Monica Closets: Part II.

Sunset in Florida the night before my grandmother's funeral.

Your grace abounds in deepest waters. 

It's been longer than I care to admit since I last wrote anything.  I feel like I'm approaching writing right now with my tail between my legs, so to speak.  It's been a few months since I wrote about Monica Closets, but I'm back in a place where my Monica closet is about to burst open and explode all over the place.  Life has been an interesting sort of mess over the past few months, hence my lack of writing.  I was hopeful that life would slow down once our wedding was over, but it has done nothing of the sort.  I've travelled all along the East Coast solo in order to be make it to different family happenings-- my sweet sister's graduation, visiting my grandmother while she was in hospice care, traveling to Florida again for her funeral a month later, and making my first trip together with my husband to go home to visit family.  Most people my age love to travel, and I often find myself glued to my computer looking at beautiful photos they've taken, feeling that sense of wanderlust that our generation seems to have captured.  But the travel I've been doing has been emotionally draining.  It's been a lot of hours in a car listening to Taylor Swift, eating more fast food than I ever want to look at again, passing through beautiful cities and towns that I have but a moment to glance at, and tearful prayers for my family as I drive.

I don't mean to pain such a bleak picture, or to seem so negative, but the trips have felt very much this way for me.  I feel like Scott and I have finally laid a lot to rest this summer.  We've been through our first family death together and have seen what supporting the other person looks like through that; Scott was truly wonderful and so incredibly selfless through all of this.  He encouraged me to go visit my grandmother instead of returning home to Indy when she was sick after my sister's graduation, and he told me to spend as much time as I needed down in Florida once she passed, even though he was not able to come himself because of school.  I laid to rest, for myself, the pressure of being a perfect housewife.  I learned that I couldn't.  With working night shift and traveling for days at a time, I had to learn to accept help when it was offered.  I felt guilty about it for a long time; here was my husband, trying to study for his dental boards as hard as he could, and I was falling apart and needing someone to help me cook and clean and grocery shop because I was either not physically here, completely exhausted and sleep deprived, or just not having enough time in the day to do it all.  It was humbling for sure, and not in the glamorous way that people try to portray feeling humbled.  It was humbling in a way that knocked me down and made me feel like the smallest person on the Earth, only to find that there was still someone who loves me enough to help me through all of the heartache and to help me surrender all of the self-imposed pressures of building a perfect life.  I'm learning that the Proverbs 31 woman that I so desire to be isn't the way that she is because she strives to be,  killing herself to be that amazing woman; she's that way because she's surrendered trying to be perfect and has found her worth in the Lord instead of in the worldly standards that she could not possibly ever meet perfection with.

We have two literal Monica closets right now, in addition to all of the metaphorical ones.  Actually, I'm going to say that we have four of those closets.  We have four closets that require careful handling, lest you find yourself hit on the head with a toolbox, a heap of clothes, some parsley, or a haphazard bottle of Tums.  August is my month for renewal, my month of dealing with all of the Monica closets.  July isn't for that.  July has been about pushing through the Monica closets and accepting them for what they are right now-- giant, over-filled messes.  Our honeymoon is approaching, we leave next week for that.  And each day until then is packed to the brim with work, studying, cleaning, runnings errands, booking trains, buying tickets to tourist destinations, packing and re-packing.  But for almost two weeks, we're leaving our Monica closets behind and taking a break from everything that life has brought for us this summer.  We're leaving behind every stress and worry and fear, and we're going to enjoy honeymooning in Italy.  When we first got married, I was so bummed that we couldn't do a honeymoon right after.  With everything that happened for us right after our wedding, I'm now so glad that we didn't go on one then.  This one is coming at just the right time for us, and I think we'll be able to enjoy it so much more and will appreciate more than we ever would have 3 months ago.

I'm keeping August in the back of my mind as my month of renewal.  I've already had to surrender a lot of things for August.  I'm missing two weddings in August that I would give mostly anything to be there for.  Both couples are dear friends who supported Scott and I at our wedding, but the distance, my night shift schedule, and other recent life events are keeping us here in Indy in August.  I'm sure there will be more to surrender in August, more challenges may come our way by then, more things that we'll have to shove into a Monica closet, but I think we'll be ready for it then.

Scott and I have been following a practice that was introduced to us by his sister and brother-in-law at meals; Ashley and Chris read aloud from their Bible every night at dinner and then pray based on the passage that they just read.  We had adopted this awhile ago from them after they came to help me move to Indianapolis, but we kind of got out of practicing it for a little while.  Scott initiated it again recently, and we've been learning a lot reading through Job.  I don't think he was looking for any particular book to read in the Bible, but as he was flipping through I saw Job written at the top of a page and told him to stop there.  I knew Job, I had read through his story about a year ago.  Back then, it was powerful but didn't apply much to what I was going through.  Now, it's immensely important to me.  We've been reading about the suffering Job has gone through and how he praises God in the midst of such immense suffering, and it's a gentle reminder for us to do the same through difficult circumstances.

I think we all have Monica closets, whether physical or metaphorical ones.  And it's up to each of us to decide what we're going to do with them.  Will we keep shoving things into them to be dealt with later? Will we take the time to break them down and deal with what's inside, even if it takes a lot of time to do so? I don't know the right answer to all of this, but I know that we've had an incredible amount of Monica closets over the past few months.  Some were just given to us and we had no choice but to deal with them, and others were ones we created ourselves and just haven't had the chance to work through them yet.

Moral of the story? I'm a work in progress, right now.  The day is coming when I'll be a little more put together to share with you, but for now, I hope you're ok with the beautiful mess I'm in and the best that I can offer you through it.

Grace & peace, sweet friends.
C