impossible until it’s not

This was in my fortune cookie the other night.

The hard things keep coming, don’t they? Sometimes I stare at the calendar and think, There is no way I will make it to May. There is no way I will make it through next week. I am so quick to jump ahead to all the things in the universe I can’t imagine shouldering right now. If we got a bill for x amount of dollars, I could not pay it. If I had to turn in my dissertation prospectus tomorrow, I wouldn’t be ready. If a giant robot took over Columbus and forced all humans underground, I wouldn’t have enough bottled water to keep us alive.

I am learning to trust. It’s slow but I’m learning. I try to think back to the all the impossible things I’ve done. Passing my candidacy exam felt impossible. It felt huge, insurmountable. But I did it. Step by step. It’s not as if one minute I was a PhD student and the next I was a PhD candidate. It was night after day after night of reading. It was one exam day at a time, one sentence at a time, one question at a time, one book at a time. It was impossible…until the moment it wasn’t.

I am struggling not to leap ahead to the next impossible thing I can’t imagine overcoming. Some days, I feel scared out of my  mind by how much feels impossible. But that is not how we are supposed to live. That is not how I want to live. 

Things are only impossible…until they are not.

love, elizabeth

“Will you make fun of me if I admit I got us lost?”

I asked finally.

“No…but we are definitely going the wrong way.”

“Yeah. I think you’re right.”

Feeling safe enough to admit you’re wrong is like hitting the marriage jackpot. Until I learned to really trust Kyle, I was afraid of being wrong, of screwing up, of being less than perfect. But I can say now, with a sigh of relief, that it’s okay if I’m wrong. It’s okay if I get lost. Because my husband isn’t going to laugh. And he’s not going to be mad. He’s going to help me get turned back around. With Kyle, I can finally say I’m learning to love being wrong.

What about you? What do you feel safe enough to do in your relationships?

love, elizabeth

DIY: Valentine’s Day Decorations

Like I said, Valentine’s Day is kind of one of my favorite holidays…and this year I had fun making my own decorations.

I wrapped some strips of newsprint around plain glass votives and tied them with ribbon.

This is a recycled metal rose that Kyle bought me at a renaissance fair a few years ago…

I glued five or six white and black hearts together and hung them staggered in the living room window.

It’s interesting how things connect in our brains. All the heart shapes and images that have shown up this February have stuck with me.

Sometimes I’m not sure who can be trusted with my heart. I have lots of wonderful friends and family and I love them all. But I think sometimes that I open myself up too much. Am I too trusting, too careless with my heart? I only have the one very vulnerable, very young heart and sometimes I worry about giving too much of myself away.  I wonder about this and I wonder about my fear and I wonder about the wisdom of really being yourself fully and totally in this world.

It’s important to let people in. But maybe I do this too easily, too much. The fact is, not everyone deserves my whole heart. Only a few, in fact. I also want to be sure that I’m the kind of person that can be trusted with the hearts of others. It’s not every day someone hands you their heart.

What about you? Who do you trust with your heart, your deepest, most personal thoughts and feelings and self? Do you always feel safe doing that? Have you ever regretted it?

love, elizabeth

Follow the Guest Post Fairy!

That's right. Today I'm blogging over at Fairdale Diaries. If you haven't met Laura yet, please come over and say hi! We're talking about how Kyle deals with my backseat driving so if you have a rant/suggestion for me, you better get over here and share it!

Hope your Mondays are already rockin'.

love, elizabeth

PS: Countdown to giveaway continues...Just 8 more posts! Tell your friends, tell your family, tell your new neighbors (hey, it's an icebreaker - "so glad you moved in above us, please don't hold dance parties at 3 am, and oh, my blogger friend is holding a giveaway and you should check it out").