I sat next to my three-year-old and across from my seven-year-old at lunch yesterday. My niece read a question from a conversation starter box at the table.

“What is the greatest dream of your life?” She asked.

I could have said…

See my book published.

Tell my story.

Speak to women.

But the first thing that came to my tongue was,

“Be a mama.”

All truth. That has been the greatest dream of my life fulfilled.  I’m content. I’m satisfied. And I love my responsibilities.

Even when there are tantrums or fevers, or when there are little people who want their own way. Even when there are tears to be wiped or baths to be given and knees to be bandaged.  Even when I feel like walking out the door as soon as my husband walks in the door in the evening. It is still my dream.

And I’m honored and humbled to begin another year with them.

Tomorrow morning at 11am Pacific time (12 noon Mountain) I will be on The Well Radio Program with Adrienne Graves and Gina Johnson. You can listen live here.

Yay!

A great way to end out the year AND it’s on my birthday.

Hopefully they won’t sing to me and hopefully I won’t embarrass myself.

(Gina just informed me that you have to view/listen through Firefox. If you miss it, the recorded show should go up sometime tomorrow afternoon or evening.)

A canine one, that is.

Thing is, I’m not really a dog person. For the past 8 years we’ve kept cats.

I love cats. They are aloof, non-demanding and if you can forgive the once-in-awhile vomit they leave on the stairs, they are the perfect pet. Our cat Rosie doesn’t need a lot from me except for a warm place to sleep, food and water and the occasional between-the-ear-rub.  She sits in my lap (on her terms) and lets me cuddle her (when SHE feels like it) and takes up half of my space on my bed (when she chooses to grace us with her presence at night).

I give her some and she gives me some. And it isn’t much.

This DOG on the other hand is a LOT of work.

And she’s a good dog too. She’s a five-year-old female Golden Retriever named Flower who follows me around the downstairs constantly, torments the cat and pants with her hot breath on my hand when I’m trying to write a blog post. She has been impeccably trained by the original owners and is obedient to hand gestures and voice commands. She hasn’t shown a hint of aggression (our household feline notwithstanding) and her favorite thing that we’ve discovered so far is rolling around on the floor with the girls.

She is, however, much more demanding than any cat I’ve ever known and far outshines our still-alive goldfish in time and energy.  She needs fed and walked twice a day. Her vet and grooming bills (the first time around at least) were painful. She is in constant need of affection and must at all times, be in the presence of the family. She will not tolerate being left out of anything fun.  And we won’t even talk about the scooping that has to be done in the back yard.

But I’m learning that the return on my investment is worth it.

Unlike the cat (who will always be the queen of our house in her minuscule mind), Flower seems to give real, solid, tangible love. She responds to affection and intentional care and simply watching the girls interact with her has been amazing to witness. As my father-in-law put it, Flower seems to diffuse the intensity in our family. She’s been the best thing for us. I have a partner for my early morning runs and she listens to everything I have to say.

And my husband? He’s seriously falling in love with her more every day.

Anything worth having costs something.

Including a horse-sized hairy dog that secretly sleeps on my sofa at night when no one is looking. And one who’s stolen my heart.

A family. A relationship. A job. A child. An education. A healthy body. They all cost something. And sometimes there’s even pain involved.

But when we invest time and energy into good things like people and community and our relationships with God, the return far outweighs the cost.

So today, invest where you need to. But be prepared: your heart might be stolen in the process.

****And the winner of my last giveaway (sniff, sniff) is Whitney Bray. She says her favorite thing about the holiday was:

Just being with my children. Staying in our pj’s for 2 days.

And I’d have to agree (except we didn’t stay in our pjs, although I WISH we would have.) Congrats Whitney!  Bake us something from Dorie, okay?

I really hope you aren’t waiting until Friday.

I know Friday signifies the beginning of a new month, a new year and even a new decade. But I sure hope you aren’t waiting until then to start whatever it is you are intending to begin.

You say…

I’ll start Monday.

I’ll begin when it feels right.

It will be my New Year resolution.

Well,

If it is truly a resolution, resolute, resolved, then RESOLVE to begin now. There is nothing keeping you back, right? In reality, if there is something you mean to begin or quit or change then waiting until Friday is just plain dumb.

Start now.

You heard me.  Right now.

Resolve yourself to quit. Decide to change. Purpose to start to be different. Determine to begin.

You say…

I’m going to stop eating cookies.

I will walk every morning to lose that 20 pounds of baby weight still there.

I’m going to stop yelling at my kids.

I’ll finally clean out my closet.

Well I say, don’t wait until Friday. Start today.  Make THAT your resolution: to decide to do something and then do it. Don’t put it off.

What will you DO today?

…because it’s my last day of giveaways.

We’ve done 6. Each one has had a little theme.  This one — no theme.  Just a collection of some of my favorite things.

1. My absolute FAVORITE baking cookbook: Baking by Dorie Greenspan. Please, do not enter unless you WANT this. I can’t wait to give this away to someone who loves baking or who wants to learn. Either way, it’s a perfect book.  Dorie’s straightforward explanations are easy to understand and even though some of her recipes are a bit complex, it is well worth it. Her pie dough is to die for, Bill’s Big Carrot Cake is a staple around my house and her Favorite Pecan Pie I’ve made once on Thanksgiving and once last week. My current favorite recipe in this book is her Cranberry Lime Galette (a yummy free-form pie). You should see my copy of this book: rumpled pages, chocolate smears, dogeared corners and sticky notes splayed out on all sides.  It is loved like the Velveteen Rabbit.

2. NeedtoBreathe “The Outsiders” is my favorite go-to playlist lately.  In fact, click HERE and HERE to watch Chad and Chris doing a couple covers. I love this album. I mean, I really love this album. Its actually a little embarrassing. I made my husband and his musical friends learn two of the songs for my birthday party later in the week. Hopefully you will love them too.

3. My favorite lip gloss. I keep a tube in my purse at all times: Burt’s Bees Super Shiny Natural Lip Gloss in Zesty Red. It does not come out red (don’t worry)  but more of a wine-tint. Perfect and it smells good too.

4. And my favorites will come with a reusable canvas shopping bag from Whole Foods. I’m partial to Trader Joes but either way, the bag is awesome. I use the bags not just for groceries, but for trips to the beach, clothes for the girls for overnights with my mom, books to take back to the library. Seriously an all purpose (cute) bag.

So there you have it.  My Favorite Things: Six Weeks of Free Stuff has come to an end [sigh].

But one of you will win all this awesome stuff.  Leave a comment before 9pm on Tuesday night telling me about your favorite thing that happened over Christmas (favorite gift, favorite dessert, favorite song your kid sang, favorite joke someone told over the Christmas ham at the dinner table).  You get the idea.

She devours fact books like they’re pancakes on Saturday mornings.

Like how many seconds in a year.  What polar bears eat. When Pluto was “discovered”.  And why the Titanic sunk.

She asks, “Why DID the Titanic sink, Mom?”

So I try to bring up my memory of James Cameron’s behemoth  film of 1997 and what I remember of an iceberg ripping a hole the size of New York in the side of the ocean liner. I explain that icebergs float with 90 percent of their mass beneath the water.  I don’t tell her about Leo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet with blue lips in the water or about the lower class passengers drowning below deck.

“Did babies die?” She wonders.

“I’m not sure if there were babies on the ship,” I lie.

But then I realize that she can know that. She’s almost eight and she can know that.

I explain to her that there weren’t enough life boats and that the rich people stayed in staterooms with windows. That the poorer people weren’t allowed on the boats before the rich people escaped.

She decided, “I think babies died, Mom.”

“They might have, honey. I’m sorry. Does that make you sad?” I asked her.

She sighed the sigh of realizing that the world is not perfect, that people do bad things, that earth isn’t always filled with butterflies and ponies in a meadow.

“Yes. That makes me sad,” as she moves on to another page in her book. Insects’ olfactory glands or the lowest point on the globe.

But I’m left with a catch in my throat. Not because of the sinking of the Titanic almost 100 years ago and the babies that probably died. But because my daughter is quickly learning that hatred exists outside of the tiny world of her school playground and that there are bad, evil people in the world.  And soon she’ll find out that even I can’t protect her from it all.

Babies die.

Those with the least money are given the short end of all the sticks.

Sometimes there aren’t enough life boats.

But I’m here, as her mother, to help her put the difficult pieces of the puzzle together, to guide her wild thoughts and to point her to the Answer that I can’t fully explain.

There is Hope and His name is Jesus.

*** Beth in the Heartland won the Shannon Etheridge giveaway. She says:

“Self-control…probably the fruit of the spirit I struggle with the most. Whether it’s controlling myself when standing before the holiday cookie platter, controlling my tongue when I am frustrated with my in-laws, controlling myself while disciplining my 2 young children…I always, ALWAYS could use more self control. I’m intrigued by these books and will be looking them up at my local library. Thanks for the tip.”

Congratulations, Beth!!

How are we going to make it for the next 50 years?

50 years from today I will be turning 85. 

My hair will get brittle and grey.  My eyes will fade and my hearing will go. I won’t be able to hear him sing over his guitar in the evenings.  That’s assuming arthritis doesn’t overtake his hands and silences them.  My own hands might become too stiff to make us a small dinner in the evening or my arms too weak to stir raisins into his favorite cookie dough.

He might grow weary of my same calling “ChAAd” from the upstairs.  He’ll notice my voice getting older.

I won’t find the freshness of youth in the mirror anymore so I’ll have to search for it in the eyes of my daughters.  They’ll grow too and make me a grandmother. If I’m lucky — a great-grandmother.  If I can’t find the youth in my own face, my husband won’t either.

My body will move slower, my mind will plug along at increasingly deteriorating speeds and I will forget things. I will get old.

We will get old.

Will my husband still love me? Will he still sit across from me at breakfast and think of something new to say?

Yes.

Just like I’m a different woman than I was five years ago, I’m a different (wiser) friend than I was ten years ago, and I’m a different mother than I was 7 years ago, we will have a different marriage than we do today.

Any muscle that isn’t used regularly will atrophy.  The same is true with love and relationships. If we continue to move forward, move upward, search for the the meaning in each other our marriage will be BETTER than it is today.  It will be more sinuous, more muscular and stronger than it is when we are young.

Even if our bodies are weaker.

The brittle grey on the bathroom sink won’t be worrisome because it will be familiar and known.  The fading blue eyes of my husband will be more loved than the bright blue of tonight because together we will have witnessed more life. The stiffening of my hands will be okay because they can still be held by my husband, my daughters.

We will turn our marriage over year after year, the exciting years and the boring ones in between because we’ve committed to this. We’ve committed to best-friendship for as long as we both can breathe.

And after.

Are you going to let your marriage atrophy?

Seven years ago I had no idea how I got to the place I was: in the middle of an affair, depressed, obsessed and full of self-loathing.  But I didn’t get there overnight.

During my healing and restoration I read Shannon Etheridge’s book Every Woman’s Battle.  In it she asks a question: If you can’t control yourself before you’re married, what makes you think you can control yourself after you’re married (I’m paraphrasing because I can’t find the page number).

Ahem. Right.

Because the thing is, we hadn’t controlled ourselves before we were married.  When I got married in 1996 at the age of 21 Chad was not a virgin but I was.  Technically, that is.

We had gone as far as we could go before we were married without actually having intercourse. So when we did get married, we began our intimacy off on the wrong foot: one laced with guilt and embarrassment.  We had not been able to exercise the self control we knew we should have.  In fact, half the reason we did get married 2 weeks after I graduated from college was so that we didn’t have to live out the rest of that summer having almost-sex whenever we were alone.  We wanted the real deal.

Reading Shannon’s book in the months after my affair was an eyeopener to say the least (and it turned out to be the single most effective book I read during that period).  I finally began to understand some of the roots of my problem: a fundamental and complete lack of Godly self-control.

Last week a reader emailed me ans asked me how Chad and I managed to say pure when we were dating, how we were able to “wait” until we were married.  We hadn’t, I had to tell her.  Not completely.  She asked me how a girl can navigate through singleness and make it all the way to a future wedding day without sleeping with any potential boyfriends.  And, was it worth it.  My answer to her was almost too simplistic.

Yes, it was worth it.

And to how? Self-control.

The self-control couples need to keep from having sex before they are married is the same self-control that keeps me from having an affair. And its the same self-control that keeps my husband from looking at porn. Its the same self-control that keeps me waking up every day and striving to keep my marriage pure and focused.

That self-control doesn’t change as soon as I sport a wedding ring.  It’s something that should be learned early and learned well. And then it must be practiced.

Or else it is all hopeless.

Which is why today I’m giving away a pack of Shannon Etheridge books. She has been generous to donate four books that I will give away as a set to one of YOU!  Every Woman’s Battle, Every Woman’s Battle Promise Book, Words of Wisdom for Women at the Well and then a copy of the Stephen Arterburn book Every Man’s Battle (a must read for every husband/boyfriend).

Leave ONE comment before 9pm Tuesday telling us what you think about any of this: about self-control, about waiting, about being single, or married, or anything.  Just tell me your thoughts.

Today is for me.

Because sometimes I write what I think is a just-okay post and dozens of you leave comments about how much you needed to hear it.  And then there are days I write the oh-this-is-it post.  The words just flow off my fingers and I feel the ideas hum in my heart.  And only one or two of you seem to connect.

I’m still going to keep writing. Even if only one or none of you says, “This was for me.”  It doesn’t matter.

So I guess today, this post is for me.

[I mean it can be for you, if you want it to.]

But honestly, today I’m writing because I need to tell God I’m grateful He still wrote the Story even if only for one person, me.

People say that God would have sent Jesus to the cross for just one of us.  That sounds silly right? Regain relationship with humanity even if humanity was only one person? And what if that one person was adulterous, sinful, angry, bitter, hopeless me? Would He have still redeemed the human race for that?

The answer is “Yes.”

It embarrasses me that He loves me that much.

God wrote the Story, the amazing, painful, beautiful Story for each one of us.  He knew that we would murder and betray, that we would cheat and wreck and steal. He knew that we would hate and commit suicide and live for ourselves only. He knew that some of us would never love Him in return.

Yet He still came for me. He wrote for me.

And in some tiny, pitiful reflection of that, I will still write for you.

And for Him.