Wedding Dress Challenge

I've had several friends get married over the past 12 months and slowly but surely my Facebook feed and blog reader are being covered in photos of beautiful smiling girls in white gowns with handsome men holding on to one another, and their goofy looking friends (including me) awkwardly dancing or shoving cake in their mouths.  Lovely.  All of my friends are beautiful sans formal gowns, fancy updo's, and elaborate make-up.  Still...looking at the pictures makes my heart yearn just a little bit.  When Michael Johnson and I were married 7 years ago, I was just out of school and could not afford beautiful bridal portraits.  I used a chunk of savings to pay for our wedding day pictures and they were a huge disappointment.  My family took better pictures with disposable cameras and old school digital bricks than what my "professional" photographers put together.  After sitting on my rear throughout the winter, looking at photos and gaining 5 pounds I made a vain decision... I'm going to take some bridal portraits this Spring....7 years later.  I know that my wedding dress will need to be altered already, but I needed some motivation to get my workout on and I'm thinking that this would be a fun way to do it.  I'd appreciate some accountability from you all too.  I'm trying to convince Michael Johnson to participate in the challenge in a before and after photo but he's not so keen on it.  :)

      

Patience & Gra{y}ce -- The Sewing Project

We interrupt your regular doom and gloom Lendy blog series to bring you an update on a little ongoing effort Lendy has been working on for the past 3 months.  I decided about 2 weeks ago that I would not write another blog until this ongoing project was mostly completed and as of this hour everything but the crying is done.

I guess most people know that my given middle name is Grayce.  My great grandmother was named Grace and being born in 1902 and without much of a formal education she spelled her name with an extra "y." It often resulted in people calling her, "Gracie" and for much of my young life I too was called Grace or Gracie interchangeably with Lendy.  Remember -- Lendy is a weird name that some people have continual trouble with.  I think Mama threw that name in there hoping that I would obtain or exhibit some level of grace..oops.  Instead one of her favorite sayings to me to this day is, "Patience Grayce." You would think they go hand in hand.. patience and grace.  I have pretty good patience with people and situations but seriously lack patience when it comes to projects, and repetitive or tedious tasks.  I'm always one to talk about being sentimental and such but I'll pay any one of you little Pintrest honeys out there to make cute DIY stuff for me to give away than have to do it myself.  It's not that I don't have the talent or the time, just zero patience with the process.  In early December I was stalking my wifey's Pintrest page looking for Christmas present inspiration and stumbled across something that led me to embark upon a little adventure in the craft world that has taught me a new level of patience.

Sewing....

When I first started running and wanted to give up I would remember that I endured hours at the computer working through my thesis.  Working on this project I thought about the miles I pounded the pavement to train for my half marathon and knew I could endure not knowing how to sew, the sewing machine (Satan) jamming repeatedly, and my hands cramping from hours of stitching.  As I sat in the quiet sewing at night or during the snowpocolypse I found myself praying or thinking about the generations of women before me who did this all the time not for fun or for gifts but because they had to.  For once in my life a small fear crept into my mind that we -- us 20 or 30 somethings -- may be raising a generation that doesn't understand the importance of knowing simple skills like sewing and may look down on the people that do so for a living.  I'm not talking about Hollywood fashion designers.  Another fear... Would our children know or understand the significance of something handmade and passed down from generation to generation like a quilt or a piece of furniture? I know the answer to those questions lies with how I choose to raise my children if God grants me any.

Sure, possessions no matter how sentimental will be left behind when we move from this life to the next.  It's the thoughts and memories around these things that count and those usually revolve around the people that make them, share them, or use them.  They are some kind of tangible evidence of love, time, prayers, and practicality.  Growing up my Granma had a quilt we called the "Boom Blanket." We would run underneath it as she tossed it in the air and we would yell boom when it fell on us  or she'd spread it on the grass and we would jump on it yelling boom at the top of our lungs.  It was grass stained and smelled like sunshine and I remember how she could jump just as high as me and my cousins when we landed on it together.

Maybe these are future boom blankets.  I hope whomever ends up with them is blessed with warmth, comfort, and maybe just a lot of love.  :)        

Throwback Moodle Post: A Treatise on Friendship

At times, I get caught up in the titles that we give our friends.  Especially when it comes to the girlfriends.  I do not support…repeat DO NOT SUPPORT… calling your close friends your “bitches” or “hoes” or whatever.  If I call you as such then most likely I am one step away from asking you to step outside while I remove my earrings and prepare to bury you.  Friendship titles aren't that significant post 8th grade, but they continue to play games with people who are insecure..i.e. me.  I scroll through THE Facebook (aka the devil) and see friends throwing up posts about “my bestie” this and “my BFF” that.  Apparently you can have a different BFF every day while I have maybe 5 that I intend to try and keep for a while.  While there isn't an objective definition of what makes up a best friend, and the title doesn't really define the length, breadth, or depth of unconditional and at times sacrificial love and caring you can have for someone else I often take pause because I don’t have people out there posting about me being their “bestie” or “BFF.” I’m the ugly girl at the 8th grade dance holding up the wall with my 3” thick glasses for the 2^nd time in my life.  

Again, this is the danger of social media…comparing your reality with NOT reality.  

Once I wake up from my middle school dance I realize how entirely juvenile and self-centered such thoughts are.    I’m accusing these people of having a best friend “at me” rather than seeing it as a celebration of a great relationship between some folks.  Being someone’s best friend isn't about a sick title.  (Read as: I don't consider my best friends my "besties" because it's fun to say that word.)  It’s about constantly maintaining your focus on loving and serving the other person(s).  I also realize what a poor job I do of telling / showing my friends that I’m close to how much they mean to me, and rest assured that I'm a huge hypocrite because I very rarely, if ever, offer them any title of affirmation.  I have lots of friends but very few close friends and sometimes I delude myself into thinking that they know how I feel.  I do that with Michael Johnson all the time and he’s my boy BFFAEAE.  :) I think some of this spurs from being afraid to be vulnerable.  As one of my friends once said, “Being sentimental and intimate is scary.” So true and yet….

“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.” ― C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

I used to think that I was a pretty good friend.  Then I started drafting this blog and over several weeks I've been studying God's word in regards to what it means to be a friend.  There are some pretty amazing models of devoted friendship.  Granted we do not live in biblical times or the Middle East but the sentiments and behaviors for the most part are very applicable to where we are today.  Of course Christ is the ultimate model of a friend.   Jesus met, spoke to, and healed lots of people during His time on Earth, but He spent the majority of His time ministering to and serving 12 men whom He called His friends.  These men went on to become His apostles and they continued on after His ascension in one accord as they were called to do.  At one time I could not make heads or tails of Paul's letters to his companions and brethren in the churches, but now I'm beginning to comprehend how much deeper you can love people through the lens of Christ.  

I don't expect to live up to the examples but I know I'm called to love -- read as: love, forgive, cry with, hold on to, speak well of, encourage, provide for materially, etc. -- people as if unto Him and through Him.  Scripture makes it pretty clear how valuable and important it is to have good friends.  In Lendy’s world there may not be another "form" of relationship more important than friendship.  For those of us who are Believers, our Christian friends are members of our spiritual family and we are to love and care for them as such.  

“In friendship...we think we have chosen our peers. In reality a few years' difference in the dates of our births, a few more miles between certain houses, the choice of one university instead of another...the accident of a topic being raised or not raised at a first meeting--any of these chances might have kept us apart. But, for a Christian, there are, strictly speaking no chances. A secret master of ceremonies has been at work. Christ, who said to the disciples, "Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you," can truly say to every group of Christian friends, "Ye have not chosen one another but I have chosen you for one another." The friendship is not a reward for our discriminating and good taste in finding one another out. It is the instrument by which God reveals to each of us the beauties of others.” 

 C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

An Ode to my Home Girl: Mother Nature

Each morning I wake up and wonder whether or not I need to wear short sleeves or 3 layers of clothing to get me through the day.  One minute the temperature is in the 60's and 2-3 days later there is 3 inches of snow on the ground. My coworkers and friends keep saying, "Well that's North Carolina weather for you." No..no it's not.  I've been here my entire life, (almost) 30 years, and I cannot remember a winter quite like this one.    

Mother Nature must be having a rough time.  All you ladies out there know how it can be when your hormones are either raging or non-existent... it ain't good.  Hot flashes...cold flashes...out lashes...Bless her heart.  Furthermore, bless Mother Nature's poor suitors, the weathermen, who desperately try to guess what her mood is going to be from one day to the next.  I wish we all had their type of job security where we could make a random guess, go with it, and then when it failed just crack a corny joke and move on.  Prime example right here....

I don't know about the rest of you but when Mother Nature ain't happy... I ain't happy neither.  I go from someone who enjoys being active and eating fairly healthy to a bottomless pit / sleepy ---> grouchy old bitty.  I was lamenting on Facebook the other day about lusting for gravy and not wanting to workout.  A friend replied, "We're all in the same boat, the gravy boat." It was pretty hilarious but so true.  Mother Nature has placed me (us) in the gravy boat.  Now when I actually feel like running or whenever I sit down for that matter I have a bulge similar to a fanny pack full of gravy hanging over my belt.  Hopefully my home girl is going to get her ish together soon so we can all trade our gravy boats for sporty kayaks....

Otherwise I'm going to need some new jeans... and some mashed potatoes.