosie the Riveter

After Stage Moaning Myrtle was finally over, I felt a lot better. I’m not saying that I wasn’t still occasionally weepy or that everything wasn’t still a bit overwhelming, but I felt like I could handle what was coming. I wrote out a schedule for myself. I made plans for the holidays that Morgan would be gone. I applied to school. (With my mom holding my hand. Ha!) I started running again…I mean, what better way to spend the time that he’s gone than seeing just how many miles I can go when I’m angry. I scrubbed the house. One weekend, we moved all the furniture….every single piece. I bathed Zillah. (Which is quite the feat, let me tell you!) I reached out to make some friends…something I had previously been avoiding like the plague. I scheduled appointments that I had been putting off. I downloaded a ridiculous amount of lectures on my phone…and listened to them almost every day! I got enough sleep every night, even if it meant taking nyquil. (In general, I am diametrically opposed to nyquil due to the devastating effects of acetaminophen on the human body, not to mention the thousand other cancer-causing, immune system-depleting ingredients, but this was a last resort.) In a nutshell, I started living again. Not happily, but I was moving forward.

I think what made this stage better than Moaning Myrtle was just one thing: I accepted that Morgan is leaving. He’s leaving. He’s definitely leaving. There is nothing I can do about it. There is no way I can stop it. It’s coming…and I’m just going to have to deal with it. So I started dealing with it. It wasn’t fun and it wasn’t easy but Morgan is leaving and I have to be ready for that. Cue Rosie the Riveter.

Stage Rosie the Riveter did not mean that I wasn’t sad and angry though. It just meant that I was using that anger and sadness up in more productive ways…although pretty much anything is more productive than crying 24/7. I wasn’t joyful or happy, I was just accepting and I got stuff done. Which is better than crying, right?

The Emotional Stages of Deployment: Stage Moaning Myrtle

I’m pretty involved with our Family Readiness Group here in Virginia. It’s not something I ever planned on being involved in, but the opportunity fell right into my lap through a series of different events and here I am. Involved. And it’s actually a lot of fun.

In meetings and briefs and other things with fancy military names, we’ve been talking a lot about the emotional stages of deployment. Deployment is coming and I don’t know about everyone else getting ready to say a very long “see ya later” to their most significant other, but we’ve started to hit some of those stages in our apartment. I was, however, disappointed that I could not find a psychological study that I felt accurately described what we’re going through right now. After a little thinking, I decided to name my own personal stages. Maybe if they have a name, Morgan will have a slightly easier time dealing with them.

I have just recently come out of the first stage that lasted for a very, very long time. I’m going to call it Stage Moaning Myrtle. If you live under a rock and haven’t seen Harry Potter, Moaning Myrtle is a ghost that lives in the bathroom and is still highly upset about how she died. The name says it all, Myrtle moans. And cries and whines and complains and can’t seem to accept that she is, in fact, dead. She knows that she’s dead, she just won’t accept how it happened and why it happened and the unfairness of it all. She’s weepy, to say the least.

That has been me, oh internet world, probably since August. On an intellectual level, I knew Morgan was going. I saw the new uniforms and the Power of Attorney documents and the registering the cars in his name for two years and the passport applications, I just could not accept that we were going to miss such a huge chunk of each other’s lives. Did I handle this calmly and strongly? Heck no. I cried. When Morgan was gone, I cried. When a song came on the radio that reminded me of him, I cried. At FRG meetings when they would talk about deployment, I had to look up at the ceiling and think about how illogical of a move it was to close down the Discovery Zone at the end of the nineties just when I was really starting to enjoy it. Why? So I didn’t have to think about anything that would make my mascara run. (If I had worn makeup when the Discovery Zone went bankrupt, I probably would have had mascara streaks for weeks.) When Morgan brought me flowers, I cried. When he smiled, I’d cried. If he snored in the middle of the night and woke me up, I cried. I cried to my mom. I cried to my sisters. I cried alone. I cried at the park. Seriously, I had to up my water intake.

I had someone tell me that this response was unhealthy but I have to be honest, I think it was good…and normal.  I was pretty much mourning the months that I’m going to lose with my husband and best friend. It wasn’t fun. I had an awful lot of facts to work my way through…

We’ve never been apart for this long before. And even when we have lived apart, we’ve talked on the phone or video chatted almost every day. With the exception of boot camp, we’ve never really been apart communication-wise since we met in 2007. This is our first deployment. Morgan will be in combat-zones. We will not get to talk every day. We may not even get to email every day. Some days, I won’t even know for sure if he’s alive. Although the chance is ridiculously small, he may not come home. Anything could happen. And even if all goes well and according to plan, we are going to be separated and lonely for a lot longer than I appreciate. No matter what, when he gets home our relationship is going to be different. We’re both going to have changed and adjusted and come back together as two different people. Not bad, just different. And from what I’ve read, it’s very hard for a lot of married couples. That’s why the divorce rate is so insanely high for military. It’s hard to go from being self-sufficient and alone to having another person that you are supposed to be essentially one with show back up suddenly. Even the strongest, godliest, most loving couples I have met say that coming off a long deployment is hard. Morgan may come home a different person. I may turn into a different person. There’s a good chance that we’re going to have a myriad of painful adjustments to go through when he gets home. 

So as I worked through all of this, I cried. I mourned the loss of my best friend. And that’s okay. It’s normal and healthy. The big problem was that all of this working through and crying that I was doing was punctuated by guilt. I felt like I had to pull it together because Navy Wives are strong. They don’t fall apart. They pull it together. And while I couldn’t care less if I’m behaving how a Navy Wife is supposed to behave, I did care that I wasn’t making Morgan’s time left at home spectacular. I felt this heavy responsibility to make the last couple months that Morgan is stateside fantastic…to make them so great that even when he’s riding an elephant in Dubai next year, he’d still miss me. Like if I didn’t pull it together, he’d be glad that he was gone. And that made me cry more. I felt so guilty that I couldn’t hold it together for him. That I couldn’t even go out to dinner with him without my eyes welling up with tears and having to look away from his face…the face that’s been there since I was seventeen getting me through all the hard stuff. I love him so much and I didn’t want this to be any harder on him than it’s already going to be…and here I was being the exact thing that was making it harder on him. So on top of being a basket-case, I was also so unbelievably guilt-ridden.

Stage Moaning Myrtle was no fun. In fact, compared to every emotional upheaval I’ve had the extreme pleasure to go through in the last twenty-three years, this ranked right up there with the worst of them. The problem was the guilt. Yes, I wasn’t making this any easier on the people around me but the emotions I was experiencing were valid, normal, healthy emotions. As a human being, you are allowed to mourn your losses, in your way and in your time. You are allowed to be a mess and fall apart. It’s normal. What shouldn’t be normal is the guilt…although talking to other people in the same boat (ahhhh that pun. It’s getting so old. Just one more time) leads me to believe that the guilt is there for a lot of them too. That they do fall apart and that they also feel extremely guilty about not being able to hold it together. They feel guilty for their totally normal, human emotions. For some reason, we Navy Wives have been programmed to hold it together. To be the strong ones on the home-front. And while we can hold it together and we are unbelievably strong…it’s also okay for us to not hold it together sometimes. 

So fall apart if you need to. Seriously. Sometimes we all need a couple days (or weeks…or months) of being Moaning Myrtle. It is unfair that you have to say goodbye to your other half. It is a huge sacrifice that you’re making. And you are allowed to be sad. You are allowed to cry. You absolutely do not have to bottle it all up inside all the time. You can talk about it. You can scream about it. You can cry until you are dehydrated. And you don’t have to feel guilty. Those things are normal. They are human. And they are not weak. And even if the people around you start handing you tissues before Chasing Cars gets into the chorus because they know what’s coming, that’s okay. Go ahead and be Moaning Myrtle.

And just a little sidenote: Morgan is fantastic. I mean, seriously. The guy takes everything I throw at him and just stays awesome. I cry and cry and he’s just fine with it. He comes home with chocolate and flowers and hugs me until I can’t breathe. I don’t know how he’s always just stable as a rock, but he is. And I’m so glad he’s mine.