elegant or not

ohhhh, blogggg.

i miss youuuu.

it's been a really lame couple of weeks, i have to tell you.

the flu (or his cousin or maybe his second cousin?) came for a visit our house and decided to stay a while. dave was the first to go down, then elias, then me (the day before 23 people were to arrive at my home for thanksgiving), then piper. we mostly had a random, peculiar and miscellaneous smattering of symptoms. 103 temps, chills, nausea, runny noses, headaches, general gross feeling-ness. i won't bore you with any details, like about how sick kids are whiny and needy little drips, but by last saturday, i was so desperate to get out of the house that i was giddy to just get out and do errands. i mean, i almost was willing to gladly go to the grocery store. almost. but we're all better now, and truly, i'm grateful that we weren't more sick. a lot of people are really getting nailed with these various strains of flu.

it's funny, i finished reading traveling mercies by anne lamott* when i was sick. and suddenly i felt like being sick is a great opportunity (and not just to catch up on reading).

let me explain.

i picked up in the middle of the book somewhere, and she was talking about her neighbor who had cancer and how one day she woke up feeling awful and achy with a headache and so on, and was complaining to her neighbor. who's essentially...dying. and having chemo and various other painful cancer treatments. but he smiles and is chipper every day because he is at peace, and is enjoying his life anyway. you know, come what may-type thing. and she was killing me, talking about how ridiculous she felt because she was sick, and there she was complaining to him about her seemingly insignificant troubles. and it really reminded me that there is always someone sicker, always someone who's frying a bigger fish in a murkier pond.

she writes "i hate being the kind of person who tries to get someone with stage-four metastatic lung cancer to feel sorry for her just because she has a headache. (though it was an ice pick headache.) but the way i see it, God loves you the same whether you're being elegant of not. it feels much better when you are, but even when you can't fake it, God still listens to your prayers."

i tell ya, my head/body didn't feel better after reading those pages, but my heart did and my soul did. we've all been there, haven't we? when our life sucks "the most", we're the "most tired", or the "most overwhelmed", even though...we're not. and we're really not trying to be elegant, we're just mad or sad or ill or annoyed and we don't care who knows it.

reading those pages was a good reminder to be grateful even when we're ill, and our kids are sick, and they whine and demand to be held constantly. because when we're sick, we get to read books. and snuggle our kids and watch movies all day. and wear pajamas, and have no pressing things “to-do”. and be present. and enjoy the good things wrapped up in the not so good things.

because that’s life. and life IS good.

*and seriously, if you've never read anne lamott, pick up anything she's written. bird by bird, operating instructions, anything. she's somehow reverent and irreverent, quick-witted, insightful, and at times, cheeky. but i live for honesty in writing. it's like breath to me. i'd rather listen to nickelback on repeat then read books that are a bunch of crap. so i admire her rawness. i wish i had half the audacity she does, even if i don't always agree with some of her theology. it's neither here nor there. hilarious is hilarious. and i love me some funny :)

so about that book...

you know, the one i mentioned in my very first post. my deep blue sea. let me tell you a little more about it.

it's a story about

love.

you're likely thinking: boring-sappy-unoriginal-typical-blah.

at least that's what i usually think of when i think of love stories. but this one is good. and it's real. and it's sweet and unexpected. and it's true.

it's my story. our story. the story about my deep blue sea. my dbs.

at this point, i have a lovely green leather-bound journal. i've written memories of the year we were dating, engaged, and married. (yes, it was a busy year). and of course i have to write them down- i don't want to forget them! truth is, my brain is scattered amongst the books i read and write in. as long as i have my books, i'm good. also, i have compiled all the love letters, written and received over our years spent together. almost five now. dave and i both share an affinity for books and writing, so there's no surprise we go old school.

the book will be a compilation of our story. how God divinely orchestrated such minute details to fall into place time after time after time. all the ways he won my heart, all the ways i tricked him into marrying me. haha, kidding. it was all my girl magic, right, babe? ;)

thing is, i think our love story is beautiful. all love stories are beautiful, really. there is something about what happens when you surrender yourself to another person...the risk, the fear, the joy, the excitement...

i'm in love with love.

whatever, i'm totally a girl right now.

so in the spirit of being sentimental, i'll share with you what i wrote for dave that inspired the title of this book. here goes:

"Deep Blue Sea"

Sinking into your depths of blue
Deep blue ocean
Waves of love crash down hard
And you crash into me
I float along in the salty sea
But you make me float
A warm day sun creeps under my skin
You’re under my skin
Whipping winds blow through my hair
But you still see me
You still see me
Sand slips through my hands
Days pass me by
And love crashes down
It sweeps over me
Deep blue sea
Sinking, I’m sinking
Deeper into you
And you want to be
My deep blue sea
Waves of love crash down over me
Taking over me
I float along in this vast blue ocean
And you’re all I see
My deep blue sea
Try to catch my breath
As the waves crash down
But you’re the air I breathe
Love crashes down, it sweeps over me
My deep blue sea
Sinking, I’m sinking deep
Deeper into you
And you want to be
My deep blue sea…

i wrote this in the midst of our dating, soon before we were engaged in july of 2004. it feels so long ago now, but time is so relative.

the twist on this poetry is that d b & s (deep blue sea) are dave's initials. i never wrote it with that intent, but he noticed it right away, thinking i was clever. maybe i am clever, but that one wasn't me. so i call him my deep blue sea.

and he is. much more today than ever.

ahh, sappy junk. people love it ;)

so there's a little follow up to my first blog. i don't know when, but some day i will write our story. it will be so good, they'll want to make a movie out of it. and gerard butler or jeffrey dean morgan will play dave and some cute blonde actress can play me.

i like it!