Breaking up is hard to do

Whew,

Kind of a rough week here.  One of my very best friends found himself starting a “trial separation”  with his wife of 5ish years.  While many of us who’ve known them had an idea there were issues, the news was a shock to him.

I was the Best Man at their wedding, helped them move and everything else that happens when people are close.  Now he’s oscillating between devastatingly sad and self-righteously angry.  We’ve had a few conversations and shared some texts.  I’m not sure if I’ve been supportive enough or too prodding or too blunt, but I’m doing my best to support someone I really care about from a distance.

As a counselor, it’s created a slight discord in my head.  I’m lucky enough that I’ve helped more people through difficult times as a counselor than as a friend, so I’m constantly wondering where that elusive line lies during my conversations with him.  As friend, I know I need to be supportive, but do I support behavior and emotions that are scattered and messy?  Sure, right now I do when everything is raw and there’s a lot of unknown ahead, but when do I make the subtle shift from “Yeah, that sucks,” to “Hey, have you gone outside today?”

This news, of course, also started a conversation between my wife and I about marriage.  I’m not worried about our marriage, I think we’re both open and honest with one another to talk before things got to that point.  But it did start some good talks about relationships, both ours and those around us, and what we see as good and bad parts.

We’re both peeling away layers this winter.  I’ve got some stability in my working life, and looking outward and inward with the extra energy.  How do I want to look?  How do I want to feel?  How do I incorporate those things into a spiritual and prayer life?  Kelly’s (not her real name) peeling back layers about what she wants from a career, how to take care of her body and what it means to be feminine when your body doesn’t always feel the way you want it to feel.

So we’re both peeling back some pretty extensive layers that, of course, affect our marriage.  In the past two months, we’ve had huge talks about clothes, money, sex, free time, religion and just general day to day things.  It’s not always easy, but we’re trying to redefine ourselves while figuring out how those redefinitions work within our marriage.  A lot of complexity and a lot of plates spinning at the same time, but these are such good conversations to have.

Doing the winter shuffle

It's entered that point in winter where I'm just waiting for Spring, which is sad because this has been the easiest winter in Minnesota that I've ever experienced.  We've been above freezing more than below it, and there's been almost no snow whatsoever.

Still, it's chilly, and I want to build some gardens in our new backyard, go running on the weekends and bike to work during the week.  All of which would be possible in the winter, I guess, but I'm a weeny.

Winter doesn't mean we have to eat ugly foods, though.  I love to eat with the seasons, and root vegetables, for the most part, aren't known for their visual appeal.  It seems unfair doesn't it?  When everything else is dreary and gray, it seems like food should offer an alternative.  I think it does if you search for it and don't give in to the easy appeal of processed foods.  I found this recipe off of 101cookbooks.com, one of my favorite websites to find yummy vegetarian ideas, and decided to give it a try.

Some purple and green cabbage, mixed with some onion, carrots and parsley.

I did mess up the recipe, so it didn't turn out super well.  It calls for roasted sesame seeds and tahini.  We had tahini but no sesame seeds, but we figured it didn't matter since tahini is sesame seeds and that maybe the roasted sesame was just for visual appeal.  Nope, I made it, we ate it and agreed it was definitely missing something like a roasted seed or nut of some kind, just for an extra flavor boost.  Oh well, next time I guess.

(Sorry for the picture quality of this last one)

Ogres, and people, are a lot like onions

Around my senior year at XU, I went through a personal renascence.  I’ve described parts of it here and how it related to my old relationships, but it really reached further than that.  It changed my appearance, solidified my faith in God, obliterated my career path, shifted friendships and introduced me to the wonderful woman who eventually became my wife.  

This metamorphosis didn’t come quickly or painlessly.  Again, it involved getting out of a not-so-great relationship, which, while needed, was painful at the time.  I lost more friends than I gained and had to really look at how some of my behavior didn’t match up with my new found values.

I mention this, because I feel like I’m on the edge of another personal renascence.  Where I take stock in the different parts of my life, reassess myself and embrace these changes.  This has been stirring around in my mind for while, and probably, subconsciously, why I started this blog.  A chance to take stock, look around and make sure I am who I want to be, and, not to get to Christiany on you, who God wants me to be.

I wish I could say the muse for this post was some life altering realization, where the clouds parted and I suddenly knew it was time to peel away a layer.  Sadly, or not so sadly, the catalyst for all of this was this great pair of shoes.

I visited a vintage consignment shop with my wife the other day and found them, in my size, for $15.  I’ve literally worn the same shirts for the last 4 years without any kind of problem.  Switched between sneakers, boots for snow and Chaco sandals in the summer.  I wear 2 pairs of pants regularly and have owned the same shorts for more than 5 years.  

So what possessed me to purchase somewhat trendy shoes that I have no experience wearing?  I have no idea.  Something just sparked when I saw these brown wingtips.  Heck, I have no idea what kind of clothes to wear with them or where I’d wear them, but, bottom line, they’re pretty cool shoes.  That was enough for me to buy them, bring them home and wonder, “What the heck am I going to do with these?”

I’ve got some ideas on where to go with this, and peeling back this layer involves a lot more than fashion sense.  Look for more updates on where Layer Peeling 2012 takes me.  

Kick the beat with the help from some drumsticks

Is it just me, or do all of these guys seem like the really cool kids who were cool enough to be friends with everyone.

They're broken, I'm broken, we're all broken

Some of my favorite stories from the bible occur whenever Jesus surrounds himself with sinners.  His followers, following ancient Judea customs, believed that being around sinners, or “the unclean,” would cause them to become unclean themselves.  Jesus scoffed at this tradition and showed his followers the importance of being with ALL people.

There are a ton of lessons in these stories:  The importance of meeting people at their level when trying to help them.  The dangers of believing that we’re ever too good to be around another person.  And, my personal favorite, that everyone has something to offer, and that by loving everyone, especially the ones we find difficult to love, we bring ourselves closer to the loving image God has for us.  

My friendships in Dayton bring this image to mind, if only because a lot of people I visited over the holidays were struggling in different ways.  Marriages have become tense.  Steady work remains allusive and ways of living remain different than what I work for and enjoy in the Twin Cities.  

My first reaction to these differences was deep deep sadness.  I just felt grief in my bones for these beautiful people and the friendships I felt were fading with time.  My second reaction, not surprisingly, was defensive.  I started in on the whole “I work hard for what I have,” and “They make their decisions just like I do” line of thinking.  I think that was my way of feeling guilty for my success, which is pretty modest by most accounts.

All that changed, when my wife sent me THIS link, beautifully written from a woman in Dayton.  I tapped in to this kind of spirituality when I came to Minnesota, and I think some part of me didn’t believe it existed back in the Gem City, if only because I’ve only known it since moving away.  

I loved the sentiment and the music (Over the Rhine is a great Indie-folk band from Cincinnati), but most of all I love that it reminded me of the stories I mentioned earlier.  I love these people not for what they produce or give, but because they are.  It would be easy to push all of the hard complicated things out of my life, get defensive about my own and put up some strong fences.  

That isn’t life, though.  It’s some weird suburban fantasy where everything is easy and clean.  It isn’t, and that’s why it’s important to love people and relationships that become messy or painful.  It reminds me there’s good in the hard.  There’s beautiful and love and amazing in the messy.  It’s a lesson I keep relearning, and I hope I always will.

Cookies and Christmas

Going home can be tricky, and going home during the holidays is always tricky.

My wife’s family is full of energy and excitement.  Lots of people doing lots of interesting things who are excited to see family and hear new stories.  We tend to be the less interesting, slow paced people in this family.  Oh, you’re starting a power company in Africa and traveling around the world speaking to investors?  My 8th grade football team went 4-4.

We’re happy with our lot in life, though.  In fact, we love it.  We live simply and do our best to enjoy the genuinely good things around us like local vegetables and changing seasons.  It’s just that we don’t have much to contribute to these big conversations.  This year, though, we agreed that our little house and joyful lives were enough for us, and to let other people do most of the talking.  

Jump forward a few days, and we’re sitting in Cleveland with my family.  Lots and lots of sitting.  We flew into the Cleve around 2pm, and sat in the same spots on couches for the next 8 hours (with a break for dinner).  8 hours.  It took us a couple of days to get over the culture shock of active talkative people to sedimentary small talk, but we came through the other side a few pounds heavier and more appreciative of our little life than ever.  

Jesuits, Buddhism and Christmas

I was in a rough place a few years ago around this time of year.  Halfway through my senior year of college at Xavier University, I ended a messy relationship and started questioning my chosen career path.  The relationship should have ended much much earlier than it did, but we both held on because sometimes the bad patterns we know are preferable to the patterns we don’t.  Also, I think questioning your direction in life is always a good idea, but doing so halfway through your last year of college produces a fair bit of anxiety in everyone.

I went to the last student Mass of the semester with quite a bit of personal trepidation.  Fear of being single.  Fear of my chosen path.  Fear of unchosen paths.  Sadness over lost time and opportunities associated with my recently failed relationship.  Just an all around uneasiness concerning life, not to mention a looming graduation with uncertain job opportunities ahead.

Fr. Graham, Xavier’s President who celebrated the Mass, gave his homily and, of course, talked about Christmas and why we celebrate and what it means worldwide.  But then, as Jesuits often do, he asked us to reflect on the message from a personal standpoint.  What would it mean to let Jesus be born within us this holiday season?  How would we be different?  I wish I could say something exploded inside of me, that I jumped up from the pew and realized everything there was to realize, but, of course, that didn’t happen.  It definitely gave me something to think about, though, as I walked to Dana’s to grab a post-Mass beer with friends, but I pushed it to the back of my mind to get through finals, travel home and weather normal family madness associated with the holidays.  

My family is small, so Christmas day consisted of me and my parents opening presents and then settling in for a day of watching holiday movies and reading new books.  I have this distinct memory of sitting in an old brown recliner, surrounded by wadded piles of torn wrapping paper and opening a new book, The Art of Happiness by the Dalai Lama.  One of his main theories in the book is happiness vs. pleasure, which are two different things our society often confuses.  He, not surprisingly, believes that happiness leads to greater personal joy than the addictive nature of pleasure.  

Sitting in the chair, book in my lap, I thought about happiness, pleasure and Fr. Graham’s message of a personal Christmas.  My ex-girlfriend certainly provided me with pleasure on many different levels, but our lack of real happiness had become more and more apparent.  The same with my chosen career path.  I had wanted to write for newspapers my entire life, it seemed glamorous and exciting, but the high divorce rate I saw for journalists, endless story chasing and disposable nature of print media left me feeling empty at the end of most work days.  In both cases, I constantly chased things for pleasurable reasons with no regard for greater happiness.

This greater happiness, not just fleeting pleasures, is what God calls for me.  My wife, my home, my job all fill me with a peaceful joy I feel in my bones.  This bone-deep happiness gets me through good and bad days, easy and difficult times.  God meets me in these places and walks with me along our path.

I know this means a lot of different things for different people, but Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays and good luck.  I hope this is a rejuvenating time for you, and I’ll see you next year.