LEARNING LOVE

I’ll always miss this Christmas. I don’t have the words for it but I think it’s important for my heart and soul that I try to find them. This Christmas was my first Christmas married to Max. Last year we were engaged and decided to spend Christmas with our families separate because it would be our last Christmas of comfort zones, only old traditions, and “just the four of us” time.  This year we agreed that our first married Christmas should be spent just the two of us. Max asked me my Christmas expectations and I just said “I want to go somewhere that looks like whoville- in a snowglobe”. I’m very specific about my expectations- makes life a challenge for sure. Haha! So I googled “Christmas towns in America” & all of the top ten were in Colorado. Then I  typed “private cabin in the snow” and that narrowed our search. Then we found it “The Wild Horse Inn” in Fraser Colorado. Neither of us had ever been to Colorado but we knew it was a short flight from LA so we booked it in July for Christmas! Shortly after we booked our flight, we reserved our Christmas stay in a private cabin at that bed & breakfast.

Flying over the Rocky Mountains was breathtaking but nothing could’ve prepared me for the Hallmark movie I was about to star in after a short ride from the airport. We drove through Winter Park and it looked like heaven. The streets were lined with Taverns and Pubs. Ski lifts hung like Christmas lights & children bundled up so warm they looked like stuffed animals as they tried to walk with all of their layers on. When we finally took the right turn off the main road and up the mountain some more I only saw snow for miles. We pulled up and I felt butterflies in my tummy as my jaw dropped. The most beautiful log cabin with icicles and garland with white lights and red bows. I could smell the hot chocolate just thinking about it from the parking lot. The chimney was going and the smoke looked like magic flying against the bright white snow. Next to the big cabin was a tiny little log cabin, you could see the Christmas tree from the window. That one was ours. Erica & Will, the innkeepers, are the most wonderful people. They have a new bunch of characters in their home every week and they welcome everyone with such warmth and enthusiasm as if they aren’t worried at all that you might be a total lunatic they’re stuck spending the holidays with.  When “winter sports” aren’t your thing there are a few options while staying in the rocky mountains: drink tea, make friends, eat cookies, talk to each other, and drink more tea. * Cue Julie Andrews singing These are a few of my favorite things. 

The tea was perfect but the best part is that I fell so much more madly in love with my husband in the mountains. There was no wifi in our cabin and no service 12,000 ft above sea level so we noticed each and every one of the 24 hours in a day. It was beautiful. I experienced peace and stillness in a way I had never imagined before. In our claw foot tub with bubbles and wine one night we were sitting there silently and I said, “I think this is the first time in my life that I’m not worried about anything.” Being so removed from everything but Max I learned what it’s like to have zero thoughts other than gratitude, peace, and joy.  I look at Max differently now. Can I tell you why?

After almost a year of marriage I thought it wasn’t possible to love him anymore than I did when I said “I do.” It’s so cliche but we’ve all heard it= “I fall more in love each day.” It sounds beautiful but It’s not easy to comprehend at all. For almost a year now I watched my husband lead us through one of the hardest years of my life when it comes to my mental and physical health. Depression began to manifest physically and my digestive system seemed to be trying to ruin my life day in and day out. I gained weight and stretch marks and migraines and shame and more shame. After our honeymoon I knew I had to start going to therapy because I felt like I was being robbed of “the time of my life”. “This SHOULD be the happiest part.” That S word is worse than any F word if you ask me. That S word is really “shame” covered up with some other letters to trick us. I was hurt. I was angry. I felt like God owed me a honeymoon phase because we were missing ours. We were thrown right into Max caring for me and me feeling like the weakest wife who struggled to get out of bed. The people who mean well would say “you’re married! You’re finally having sex! I’m sure it’s all you do since you all waited for it together.” Ha! Trust me, a libido is hard to find in the middle of thoughts about how much of a disappointment you are to the man who chose you when you’re so sad with no reason why during the “happiest time of your life.” I worshiped. I prayed. I asked for prayer. I surrounded myself with some of the best people in the world. I committed to showing up even when it was ugly. I walked into that church and hid in the balcony crying to avoid “killing the vibe” of anyone else’s day. Nothing helped. I felt so stuck.  I went to therapy every week sometimes twice. I got a freakin’ colonoscopy to make sure I wasn’t dying and let me tell ya- if the prep for that doesn’t kill ya, you’re probably fine. I deleted instagram for months per my therapist recommending it because ya know, comparing yourself in bed to literally anything on instagram is bound to make you feel like a dirtbag.

On my worst mornings I could feel the presence of God the Father whisper “trust me, this is a gift.” And I remember thinking “are you crazy, God?! Because honestly, I’m starting to think you are like Joe Goldberg-level-crazy. None of how I’m feeling feels like a gift. It feels like You’re not who I thought You were.”

One day at a time I made it to the end of each day. My dad’s golden ticket of parenting advice rang truer than ever, “one foot in front of the other, Em. That’s all you have to do.” Some days I had some really good moments and some days were just all hard. They were hard because the Kindness of God felt brutal. It was HARD because God showing me how to be loved. How to be taken care of. How to receive Love.

I went into marriage so ready to give love. I had giving love down to a science! I mean, I write greeting cards daily, I decorate the envelopes. I love people so much it makes me cry tears of joy when I talk about MOST of the people in my life. But marriage love, that’s foreign to me. Not because I’ve never seen it, I have. But because I don’t think I believed in it for myself. I got so used to loving. So much of my love flows from the maternal part of my heart. The part that’s so deeply committed to giving love unconditionally. But marriage love is about trust. Do I trust my husband? 100000%, of course I do. I thought. But did I truly believe that at my most “unloveable” I was worthy of love? Isn’t that the message of the gospel? Had I missed the CORE of my faith? God used my husband to show me that I was missing the point.

God spent this first year of marriage stripping me down to the beginning of myself. Who am I at my core? Our first teachers in life are often hurt, trauma, bullies, shame, social media, and other people like us who had the same teachers and have their own lies/beliefs about themselves. God showed me every lie I believed about myself until I saw the truth. Which, by the way, felt like torture.  Who am I outside of what I can do for other people so that they tell me I’m wonderful?…Tell me that I’m ok?…Tell me that I’m not too much- that I’m the perfect balance of not too much but always enough?

Ending 2019 and coming to the close of our first year of marriage, there are things that God brought to my attention that have no control over me on my hard days anymore because God has already exposed them. There are certain things that can torment us without us even knowing it until that time when God says “Ok I think she’s ready to heal from this. She’s ready to go through what it would take to really be free of these thoughts that I never wanted her to have to go through in the first place.” His kindness is that He gave me a soldier for the battle. He gave me Max and He promised us a future beyond our wildest dreams- A family, a ministry, a legacy of so much goodness and love. But first He was going to show us what we’re made of. He threw us right in, because HE knew exactly what we’re made of. Our first year set a foundation that included major breakthrough and healing in our family, an ability to set boundaries, the understanding of what it means to trust one another with everything from finances to emotions, major decisions, and everyday in between.

So back to Christmas… I look at Max differently now because we are different now. We’ll always be different. Each Christmas I’ll see a whole new layer of his heart sitting across from me in the bubbles. This year I see a man I trust with my whole life. I trust him to love me because I know that even when I feel unloveable I am so loved by my Heavenly Father and by the man that He sent to be my husband. There’s been a freedom since Christmas. I feel like Jesus threw us a party- what a gentleman, throwing us a party for His birthday. I feel like He threw us a party filled with real peace because we didn’t back down from the challenge of healing from the lies within myself and defeating the strong voice of shame in my mind. Because God love us too much to take us to the next step of life unprepared and carrying weight that doesn’t belong to us. Here’s the thing, who cares what anything “should” look like.  God knows what He’s doing and He has promised us that He works ALL things for the good of those who love Him.

We are CHAMPIONS this year. Our first year of marriage wasn’t hard like everyone warned it would be. We didn’t fight like crazy or regret our choice. It was hard because I was learning that some of the things that “life” taught me made life harder than it needed to be. It was hard because God went to work on showing me how to be loved completely. The Kindness of God was spending the year showing me how to be LOVED and how to be taken care of.He didn’t cause depression in order to teach me, because He’s a good God. But He met me in that darkness and used it to introduce me to myself. Every avenue of my life allows me to take care of people, whether it was codependent friendships, trying to play god for people, nannying, ministry, etc. I regularly rejected being cared for because it made me feel weak. His STRENGTH is found in our WEAKNESS.

There’s a lot more to say here. And I will. Last time I wrote I wasn’t even engaged yet. We’ve had a wedding and a year married now and it’s been the most beautiful experience of my entire life. It took me a year to figure out what the hell God’s point was in not just immediately healing me from depression. Because let’s be honest, that’s what we want. We don’t want to slowly be crafted into a version of ourselves that looks more like who God created us to be, we want an instant-gratification-Jesus. We want comfort. We want happiness, not freedom & joy. It is worth it, sister. This year taught me how to surrender. How to be loved not because of what I’m doing but because of who I am. This year I learned that redemption sometimes looks a lot like depression. One day at a time. First the crushing, then the wine.