milestones

As this is a milestone year, I have been thinking about what I want life to look like during this season. To that end, I have set a few goals. Feel free to harass me about meeting them.

1. (I can't believe I'm putting this in print) Complete first drafts of More and Fear Not.
2. Return to and maintain my normal weight by working out four times/week.
3. Take two spiritual retreats, one alone and one with the Hubby.
4. Attend a writer's retreat at The Convent.
5. Be intentional about deepening my intimacy with God, my family, and my friends.

I have rough outlines completed for both manuscripts. Don't ask me about my weight. Did you not hear me say I had a birthday? Retreat number one is scheduled for October. I am already saving money for the writer's retreat in the spring. As for the last one, not really sure what that will look like.

Wish me luck.

a new year

Yesterday was my birthday. I begin my fortieth year with these wishes from my mother:

How to Make A BEAUTIFUL LIFE--
Reflections For a Daughter On Her Birthday

Love yourself.
MAKE PEACE with who you are
and where you are
at this moment in time.

Listen to your heart.
If you can't hear what it's saying
in this noisy world,
MAKE TIME for yourself.
Enjoy your own company.
Let your mind wander among the stars.

Try.
Take chances.
MAKE MISTAKES.
Life can be messy
and confusing at times,
but it's also full of surprises.
The next rock in your path
might be a stepping-stone.

Be happy.
When you don't have what you want,
want what you have.
MAKE DO.
That's a well-kept secret of contentment.

There aren't any shortcuts to tomorrow.
You have to MAKE YOUR OWN WAY.
To know where you're going
is only part of it.
You need to know where you've been, too.
And if you ever get lost, don't worry.
The people who love you will find you.
Count on it.

Life isn't days and years.
It's what you do with time
and with all the goodness and grace
that's inside you.
MAKE A BEAUTIFUL LIFE...
the kind you deserve.


The people who love me found me this weekend. For that I am immensely grateful.
Thank you, thank you, thank you...

Here's to a new year.

with love, for a fellow alto

(In honor of Jill, her precious babies, and the two loves of her life—Jesus, and David…)

She said goodbye in the rain, under a gray, it’s-still-not-spring-in-Ohio sky, in the kind of cold that soaks into your bones and doesn’t leave until curled up hours later under layers of blankets with another warm body pressed up against your own. Who will that body be for her, this afternoon, when she is cold and weary to the bone?

High school sweethearts. Fresh-faced, bright-smiled, big-haired photos, dated back 23 years. Homecomings. Proms. Joyful wedding portraits, dated one week before my own. Family gatherings. First homes. Bringing home baby boys. Rejoicing over a baby girl. Vacationing with friends. Driving the ‘Vette. Easels full of smiles, smiles, and more smiles.

She still smiles, but it is a weary smile. A tired smile. A sad smile. I know a brighter smile will return—as will laughter, as will joy. But I know, too, that it will be bittersweet, as smiles always are for those who have lost much.

God is good, she reminds us. She raises her hands in exaltation. She reminds us to keep singing, when we “wonder if we’ll ever make it through.” I know her faith is strong. I know her God is big. But I know her heart is broken, and I know it won’t heal quickly.

Faith is an amazing, beautiful thing, and hers has been (and I’m sure she hates to hear this) an inspiration to many. It will carry her through, even when that very faith causes her to wrestle in the darkness with the one who gives and takes away. She will persevere, and she will overcome, all by the grace of God and the indelible spirit he placed within her.

But faith doesn’t spare her the cold, empty spot next to her in bed, the sight of the wheelchair in the corner of the garage, the driver-less Corvette parked in the driveway. It doesn’t spare her children the absence of their father or his parents the loss of a son. It doesn’t fill the empty seat at the dinner table or erase the smell of his cologne from his pillow or mow the lawn and take out the garbage. Faith doesn’t prevent the heart from aching, the soul from grieving, the tears from falling.

But what it does—oh, what that faith does. It receives into its soil every seed of hope—of healing, of mercy, of grace, of comfort, of peace—and it buries them inside its rich darkness, nurturing them with its life-giving, death-like silence. That faith protects each tiny seed—choking out the roots of resentment and bitterness, fighting off the crows that threaten to snatch up each deposit of life—and goes to work fertilizing, hydrating, compressing, forcing each and every one to burst open with determined life that presses up through the darkness and into the light, reaching higher and higher and higher until it opens wide and bears its fruit so that all may pick from its harvest and taste and see that the Lord is good.

God is good. Some days she will sing it. Some days she will shout it. Some days, it will be just a whisper. It will remain true, whether she professes it or not, but she will continue to profess it, nonetheless. Because she knows something about rainy days, and about pain, and about wondering if she’ll ever make it through—and she knows that all she can do is to keep on singing.

Keep Singing
by Mercy Me

Another rainy day
I can't recall having sunshine on my face
All I feel is pain
All I wanna do is walk out of this place
But when I am stuck and I can't move
When I don't know what I should do
When I wonder if I'll ever make it through

I gotta keep singing
I gotta keep praising Your name
You’re the one that's keeping my heart beating
I gotta keep singing
I gotta keep praising Your name
That's the only way that I'll find healing

Can I climb up in Your lap
I don't wanna leave
Jesus sing over me
I gotta keep singing

Can I climb up in Your lap
I don't wanna leave
Jesus sing over me
I gotta keep singing

Oh You're everything I need
And I gotta keep singing

i'll leave the light on...

He walked through the front door, put down his bag, and turned off the lamp on the table next to him. I came behind him with his carry-on, and watched as he walked through the dining room into the kitchen, turning off the lamp over the piano as he went. I smiled a wry smile. You're officially home. How symbolic.

My husband left two weeks ago on an airplane bound for Zambia. His absence was most felt in the evenings--the kids asleep, the sky dark, and our bed empty. Knowing myself well, I did what I needed to do to make it through those 15 nights alone.

I left the lights on.

The two lamps my husband extinguished as he entered our home this morning had been burning since he left. Literally. In one fail swoop he announced to my spirit and all others in attendance that darkness was no longer a threat to me--he was home.

The light of my life was home.

the wall

It rises tall and cold between them, damp to the touch after a day of rain. It always seems to be raining, she thinks, her back against it, rubbing her arms to ward off the chill seeping through her clothes. How appropriate. In truth, she forgets now, once inside, if this wall was of her making or his, so overgrown is it with vines that the craftsmanship is no longer visible. No matter, I suppose. It is here when I need it. That will suffice. She draws her limbs closer, embracing herself tightly for both warmth and comfort, and surveys her surroundings.

Gray sky blends into gray walls casting gray shadows on gray floors. Dreariness etches itself permanently into the stone, like lovers seeking graven immortality. The imposing gate, some distance to her left but completely within view, is locked from within—the key weighing burdensome around her neck like a yoke to heavy to bear. To her right is the only furnishing, a small table laid with a decanter and glasses. Recognizing her thirst (but not recognizing its source), she pours herself a glass and takes a good, long draw before nearly spitting it out all over the front of her. Ah, yes, she remembers. Self-pity is a nasty, briney drink. Inevitably, it does not satisfy. Biting her cheek to produce saliva, she returns to her post, eyeing the gate warily, if not pointlessly.

There will be no attempts at entry tonight. Of that, she is certain. Despite the fact that words were not spoken in anger, they were received in anger, and retreats had been made and stones had been thrown, one of them nearly missing her head and another bouncing off her shoulder and landing near her foot, only to be kicked to the farthest reaches of the courtyard. No, he would not be coming for a while. Not that she would open the gate should he actually try to approach her—she drops the key down into her sweater, its coldness shocking between her breasts, and folds her arms as if to ward off any attempt to retrieve it.

Now what. She pulls herself in tighter, her efforts to find softness yet again met with frigid unyeildingness. The irony of it all. The key presses harder against her chest, digging its cold form into her flesh, reminding her that the stone wall is not the only thing that does not yield. Ignoring this thought, and all others like it, she begins to settle in for the night, perhaps for even longer. That is when she hears it.

It begins faintly, as if in the distance or as a child would sing to herself under her breath while at play. Curious. Unable to make out the tune, she is only aware that it is music, and she strains her ears to further discern both its refrain and its source. In time, she begins to make out the voice, gentle to the ear, and it grows both stronger and tenderer as the words slowly begin to resonate clearly. Arise my love, and come with me… Knowing fills her, and her wounded heart flutters anxiously within her chest, thumping against the weight of that which binds her. Keeping to the shadows, she edges toward the gate, stopping just short of it. And that is when she sees him.

Crouched on his heels, back against the wall, he leans his head against it with eyes closed and continues to sing to his beloved. You’ve ravished my heart with just one glance—my Beautiful One, arise and come with me. She is at once undone. Back to back, separated by stone, she begins to weep, as his fingers gently find their way through the gate to her own. He came for her.

He came for her.

She is redeemed.

thirteen years, and counting...

TomLoriecropped, originally uploaded by as we see it.

The H.O.

Twenty years since the boxes, carefully packed and tied with twine, have been opened. The musty, metallic smell that begins to fill the room as bags are opened and objects removed attests to the passing of decades. My husband inspects each piece with care, reminiscing as he goes. “This engine here would be worth between sixty to a hundred dollars if you were to buy it today,” he informs me. It is at this point I question, given this information, “Are you sure you want to do this now?”

But he has waited for this moment for years. “Do you think the kids are big enough this year? Do you think we could put the train around the tree?” This year, after six Christmases, the answer is finally yes. With the proper care and monitoring, our children will be inducted into a magical piece of their father’s childhood, as he was, once, into his own father’s, and so on. Nostalgia is something no family should be without. Ours has an abundance, passed down through the generations. Which is why the boxes, after much scheming with his father, are now in our living room and my husband is somewhere circa 1978.

He holds one up—“we have a little red caboose!” That will excite our son, who, of course, is who this is all about. Really. I’ll remind him of that shortly. But for now, I allow my husband to play with his toys in our living room. He pulls more items out and looks, perplexed, at a tangle of red-orange wire for a moment before returning it to the bag. “It really IS for him,” he insists, as he discovers what I’m writing. And I mostly believe him. Mostly.

Our son, obviously, inherited his fascination with trains honestly. He is a child obsessed, his little wheels turning constantly. We’re driving home one night after dark, and my daughter is asking if grocery stores are open all night. We begin to discuss how some places that sell food are, indeed, open all night. “Why isn’t the train store open all night?” my son asks, out of nowhere. We are hiking one day, just a week ago, and my daughter points out to me the sunset, because “I know you like sunsets, Momma.” “I DO like sunsets,” I reply. “I like train sets,” he pipes in from the kid-carrier. Obsessed, I tell you.

So, I do believe this is motivated, in part, to please and excite a particularly coy two-and-a-half year old sleeping upstairs with Thomas the Train. The two-and-a-half year old who checks every time we get off the freeway on the status of the train bridge we go under to return home and reports to me, excitedly, what he finds, as if I can’t see for myself. The two-and-a-half year old who plays for hours with wooden track on loan from a friend and who will sob, broken-heartedly, tomorrow when we return the set to its rightful owner. But I know better than to believe this is his sole motivation.

The lid comes off the engine, the track having been laid carefully on the living room carpet. The moment has come. “Most of the couplers are still in really good shape,” he informed me earlier, but they are about to be put to the test. The engine lights for a moment, then sputters, then lurches forward. He tweeks it, repositioning it on the track, and it is off and running, much to his surprise. “I thought I’d have to do more to it than that--that's amazing!” Cars are coupled together and, viola, we have a train. I must confess it is a little exciting.

I chuckle. And then I smirk. Seventeen years I’ve known this man, and I’ve never seen these boxes. I knew they existed, the mythological trains in his parent’s basement, but now they have come to life for me, as they will for our children come Christmas morning. But more magical to me, for now, is the nine-year-old boy with the twinkling green eyes laying track in my living room, working intently on his model trains.

love letters, revisited

For being the kind of man who cooks dinner, clears off the counters, runs the dishwasher, occasionally empties it and on a rare occasion returns dishes to their correct locations…

For being the kind of man who loves music and leaves and camping and symphonies and beauty and children and family and art…

For being the kind of man who cleans the house while I’m at work on a Saturday, in between gymnastics lessons and making lunch and running errands and naptime and “Daddy, will you play Barbie’s with me…”

For being the kind of man who cries when he buries the cat…

For being the kind of man who gets up at dark-thirty to go running so he can be healthy but not have it interfere with family time…

For being the kind of man who creates things like “Tickle Fest” and “Milkshake Night” and “Daddy Dates…”

For being the kind of man who has (finally) learned to say, “I’m sorry. I was wrong…”

For being the kind of man who works hard, works smart, works ethically, works as if unto the Lord…

For being the kind of man who would pursue me, marry me, put up with me, and pursue me all over again…

I love you.

a better writer in the house...

Too short, too heavy, too wrinkly, and almost too old.

This is the woman that my wife would have you believe I am married to.

I, on the other hand, know better. The woman I am married to has grown older. Well, it's bound to happen after 17 years. But in those 17 years I've known my wife, she's become more.

More loving, more patient, more confident, and, yes, dare I say, more attractive. Not in spite of time, but because of it. Come to think of it, many of these "more's" (if that's a word), have happened in spite of ME.

As I sit here writing this, I'm reminded of where we've been and what we've experienced. I'm also aware of what our love is capable of producing. For instance, the curly-haired six-year-old sitting next to me who keeps asking, "What are you writing? Can I read it? Why are you writing?"

My wife thinks I only say this because it's my "job." To some extent, she IS right, it is my job. It is my job to love her, to hold her, to encourage her, and cheer her on. It IS my job to love, honor, and cherish. It is exactly why I wanted the job when I said, "I do."

I wanted to be the one to tell her, "You are so beautiful, so kind, so caring."

My husband, October 2005, as written in our really cute little blank books that sit on our bedside table...

going home

We return this weekend to the place we met 17 years ago last month. To the place we became friends, fell in love, got engaged, and planned our life together. To the cafeteria where he waited many a morning for me not to show for breakfast. To the dark room where we had our first kiss. To the paths we walked, arm-in-arm or hand-in-hand, for four years. To the favorite picnic spots, leaf-fight spots, walking spots, frisbee spots, snuggling spots, talking spots, and making out spots. To the bench at Decker Hall where he bent down on one knee in an Indiana blizzard and asked me to be his wife.

Dorm rooms, dark rooms, choir rooms, practice rooms, class rooms, dressing rooms. We will visit them again. We will show them to our children, who will be too young to remember but a faint vision of luminaries lining the sidewalks. We will hear the choir sing, reminisce with old professors and directors, catch up with good friends. We will remember what it felt like to be young and in love.

We are going home.

the difference between my husband and I

There is approximately one third of a piece of Kalua cheesecake in my house. With real whipped cream. From the Cheesecake Factory. It sits downstairs, barely protected behind the wooshing temperature seal of the refrigerator door, and it taunts me upon my weak-kneed return from aerobics.

The cheesecake entered my home on Saturday evening, a consolation gift for my husband for allowing me to accompany Beth on her impromptu, late night escape. Two large clouds of whipped cream dotted its dark, stormy landscape, and I was quite certain my Six Carb Original, sans whipped cream (sans anything, for that matter), was a February day in Ohio by comparison. Beneath the cumulus whipped cream lay three layers of rich, fatty goodness—first the light, fluffy coffee layer, creamy brown like hot chocolate, just the way I like my coffee. Then a lighter colored layer, thicker and creamier although unable to be properly identified, but certainly scrumptious just the same. Then, oh… Then, the chocolate and hazelnut crust… dark-dark-dark-rich-crumbly-fatty goodness. Perfection. I presented it to my wonderful husband with great pomp and circumstance upon my return, and awaited the opportunity to watch him relish this rich, fatty goodness and all the while proclaim what a wonderful wife I was for delivering it to him.

That is where the difference between us became apparent.

He didn’t eat it.

Really. He thanked me profusely, and promptly placed the cheesecake in the refrigerator, remarking that he just wasn’t very hungry at the moment. There was a full half-minute of mystified silence before, completely dumbfounded, I questioned what the heck hunger had to do with anything when there was a piece of Kalua cheesecake in the house. Did he not see the puffy clouds? The dark-dark-dark-rich-crumbly crust? The creamy brown perfect coffee layer? Not hungry?

(For the record, I am, at this exact moment, not hungry. But there is a piece of cheesecake in my fridge and if it were not for the fact that I just tortured myself again at aerobics this morning, it would not be in my fridge any longer. Are you catching my drift?)

Last night he powered down the computer and came to join me in bed, where I was happily reading and trying to pacify the 20 lb. cat who nibbles you until you pet him, and he began to eat his cheesecake. Next to me, in bed. I was not happily reading any longer. I was coveting my neighbor’s cheesecake.

He graciously offered me a bite and, pretending to be nonchalant, I accepted. I clamped my lips down around the fork, determined to pry every possible morsel from the utensil. I closed my eyes, and I sighed. It was all I dreamed it would be. I savored the texture, the flavor, the essence of it for but a moment, and then it was gone. Gone. I resolved that I would not ask for another bite, but that if he offered, I would, of course, accept. It would be rude not to. I began to pray that he would offer. Not really, but I did hope and wish. And he did. A second moment of heaven, followed by more dumbfounding perplexity.

Two thirds of the way finished, and he announced he was full and would save the rest for tomorrow. Today, where it now sits tormenting me from the floor below. “What?” he asked as I half glared, half gaped at him with widemouthed amazement. Five to six bites left, and he cannot convince his five-foot-eight, one hundred and fifteen pound frame to pack them in. More mind-boggling is that he could, but he chooses not to. It is beyond my comprehension. Where was I when that gene was passed out?!

Probably eating my cheesecake. Which, by the way, had approximately a 20-minute life span. My husband’s is at 39 hours and counting. Hours. I’ll let you figure the difference.

I’m going to go look at the cheesecake again.

official results

10th in his age bracket...

...and 27th out of 270!

Top 10%!

"Way ta go, I-da-HO!"

20:20

My hubby ran his 5K today--first race he's run since HS. His goal was to break 21 minutes and finish in the top third. His time is above, and we think he actually made the top quarter. "I'm beat--but that was AWESOME!" he panted from beyond the finish line with a big ol' smile on his face. Way to go, babe.

Almost two hundred runners, only one person wins. But the funny thing is this-- for all I could tell, only about ten of them were running to WIN. The rest of them were running to run--running to beat not the guy in front of them, but to beat the voice inside themselves that said they couldn't do it. Ten-year-old girls, 60-year-old women, 75-year old men, all excited just to finish the race and possibly beat their own best time.

I will never run a 5K. I will never win the Noble Peace Prize for literature. I will never receive a Caldecott or a Newbury. For all I know, I may never even be published in my lifetime, or ever. There are many "prizes" in this world that will never be within my reach... but if I can beat the voice in my head that says You can't do it, I will have won all that is worth winning.


Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize. 2 Cor 9:24

love letters

I made a noble goal that I would write my husband one love letter per month for the entire year this year. The purpose was two-fold, the first obviously being to give him lots of warm fuzzies and good feelings about himself and about me. Very noble, and very sweet. I’m such a good wife. And a good student. I learned in marriage and family therapy school that husbands need warm fuzzies. People end up in therapy if there is a shortage of warm fuzzies. So, I thought I’d better stock up. The second purpose was to give ME lots of warm fuzzies and good feelings, so as to spread the fuzziness around. Wouldn’t want us to end up in therapy. Again.

So, about the end of December of 2004 I went out and plunked down entirely too much money at some ridiculously large bookstore chain to buy each of us attractive little blank-books within which to chronicle our love for one another, because said love was not good enough for ordinary spiral-bound, cardboard-covered notebooks. We found places for them on our nightstands, a small feat within itself, and we began to chronicle the aforementioned love. Fuzziness abounded and we were very cute and sweet, secretly writing letters to one another and placing them on each other’s pillows before bed. Good feelings exuded from us both, and it was all just very precious.

My last entry is dated 03.29.05. Today is 08.22.05. In case your math isn’t real good, that equals “I suck.”

I don’t know what happened. I could lie and tell you the attractive little blank-book fell under the bed and was swallowed by a gigantic hair ball, which has actually been true once or twice, but you would see through my excuses and tell me to get my little fanny under the bed and dig it out. Which is fine except I’m afraid to crawl under my bed because it used to collapse sporadically and despite the fact that it has been fixed for over twenty years I still just don’t trust it. So you could tell me to send my spry six-and-a-half-year-old to her probable death under the bed, but the truth is that, once retrieved, the book would still be sitting in its same perfectly positioned place on the nightstand, unopened, and her heroics would have been in vain. Which is a shame. It really is a very attractive book.

What particularly rubs salt in the wound is that I’ve recently been sorting out some papers and setting aside letters we’ve written to one another to put in the large box I keep labeled “letters we’ve written to one another.” It is another very precious thing, and is bursting to the seams with old letters. Old letters. You would not believe the number of letters we used to write to one another. We had matching notebooks in college, spiral, I might add, that we would write to one another in and pass back and forth. Five-subject notebooks. Full. Apparently, blank-books were not a hot item in the late 1980’s.

Hundreds, literally, of letters. They read to me almost like fiction, now. We used to believe we were so different. Were we? We were so in love, so connected, so open. People would comment on our relationship—we weren’t the only ones who thought our love to be idyllic. We thought we were invulnerable, immune, inpenetratable. Three years of marriage therapy in the mid-1990’s shot that belief to hell. What happened? Were we really any different? Are we now?

I hate this. I hate that I suck. I hate not being who we were in college. I hate being a statistic. I hate that I have pride and resentment and unforgiveness and fear. I hate that I resist being vulnerable. I hate that time is a commodity that seems to balance constantly in the red. I hate that I procrastinate, that I seek my own comfort above all else, that I just don’t feel like it. I hate that I am paving the road to hell with this attractive little blank-book and all its good intentions.

And so, now what? A new goal? A redoubling of my efforts? More guilt and less fuzzies? Or more fuzzies and less guilt? It was such a good goal. I was going to be such a good wife. And the blank-books, well, I just can’t tell you how nice they look on our nightstands. It would be a shame to move them.

Being different. A very noble goal, would that I could attain it.

measuring distance

Some nights, he sits at my feet, his work spread out around him on the floor. Some nights, he occupies the opposite corner of the couch, other nights, the office upstairs. Sometimes a rehearsal calls him away, sometimes the dishwasher, sometimes the children. Close enough to touch, to speak, to call, yet not close enough to connect. If the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, the road between us is often long and winding.

I look at him across the room, his features virtually unchanged in the seventeen years since we first met. One year away from having known one another as long as we hadn’t known one another. There are mere steps between us, yet we are miles apart. When did the once well-worn path between us become so drawn out and difficult to traverse? When did we start creating alternate routes?

It is not a distance marked with hostility—there is, for the most part, no enemy fire or rebel insurgency. No barbed wire, no gates barred and locked, no armed boarder patrol. Nothing there but orange barrels and detour signs, as far as the eye can see…

One barrel flashes pride, another faintly blinks ambivalence, the battery running low. Another flashes unforgiveness, another self-righteousness. Lack of trust. Self-protectiveness. Nursing of wounds. Justification. Laziness. Fear of vulnerability. Fear of intimacy. Fear of rejection. Fear.

Road closed.

He looks up at me, his eyes still the same soft heather-green that once made me, to borrow a phrase from a client, “all twitterpated.” They crinkle around the edges as he smiles at me—a new development in the last few years. Oh, for him to look at me that way all the time again. To get out the ATV and buckle up tight and off-road it the straight line between our two points, kicking up dust and leaving tracks that cause people to wonder what idiots drove through that field…

Lord, help me to measure distance as you would have me to. Repave the way, sweeping away the sea of orange and blacktopping the express lane between us.

Help us embrace the open road.

more thoughts on mid-life

Been thinking more about my conversation with Cindy earlier today. We talked about discontent, disillusionment, disbelief. We talked about the fact that there is no going back. We talked about the fear we have in moving forward, given the tired bleakness we see in the faces of the fourty-something women dragging through life around us. We talked about grieving—all that is that shouldn’t have been, and all that should have been but isn’t. We talked about getting older…

But, see, here’s the thing. I’ll be thirty-five a week from Monday. It is what it is. I will never completely fit in with the hip twenty-somethings on staff because I’m TEN YEARS older than they are. Once I finally GOT that (albeit a few short months ago), I started to become okay with it. I’m not a young adult anymore. I won’t ever be again.

But here’s the other thing… I LIKE my life. I really do. I couldn’t say that even five years ago. Despite the lack of time, lack of freedom, lack of spontaneity, and lack of sanity, I am, if I am completely honest, living the life I always wanted. Is it perfect? No. Do I struggle with discontent? Yes. I see friends who are dating, friends who are traveling, friends who are doing what they want to do when they want to do it. I see friends who don't have tuition payments and ballet lessons to sit through and bedtimes to tie them down. And I struggle with jealousy big time.

But at the end of the day, I have a husband of almost thirteen years who still thinks I’m hot, and a son and a daughter who adore me, and I come back home to cheers and smiles and hugs every time I go away. I have a job I love and a home I love and a family I love and the time and resources to enjoy them. I know who I am and I know who I am not, and I have friends and family who love me anyway. I can live with turning thirty-five.

This is one of my favorite songs, ever. It’s not Bono, but it’s true. I thank the Lord that I am living my dream.

The Stuff that Dreams are Made Of

Take a look around you
change the direction
adjust the tuning
try a new translation
Don’t look at your man in the same old way
take a new picture
Just because you don’t see shooting stars
doesn’t mean it isn’t perfect
Can’t you see…

It’s the stuff that dreams are made of
It’s the slow and steady fire
It’s the stuff that dreams are made of
It’s your heart and soul’s desire
It’s the stuff that dreams are made of

So what’s this about your best friend?
She’s got a brand new shiny boy
and they’re moving out to Malibu
to play with all his pretty toys
And you feel closed in by the same four walls
the same old conversations
with the same old guy you’ve known for years
but use your imagination
and you will see…

It’s the stuff that dreams are made of
It’s the slow and steady fire
It’s the stuff that dreams are made of
It’s your heart and soul’s desire
It’s the stuff that dreams are made of

What if the prince on the horse in your fairytale
is right here is in disguise
And what if the stars you’ve been reaching so high for
are shining in his eyes

Don’t look at yourself in the same old way
take another picture
Shoot the stars off in your own backyard
don’t look any further
and you will see..

It’s the stuff that dreams are made of
It’s the slow and steady fire
It’s the stuff that dreams are made of
It’s your heart and soul’s desire
It’s the stuff that dreams are made of
It’s the sails against the sky
It’s the stuff that dreams are made of
It’s the reason we are alive
It’s the stuff that dreams are made of

Carly Simon