present and purposeful

Whenever I post something about marriage or loving my honey, I feel a little guilty. I hesitate because I have a lot of friends that aren't married, but would really like to be. It all seems a little unfair, especially since being married wasn't something I always dreamed about. I didn't grow up fantasizing about my wedding day and made "if" statements about marriage, not "when." I figured I'd probably get married since most people do, but it was never a goal. My plan was to go to college, get a degree, travel the world, own a cute loft in the city, and maybe on my 30th birthday consider wishing for a husband. And then just because of the way life works, I ended up falling in love and getting married at the age of 22 after dating my now husband for only a year. Not to mention, hardly meeting any of the other goals I have... yet. Things seem a little backwards.

Whenever the topic of marriage and kids came up in a group of girls, I always felt like I couldn't relate. Sure I've had boyfriends and heartbreaks, but I didn't have an intense longing to be a wife and mother. And now I have those things (well, except the kids), I feel even more un-relatable. I don't want to cause any pain to my friends, especially the ones who know that it wasn't something I longed for and yet it happened to me. Life isn't fair. I don't know why my friends aren't married, especially since all of them are attractive, smart, funny, talented, and would make great spouses. I don't know why it happened for me and not them.

I do know, however, that there is purpose in every stage of life, unplanned or not. Getting married young, fast, and to a soldier was definitely not my plan, but it has been amazing. Maybe being 30 and single wasn't your plan, but it can be amazing if you let it be. There are things single girls can do that are a little difficult for married gals. The summer before I met my beau, I had a casual conversation with a friend that let to a whirlwind month long stay in another country. That would be a little difficult for me to do now. (Although my sweet husband who knows my heart for the nations and adventure wouldn't prohibit me going or anything, there is just another human being to consider now.) I'm learning things now, in this time, this place, and this current situation that I would have never learned anywhere or any time else. The same goes for whatever situation you are in. This life you are living may not be what you want it to be, but I want to encourage that this season is not in vain. There is value in it. You can live a purposeful single life. You can serve others, learn about yourself, go on adventures, make friends and do a whole lot of stuff you wouldn't be able to do in another time or place or situation. Please, dear sisters, don't take this time for granted. Marriage is wonderful, but so is singledom. Live in the present so you don't miss an experience you'll wish you could of had!

Strong

Some days are easier than others. Some days you feel like shouting "I am WOMAN! Hear me roar!". Or maybe: "deployment shloyment. I got this." We grab our proverbial bootstraps, roll up our imaginary sleeves, and conquer our world. Most days, however, we survive. We get out of bed and put one leg in our pants at a time. We go about our business. We manage to feed ourselves something that may resemble actual vegetables. We smile at the checker at Walmart. We blend in and do what needs to get done. Then there are the other days. You know them. They are the ones that knock you off your feet. These days are a car that has run a red light and SMACK, plows you down, leaving you stunned and bleeding in the street. These days are the ones you don't want your husband to see. You sure as hell know it ain't pretty. You know it may be cause for worry and the last thing you want to do is worry and distract your soldier. But then dagumit, he's the one that makes you feel better. He's your best friend. So then comes the wringing of hands and gnashing of teeth as you debate over what to tell him and what to store later to unleash on some unsuspecting victim... uh, I mean, what to vent to a friend about. Or maybe there is no debate and you just whine and weep to your man and make him feel like crap because he is the cause of all this torment. Oh but, none of us would do something like that.We are Army wives, Army Strong.

But what if Army Strong isn't strong enough? What if Me Strong and Love Strong and all the other reasons we think we are strong, aren't enough? Is there a kind of Strong that is stronger than you, than your love for your spouse, than the U.S. Army? Is there a Strong that we can lean on when we've lost all confidence in ourselves, our love, and the Army? 2 Corinthians 12: 8-9 says "At first I didn't think of it as a gift, and begged God to remove it. Three times I did that, and then he told me. 'My grace is enough; it's all you need. My strength comes into its own in your weakness.' Once I heard that, I was glad to let it happen. I quit focusing on the handicap and began appreciating the gift. It was a case of Christ's strength moving in on my weakness." (The Message) Ok, seriously? Glad to let it happen? Appreciating the "gift" of deployment? That's almost laughable. You and I both know sending the person you love the most in this world into a war zone isn't something we want to appreciate. But what if it causes us to let go of our grasp on good things, in order to be able to receive the best thing?

Self-assuredness and appropriate confidence are good things. Faithfulness, loyalty, and love are good things, things God loves even. It's when we cling to those things for our strength that it gets a little messy. It's a hard concept to understand that when we are weak, we become strong. It's like surgery. If we have dead, necrotic tissue inside of us, making us weak, a surgeon must cut us open, exposing our vital organs. He must cut through the skin, our protective layer. He must cut through our fat, our insulating layer. He must cut through our muscle, the layer that helps us move and remain upright. He must get to the most vulnerable part of us and EXPOSE it. We are then in an incredibly weakened state, arguably more so than prior to the surgery. But it is what he must do in order to get to the dead tissue. He diligently, carefully, and masterfully removes what is dead and what weakens our whole system. We must first be weak before we can be made strong. We can take pills and herbs and do everything in our power to mask the symptoms, but unless we allow Christ to make us strong, we just hold onto the dead thing that's making us sick in fear of becoming even weaker. We have to trust, however, that this process of being weak allows us to become stronger than we ever imagined. Not Me Strong, not Love Strong, not even Army Strong, but God strong.




I credit the phrase "God Strong" to the book with the same title. For more reading on the subject, please check out "God Strong" by Sara Horn, an author and military wife.

being love

It was wedding dress shopping day and a friend of my Maid of Honor said, "Remind Carsen that as much as she's preparing to be a bride, she needs to prepare to be a wife. And as much as everyone will try to convince her, it's actually not all about her." Do I see some of your eyes widening? Are some of your heads shaking? The concept that a wedding is not all about the bride goes against what our culture says. Women find it acceptable to do and say things that are normally unacceptable when it comes to their wedding day. I was constantly bombarded by the mantra that it was MY day.

Fast forward just a few months and now I'm an Army wife dealing with deployment. With so much attention and allowances made for me, it's been easy to think once again that it is all about me. I'm so, so grateful for the encouragement, support, and never-ending grace that my friends and family give me, but I've allowed that to make it embarrassingly easy for me to be all about me. In a fit of frustration and miscommunication with my husband, I stepped back for a moment and realized that all of my demanding and emotional upset were because I couldn't take my eyes off myself long enough to see my husband. I had to apologize for totally messing up the "love is not self-seeking" part. I told my husband that I felt like an awkward teenager fumbling over my words and struggling with making myself clear. I realized that I should have been listening instead of talking in the first place. And as soon as I was able to do so, I felt better.

When our vision is so short that we can't see past our own noses, we miss so much. We miss an opportunity to satisfy our spouses need. We miss the fact that what we are kicking and screaming about is right in front of us, if we'll only shut up long enough to see it. We miss a Heavenly Father looking down at us, waiting for us to finish our fit so he may speak with our full attention. We see down and in, instead of up and out. When we lose vision, we lose focus. And how unfocused I had been!

I just chatted with a friend and shared some of these recent struggles. She said, "I'm watching you be love. You're doing it." What a blessing it is to have friends that encourage you in the midst of your mess-ups. That was one of the best compliments I've ever gotten and I hope I can remember to keep being love.

10 Things That Make Deployment Suck Less

Let's face it, we all know deployment sucks. But I'm kind of getting tired of my self-induced pity parties (remind me of that in a week) and forced myself to come up with 10 positive things about deployment. Clearly, I'd give up all these things and more to have my soldier home, but since I can't, I'm just going to appreciate them. Seasons come and seasons go, but not with force. I guess I'd rather surf the waves than fight against them.

1. Getting to cook fish and mushrooms and go out for sushi, things that my husband hates
2. No arguing when it comes time to pick out a movie or over whose friends to hang out with
3. Learning new things that I may have just let my husband take care of if he were here
4. Combat and separation pay plus less taxes equal a little more income
5. Entitlement to Servicemembers Civil Relief Act which drops interest rates on auto loans, mortgages, and credit cards to 6%
6. Spending less on food, gas, and date nights
7. Making more, spending less, and lower interest rates on debt mean a boost to the savings account!
8. Knowing that because my husband left, thousands of soldiers are coming home and being reunited with their families
9. A renewed and heightened love and affection toward my spouse
10. Pride and thankfulness for our freedom as a nation

And while many live routine, mundane lives, I have something to look forward to: the return of my soldier!

Lump in my throat
And beating in my chest
Take what you want
And divide the rest
The air hums on
And the cloud covers
I can't go on
Left with the others
If time is money
Then we are broke
I can't hear your whispers
The distance chokes
Tell myself we'll get through
My heart is saying
I hope that's true
They say all is fair
In love and war
But one gives
And the other takes more
And more
And more

education

My little sister informed me this week that there is no longer music, art, or physical education classes at her school. This absolutely frustrates and baffles me. With the economic "crisis" and budget cuts, I cannot believe how much is being taken from education. What hope do we have for our already declining future if we cut education?

The process of learning an instrument has been proven to be directly linked with the neural connections used in abstract reasoning and spatial relations. A 1997 study demonstrated that musical training was more beneficial than computer training when it comes to spatial-temporal ability, which develops "higher brain functions required for mathematics, chess, science and engineering." (And yet we are installing computers and taking out band.) The brain has been described as a giant "connect the dot" game and it has been argued that both visual art and music may make more dot-connections than even math or language. These connections allow for higher order thinking, including creativity, problem-solving, and reasoning skills. The more complex the connections, the more complex the thinking. Heaven have mercy on a society who is resigned to rote thinking, memorization, and blind repetition of facts.

Other than the obvious physical and health benefits of exercise, there also has been research on the positive correlation between exercise and intelligence. The aforementioned study "revealed that aerobic exercise resulted in a moderately large effect on overall cognitive performance", especially in the area of executive function. The researchers define executive functions as "planning and selecting strategies that organize goal-directed actions (Das et al. 1994) and stand apart from processes involved in basic information processing" (bold mine). Our society has literally whittled school down to "basic information processing" and that makes me a little nervous.

Cossy

Imagine, for a moment, that you are eight. You are eight and you are in a family of three children. You live with an aunt who takes care of you. She works long hours at a salon, doing women's hair. At night, sometimes, she doesn't come home. But, when that happens, she usually comes home the next morning with enough money for food that week.

Your mother died when you were very small, and you don't remember her. But your father loved you, and tried to care for you. You watched him grow sicker and, eventually, your cousin came to get you and take you to her home. While you were living there, you got word that your father died. Your aunt came to pick you up, then, and you started living with her. At six, you noticed that there was pee in your blood, and that your skin was starting to look scaly.

Imagine, for a moment, that you are Cossy Nakate. She is eight years old. She is living with her aunt who is forced to work as a prostitute in order to feed her. Her parents both died of AIDS, but not before they passed it on to her. She is already passing blood in her urine, but her blood count isn't low enough to get the free medication that foreign aid provides. Essentially, Cossy is waiting to get sicker, so that she can get help.

At Nakate, we feel that Cossy is representative of most the little girls living in Kakooge. After meeting her, we decided that we not only wanted to change her life, we wanted to change the future of every little girl in her village. Through employing their mothers, aunts and grandmothers, we are sending them to school, putting clothes on their back and providing food for them each day. Not only that, but we are teaching them that women are valuable, powerful and able to provide. We are teaching them that you don't have to prostitute yourself out to provide for your children.

This week, we'd like to ask you to donate a dollar for your daughters, for your nieces - for all the eight year old girls you know that wake up every morning without worrying where their mother was last night.

Donate a dollar for Cossy.

Shanley Knox

Nakate Project Founder

lovers

"Anyone can be passionate, but it takes real lovers to be silly."
Rose Franken







*Photos by Lauren Coughlan*

Nakate and Mama Hope

Mama Hope, what an appropriate name. She is a Ugandan mother of seven who has found hope in The Nakate Project. Nakate's concept is simple: provide jobs through jewelry-making, which empowers women with means to raise their own money to feed their families. And to simplify it more, there is a small staff and all state-side administration is done on a volunteer-basis making it possible to send all proceeds directly to these women. The women in the program take scraps of paper and old wrappers and roll them up into beads for necklaces, bracelets, and earrings. What a beautiful metaphor it is: taking things that were once condemned to the trash heap, and turning them into something gorgeous, life-giving and life-changing. This is exactly what Nakate does for the women of Uganda: takes them out of a hopeless situation and offers a chance for women to work with their own hands and creative minds to give life to their families.



This week Nakate is partnering with Tipping Bucket to raise $2,000. Nakate currently needs to raise $2,000 so they are able to ship the necklaces to the states before they are purchased and to pay the Ugandan family who facilitates the program. Nakate is committed to paying monthly salaries to the women (40 women get $37.50 a month) which takes start up costs than are incurred prior to the sale of the jewelry. The way Tipping Bucket works is like this: If Nakate raises the goal of $2,000 in the allotted time, Nakate gets to keep the money. If not, all the donations go back to you, the individual donors. All they are asking for is each person to donate one dollar starting Monday here and to spread the word. You can probably find that in your couch. One dollar may be small in the eyes of the world, but to Mama Hope it is the world.

cloud of weird

I was heading to Austin to go pick up my sister from the airport. As I was getting gas, a late night Taco Bell craving overcame me. Lucky for me, it was right across the parking lot and I had left my house early enough to stop. Or was I lucky? About 2 miles and 5 bites into the drive, I realized this grilled stuffed burrito might have been a bad idea. A very bad idea. First the little devil of a burrito started to drip all over my hands. And because it was on my hands, it also got onto the steering wheel. I reached down to get the bag where I might find some napkins. Make that a napkin. Actually, make that a mild sauce covered napkin. I did my best and buried the wrapper and now totally burrito soaked napkin into the bag and was thankful that was over.

My satisfaction quickly subsided when I started to feel something wet on my crotch. I looked down and saw a giant blob of burrito guts in my lap and all over my phone. It looked like I had diarrhea of the who-ha. Awesome. I stupidly reached into the Taco Bell bag to get the napkin and in doing so, my hand got covered in burrito once again. Now I'm digging in the dark (no light in my car), with gooey hands, and who-ha crap all over me frantically trying to find something that will work to clean up the mess. No napkins in the glove box, but I found a notebook. I ripped out a page and tried scooping up the mess. Not very effective. Then I found an empty Zip lock and used that to scrape and wipe away the burrito insides that were seeping through my under-roos and onto places where no burrito should go. All of this is happening while I drive at 11 pm with truckers staring down into my Corolla.

Like a sweet little oasis, there was a toll booth. *Please, Lord, let there be a nice lady in there who has napkins. Please.* And just like that, I asked the lady at the toll booth and she had napkins! The mess had started to dry so I put a finger over the straw of my water and went to work. Ice cold water right on your crotch isn't comfortable, but it had to be done. I scrubbed and scrubbed. Now it looked like I pissed myself, but I decided that was better than the alternative, who-ha crap. So I drove the rest of the way sans AC and hoped to all things good and holy that it was dry before I got to the airport. And then out of nowhere some demonic creature leaped out in front of me. From the smell of things, I'm pretty sure I hit a skunk.

I got to the airport where I parked and was able to get a slightly better look at the damage. I had really missed some spots. So in a crowded airport parking lot, I was rubbing my crotch, sweating, and cursing to the gods of Taco Bell. I was just waiting for security to apprehend me. They were never going to let me leave this airport with a child. That was going to have to do until I could get to a bathroom and in better light. A quick hike and a trip through creepy, AIDS-infested stairways and I was in the airport. I walked into the bathroom and looked down. The cheesy, sour creamy-ness had dried into a white, crusty substance right on the money maker. I'll let you decide what that might look like. So once again, I'm scrubbing and swearing. A lady walked in while I was strategically placed under the hand dryer whispering "please, please, come on!" There was nothing else I could do.

Somewhere between the initial discovery and the skunk, I called my mother. I pretty sure she was in tears from laughing so hard. Right after we hung up, she texted me "Be careful. You seem to have a 'can things get any weirder?' cloud hovering over you." Story of my life, mom. Story of my frickin' crazy, silly life.