​I saw it twice in a week, a quote allegedly by the late Mexican artist, Frida Kahlo, that I could have written:

"I used to think I was the strangest person in the world
but then I thought, there are so many people in the world, there must be someone just like me who feels bizarre and flawed in the same ways I do
I would imagine her, and imagine that she must be out there thinking of me too.
well, I hope that if you are out there you read this and know that yes, it’s true I’m here,
and I’m just as strange as you."

​First of all, though widely attributed to Kahlo, it appears there is no proof she ever actually said it. There doesn’t even to seem to be a plausible suggestion that it was her. So why does everyone think she said it?
 
​With a little digging, I learned that In 2008, a Canadian writer and artist named Rebecca Katherine Martin, just 15 at the time, mailed a postcard to the wildly popular blog PostSecret, a site that anonymously posts reader-submitted “secrets.” The idea is that, by posting the secret, it loses some of its power and the poster becomes somehow less alone. The postcard she created featured a partial picture of Kahlo, which seems to be the only reference to her.

Maybe there’s something to our desire to believe that a famous, beautiful artist felt as flawed and lonely as we do. Maybe that’s why the quote is consistently attributed to Kahlo. Or maybe it’s our inability to pay attention to a Google search longer than the first few results to figure it out. Maybe it’s both.

​One of the places that the alleged Frida Kahlo quote surfaced this week was in a video I watched introducing the Mothers of Preschoolers theme for the year, and I could tell it resonated with my friends too. I lead our local MOPS group this year. You know, the group with the ridiculous name that I never wanted to join because I feared they might try to make me decorate a cake and talk about my feelings? Well, they've never made me decorate a cake. But MOPS has been a lot of beautiful things to me: a place to take my kids when the days felt long, friends and strangers to cook my dinners on nights when I couldn’t because I had just had a baby (or had just lost one), conversation in a place where I had neither friend nor family. But most of all, it’s made me feel less alone.

I was walking on the beach, talking to my brother in law and sister in law, but I might as well have been on the Roman Road, talking to anyone who would listen.

One of my daughters is consistently a terrible ambassador for herself. We know her to be hilarious, brilliant, insightful and caring, but many people who encounter her—even family—might not gather that from their time with her. Her behavior betrays her. I hear myself saying this, in frustration, and dig my toes in the sand, immediately aware that I do it too.

Our new pastor had rattled the familiar verse off the weekend before, “What I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do” (Romans 7:15 NIV).

So, for our daughter, maybe it’s a tantrum when she’s feeling overwhelmed, flying off the handle because a bee flew by or speaking unkindly to someone she loves. I see this behavior met with frustration, anger, or even disgust from people we know and from strangers alike. Sometimes I meet it the same way. It’s frustrating to see someone I love misrepresent herself so.

And yet, I betray my heart on a regular basis. Inside, most of the time, I am loving, open and kind. I see the best in others and want to believe good things for them; I have ideas about telling and showing them this. I have plans to spend my time with intention, doing things I love for myself and people I love. But then, instead, I spend my time forgetting myself, complaining or judging, scrolling through Facebook while the precious minutes fly by at night and hitting snooze in the morning. Why do I do this?

Five years ago, when I turned thirty, I found myself at a crossroads of sorts. I struggled with my identity, then a mother of two daughters, three and one, working full time. I wrote about my newfound knowledge that aging is hard, even when you didn't think you were vain or insecure, and that confidence looked different and was harder to come by than I'd thought.

Today I find myself turning thirty-five with far less struggle. Everything is different: we've relocated to two different states since then and settled on the southern Virginia coast, where I never wanted to come and now never want to leave. I quit my job to stay home with the kids and added one more: a wild, affectionate, blond little boy. Our girls have grown, and with them our parenting challenges. My body and diet and lifestyle have all changed. And coinciding with, or maybe as a result of all these changes, I have learned volumes about myself.

Like most people, I have traits of which I'm not proud. It can be tempting to shame ourselves for these, or at least it can be for me. I'm terrible at keeping in touch, at returning phone calls. I like the idea of making plans but often feel like I want to stay home at the last minute. I screen phone calls, even from people I love most. I can be awkward in social settings; I love people but crave solitude. For years I have hung my head about all of these things.

Over the last five years, though, I've learned that these are not necessarily shortcomings, but character traits. My love of togetherness but need for solitude are not contradictory, they just are. They are part of what makes me me, and each part is equally good and right and neither part requires me to apologize. Knowing this about myself frees me. It enables me to commit to only the social engagements I really want to be a part of, reserving time at home with my family or alone. I no longer feel a need to explain a negative RSVP. The reasons why I choose not to commit to something, for myself or for our family, are my prerogative. My wellness--and my family's--is my responsibility alone and comes first and, for me, this includes ensuring my margin. Adopting this habit has garnered me puzzled looks and questions that sometimes feel more like accusations from others with different needs, but it has also largely removed resentfulness from my life. If I only say yes when I really mean it, then I am free to be fully present and engaged where I am. And, necessarily, I say no to lots of really good things. But when I leave white space in my  life, sometimes it serves me and my family by allowing us downtime. It has also often freed me to help others I hadn't known I'd be helping. And, either way, it's good.

One afternoon a couple weeks ago, while the kids rested and napped, I sat on my bed listening to a sudden summer storm. After a blinding flash of lightning, thunder clapped so loudly that the house shook. I heard a crash in the room above mine, then fast little feet pounding down the stairs. Emerie burst into my room and dove onto the bed.

"The storm seems to be right over us," I said as I held her, "but it won't stay long."

A few minutes later, the thunder rolled from a farther distance, and Emerie relaxed and headed back upstairs.

Later that week, we ventured to the Air and Space Center and watched an IMAX movie about the International Space Station. The astronauts talked about their impressions of life up there, and of the view of things below. One talked about the surprise of learning that, from space, you can see storms all over the world. We watched the footage of lightning flashing in clusters on different continents at once. It got me thinking.

On the way home, we talked about our favorite parts of the museum. I mentioned the movie as one of my favorites. Specifically, to my Emerie, who still tends to see the world through her very narrow lens, I focused on the part about the storms. About how, in the midst of the storm in our backyard, it would be easy to assume we were the only ones fearful of thunder and lightning, the only ones enduring the pouring rain. But a higher perspective reminds us that there are storms all over, and that those around us are suffering too.

​I stood on the train in Paris, clutching the metal bar as we slowed to a stop. “Mind the gap between the train and the platform,” the recording said, and when we were safely above ground, something about those words struck me enough to make me jot them down.
 
Yesterday, while looking for something else, I found them again. Mind the gap.
 
Our family lives in a gap this summer. Our house is torn apart, in the midst of a major renovation. It’s eustress, like I learned about in my Intro to Psychology class in college—a positive stressor—but a stressor nonetheless. We are reunited after a month apart and thankful every night to sleep in our own beds, but the rest of our main level is a construction site—filthy, unfinished, unsafe. In our un-air-conditioned sunroom, where it has been in the 90s all week, I cook our meals in a microwave, toaster oven and on a hot plate. We are hot. The kids are getting on each other’s nerves. I am never alone and running out of diversions, even as loads of work that I cannot do beckons from inside the house, since I can’t safely contain Deacon. I find myself wishing the gap between under construction and completion away, but of course that would mean wishing three weeks of my children’s summer away, and it will be over soon enough on its own.

Uncomfortably, I'm wading through some personal uncertainty as well, in a gap of not knowing. Not knowing isn’t my strength.

I find my sense of self in a gap too, this whole year. Of what I once did and what I do now, who I used to be and who I will someday be. So whoever I am now, in this season, shifts uncomfortably in the gap. I am unmoored; I can’t find my voice, can’t find my passion, can’t find my discipline. And if I’m not careful, I might wish away these questions, this uncertainty, this discomfort, yes, but along with it I would miss the peculiar beauty of these days. The preciousness of the faith inherent in not knowing. The gratitude that living in the moment necessitates. The simple pleasures of just being here, right now, of being aware that nothing else has been promised to us anyway.

I’m shifting my focus this week to minding the gap between: the way it is and the way it may someday be, what I am and what I want to become, what I do today and what I may accomplish someday. And maybe there are changes to make or work that should be done; maybe there is motivation I lack or hustle I haven’t found, but I rest in the knowledge that there can be time for all of that. It’s not always time for looking ahead or behind, sometimes it’s enough to just acknowledge and be present in the in between.

On the same day he took me for a loud, fast ride around the neighborhood in the gold, ‘69 Mustang both he and his son drove to high school, the Mustang he later carefully loaded on a trailer bought for just that purpose, he looked at me tearfully and said, “Thank you for carrying me this last year.”
 
A hundred meals flashed in my memory: some packed for two, with care and attention to detail, others for one, before, and then even more frequently after she was gone, and still others shared around our chaotic and banged-up kitchen table. And of them all, I think, the latter mattered the most.
 
That table wasn’t fancy. Extendable and bought for a fraction of its value from the “As-Is” section of Ikea; when we bought it we had thought it a steal. But ten years of scratches and spills, three kids with grubby hands and math homework later, and it had seen many better days.
 
And the meals, though homemade with love, fell far short of gourmet: turkey for Thanksgiving and ham at Christmas, yes, but mostly soups in the winter: boeuf Bourguignon, butternut squash bisque and pasta e fagioli, and simple dishes the rest of the year: ratatouille, tacos, Bolognese and baked chicken.
 
“Thank you for carrying me,” said the man who had jump-started my car when it had died on a winter night, filled with children after a visit to a friend’s house, who took out my trash and changed my flat tire while my husband was away, who often met my daughters at the bus stop while my son napped and chatted with them all the way home, who delighted in watching my son grow and always greeted him with a smile and a hug. 
 
I’m still mulling over all that our friendship with him has taught me. I’m still deciding what it means.
 
There is a gate in the fence that separates our yard from the one that used to be his. We put it there with hope that we would use it for years to come, not wanting to believe that maybe we wouldn’t get the chance. If pressed to consider the possibility of different neighbors, he joked, “Maybe we could write a provision into the contract,” but more seriously, “You could always lock it.”
 
So before he drove across the country, his Mustang trailing behind, while he stayed in our guest room, the one tucked into the eaves and overlooking the yard and garden next door that had not two days before been his, I heard my daughter in the back yard calling to someone I couldn’t see: “Sure, come on over!” I could almost taste the bittersweetness on my tongue as I saw the beautiful blonde child walk through the gate, from her new yard into ours. Can a gate be a legacy? A legacy that lets in a little girl with flip flops and a shy smile, who has a little sister and brother and parents who invite my husband to share a meal with them while I’m away?
 
I know what we gave him, I think, because he would thank us for it all the time. But I’m still coming to terms with what he gave us, along with the bags of empty food containers no longer waiting to be refilled. Sometimes it seemed that, to him, maybe I was a bit of every woman: mother, sister, wife, daughter, friend. But I think I’ll always remember him as the one who reminded me that I can live and love with intention and my days can impact others right here, over the fence-- right now-- not only in a someday down the road when my children are grown and not only back then, when my days looked different. Now. Around my banged-up kitchen table, with my tired eyes and bickering children, eating my ordinary food.
 
We'll miss saying, "Come on in," and a half-hearted, "excuse the mess," even as we get to know the warm people who have bought his home but could never take his place.

It’s not clear to me who did the carrying, but that gate in the back yard will always feel like hope and love. It brings us comfort to know it will continue enabling us to say, "Sure, come on over," even now that he's gone. 

We sat outside at a café, sipping drinks and reflecting.

Starting in Barcelona, we had flitted across several parts of Spain, to the Basque Country and the Rioja wine region and back again, then on to Bordeaux and Paris by train. We had experienced three distinct cultures and languages and four very different landscapes.  We toured seven wineries and at least five cathedrals; we stumbled over our limited French and Spanish; we learned about architecture, art, history and wine; we ate countless tapas, drained dozens of glasses of wine, and moaned over dishes of paella and cups of coffee in Spain and pretty much everything we ate in France. How would we decide on one favorite part?

While Daniel mulled it over, I blurted out, “My favorite part was having the space and time to really be with you. I felt present and connected. And I loved everything else about the trip, but that was by far my favorite.”

He complained that I stole his answer.
​
And we had stowed bottles of wine wrapped in my sweaters in our luggage, accidentally left a particularly cool sign from a bodega in Spain in our hotel in Bordeaux and loaded up on ridiculously fashionable outfits for the girls from Paris, but this was the souvenir I was most concerned about.
“We can’t always go away. So how do we bring that back?” I wondered aloud.

When we began our twelve-day journey, we were both a little lost. Daniel in stress from work and our upcoming home renovation and I in something of a delayed identity crisis. For months I had felt like nothing was mine, that maybe, slowly, my dingy, grey Chuck Taylors and my messy ponytail and minivan were starting to define me. And it was less about what others saw—of course that’s what they saw—and more about the fact that it was becoming all that I could see. I talked it over with Daniel and close girlfriends, but I hadn’t found any reprieve. To be honest, I still haven’t found the antidote. All I know is I didn’t feel that way for a second while we were away.

Vacation is easy. No work, no juggling, no cooking, no dishes, no laundry, no responsibilities, no children with their constant needs. About a week in, though, I realized how much I missed those children and their needing me. I missed being the one to kiss boo-boos and listen to them tell me, breathless, about their days. I missed many of the things that had started to feel so endless and draining.

And maybe that’s the point? Maybe one of the purposes the distance serves is just to remind us how good we already have it? I’m not sure.

​On our trip we learned new things, among them that we are still capable of learning new things. We remembered how many characteristics we might have thought of as American that are actually just part of the human condition, both good and bad. We remembered how much of that condition can transcend language and geography. We watched Spanish fathers dote on their daughters, just like American ones do; we learned about the ego and insecurity that shaped famous paintings at the Louvre, and we gasped, teary-eyed, at the overwhelming beauty inside Saint-Chapelle in Paris. We were reminded of the reasons why we travel—it’s not just the time away— it’s what we gain while we’re there. We talked about bringing the kids next time, so they can see first-hand the intangibles we try to teach them. We remembered that it’s worth the time, the expense, the preparation. Our trip was worth every bit of effort, every penny, every tear. We remembered that we can’t learn about someone else without learning something about ourselves, even if we’re still sorting out what that is.
​
That night at the café, we talked about how we might preserve that connectedness, that feeling of being present. We talked about turning off our phones, about carving pockets in our day to sit down over coffee and talk, even amidst the chaos. Later that night, our tenth anniversary, we ate dinner at an Italian restaurant (in Paris!) not unlike the one where we had had our first date in Baltimore, and then we bought a bottle of champagne and cheap, souvenir espresso mugs and walked to the Eiffel Tower in the rain. We sat on the lawn with all the other tourists, snapping pictures for people who said gracias, thank you, and grazie and taking a few ourselves, often laughing hysterically. What a life we’ve been blessed with, what a love. “Who’s got it better than us?” Daniel whispered to me, and of course I had no reply. 

​It’s an embarrassment of riches to find ourselves ten years into marriage still feeling this lucky, this happy, this in love. And that’s not to whitewash the annoyances (just a glance through my pictures will show you how often Daniel rushes off ahead of me—a pet peeve of mine—many of my pictures are of his back). We aren’t ignoring the hard times, nor are we living in denial about the hardships to come. We remember them and we know they will return. But, in the spirit of being present, it’s not our job to live in fear of them. We choose not to wonder what might be or what might have been; we choose to embrace the life and love we actually have, right in front of us.

When we filled out our Customs form on the plane, we disclosed the wine and clothes, but we couldn’t list the souvenirs that mattered most: a profound gratitude for our love, our life together, our children, our family and community, and a renewed desire to be fully present in the midst of them all.
​
We couldn’t believe the ground we’d covered in twelve days, all that we saw, all that we learned, all that we experienced together. How could we explain it to someone who wasn’t there? How could we sum it up?

“It’s kind of like a secret only we know,” I said to him in Paris. And now that we’re home, everyone asks about the trip.

“It was great,” he says.
​
“Indescribable,” I agree, and we share a knowing smile and leave it at that. 

​I’m up in the middle of the night, carrying burdens that aren’t mine. Or maybe they are.

Someone I love is nursing a broken heart. “I wish I could skip this,” he said, and he asked me what he should do to help him heal.

 “Take excellent care of yourself,” I told him, and I meant it. I talked about eating well, about taking care of his body, about surrounding himself with people who are affirming, about doing the things that feed his soul. It was solid, practical advice to follow in a time when he felt the energy to do few of these things.

I believed it. I even drafted a piece about it to share with you. I still believe it.
​
But there is a time for everything.

I tossed in the middle of this night, cradling sore wrists, my outward sign of inner struggle, and praying without words, waiting for the light. And then I got tired of waiting and got up.

Last night a stranger called who needed a favor for our mutual friend. A friend with a generous heart and contagious laugh and a house across the street from mine. A friend who, I learned then, had just unexpectedly, so shockingly, lost her youngest daughter.

 “No!” I yelled into the phone at this stranger, involuntarily. I hung up and sobbed into Daniel’s chest, wracked with vicarious pain for my friend, for her husband and their children. Minutes later, I found myself at her kitchen counter combatting opportunistic fruit flies and sugar ants while the dogs stretched their legs out back. Someone must have been loading the dishwasher when it became obvious it was time to go.  I finished the job and sprayed down the counters and sink to eliminate the springtime pests and laughed through my tears at the absurdity of the gesture.

I remember frantically hacking away at dead tomato plants in the garden the night our neighbor died. As if I could protect her husband from further grief, as if I could fix any small part of something so unfixable. Of course I couldn’t. But I also couldn’t help but try. My grief compelled me.

​​Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.
Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.

​For more than a year now, I've held fast to a dream. But of course, I've held it far longer than that. Before I grew into my teeth, from second grade on, all I've ever wanted to do was write. But I never told people I wanted to be a writer; I told them I wanted to be an author. Did I understand the difference back then? That something about this particular dream was held up in the thing I wanted to hold in my hands?

For the last year then, maybe it wasn't a dream I held fast to. Maybe it was more like a calling or compulsion. Always I've been a writer searching for the story-- my story-- the one I couldn't help but tell. I thought maybe this was it. I spent money and time trying to learn the mechanics and execution. Through hundreds of dark mornings I labored while my children slept, reading, organizing and planning, researching, listening and writing. It was my baby, tied so inextricably to my identity as a writer that I felt I had to mention it to others, even though it made my voice shake.

And then I got stuck. Life got complicated and crowded for a while, and I lost my inspiration. Logistics and issues outside of my control got in the way, but also I couldn't find my diligence or passion. I stopped feeling like I had something to say that was worth hearing. 

This book, this baby, had been a joint venture, a deeply personal collaboration with a dear friend. It was an arduous, brutal journey for her and completely uncharted for me. She afforded me nothing but grace while I tried to find a way forward. And then one day she felt the need to let it go. She tried to give it to me, but I couldn't take it; it was never really mine. It took me weeks of wrestling before I could respond to her. 

Because what happens when you know you're called to do a thing, but then the thing changes or is taken away? Does it negate the initial call? Does it mean you got it wrong? That the process was the thing, or that maybe it will come again? Is it possible it just means you have to lean in further, work harder, hustle faster to press through the obstacles?

I don't know. But I know I'm tired of starting things and not finishing them. My pile of false starts is one of my least favorite collections. I couldn't bear the thought of adding another to the heap, not one so big, so typical, so cliché. Everyone is writing a book, right? It's on so many bucket lists, but it typically doesn't get crossed off. And what about the people who heard me mumble, "Actually, I'm working on a book," at some point last year? How do I reconcile that?

Am I stopping because it got hard? Does walking away defy the clear-as-day initial call that this book was for me to write? Am I quitting or letting go?

Last month I got to attend a milestone birthday party for my father-in-law. We had traveled nine hours into the middle of the night, unbeknownst to him, to be there when he walked through the door. Just after “SURPRISE,” his small grandchildren yelled, “OPA!,” before rushing to hug him. I watched him make his way around that crowded room, greeting family and friends he has met along his winding road. You see, my father-in-law has known pain in his life; he has known regret, and he is well-acquainted with the rarity and beauty of second chances. He believes deeply in grace and forgiveness, because they have transformed him.

I didn’t know him before; we met more than eleven years ago over pizza on a Friday night in New England after I'd been dating his son for only a month. And I liked him immediately. He is easy and warm. He has demonstrated, over and over again, that he not only loves and supports his son or our family, but that he loves and supports me. When Daniel used to travel all the time, he would call the house in the middle of the week. “I’m sorry, he’s not here,” I would tell him.

“I know. I called to see how you’re doing,” he would reply.

So on his big birthday, in that twinkly room, I watched him reconnect with old friends, new friends, and people he has given a hand up to along the way. And when one of his sons announced that he was going to play a song he had written with his father in mind, I listened.

“My dad is my biggest mentor,” he said, “he let us make mistakes. He listened. He let us become who we were going to be.”

I felt my eyes well up. Because that was exactly it.

My father-in-law has a trait I don’t have, or at least one that doesn’t come naturally. He has restraint. The word is so unfamiliar to me I actually had to look it up before I wrote this to ensure I was using it properly. Restraint: (2) unemotional, dispassionate, or moderate behavior; self control. And sure, I recognize the irony that I am sharing an impassioned post I’ve written on the virtue of restraint, but stick with me. 

Lately I find myself in a handful of situations I can’t understand. They are not my situations. Either they involve politics and the larger community or the actions of friends and loved ones. And in both I struggle to practice restraint.

Walking away from a situation in which I had actually succeeded to love and support instead of spout off at the mouth, I mentioned to Daniel, “I’ve been thinking a lot about your dad,” I said. “About how he shows the most restraint of anyone I know. That doesn’t come easily to me; I just say whatever I’m thinking.”

Daniel laughed, “He has actually said that about you.” And I thought, well, at least we both know me well. I wasn’t offended. It’s true. And I might argue that there is merit there too. If you’re a friend of mine, it’s unlikely you’ll ever wonder where you stand with me. There won’t be secrets. I will be honest with you; it just might sometimes get uncomfortable.