Failure to be Grateful For

~ Natalie Hart ~ Leave a comment

My friend, Chris Robertson, who works at the Acton Institute, posted this line on Facebook this morning: “Our greatest fear should not be of failure, but of succeeding at things in life that don’t really matter.”

I felt that one in my gut. A conviction in the true sense of the word: I had been tried and convicted of succeeding at things that don’t really matter.

And then I clicked through to a blog post that responded to that line with the assertion that if Christ is Lord, everything matters.  The author, Jake Belder’s concern is to not let people divide their lives into good = spiritual pursuits vs. bad = everything else. Belder doesn’t want Christians to be so farsightedly focused on their personal salvation that they don’t see their daily lives as opportunities “to demonstrate Christ’s rule over all of life, offering the world around us a foretaste of ‘what is unseen’ – that glorious future when the whole of creation is redeemed and everything finds its fulfilment and flourishing under the consummated rule of the true King.”

I can get behind that. Almost. Except for the headline, “If Christ is Lord, Everything Matters.”

Because everything does not matter. It does not matter that I can get the highest score in online Boggle every 10 or so tries. It doesn’t matter that my new rug is still driving my nuts by throwing off pills and dust creatures. It doesn’t matter that I am not model-thin. It doesn’t matter that I have an unpoppable pimple on my cheek that I have to force myself not to touch dozens of times a day. It doesn’t matter that I haven’t dusted behind my books in at least 4 years.

The last one has a caveat. I’m not inspired by a holy approach to doing the dishes and folding laundry and brushing my teeth. I’m fine with them being mere chores. If the holy approach to chores gives you a more peaceful and godly life, I think you’re awesome. I really do. To me, they don’t “matter” except insofar as I want a reasonably clean, safe, and organized house because otherwise I get anxious and that spills over into areas that matter more to me.

I’m sure we each have a list of things that consume our thoughts or our time that we’re aware don’t truly matter. Even Paul, no slacker when it came to working for the kingdom, does: “I don’t really understand myself, for I want to do what is right, but I don’t do it. Instead I do what I hate” (Rom. 7:15 NLT).

It happens over and over in the Bible: people focus on the symbols of obedience to distract from their disobedience. In 1 Samuel 15, the Israelite army has just defeated the Amalekites. Saul was supposed to destroy everything and everybody, but he didn’t. He and his men kept the best of everything and destroyed the rest. (In a side note, I think Saul was in a tough position: it was a long walk to Amalek, gathering the tribal army along the way, waiting for the Kenites to move to safety, then doing all the defeating. The army would’ve expected to be paid with plunder.) When Samuel confronts him, Saul twice explains that they saved the best of everything so they could do a big sacrifice at Gilgal. Samuel comes back with, “Obedience is far better than sacrifice. Listening to Him is much better than offering the fat of rams” (15:22 NLT).

Moreover, you can succeed at what is called in dance, “marking it.” There are some rehearsals in which you don’t dance full out, but just enough to get a sense of the performance space. It’s boring to watch and merely technical to do. Similarly, you can succeed at living a safe, medium life, never stepping out despite fear, never trying anything new, never risking embarrassment in the Lord’s name. That’s not a success I’d trumpet.

Going back to the quote that started this all, “Our greatest fear should not be of failure, but of succeeding at things in life that don’t really matter,” I want to bring in a different perspective on failure: the scientist’s. They fail all the time. They, like hitters in baseball, might even fail more often than they succeed. Each time they fail, they learn. Each failure is important.

This hits me where I live today, because I feel like I’ve failed at something that matters: I’m leaving the church I’ve loved for nine years.* I’m sad and I’m anxious, but I can’t stay. I’ve learned so much there about serving the Lord and His people, about prayerfully pushing past fear and past the sense that my way is always the right way, about throwing my body, mind and strength into loving the Lord and serving His people. This good failure of mine changed the course of my church life and my faith life. I’ll always be grateful to it.

 

*I apologize to my church friends who may be hearing this for the first time in this venue.

 

Diaries: Unexpected Sweetness

~ Natalie Hart ~ Leave a comment

We’re whipping through the years, now. There was one entry each for 1979 and 1980. One is so earnest and dear and the other makes me cry. In a developmental note, I was no longer writing in block capital letters, but in lowercase, loopy cursive.

December 22, 1979   I have to pay better attention to my father. He is getting a lonely look on his face.

I have no idea what was happening. It was close to Christmas, which was a time my dad loved. He went all out but did his main shopping on Christmas Eve after work, which cut it close because that was the night we opened presents. He’d come home laden with bags and head straight upstairs to his attic office.

I believe 1979 was the first year my dad got one wish: we had oil fondue for dinner that night. My mother wouldn’t do it until my brother was 10 and she felt we could safely handle a pot of boiling oil on the table.

After dinner, Dad would disappear upstairs again, wrap everything in newspaper, write on the tags that they were from Santa (including the gifts he bought himself), and bring them all down. We’d tease him about the packages being from Santa. He’d insist. We’d get down to business.

I also don’t know whether I did pay better attention to him. The diary is silent on this. I hope I did.

April 24, 1980      I saw the movie “Lovey” today. It was fabulous! Today, I also wrote my first french letter. It was fun. I always seem to enjoy those things. I enjoy almost everything. God gave us so much to enjoy! To me, my understanding and love of God is growing. And when I pray, it is almost always from my heart. Almost every day I thank God for my parents and teacher, they are so wonderful.

When I read the above, I was puzzled why I’d been watching that movie. After a little research, I figured out that it wasn’t the film version of the Judy Blume book, Forever, her book about “going all the way,” which my class read avidly, especially the pages that had been pre-folded-down for us.

Not at all. Lovey: A Circle of Children was a 1978 TV movie about a teacher of autistic children. Here’s the description from Answers.com:

Lovey: A Circle of Children, Part Two is that TV movie rarity: a sequel that is every bit as terrific as the original. Jane Alexander repeats her role from 1977’s A Circle of Children as a volunteer teacher specializing in autistic and emotionally disturbed children. Hannah (Kris McKeon) is an 11 year old child nicknamed “Lovey.” The girl is given to loud, unexpected and quite violent tantrums, and for a long time it looks as though Ms. Alexander will never get through to her. The social worker’s efforts to help Lovey put a severe strain on her off-hours love life. Despite the soap-opera trappings, Lovey: A Circle of Children shines with the light of truth from first frame to last, with Jane Alexander matching the brilliance of her earlier performance in the same role. Like A Circle of Children, this sequel was based on the autobiographical novel by Mary MacCracken. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

I remember this movie: the calm tones of the teacher, the tantrums of the girl. I know I’m not the only girl who went through a phase of devouring books and movies about kids with developmental or emotional issues. All that nobility and persistence. And tears. I’m certain it made me cry, then. It’d make me cry even more now, I’m sure.

I wonder what I was doing when I wasn’t praying from my heart? Was I just rehearsing words? Trying to pray before bed and falling asleep in the middle?

I like thinking about that twelve-year-old girl who got really into things and wanted to love and understand God was grateful to God for almost everything. I’ve gone through intense times of gratitude since then, and they’re wonderful.

The year we moved back to Grand Rapids from NYC was another such time. We decided to move, my husband got a job that was a promotion in his field, we bought a car, I got pregnant, and we bought a house, all in the space of three months. And then in December I got to dance as Mary in a Lessons & Carols service while I was pregnant — one of the best experiences of my life. I can’t say I was a ray of sunshine all the time, but I was deeply, deeply grateful to God for all of it. Then the child arrived and exhaustion and insecurity took residence for awhile.

You know, I still get enthusiastic about things. I still want to love and understand God. And I’m often grateful.

However, I am not feeling too sunny about sharing the upcoming diaries. The excruciating high school years — exclamation points galore, gushing, soul-bearing, ridiculous behavior. That we all go through it doesn’t make it any better….

Diaries: October, 1978

~ Natalie Hart ~ 4 Comments

I was not a consistent diarist. The prior entries for 1978 are from January. The next ones are from October. At least I’d write a few entries in a row before losing steam. Actually, this is something I still struggle with: full of good intentions but not so full of sticktoitiveness. I get more disciplined as I get older, but it’s still a “growth area.”

10/7/1978   Today at modern dance we learned how to use the balls.

I loved that class. It was actually rhythmic gymnastics, which I was really good at, but my cousin (who I took the class with) didn’t take it the second year and I was too shy to take it by myself, so I dropped it. I wish I hadn’t. I had the flexibility and gracefulness that the sport requires. Coulda been a contenda! Can’t do anything about that now. At least I still use those skills many Sundays when I take out the big ribbon on a stick to wave during praise and worship. Although I got it tangled around my neck once and I tied such a multi-knot in the air that I had to stop and undo it this past week, I try to make patterns with the ribbon that go with the words of the song.

And, out of all the things that I’m discovering are still an issue for me, these 30 years later, this one is not: I’m not afraid to be really good at something. It isn’t considered very feminine to boast, but I’m going to do it: I’m really good at Zumba. My spot is in the front line, right by the mirror, and I dance the living daylights out of every number. I came in almost late this morning, and when two other regulars saw me, they said, “Oh good, here comes our teacher,” which we had a laugh about. My theory is that I’m not snotty or obnoxious about being good at it, I’m not falsely modest although I do highlight when something is hard for me, and I take such obvious joy in it that nobody can feel I’m lording my Zumbabilities over them. Also, I just plain love it, and I’m not letting anything get in the way.

10/8/1978   I felt so stupid standing at the church doors handing out newsletters. Boy, is Mrs. M. ever pregnant. It looks like she’s about to burst. I went over to E.’s house, we listened to Grease twice. It was freezing outside, no wonder R. wore mittens to Church. Near the cottage it snowed. Here it rained and hailed.

Oh, the self-consciousness of the tween. No idea what the newsletters were for. And I don’t remember noticing adults all that much, so Mrs. M. really must’ve been ready to have that baby. This is the problem with trying to tell a self-conscious child not to worry about it because nobody is looking at you: they often are. It was apparently ridiculous enough to wear mittens to church in early October that it became one of a half dozen diary entries for the year.

Conversations between my daughter and her friend bear this out, too: it’s all about the other people in their classes. So maybe I need to revise the advice, turn it to: “Whether you do nothing or something, some people will love it, some people will talk smack about it [shrug]. So you might as well do something.” Not that anyone will listen to that, either, but a mother’s got to try.

10/9/1978   There wasn’t any school for us today. Guess why? It was Thanksgiving. Oma and Tanta Re came over for the turkey dinner. After supper we saw some slides. Most of them were from Holland. Today was chilly and if you were going to be outside for a while, you had to wear a jacket.

10/10/1978  Today was Guides. I showed “Sparky” my stamp book and she said she would send a tester.

Let’s set aside the nod to the expectation that other people would be reading this with the “Guess why?” Although that is happening now, it’s silly in a ten year old.

I think these two entries are connected. A relative from overseas brought me a huge envelope of international stamps for my collection. It could very well have been Tante Re. I still have the stamp book. I have pinned a post on using stamps in art, and now that I see these all again, it makes me want to take them out of their little book and put them on the wall.

And now I’m going to give ten-year-old me a hug. She was a sweet little thing.

Words, Glorious Words

~ Natalie Hart ~ 2 Comments

I’ve been reading one of my Mother’s Day presents, Stephen Fry’s The Fry Chronicles.

In the introduction, he says that he is not a practitioner of brevity; where someone else uses 10 words, he’ll use 100, which is true. He blames it all on his love of words. And he uses some great words and fun turns of phrase (turn of phrases?). Here are some that sent me to my dictionary, most of which I could get the gist of in context, but wanted to see what precisely he meant.

caravanserai: a Near East inn with a large courtyard to accommodate large caravans

prolix: writing or speaking at great and tedious length

evangels: good news in general; also the good news in the New Testament sense, a doctrine or guide
I’d read this as a variant of evangelical, but it isn’t at all: it’s what the evangelical believes in.

calumniating: slandering

anathematize: (I’d never heard the word as a verb) to slander, to pronounce something an anathema

All of these words were on the same page (p.46). Three of them in the same sentence, which is so fun that I’m going to share it here:

For myself, I’d always thought Leavis a sanctimonious prick of only parochial significance (my own brand of undergraduate sanctimoniousness at work there, I now see) and certainly by the time I arrived at Cambridge his influence had waned, he and his kind having been almost entirely eclipsed by the Parisian post-structuralists and their caravanserai of prolix and impenetrable evangels and dogmatically zealous acolytes.

I group memoirs in two broad categories: thrill rides that sweep you along and engross you in the story of this person’s life (the other Mother’s Day present, Storm Large’s Crazy Enough is one of these), and charming and interesting stories that leave enough room for you to think about your own life while you read about this other. Fry’s memoir is of the latter kind, so I’ve been remembering and analyzing who I was during my college years. No introspection in this post, though (that’ll wait until later). Now, more fun words.

lacunae: minute cavities in bone; air space in tissue of plants; missing part of a manuscript or argument

seraphically: seraphs are the highest order of angels, so this is angelic in the extreme. As he uses it, in a story about a wife smiling seraphically at their friends after her husband has been an obnoxious jerk, I imagine that it’s a bit aggressively angelic. Or, I guess, so far above it all angelic that her husband’s behavior doesn’t even register.

nubiferously: I think he made this one up. Based on nubile, which refers to young, sexually attractive persons, usually female. But this is how he used it:

At tea, the nubiferously chain-smoking pair of Tom Stoppard and Ronnie Harwood visit our rather showbizzy box.

Stoppard was 71 and Harwood 74 at the time of this story. They were chain-smoking like young, sexy girls? As if they were under the delusions of the young that they were going to live forever? No idea, but it’s a fun word to say.

fell-walking: fell is British word for a hill or area of high land. He uses it an a description of who people imagine pipe smokers to be, as in “they wear woolly knee socks and take brisk walks in the hills.”

obstreperous: This word appears in a favorite picture book from growing up, but I’d forgotten it. I’ll have to trot it out in children’s worship when the kids are noisy, boisterous and unruly — at least they’ll learn a new word.

When asked, the word I say is my favorite is susurration, a soft murmur or whisper, which I first read in a description of the sound of a light breeze through tree leaves. How about you? Any favorite words? Words you read that sent you to the dictionary?

 

 

Diaries: Romance Edition

~ Natalie Hart ~ 1 Comment

I will have a 10-year-old daughter for only one more day, so, in her honor, I’m going to utterly embarrass myself and reveal my romantic obsession at her age: D., the older brother of my friend and classmate E. Although we were two grades apart, we went to a tiny (and I do mean tiny) alternative Christian school, so we were in the same classroom. (Note that while I identify everyone else by initial, I use my cousin Esther’s full name because she is no longer with us to object to my using her name.)

He was the perfection of boyhood and I fell in love immediately upon seeing him. I liked him for years. Years. Here we are sledding (I was in heaven but also freaked out enough to maintain a reasonable distance between us):

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fri. 2/3/78 D. gave me 40 cents to spend. Now everybody’s teasing us. I’m glad. I’m expecting a call any second.

Mon. 2/6/78 Today all the grade 5’s had a fight. It’s sort of O.K. It all started when D. broke Esther’s radio. This is what a note said, “If you don’t get E. and I this and that you have to kiss Natalie.” Just before D. got on the subway he said he’d phone me. Esther just phoned me. [I later added: He didn’t.]

Tues. 2/7/78 Today Esther had this silly plan for me to spy on her and D. She makes me so jealous because every day she has something to say about D. I wouldn’t be surprised if D. hated me. If he does hate me I’ll just love him the same, and more. Some day all my love life is going to be ruined because of her. Today my stupid parents wouldn’t let us see the guests. All we had for supper was a tiny bowl of soup.

Fri. 2/10/78 Today was so exciting. D. walked me home.

Oh, the drama. The insecurity. The blowing tiny gestures all out of proportion. All my love life ruined….

I remember the day when D. was going to have to kiss me. This was a terrifying possibility, so I shoved aside the three-seater couch in our lounge and barricaded myself behind it so nobody could get near me. Although perhaps being kissed in such a publicly pressured way would have saved me from years of pining. My 3rd grade boyfriend kissed me on the landing of the exterior steps while everyone was running up to our classroom after lunch and it was the end of a beautiful thing.

We’d been together for what felt like ages, but was probably less than a month, holding sweaty little hands during lunch and class movies and arranging to stand next to each other when the class walked in the hallways so we could hold hands. I ignored the teasing and thought we were perfectly happy, but his buddies pressured him into the smooch. Embarrassing me so in front of the whole class was enough to tell me he wasn’t for me. That was it. The red-haired boy who pulled my chair out for me every day when I came to class stepped in to provide balm for my wounded pride. Although that only lasted until my birthday pool party, when he dunked me nine times, making me gasp and gulp water those last few times. That was it for him.

With D., I was not so fickle. I liked him from age 9 until my early teen years. It never developed into anything more real than vague compliments and flirting, either, which means I have a sweet memory of that crush. There’s very little reality to intrude.

In a non-romance moment, I sounded then just as silly as my kids do now when they get incensed at parental action. It’s kind of cute.

Anyone want to share embarrassing personal stories so I don’t feel alone?

 

Diaries: January 1978

~ Natalie Hart ~ 1 Comment

Number two in the ongoing series of exploring my old diaries. In January of 1978, I’d be just ten years old.

Ten was my first birthday back in Canada, after three years in Australia — winter activities instead of pool parties. I went to bed early the night before my birthday because I was kinda sick. When I woke up, I came downstairs. My parents were sitting on the built-in couches (white painted wooden frames that my father built, black, wide-wale corduroy cushions that my mother sewed, total 70s awesomeness). I sat down and waited. But they didn’t say anything about my birthday and no presents materialized. I thought they were messing with me. So I gave expectant looks, made what I thought were leading comments. Still nothing. What were they waiting for?

For my birthday. I’d only slept for a couple of hours.

We went to the planetarium for my party. I think the next year was my famous ice skating followed by decorating and filling of gingerbread sleigh party. Now that I’ve tried to make gingerbread houses my own kids, I am forever in awe of my mother for hand cutting those 7 sleighs.

Anyway, back to the diaries:

1/24/78: Yesterday, R. and I danced to Shaun Cassady record the she had gotten for her birthday.

1/25/78: This morning when I woke up my room looked like I had my door closed. Rainy day. Snow night.

1/26/78: Today we had a blizzard. In Ohio it was -100F because of the wind. We had a hard time going home. J.B. acted like she was the boss of the whole world.

So that’s a little slice of me at 10: dancing to embarrassing pop records, early writerly pretensions, and social drama. I believe my cousin R and I even wrote a fan letter to Shaun Cassidy. “Da Do Ron Ron” loomed large in all our social gatherings that year. At my cousin Esther’s birthday that month, we danced to it in a wild circle, weaving around the South African rugs and drums in her living room.

The second entry is me trying to describe the quality of the light on that dim morning. Had I yet read Anne of Green Gables? At some point, I went around constantly describing my world as if Anne were seeing it and describing it in her fanciful, flowery 1908 way, but this is too early for that.

The last entry shows the Canadian toughness. There was a blizzard and school was not cancelled. No, indeed, we went home on the streetcar and then subway from our tiny Christian school just like normal, although we would’ve had to wade through drifts and keep walking against wind and shove our way through adults on their commutes.

The difficulties of this situation were not, however, enough to stop our little group from irritating each other. This is yet another reminder to let my kids complain about other kids and get all heated up about things that happen on the playground or in the classroom without needing to comment or provide perspective.

That last one is the toughest for me. I want to provide the perspective of my years and knowledge to moderate their extreme views of other children. But they’re kids. Most of my attempts will only cause them to never tell me anything ever again or to always go away when they want to talk. I’ve been working on reigning that in (except for calling kids “stupid;” I draw a hard line on that one). So this perspective I’m gaining on myself is teaching me how not to force perspective on my kids. How’s that for circular?

My next diaries entry will take us into excruciating territory: ten-year-old romance. Can’t wait.

In the meantime, enjoy this photo of the couch I described above and me at another birthday:

Wonderful: Nobody’s Boy

~ Natalie Hart ~ 2 Comments

When my father was 8 or 9, he was home sick from school. He picked up a French novel, Nobody’s Boy by Hector Mallot (although I’m sure he read it in Dutch translation), and devoured it. He hasn’t read it since, but remembers being totally wrapped up in the adventures and misfortunes of Remi, an 8-ear-old boy who is sold by a cruel foster father (after being raised by his loving foster mother while the father is working in Paris) to a traveling musician.

The musician is, lucky for Remi, a warm taskmaster. Although Remi does have to walk with him all over France and learn how to play the harp and sing and act in little pantomimes with the rest of the troupe, the rest of the troupe consists of three dogs and a monkey. Master Vitalis also teaches Remi to read and write. It’s a hard life, but he’s treated well and he loves the dogs. But alas, while defending Remi to a policeman, Vitalis strikes a police officer and is thrown in jail for 2 months, and Remi has to survive on his own.

A sick little boy on a barge (Arthur) hears him playing the harp and invites him on board. Lucky for Remi, he is invited to stay on the barge with the boy and his mother to keep Arthur company. He does and he’s very happy there, and the mother and Arthur grow to love Remi. Once he’s out of jail, they ask Vitalis whether Remi can stay with them. But alas, Vitalis will not let him go. Things go downhill from there.

That’s how the book goes: lucky for Remi, followed quickly by, but alas. He meets kind people who can see “he has a heart,” and cruel people who won’t listen to him and throw him in jail. He lands in the lap of luxury, but never takes it for granted, and always works hard, which is good, because he’s soon yanked back into the vagabond life. The twists and turns of Remi’s life are dramatic — sweet, funny, tragic, harrowing.

Nobody’s Boy was written in 1878, so the language is courtly and old-fashioned, but the story is not too old-fashioned in the telling. There aren’t pages upon pages of description. All landscape and cityscape descriptions are just what a boy that age would notice, and they’re generally told to give us insight into him: does this place make him afraid, hopeful, happy, sad, etc.? What clues does it hold as to whether things will go well or poorly?

It’s considered a classic in children’s literature, and I enjoyed it. But most of all, I love the image of my dad as a little boy, sick in bed, captured by his first novel, reading as quickly as he could to see what would happen to poor Remi. I can’t remember what that first book might have been for me, (Anne of Green Gables or Little House on the Prairie most likely), but I remember it for my son: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. I’d given it to him for pre-bed reading and came up at 10:30, and he was still going, wide-eyed with wonder. Getting lost in a fictional world is one of the best things ever. Do you remember what that first “wow!” book was for you?

Wonderful: May B

~ Natalie Hart ~ Leave a comment

This is a first for me: a historical novel in verse for children. And it is marvelous.

Mavis Elizabeth Betterly (aka May B.) is a 12-year-old living in western Kansas in a soddy (a hut built out of sod stacked grass-side down and scant bits of wood) in the late 1870s. Her parents hire her out to a newly married couple because the spring wheat didn’t do well and they need the money.

Around my finger
I twist a blade of grass.
It’s what I always wanted,
to contribute,
but not this way.
If I leave,
schooling is as good as finished.
Come Christmas I’ll be home
but even farther
behind.

Her father hitches up the wagon and drives her 15 miles away. She’ll be gone from July to Christmas.

The new family is not happy, the wife only a few years older than May and from the East — unprepared for prairie life.

The sound is muffled,
like a child at her mother’s shoulder.
Just as Hiram can’t hold back laughter during family prayers,
Mrs. Oblinger’s sobs escape the blankets.

Surely Mr. Oblinger hears?
Three of us awake,
two pretending sleep.

Something happens and May is left alone. In August. The nearest neighbor is gone East. Nobody knows she’s alone and there’s no way to get word out to her father.

When the world is black,
I’m most alone,
the silence thick around me.
I pray for wind,
for rain,
for the meadowlark
to break
the constant pound of quiet.

Her only company is the reader she took with her. The only problem with that: she’s dyslexic, and every attempt to read reminds her of Teacher repeatedly humiliating her in front of the school.

The tale of how May survives months on her own is gripping and moving and inspiring (and involves hillbilly hand fishing). It’s minimally told, but each detail is the right one. If you or your child like Little House on the Prairie, this book is for you. Don’t let the verse format intimidate you. My daughter isn’t a fast reader, but she whipped through the 225 pages in a few before-bed reading sessions. It came out this year, so it’s only in hardcover, but at least try to get it from your library. It’s wonderful.

May B., Caroline Starr Rose, Schwartz & Wade Books, 2012.

How Email is Saving My Marriage

~ Natalie Hart ~ 3 Comments

Okay, that heading exaggerates. But kind of not.

Those of you who’ve been in a relationship of fairly significant duration know that there’s always a Big Nagging Issue (BNI). Some problematic way you have of relating to each other that crops up again, and again, and again, no matter how good everything else is. You knock it down, but it keeps popping up. Each time you have to knock it back, it feels like it sinks its claws in even deeper because you’re so sick of it that you wait longer and longer before you try to address it or you get more and more upset each time. Well, we’re in knocking back the BNI mode.

Frankly, it wasn’t going well, until I recently wrote my husband an email to explain, in a nonemotional setting, exactly why I’d been so upset the other night. He was out and I couldn’t sleep because my brain kept going round and round about the BNI and because there was real opportunity for confusing the issue. So I wrote the email like I used to write editorial letters: precise analysis tempered by compliments. Something I can’t do while in a face to face discussion in which my emotions have gotten out of hand (which is almost all of them regarding the BNI).

The next morning, he thanked me for the message and promised a response. A few days later, he sent me an email. And he had some requests for me. Trust me when I say this is revolutionary. I am an intense person, especially when upset. This was the first time he’d had the space to truly say his piece without me crying or jumping all over his wording. And then because this was an email, I had the chance to, privately, go through a whole cycle of upset, self-justification, and acceptance, to arrive at agreement. When I was calm, I wrote him back, asking for clarification/examples of one item.

I was thinking it’d be something minor, something tweakable. It wasn’t. It was the number one personality failing I have: my (especially lately) hair-trigger temper. This is the thing I am most ashamed of, the thing I try my hardest to contain already. It sucks to be called on your s#*!, because until you’re called on it, you can make like it’s a personal issue, not a marital or family issue. Now there’s no pretending.

Anxiety makes the problem worse, and I have a number of big things to be anxious about — imploding church, manuscripts out on query, BNI. So my church home, my potential career, and that pesky BNI are up in the air, which means that any other stressor gets a ridiculously huge response. So I take conversations with my dad way too personally and negatively. I make my kids cry about homework. My heart races at the towering household filing pile.

I don’t have a lot of power to change those big anxiety items, but I can take care of all the anklebiting items that add to it, like the household filing, the half-finished house projects lying around accusatorily, the making of summer plans for the kids. I can make sure I do my daily Bible reading and prayer. Lots of prayer. I can read things that help me put things in better perspective, like this. I can make sure I have fun with the people I love.

And, going back to the title of this piece, I can keep attacking the BNI via email with my husband. Social media may or may not be isolating us in the name of seeking connection, but email is my current favorite marital aide.

Wonderful: Cupcakes

~ Natalie Hart ~ 4 Comments

So my family and I took a one-day trip to Chicago. After the marathon drive to NYC earlier this year, a 2 1/2 hour drive was nothing. We hit the Museum of Science and Industry for the Mythbusters exhibit, which was incredible. You know how exhibits always say they’re hands-on, and then you get there and there are some buttons to push and cranks to turn and that’s it? Mythbusters is not that exhibit.

We got to do all kinds of versions of some of their episodes.

Do you get wetter running or walking through rain? Our verdict: walking. But if you wear a thick, absorbent sweatshirt, then it won’t look like you got wet at all.

Can you build a house that will withstand a wind storm? Our verdict: mostly. Our best structures had the roof or a wall or two go, but most of it stayed intact.

How long can you hang from a ledge on a cliff? I would drop within fifteen seconds, the kids made it about 45, and my husband around 35.

Can you drive blind? I don’t know the answer to that, but I can tell you that I coach people into quickly crashing.

Can you whip a tablecloth off a loaded table without making the plastic dishes fly? Yes. If you don’t count a couple of cups that went on their side.

But that’s not what this post is about.

We had a near religious experience at Sprinkles Cupcakes. Many of you may know that this is, apparently, where the cupcake craze started. I thought that was at Magnolia Bakery in NYC, but I guess I was wrong — unless there’s an East Coast vs. Midwest cupcake rivalry I’m unaware of.

We were walking on the way to my husband’s pilgrimage to Urban Outfitters and saw a line of people snaking out of a storefront on a chilly, rainy day. So, this being a vacation day, we followed our whimsy and checked it out. And then had the best cupcakes we’d ever had. I love your almond cupcake, Little Pearl Cupcakes, but the lemon one I had at Sprinkles was so light and deeply flavorful. It was on a whole ‘nother level. The kids got S’more ones with graham cracker crumbs at the bottom of a chocolate cake and a dome of toasted marshmallow on top. Oh, and I forgot about the core of soft chocolate in the middle. My husband got one with chocolate cake and vanilla frosting.

Everything was perfection: it was exactly what it should be in that ideal world I normally don’t live in. But I did for a few minutes yesterday, and then a few more today when I finished my cupcake. And I was grateful.