My 2014

To Do:

• Write my thesis

• Finish up both my graduate programs

• Read 52 books

• Get my computer life organized

• Blog more

• Write more; Speak more; Say more

• Get my hair done more often; Get my nails done more often

• Organize and write out my curriculum for each course I teach

• See and speak to my friends more often

• Travel 3 times (or more)

• Learn to walk better in heels

• Be healthy – exercise, eat right, juice, lose a little weight

• Prioritize what makes me feel good

• Work on the outside of the house

• Potty train Julianne

• Get my kids eating better

To Quit:

• Making decisions to make other people happy

• Keeping my mouth closed when I don’t feel like it

• Feeling guilty about spending money

• Drinking sodas

• Oversleeping on weekdays

• Being so messy

• Being overly dependent on my husband

• Being afraid to drive

Happy New Year, everyone.

I hope you are living the life you want.

I hope you own yourself. I hope you feel good. I hope you are loved. I hope you are traveling at the edges of your perception. I hope your world is growing. Be good to yourself.

Love,

Jordan

Some thoughts about life...and being a woman

Well, another year has come and gone and I’ve been radio silent. It’s hard to pinpoint a single reason why…just a lot of things piling on top of one another and resulting in agitation, a bursting brain, and dreams deferred. As I review my old posts and examine my changing self, I see a constant struggle – a search for balance, that secret ingredient that will allow me to be all the things and all the people I want to be. I continually work toward and wait for that day…the day when I can relax into my own existence as the perfectly balanced woman, mom, wife, teacher, writer, learner, homemaker, friend, and self I want to be.


The truth is, I’ve been so busy. So busy. Too busy figuring out how to juggle and survive all the roles I play and how to trick everyone (myself included) into thinking I’m doing a decent job at a few of them. Too busy trying to put on faces and hats and to figure out which parts of myself belong when wearing each one. Too busy doing everything that everyone else needs me to do, wants from me, or thinks I should be doing. Too busy doing all of those things to be being myself at all. And you know what…that makes a person pretty tired. So tired that the very thought of digging down into the mess and grasping for realness and truth seems like the most impossible thing in all the world. And, I keep thinking, there is always tomorrow. There is always next semester. It will be easier in a few years. The kids will be older and more independent. We will have more money and the struggle won’t be quite so hard. I’ll be settled in my job. Hah!


I reread all that, and I am ashamed to sound dissatisfied. I’m not. I love my life. I love my husband and my family. I love being my babies’ mama. I love teaching English. I love working in a challenging and fulfilling career. I love my home. I love my struggles. I love my obligations. I would not be anyone else or anywhere else. I hope that’s clear. It’s just that, altogether, it’s enough to bury a person. And I’ve realized that being buried beneath my tasks is my greatest and most realistic fear. I could live a life of days spent getting the job done. But I won’t. I want to be here – exposed, and raw, and real, and honest…all of me…all the time.


I love this little break. Two weeks off to collect myself. I always have so many big plans, but usually my to-do’s go unchecked. Winter break is about rest and reflection. I’ve spent most of the last seven days resting, reading, thinking. And here’s what I’m thinking: balance isn’t in the cards for me. I’m a woman of extremes. I have big dreams and big fears. I take on too much and I take too much. I throw myself full-force at everything all at once and the result is never perfection. But that’s okay. Because I am vast and extreme and multitudinous. And I like swimming in the ocean of my mind every day. And the things that I do are good. They aren’t puzzle pieces. They don’t fit together to create the perfect picture. They are more like vivid brushstrokes on a giant, abstract mural. And the images there might not make much sense to anyone else who looks at it, but I’m liking what I see.


As I get older, one thing that I am finding to be truth is this: Control is an illusion. I have no control. Neither does anyone else. Life is always throwing curve balls and there’s just nothing to be done about it. Today, as it is, is all I’ve really got. So, I must insist that I am not satisfied to spend another today buried under the craziness of my own life. It will be tedious and it will be dirty, but have to dig myself out. And every word is nothing but a speck of dirt. These words are a single shovelful. And they will mix well with the water in my ocean-mind to make paint. And that paint will make beautiful art on the walls of my life. So here’s to not being buried. Here’s to digging, and painting, and swimming, and living, and being here…all of me…all the time.

Two

My baby Chase,

It’s late…way late. I have been running around like a crazy person for the past couple days trying to get everything together for this party, and, of course, it’s still coming down to the last minute. That’s how we roll, I guess. Anyway, like I said, it’s late. And the early morning is going to come so soon, but I can’t settle down. My mind is somewhere else…somewhere wrapped in the blessing of your existence.

Two years ago tonight, your daddy and I did something we do all the time when I need calming down. We were thumbing through books at the bookstore, losing ourselves in the possibilities of words, forgetting the craziness of right here right now for just a minute (well…I was doing those things. Your daddy was sitting in a chair playing on his phone, his favorite calming bookstore activity. But that’s neither here nor there… ). We were on our way to you.

In the last moments before we headed to the hospital to begin my induction, I noticed a book called, “Taming the Spirited Child.” That title just breaks my heart. It still breaks me the way it did that day, when you were all possibilities. I closed my eyes and I begged the universe for a spirited child. And I swore if you were, I would NEVER try to tame you.

I have a hard time remembering who I was on that night. I was a girl. A girl with big ideas about parenthood, a lot of confidence in my ability to be a good mama, and not a damn clue about the reality of raising a child.

Who I am today is a hundred miles from that girl. And that’s because of you.
Even so, I stand by what I begged for. I got it. You ARE spirit, my child. You are independent and strong-willed and such a little self. A BIG self. You have so much muchness. You are magic trapped in a body.

Some days, I wonder how it was that there was ever a day that I didn’t know you. How could there have ever been a day that you didn’t exist in my reality? Other days, I realize that I still don’t know you…I haven’t scratched the surface of you. You are an ocean and I’ve only just waded into the lapping waves. You are an eternity that I’ve lived in for just a minute.

What a juxtaposition. You are my always were. And you are also my never will fully be. You are a growing. You are a forever, little magician.

Thank you for being mine…for becoming a part of what is me. You teach me every single minute of every single day how to know myself better. You amaze me. You humble me. You exhaust me to my very bones. You ignite my soul to be bigger and better and worthy to be someone to you. Thank you for that. Thank you for being the part of me that I could never be for myself. I will spend forever and ever trying to do the same for you.

You can be my brave, and I will be your safety net. You can be my fun, and I will be your serious. You can be my freedom, and I will be your structure. You can be my open field, and I will be your home. We can spend a lifetime this way…teaching one another how to be. What a gift. I love you unbelievably.
-Mama

Happy Days and Happy Birthdays

Saturday Michael will be twenty-seven. I can't quite figure out what the big deal about twenty-seven is to me, but it seems like a monumental age. Like the age of a grown-up. He'll have had twenty-seven birthdays...almost an entire month's worth. And this will be the ninth we've spent together. Sometimes, as birthdays approach, I get a little mournful of the fact that I’m not really a person of grand gesture. I’ll probably never have the money, time, or general wherewithal to surprise him with a new boat or vacation…or anyone else I love dearly for that matter. I do think birthdays are an important reason to celebrate someone in an extra special way, but somewhere during these past nine years, our birthdays have become just another day nestled almost unrecognizably into the same-old, same-old of our every day.

But when I really think about the way we’ve built our lives around these same-old, same-old days, I find that what we do have really is something grand and spectacular and worthy. Something so much more than the greatest gift I could ever think up to give anyone. In the past nine years, we’ve built something so special, so perfectly made out of us, that even our bad days seem very, very good. We’ve built a life that doesn’t place too much stock in looking forward to the special occasions, big events, vacations, and weekends of life, instead putting our focus into being aware and present and gracious about today. Last night, our family gathered for dinner…taco soup and slice and bake cookies, nothing fancy…and we enjoyed one another, played with the baby, watched TV together, and shared stories about our days. It was not much different than what we will probably do again a couple of times next week. But it felt so nice and whole and perfect to be celebrating Michael in that way…in that same way we go about our normal lives, making sure that every day that we can do it, birthday or not, we make the most of one another.

In the coming days, there will be razorback games, and more birthdays, and fishing tournaments, and girl’s days, and comforting fall dinners, and somewhere in there, a new little person will join our lives. These special things will be mixed in, of course, with bad days, arguments, stress from work, worries, and everything else that makes life hard. But, through those things, we will hold on to one another for support and dwell in the good…in the special moments that we are able to create and sustain so often. Because that’s just how we do it. It is a good life. It is a full life, and I am so thankful for it.

And I’m also thankful for my husband. I am so thankful for how we love one another. I am thankful for this life we are making together. It isn’t hard to live a happy life when we have a little person like Chase running around us all the time making things so joyful and exciting. It’s even easier when we get to anticipate the excitement and fun and overwhelming love of being able to add another person to this mix in a few short weeks. But all the words and metaphors and emotional ramblings in every language in the world will never be able to express how truly blessed I feel to share with him what is at the center of all of that…a relationship that is solid and rich and pure. And good...good in every sense of the word. I love you, Michael Gross. Thanks for sharing this life with me. Happy Birthday, you old grown-up man.

Living Consciously

There’s been a lot tumbling around in my head lately…lots of thoughts about big issues, the little things of my day-to-day, philosophical meandering on life and purpose and so on. On all accounts, the over stimulated mush in my brain wouldn’t really be able to come up with a focused blog on any of it, so here’s an early apology if I sound like a rambling crazy person…I like to blame it on a little (or not so little) something called being eight and a half months pregnant.

What I really want to talk about right now is consciousness. During these past few years, one of my greater struggles in life has been to satisfy my desire of attaching a purpose to my life and the things I do with it, big and small. I would describe the most interior part of myself that I’ve yet uncovered as an introvert…a thinker. Someone who easily gets stuck inside a thought or a feeling, chasing it round and round until I inevitably discover that I can’t make a static relationship with it. These slippery things make it easy for me to lose my focus, to get frustrated, to need a change or a new direction to run. What I want, beneath all the more important things like a healthy, happy, well cared for family, is to find a way to feel peaceful in my daily life. In coming to the understanding that this is not really in my nature, I’ve spent a lot of time asking what I need in order to help myself find a way to that place. So far, I’ve decided that the most important tool I need is a sense of purpose. A reason for being that is above the little things I do each day, but still in some way intimately connected to them all. A goal toward a specifically directed output into the universe that is a result of all the little things that make me, well, me. Adherence to this path is difficult, but I think I’ve discovered the key…at least one of them: Consciousness.

By consciousness, I mean to say having a generally focused awareness about everything I do. If, for instance, I decide that I want to be a more supportive and loving wife to my husband, I have to realize that deciding this, for all real purposes, means absolutely nothing. Even making an effort to do one or two things a day toward this purpose is really ineffectual in making a true change. The only way to make any headway on a goal like this is to make a conscious decision to be aware of it in all the little things I do each day. I will fail…a lot (in this case, just ask my husband). But, when I am constantly aware of my goal, I more readily consider the effects of my actions, words, and attitudes and whether or not they are helping or hindering what I’ve decided is my purpose. When I am aware, I quickly realize that explaining my feelings and needs are more likely to create quick understanding and cooperativeness between the two of us than my frustratingly demanding a need for help, or giving Michael an exasperated look as the baby attempts to climb on the table for the fourth time in a row.

Now that I think about it, this example may make the whole process sound a little simpler than I mean for it to. Obviously communicating effectively is going to make a marriage easier. That is not what I really want to talk about here. Rather, I mean to say that I’ve found that key to making positive changes, to living a more peaceful, satisfied existence, for me at least, is a commitment to living in a conscious way about what I decide is important to me and my purpose.
I want to live a life that can’t help but make other people’s better, a life that always focuses on love and decency above everything else, a life that is constantly learning, enthusiastic, and pushing toward ultimate betterment, a life that understands that this world is complicated and is full of good and bad and is totally and completely uncontrollable – a life that accepts this and focuses on my role as a human in the midst of such a mess, a life that is driven but content, fired up but peaceful, accepting but not complacent. Living this life, in a nutshell, is my purpose.

I have to remind myself to be aware of these goals on a daily basis in order to in any real way live this life. I have to go about my every day consciously. I have to realize when certain habits, actions, and attitudes get in the way of these goals, and I have to take responsibility for changing them. Lately, I have been trying to focus on one small thing each day. One minor adjustment in attitude or action or whatever that ultimately contributes to the greater goal. I take a few quiet moments each morning to reflect on what I feel my soul is really needing that day in order to feel peace. Today’s goal: to feel blessed.

In the midst of all I have - a beautiful, healthy child and another on the way, a strong and supportive relationship, a present, healthy, loving family, more life friends than I can count, a comfortable and happy home, a set of interests that keep me excited and motivated to keep learning and changing…I could really go on and on… In the midst of all this, I more often spend my time feeling afraid of my lack of control over these things. I feel worried instead of content. I would even say that, lately, I feel paranoid that something bad will happen if I don’t keep a constant watchful eye on everyone and everything I love all the time…as if that watchful eye could really keep any of it safe anyway. This attitude is not helping me achieve my purposes. In fact, my constant fear of something terrible only really causes me to attempt to over-protect (read over-control) my loved ones, dump my own irrational fears on everyone else, waste copious amounts of ineffectual time “spinning my wheels” (as my mother says), and feeling unhappy feelings about things that should make me happy and peaceful.

I know that I won’t change this behavior overnight, but with vigilance toward being aware and conscious about how it is truly affecting me and my loved ones, I can make small changes. I am accountable for this, and if I want to feel better and keep my fear from running (and ruining) my life, then I HAVE TO change it. Today, I am taking one small step toward a life change. I am feeling blessed instead of afraid. I want the universe to know that I am thankful, not that I demand that it doesn’t take something precious away from me. Today, I am going to radiate thankfulness…I am going to own that I am so blessed that I can’t stand it…so blessed that it isn’t even fair. Today I am going to invest every last drop of myself in loving who and what I have and enjoying everything. That seems like a VERY purposeful way to spend my day.

just keep swimming...

The other day, my little sister’s best friend posted this as her facebook status. I’m not usually one to refer to cartoons for life mantras, but it was strangely just what I needed to hear. ..a reminder of the only thing I can really do. Just keep swimming.

This week was a tough one for us. The financial reality of not having a job truly began to set in. Michael got an offer for a great job on Monday, which was promptly revoked a couple of hours later due to the fact that his step-brother works for the same company, and it violates their nepotism policy. (For the record, everyone that was a part of Michael’s interview process was aware of the situation and assured him that being step-brothers didn’t count as immediate family.) Anyway, there are no hard feelings toward the company or anyone involved…It just felt like having the rug put back under us and then ripped out again. It was a punch in the gut after everything else that has happened, and it took us a little while to get over.

Inevitably, it just seems to have been another little lesson for us. Patience and Faith. Patience and Faith. Patience and Faith. I repeat these things to myself when I feel panic or frustration starting to rise, and only after Monday did I realize that I haven’t been truly giving myself over to either patience or faith. It isn’t enough to cling to the ideas of patience and faith to help myself through this. I have to learn them. I have to practice them. I have to focus on WHAT THEY REALLY MEAN. And that’s hard.

I’m learning right now that patience doesn’t mean calming down or waiting for answers that will shortly present themselves to me. It’s not enough to have patience for a few days or a few weeks. We are making changes here…life changes. The answers to the questions that create life changes take time. I’m learning that I can’t expect my husband to decide how he wants to go about starting his career over in a few weeks. I’m learning that I can’t expect him to go about things the way I do. I’m learning that he needs the time to really look within himself and figure things out. These transitions we are going through aren’t set on a timeline like I wish they were. So I’m having a baby in a few months. That doesn’t mean we have a deadline. Babies are born into all sorts of crazy situations and everything turns out fine. This baby will be fine…and loved…and happy. What else really matters? Learning to have patience is hard for a control freak because it means giving up control (or at least the illusion of control). Relinquishing control is a daily (hourly) struggle for me, but I’m working on it. And sometimes I fail completely. But sometimes I don’t. This next week, I’m going to focus on harnessing this type of patience and letting it keep me afloat. I’m going to focus on NOT struggling against the tide.



And then there’s faith. This is a really hard one for me. Fundamentally, I believe in individual autonomy. To an extent, I believe that I control what happens to me. If I work hard, I am much closer to achieving what I want than if I just wait for it. This is how I’ve lived my entire life, and I think I’ve situated faith in a strange place. I have faith in what I have control (or the illusion of control) over. I have faith in the ultimate human good. I have faith that being a good person is always for the best. It has always been really hard for me to have faith that things would just work out for the best. Obviously, things don’t always work out for the best. People fail. People die. Tragedies happen. Good people don’t always have good lives. So there’s no point in believing that everything will turn out great. Maybe it will and maybe it won’t. That’s always always been my perspective on things. But I’m beginning to realize that I’ve left something out of that equation. Maybe things don’t always turn out for the best, but (and I do believe this) things always turn out how they are supposed to. Every single hard thing I’ve ever gone through has shaped me. Whether I fight it or struggle for control over it or wallow in my frustration with it, the universe always wins. It always finds a way to teach me what I’m in desperate need of learning. The faith that I’m searching for means that I need to relax and let the universe do what it’s going to do. Things will turn out exactly how they are supposed to without my overanalyzing and scrutinizing over every single decision. There is no use for all my worry and fear. One way or another, what is going to be will be. I just have to let it. This week, I’m going to focus on the faith that helps me let things be.

My sister in law is an elementary school teacher, and she once quoted from a book she’d read to her class: “Today was a bad day; Tomorrow will be better.”

So, after a long, hard, emotionally draining week, I’m going to spend the next few days focusing on the lessons I’ve learned from Disney movies and children’s books. I’m going to keep swimming toward a better tomorrow. I’m going to let go of today’s pains and move forward. I’m going to find the inner peace to let the universe shape me, reminding myself every moment that life isn’t about the jobs we have or the money we make. Life is about becoming who we are supposed to be, and this day’s challenge is just a step leading us in that direction.

Meditations on Patience and Faith...and Blessings

It’s been a pretty crazy couple of weeks for this little family. And I mean crazy. On June 30th, Michael got a pretty shocking call at four o’clock in the morning. It was his confused boss, letting him know that he thought Yarnell’s Ice Cream, the company Michael has worked for for the past five years, had gone out of business overnight…without any warning to employees.

In all honesty, it has been pretty obvious that things were going downhill at Yarnell’s for a while now. After a string of drastic pay cuts, we began casually looking for new options for Michael. But Yarnell’s has continued to pay our bills (and not much more) in the meantime…until last weekend, when he and two hundred other employees received their final paychecks which included no severance, no pay for saved vacation time, and nothing else.

So here we sit…in small town Arkansas, with a seventeen month old and another baby due in sixteen (ish??? I’ve lost count) weeks, and no jobs. All our plans have been thrown up into the air, along with all our feelings of security and peace. With the last little bit of my master’s degree able to be wrapped up from home, I was all set to stay home with my babies for a year or so before really trying to get my career started. Michael was content with Yarnell’s but hoping to find something better for us in the meantime. It wouldn’t have been easy, but we would have gotten by while our babies were little. And now..who knows? Either one or both of us could end up having to go to work. We’re most likely looking at relocating, which is equally exciting and terrifying for a number of reasons. We may or may not have a settled life before the birth of this baby. We’re starting over.

We’ve been trying to look at this as an opportunity rather than a hardship. Michael has been tied to a job he hasn’t loved for a long time. Now, he’s not. He needed a change, and now he has to make one. There is a plan in all this…but it’s still scary. I am hardwired for anxiety, and I’ve done my best to keep it at bay – to be the most supportive and encouraging wife, the most calm and assuring mommy, the most soothing and healthy home for our littlest one. It’s my first tough lesson in motherhood. I’ve always known that women hold families together and keep things smooth and peaceful, but I’ve never been challenged to try to do this when I feel so anxious and uncertain about the future. I do my best to take things one day at a time, to enjoy the time with my husband, to focus on what I can learn.

Right now, I’m spending a lot of time meditating on patience and faith. These are the lessons the universe is trying to teach me through this. These two things have always been some of my greatest weaknesses, and I know that somehow, through this, I am being shaped and prepared for a day when I will truly need to lean on patience and faith. In the scheme of things, our problems are small. We have each other, our health and love and absolute assurance in one another. We have safety and security and a roof over our heads. We have a huge community of family and friends loving us through this. If I can’t learn to be patient and have faith that we will be taken care of, that we are on the path to what is meant for us, in the face of all of these blessings, then how could I ever hope to make it through something really hard? There are people all over this world struggling to literally survive. There are people who’ve lost their homes and loved ones in disasters. There are people who live every single day afraid of real and dangerous threats. There are people who are fighting addictions and diseases. There are people who are truly broken and alone. And somehow, these people survive.
We will make it through this. We will find the right way to provide for our little family. Our children will grow up knowing love and hope and happiness (and hopefully, someday, faith and patience). I look forward to the day when things will seem more settled and less scary.

Until then, I will do my best to wait and believe that things will work out. I will make the most of these days. Until then, I will focus on how thankful I am. I am thankful for the soft places to land. I am thankful that when I freak out and cry and talk one hundred miles an hour and make absolutely no sense, my husband just holds me and breathes deep for me and tells me it’s all going to work out fine the 157 times I need to hear it. I am thankful for knowing that even the hands that sometimes seem to be pushing me are really just trying to help hold me up and keep me steady. I am thankful for the best family who loves me and the kindest and most wonderfully supportive, best friends in the world. I am thankful for a hot shower and good smelling candles and the perfect Ryan Adams song coming on the radio. I am thankful for the smiliest, funniest, happiest little boy. I am thankful for this healthy littlest one. Most of all, I am thankful for knowing that no matter how much time I spend measuring out, counting, categorizing, and strategizing against my pains and worries and frustrations, they will never compare to the blessings I can count up in just a couple of seconds.