Tag: love

Easter Weekend: It Is Finished

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I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.

Galatians 2:20

Happy Easter weekend, I hope you get to spend it celebrating with loved ones. I want to take this time to talk about peace and forgiveness.

We call Christ the Prince of Peace and it’s a fitting title for the lamb who delivered us from evil. We have been given the chance to find deep lasting inner peace with him. My life hasn’t been peaceful lately, it’s been chaotic. I’ve felt posed for the next thing to rattle us. But that’s not to say there hasn’t also been deep joy, I’ve got a beautiful healthy family and a ton of love in my life. Yes there are flaws, both in me and in life, but if the Son of God can die for the flaws within me the least I can do is make peace with the flaws forced upon me by unseen circumstances.

There is a lot of talk in the self help world about inner peace and I think it’s good talk, but for someone religious I think it’s important to look beyond the guru talks and find the extremely humbling inner peace that comes with being loved, forgiven, and knowing God has a plan. If you’re anything like me you find yourself in phases were you hang onto that and phases when you manically forget that deep peace. I’ve been forgetting it in this season, so what better time than Easter to rewrap myself in the loving cloak of The Prince of Peace?

The truth is God is unmoving, it’s us who drift back and forth to Him, shall we all make an effort to bask in His Glory this weekend and find the peace and love He offers us.

The balance in romantic relationships:

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I was having problems getting a new hard drive that my laptop warranty afforded me. They said it would be to me in two days. Three weeks later and three calls later it had been returned to the warehouse according to the tracker but not according to the company that sent it to me. I was beyond frustrated so I handed it over to my husband, who made one very stern and angry phone call and it was on my porch the next day. Magic! But also one of the reasons we work so well together.

He picks up on the areas I lack and I pick up on areas he lacks. I’ve talked about how all good relationships are partnerships, but it goes beyond that. It’s about finding a partner who can pick up were you let down. It’s magic when you can find someone who helps make your household more rounded. I’m not saying it should be your only goal in love, obviously there are a ton of factors that come into play when it comes to falling in love and getting married, but there is something to say about the dynamics between male and female, ying and yang, critical thinker and creative thinker.

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On being a dependable force of goodness in a child’s life:

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Every now and then I read to much on current events and I feel the burning desire to save the children. A lot of them are doing good, but I’ve always felt a deep spot in my heart for children in situations they shouldn’t be in. It’s not because I’ve ever been in an abusive situation as a child. I had a wonderful childhood, it was tainted by some things, crippling separation anxiety in first grade, a bipolar diagnoses at the age of six, being bullied till I was suicidal in middle school, but really none of that stood a chance against how well loved and protected I was by my parents, family, and friends. My heart aches for children who don’t have that, or for adults who didn’t have that as a child, because that got me through all sorts of things.

That’s what I want to talk about, not how terrible it can be or how good it can be, but what a difference a stable source of good can make in a child’s life. It’s not a news flash, everyone knows that broken homes can do some serious damage, but as my friends start having babies and I work towards that age were I want to as well I’ve been thinking a lot about what you can protect kids from and what you can’t.

There is a ton that you have no control over whether you are the child or the adult looking after them. Bad things happen, to everyone, over and over again, but if we have enough good to counteract that bad we can get somewhere healthy and happy. It doesn’t matter if you are a parent, a family friend, a teacher, or an older sibling, being a stable source of dependability and goodness to a child can save their lives in more ways than one.

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My husband met and married me while I was sick: Finding love while chronically ill

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Photo by: Sarah Warden Photography

A few months ago my husband looked at me and said “I really don’t know who healthy Anna is.” And he wasn’t wrong. He met me when I was really sick with Lyme Disease, and I was still fighting it when we got married. I still am fighting it in a lot of ways, I’m still on medication. I’m still trying to get my “normal” back, but most of my life has fallen back in place. I’m blessed. I know a lot of people don’t get this far with Lyme, but something about that line hit me hard, he didn’t know who I was healthy.

We all are different when we’re sick, even if we have the same loves and personality deep down. It gets distorted by pain, our hobbies get dismissed because we’re not able to do them. We struggle to be ourselves when we’re ill. There’s no way to sugar coat it. I was a lot grumpier when I was at my sickest and definitely a lot weaker and less enthusiastic.

But still, I got the love of my life while coming out of this terrible illness. Someone fell in love with me when I was my grumpy unable self. That’s a testament to our love story for sure but it’s also more than that.

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The process of loving someone teaches you a lot about yourself.

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Photography by: Sarah Warden Photography

I feel like I’ve been learning a lot about myself lately, every corner I turn I’m faced with either a reality that  should have been obvious or something I had never even considered about myself. These revelations have been both good things and bad things and a lot of things that don’t really categorize as either, but one thing that has proven true is most of these revelations come in relation to Chris.

He’s marrying me, so obviously he pays a lot of attention to me, in some ways he pays more attention to me than I pay to myself. He catches small mood changes that hardly register in my mind. He notices repeated habits that are so normal to me I don’t even realize I’m doing them. He speaks on them a lot, pointing them out or asking what’s wrong. It makes me realize how much of my everyday life and being I dismiss because they’re normal to me. That doesn’t make them any less a part of me though, in fact, maybe it makes them a bigger part of me than the intrusive acts or emotions. Maybe these small things, are the foundation on which my personality is laid.

Now, most of these things are neutral acts or positive acts, they aren’t things I feel the need to change, rather they just make me think, but that doesn’t mean that the act of loving someone doesn’t make you notice your flaws. Love may be blind, but it sure opens your eyes to yourself.

You see love makes you want to be a better person for the person you love, and in my case, it has made me critical on some aspects of myself. It’s not negative and I don’t mean it to sound that way. Seeing these flaws are a good thing, because it gives me the chance to approve upon myself, for both him and me. It’s room for growth, which we all desperately need no matter how good we already are.

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Romantic relationships are partnerships and should be treated like it.

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In Australia they don’t say ‘my significant other’ they say ‘my partner’ because that is what relationships really are, they’re a partnership.  I often see hear people talk about how you shouldn’t rely on your partner, and I agree with 50% of what they’re saying.

I agree that you need to be able to function without them, you need to be able to live if something were to happen to them or if something were to happen to the two of you. But not being able to function without someone and relying on someone are not the same thing. You should be able to rely on your partner. They should be carrying you when you can’t carry yourself. I know that there’s an idea out there that you should never be unable to do things alone, but it’s false, everyone needs help, and sometimes we need a lot of it. I touched on this in my relationships and mental illness post, but the same way they should carry you when you can’t, you should carry them. It’s a two-way street. It’s a partnership.

The whole premise of dating isn’t just for fun, though it’s turned into that over the years, it’s that you’ve got someone by your side to tackle life with. It’s a try out session for the partner that will last you a lifetime. And being a partner means a lot more than being in love with your best friend. It means that you ask each other for permission before making sizable decisions. It means that you seek each others advice on near everything. People hear you talk about these things and think that you’re in a controlling relationship, but that isn’t what its about. It’s about wanting the others opinions and wanting them to agree with you as you make choices that will effect both your lives.

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The Candy Bomber:

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Everyone needs a reminder how good the world is, even in the most evil time. This story is from World War 2. A man known as “The Candy Bomber”, named Gail Halvorsen, shared two sticks of gum with kids in the bombed destruction of Berlin. The kids split them as many times as they could and then passed around the wrappers to smell the mint. It gave Halvorsen the idea to ask his friends for their rations of gum and chocolate. He told the kids he would air drop the candy, like he had the supplies. He said they should look for the plain that waved it’s wings. He dropped the candy the next day all tied to handkerchiefs as parachutes.

Word got out around the states and soon tons of candy and handkerchiefs came pouring in. They dropped candy for days and days on end. Around Christmas time, and at first out of the hands of soldiers already fighting over seas. Halvorsen said that he got called in to talk to his officials, expecting to be chastised, but was greeted with warm regards and permission to continue.