Belated 9th Anniversary Post

"Come to Hatteras," they said, and I didn't want to go with you. It had gone bad between us, again. Nine years married, and there's been more bad than good, more hard than easy. We are weary.

I worry about what our children have learned about marriage. We have taught them all we know about it, but our understanding is a bag with holes. We've prayed, read articles and books, watched videos, met with a counselor; yet, we can't seem to get it together.

I've been an excellent learner all my life, but I can't seem to learn this: can't seem to break our painful cycles that are, in many ways, similar to the ones I witnessed, growing up. Sometimes, I'm tempted to blame my parents; other times, I'm tempted to blame yours. I've asked you to imagine throwing my daddy and yours into a sack and shaking it; what would be the outcome? Not good, and I'm not always sure who is who in this scenario; regardless, the truth is that we're the adults (the ones influencing children), now, and aren't we responsible for the choices we make?

It doesn't feel like it; I know. Our behaviors feel innate, primal, beyond the capacity of our excellent brains and kind, Jesus-loving hearts. I live with the fear that, down the pike, our children--our daughters, especially--will choose this: not because it's happy or healthy or normal, but because it's familiar.

We long for respite. We found it, for a few days, in Hatteras. With lights and nets, one night we walked to the sea to hunt ghost crabs.

I'd never hunted ghost crabs, before, and in truth participated this time only through the lens of my old camera, a T3i, which has limited ISO capabilities. It has a flash, but I wanted to see what I could get with ambient lighting. The resulting photos are blurry, but I love them; I think they capture both my wild excitement and my disorientation.

 

They also capture Charleigh's trepidation.

I took many beautiful photos while we were in Hatteras, but these are the ones I've studied over and over. I haven't been able to stop thinking about that night: the dark air so thick with salt that, licking my lips, I could taste it; the beams of the flashlights and lanterns; Charleigh's eyes, wide with concern; the delighted laughter of the other children and shouts of the adults ("We've got one; bring the bucket!"); the surf's occasional lap at my flip-flop-clad feet. Again and again, I have played the movie of this--the ghost-crab hunt--in my mind, until I could not doubt that there was something more I was supposed to see in it, write about it.

So I did the thing I do, sometimes, in which I force my spirit open like a pistachio nut left in the bottom of the bag: one of those we pick out and toss back in because it has an ungenerous gap, because it must be either pried open with something other than our fingers or cracked with a snap between our teeth.

After days and days, this is what I found.

Hunting ghost crabs is a perfect analogy for our marriage. We are haunted people. We are together but alone. We each carry a little light and benefit from the (little) light of others; still, we are severely limited in what we can see. It's dark, here. There are ghosts, here, but good on us if we're committed to capturing them: to seeing and accepting them for what they are and, ultimately, to setting them free.

Your beams illuminate my ghosts; my beams illuminate yours. Our power in one another's life is this and only this: illumination. Not eradication. Eradication is deeply personal. We have long been distracted by one another's ghosts. If there is to be peace and progress, each of us must commit to dealing with his or her own ghosts, also to giving the other space and time to do the same.

May we stumble ever closer to a better and brighter place; may we find one another there. This is nine years married. Hear me when I say: I love you, still.

To Jim on Valentine's Day

Dear Jim,

I'm thinking of February seven years ago. Remember how that guy Tony told you he no longer wanted to be intimate with his wife after watching her give birth? I still have no idea why he told you that, or why you shared the conversation with me. But I was so insecure after Clementine was born--remember?--that I squeezed into your single bed right there in the hospital room. Hold me: tell me you still want me after witnessing that.

I'm so glad to say I know you better, now. I know you, now, as the man who crossed to the nether side of the drape while Dr. Reutinger was performing my c-section to deliver Chip. "Well," you said, watching every bit of the action (and barely raising an eyebrow), "now I can say I've seen parts of you that no one else ever has."

There's been so much blood. No one much talks about the blood inside of a marriage, inside of a family. No one much talks about the snot, the shit...and I'm being literal, here: not figurative in the least (although there's been plenty of figurative shit, too, and someone is even now shaking his or her head over my word choice, but poo doesn't quite cover it).

The puke. Remember the time Cade threw up in his loft bed? Then I--having climbed up to clean up--vomited on top of Cade's vomit. You pulled down the mattress, knelt on the bedroom floor and cleaned it all up.

Something has shifted since Valentine's Day, last. I've shed some paranoia. Just the other day I said of you: "I guess if he were going to leave me, he would've done it, by now." Lesser men are leaving all the time: in search of love, I guess, but love isn't something found; it's something made...and not always (or even often) between the sheets.

What I want to say to you, My Valentine, is thank you. Thank you for staying with me. We've survived so much, including one another, and

I love you.
Brandee

Our Christmas Miracle

In the fall of 1992, I was a freshman at Maryville College and on work-study in the library. My friend Akiko was standing just on the other side of the circulation desk, talking with me, when a security guard approached and said I needed to call home. I hurried with dread to the payphone in the lobby, Akiko on my heels, and learned that my (paternal) grandma had died. I've never forgotten the comfort of my friend: how she walked with me to my dorm room, stayed with me as I packed. I've always believed that God sent her to the library to be with me.

I remembered this at the restaurant, last night, when I was hurrying to leave work and looked up to see Andrea and Vanderhoop just inside the front door. Am I dying? I thought, then: Whatever is happening, God has sent them. I've been here before.

My sister-cousin Andrea is a nurse. When I told her I was leaving work and why (more bleeding than after childbirth or miscarriage), she insisted not only that I go to the ER but also that I allow her to drive me. Jim and the four children had been at the zoo for the live nativity and headed toward the hospital. "Go ahead and check in," he said. "I'll bring the insurance card."

As I left with a nurse for triage, Andrea asked: "How do you want this to go?"

"I want you to take the children home," I told her. "I want Jim to stay with me."

And even as the words left my mouth, I realized: I already have my Christmas miracle.

I've been praying for a different one; Jim had a fourth interview, last week, and whatever the company decided, they decided, yesterday. They told him they would turn yesterday's decision over to HR and contact the candidate of choice early next week. I can't tell you how many times I've thought: Wouldn't it be nice if they called, this week, to say he has the job? 

I've been longing for my parents and brother's family in East Tennessee; I haven't been home for an entire year, and I guess I've never been apart from my mom at Christmastime. I haven't been able to bring myself to ship her a package. She hasn't been able to bring herself to put up a tree. Wouldn't it be nice, I've thought, to know Jim has that job...to just pack up and go home?

Our situation has not yet been resolved; yet, already I can say:

I would not go back.

I would not go back to where we were before Jim lost his job. We were with our third marriage counselor, and while he is incredible!, progress was painfully slow. Jim was so frustrated that he walked out of our last session. He lost his job right after; then, we didn't have the option to return to our (slow) miracle worker. We didn't have the $300/month to spare.

Trust me when I say: after Jim lost his job, things got much worse before they got better. But this situation has been like a jump-start, or defibrillation, to our marriage. I believe we will make it, now. I believe we will be okay. And I'm going to be okay: I was discharged from the hospital with a doctor's note for work and strict instructions to visit my OB/GYN, today. My body is changing. (There's a pill for me.)

My heart is changing, too, and Jim's. We are changing. God is at work, here. There has already been a Christmas miracle.

Belated 8th Anniversary Post

Dear Jim,

Sometimes I like to pretend I made perfect sense before I married you (in all your complications, depth, and passion) and before we brought, in less than four years, three babies into the world.

I am (we are) in a pressure cooker to be sure, but I think it's important that I try to remember who and how I was (really was) before you...and between you and you. I am thinking back to our weekend in South Boston. It had been thirteen years since we'd touched and eleven since we'd looked upon one another's faces.

It's been more than eight years, now, since South Boston: long enough that the brightness and sharpness of those few days are gone. But when I try, really try, to remember the truth about them, I remember first and foremost how much I cried.

I remember how, without my asking, you said everything I wanted you to say. I remember how I couldn't handle it: how I left early, telling you I needed time to process it. I remember how I couldn't, didn't believe it.

But it was all true; wasn't it. I am not asking. You are still here.

For eight years, you have lived out what you said in South Boston; still, I do not always believe you love me. This is rarely your fault. We are so far in; still, I am terrified. Terror does not always look like one might expect. This is not a cheap, horror movie. This is our home, and these are our lives and the lives of our babies.

Somewhere in the middle of a bed in the middle of a log cabin in the middle of the woods, there is a woman crying. She is pinned against her sleeping husband by one of his Paul-Bunyan forearms, but it is not what (it is rarely what) one might think. He scratched her back with his chin before he fell asleep, and before that, they talked in the dark as though it were 1994. Or 2007.

I am that woman. Mostly, I am thinking I want to die your wife.

Brandee

On Drowning

Like Charlie Brown, I'm in love with a little redheaded girl. Her name is Charleigh (pronounced Charlie), and she's my third of four children, second daughter, presenting middle child.

She's been hauled in distress from the lake the past three summers in a row, and I told her daddy I couldn't enter another summer without Charleigh's knowing how to swim, float, something. We signed both girls up for swim lessons at Aqua-Tots: Level 3, Fast Track. Six-year-old Clementine loved every minute of it.

Charleigh, though, struggled. She's strong and solid in the way my people mean when they say built like a brick shithouse, so there was never a question of physical capability. Problem is that she's strong-willed in the way my people mean when they say raised in the canebrake by an ol' mama lion. And Charleigh wasn't happy over the swim-lesson situation; in fact, she was periodically awash in terror.

The first week, I bit my nails watching Charleigh through the glass. Instructor Alex pulled her into the water and made her complete the drills even when she roared with her head tipped back or pleaded with her pale hands clasped together. Sometimes he worked with Charleigh's classmates while she dangled off his back like a baby monkey. Once, Charleigh broke free and ran, and the master instructor on duty had to abandon his class in the pool to return Charleigh to hers.

She did her fair share of yelling at me before and after class; one afternoon, I pulled the minivan off the side of the road and refused to drive until she quieted. I assured her over and over that Alex was not going to let her drown for fear of losing his job. (Ha!) But on the fifth morning, Charleigh melted down completely. Complete and utter hysteria.

"If you're not a big enough girl for swim lessons," I suggested, "maybe you're not big enough for Vacation Bible School."

"Or King's Dominion. Or a week at Nana's," Jim said.

"Or your birthday at Jellystone," I added.

Charleigh, sobbing, said: "Maybe we can just celebrate my birthday, next year." My eyes met Jim's. (His were wet.) He shrugged. For a moment, we were completely at a loss. Then I thought: this child has almost drowned three summers in a row; of course she's afraid. Of course the fast track's hard on her. But we've already paid (an arm and a leg); I'm watching her through the glass; her instructor is so kind, so patient; and ultimately, I'm just trying to keep her alive. She's going to have to be pushed through her fear. She needs to know how to swim. She's going to do this. Period.

It was the right decision. Somewhere in the middle of her fifth class and just like that, Charleigh stopped being afraid.

***

And here comes the Lord. Later, when it's quiet. You see it now; don't you? He asks. I immediately go twitchy and try to chalk His voice up to magical thinking. A facet of mental illness, I think. That's all. But we've been in many of these uncomfortable places in my lifetime, and we both know what this is, so He laughs and cracks my world open just a little more.

I see Charleigh's hysteria and hear my assurances that Alex will not let her drown. Then I see myself in a state of emotional disregulation. I've just come to understand the term for this form of it: panic. Like Charleigh's fear, it has been hard-earned. Our counselor has explained it to Jim in terms of drowning. ("She's going to come up clawing and scratching," he said, "or whatever she thinks she needs to do to survive.") I realize with a start that Jim isn't going to let me drown any more than Alex was going to let Charleigh drown, also that Father God (on the other side of the glass through which I see Him darkly) isn't going to let Jim let me drown any more than I was going to let Alex let Charleigh drown.

I see that, like Charleigh, I have to push or be pushed through my fear. Life with fear in one's heart isn't kind. It isn't God's best for any of us.

Parenting. Jesus promised: whatever we do for others (especially the least of them), we do for Him. But in my lifetime I have found that, often, whatever I do for others and from a perfect place in my heart, I do for myself. The Lord in His great mercy works it out that way.

'Tis So Sweet

I haven't known what to share for what feels like forever. When I write that, I mean it: I haven't known. I puzzled over it for awhile; I couldn't figure out why, having written through so much for so long, I was suddenly at such a loss.

But I know, now: I haven't trusted my feelings, lately. I seem able to write any feelings I have as long as I trust them, but I don't always, anymore. It's related to counseling, and I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing; in fact, I think it's a good thing to step back and say: yes, I feel this way, but should I? Is my perspective fair? Am I seeing this situation from all sides and for what it really is, or am I seeing it only through a flawed lens?

And I don't think I'm being unfair to myself, because I don't trust Jim's feelings (or anyone else's) any more than I trust my own. I think the truth transcends feelings. I suspect that, most of the time, the truth sprouts in middle ground...or maybe on some distant plain no one can see in his or her shortsightedness.

I may not trust my feelings, right now, but I think it's important that I write: I trust Jesus; I do. I think He does good work in me when I'm in a state of discomfiture. I know He hears me. I know He sees straight through to the heart of me. And just like the old hymn says: I've proved Him over and over.

Things are not always well between Jim and me, but I believe they will be because we want them to be, because we're working on it. I would say that, otherwise, things are very well. I'm deeply encouraged in our homeschooling journey with the little kids. Maybe I'll write more about that, soon. I want to write, too, about our little dog and how I know she's meant to heal just one more broken place in my heart.

Oh, for grace to trust Him more!

Fight or Flight

I liked our new marriage counselor immediately. She's deadpan, and I don't tend to run the roads with suchlike, but Lord help: when sparks are flying between him and me--or me and me, for that matter--the counselor's impassivity is such a gift. Also, she has the kindest eyes I've ever seen.

She's seeing us separately, for now. When she asked, last session, what I was learning or thinking, or how the Lord was leading, I told her a little about a class I'm taking through Canvas Network on behavior management. It emphasizes making small shifts in one's own behavior, as teacher, in order to impact the behavior of one's students. I signed up for the class because I'd never studied behavior management and had recognized a deficiency when teaching sixth-grade English, also because I find myself flailing in this area, even now, while home educating Jim's and my four- and five-year-old daughters.

Online instructor Paul Dix explains: humans have both an emotional mind (the limbic brain) and a rational mind (the prefrontal cortex). The emotional mind is dominant and has--smack-dab in the middle of it--a nut-shaped object called the Amygdala. The Amygdala's job is to respond to threat signals (Danger!) by releasing small bursts of hormones into the rational brain. Once the Amygdala has triggered, rational thinking stops, and a body prepares for fight or flight.

My emotional mind, I told the marriage counselor, controls me too often. I'm pretty much always ready for fight or flight, and while I'd thought I'd like to be a person who yells a little less, especially at the kids, I hadn't realized the serious ramifications of such behavior. If any of us is "on eggshells," so to speak, (s)he isn't learning the way she should...which may well provide the single best explanation for why I'm not a genius by now.

At this point, the counselor whipped out a couple of huge, matching volumes, and we took turns reading aloud through a section on being reactionary. "Well, what do you think?" she asked when we finished. "Can you relate to any of that?"

"I can relate to all of it," I said, then: "I had no idea I was so broken."

"We're all broken," she said, "and the point isn't to beat yourself up. This is learned behavior, and it's difficult to overcome. But you're worth it; do you hear me? You're worth it. And so are those you love."

I'd tell you I haven't written much, lately, because I've been busy, but truth is: I've been busy for far longer than the four years I've been blogging. It's closer to the truth to say I've been learning and processing so much that I haven't been able figure out how or where to start sharing.

Jim's and my marriage isn't any happier than any other romantic relationship I've ever had, which is to say: it isn't very happy at all. Jim's and my marriage is holy, however. The way we deal with one another isn't holy, always (or even most of the time), but if nothing else, our marriage has an "iron sharpening iron" quality to it.

This man will not leave me alone. He will not let me be who I am. It's exhausting. I feel picked at, nitpicked, roosterpecked.

But.

I have to ask myself: have I become, over the course of this relationship, closer to who God would have me be? And yes. Unequivocally. God doesn't leave us alone, either; does He?

Belated 7th Anniversary Post

Dear Jim,

You were cutting up ham and pineapple for our $5, cheese pizza from Food Lion...only it was a free pizza, as it turns out, because you'd worked your magic, again. We had some manner of tension between us after the big "band booster" meeting, and it was more of the same: how you get on my nerves with your penny-pinching even as I'm so thankful I've never not had gas money.

I squeezed between you and the pizza on the stove because it never fails: if we can bring ourselves to touch, the bad feelings evaporate, and I said, "If you weren't so good-looking, it would so be over, by now." I watched you laugh because that's your line, and I appreciated all over again how you're a whole head taller.

"What happened," I asked, moving to the other side of the bar, "to those days when I could just sort of shake my tail feather and get whatever I wanted?"

"Brandee," you said (and you were wearing your serious face), "what have you ever wanted that you didn't get, eventually?" And when I tried to think of something, I couldn't. Which means there's definitely an adopted baby in our future, Jim?

But seriously.

Thank you for taking such good care of us. I know it hasn't been easy what with my not working outside the home these past six years. I know you've wished a million times that you could just turn the bill-paying over, but you've known that--even if I did my very, very best--I wouldn't see all the ways to save money that you do. Just so you know: I think you're a genius. I think you put Dave Ramsey and Clark Howard to shame.

Thank you for providing everything we need and so much of what we want.

I'm satisfied, and those exact words ran through my mind, early yesterday morning, as I turned my back to your fur and heat and settled down to sleep. Your arm was flung above my head, and I reached out and caught your great hand with its curved fingers. I ran my index finger across your knuckles and down into the valleys between (and back).

And I thought to myself how it's been like that with us: up and down, up and down, up and down, up and down (and back). But maybe the important thing is: through it all, I've never wanted to leave. There's a whole world outside of the up n downs, but I've never been tempted by it. I just keep bumping along, and I guess you do, too. We just keep choosing one another all over again.

Seven years married.

I love you so much.

Brandee

Thank you, Chuck E. Cheese Machine.

6th Anniversary Post 
5th Anniversary Post

Approaching Our Seventh Anniversary

When we set the GPS in our driveway, it says six hours (on the dot) to Jim's mama's. It takes more like seven-and-a-half with the little kids; each travels well but has a squirrel bladder. We stumble road-weary into Jim's mama's trailer, and there's no vacation element to our visits, these days. Sometimes I take the kids out for awhile, but--having gotten up with Jim's mama in the middle of the night--I do it tired and because the kids are climbing the walls, getting on each other's nerves and everyone else's, too. I wonder about Jim and his mama the whole time we're out...not because he's incapable, but because (given that he's working remotely) he's busy, distracted. Also because at her current level of need, things can become awkward pretty quickly even for me, and I'm of her gender and not of her blood.

We returned home from Mother's Day weekend Tuesday evening, and I've been wrong ever since. I thought just exhaustion, at first, but then my throat went sore. This was days ago, but last night, I woke from a dead sleep for the sidewalk-scraped pain in my throat. I have a hacking cough, a runny nose, watery eyes. Clementine shares my cold, I think; I listened to her sneeze a dozen times in a row, this morning, from the spot we shared on the sofa.

So I've struggled, lately, in thinking of a positive something to share, but here it is, a happy announcement: things are well between Jim and me. If you knew us, really knew us, you'd know it hasn't always been well between us; in fact, at the outset of this crisis with his mama, things got as bad as they've ever gotten. At some recent point, though, we realized: this moment in time really matters. How we handle it matters.

We've been motivated, lately, to treat one another with extra kindness. I value the sentiment of the Golden Rule but understand that--if I know how Jim would have something "done unto" him--there's more kindness in going that route than the one I would choose personally, if roles were reversed. He's reached a similar understanding; I can tell. Truth is: Jim and I differ in so many ways, and after almost seven years of marriage, we're just starting to understand how to bless and help one another.

Our small group participated recently in a DVD study called Sacred Marriage. Have you heard of it? I got a lot out of it, but my very favorite moment was the one in which Gary Thomas said it takes seven to ten years for a couple to learn to live together. It's tragic, he said: oftentimes two people are just on the brink of figuring things out when they call it quits. And truth be told, up to that point I'd been a little angsty about the approach of Jim's and my seventh wedding anniversary. My first husband and I split up after about six-and-a-half years of marriage. I've heard the phrases seven-year ache and seven-year itch all my life.

Gary Thomas's words filled me with hope, and I've been watching ever since for evidence that Jim and I are just on the brink of figuring things out. It's there. Over the past few days, I've found it in the way he's handled this summer cold of mine. I could go into the details but won't; what's important is that he's learned what I like when I'm sick (very different from what he likes, when he's sick) and done his best to please me. I keep thinking: what if this is it? What if we're on the brink? What if we've fallen over the very edge? What if it's happily ever after from here on out? And I guess there's no point in expecting anything less.

How We Co-Labor: A Marriage Letter

Dear Jim,

I feel so happy in this moment and almost a little guilty for it (given the situation with your mom), but just: you'll never know how conflicted I felt about homeschooling the little kids, and for how long. Sometimes I flip-flopped from one hour to the next. Even if I managed to lean one way for an entire week, I didn't have peace, and I didn't understand why...especially because I was really praying.

My pro and con lists were almost the same length, and I could write them out for you, but truth is: all the cons stemmed from self-doubt. I didn't know if I could do it, and maybe I can't.

I never thought to ask God to send you home (I wonder why; you'd worked from home before Char and Chip were born, and that had been good for us), but--when you told me you'd be working remotely starting May 1st--I remembered all over again: God sees me. He knows who I am, how I am. He knows what I need.

Your job keeps you hopping (or talking and typing). I don't see you much during the day; you're holed up in the office you put together in the corner of our bedroom. But that's okay. I don't need you much during your work hours. I need you during what used to be your driving hours. I need you to help this morning hater get the day started, and I need you to help me shut the day down.

You'd struggled to understand why I'd been so very...done by 6:30, so I was touched, today, when you said: "I have a whole new appreciation for what you've been doing around here, and I'm sorry I haven't been more supportive." All this time, that's what I've wanted: not so much for you to do anything as for you to see me. Now, you do. Or, at least, you hear me. And when a little person gets particularly unruly downstairs, your voice booms down from above like the very voice of God. I had no idea how much I needed that little bit of reinforcement.

I'm not too proud to admit: I don't know if I can homeschool the little kids. But I know we can. I have so much peace about it, now. What a gift to have you home.

I love you.
Brandee

**writing in community with Amber and Seth Haines

The Wheel: Thoughts on Marriage

He ran away with me, and he wouldn't have done it if he hadn't made a hotel reservation; he said so, himself, because we were in Tennessee, and his mama is so sick, there, that she can't stay by herself. He'd stayed with her the night before while the kids and I had slept at my parents', and--when I pulled into his mama's driveway bright and early the next day (the kids in my mom's care)--he was standing on the porch, dialing my number.

He thought it best, he said, to help take his mama to the doctor because he might have to carry her down (and back up) the porch steps. In the end, he turned the chair backwards and wheeled her down, and careful as he was, she hollered so loudly at the little bumps that the neighbor came running. She's not one to holler, so we were every one shaken and out of sorts. I fetched one of her pillows from inside, and we built up the passenger seat of her car and helped her get settled, collapsed the wheelchair and put it in the trunk.

I tell you these things to give you context for Jim's and my night and (almost) two days away, and I don't know how one enters wholeheartedly a getaway when there's no getting away: no getting away from the tick-tock of limited time on the clock, no getting away from the concern, responsibility, helplessness, grief. None of my any of that touches his, but I'm not unaffected, and seeing as how it was my first night away from the baby, I was a nut bar for a whole different set of reasons that confound me to just about the same extent as Genesis 3:16b's being fulfilled through me.

But anyway, napping was at the top of my list of things to do during our getaway, as was lovemaking, shopping (mostly thrift), eating good food, and drinking beer. His list was similar to mine (subtract drinking beer, add playing arcade games, and understand that "good food," to Jim, doesn't automatically mean "gourmet cupcake" like it does to me).

At the last minute, I added an item to my list: riding The Great Smoky Mountain Wheel. The Wheel--which travels 200 feet up in the air--is an attraction at The Island, a new retail and entertainment center in Pigeon Forge. We were promised three full rotations and got five. I thought Jim was going to hurl. "That was one time in the history of the world," he said, "that I would've been alright with someone's shortchanging me." So The Wheel wasn't exactly a romantic experience, but I loved it, anyhow.

It  ends up being analogous to this life Jim and I are living together; I mean, I remember full well how I'd romanticized it, and it ain't that. It's mostly just two people working their hind ends off for a house full of (very demanding) kids. We get a day or two away, and we're so exhausted as to flop into the hotel-room bed and fall asleep (within minutes!) smack-dab in the middle of the day. I cry periodically, during our getaway, and gnaw my fingernails to the quick. And every single time we make a pit stop, he has to remind me: we can go inside together; no one needs to stay in the vehicle with the kids.

It's not what I'd doe-eyed dreamed, but I love him. My desire is for him. I permit him to rule over me. (That last bit blows my mind.) And--when I take his hand across the table at breakfast and ask: "Do you regret me?"--he shakes his head and looks at me in that seven-years-ago way that seems much further back.

"I don't regret you," he says. "I still remember. I still remember how I begged God to let me have you."

See my reflection in this one?

What Makes You Come Alive: A Marriage Letter

Dear Jim,

I so often want more of you. Forgive me (you've always given so much), but I find myself a little breathlessly expectant, lately: your headlights slicing through darkness, your tires crunching over gravel. One door slams; another swings open, and--as the children climb your legs and talk your ear off--I just keep waiting for my turn at you. You're always mine before it's all said and done,

but it's the "said" part I feel inclined to discuss, here and now.

I'm sorrier than I can say, Honey, that I had just assumed your love language to be physical touch, same as mine. It's always been so hot between us that I could hardly believe the "words of affirmation" result to that test, but then I reckoned: I am, after all, a woman of many words. I can affirm with the best of them.

(Maybe a man in need of words will turn to a poet surely as a woman in need of physical touch will turn toward a body she likes: that of a tall and broad-chested tackle, in this case.)

I thought back to 1994 and the scandalous sorts of words I wove into notes and poems and whispered into your ear just before turning on my heel and walking away. I'd guessed myself unforgettable for other reasons (no need to write those out in this forum, right, Darling?), but maybe it was the words. Maybe it was, and my heart leaps at that thought because I hope to have words--even if other things fade--until the very end. I am so much of so many words.

I think back to 2007, that fleeting "Lips of an Angel" time, then South Boston and your swinging wide the door, your eyes a well of desire and suffering at least eleven years deep. You needed something, clearly, and what I'd neglected to consider from at least one angle is this: we stayed up most all night but didn't make love; we talked and talked and cried and talked and talked, and in the morning, you were a new man.

And I'm sorry, My Love, for those angry times of wielding words as weapons and just as sorry for those missed opportunities to fill lazy, open spaces with words that would've affirmed, blessed, built up. I know what makes you come alive, now; get on home and breathe on me (you fabulous effing man), and I'll speak love in wave after wave.

Yours ever,
Brandee

Photo by Anjie Kay

**writing in community with Amber
**click here to read the marriage letter I wrote, last month
 

Once Upon a Time: A Marriage Letter

Dear Jim,

Once upon a time (or twenty years ago, come September), we took an ethics class in the Center for Campus Ministry. Dear Dr. Hewitt--God rest his soul--broke our class into small groups for the purpose of discussion, and you were in my group, sitting across from me. I remember my turning to watch him write on the white board: philia, eros, agape. Then my turning back into the fire of your eyes.

No one had ever looked at me like that, before, and I could see straight to the hungry but honest core of you. It lit me from within, the lightning-strike knowledge of who you were and what you wanted, but I was twenty. I wasn't ready.

For months, we circled one another like boxers in a ring, and it comes to me now: I provoked you from the start. I've always brought out your wild and bellowing: maybe because I've always held something back, just a little something or another you've wanted. You will think of me. You will come back for the more.

I'm nothing if not defiant.

The other night, we were lying tangled in the marriage bed, and I asked you why you love me. Your sigh rattled deep in the giant, rib-jutting cage of your chest, as from against your very heart. "Don't take this the wrong way," you said, "but I don't know. It's like I don't have a choice. There's just something inside of me. I have to have you."

You and I, we can count on eros even when agape eludes. Bone of your bone, I am. Flesh of your flesh. Your other (not better) half.

I do love you.

Brandee

**writing in community with Amber

It's Not New York City

New York at Night, Vivienne Gucwa

He sits a little slumped beside the stove and shakes his head over the electric bill. I stop stirring in the rice just long enough to hug him and tease: "Good thing I know how to entertain you for free."

"Yeah," he says. "My greatest source of happiness, lately, is your lovin' on me."

I know he's sincere but add: "And the kids."

"Yeah," he says, "when they're asleep." And we both laugh.

***

We talked so much about stealing away this winter: taking the train, maybe catching a show. My parents said they'd drive up and keep the kids a weekend here at the house; it seemed for a minute like it might really happen. 

But my mom will soon have foot surgery, and we just learned over the holidays: his mama's really sick. We know we need to be careful with our money and his vacation time. We know we need a reliable vehicle and did a thing he hates to do: take on a vehicle payment. 

So we rent movies from Red Box and settle together on the couch. I nurse the baby to sleep. I weaned all his siblings at his age, but he's the last, and he smells mysteriously like Play-Doh and Sweet Tarts; there's no reason to rush. The others sleep like angels in another part of the house. 

I lean against Jim and reach into his popcorn bowl. I wear pajama pants. It's messy in here and still decorated for Christmas, but these log walls enfold so much of what's good. It's not New York City, but New York City will wait.

Thoughts on Feminism

Oh, the ongoing uproar on the subject of feminism.

First, my story: I was raised in a household in which my dad functioned as head. I followed his rules for the most part, and I was motivated to do so because I loved and respected him and didn't want to disappoint him, but also because I didn't want to suffer the consequences of disobeying or embarrassing him: i.e., he had a long, black belt. All of the above is true for the years we were and the years we were not a church-going family.

I've always found myself attracted to men like my dad: broad-shouldered with a commanding presence. My ex-husband doesn't fall into that category at all, and I'd tell you I don't know how I ended up with him, but that would be a lie because, in fact, I do and just don't want to get into it right now. 

At any rate, my ex-husband had been raised primarily by his divorced mother, who was and is a strong and God-fearing woman, and my ex-husband seemed perfectly comfortable and content with the idea of a true and equal partnership between us. 

Problem was, I didn't know how to function within that sort of construct. I couldn't be trusted. I ran amok. He wasn't a saint, either, and our marriage fell apart.

So, now: Jim. Jim is much more like dear old Dad than my ex-husband. I consider him the head of the household, and under his leadership, I walk much more closely with the Lord than ever before. I feel fairly comfortable with the way our marriage works, although we've had to hash a lot of it out, and some of it with a professional. 

Jim holds the purse strings for real and will absolutely put his foot down in other areas, as well, but I can honestly say: I've never come to Jim regarding a Jesus calling that he hasn't backed me 100%. (I take that back: he's still not on board with the idea of our adopting a baby girl from China, but I trust that--if it's a true calling--he'll get there.) One of my favorite things about Jim is his desire to delight me. He reads and supports my writing; he surprised me with my camera and supports all my dabbling in the realm of photography; he supported me through my season of excessive cookie baking; and probably most importantly, he supports my every effort to do God's work.

Now, who's to say how screwed up I am or my marriage is, and why should anyone care, really, so long as I love the Lord and do His work...so long as I love and please the husband God's given me...so long as we're happy together (or working on it)?

And when the rubber meets the road, the feminists and non-feminists alike pluck my nerves because everyone's trying to convince everyone else of something, and I don't give much of a big, fat hairy crap about any of it.

Who am I to say whether or not some chick's been called to preach? I grew up in an Independent Fundamental Missionary Baptist church, and a female preacher works for me to about the same extent as a female gynecologist, which is to say, hello, not at all, but I'll readily admit: 1) I'm probably totally screwed up; 2) I have zero interest in messing with God's anointed; 3) a female preacher may well work beautifully for someone else; and 4) I don't know how to get around Galations 3:28. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus. Amen.

Please, Lord, don't ever call me to preach because my sad, little zit of a brain would just pop.

In terms of our marriages, though, Lord have mercy! Why must we feel the need to tell one another how to be married? I say: Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct thy paths (Proverbs 3:5-6, KJV, again: I told you: Independent Fundamental Missionary Baptist upbringing).

If anyone cares...if anyone's listening...my best advice for your marriage is simply this: make it your God-centered marriage. Get down on your hands and knees. Get up in the Word. Pray. Pray with your spouse! If the Lord's truly calling you to speak into other people's marriages, that's one thing, but be sure. Be careful! I suspect that most of you would do well to concentrate on your own person and your own marriage because...well, because...you're nothing but a hot mess like the rest of us, and you're not changing anyone's mind about anything, anyway.

You Could Be My

I seem to be telling the adventure in backwards order, so: an acorn-shaped gazebo in Silver Spring, Maryland. I'd read about it and asked Andrea if we could check it out. Given that nap time had come and gone by the time we pulled up (the girls scrapping and acting a fool in the seat behind us), Andrea turned on her hazards, and I hopped out of her Exhibition, alone.

The above isn't the best photo, I realize, but the sun was bright, and the gazebo sits just under a large tree. As I walked quickly around the gazebo, I saw just past and below it what looked like a fireplace or some such, and--given the plaque beside--I  went to investigate.

The plaque says (among other things) that this is the Silver Spring from which the community derives its name: that Francis Preston Blair and his daughter Elizabeth discovered it from horseback in 1840, Mr. Blair naming it Silver Spring based upon the appearance of "rays of sun on mica sand particles in the water."

For a spring, it looked dry as a bone to me, but I've been singing bits and pieces of the Fleetwood Mac song in my head, ever since. I looked up its history, last night, and learned: Stevie Nicks wrote the song after driving under a freeway sign that said Silver Spring, Maryland. "'You could be my silver springs...' that's just a whole symbolic thing of what you could have been to me," she explained, once.

I think about my own man: so overwhelmed and tired, lately. The night the little kids and I returned from Maryland, he participated in another mock trial for extra cash, and he's making more repairs on the bitty house, this weekend. We have catching up to do, yet, with bills, Christmas presents to buy. And I know he's worried about his mom: some scary things with her health, lately.

I don't always know what to do or say; in fact, today, he told me to stop talking. But I think about that bone-dry-looking spring and--upon considering what its name symbolizes to Stevie Nicks--decide not to dwell on what Jim could be (or is) to me, right now, but instead, on what I can be to him. I undress and tuck myself in against the prominent bones rising from his chest. I run my hands over his warm body but say not a word.

I would be your only dream...

Your shinin' autumn...ocean crashin'...

Money Troubles and Mini Adventures

We vacationed a bit hard this summer, which would've been fine had our renters continued to pay their rent (the mortgage on our second house), but you know how it goes, which is rarely the way it ought; thus, we've had to slow way down.

We've cut out the eating out, also all shopping save that of the responsible, grocery variety, including thrift-store and (almost all) yard-sale shopping. I've stopped driving into town except on the days Charleigh has gymnastics (the one luxury to which I'm still stubbornly clinging, along with Clementine's dance).

And, you know, I don't like it, but I feel surprisingly happy, anyway. The house is cleaner, the laundry more caught up, than it's been for awhile. I switched out the girls' warm-weather clothes for cold-weather ones. I'm expecting some out-of-state company over the next couple weeks: so, so excited about that. Excited about halloween and Chippy's first birthday.

I've been studying--and learning!--my camera and photography with determination and wonder, and I've been writing offline. Fiction. Just a little bit.

I love autumn. I love my husband and how, without so much as a word, we've agreed to treat one another more kindly since the money troubles started (because life's hard enough). I love my children and how, really, they just want Jim and me and our attention. I've raised them to go and do, and they love it, but they're just as happy to hang out at home in our log cabin or yard.

Clementine's learned the dinner-time prayer that hangs in our dining room, the same one Cade used to pray:

Thank You, God, for this food

for rest and home and all things good.

For wind and rain and sun above,

but most of all for those we love.

My eyes well up at that last part every, single time. I really am so thankful for all of it, including the mini adventures we've managed to squeeze in, over the last two months, on a tight-tight budget.

Wizard of Oz kids' event at the mall. (We already had the dresses.)

Watching Jim play softball. (Doesn't he look great?!)

Day at our state park with Sarah Beagle and the kids for whom she's a nanny.

Wizard of Oz 3D (a huge extravagance, admittedly, even though it was a matinee).

Fall festival at church. Cade, Samwise, Phillip.

Fall festival at church. Trunk-or-treat (our minivan). My girls with Zach and Lydia.

Fall festival at church. Chip and Rachel. This photo totally makes me cry.

Day at the zoo. (We have an annual membership.) This is Rachel's son Zach.

Aubrie and Chel at the zoo.

Chel's son Camden at the zoo.

but most of all for those we love.