Thirty Pieces of My Thirty Years #9: Mom

Selflessness is always taking the smallest helping so that others can have the choicest pieces.

Selflessness is praying and fasting for your children and for their spouses.

Selflessness is thirty plus years of baseball, football, volleyball, soccer, and basketball games.

Selflessness is waiting up until midnight to make sure everyone makes it home safely.

Selflessness is caring for your aging father, counting pills, paying bills, loving even when it's hard.

Selflessness is allowing your introverted husband to have peace and quiet, even when you'd rather talk to him.

Selflessness is helping to paint my kitchen ceiling.

Selflessness is caring for the thousands of patients who haven't been able to care for themselves.

Selflessness is dying to your own preferences about weddings and joyfully serving your children to help make their vision reality.

Selflessness is dropping everything when one of your children calls.

Selflessness is rejoicing when they rejoice and weeping when they weep.

Selflessness is thousands of diapers changed, meals cooked, boo-boos tended, toilets cleaned, cards written, piles of laundry folded, pants hemmed, and phone calls made.

Selflessness is my mom.

Happy Birthday Mom! I'm so grateful to have had these past 30 years with you and to have seen God's grace so richly displayed in your life. I hope that one day, when I have children of my own, I will be able to follow your example.

Thirty Pieces of My Thirty Years #8: Becca

Exploring London together.

Wedding day

I have many friends in my life who are not like me. In fact, you'll be hearing about some of them by the time I finish this series. I like having friends who are not like me - they challenge me, complement me, and support me in areas where I am weak. This is a very real gift.

My friend Becca, however, is a gift of a completely different sort. She is a friend who is very much like me -frighteningly so at times. We are both oldest children with moms who are nurses. We both grew up in the church, became Christians at an early age, and walked with the Lord throughout high school and college. We both majored in English and taught English for several years. As a result, we've both graded thousands of essays. We are both idealists who struggle when reality doesn't measure up to our dreams (which is often, in case you're curious!). We both love coffee, Pottery Barn, ethnic food, and Ann Taylor. We both thought we'd get married young and actually got married at 28. We both have husbands who are engineers, love Settlers of Catan and sports, and challenge us with tender truthfulness in the face of our emotionality.

All that to say, our brains and hearts are shaped in much the same way. More than most other people I know, Becca understands my particular joys and struggles, the way they feel inside and the particular impact they have on my soul. This has been a wonderful blessing to me. Sometimes, when I am in a hard place, I just need to hear that I am not crazy for struggling like I do, and Becca is quick to remind me that I am not alone. Even more importantly though, she always points me back to God and to His word as my ultimate source of hope and comfort.

It's hard to believe I've really only known Becca for four years. In that time, she has grown from being an acquaintance I talked about teaching with to a European traveling partner to the kind of friend who notices when I've had my eyebrows waxed. She has rejoiced with me when I have rejoiced, even when she herself longed for the blessings I was receiving, and has wept with me as I have wept. She has seen me at my worst and has persisted as my friend, having faith for me when I didn't have faith for myself. She and her husband Seth are also some of CJ and my favorite neighbors, blizzard buddies, Settlers of Catan competitors, and marriage counselors.

Becca, thanks for being a faithful friend!

Thirty Pieces of My Thirty Years #7: Joel

I originally intended to post this entry on Saturday, the day of Joel's marriage to my wonderful new sister-in-law, Jen. However, I got too busy with the festivities to make that happen. All the same, this post is in honor of Joel's wedding day - I love you brother!

Joel and I in Paris on our family European Christmas trip.

Joel is my little brother who is not so little. We're only 22 months apart, so I can't really remember life without Joel. We are similar in some ways and very different in many ways, but I am so grateful God gave me Joel as a brother. Here are just a few of the many things I appreciate about him:

Joel is strong. One of the things I remember my parents saying to him time and time again when we were little was, "Joel, you don't know your own strength." Often, they said this after he pushed his tiny friend Sarah over in play or after he shoved our youngest brother Nate a little too hard. After all, Joel went on to become a heavyweight wrestler and a football lineman. But I think Joel is strong in more ways than just the physical. He is strong in his convictions about God and the gospel. He is a strong leader in his church and in his work in campus ministry. And he has been strong in the midst of suffering and persecution, putting his hope in the Lord even when it would have been easy to waver.

Joel is tender. Even as a small child, he was quick to notice and care for the weak and the suffering. One time, a few years back when I was still single, he sent me one of the sweetest birthday cards ever, reminding me of my beauty in God's eyes even when it is unnoticed by others. His words helped encourage me in a difficult time. I have seen him continue to grow in this area, showing incredible tenderness to his bride.

Joel is curious. I distinctly remember conversations at the dinner table with a three-year-old Joel that began something like this...Joel: Mom, why is ketchup red? Mom: Because it's made of tomatoes. Joel: Why are tomatoes red? Mom: Because God made them like that. Joel: Why did God make them like that? You get the idea. Joel always wanted to know why and loves figuring things out. My brain is much less scientific, but I so appreciate Joel's love for and curiosity about the natural world. God has richly gifted him in this area, and I look forward to see how God will continue to use these gifts in the future.

Joel is competitive. He once threw a checkerboard at me, pieces and all, when I beat him at Checkers, and we've each had our fair share of bad attitudes in family game nights. I appreciate Joel's competitiveness though as it has sharpened me and as we've grown together in humility and as gracious losers.

Joel is intentional. He likes to plan and strategize ways to run his life most efficiently - there are few other people I know (besides my Dad and myself) who can get so excited about organizational systems, and I love that about Joel. He has also been an example to me in the intentionality of his conversation. He does not waste any opportunity to draw people out and find out what is really going on in their hearts. Joel was the first person to call me out on being too guarded about what I was really thinking, and though I wasn't grateful at the time, his challenge has stuck with me as I've worked to grow in vulnerability over the years.

Perhaps the most lasting impact Joel has had on my life is the way my relationship with him helped prepare me for my marriage to CJ. Both Joel and CJ are men whose personalities are an interesting mix of strength and tenderness, men who like to debate, and men who value truth and theology. Growing to value Joel's strengths in these areas and to learn how to relate to him in spite of our differences has greatly served me in my relationship with CJ.

Joel, I love you much and so grateful God gave you to me as a brother. I hope you are having a fabulous honeymoon, and I can't wait to see you soon!

Thirty Pieces of My Thirty Years #6: Reading

As you can see, I come from a family of bibliophiles. I don't have to search my memory long to find evidences of our obsession.

My Dad loves the smell of books, loves to press his nose against the binding and breath deeply. My brothers make fun of him, but I've caught them both doing it a time or two.

When she was a girl, my Mom tried to escape her household chores by "going to the bathroom" and reading. She's still known to lose track of a day when captured by a good book.

I was read to enough as a child that I was able to teach myself to read before kindergarten, having memorized the words to my favorite stories. Throughout most of my childhood, I read an average of a book a day. At one point, I decided I was going to read all the books in the young adult section of the library and began working my way thorugh the "A" biographies (I think I got to George Washington Carver before I quit). In general though, I read Nancy Drew, Boxcar Children, and the like.

My Dad read my brothers and I the Adventures of Mini and Maxi and The Chronicles of Narnia. My Mom read to us from history books as part of our homeschooling curriculum. I read my brothers a series of books about some girl named Mandie. We lost ourselves in her adventures on our living room couch, me in the center, Joel on one side, Nate on the other.

My brothers and I ate more than our fair share of free personal pan pizzas thanks to Pizza Hut's Book-It program.

Martin family beach vacations have been and still are basically week-long reading fests - with a few breaks for swimming, eating, boating, and napping. It's how we relax.

Martin family Christmas mornings usually end with everyone holding a new stack of books.

I don't read as much as I used to, but I still consider myself a reader. Books feed my curiosity, allow me to understand people different than myself, and help me to be still and quiet in a busy, crazy world.

I love the way they look on a shelf, pages after pages of wisdom waiting to be explored. I love how they fit in my hand, the grainy feel of the pages in my fingers. I love how it feels when a book totally captures you, when you stay up until 3 a.m. to finish it, when an author says something you could never put words to, maybe didn't even know you were trying to express, but on some deep level always felt needed to be said.

I love that even God values words, that He chose to reveal Himself to us in a book, in pages, in story that can be read.

Thirty Pieces of My Thirty Years #5: Singleness

Singleness was not supposed to be one of the pieces of my life. As a little girl, I figured I'd do what I saw most of the people around me doing - go to college, meet someone, fall in love, and plan a wedding. Shortly thereafter, I figured, we'd settle in a cute little house and have a few babies, and the rest of life would be a haze of cozy, joyful Kodak moments. It seemed to me the perfect plan, and since I didn't see anything morally wrong with any of it, I was sure that God would help work out all the details.

Well, needless to say, God had other plans for my life. I was graduated from college with a diploma and teaching credentials, but no boyfriend in sight, much less a marriage prospect. The neat little plan I had for my life was unraveling, and suddenly, I found myself facing a season of life I never imagined - singleness.

Many people idealize the single life - lots of expendable income, more free time than you know what do do with, endless options. I wasn't thinking about any of those things though; all I could imagine were years and years of lonely dinners, dateless weddings, and way too quiet Saturday nights. I feared being alone.

But in His wisdom, God allowed me to experience six years of lonely dinners, dateless weddings, and quiet Saturday nights. I learned that if I let go of my fear of being alone, I could actually enjoy the quiet moments, that they provided rest for my soul.

I learned that even when I felt alone, God was near, that He was working in my life, calling me to trust His plan and let go of my own.

And I learned that singleness was full of wonderful blessings: a rewarding career as a middle school English teacher; a chance to pursue my passion by getting a masters degree in creative writing; opportunities to travel to Hawaii, Arizona, Boston, Cambridge, London, Ireland, Scotland, France, Italy, and Switzerland; and sweetest of all, eleven wonderful roommates who are now among my dearest friends.

Even though I'm very thankful to be married now, the reality is that if I'd been married when I thought I should, I would have missed out on many, many blessings. I'm not saying I'm no longer up for a house full of babies or that album of Kodak moments, but I am saying that I'm grateful for the story God's written for my life thus far, including the chapter called singleness.

When I was struggling with being single after graduating from college, I prayed some super-spiritual prayer like, "God, if I have to be single, can you at least let me live with some really cool roommates?" The picture above, taken on our wedding day, is evidence that God often answers even our most selfish, pitiful prayers. The women you see (along with CJ and his many roommates) were all roommates of mine in or after college, and they have filled my life with much joy, encouragement, and laughter. Mary Grace, Rachel, Jill, Leah, Brynne, Lisa, Julie, Amy, Chrystal, Kelly, and Kirsten, thank you for being the best roommates a girl could ask for. God has used you in my life in my life in more ways than I can name here, but each of you helped make my single years the rich, sweet time they were.

Thirty Pieces of My Thirty Years Update

So you may have figured this out by now, but I'm having a hard time keeping up with my post-a-day goal for this Thirty Pieces blog series. Leave it to me to take on a project (or 50) I can't quite manage!

I'm still going to finish it, but in with all the traveling and weddings and house projects we have going on right now, I'm going to allow myself to complete the thirty posts by the end of the summer instead of forcing myself to finish by the end of July. I hope you'll still keep reading along with me!

Thirty Pieces of My Thirty Years #4: Lamont and Tyler

Outside, snow falls, fat flakes floating on still, heavy air. Inside, laughter and tears mingle with twinkling lights, sparkling ornaments floating in wine glasses. We have shared our burdens; we have entered into each other's stories. We stand in a circle and pray, hands linked.

The baby is sleeping upstairs. The snow settles onto branches. God hears our voices. I feel peace.

* * *

Lamont and Tyler, this is just one of many such moments CJ and I have enjoyed with you guys. You have put in long hours helping us paint and move into our new place, you have sat with us in the midst of our deepest struggles, you have enjoyed us for the opinionated, emotional, crazy people we are, and you have asked hard questions and persisted in hard places of our lives. You have been the kind of friends to us that I hope we can be both to you and others. Thank you.

Thirty Pieces of My Thirty Years #3: Cambridge

I know, I know. I'm a bit behind on my Thirty Pieces of My Thirty Years series. I intended to write while we were visiting my in-laws this weekend, but somehow hamburgers, mass, ice cream, shopping, and Settlers of Catan made three days fly by too quickly. So I'll be catching up on my posts over the next few days. My first post today is about my time studying abroad in Cambridge, England.

Four years today, you would have found me in Cambridge, England, enjoying a daily routine that went something like this:
Wake up in tiny St. Catherine's College dorm room, tired thanks to drunken Italians celebrating their World Cup victory outside my window the previous night (Italia! Italia!) and already sweating thanks to the absence of air-conditioning and record-breaking heat.
Enjoy breakfast in the already sweltry St. Catherine's dining wall. Pass over baked beans and stewed tomatoes. Choose a chocolate croissant and a steaming cappuccino (remind myself that the Italians do have their merits after all). Choose a seat at long dining hall table; imagine that I am in a Harry Potter film. Share essay writing progress with Heidi, Kellie, Kimberly, and or/Kevin, my new friends who are also from George Mason and studying here this summer.
Walk down Trumpington Street and across the River Cam to morning Jane Austen class. Admire Alexander Lindsay's ability to quote from memory long passages of Pride and Prejudice and his passion for Austen's "moral compass."
Grab a mid-morning snack and engage in Austen debrief with Kellie and Kimberly. Attend plenary lecture on tragicomedy and wonder if I could ever present such brilliance in a one hour span.
Enjoy leisurely walk back to St. Catherine's for mid-afternoon break. Eat peanut butter and apples in my dorm room. Read sonnets in preparation for afternoon class. Send a few e-mails. Return to classroom area for afternoon Shakespeare class. Wonder why none of my high school teachers ever bothered to tell me that many of Shakespeare's sonnets appear to have been written to a "fair youth."
Wander downtown after class. Explore Magdalene College, where C.S. Lewis once lived and worked. Sit on a bench and feel inspired. Dream of writing my own book someday.
Join the GMU gang for dinner in the now almost unbearably sweltering dining hall. Share funny stories from the day and plan for the night's adventures. Eat a three-course meal served by waiters and marvel once again at how different the British university is from the American college. Try to enjoy the meat and potatoes and dream of guacamole and air conditioning.
Spend the night out with GMU friends: a performance of Hamlet on the lawn or a round or two of Strongbow at the pub. Laughter. Deep conversation. A taste of a slower, more relational culture that is a far cry from the fast-paced Northern Virginia world we call home.
I only spent three weeks in Cambridge, but they are three weeks that have left a lasting impact, not only in the four good friends I met there, but also in the form of a lasting desire for a simple, quiet, rich life.

Thirty Pieces of My Thirty Years #2: Coffee Shops

Perhaps it's a little sad that coffee shops are making my list as one of the 30 most influential things in my life. I'll be honest. I do like coffee, and my husband likes coffee - a lot. So we spend more than our share of time at our neighborhood Starbucks (I walked there this morning in fact). But I like to think it's more than just a yuppie obsession. After all, coffee shops have been a major part of a lot of big things in my life. It was in a coffee shop that I:

*Stayed up until 2 a.m. talking about boys and life with the KAR squared group.
*Met my first NOVA roommates, Jill and Leah.
*Was first asked out by CJ.
*Dated CJ - we were both in grad school while we were dating, so many of our dates involved studying in a coffee shop together.
*Conferenced with my first freshman composition students.
*Developed my friendships with Becca, Cortney, Lisa, Randi, Tyler, Sue, Heidi, Kellie, Kimberly, Abby, and pretty much everyone else I know.
*Graded thousands of middle school and college essays and read my way through grad school.
*Enjoyed newlywed Saturday mornings - reading and Starbucks followed by a walk to the farmers' market.

So thank you Starbucks, Murky Coffee, Le Madeleine, Greenberry's, Dunkin Donuts, Panera, Caribou, Prince Street Cafe, Seattle's Best, Jazzman's, Saxby's, Chestnut Hill, Peet's, and Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf. Thank you for hundreds of house coffees, iced blendeds, pumpkin spice lattes, and hazelnut iced coffees. Thank you for comfy chairs and clean tables. Thank you for space to people watch and eavesdrop and be surrounded by people even when you need to be by yourself. Thank you for good memories with my husband and for creating a place in our culture where relationships happen.

Thirty Pieces of My Thirty Years #1: Bigler Hall

Third Floor Bigler Girls (My Senior Year): Mel, Me, Erin, Brianne, Shannon, and Mary Grace

Throughout my junior year and in the first semester of my senior year (before I left Penn State for student teaching), I lived in 326 Bigler Hall, a squat, architecturally unimpressive female dormitory on the corner of Penn State's East Halls, a section of campus occupied primarily by freshmen.

Out of our dorm window, my roommate, Mary Grace, and I had a view of Lot 80, the vast, square parking lot that separated East Halls from the rest of campus. In the winter, the icy winds blew uninterrupted across the treeless lot and rattled our window. In the spring and fall, we opened the window and invited in the smells and sounds of our little corner of campus: the whizz of cars into and out of the parking lot and the fragments of conversation and warm haze of cigarette smoke drifting up from the dorm entrance where smokers and the occasional mellow guitar player gathered.

In many ways, Bigler Hall was the last place an upperclassmen should have wanted to live. It was far from everything. An atmosphere of freshmen immaturity prevailed. The rooms were small and boxy. But for Mary Grace and I and for the other 8-10 girls from our campus ministry who chose to live there, it was a pocket of warmth and comfort in the midst of a large, busy campus.

For me, Bigler Hall is many things. It is the place where a roommate became a best friend, the place where Mary Grace and I hung our multi-colored batik and stacked our beds in a loft, the place we prayed and cried and wrote English papers together, the place we studied the Bible in the quiet of long, sun-streaked Sunday afternoons, the place where our dreams formed and died, and the place where we talked about (and most likely over-analyzed) it all.

It is the place where I formed many of my best college friendships, where Shannon spilled her heart to me on the futon one September afternoon, where Kim and Laura introduced me to the wonders of Yogurt Express, where Megan wrestled through the deep questions of faith, where Mel, Brianne, and Erin fought it out and became deeper friends in the process.

It is the place where I learned that life and ministry are inseparable, where I realized how deeply wounded we all are, where I experienced the joy of teamwork so profoundly that I've been ruined for independence ever since. It is a place where I asked God a lot of hard questions, and it is a place where I can distinctly say that God met me. It is no longer home, but it will always be home, a place where I was known and loved and part of something much bigger than myself.

When I was trying to decide whether or not to live in Bigler in the first place, tempted by the allure of my first apartment, somebody told me I'd have my whole life to live in an apartment. She was right. I only had one chance to live in Bigler Hall, and I am so glad I did.

My First Blog Series: Thirty Pieces of My Thirty Years

In honor of my thirtieth birthday, which is coming up later this month, I've decided to do a post a day for the remainder of July. Each day I plan to write about one piece of my life that has played a significant role in shaping the person I've become over the past thirty years. I plan to write about people, events, places, and even things that have been important to me.

Why? Well there are a few reasons (not thirty, thankfully!). One, it will help me to meet one of my goals for the summer: to write everyday. Two, I think it will good opportunity to reflect on the past thirty years and the milestone that this birthday is. Three, I hope it will build in my own heart (and in those of any readers who might join me on this thirty day journey) the conviction that God is at work in all the scattered pieces of our lives, shaping and molding us through our trials and joys into the people He wants us to be.

Note: I don't plan to present these thirty pieces in any particular order. In other words, they won't be organized chronologically or in order of importance. They'll be presented as the pieces of life are (as much as I've tried to make them otherwise!) - messy, disorganized, and sometimes overlapping.