Category Archives: dreams and realities

November 28, 2012 · 8:25 am

How a Man Smells

During the summers in college, I worked at an all-girls’ camp.  My friend Molly had a Bath & Body Works air freshener hanging from the ceiling fan in her room.  It was Moonlight Path.  And she said she liked it because it smelled like a man.  Go ahead and laugh if you want – I know what she meant.

This morning, my friend Amaris sent me a message to say she was up (in America) in the middle of the night, working.  But, she said, it wasn’t that bad, because she was accompanied by the lingering smell of a man who’d been helping her earlier.

Le Male. In a man-shaped bottle and everything.

When Simon and I first started dating, he wore Jean Paul Gaultier’s Le Male.  It comes in a man-shaped bottle and everything.  He hasn’t worn it much the last few years, and now, every time I walk by a man who’s wearing it, or smell it in a department store, I am 21 and it is Autumn and I have butterflies in my stomach.

(On a negative note, I occasionally smell my ex-boyfriend’s Hugo Boss and I am 18 and it is summer and I am depressed.)

The smell of a man’s cologne is a powerful thing. For me, it is the smell of sweet memories. For Molly and Amaris, it was the smell of possibility.

How about you?  What colognes (or perfumes) make you feel, hope, remember?

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October 2, 2012 · 9:23 pm

The Evolution of Cool

It might be hard for you to believe, but I wasn’t cool in high school.  I hung out in a group about two tiers down from cool, with some newspaper staffers and theatre nerds.  During break, the cool kids stood on the balcony overlooking the common area.  I usually stood underneath it.  Sometimes I’d wander up there and say hey to a few select people, but I didn’t usually stay long.  I felt self-conscious amidst their Abercrombie hoodies and Citizen jeans.  I was tall, too, so it was hard to disappear, to stand unnoticed in the crowd.

My best friend’s name was Lauren, and she was like me.  We spent most of our weekends hanging out at one of our houses, watching that scene when Dawson and Joey finally kiss overandoverandoveragain (I can still sing the song that played during that scene).  We ran lines for whatever play we were in at the moment, talked about the future, executed ridiculous schemes to walk the six miles from my house to hers (and then get her mom to feed us cake and drive us back to mine again).  We picked up sweet potatoes out of the harvested fields behind my house and put them in all my neighbours’ mailboxes.  We thought we were hilarious.

Right before I got married. Getting cooler.

There’s something those cool kids had in high school that we didn’t have.  But when I come home to visit my mom and dad and I see them in Wal-Mart, I can’t for the life of me figure out what it was.

In 2012, Lauren lives in Washington, DC and has a pretty legit job with a political science organization I can never remember the name of.  She’s just as hilarious as ever, wears really great shoes, and dangit y’all, she is hot.

Smart. Sexy. Lauren.

In 2012, I’m married to a man who works really hard at marriage with me.  My son is sweet as pie.  I am part of a community I love.  I do work I enjoy and am good at.

As far as I’m concerned, whatever we thought we lacked in 2000, we’ve more than made up for in the 12 years since.

In 2012, we are cool.

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July 9, 2012 · 3:00 am

Q&A

Y’all, something strange happened last week.

Remember this post? It ended up on wordpress.com’s homepage, and thousands and thousands of people clicked on it and came to Great Smitten.  If you’re reading this, you might be one of those people, and I’m so happy to have you.  You might also be one of the people who’s been here for the long-haul, and I’m just as happy as ever to have you, too.

When I started getting emails and comments from people last week, I tried to respond to them.  But then there were 100.  And then 200.  And now, I think the comment count is approaching 400, and I can’t even check my emails without having a panic attack.

But I did think it might be a good idea to answer a few questions here, in no particular order, for everybody’s benefit.

Ready? Okay.

1. Remember this part?

“The best part about realizing everyone is faking it, is that you get to stop faking it yourself.  You get to be totally, authentically, comfortably confident in what you know and who you are.

For real.”

Yeah…it was kind of important.

2. I spell “realize” with a z because I’m American.  (Except sometimes I spell it with an s because I’m starting to forget which is which.)

3. Thank you for your offer, but I don’t need a man to talk to.  My husband is good at that.

4. Nine

5. Jessi Connolly

Thank you for asking.

…

See you back here later this week for more photos, stories, and inspiration to live a creative, authentic, passionate life.

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May 28, 2012 · 10:05 am

May we all be failures.

I could give you some really good advice about work/life boundaries.

It’s not because every night I turn my computer off at 5pm and don’t even think about work until Adlai’s naptime the next day, and  it’s not because I never check my work emails on my phone while I’m hanging out with Simon in the evenings.

It’s because I fail miserably at it so often.

I can tell you what not to do, because I’ve done it.  I can tell you what works, because I know what doesn’t.

My friend Sarah wrote recently that a few couples in our church had asked her for some advice about communication in marriage. Sarah’s husband thought that was hilarious, because these two are very open about the fact that communication has been an issue for them.  What Sarah had to say, though, was that failure does not automatically disqualify us.

If it did, heaven knows I wouldn’t be qualified for any dang thing I’ve set out to do.

I have folders of poetry and prose hidden at my parents’ house that I pray will never see the light of day.

I have taken some photos that are blurry and overexposed and, worse, some that are so devoid of emotion or thought that I shudder to look at them.

I have opened my mouth to sing in front of crowds of people only to hear my voice come out thin and weak and on completely the wrong note.

But through my failures, I have learned that there is such thing as too many commas, too many adjectives; learned how to set my f-stop in direct sunlight and help people feel relaxed in front of the camera; learned how to better control my voice.  I’ve even learned that when I let my work seep into my family time, I end up with a husband and a son who are dissatisfied – who don’t get the all of me they deserve.

My failures haven’t disqualified me.

By the good grace of God, they have refined me.

Through my failures, I’ve come closer to the person I was meant to be.  And I’ve learned how good the grace of God is to make it so.

I pray you fail, too, so that you might know Him better.  And so that you might be one step closer to the excellence to which you’ve been called.

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May 17, 2012 · 9:28 am

My Dreams are Sneaky

Today, I’m so thankful to have Liz Griffin from Lark & Bloom writing about her sneaky dreams.

Come on, folks, give her a warm Great Smitten welcome…

(I don’t know what a Great Smitten welcome is.  Maybe an aggressive high-five?  A screen-clink with your coffee mug? Do what feels right.)

It would be appropriate to say I have been a dreamer since birth. My childhood was filled with crazy ideas and a sketchbook of possibilities. Most of my dreams have been a bit ridiculous. I would go completely insane if I actually worked in a small bakery in a remote French village. Glad that dream didn’t come true.

As I matured, so did my dreams. By the time I was in college I dreamt of social change. I planned on attending law school & working for the U.N. I wanted to fight bad guys. My other dream was to have a family. Those two things seemed incompatible. I knew what I wanted to do, but had no idea how to do it.

After college I had a job offer to get into military intelligence. Basically, I would have been like the chick in Top Gun. Minus the sleeping with Tom Cruise part. Intelligence officer job, possible U.N. internship, grad school applications…my dreams were about to come true.

Or so I thought. Turns out God had a different plan. My husband & I ended up planting a church in Seattle & having children right away. Instead of helping solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, I was changing diapers and discipling women.

It was a different journey, but one I followed whole-heartedly. Fast-forward seven years and a few moves. I now live in Texas. I have two kids and am adopting two more. The family dream is in full swing & the justice dream is waiting patiently.

My dreams got real sneaky this past fall. God began to merge the two and suddenly I was helping form an anti-trafficking organization called UnBound. Things began to happen in ways I never expected. After tucking my kids into bed at night I would head off to the university and speak to a group of students at anti-trafficking events. UnBound now works directly with law enforcement organizations & is going to be launching international efforts soon. I get to raise my kids and fight the bad guys while they nap. God is brilliant.

As you read this, you may think that sounds impressive. Don’t be fooled. It doesn’t feel impressive at all. I don’t have a high-rise office. There is no assistant to tell me I missed ten important calls while I was addressing Congress. Instead I spend my day potty-training & pushing kids on swings.

The other day I was making peanut butter & jelly sandwiches for the kids’ lunches while on the phone with a maximum-security prison. Negotiating the release of a trafficking victim while loading the kids in high chairs wasn’t in the original dream.

Giving a phone interview while wiping poop from a child’s bottom wasn’t in the dream. In fact, this wasn’t the dream I planned at all. This is a better dream. This is the kind of dream only God could orchestrate.

He is sneaky with our dreams. In my mind, my dreams come true in a fantastic moment. Usually involving a rooftop terrace, a city skyline, and a soft breeze that blows my hair gently away from my face as I gaze into the distance. Cue swelling music and then I have my moment. The moment I realize my dream is coming true. I smile and the camera zooms out. The End.

But that isn’t what happens. Dreams creep. They hit the boundaries of our seasons, & wait quietly while we deal with life. God blends the unblendable and creates a custom built life for our dreams.

My dreams seem ridiculous at times. I’ve never stood before Congress. I don’t own a power suit. I only have 327 followers on Twitter. But I have God. I have a family who gets the best parts of me. In the middle of all that I get to play a small role in seeing slaves freed.

God’s dreams for me are better. God’s dreams for me are balanced. They aren’t based on my passion, but His destiny. I’ll take those dreams any day.

Even if it wasn’t what I expected.

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May 11, 2012 · 7:49 am

A Dream Deferred

First things first.

Notice anything different?

Jessi has been hard at work and Great Smitten is looking gorgeous!  I’m pretty much in love.  We’re still tweaking a few bits and there will be a few more changes, but seriously, how good is it looking?

Now, on to another beautiful thing – Ellen Parker, from handmade recess, and this beautiful thing she wrote for you.

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I used to be a High School English Teacher.

I fell in love with books and American poetry and I was done for.

It’s been years but, still, Langston Hughes’ epic question pinballs through my brain.

What does happen to a dream deferred?

In January of this year, I walked right into that brick wall of a question.

For four years, I had been running a fairly successful handmade business. I dreamed up big plans and I smeared my heart all over them. I hired interns. I expanded to the far reaches of my glorious limitations.
afternoonlightedit

Those glorious limitations? 36, 9, 7 and 4. They are my people. I live, breathe them in and out every day.

Something happened as I pushed on the good boundaries of my life. I started to feel farther and farther away from who I wanted to be. Soon, it began to feel impossible to touch what I really wanted.

What I really wanted was to invest in my marriage. What I really wanted was to be a mother who says, “I choose you.” Even when I had to say no. What I really wanted was to be fully present when I was present.

Sometimes the work of your hands and choosing your family don’t have to be mutually exclusive. But sometimes they are.

My husband and I stepped back. We boiled it down. We shaved off all the things that stretched me too far gone.

I let go of my handmade business. I took on sewing for someone local. I let go of the weight of direction and sales and marketing. I kept creativity.

And the gift has been that when I am present, then I can be every bit present. My story is not about stay at home mothers or work at home mothers and work at home wives or work out of the home women.

It’s just this: every time. Every time I have the chance to choose what is best and let go of perfectly good. I’ll do it. Because deferred good is better than not knowing best.

…

Ellen has also written a beautiful post over on her blog – a letter to young mothers.  And I’m not lying when I say I just cried in a coffee shop as I read it.  

So yeah, I think you should read it too.

 

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May 7, 2012 · 12:26 pm

Influence

It’s May, y’all.

Not that you’d know it here in England.  It’s cold and gray and wet, and I’m not happy about it at all.  And I’m especially not happy about it in light of the fact that loads of my North Carolina friends are plastering their facebook walls with pictures of the ocean and their children dressed in little swimsuits and digging in the sand.

This weekend, I fed Adlai his first popsicle, just to forget for a moment that it was 40 degrees outside.

*deep sigh*

Anyway, as you may have noticed, this post is not entitled Do Your Dream.

I do have more of those lined up for y’all in the coming weeks, but we’re having a little break this week, as I want to tell y’all more about something I hinted at last week:

The Influence Conference website is up, and if you’re a girl whose sphere of influence is between 1 person and 1 million people, and you want to use that influence to spread of a message of hope through the Good News, you should think about coming.

I’ll let you know about my involvement in Influence more in the coming days.

But for now, I’ll just say this:

I’m going to be there, and I would love, love, love to hang out with you.

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May 4, 2012 · 8:15 am

The Quietness of a Gentle Dream

Sometimes excitement isn’t all screams and exclamation points.

Sometimes it’s whispers and shrugs, quiet head nods. Sometimes it’s just peace.

There are exciting things happening now.  Quiet things.  Dreams coming alive.  Dreams I’d barely even gathered the courage to whisper.  Slowly, gradually, bringing themselves into fruition at the beckoning of the God who planted them there.

You can see the roots of one of them here.

And another, here.

And I’ll just leave it at that for now.

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May 2, 2012 · 8:51 am

That Time I Was On the Radio

Of course I tweeted it.

Y’all remember that time I was on BBC television?  (If you’re new here, you can check that out here.)

That was fun.

This week, I had a similar experience, except this time I was on BBC Radio.

It all happened thanks to a Twitter conversation with radio host Nick Coffer, who has guests on to talk about their lives and just anything, really.  I love this, because I absolutely believe that everyone has a story.

I joined Nick in his studio yesterday, along with a lovely lady named Natalie.  We talked work, and love stories, and being an American in England.  And then, because it’s what I love to talk about, we talked about dreams.

Wanna hear?  

(Don’t panic when you see it’s three hours long.  I’m only on for the first 45 minutes, right after the news.) 

…

Coming up later this week, more about dreams, and what this has to do with them.

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April 27, 2012 · 7:41 am

What’s coming.

Let me tell y’all where I am right now.

I’m in a season.  It’s a beautiful, broken, long-awaited season of seeing some of the creative things I’ve been dreaming of for a long time come to fruition.  There are other things happening, too.  Things that are less dreams-come-true and more waiting, more routine, more quietness.  But in this season, yes, I’m realizing some dreams.

Before this season, I was in another season.  There were dreams-come-true in that season, too, but they were dreams about motherhood and marriage.  And there was waiting then, too.  And hoping, and praying.

And before that, there was another season.  A season of dreams about travel and adventure coming true.  But I was waiting then, for my husband.  For a family.

All this is to say that, while I’m in a season right now where I’m having so much fun creating and dreaming, it has all happened at this time.  In this place.  And before the time was right, it wasn’t right.  Not for these dreams, but for others.

And I fully realize that some of you are like me, and are enjoying your creative dreams coming true. But many of you are in those seasons of other dreams, and of waiting for your dreams, and of waiting for the time to be right.  Waiting for Him to make it so.

That’s why I’m devoting the month of May to talking about dreams on Great Smitten.  I’ve invited some very special people to talk about their dreams here, so in addition to the continuing Do Your Dream Monday features, some other girls are going to be sharing about their dreams, and their seasons.  I’m also going to share some practical things that have helped me in my waiting and hoping.

I hope you’ll find it so encouraging.  I hope it will help you celebrate your dreams-come-true, and that it will help you wait more patiently for your dreams-as-yet-unrealized.

…

Got any specific questions about dreaming?  Things you want to hear about?  Holla back.

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