We must let them practice and maybe even fail.

We have to let them run and

to dream and

to think and

and to

Because if we protect them too much from failing

or hurt feelings

or bruises

they’ll never learn.

How did you learn? You tried and screwed up and then you tried again. Then you got it right because you a. remembered what went wrong, and b. had the confidence to do better the next time.

Because eventually they’ll be out there without us trying to navigate the big wide world on their own. They have to have memories of failure in order to succeed.

Protect them from speeding cars and from peanut allergies. Protect them from falling down cliffs and from ocean waves that would drown. But don’t protect them from failure.

Do you have any memories of failure that have helped you?

A lot of bloggers/tweeters have been posting photos or videos of themselves sans makeup, waking up in the morning or with oreos in their teeth. It’s part of POTSC’s Real Me campaign.  I’m like, “Yeah, like I’m going to do that.”

And I actually was going to.

But, oh, this is good…

I thought I’d go one step further.

I’m showing you the inside of my van.  [gasp].

And I’m going to take a video right now before I chicken out or clean up.

That’s worse than me without makeup, I promise.

As of right now imma gonna tell you what I have in there: two leftover cupcakes from yesterday’s class party, an unused carseat, an empty juice box, Hope’s riding chaps, lip gloss, my purse, a coat, a scarf, some crocs for the kids, tons of books,and so many other things.

So. Many. Other. Things.

So that’s it. You have me, without the clean up I do before someone rides in my car, before the clean up I do before I drive to the car wash. You have the van that I live in most of the day in all it’s goldfishy-glory.

The real me. Without airbrush, without a dustbuster.

In the spirit of authenticity and genuineness, here I am.

The REAL Me from Sarah Markley on Vimeo.

What do you “clean up” for others?

If you’ve done a “real me” photo, leave the link in your comment. I’d love to see it!

One more thing, if you subscribe on a reader or get this through email, click over to the blog to view the video or click here to watch straight from Vimeo

He is bigger than me.

Up until the time I was 25 I was overweight.

I began to lose what would become 60 pounds of excess weight in the fall of 2000. I was heavy when I met my husband in 1992. I was heavy when I got married in 1996.

Aside from his glowing humor (he was the funniest person I’d met up to that point and would ever meet), I loved the fact that he was tall.

At 5’8” and with extra weight on me, I was taller and just plain bigger than most boys throughout junior high and high school. I was always embarrassed of my size.

So when I met Chad when he was 18, he was all arms and legs.  He was almost 6’3” and even though I was overweight, I felt small(ish) next to him. I was shorter than him and I weighed less than he did.

(Let’s just not talk about the day I delivered Naomi four years ago and the scale said 214.)

He was bigger than me and that meant something.

It meant that he could protect me. That I could sit on his lap and not crush him. That if I punched him in the arm he wouldn’t fall over. He was stronger than me.  It meant that he could hold my hand and lead me somewhere. That he could pull me out of the way of a car in the parking lot.  It meant that if I stepped on his toe I wouldn’t break his foot.

He could see over the heads of other people in the crowd, so I trust him to help me get out of the mob of people leaving Disneyland after the fireworks.  He could reach further, stretch longer and walk faster than me – longer legs help.

Since then we’ve both lost weight and I’m still smaller than him. But the funny thing is, I only think of him as bigger than me when I need it.

“Reach the pitcher on the highest shelf, please!”

“Can you put the Christmas boxes back up in the garage cabinets?”

“Help me up, I’m exhausted.”

So much of the time I restrain God to the size I am.

I think about His solutions in terms of my own world and body. I trust Him, but only so far as he can keep my life looking like it does today.

I pray for answers that fit the finiteness of my own mind. I don’t ask Him to reach the high things in the kitchen cabinet mainly because I can’t reach them myself and I fail to trust him to see clearly over the heads of the crowd.

I know differently, but I think about God in terms of me.

But He is so much bigger than I am and is not confined to worldly fixes.

He moves quicker, sits taller and stretches further than I can think possible and His solutions to my silly problems here on earth are beyond me, taller than me, stronger than me.

He will not be crushed. He will not be broken. And He will always protect me.

God will always be bigger than me and I can’t forget that.

Today she turns again.

And now I really believe it won’t ever stop.

When she’s 3 or 4 and still has Kindergarten ahead of her, when she scoots up close to me to watch Sesame Street with a sippy cup tucked under one arm and a stuffed horse under the other, it’s hard to imagine her at any other age.

It’s easy to delude myself that I can go back when I choose to in my mind. But we all know that remembering the scent of freshly shampooed hair, still tangled from the bathtub is not the same as pulling her little body close in her towel, sitting her on my lap and brushing out the auburn knots.

It’s just not the same.

It’s harder and harder to remember the weight of her as a baby on my hip as I checked on pasta for dinner.  I would stand sideways to the range, stirring hand close, baby arm far away from the boiling water.

I’m only 8 years removed but already the memories are dimming.

So, just like her, I’m going to look ahead today.

I’m going to “remember” all the amazing things we’ll do together this year while she’s 8.  I’ll think up places to go, books to read, things to learn. I’ll think about her as a teenager someday and what she might ask for her birthday in 5 years when she’s 13. I’ll never forget her as a baby, but I want to look forward to her future.

Because she’s not going to stop for me. I’d like to freeze her at 6 or something, but Hope won’t have it. She’s going to keep walking forward.

After all, “remembering” the future is simply another word for dreaming.

Happy Birthday, Hope!

Going into this week I know it’s going to be a roller coaster.

Monday: Click, clack clack of the coaster up the impossible hill.

Tuesday, Wednesday: Its windy at the top and I can see all of Southern California. If it weren’t for the solidness of the train and the steel, the summit would be disarming. Because I’m afraid of heights. I still have to look at something close, my hands, my shoes, the bar across my lap as touchstones. I understand I’m really connected the earth and not flying.

We make the slow turn as the rest of the train catches up to the front. Clack clack clack. The track drops off in front of me and my heart begins to race.

Thursday, Friday: A scream that I’m recognizing as my own, my hair against my head, my tears that make horizontal tracks toward my ears as we make our way toward the loop. I feel the pressing of my body into the car and I turn to the side as the world turns on its head. My stomach tells me I’m 35 and not 16.

Saturday: The final shallow bumps and humps near the station, the coaster operator pushes some hidden button somewhere and we all come to a jarring stop. The foreknowledge of this end is the only thing that keeps me from the chiropractor tomorrow.

I know now, on Sunday night, that I’m coming into a week like this: full of mind numbing loops, deafening climbs and halting stops. I’ve already had a weekend that has pointed to it. I know it’s going to be difficult to get to next Saturday night.

There will be tears. There will be heartache. And there might even be disappointment.

So how do I prepare?

I get on the ride. There isn’t a choice in the matter. I pull the restraint bar over my head and shoulders and lock it into place as snug as is comfortable.  I press my head and neck against the back of the seat to lessen the shock of the thrilling beginning. And then I hang on.

I pray. I ask others to pray for me. I spend time alone. I read the Bible. I’ll probably break down and then I’ll pray again.

If I know this is going to be a wildly tough week, I am determined to go into it will all my guns blazing, so to speak. I will not, I cannot be flattened by this roller coaster week.

I know I ask it rarely but will you pray for me?

Earlier this week I wrote about gifts.

Gifts we give each other, our children, our friends. And how that communicates love.

But the simplest and perhaps the most difficult gift we can give our children is the gift of a growing marriage.

We can shower them with toy ponies, with Nintendo DS’s and iPods. We can even give them an intense, focused love, time spent on the sofa cuddling and hours spent reading books. We can take our teenagers out for coffee and shopping for a new pair of shoes. But if we can’t give them the gift of a healthy, selfless marriage, we are robbing them.

We need to take time alone to reconnect.

We need to spend weekends by ourselves, holed up in a hotel room somewhere rediscovering each other.

We need to be intentional about the friendship we have with our spouse.

We need to laugh together.

And we need to kiss and hug, showing our children what a healthy relationship between a man and a woman looks like.

We owe this to our children that we brought into this world. This world that tells them that sex is alright before and outside of marriage, that it’s better to live with your boyfriend than to wait until your wedding day, and that divorce is normal and expected.

It might be one of the greatest gifts we could ever give our kids.

I know there are a million books out there written about love and marriage and I am NOT attempting to reinvent the wheel.  However, here are a few ways that Chad and I try to keep our marriage growing and moving forward:

1.  We regularly set aside time for just ourselves. We get babysitters, we get grandparents, we get play dates, we get whatever we have to to take date nights. We see this as probably the most important aspect of maintaining connected to one another.  And twice a year we take a weekend away. Some years we’ve driven one hour away to spend Friday through Sunday at small inn. Some years we’ve made a bigger trip, getting on a plane and celebrating our anniversary together in some fun, faraway city. But whatever we do, we make sure it’s just us and that the intent is to spend regular, uninterrupted time together. We watch movies, take naps, take long and late dinners. I find myself looking forward to them when we have them planned and then remembering them well after we’ve come home.  We come home better parents and I never feel bad about leaving my girls with their grandparents for the weekend.

2.  We talk things out. In the early years of our marriage we slammed doors, went to bed angry, walked out and hung up the phone on one another.  I’ll admit that once in awhile there may be a few unresolved hurt feelings at 11pm because of misunderstandings, but for the most part we are committed to sticking a conversation through until we reach a conclusion.  Through therapy and also through trial and error we’ve come up with better patterns for disagreement and communication. And the more we talk things out, the more we learn about how the other works the best.

3. We are interested in the other’s benefit and growth. In watching my husband work through his ADD on a daily basis (for the last 13 and a half years) I’ve figured out ways to help him. I try to remove distractions, reduce chaos and allow him an “out” when he needs to calm his mind. The more I’m interested in his growth, the less I’m trying to get my own way.  And when we both do things like this for each other, our relationship only benefits. It’s simple selflessness and we try to get better at it every day.

4. We make the choice to connect. When we do get a date night, most of the time we intentionally choose NOT to see a movie (although December was movie-heavy for us watching Avatar and Sherlock Holmes) but instead grab dinner or coffee. Sometimes we just find a fun place to walk around and talk about whatever we feel like.  And, we have a busy life by default. So many times we have to make choices, for the benefit of our family and our marriage, not do participate in certain things that may be good, but may not be the best for where we are right now. For example, we may say “no” to dinner out with friends because we know that we need to sit across the Starbucks table with each other talking about our day.  Sometimes its difficult to regulate ourselves and can find ourselves in a place where we feel like we haven’t “seen” each other in weeks.

There are more. And we are so not perfect at any of these. But we know that in order to still be married when we are 95, we need to keep things on a steady pace of growth. And we want our grandkids to have grandparents who are still in love.

What are things you do to keep your marriage growing?

****The more I thought about this and after having received a heartbreaking but amazing email, I want to add something. There are many of you reading who are single parents, divorced parents or who are living in an impossible marriage. You are worried that you can’t give them this example.

In the same way that God makes up the gap of sin with the Cross, He stands where we cannot stand, He strengthens when we are helpless, and give’s hope when we’ve lost all hope.  God is the Father to the fatherless and the husband to the widow.  He, somehow, can fill in the holes left in our lives by hurt, pain and sin. He always makes up where we fail, and in the case of broken marriages, He can fill in that gap left by spouses who make poor choices. Remember, God loves our children more than even we do.*****

By the way, Shannon Ethridge reposted one of my blog posts from last month on her own blog, The Sexually Confident Wife. You can read it here.  Thank you Shannon for your kind and humbling words.  Your ministry has been invaluable to my own healing and recovery.

What can I do with 300 words?

It takes me about 22 minutes to write (if I have a good idea) and about 6 minutes to read three hundred words.

• I can write a short blog post.
• I can encourage someone with a card that I put in the mail.
• I can sympathize with someone who has had a loss.
• Or write my elderly grandmother and tell her how we are all doing out here in California.
• I can pen out a prayer, a request or praise.
• I can make a list that has been weighing on me. Getting it out on paper helps.
• A love note. I can tell my husband how much I appreciate him going to work each morning.
• I can send a thank-you to somebody who has poured their life into one of my children’s hearts. I can make sure it’s unexpected.

Three hundred words is not much.

It is concise. Much less than a chapter. Only a tiny bit more than one typed page, double spaced.

And if you are wordy, a three hundred word limit will force you to make your words count be wise with them. Use rich language and words that have significant meaning and connotation.

Three hundred words is brief. Anne Lamott calls it good, daily writing practice in Bird by Bird.

And if you do, as I do, believe in the power of words, you know that something as energy-less as three hundred words could breathe life into someone.

So today, I challenge you to do it. Be real, tell the truth, and write your 300 words, whether they are to someone, for someone or for the world to see. Spend them today on someone who truly needs them or on something that needs to be said.

It will only take 22 minutes.

I’m running around our city looking for a horse.

A specific one.

Problem is, I don’t know exactly what it is. But I’ll know it when I see it.

You know, it’s the special Unicorn-With-Wings or Rainbow-Maned-Delight or something. Either way, Hope’s birthday is next Tuesday and she’s been eyeing these horses since last summer at the Fair.  And now that I’m searching online for them, I’m not sure if they actually exist in the same manner that I’m envisioning them.  I still have to try.

In my own personal love-economy, gifts are important. I like to give them, I like to receive them. But it has nothing to do with money. It has everything to do with knowing.

I know my turning-eight-years-old daughter very well. I know that her mind play is filled with horses in all different scenarios: school, houses, fields, snow.  When she’s not reading, she’s playing with horses. When she’s not beating up Lego bad guys on the Xbox, she’s playing with horses. And anything else she plays (dolls) with is just a means to working them into playing with horses (the dolls become the horse’s-mamas).

I know her.

And the gift I’m attempting to give her is out of love for her. It’s a means of showing her how much I love her by how much I know her.

Again: how much I love her by how much I know her.

Are you giving gifts like this?

Is what you are giving to your spouse, your parents, your children fueled by your knowledge of them? Are you buying ties for your dad when all he really wants is for you to have a cup of coffee with him? Are you pushing dance lessons at your daughter when all she really wants is for you to sit and read with her for that 45 minutes she’d spend in ballet?

I’m not always giving gifts like this. I often give what is easy or convenient.

What about God? Am I giving Him what He really wants from me? Is it fueled by my knowledge of who He is? He wants my time, my thoughts, my devotion. He wants my daily focus.

Recently I asked a girlfriend how her Christmas was. She told me that it was *fine*.

“Just fine?” I asked.

“My parents got me things. But not what I’d asked for,” And then she went on to explain that it wasn’t about the money spent or the wrapping or the gifts themselves. But that it was about the fact that she realized her parents didn’t KNOW her. They got her what they liked, not what she liked.  And it made her sad.

When we do give gifts that fit the recipient, whether it be actual things, time or affection, we communicate love. Amazing love.

“You KNOW me!”

“You’ve THOUGHT ABOUT me!”

Now if you’ll excuse me, I must go find the Windy-Dancing-Rainbow-Pegasus.

(Gary Chapman’s The Five Love Languages is a great way to get to know yourself, your kids, and your spouse. There is a free quiz here if you don’t know what your languages are.  Mine, by the way, are Quality Time and Receiving Gifts.)

“MAAAM!” I can hear her calling me through the closed doors and through the sleep I’m fighting to wake from.

In green the clock burns my eyes: 2:45. I hear her again, muffled. “MaAAaMa!”

I recognize that my three-year-old is calling for me. As I swing my legs out of bed to find her, her calling is louder and more desperate.

“What is it honey?” I ask as I find her sitting up in bed, crying. “Was it a bad dream?”

“I dreamt someone came and stole Night-Night-Kitty.” She wailed. “Where is she? Can you find her?” Naomi wanted me to find her beloved stuffed white cat.

At 2:53 in the morning, I tip-toe past the dog snoring on her bed to search the downstairs. I peek into the dark playroom. I look in the toy box.  Night-Night-Kitty is nowhere. I suspect that she might left in the playhouse in the backyard but I am NOT going to venture barefooted into the moonlit yard at this hour.

I return with her favorite Polly Pocket doll to deflect the sting of not finding her cherished stuffed animal. “Honey, I can’t find her. But I’m sure she’ll show up in the morning.”

But she won’t be comforted. The irrationality of half-believing a nightmare coupled with the reality of not having Night-Night Kitty in hand is too much for her to handle. She can’t see a way out. And at 3am, nothing feels fixable.

I coax her into bed with us and she finally falls back asleep, clutching her tiny doll in one hand.

In the morning, she forgets the Kitty and when she does finally look for her, her effort is not nearly as concentrated and her need not as acute as the night before. She looks for her casually throughout the day.

Because nothing seems as bad in the morning.

Maybe it’s time that helps. Or the sunlight. Or even the noise and activity of a new day that helps to blunt the blow of heartache. But either way, it’s never as bad in the morning.

The morning is always better than the tears that wake me up at 1:14am, 2:25am, 4:08 am.

The height of the pain is usually in the dark, in the middle of the silence, when it’s just me and my thoughts and the panicky feeling when I know I can’t, in my sanity, endure it.

So I can’t believe the nightmare. I can’t be taken in by the silent house, the fear that builds in the dark.  I can’t give in to hysterical worry.

And neither can you.

Just wait. The morning will be there soon enough and even though the problem has not changed, you have. Because you will get up, you’ll splash some water on your face and you will do what you need to do. The sunrise and the day will help.  Your responsibilities will help. And you will be strong enough because you rely on the One who gives strength.

You won’t be afraid because its a new day.

It is six years today.

Six years clean.

Six years free.

Six years committed to God, to my husband and to letting love rule and not my own self.

And I’m writing about it on (in)courage this morning.

Giving God a Year

Six years ago today I gave God a year.

January 4, 2004.

I’d just confessed to an affair, my marriage was in shambles and I had no idea what the future held. I didn’t know if my husband was going to leave me or if he’d take our daughter with him.

I couldn’t bear to think about the next day and I didn’t know what would happen tomorrow. My “future” was as hazy and undefined as it ever had been.
So I gave God all that I had, because honestly at the time, I had very little of my own. My integrity was shot.  My marriage was fractured.  Every one of my relationships with friends and family members were iffy at best and rocked at worst. To be the most hideous of clichés, I had hit rock bottom.

The only where to go was up.

The weekend after my life fell apart (or rather began) my pastor preached a sermon.  He asked us to “give God a year” and see what could happen…

Click HERE to read the rest.

Can you give God a year?