Mush

I wrote this blog this past April after attending the wedding of two of my favorite people in Austin, TX.  I never posted it because it seemed too silly and sentimental. Right now, I could go for a little silly... and sentimental.

I recently attended a wedding. I haven't been too up on weddings in a while. I honestly think the last wedding I attended was a friend's from high school, and I didn't even actually attend the wedding. I made it just in time for the reception, and that was the best part...because there was free wine and frozen daiquiris.

I grew up in the church, a church that taught me that my ultimate goal was to find a husband and have children...and raise them in the church. How would I mark the beginning of this, my real life? With a wedding, of course!

There would be a ceremony, beginning with the bride walking slowly on a plastic white "carpet," announced by some pop song. The rooms (sanctuaries) were usually white walled with beige or sea-foam carpeting. This part of the wedding, the ceremony, would last no less than forty-five minutes, almost, if not as long as, the length of a church service.

The bride and groom would light a candle together, or pour sand into a jar (ridiculous. RIDICULOUS) to represent their unity. Then, they would kiss, and it would be time for cake.

Cake was as much as one could expect from the grand reception celebrations. There was also punch and sometimes cookies. The "party" would take place in the fellowship hall, filled with long tables and folding metal chairs, lit by the glare of magnificent florescent lighting.

The bride and groom would cut the cake, throw the bouquet and...the garter belt (but not really a garter belt) to the single men and women, and then they would run out the doors to their limousine, and disappear into the exciting new world of doin it...together.

And it was sacred*, and it was beautiful*, and clean* and pure*, because anything more would be...SIN.

I don't want to shine the WORST light on this. I know many wonderful people who did the best they could with such ceremonies and have had a grand time of marriage. The important part, I'm sure, is the marriage, not the wedding.

The wedding I attended last week in Austin, TX, that joined my close friends, NAY, bestest friends Carol Alexander and Matthew Falkenberg, was all of those things*, as well as one of the most beautiful sins I have ever committed.

I know. That's a really big statement to make. Like, that's huge and sentimental and shit. But I don't know how else to describe it.

We ate and drank and...indulged...and swam, and danced, and sang, and drank more (and indulged), and danced and sang more than I may have ever done.

It was pure and beautiful and even sacred, but not because it was religious. It wasn't.

I think somewhere along the line, we may have forgotten who...what....God is. God is Love. And that is huge. It's bigger than religion..s.

Matthew and Carol were married by our wonderful friend Devin, who recently married his precious husband, McKenzie in our nation's capital so that they could be transferred together when the Marines sent him to Japan. So that he could be with his family, with the man he loved.

And I cried.

I've been thinking a lot about love and about family, extending those definitions to the people in my life that I've used to redefine my tree. I lost hold of my concept of what it meant to belong when my ideals were challenged way back (you may know the story). I eventually found that loving the others in my life could fill the void left by the rift in my belief system. I took love away from the romantic notion and found it in everything.

But I forgot that the romantic notion was also real, and I've been rolling my eyes a lot over the years.

When my heart was broken for the first time, I wailed to my mother that The Bible (which states: Love never fails) was wrong. She always says she did a bad job of raising me (which isn't a nice thing to say to a daughter, MOM), but my mother hit the nail on the head that day when she answered, "that verse isn't talking about people, and it's not talking about marriage, it's talking about God."

It's hard for me to think about, "God" without thinking about "Love." I try to remind myself that it's not okay to equate God with the people who say they represent...IT (close your mouth, parents). The verse is talking about love. And I know, I'm waxing spiritual like I fancy myself some sort of prophet. I don't. I've believed in that all encompassing God-love for a while now, but I haven't necessarily believed in that romantic love.

I do now. Again. A little. At least. Finally. Because it's the same damn thing, or it should be.

I found love after knowing Matthew and Carol for less than a year. I chose them as my family, and Devin and McKenzie too. Since then we have grown together and apart. We have moved closer and further away, and last week, we met up again, with others in our circles, and we ate and drank and danced and sang. We celebrated love and commitment, and we laughed together as we acknowledged the inevitable hard times.

I know I'm too sentimental. I know it. I wish I could be funnier right now. But I can't. I'm a damn love-sick fool, and I don't care who knows it.

It may seem easier to follow a predetermined path for your life, to try your damnedest to make all the pieces fit so that you can float by with as much ease as possible. But there comes a time when you have to grow up.

"When I was child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child, but when I grew up, I put childish ways behind me." (I made this one my own...meaning, I took out the gender specifics) (gender is a structure, not a real thing. Kill your idols).

There is no guidebook for your life, and there is no way to plan for your future, even with a 401K and a savings account with a great interest rate (if that even exists!). There is only you...and the people you love, but it can take a while to see them, to find them.

"For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known." (that's just straight up NIV, kids)

My friends, the people that I love, have taught me to love in every way that one can, and through those lessons, they have inadvertently helped me to continue my hope in the greater love, the omnipresent love, the love we forget about that calls us to put away the self and serve the other. There is no greater task. There is no job that trumps our responsibility to love each other. 

Matthew and Carol, if you're reading this, you are part of the team that taught me that love still exists (even the sexy kind!), and holy cow, what a feat. You guys are like...not just a piece of the pie...but the whole pie. And I wish you the absolute best. I hope, when it's hard, when part of the pie seems to be missing, that you remember the rest of the pie still waiting to be eaten. I also hope this metaphor makes sense. 

Now, I say with confidence, to anyone listening, it's true, "Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away." 

And nothing else matters. 

The Family You Choose

I chose the title for this blog a week ago, and I had almost forgotten my inspiration for it until just now. I finished eating yogurt covered pretzels, sipping my morning coffee of leftover Stumptown coffee beans that had to be removed from the espresso grinder by hand and either thrown away or stuffed in a pastry bag and transported to my home, whilst watching John Oliver, and I began my daily perusal of the facebooks to read yet another post from a good friend of mine that sparked a delightfully (actually) intelligent debate which, in turn, reminded me of the reason I would like to write about "The Family You Choose." Long sentence? It's legit. Try reading some Cormac McCarthy.

I've had a strange relationship with the idea of "family" for most of my life. I suspect we all do. There are societal norms, 2.5 children and such, and there is...everything else.

My mom is the youngest of seven. Holidays and vacations spent in the exotic small towns of Oklahoma were bustling, frenzied, and fascinating. There were so many siblings with children with their own children, and cats and dogs, and food and football, and that remarkable Nevills sarcasm. I could write books about the people I met, that claimed me and I them. My family.

My dad, on the other hand, is one of two. There is a certain level of intimacy, I gather, from growing up in a family of four, an almost perfect nuclear family. There is also a certain level of honesty that ferments from mutual strife. I remember meeting my dad's sister once, vaguely, as a child of about five, and a second time, years later, as a confused as hell teenager. I walked into my grandmother's room at the nursing home, and my aunt stood up to shake my hand, say this, "remember me? If you do, it's probably not good because the last time I saw you I hated kids," and give me the warmest smile I can remember.

Then there's...us. The three amigos. My mom and my dad and me against the world. And for twenty-four years, that's how it seemed it would always be. Until my parents divorced, and I, basically, fled the country.

I don't think I had started to grasp the vastness of the cosmos until my parents got divorced and I felt, for the first time, that I was completely alone in the universe, that my leash to the space shuttle had broken and I was Sandra Bullock-ing through space (Damn, she fine in that movie, though). The remarkable thing that I take from that whole...moment...was the simultaneously deafening yet beautiful utter silence.

Imagine being reborn, except this time, you're old enough to remember every terrifying second, from realizing that this liquid room you live in isn't big enough any more, to being SLOWLY forced through your mother's vagina, head first, to all the damn SHOTS you have to get...again. You have to shit your pants a lot, too.

At the age of twenty-four, I began the painful process of relearning the whole damn universe.

The most remarkable part of growing up is meeting your new family members. If you go looking for love, you will find it. I was lucky enough to meet some incredible people that fell in love with me and took me in. These are the people that occupy the space of my heart because I know that I occupy the space of theirs.

When I feel alone, misunderstood, lost, insane, broken, and bloody, I think about my family. The family I chose. I think about how much they must love me, to keep coming back after experiencing my waves of depression and anger. I think about how brave they are to be jumping off of cliffs every day to live the lives they've always dreamed. I think about how proud of me they'll be even if I fail at everything.

The people in my life, that I love, are so smart. They are inspiring. They are beautiful. And they love me. So I've got no excuse not to do the same.

The best part of it all, is that I still have my family from my childhood. It looks different and feels different. It is different, but that doesn't mean it isn't better. The honesty that comes from mutual strife, that ferments, becomes a relief. It becomes a resting place, where we can be ourselves, where we can be safe.

BOOM. Whole post about my dog who is incredible. GOTCHA!!!!

P.S. Not really.