month 5: not-so-normal normal

you. 
my love. 
you. 

i feel like my life is full of adventure with you. and i felt like we reached more of a "normal" this month. it was really nice to connect with you this way since our marriage has been full of the new since it started five months ago. i'm appreciating the somewhat "normalizing" of life. (i use that term loosely, since "normal" doesn't usually include dog sledding, epic snow shoeing, and driving on treacherous highways.)

when i think back on this month, i don't have much to say...except betee-bbeety-boo-loo-bop-boppity-bop bop. and that i adore you! when i look at you, i think to myself, "wow. i am such a lucky girl." you help my heart expand.

thanks for fixing dinner tonight.

love, 
your kaka-bird

ps. ARRRR RAAARRRAAARHHRAA AAAAR

month 3: pack pack pack & unpack

lovey, 

we got rid of so much crap it was ridiculous. reducing our combined lives down to one (rather large, but still) carload was an enormous task. packing to settle into a new home with the notion that we might become nomadic was not easy. and i know i wasn't the easiest person to deal with when i'd look sharply at your stuff and say, "uhh...are you gonna get rid of that?" with my loving and non-judgmental tone of voice. or when i stood between the dining room and kitchen looking at our giant mass of kitchen/food boxes and broke down. "there's just too much stuff! i'm overwhelmed." you hugged me, as you often do, and let me be me.

we said goodbye to our families through thanksgiving and christmas, goodbye to our friends over and over, and goodbye to a life that treated us extremely well. it was heartbreaking to leave behind something so good, but i know i'd never regret having chosen this new life with you. 

you've seen me more vividly this month. in the form of weeping over and over, the joy of driving towards our destination (the place that's captured my heart: montana), my attitudiness because i really need to get out and roam but i've been inside all day, in my ocd zero waste endeavors, ... 

but when i look back on this past month, i'm filled with gratitude towards you. you were on board to reduce your life down to boxes and move to a state you've never been to. and you've been open. really open. to being here, discovering ennis, learning about montana/beef jerky/ribs/setting up the hot tub/fixing/cleaning/writing/cooking/thisthatthisthat.

you've been encouraging to me, asking about what i might need, if i've started making plans for my biz idea, etc. you've been kind to say good morning __(insert some term of endearment)__ every day, to come upstairs to tell me about new discoveries or just to say hi, to take care of so many of the various needs here like bringing in wood pellets almost every day! you've been so patient with all of my looks and words of judgement (sorry!), my ocd tendencies, my desires to wander or randomly drive down some road. 

a few memories that stick out to me:

• when you held me as we lay together on the red couch. i felt so much love towards your kind and loving heart that tears streamed down my face.
• when we finally hit montana!!!!
• saying weeping goodbye to heather, steve, ian, matt, and mary on the morning of 1/1/14. wow.
• reflection time at philz on 12/31/13
• your eagerness to make beef jerky
• that nasty trash smell that we endured to/from bozeman. we certainly learned our lesson.
• discovering how awesome the ennis library is!
• finally arriving at our new home. (still makes me sigh in relief...)

it's hard to believe that it's been only a month since the last letter. damn. it's been a good month.

i love you with all my heart my love (even if you look sickly).
-birdy

month 1: adjustments, firsts, and singing

my love, 

it's hard to believe that it's already been a month since you and i got married. time has felt elusive since we said our vows and celebrated with our beloved community. we've experienced so much in the last month. you've whet my appetite for our future, for how we'll create our marriage. (yes, i posted this picture even though you think you look a little funny in it. what? i like how it --fine, how i-- came out...)

after that amazing dinner with family, i was eager to head to calistoga to start our honeymoon. i couldn't wait to be with you! we needed time away after such an intense six weeks of wedding planning. can you imagine if we had a longer engagement? lol. i'm not sure we could've handled that. 

i have to say, it felt so natural to get used to sharing a bed with you (a first!), and waking up next to your sweetness. you're really cute when you sleep. i was nervous about starting our marriage because it would be (and is!) such a huge adjustment from single life. i was surprised by how easy it was to be more and more myself with you. and after we got to tahoe, i started feeling so much adoration for you those first few days. i think my heart grew a little bigger. plus, i had so much fun with you roaming around tahoe, tandem biking, hiking, cooking, eating, watching movies, hot tubbing, and other wonderful things married people do together (many firsts!). ;-) 

i think you started singing again more during this portion of our tahoe trip too. i think singing means you're happy and at peace. you'd spontaneously break out in song about something random happening in the moment. "oh look, lizzy is eating again. eating eating eating. lizzy lizzy lizzy." (i know that wasn't even close.) and even though i don't give you much attention when you sing those made-up tunes, know that i think it's adorable and i love you more for them. it's just happening quietly in my heart. 

then we headed south to yosemite with jb & nino for honeymoon part i.5. it was a gift to be able to spend time with your our cousins, even eating crappy lodge food. golly, the food was so bad i remember feeling embarrassed that our french cousins had to eat it. but...redemption wasn't far off. a really good pizza joint, oysters from tomales bay oyster company, and a korean feast can easily cure things. haha.

i remember the day we picked them up in reno, they fell asleep in the back while you drove down the 580s. i took this picture at about the exact time our ceremony started one week prior. i thought, "you are my man." actually, i probably said it out loud given how extroverted i am with you. ;) hehe. i love looking at this photo of you. it makes me feel incredibly peaceful knowing that we committed to living out the rest of our lives together. that you are mine and i am yours. i think it was one of the first moments when i could finally sink into that new reality. 

jb & nino. ahh.... they are such sweet people. i'm lucky that i inherit them into my life by way of you. although my communication with them isn't as fluid as i would hope, what farts can do for relationships is astounding. it was so much fun to share that lodge room and drive all over california with them. and you know what i'd say my favorite part of yosemite was...yup, you guessed it: the black bear sighting!!! it was SO AWESOME when you told us all to stop and look to our right. and just like that... the bear walked right in front of us. my eyes almost fell out of their sockets because i was so elated. it was all of our first time seeing a bear! 

after our cousins left, we stopped by mountain view for a few days to scrub down your apt before handing in your keys. you spent the first day or two by yourself in your old space to clear out your belongings in order to move into my our place. i wondered what went through your head during that time alone, sifting through everything you own. you'd come home to me at night, tired. not because it was necessarily physically taxing, but because it seemed you went through an emotional marathon of closing that chapter of your life. i remember feeling glad to see you at the end of the day. i missed you, even though we were only apart for a matter of hours. as independent as i can be, i've been so surprised that i want to spend all my time with you! (although, writing this alone is pretty nice. haha)

then it was time for honeymoon part ii. friends joining us at our amazing tahoe cabin (thanks to the durdens!). it was so much fun to be in community and practice hospitality with you. we i spent too much on groceries to make sure we had "enough" food. we took them on bike rides. cooked together. shared meals around that giant table. it was such a gift to be with them, and with you. matt makes awesome pancakes and candice is crazy. joy & billy can cook some damn good chicken and mary makes mean meals. and poor tiff, she was so sick! :( and i will never forget the last night that it started snowing. it felt like magic. the snow was so dry and crunchy, we jumped straight into the hot tub! hard apple cider + snowfall was amazing. and waking up the next morning blew me away. we went from warm sunny days to a winter wonderland overnight. i had never seen the torch being passed from one season to the next so clearly, and there it was. all i wanted to do was play, and you were concerned for our safety back home. we had a bit of a conflict later about that and other things, but as usual....we resolved it quickly. (of course after some huffing and puffing and silent awkwardness on the road. i think i'm getting better at conflict resolution. don't you think?)  :)

sometimes in the morning, if i wake up before you, i like to watch you sleep (and take photos). there you are my love! my peaceful bunny.

being married to you is not just about the fun adventures we've been on....but it's the simple daily things. it's all the stuff that happens between these photos. it's the moments we're present to each other. (sometimes cooking, but definitely) eating together, asking about your day even if we spent the whole of it together, being in the same room doing separate things, all the ways you mock me and i can't help but howl, the small looks and expressions, the result of curiosity or lack thereof, the check-ins we have about how sex was, hearing your footsteps and knowing you've come home to me, it's the learnings. lots of learnings.... constant learning. i promised you i would be your best student in my vows, and i hope you feel like you are more known each day. because i certainly feel more known (and therefore loved) by you.

thanks for being you, samuel. for being my beloved. for loving me through and through. you are so good to me, especially when i don't deserve it. i've felt so served each time you: offer me food when i've already had my meal because you know i'd like a taste, tell me you love everything about me when i complain about my growing belly (no i'm not pregnant), open the car door and ask, "ready?" before you close it, ride my emotional waves and stand as a steady rock, & hold me for no reason but as an outpouring of love.

i am in love with you! and i look forward to what's to come. i can't imagine who else i'd rather be on this journey with but you. 

love always, 
your bird-dragon

ps. i know you love this song so here's one more for today. 

today is friday.

the next day is when everything changes.

since getting back from europe on september 1st, i have been thinking about this wedding day, almost non-stop. i'm exhausted from having my brain start at 65mph every morning and from being in a state of gogogo. it's been stressful and tiring, and i have certainly not been my best self. samuel will attest to this fact. (i've said, "i'm sorry for ______," about a thousand times to him.)

but. 

what brings me back to an even slightly better state of being is by letting my gratitude settle in. during these last couple weeks, i've been so moved by all of the care and love that our friends have poured out on us, on me. i am completely taken by everyone's generosity. i feel undeserving of so much abundance, and yet i feel i am supposed to just soak it in and receive. and to simply look in everyone's eyes and say, "thank you." 

what this process has shown me is that people really love me. they really love us. like....a lot of them, and like....a lot of love! they are our family, our church community, our friends: our dearly beloveds.

i can't wait for the gathering of all these beloveds, to bear witness to one of the most important decisions i'll make in my lifetime. i'd be lying if i didn't mention that as much as i'm elated to be married, i'm scared! it's such a huge decision! a tiny part of me wonders if i'm ready to do this. and then this huge part of me responds with, "trust me. this is going to be the best adventure you'll ever go on. let's fly!"

so i walk to the edge of the cliff, spread my arms, and take a deep breath before i jump...

quote | afraid to die?

Am I afraid to die? I am every time I let myself be seduced by the noisy voices in my world telling me that my ‘little life’ is all I have and advising me to cling to it with all my might. But when I let these voices move to the background of my life and listen to that small soft voice calling me the Beloved, I know that there is nothing to fear and that dying is the greatest act of love, the act that leads me into the eternal embrace of my God whose love is everlasting.
-Henri J. M. Nouwen

quote | the way i want to love you

You must learn to understand that all your deficiencies, even those that come from your past sins and vicious habits, are part of my loving providence for you, and that it is just with those deficiencies, just the way you are now, that I would love you.

Therefore you must overcome the habit of judging how you would make yourself acceptable to me. When you do this you are putting your providence, your wisdom before mine. It is my wisdom that tells you, "The way you are acceptable to me, the way I want to love you, is the way you are now, with all your defects and deficiencies. I could wipe them out in a moment if I wanted to, but then I could not love you the way I want to love you, the way you are--now."

Julian of Norwich

abby joy.

i had the immense privilege of meeting abby joy this past weekend. she's the newborn daughter of my lifelong friend annette and her husband abe. she's a fighter who does what she wants (like telling the world she was ready to come out 10 weeks early and then trying to escape from her incubator). i have a feeling she may occasionally give her parents a hard time, but that she'll penetrate the world with her deep compassion, fiery spirit, and joyful heart. 

in the meanwhile, there are a whole lot of people praying for her to drink her mama's milk and grow strong. you're beloved abby joy! 

 

wdydwyd? | bike camping to sam p taylor (again)

you know how time spent browsing the internet can go: click click click click click, pause, click click (sometimes leading to an exorbitant length of time wasted). well on one of those clicks, i stumbled onto this photo through a twitter connection. you'll notice on the bottom of the picture an opaque "wydydwyd?". when i saw it, i wondered what the heck that crazy long acronym was about, so after a .013 second search, The Google told me what i needed to know. except, the answer unexpectedly invited me into a much larger question: why do you do what you do? 

(thanks a lot google.) anyway, the question was haunting because it was impossible to get out of my head! fast forward a few days from the initial click and i get presented with a bit of a dare to post my own wdydwyd self-portrait from isaac (the guy in the photo) and he would in turn share his most impactful excerpt on joy + how that joy's manifested in his own life. (the topic of joy is in response to the work i'm doing for hopelab's joy campaign.) it seemed like an intriguing trade!! 

so this weekend while bike camping up to samuel p taylor, i thought it'd be fun to invite my biking buddy kristen to participate (...as well as whoever else we'd meet along the way)! here are the folks who we asked to play, including kristen:

(from left to right)
bc / 24 / farmers market stall employee
jim / 37 / marin community farm stands organizer
paul / 33 / artist, illustrator, cyclist
scott / 58 / sand sculptor, artist
kristen / 26 / flight attendent, climber, up-for-adventure gal pal

you know what surprised me? 
bc, jim, and scott had immediate responses when presented with the question! they didn't hesitate at all. i was inspired by their clarity and confidence in the moment. 


and then there's my response to wdydwyd. i had a few statements that resonate true for me right now, but the one below is most befitting since one of my intentions this year is to live in the reality that i am beloved. in this particular journey, i've noticed that the gift is two-fold: i've been able to believe not just in my own belovedness, but also enter into others' belovedness (both of which which can be challenging at times).


i'm finding that to see oneself and to see another as beloved might be one of the most motivating reasons to be kind, tender and vulnerable, to show grace and to practice integrity, to commit and pursue, to speak truth, to be open to changing, to delight and to choose to love...


so why do i do what i do? because i love being changed by:


(ps. this photo was taken on a tree stump with a timer. apparently, i missed my head and stood about 12" from being in focus - a lovely recipe for an interesting photo!)


thank you isaac for challenging me to act on my curiosity & to reflect on this simple, yet profound question.