Who Am I?

Who am I? If that isn't a loaded question, I don't know what is.  There are so many ways I could go about answering the question of "who am I?" and so many points of view I could take.  But I am going to "know my audience" in this situation and answer it according to who I am writing to at this point (and I may not be writing to every reader today, so even though you are reading this, you may not be my intended audience).

I'm getting married one month from tomorrow.  I am so excited!  The story is a beautiful (beauty from ashes) and magical love story and I am so grateful.  But in the beauty and the magic are two people coming together blending two families and two sets of friendships and two separate lives and in that blending, each person is a stranger in the lives of so many.  I am a virtual stranger to Marc's kids and family and friends.  I've had the opportunity to meet most of these people, but they don't know me.  I'm not writing this blog and passing it out to them, but I'm writing as if I were writing to them.  Today I'm thinking about what I wish they knew about me as they give their "blessing" to us at our wedding in a month.  Our wedding is going to be a weekend filled with opportunities for everyone to get to know one another.  We are sharing many meals together, we are playing at the lake together, we are riding go carts together and playing arcade games together, many of us are staying in one big house together, we are going to be laughing around campfires and talking around kitchen islands.  I am really looking forward to this time getting to know Marc's friends and the time that my friends will get to know Marc.  The weekend is way more about building relationships with a little bit of wedding icing on top.

So to my "audience" today, Marc's boys who may never even see this post (and that's ok). . .  Who am I?  Who is this stranger marrying your dad?  I want to give you just a small glimpse into me and I want it to be more honest and raw than you might get from spending a day at the lake with me or a weekend around me and a bunch of my amazing and funny and loud friends!

Of course, I am a daughter of the King, who has been made in the image of God.  I am a sinner saved by grace.  I am a mom and a daughter and a sister and a friend.  There are many givens that I'm not going to address and I know that I am so much more than just a blog post, so don't read this thinking that I am naive enough to think that I am grabbing all of me right now.  I'm not.  I don't intend to.  I can't imagine being able to.  I am just writing as a quick snapshot into me so that you may know a few things about me that aren't necessarily obvious without the years and intimacy you've missed out on to this point.  So you, my readers, are Marc's boys for the next several minutes. . . . 

The sign at the top of this post is hanging on the wall where I am staying this week and it stopped me in my tracks.  Jesus knows me this I love.  One of my "arrow messages" from my past is that I will never be known.  I grew up in what felt like a fish bowl.  It felt like many people could see into my life because of who my father is and it felt like people thought they knew me from looking in and hearing stories, but I knew they didn't know me and I feared that no one ever would because I had to "swim around" in my fish bowl looking happy and perfect so I didn't disappoint anyone and the assumptions they were making.  I also have an "arrow message" that if people truly knew me, they wouldn't love because somehow the real me wouldn't measure up to the me they thought they knew.  So, the sign on the wall stopped me as a refreshing reminder that Jesus knows the real me and I love that.

I am a mom and I love being a mom (most of the time).  I think that much of the time I am a pretty great mom, but I know that I mess up a lot.  This year I have come to realize how often I parent out of fear and how much that hurts my kids and my relationship with my kids and I have really been trying to work on that.  As I dug into myself honestly, I realized that I was parenting out of two main fears: my heart feared that my kids wouldn't love me and my pride feared that I would look bad to others.  Those are two really ugly things to admit.  It is hard being a single parent because I have to be good cop and bad cop and I have to "compete" against a parent who is not around and therefore who isn't ever the "bad cop." So, my fear made me struggle with sticking with the boundaries I set and my fear made me struggle following through with the consequences that I knew were necessary.  The fear of not being loved really paralyzed me as a parent over the past couple of years.  And then my pride would kick in and I was so afraid that I wouldn't seem like a good parent based on the choices my kids were making and I would parent out of that fear and it was so irrational.  Parenting out of fear made me kind of a wreck because I didn't like who I was being as a parent and my kids didn't really know "who" to expect day in and day out.  That's embarrassing to admit because I have been a great parent in the past.  

I'm fun and I love taking my kids on adventures.  I love to laugh with my kids and I love to intentionally make memories.  I love to have quantity time with my kids that naturally leads to quality moments.  I like to know my kids and I like to be their shoulder when they need one.  I love being who they run to in the good times and in the bad times.  I am the queen of Forced Family Fun and I value knowing the hearts of my children.  Unfortunately, my fears have trumped all of that other stuff recently and I have gotten the opportunity to apologize often and redirect my parenting back to the parent I used to love being.  So, am I a perfect parent?  Absolutely not!  Do I want to be a better parent?  For sure!  Am I humble enough to admit my short comings and make positive changes?  Yes (most of the time)!  As you get to know me and my kids more, you will hear some really fun stories about our adventures and you will hear some really funny stories about my failures.  I would imagine that most of the stories you hear my kids tell are true--bad and good!

I feel like I have pretty good intuition and I can read people well.  I used to think that I had the gift of discernment, but I question that since I was married to someone for twenty-two years who I didn't really know ultimately.  So, I struggle internally with the question of whether or not I do have discernment after all.  But at the end of the day, I feel like I can genuinely understand people and where they are coming from and see another side to a story that some people miss at first.  I think this is one of the ways that I compliment your dad because I can slow him down when his head is going a million miles an hour about a situation involving other people. I feel like I can step in and bring the perspective of "the other" in situations where he may not be able to see it.  I am in tune to the feelings of others and many times that is a great thing because I can base my actions and my words on what they are needing in the moment.  But sometimes it isn't a great thing because I will not be true to myself in order to not rock the boat or, in my weakness, I will manipulate people in order to get my own emotional needs met.  That is a very ugly thing to admit.  But I think that I am growing so much more as a person because I can see and admit that.

I'm an Enneagram Two and I think you both have had the opportunity to see this in me.  The Two is "the Helper" and I help people out of a genuine desire to be helpful and, on the flip side, out of a genuine desire to be loved.  I am a helper for both selfless and selfish reasons.  One of you have seen me stock your fridge with some of your favorite items or bring you your favorite drink from Starbucks out of the blue and the other one of you has seen me dive into action with my network of friends to help you out when you lost your wallet and you were more than 1,700 miles away.  I do those thing because I genuinely want to help you and I also do those things because I really want you to like me.  The Enneagram Institute says about a two: "Being generous and going out of their way for others makes Twos feel that theirs is the richest, most meaningful way to live. The love and concern they feel—and the genuine good they do—warms their hearts and makes them feel worthwhile. Twos are most interested in what they feel to be the “really, really good” things in life—love, closeness, sharing, family, and friendship."  I truly do love to help other people from a very good place inside of me and I really do believe that the most important things in life are close and loving relationships.  

I would rather be having an adventure than watching TV.  I don't need to sky dive or climb Everest, but I would rather be outside exploring the woods or traveling and exploring the world if given the choice between that and sitting inside with a device.  And I'd rather be doing those things with someone I love.  I mentioned Forced Family Fun above and that is all about me wanting to make a memory and have an adventure.  I've taken my kids to ride our bikes around the rim of the Grand Canyon and to watch the sun rise at the Delicate Arch in Moab and on a train trip from Denver to San Francisco where we rode our bikes across the Golden Gate Bridge and had to hitchhike from Merriam Woods.  We have made memories snowboarding and snow shoeing and sledding and tubing on a "normal" day when we lived in Colorado and we have made memories road tripping to Vegas and to the Santa Monica Pier for a dumb picture in front of the Ferris wheel on a not so normal day.  We have snorkeled with whale sharks and hiked to water falls and cooked over a camp fire.  We have seen the world together from lakes and tea farms and wild animals in Rwanda to the Taj Mahal in India to the roads of the Gran Prix in Monte Carlo to the hidden beaches of Palawan Philippines and everywhere in between.  All of these things I would rather do with people I loved if given the choice between adventure and just sitting with a device or in front of a TV.  And on the flip side of my adventure coin, I would rather just sit beside someone I love and just be together instead of watching TV.  It is the total opposite of an adventure, but I would choose sitting beside a loved one every day of the week when given the chance.  Join me sleeping in a cave in Arkansas or canyoning in Switzerland or just join me on the couch for a minute of peace and quiet--either way I am happy just being with the people I love.

I am quick witted and sarcastic.  I love to laugh.  As I have introduced your dad to my friends, I have realized that I surround myself with funny people.  My best friends are hysterical.  And one of the things I love about your dad is that he makes me laugh.  My kids and I laugh a lot.

I love animals.  I grew up having had almost everything as a pet.  Of course dogs are my favorite, but a raccoon and a mule deer also make great "friends"!  I (not so secretly) wish I could actually talk to animals like Doctor Doolittle and I also dream of having a pet bear.  One of my favorite animal fun facts is that when an elephant sees a human, the same part of their brain lights up as when a human sees a puppy!

I love the mountains and the snow and the cold and I also love watching the sun rise in Cabo and the sun set in Texas (or anywhere, but the sunsets are my favorite thing about Texas).  Snow makes me so happy, but Spring is my favorite season.  I love walking in the woods and I would rather live by water (lake, ocean, river it doesn't matter) than in a neighborhood.

I think it is important that you know that I love fiercely.  I am loyal and devoted and I am a mama bear when it comes to those I love.  I have been praying for both of you since I met your dad and I have grown to love both of you deeply through that time of prayer.  I promise to love your dad forever--the good and the bad.  I know that relationships are hard and that doesn't scare me.  I was hurt deeply in my last marriage and it ended because of continued infidelity and that infidelity spoke "truth" into my greatest fear that I will never be good enough to be loved.  It seemed to prove the lies I believed about myself that I will never be wanted or worthy of love.  Thankfully, I know now that those are lies and that the truth is that I am worthy of love and it is a miracle that I trust fully that your dad loves me and that I trust fully that he will not betray me in that way. I say that it is a miracle because I didn't think I would be able to trust again.  I love your dad enough to trust again.  And your dad loves me in a way that make it easy to believe.  Your dad loves me well and he is selfless and generous in the way he loves me.  

It is important to me that you know that I will love you both fiercely and in that fierce love, I will not try to be your mom.  You have a great mom who loves you and I am so thankful for that.  I don't want to take her place.  I just want to be the lady who loves your dad well and I want you both to know that I love you, too.  I'm awkward and I don't know how to do the step-mom thing because I've never done it before.  In all of the Disney movies the biggest villain is the step-mom and I don't want to be the biggest villain in your lives.  I want to be your cheerleader and I want to be someone who believes in you.  If you need me to listen to you, I want to listen with both of my ears and with my whole heart.  If you come to me for advice, I'll do cartwheels inside and then I will try to give you thoughtful and unbiased advice.  If you need me to help you, then I want to help you with 100% of my energy.  If you want me take you on an adventure, then I can't wait for you to join me.  If you want me to just stay in my lane and love you from afar, then I am going to try my best to do that.  I have no idea what I am doing as I take this new role.  I have no map and no instruction book and I feel a bit lost and overwhelmed because I want so badly to do it right and to be the best me for you that I can be.  I'm going to mess up and I'm going to say I'm sorry.  I hope that I exceed your expectations and I hope you grow to love me and that one day I will hold a very special place in your heart.  I long for that.  I hope you trust my love for your dad and my love for you even through the awkward and bumpy times as we begin this new adventure of blending a family.

I sort of got off of the "Who Am I?" topic, but I really just want to be known.  I feel like we are strangers and that makes me sad and it scares me a little bit.  I'm an open book.  I'm honest.  I'm kind.  I'm thoughtful.  I'm compassionate.  I don't sweat the small stuff or get caught up in the weeds of details and I let a lot roll off of my back (that makes me different from the Johnsons, I think).  I don't get caught up in what if's and I try not to micro manage.  My intentions are usually good and I am not afraid to admit when I am wrong (usually). I will mess up and I will fall down and I will pick myself up, dust myself off and try again.  I may crawl into bed and cry for a bit before I do, but I will try again if that is what I need to do for relationship.  

I hope we all get to know one another.  I hope we all love one another.  I hope we make some great memories along the way.  I hope we laugh a lot.  I hope we have inside jokes and I hope we are confident of the unconditional in our relationship.  I hope we become a family that is made up of a bunch of people who were thrown together out of a situation that none of us ever wanted to be in, but we had the opportunity to make the most of and we did. I hope that down the line me and my kids will be family to you both.  I hope we are all stronger better people because we pushed through and chose to love one another.  We have to be family because I'm marrying your dad, but we get to be friends if that is what we choose--I hope that is what we all choose ultimately!  

I cannot wait for you to really get to know me and prayerfully you will learn to love the me you get to know.