Redemption

We all need to be redeemed. We’ve all felt undeserving and full of fault at some point in mortality, and if we haven’t, we will… That is the nature of life. Falling down is the way we learn how to walk, slipping up is the way we learn how to say we are sorry….. forgiving and forgetting and loving and improving are born from the unhewn roughness with which we approach life in our youth….a roughness that is only smoothed and shaved away with time and a sharpened sensitivity to what roughness is and how we may remove it from ourselves.

Today, I studied a powerful portrait of the reality of redemption- and it was sweet, all-consuming, and bright as the golden lights that illuminated one of the loveliest weddings I have ever attended. Small and perfect, an intimate group of us watched a bride, a groom, and the bride’s 10-month old son come together and make vows… what we believe are promises with God, to love and care for each other forever. The faces of those in the room told volumes… a father who tried to support his daughter as she delivered a child while young and alone, a sister who had carried so many complex questions about the world and witnessed the difficult journey of her elder sibling, a groom who had waited long and through personal medical challenges to find the love of his life, the bride who had overcome heartache, loneliness, and the fear of the uncertainty that she wouldn’t find someone who loved her and her son the way she dreamed. In that moment, as the couple looked into each other’s wet, happy eyes and their little son smiled in their arms, I watched as so many hearts in the room dumped a thousand pounds of former pain, uncertainty, and discouragement into the past and left it behind forever. It was genuinely one of the most raw and precious emotional experiences I have ever witnessed.  

As the little boy finished off the statement of the promises with unrestrained and innocent “amen, amen, amen…”, I could almost feel every heart in the room bursting with the same cacophony of agreement, repeating to themselves an endless stream of silent “amens”.

This family was perfect, new, whole, and free of the challenges they had conquered. With all the turbulent news and tragedies that face us and our neighbors in daily life, this was a moment where it felt the world stood still, breathed deeply, and told me to believe better in God and the reality of redemption.  

There is nothing so broken or so helpless that it cannot be made right again with God – I know it. I’ve felt it. I’ve seen it.

Campus Beauty - School Day Snaps

Quarter 1 - A Smattering of thoughts

Goodness how the weeks do fly! Chris and I are now knee-deep in our first quarters and all the stress, fun, and lapses in household cleanliness that this stage brings. Now that we have a small collection of experiences and patterns (the ones working for us and not working for us) I feel I finally have some actual wisdom to impart.... so, here goes! 

1. Food: Eating out is expensive $$... Cooking meals to take to school is time consuming... and one rubbermaid tub of leftovers only takes you so far when you are at school from 8:30 to 6 every day. This eating conundrum has kept us on our toes the last few weeks. One thing that has worked for us has been making large quantities of big meals Sunday night and bagging them in portion sizes for a few weekly lunches. Spaghetti, lasagna, stew, curry & rice etc. have worked really well for us.... until Thursday hits and we're all out of prepared food! As a solution, we've decided on a few very inexpensive take out places near our house and agreed to forgo the time, stress, and extra hunger pangs for a night or two a week. By Thursday, emotions are just a bit tenser and takeout provides a fun, celebratory way to push us through the end of the week. Not everyone in grad school may have enough funding for this luxury but it has been a lifesaver for us - I mean, happy, well-fed couples are typically pleasant ones, yes :) 

2. Cleaning: This is another question that gradually grows throughout the week as dirty clothes hampers begin to bulge and the bed starts to be reduced to an unrecognizable bundle of feathers and blankets as Friday approaches. What's been working for us? Pick your battles. We've decided on a list of essentials that need to be attended to every week and tried to let a little bit of clutter slide on the weekdays. Chris and I are lucky because neither of us are OCD about cleanliness but neither of us can stand being in a dirty, unkempt place for long. This leaves us oscillating between tidy and cluttered throughout the week as our schedules permit. Flexibility and a willingness to pick up for the other spouse have been key in making this work without anyone feeling like they are pulling most of the load… communication has been super important here because sometimes I just get suddenly, tiredly emotional about another pair of husband’s stinky socks being on the floor!? I mean, right?! This problem is normal and real and very conquerable.

3. Time: We’re still working on this one… which is good because I think it is the most important. I credit Chris for bending over backwards to make me feel as if I am the most vital and lovely thing to him in all the world… Being apart for the entire day is very made up by snuggling at night and hearing a genuine ‘I love you’ whispered in my ear. Quality over quantity time is the game-changer in relationships between busy people.  Another big source of joy is our Sunday havens. We’ve both decided to not do homework on Sundays, focusing instead on going to church, being with each other, spending time with friends and cooking those bulk meals! It’s helped us focus harder on the other days and relax for one 24 hr period during the week. Sunday is now my safest and happiest day.

I hope some of these tips have been helpful! I have more to come… including some of our funny couple failures as we work through the 1^st year of grad school..

For now, I’ll just say that this week I was scared out of the apartment by a little mouse- yikes?! …Which Chris teased me about but I felt perfectly justified in given my feminine instincts.. thank you very much! But now, the apartment is mouse proof, we’re feeling like we are becoming city veterans, and… my handsome husband can now add "mouse removal" to his long list of marketable qualities.  Happy October!

The "Chic" of our last little "ago"

We moved!

After trips to Mexico, CA, ID, MN and even Seattle WA this summer we finally left our six years of Provo memories and moved... to Chicago. I want to go back and highlight each trip and the things we enjoyed during each stop after I share a few thoughts on our new BIG CITY home.

Pro: The food here is awe-inspiring. Today we tried lunch at hole in the wall Pakistani restaurant and found ourselves in a curry paved and chili dusted heaven of South Asian cuisine. We smiled as the spicy sauces ate holes in our feverish taste buds and our jaws tore through the slightly chewy naan to relish the last drops of our spectacular meal. It was AMAZING. Food heaven is here, in Chicago.

Con: A rat died in our alley yesterday. (This is where the garbage is taken out so garbage trucks can collect waste through the alleys instead of on main streets). Today, that rat body was finally pancaked to the asphalt and I refused to go within 15 feet of it. Ew. Triple Ew.

Pro: We are entering more rigorous education environments than we have ever been in before. Everyone we are meeting in school is a minority or from a different country. Many people speak multiple languages and some already hold advanced degrees. Our human experiences are literally world class at the top tier university level.


Con: The Chicago road is a jungle. Not only do you have to white-knuckle the steering wheel to maintain fighter-pilot like alertness to avoid collisions with maniacal -but extremely experienced- city drivers, but once you finally and gratefully park the car you have to make sure it is not peacefully stopped in one of these dozens of dangerous police traps: handicapped (pretty straightforward), street cleaning, public park parking (pay here), public school parking (pay here), permit parking (tow zone), construction (tow zone), only park between 4-8pm zone, bus drop-off zone, snow cleaning zone (don't park if snow is on the road), resident moving truck zone, etc. See what I mean about the jungle... watch out!!

Pro: Free fun is everywhere. The other day we attended a free jazz concert in Millenium park. The space was filled with thousands of families, friends, love-struck or dancing couples, all there to enjoy the end of summer and share "good vibes" with each other. As hippie as it sounds, I loved it... and there was something so magical about feeling Chris' warm arms around my shoulders and the sweet, syrupy jazz music tingling in my ears, and the starry sky glistening above us over the Chicago skyline.

Overall, we're learning a lot about our new home. But we are already pretty certain this is an exciting and life-changing place to be.

What Would You Say?

If you were asked to give a university graduation speech.... what would you talk about? Would you be intimidated? Would you be funny? Would you spend hours viewing graduation speeches ranging from a high school rap to J.K. Rowling's famous Harvard commencement speech?

Because, that is exactly what I did while scrambling to fulfill an invitation to speak at my college graduation. And, let me tell you, the rap seemed like a pretty fail proof way to go!

I must have rewritten 6 -or more!- drafts...searching and thinking and rethinking what might be meaningful and memorable. It was hard work! What did I want to be the takeaway from my 7 minutes of talking to students so excited and so full of dreams as I was? And slowly, week after long week of trying... a rap started to look like my only interesting option!

My message came to me one day as I was reflecting on my own life and trying to reassure myself that life was beautiful and meaningful, even though it doesn't always work out the way we planned. Sometimes, our plans weren't the best path for us after all. I believe -I know- that a loving God watches over our lives and helps us achieve our potential. And that, that knowledge, is enough to take a young college graduate through any life surprises.

Below is my speech - I hope readers will identify with its message and understand how this principle is dear to my heart. I wish I could hear speeches from everyone who crosses such an important finishing and starting line! (Also, here are some photos with my uncle who gave the commencement speech the day before me).

Dearest classmates, friends, honored professors and deans…

The Waiting Game

If we’re not careful, we will feel like we are always waiting….

We are waiting for the semester to end, for the salary to increase, for that friend or loved one to finally reach out to us again, for our waist to tuck in and the amount of JCrew clothes in our closet to suddenly and miraculously multiply!

Or, we are waiting to know where will spend the next five years of our lives going to graduate school…

The last one describes us…. And we need to be careful too. I've alternated through various potential locations in my head, daydreaming about where we will be living next fall. I've been trying not to get too attached to any one location with the stark truth that we do not have much influence over where we go. To say I'm impatient about it is...well, absolutely true!

So... Husband Got a Perfect Score on the GRE

YEAH, wow! We were stunned too. After weeks of sleep-deprivation, eating take-out and keeping each other awake for late night study sessions (slap on the forehead there) , Chris finally took the GRE. The GRE is the graduate school entrance examination. It is very difficult because all the test takers are competing with other top-college graduates heading to advanced degrees. In other words, it is HARD!

Husband had taken the GRE a few weeks earlier and done very well, in fact, he had scored in the 90-99 percentile on both the reading and math sections. Those scores are fantastic- but he had a goal to do even better. And... he did.

I was driving to pick him up from the nearby testing center when my phone began to ring... I put the phone to my hear and barely had time to ask "hello?" before Chris mumbled something similar to... "Lu, I got a perfect score..?!". I screamed into the phone, pulled into the testing center parking lot, ran out of the car and threw my arms around him in unapologetic exhilaration. It was the best news I could have ever have expected to hear.

This experience doesn't mean the end of tough grad school applications, but it does represent a monumental, ginormous turning point! ..which is why we went and ate ice cream for dinner afterwards and scrapped homework for the rest of the night.

Celebrations are important because working hard requires rewards, however small and insignificant they may be. As long as something is a reward to you, it must be indulged in, it must have time set aside for it. Life is too short to be without spurts of jumping-up-and-down in the car and eating utterly outrageous amounts of ice cream... just because we can.

As you power through life and work toward your dreams with all your might, I hope you find something to celebrate in the next little while! Happy living and enjoying!