Wreathing

The internet is telling me that "wreathing" is actually a word, which is a little bit disappointing because I thought maybe I could be the one to make it up, but apparently, "to wreath" actually means to cover, surround, or encircle something, which sounds pretty accurate to me.

I started getting really excited about the prospect of making my own wreath a month or two ago when I realized that it would be a perfect Christmas gift for my mother in law, who is super generous herself but always a little tricky to buy for. I also remembered my mom and aunts collecting vines and moss and berries at the cabin over thanksgiving one year and everything spread out on the long table while they weaved pieces together in circles. I was a little awed that they could take all the tangled vines and wild greens and create something so tame and beautiful, it's like they collected up the whole mountain side and managed to hang it on the front door. I'm not sure why I haven't thought of giving it a try myself until now, maybe because it's such a homey thing, and this is probably the first year I have felt like I have my own little home to welcome others into. 

There was a good bit of trial and error involved and I ended up having to hot glue some of the pieces in at the end, which wasn't part of the original "all natural" picture in my head, but the process itself is really fun and I love the final result!

The whole wreath idea has me probably the most creatively inspired that I've been since our wedding.  I don't know, there's just so many different ways to make a simple circle beautiful and I want to try them all! But the best part so far has definitely been sharing it with friends. Our little apartment was full of pine needles and berries and moss and cotton and all kinds of mess the other weekend while some of my best friends made some awesome creations. It was so fun seeing how everyone's wreath was so unique to them!

  

We had a lot of fun, made some lovely circles, and will probably definitely do it again next year!

musings from the dirt

I'm wrestling with something right now and I want to try to work it out of me a little here, because I know it's not a struggle that is unique to me.
If there is anything that I've been learning lately it's that conflict is good; in fact, facing conflict is a crucial step towards what I want most in life, intimacy with God and Steve and others. I know it's a simple idea and I thought I already believed it, "no pain, no gain", "you have to lose your life to find it", "beauty from ashes", the quotes and verses are endless. I've never really questioned their truth before, but things are a little different right now in the landscape of my life.

Last month, Steve and I went to Chicago for a little adventure named the Storyline Conference. It was a two day conference run by our favorite author, Don Miller, and his crew of inspiring artists and dreamers, including international lawyer, storyteller, and incredible life liver, Bob Goff. We had already dabbled in Don's storyline theories and started going through a workbook of his where you're supposed to map out your life and identify where you want your story to go and what kind of character you are going to be. The life/story analogy has resonated with me for awhile, you don't have to go too far back in this blog to find many a reference to story.

 But this time, the specific idea that conflict is supposed to play a really important and especially good role in my story really hit home. As in, the idea hit a wall in my heart that I don't think i've really owned up to before. A wall, or a fundamental belief that actually conflict is not good, I don't like it, and it has never served me very well before so I will continue to avoid it at all costs thank you very much, Don.

Some conflict is unavoidable of course, I think that is the kind that I have at least sort of learned to accept. Things don't always go my way, I don't always get the job or have the right words or make the right choice and that's okay. I can see how God works those things out for our good. But I think there is another kind of conflict that you have a real say about in your life. The kind that has to do with relationships and working at them, overcoming differences, giving up rights and wants, confessing, forgiving, humbling yourself, risking discomfort and misunderstanding in hopes to make a real connection. I think that stepping out in those things is especially terrifying and, to be honest, sometimes it feels like it's not worth the risk. You can kind of get along okay with unspoken hurts, long silences, and other kinds of brokenness under the surface of relationships. Experience has had me thinking that when you try to pick at the scabs, or look under the bandaids you will only make things worse.
I'm not going to go into where this belief comes from right now, the important part is to acknowledge that it's there and that fearfully avoiding is exactly how i've been handling it. I like things to be as they are supposed to be, beautiful and true and good. I hate the gap and the way it makes me feel when I know things are not that way and that I may need to face some dirt and hard stuff in order to help the story along to it's intended place of real peace. But that is always what God is in the business of doing; turning, renewing, restoring, redoing. And when you stop being willing to engage in that sometimes painful process, when you freeze in fear of the conflict, your story doesn't move. But in His merciful ways, eventually the stalemate becomes worse to face then the prospect of the mess that could be caused in moving forward, so you are forced to at least turn your attention to what's going on. And that's where I am finding myself right now, caught in His mercy, starting to unlearn the lie, being slowly persuaded into the truth of the matter. And one way He has been showing me this is in the garden, because it's a place that I love and understand, and He knows that.

The zinnia bed before...

The opportunity to work for Trisha's Flowers came to me through my good friend Lindy Paurus, when her family was moving back to Minnesota last spring. She had been helping Trish with her blog and with wedding flowers and the gardens and needed a replacement and thought of me. It's funny, I have always always loved flowers but I don't think I ever really thought I could actually work in the flower world. Now it kinda feels like the only thing I really want to do.

Trish has been waiting for years to move all her gardens and work space across the street where they have a bigger barn and more land and this year she's finally making it happen. It has been super exciting to think about a new work area and all the potential beauty and growth in her business and gardens. But it has also been a ton of work. Most Wednesday afternoons I leave the gardens filthy, covered in dirt, smeared with sweat, aching all over,
and I love it. I think that when most people think of flowers, including myself, we think of the delicate petals and the pretty arrangements in fancy vases. Flowers are clean and colorful and purely for our enjoyment and delight. Even gardening has it's own neat little images associated with it, printed gloves, small handheld shovels and watering cans. Flower farming, I'm learning, is another story all together. There is a lot of dirt and bugs and heavy lifting behind those beautiful blooms and I'm positive I only know a fraction of it. But it is so inspiring and energizing to tend those little living plants and see them grow from seed or bulb to bush or stalk and finally to unfold into bloom and flourish for their season. So I wanted to share some of my musings from the dirt...

The zinnia bed in process...

I'm actually beginning to think that behind every beautiful thing is a hard, dirty, messy process. I think beauty, when we see it, seems to encapsulate effortlessness. A truly beautiful face looks like she didn't even have to try. A beautiful story or movie seems like it must have just fallen into place for the writer and fit each actor perfectly. I think a beautiful family or marriage seems like they were just born open and honest and trusting and confident and loving, like they don't even have to try. I am easily fooled into thinking that the mess inside or around me excludes me from the beauty I long to emulate. I get frustrated when something doesn't seem to come naturally to me like it must for the ones who have already attained it. But the dirt is teaching me a different narrative. Because the flowers actually just do not exist outside the digging and the weeding and watering (maneuvering an awkward hose and carrying heavy buckets, not cute watering cans). And from what I'm hearing from writers writing about writing, its not an easy process either. As for those beautiful families and marriages, there's no telling what kind of tearing down and building up has gone into them, but I do know that intimacy is at the heart of them.

IN'TIMATE, a. [Latin intimus, within]
1. Inmost, inward, internal
2. Near, close
3. close in friendship or acquaintance, familiar
noun
A familiar friend or associate; one with whom the thoughts of another are entrusted without reserve.
verb
To share together.

"The experience of drawing closer: the barriers of thought and feeling between the two are disappearing, becoming closely united in mind and heart."
(A.W. Tozer)

I used to think of intimacy as a grossly exaggerated word that my parents would use to describe where I wasn't allowed to let my high school relationships go. But i've done some looking into it since then and decided it's actually a really beautiful adjective, noun, verb that i'm not willing to live without. I't's about being willing to really share yourself, the really good and the really bad, and to listen and truly learn to understand and care for another person's heart. I need this kind of connection with God, with Steve, and to some extent, with others. And i'm pretty sure it's as impossible to come by without conflict as beautiful bouquets are without the dirt. I see that now, even though I still don't really like it. Mostly because I don't think i'm very good at handling conflict, the relationship kind anyway, and I don't love doing things i'm not good at. But I know someone who is super experienced. Someone who took on intimacy with the whole world as His quest, and faced a lot of misunderstanding, injustice, and conflict of every kind to see it through. He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God. So i'll be following his lead now, because I want to experience the kinds of relationships he gave his life to make a way for, and because I want to grow something really beautiful.

September 27th, 2015

Hi friends,

Its not actually September 27th today, but it was five days ago, and also a year and five days ago. I want to share that day with all of you as promised, and right around the one year mark seems like a good time :)
I don't know anyone who thinks about their anniversaries to come when choosing their wedding date and I know we didn't, but I am soo glad we got married the weekend we did because it's the perfect time of year to celebrate. Fall is just beginning to make it's entrance, hitching a ride on the light breezes, painting the edges of leaves, and offering pumpkin spice at all the local coffee shops. It's still warm but you can sense the humidity giving up and you feel those subtle urges to unpack your sweaters. I never really paid attention to the last weekend in September before, but now i've decided it captures the actual moment the seasons are meeting and changing. On September 27th it is not summer anymore and it isn't quite autumn, and I love it.  This year it even hosted a blood moon, so i'm not sure that there is actually any room for debate at all, it's practically a perfect day, and definitely a great one to have an anniversary on every year.

2014's September 27th was a little warmer than this years but it still embodied everything I just described. It was no longer summer and not quite fall when I woke Rachel Landis, but went to sleep with a new name and my husband by my side.

It's funny when you are wedding planning, because everyone tells you it's all about you! And that's great because if i'm honest, I wanted it to be just the way I wanted it to be. But to be even more honest, I had to drop that way of thinking pretty early on in the planning process because it killed my creativity. I love crafting, I love planning events, decorating, envisioning and then seeing ideas become reality in surprisingly beautiful ways. These are a few of my favorite things ;). But i've never really done any of those things with just me in mind, they are usually gifts or events with a purpose outside myself; the whole "all about you" thing was really throwing me off. When I started thinking of our wedding as an opportunity to show and share God's love and beauty as it looks uniquely reflected through me and Steve and our love for each other, that's when wedding planning was the most fun and exciting.

The other really fun aspect to that was enlisting our friends and family to help out with certain pieces of our day. I really want to articulate this well because it added so much depth and beauty to our day and I cherish the feeling that came from it...The last week before our wedding was superr busy for me, wrapping up a lot of the DIY details I really wanted to include. Some of that was done with friends and family but a  lot of it was me running around in "lets get this done" mode and not stopping. It was the kind of creative exhaustion that I love, but it was exhausting, and I almost forgot that there were a lot of other people doing the same thing for me, for us, for that day. My mom and dad especially, but also so many of our friends working on little things we had given them that I didn't have anything to do with anymore. When I saw the hoopa that my mom and dad and my aunts had crafted, the flowers that Trish and Lindy and Donna had put together, the reception room that Jake and Lindy and Liz and Arthur and Kate and others that decorated, the program that jake had designed, the bracelet Katie made for me, the songs that Ashley and Brendan and Debbie were singing, the little cameras my mom in law got for the reception, the photos that Megan captured, the favors that Emily had printed, the hors d'oeuvres that Rachel had prepared, the speeches that Britt and Luke and Debbie and Brian wrote, and so many other beautiful pieces that others had contributed; it was an overwhelming sense of being loved and surrounded and supported. It completely lifted any weight that I had put on myself the week before to make things perfect. It was all just a gift to us and it blessed me in such a deep way.

 But there was something else that overswept (made that word up) even that feeling. It was what our Father did. I can tell you that I was nervous in the months leading up to our wedding, I was worried that I wouldn't feel the way I wanted, or be stuck somewhere besides in the moment, that it would rain just so I would have to learn to be okay with it and trust God anyway. I had a lot of disaster wedding dreams, I hate to admit it but its very true. The fear was strong, I can be pretty anxious at times, in case you didn't know it, but i'm almost crying right now because God's love is so. much. stronger. And never have I known it so tangibly as on our wedding day. I know to some people who were there it was just a really beautiful day, a really really nice wedding, and to others like my mom, it was an answer to very specific heartfelt prayers. To me it was an unimaginable answer to a prayer that never even made it up out of those deep recesses of my heart that needs certain affirmation and reassurance and peace. He was just so present. I'm not sure i'll be able to describe it but almost like all of our friends and family I listed, bringing their gifts to make things beautiful, God himself brought the most beautiful day, clear skies and sunshine, a perfectly timed breeze and shower of leaves for everyone to see Him in. No amount of planning could have assured that, none of our friends could have given that, it was just a gift from our Faithful Creator. And as if that wasn't enough, in an act of extravagant love towards me, there were two BALD EAGLES circling in the sky above us. I mean you don't plan that, you don't even hope for that, never in my wildest dreams did I expect that kind of gift. You have to understand, I have a thing with birds of prey, especially with bald eagles, and it's no secret to my Father, he knows how much I love them, how I see his strong beauty so vividly in their sharp eyes and detailed feathers. They are a form of love language we have between us.

I don't think of the bald eagles at our wedding as some kind of sign, they are much more special to me than a sign. They were a gift, just a gift of love from God saying He was present and He was smiling over us and He was the one bringing us together. And saying that He isn't like that, how I had thought of Him, he isn't always testing and putting us through things just to see what were made of, like if I could trust him on our wedding day in the rain. He lavishes love. And when we walked down the grassy aisle as man and wife and greeted each person present who came down after us, I could hear it and feel it in each of their comments about the day and the ceremony and the beauty they were breathing in. I knew it was all Him blessing us and blessing them.

I absolutely love looking through our wedding pictures and have done so a lot this year. Probably every day at first but I still do frequently. I love the colors and the trees, the sun rays and my blue shoes. I love Steve's smiles and my mom's all natural gray hair. I love all the faces and all the hearts there with us. I love my new family and my since forever family. Somehow Megan caught all the best expressions and even managed to get the right people with the right expressions in the background of each shot. She's amazing.
I love remembering practicing singing our song together in the meadow the day before, and the surprise when all of sudden people started showing up for the rehearsal and this was really happening. I love remembering that night Debbie and I were writing name cards on swiss maps for hours in the dark on the porch, and everyone squeezing into one long table at Appalation Brewing Company after dinner. I love that Frances did my make up outside and that Katrina could do my hair and that South Africa's national flower ended up in our bouquets.
I love remembering walking down the yard aisle with my dad without a trace of fear in my heart and speaking my vows knowing I was facing the one man I wanted to spend the rest of my life with.

May

I haven't written in ages, and it's not cause there hasn't been anything to write about. I mean we got married. MARRIED. And had a super awesome, better than I could have asked for or imagined wedding! So when I didn't write to tell you all about it I thought maybe I would just take a break from blogging for this first year of marriage. We have taken a break from a lot of things going into this year, a sabbath year, to focus on learning this kind of day in and day out crazy and ordinary moment by moment love and commitment. To define ourselves as a new family, to seek God's direction.

Every now and then I thought about blogging about our new apartment or just our little life in Easton or my job at the daycare/preschool. Or going back and telling about our wedding, which I still intend to do. But every time I just kinda thought, no ill just wait till its been a year and then I'll start sharing in this way again... and then May happened. May has been such a full month this year! It's actually the best month, there is just nothing like May when it finally comes (October is similar but we'll talk about that when it's October). First of all, Steve got a job back in Lancaster in the beginning of April, so we started looking for apartments and I stopped my part time job to focus on finishing the semester and going back and forth between Easton and Lancaster to be with Steve. We thought we would be moving in the beginning of May but ended up finding an apartment that we couldn't move into till the end of May. We celebrated Steve's birthday with first, the Broad St Run in Philly, ten miles we just weren't really prepared for and then milkshakes and magic and Atlantic city. I finished school a little bit after that and started turning my attention towards packing up the apartment but then my Grandpa's health started quickly declining. So instead, I got to spend a lot of time with him and my family in the last two weeks of his life. And that's probably why I broke my blog silence. I just want to share about the end of his life because it was a really precious time and im so thankful for it.

I've been incredibly blessed with two sets of grandparents who are all and each incredibly loving and present and healthy. Living into their 90's and still seeing life as a gift to thank their Father for. I really hadn't experienced any kind of loss of a loved one and had no idea what it would be like, so when my mom texted us saying we should really come down and we weren't sure how much longer he would have I got a little worried. I just sometimes feel so removed from my own feelings and emotions and I wanted to really take in these last days with him. On the ride to Lancaster, Steve told me not to worry about how I feel, that that just does weird things to you, and that I should focus on being present for all the moments and being there for the rest of my family. He is really good at that, knowing just what to say at certain times, and it always comes out simple and true so I can just hear and trust it.

Grandpa has always been quiet, but not in an absent kind of way, you always knew he was there and that he loved you, because he just did, there was no question about it. But in his last couple weeks and days he had things he wanted to say. He wanted us to know that we are so precious and God is so worthy and that we are so loved. He wanted us to know that he really really really loved Grandma. In the kind of way that only 71 years of faithful, God centered marriage can grow. He told us some other things just in case, like if we never smoke a cigarette we'll never be addicted, or if we never take a drink we'll never be an alcoholic :). Really though, he wanted what was best for every single person in his family, he wanted us to be at peace and to be free to love and praise God with our lives.
I'll never forget his heart those last couple weeks. I felt like I could see straight through to his core and it was as soft as a heart can be. I felt like God was just holding it and every time another family member came into his room from across the states He would just gently touch another part of Grandpa's heart and his face would fold and tears of love would come and blessing would be spoken. It's like God was giving him the opportunity to miss us before he left to be in glory.

I can't imagine what it feels like to know that your next step is into eternity with God. That there's no next season here on earth, nothing more to learn here or do here, just time to go see Jesus. Grandpa and Grandma are so good at that, at never clinging to what they have but always holding things with open hands, so they are ready to receive what God gives next. I didn't know what it would be like to lose someone I loved, someone who loved me; but it was just like watching while he let God take what God had given him, a family of blessings, and watching him step empty handed into the greatest gift of all, eternity with God.

"I tell you this brothers; flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be be changed. For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality. When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written:
'Death is swallowed up in victory. O death where is your victory? O death where is your sting?'"

The only sting to Grandpa's death is missing him, and more so thinking about Grandma missing him. It's really hard to think of one of them without the other. But when I watch my grandma face this new season of life I see the same open hands. I've never been particularly good at change and transition, it always takes me about as long as i've had something or been somewhere to become adjusted to not having it or being somewhere new. I think that's probably because I cling; I cling to ideas and people and places, to seasons and feelings, to gifts i've been given. But Grandma somehow learned to hold everything with open hands, even her lifelong companion. And God is giving her strength and joy and grace that she is able to receive because her hands and heart are open and were never trying to cling to someone who was always a gift ultimately belonging to God.

Steve and I are all settled into our new little apartment in Akron, complete with a washer and dryer and a little back porch I've been filling with flowers. We have a farmers market down the road and a bike path that feels like it was made just for us. We have friends who are just a text away and we have each other. I've been enjoying moving in and hanging everything again, making it beautiful and just ours. I've also kind of been wrestling with the comfort of having all of this and spending time and some money to make it nice. The other morning God reminded me to loosen my grip a little bit and thank him for everything that is this season of life, and to truly open it all up to Him again.

And my heart filled up to the brim with that special kind of peace that I know only comes from Him.