This one's for my Dad.

It's 7:00 a. m. in the Santa Barbara cottage on Vista Buena Rd.

The sun is coming up over the 100-year old mission-style adobe farmhouse next door and I know my 86-year-old neighbor will be coming out to tend his fruit trees any minute. 

The days are still warm and bright but the air this morning is misty with dew and carries the sweet coolness of fall on its breath.  Fall actually doesn't change much about Santa Barbara: it still hardly rains, leaves don't really turn and the temperature won't drop considerably until the rest of the nation is layering for winter.  Mainly, you just have to slow down on your way to work and watch for school children crossing streets.

So maybe it's the temperateness of the climate than, that I'll really miss when we move to the Sacramento valley in two weeks. 

We've called our 70-year-old single-wall-construction honeymoon home "the cottage," sometimes "the cabin," but more affectionately, and perhaps more accurately, "our tree-house," because it's nestled under a huge Magnolia.  It has all wood flooring and all wood walls, a knotty pine with unique little termite dinners carved out in places, and it feels like we carved it out of the tree trunk.  

We have loved every inch of this place during our first two years of marriage: Terry revamped the front porch into the open-air studio/launching-pad he needed to get his dream of an art career off the ground again. I tended to the yard and to my heart in the process: filling flower-beds, trimming hedges, picking plums and watching apples turn. I saw flowers magically become fruit, uprooted cuttings to explore how they took root, garlic bulbs to explore how they divided, potatoes to wonder at how they multiplied.  

"Just leave them in the ground," Terry teased me.  But I couldn't.  For the first time, it was all mine and I was curious and I was allowed to make mistakes.   So I did, and I killed a lot of things but a learned a lot of things too. I think maybe that's what the first years of marriage are about.

So, I'm broken-hearted that the next tenant seems predisposed to be critical of every inch of our honeymooner-paradise. 

Chester and Lois, our landlords, flew out to show the place this past weekend and before they came I cleaned for a month straight: weeded the easement, bleached the tub, scrubbed at calcium deposits from the water, oiled nearly every beautiful pine board of the wall, chased out spider friends and destroyed their homes (if you're reading this guys, you can come back now ;)  The landlords cooed that they had never seen the place so lovely or so well decorated and that they should pay us for living here, we'd done such a fantastic job. 

And they did. They gave back our full deposit and cut the rent for our last week here.  

But the woman said, "Are you going to take care of this before I move in? " and "Is there a screen for that? Can I see it? Will you put it back on?" and "What about barking dogs?" . . ."Will I hear the neighbor children? I don't want to hear skateboards scratching."  She didn't get this place, at all. 

So I clamped my mouth shut and went in the back yard to prune my (it is still my) tomato plant, to stress it until it feared for its life (as well it should) and produced.  Hopefully two weeks will be enough to turn something hard and green to red, juicy goodness. 

"Are you going to have it cleaned before I move in?" she asked.

"What exactly is it you want cleaned?" returned Lois.

"Lady," I wanted to yell, "You can see the MOUNTAINS from your living room!"

But she doesn't get this place, at all.

Things I do

It seemed like I got nothing accomplished yesterday. And by evening I was feeling pretty crabby about the cobwebs in the bathroom and the general state of my ambition. So I did what any recovering perfectionist would do:     

I made a list.  

Things I do:

make homemade breads

put flowers in the bathroom

dishes 3x a day

notice when the toilet needs cleaning

RSVP

write thank-you notes

mend clothes

plant flowers

replace trash bags

bleach the sink

have coffee with friends

apologize

snuggle

open the shades

read in bed 

google definitions

debate posting a facebook status

annihilate dish sets

leave a light on

conserve

buy more vegetables

throw away old food

stash favorite pens

brush my tongue

make myself laugh

take out extra words

make lists.

Going with your gut

I had to make a really tough decision yesterday . . . so this post is about going with your gut. 

Not going with your gut as in succumbing to a few extra pounds around the middle, but about intuition and learning to trust it. Or you might call it being Spirit led.  I don't know if those words are really interchangeable but you get the idea. 

Going with your gut means knowing when to say "Yes!" and when to say "No, thank you," when it's okay to leave your doors unlocked and when to get a dog.  For a rational thinker with what my friend Meg calls an "over active guilt complex" it also means saying "no" sometimes, to people or needs or opportunities without having what feels like very good reasons.  And it can be HARD.  Hard to disappoint people. Hard to avoid toying with regret or beating yourself over the head with unnecessary guilt. Hard to remember that that "no" was really just a "yes" to something else.  

But yesterday I had to just trust my gut and trust my husband and shush my brain full of "what ifs" and "ya-buts."  And today I'm trying to live in that decision with joy, thankfulness and trust that even when I make mistakes, the Lord is big enough to sustain me.   

I wonder what "yes" yesterday's "no" will have opened up  . . . .

I have a new blog . . .

And I actually posted something on it.

You can find it at http://kimberlypeterson.blogspot.com/

Thanks for following Blogs of Joy! which is still true but now closed. 

Kimberly

Being Free

I've been trying to free up my heart lately to express itself more genuinely.

So I cry a lot more, sometimes even when I'm happy.  And I cry in the presence of others in a more abandoned way than ever before.

I laugh a lot too.  I'm enjoying people and enjoying myself, my silly self.  Turns out I can be really fun to be with.

I dance a lot.  And make faces.  And daydream.

And I'm more honest about my dreams . . . I feel my desire and I feel my disappointment and longing and I feel the peace the Lord brings . . . instead of short-circuiting the process by not dreaming, ignoring my desires and rationalizing against my disappointments.

And, among other things, I want to have babies. I want to be a mother. I want to put my nose in the crook of a baby's neck, close my eyes and just breathe it in. I want to throw a toddler into the air.  I want to tousle the hair of a teenager working on a project.  I want to see my husband's eyes in our child's.

I "lose" time a lot.  No wonder my mother was so often trying to keep me from "dilly-dallying" so I wouldn't miss the bus as a child . . . I like to move slowly.  I like to think, and watch and experience.  I hate to be rushed.

Growing up quickly and trying to look like I had it all together, I trained my heart to hide fear behind ambition, sadness behind reason, and creativity behind composure.  Somewhere I got the idea that Type A was the only way to be successful and failure was not an option.  I came down on myself with a very heavy hand, shushing and molding myself into what I thought "valuable" looked like.

Well, with the help of Jesus, a few "vital failures," my amazing husband and some precious friends, I'm peeling all that off to find out who I really am, and who I really want to be. 

Clears up a lot of internal conflict, taking off the shell that competes with your genuine heart. But it's hard to let go of old standards and ideals and give yourself freedom to be different, to have new standards and new ideals and to believe they're just as valid.   

I feel like I'm breaking the rules sometimes . . . like I cut school and the test got cancelled anyway . . . I guess that's what unmerited favor feels like.  

And it turns out I really like grace, even though for much of my life I've given it a requisite nod above a churning religious stomach.  I rarely experienced actual sentiment toward grace and have given it little of the real honor it deserves.   But as I increasingly recognize and believe how imperfect I am, how imperfect and ordinary I will always be, and that my tremendous value doesn't come from perfection or performance but from belonging to and being loved by "I AM," the more I really like grace, value grace, long to show grace.  

I read a surprising quote yesterday in the context of building character and perseverance  in children that said: "Anything worth doing is worth doing badly."  In other words, don't let perfectionism keep you from attempting wonderfully valuable and difficult things.  It's okay to make mistakes and it's okay to fall and it's okay not to be embarrassed about it . . . 

Jesus, You are all the righteousness I need. Thanks for setting me free from guilt and the law.

 

Kimberly married into Facebook but has no friends

Facebook.

This message is about Facebook: its allure, intrigue, and capacity to both connect and disenfranchise users and non-users alike.

I have been a late-comer to this whole "on-line universe" in  pretty much every respect.  I started this blog long after blogging became "the thing" to do when you believed you had something to say and someone who wanted to hear it and little chance of ever seeing your thoughts published.  And I am a late-comer to Facebook too.  

In my defense, I never even had a computer until like 2006 when I got this little i-book for free (through a previously mentioned online product marketing scam with too many loop-holes) and who wanted to stay on a school campus longer than necessary to virtually socialize in the computer lab?  Maybe that's not fair, lots of people do it, but in those days I would much rather lay around at home with Anne and Joe-the-only-dog-I've-ever-loved Saunders and laugh over the dialogue in Buffy the Vampire Slayer or swoon away my extra hours with Jessica Winterburn watching "You've Got Mail" for the one-hundred and fifty-seventh time.  You know, real life "socializing."  Anyhow if it wasn't for that stroke of fantastic fortune or favor, I probably wouldn't have one now. . .(a cute little white MAC that fits in my purse and makes me look artsy or young-modern-professional-y, I mean) . . . or a blog . . . or this issue with "facebooking" which has now strangely become a verb in the genre of "googling," "blogging" and "map-questing." 

So here's my issue:  My older sister just emailed me to say that she tried to search for me on Facebook and when she found my profile and clicked on it what came up was a message that said "Kimberly has no friends," which she found hysterical and probably somewhat gratifying but I found unfair. "Hey," I told her "I don't have any friends because I just don't know if I WANT any friends. If I wanted friends, I could have friends, Billions of them even!" . . . which I admit was overkill, and somewhat defensive of me.

Still once I had got wind of this injustice, I decided to do some research to find out just what kind of humiliation I was dealing with.  Was this being spread like a banner across the Facebook Universe? Or being posted on the walls of all the "people I might know?"  

I couldn't tell, so I looked up my sister's friends and not surprisingly she's got plenty of them, about 65, which isn't the same as someone seemingly trying to connect with Kevin Bacon by adding on all of their friends and friends' friends and acquaintances to get a satisfying number like 450 but not too shabby either.  Notably, her list included (AND I AM NOT KIDDING): our dad (who I just didn't even know had it in him), my best friend from high school (who patently refused to go to our 10-year reunion yet who is connected with dozens of HS friends through this media), and my first kind-of boyfriend when I was 12, who granted was my sister's friend first but who we haven't been in contact with for YEARS and whom I never really wanted to see again. (To be perfectly honest I never really wanted to see him then either, which was not the only but probably the most pronounced issue in our short "relationship"- that I got nauseously nervous whenever he was around and tried to avoid even making eye contact with him most of the time- which as you will imagine puts real strain on a budding romance, but I digress.)

So what is one to do?  When you're not on Facebook and you don't know what's going on there you don't really care and expect people to just call you or text you or write you a personal email or (I know I'm pushing it a bit here with this one) an actual letter.  But I married into Facebook.  My husband has an account.  He's not too chatty up there, doesn't have much in his profile except "married" and a photo of us making faces imitating the Incredible Hulk, but when I'd look over his shoulder on his bi-weekly viewing I became enthralled by all that I had been missing.  

The magnificence of the minutia!

I mean, I got to see pictures from our friend Dara's impromptu 3-month old photo shoot of her gorgeous daughter dressed in yellow in a lavender room. I got to see photos of the entire road-trip and new home of our friends Liz and Mitch who just moved to Memphis, Tennessee.  I learned that my friend's husband was having his birthday bash in Las Vegas (Really!?) and saw a video of our pastor's son (age 3) talking about the difference between Santa Claus and Jesus. Gold, I tell you. The stuff of life.  "Life."  I mean most of the photos I've seen of our wedding were posted on Facebook (not all flattering photos mind you but a record of the day at least).  So it wasn't long before I'd started my own profile, posted a few wedding pics and a few details about my hometown and current residence.  

And then I froze stiff. What if I don't want to be this, well, findable?  What if people I don't really want to be or I don't really consider myself "friends" with want to be my friend?  What about people posting unflattering photos or information about you and tagging it all over kingdom come?  And then, of course, my sister called and confirmed my worst nightmare by fuming about how she had just discovered by looking at the list of "friends"of someone requesting to be her "friend" (see how complicated this gets so quickly?) she stumbled upon a former classmate who turned out to be married to a man she has been in love with since junior high school and made a $500 bet with me that she would someday marry, a man who not only has she been in regular contact with for years but even within the previous 2 weeks!   And no, in case you're still wondering, he had not mentioned that he was married.  So, after offering my condolences and confirming that my $500 check was, in fact, en route, we discussed the bigger issues.

What made us want to be "connected" to people in this way anyway?  We can't even keep up with the friends and family we have right now, why do we want to be reconnected with some kid from elementary school we haven't heard from in 20 years just to find out he's gay and proud and living under the name "Justice Reign?" (Also a true story.)  And I'm kind of liking the quiet life, this little cocoon my husband and I are sharing right now . . . so yes, I have a Facebook profile but no actual Facebook friends and I have stalwartly ignored the one invitation I've received.  

But it's a hazy middle ground.

Do I jump and let the chips fall where they may?  Do I delete my profile and just move on with my life? You could help me decide.  If you want to be the first friend I actually add, why don't you send me an invitation with your reason for why I should bite this lure and we'll see what happens.  Who knows, I may stop communicating by blog altogether . . . .

"Your cell phone network will be my cell phone network . . ."

What does one do with a website called kimberlylumm.blogspot when her name is now Kimberly Peterson?  Change the name and email an entire inbox of contacts, few of whom ever read it to begin with?  This option is a little awkward and has the potential to elevate expectations of my actual audience (who may have given up checking this blog long ago due to the infrequency of my posts) to think they may be able to expect some kind of regularity in the future.  And this I cannot promise.  

So for now, I will leave this blog kimberlylumm.blogspot as a shout out to German ancestry and days gone by, and just write for the sake of writing. We'll see what comes of it.  Here's a photo in case you're getting bored already.  (We're going to have to rebuild your tolerance for my long-winded stream-of-consciousness style . . .)  This is me relaxing the day before the wedding.  By "relaxing" I obviously mean "multi-tasking."  And speaking of the wedding . . . here are a few highlights:

Weddings, it turns out, don't just "happen." This kind only comes about by prayer and fasting  . . . and lots and lots of help.  Our friends and family did an amazing job helping us plan, execute and tie up all those loose ends.  My bridesmaids (from left to right) were Memphis roommate Jessica Winterburn, cousin Robin Boocock, childhood friend Meg Ashbaugh and Santa Barbara buddy, Abigail Williams.  All these women and so many more, gave in such unique and loving ways to make our day really special. 

One of the most wonderful parts of wedding planning was writing our vows.  Sitting before the Lord, and sometimes together, considering and meditating on the new life the Lord was calling us into and speaking out the desire in our hearts for a life of unity, growth, servanthood, passion and companionship.  

I'll never forget the night Terry looked into my eyes while working on his vows and said so intensely, "Kimberly, it is with a full heart that I share with you all my worldly possessions.  My Beloved, with my good rain jacket, and my Browning 12-gauge over under shotgun, I hereby endow thee." 

Well what could I say but, "Terry, my love, I gladly endow thee also with my worldly possessions including, but not limited to, my Macintosh i-book, which I got for free through an online marketing scheme that Peter Winterburn told us about, and with Lazarus, my car which was sold to me by a dear friend for only 1/3 its blue book value and was recently resurrected from the dead."

What then followed was a flurry of giving and receiving of promises such as only lovers can make: "Your P.O. Box will be my P.O. box, "

"Your cell phone network will be my cell phone network, 

"Your student loans will be my student loans,"

"With my i-tunes library, I thee worship," and so on.  

Some people have said that wedding planning and engagement was the most wonderful time of life for them.  That's fabulous, but I'll be honest, I don't love environments of high stress, constant decision making, tight budgeting, and close deadlines while under the immense pressure of social etiquette, and constant relationship management.  So for me, wedding planning was an often overwhelming undertaking.  Not to mention moving twice in two months, starting a new job, and anticipating actually having a sex life . . . But in the end, the wedding was everything that we had hoped, everything the Lord had promised and that we had no idea how to make happen of ourselves.

His presence was there. He was glorified and we are one. That's all we really wanted in the first place. And that makes everything worth it. By the way, the being married part is AWESOME! I highly recommend it!

My Top 5 tips for all those newly engaged lasses in Memphis, Tennessee?

1) Stay close to Jesus.

2) If you can stay out of wedding planning altogther, do it.  What if your parents/family/church planned it and you just showed up? Remember, the point is not to plan a perfect wedding but to lay the foundation for a solid marriage. 

3) Keep it simple, and don't get woo'd by the wedding industry's must-have's or must-do's. 

4) Enjoy the people who come around you to help, and let them help you.

5) Stay close to Jesus.