Tag Archives: roles

He’s My Partner 

Posted on by under Guest, Together in Place

When we’re young, labeling relationships is easy. This person is my friend, this person is my best friend, this person is my BEST best friend. When it’s a romantic relationship, it’s the same. You can be dating or going out. Someone is your boyfriend or girlfriend. When you’re young, finding a handy title for the people in your life isn’t that complicated.

But then  I became old and began a new romantic relationship. One day, I was on the phone, adding Rich to my car insurance. I finished updating the information that they already had on file about my vehicle, and then said that I needed to add another driver to the account.

“What’s his relationship to you?” the woman on the line asked.

And I froze.

When you’re nearing forty and you’re in a new romantic relationship, there aren’t any good terms for it. Calling him my boyfriend felt a little bit too infantile and flippant. Even though we knew that we would be married at the earliest possible time, calling him my fiancé felt too formal for the relationship that we were in right at that moment. I figured calling him my lover would probably be a little too much information for an insurance customer service rep, so I just blurted out, “He’s my partner!”

I had no idea how much that title would come to mean to me.

For much of my adult life, I had certain ideas about what marriage meant based on my first marriage, and most of them boiled down to each person having a role in the relationship. I didn’t believe that there were gender roles that only men or women were designed to have, but I did see marriage as a division of labor where each person had their job to do. It was never stated explicitly that anyone was completely bound to their job, but it was very rare that help was offered beyond the scope of our regular roles. There was always a sense of equality, but never one of togetherness.

11044523_10153016493296236_3952428309709335846_nIn this second round of marriage, both my husband and I are making a concerted effort to practice more togetherness. In some regards, this is easy. Rich works from home while I write and work around the house, and when we leave, we both work at the same music store giving private lessons. We attend church together, we eat meals together, we go to the gym together. It is rare that we have more than a few hours apart in a given week. Being physically together is something that happens most of every day.

But beyond that, we have built in the idea of partnership in our marriage. We have tried to eliminate the idea that there are his and her jobs at our house. There may be things that one of us does more often than the other, but we make it a point to make sure that no one feels like they are letting down the other, because we both do all of the chores at least occasionally.

I may prepare most of the meals because of the way our schedule works, but almost no weeks go by when Rich doesn’t order me to sit and relax while he cooks. Rich may be the one to do most of the trash removal, but if the garbage can is full and he’s busy, I take it out. When one of us wants to take a risk, we evaluate it together, and as often as we’re able, we encourage the other to leap.

Sometimes it can be trying, and old thought patterns can creep in. We will not trust that the other can handle our discomfort, so we stuff our feelings away rather than talking through our questions or sadness. Sometimes we’re just selfish and act out of our own self interests rather than striving to put the other first. But when that happens, we try to recognize the negative behaviors and work toward restoring the togetherness that is so important to us.

Some lists telling people how to have happy marriages will include items like, “Surprise your wife with a home cooked meal!” or “Treat your husband like he’s the king of the castle!” Those things can certainly be helpful when your life falls into a rut, when you are living parallel lives. But I’m finding more and more that the idea of having someone partner with you in all of your endeavors allows for greater creativity in the ways that you can exhibit generosity in your marriage. Togetherness can be manufactured, but it’s nice when it doesn’t have to be.

These days I have the nice, neat label of “husband” for Rich. But if you asked me, I’d still tell you that he’s my partner.

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424033_10151308414006236_662319879_n“He’s My Partner” is by Alise Chaffins. Alise is a wife, a mother, an eater of soup, and a lover of Oxford commas. You can generally find her sitting behind a keyboard of some kind: playing or teaching the piano, writing at her laptop, or texting her friends a random movie quote. Alise lives in West Virginia and blogs at knittingsoul.com

 

 

Scarves & High Heels: The Layers of Personal Geography

Posted on by under Guest, Role & Place

I was fresh out of grad school and decided that if I just wore high heels and scarves I’d be taken seriously in the classroom. Because at 5’2″ and just a few years older than my college students, I needed something to communicate big words like “authority” and “stature” and “smart” and “serious.” I walked around that campus with the air of someone who knew what she was about, who knew her subject matter and who knew how to teach.

But I felt like I was playing a giant dress-up game called life.

And then real life happened, by which I mean, life in the dailyness of washing dishes, and learning how to love, and making the bed, and grocery shopping. Life full of the glorious mundane. And then there is the life that happens when you add lives to your own, and spend your hours changing diapers, and making dinner, and trying to make meaning from the crying, the napping, and developmental milestones.

So slowly, as we moved from Los Angeles, to San Diego, to Salt Lake City, and as I moved from student to professor to mother, this “game” of life took on a bedrock finality where I had to concede I was, in fact, grown up. I didn’t need high heels or tomes on my bookshelf. I had a mortgage and a minivan full of kids to prove it.

It just took me to my mid-thirties and seven moves—one international—to begin to feel at home in myself.

Each place has whittled me down based on who I am becoming in each place. As I turn the pages of my past selves, each place holds for me a tender space with an accompanying nostalgia akin to flipping through old photo albums. Each place gives a geography to the chapters of me.

Each place we’ve lived has shown me more of who I am and more of who God is. Each has evidenced a terrible beauty. The painful beauty of becoming. Every home has shown me how wide and deep the Kingdom of God is and that there are good gifts in each spot; that there are always people who need you and whom you can connect to one another. Each place has stripped me a bit bare.

Los Angeles laid claim to my know-it-all-ness, as I put on my grad school knowledge like a scarf and found it lacking. For all the learning in the world couldn’t tell me about marriage, and sacrifice, and how to balance work with new motherhood. San Diego showed me my idol of my self-sufficiency as I floundered with two children under two. I felt helpless and at sea, having left the pats-on-the-back of academia and instead, spent my days pushing a double stroller up and down hills at the zoo.

And now, in what many consider the conservative capital of the US, I have been given bravery in Salt Lake City. It’s a city dominated by the LDS temple, the center point around which the city’s grid system is based. And yet, there are other factions which orbit that hub—factions that challenge, and augment, and move gracefully around the dominant religious culture. It’s made being a Christian here something exotic; and even with the pressures of four children, a college ministry and a dominant religious culture of which I’m not a part, Salt Lake City has birthed my voice.

Places do that. They push and pull at who we think we are and stretch us into who we are becoming.

Places, if we let them, usher us into a multi-orbed story, where in each new place we carry our past layers, have the freedom to shed some old ones, and to don new ones.

Places finally take up residence in our souls, not for their amenities and attractions, but for how they birth us into new people. And how, after awhile, we can look back at each place with a certain fondness after the terror of becoming has abated.

So as I string those dear places together—as connected dots on a world map—I’m reminded that there is no space that is too unlovable, too hard, or too unattractive. And, as we anticipate another move this summer, I’m looking forward to another dot on the map that I will weave my story around, and in whose stories I will be woven.

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ashley

“Scarves & High Heels” was written by Ashley Hales. Ashley is passionate about helping others to tell their scary brave stories. When she’s not stealing time to write at Circling the Story, she’s chasing her four kids or helping out with her husband’s college ministry in Salt Lake City, Utah. She also holds a Ph.D. in English Literature from the University of Edinburgh. You can read more of Ashley’s work on her blog, or follow her on Twitter or Facebook.

 

Rotating Places, Rotating Faces

Posted on by under Guest, Role & Place

Sometimes I wonder if I live as if I am a prism.

I distort the light within me through my many different facets.  My many different faces.  And it is my roles and my places that determine these faces.

At work, I am confident, focused, and confronting.  I solve problems.  I complete things.  And, I am undistracted in my pursuit of success.  My face is one of determination.

At home, I battle distraction.  The typical things of a home filled with children – and internet connections – vie for my attention.  I am less sure in this space.  The tasks that I manage to complete just start over and over again – laundry, meals, school drop-offs, homework.  At home, I try to make love my ambition, not productivity.  But it is a struggle.  My face is one of striving.

prism

At my writing desk, I am neither here nor there.  I am in Kairos, that other-than state that transports me into an openness that can only be explained by God.  In Kairos, the immensity of Him and the tiny molecule of me intersect in a way that makes sense.   My face is one of receiving.

At church, I am unmasked.  I am at rest in the company of imperfection.  I am enough.  I filter, I question, I doubt.  I accept that I am incomplete.  I pursue connection.  My face is one of seeking. 

And so this is the orbit of life:

Rotating roles,

Rotating places,

Rotating faces.

But is this the revolution that God intended? 

I wonder if the revolution He desired is one that transforms me from a prism into a window.   Because, for His light to shine through me, don’t I need to be transparent and fragile, not rock solid and rotating?  

I think I want to be a window.

window

But in transparency and fragility, I am vulnerable.  It is easier and more comfortable to play my roles and change my faces.  Rotation is protection.  Vulnerability is risky; it is complicated and messy.  Vulnerability is letting others see all of my faces, even the ones I don’t want to see.

Yet it is in this vulnerability that others see not only me, but themselves.

So I think I want to be a window, still enough to have one face, transparent enough to let His light shine through, fragile enough to let others see through me to themselves.

Determined, striving, receiving, seeking. 

If I am a window, I am all of these faces, and more, at once, in every role and in every place. 

If I am a window, I am one face.  One face that stays rotated to God, letting His undistorted light shine through.

Yes.  I want to be a window.

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H1“Rotating Places, Rotating Faces” was written by Holly Pennington. Holly has rotated faces through roles such as a physical therapist, health care executive, mother, writer, and entrepreneur.  Her rotating places include Ohio, North Carolina, Florida and Colorado.  She is pursuing a window kind of life in Washington state, despite the rain and fog.  She blogs about faithfully merging “dreadlocks” and “goldilocks” selves at www.dreadlocksandgoldilocks.com.  She can be found on Twitter (@dreadsandgoldi) and Facebook at dreadlocksandgoldilocks.

My Life as a Failed Fifties Housewife

Posted on by under Role & Place

From the beginning, there were no illusions of my culinary domesticity. We met, he cooked, and I fell in love.

At the time, I was working in campus ministry, which meant: one, I was not wealthy, but two, I had a generous expense account. With it, I took students out for dinner and ate lovely balanced meals. I always ordered meat, because restaurant meat was the only animal protein I was getting at the time. I always ordered fresh vegetables, because vegetables are expensive when they don’t come in a can.

At home, I ate things from cans. And Zatarain’s. Lots of Zatarain’s.

zatarain's

There is no shame in eating red beans and rice from a box. And my to-be husband was happy to cook. He loves to cook, and most people love to eat what he cooks. I was content to do the shopping and dishes, and to set the table with candles and cloth napkins.

I’m not completely undomesticated.

Our system worked well until children came into the picture. For a variety of reasons, and against both of our good judgments, I became a mostly stay-at-home mom, though I tried to be not-at-home as much as possible.

I spent a lot of time pushing strollers around museums, frequented the library, and mapped the location of every bathroom at the zoo. I leaned up against piles of laundry and read theology during naptime. I planned playdates with people I liked, and refused to give up coffeeshops.

This was my survival strategy, and everything (apart from diapers, inexplicable crying and constant fatigue) was fine and dandy. Until about five-thirty.

“Honey, I’m home!”

dad

And almost every day, when my husband walked through the front door, I experienced two emotions simultaneously. One was relief, “Oh-thank-you-Jesus-it’s-another-grown-up,” and the other, a daily dose of magnified guilt about dinner. It felt like June Cleaver was slapping me across the face with her perfectly manicured hand. Dinner. He had just worked all day long, and I was at the museum, and now I expected him to make dinner.

Housewife fail.

Now, nevermind that my husband likes to cook and that it helps him unwind from the day (I do not understand this, but he swears that it is true). Nevermind that it gives him a free pass from kid responsibility for another hour. Nevermind that he whips up amazing meals from random things he finds in the fridge, and I can cook spaghetti into the shape of a ball. “Excuses, excuses,” scolds the well-pressed superwoman in my head, “what kind of wife and mother are you?”

In my better moments, I am astounded that I give this scolding superwoman the time of day. It’s 2015 for goodness sake, and set gender roles have shifted, at least in part. My husband likes to cook, and he’s good at it. This is his role in our family, and he accepts it. So why do I experience this nagging pressure? What’s next? Am I going to start questioning my right to vote?

But all of this is more complicated than a caricature.

I have these female friends, and they are not caricatures. They are accomplished, dynamic women, and I have a lot of respect for them. A few years ago they started doing things like family meal planning, and as far as I can tell, family meal planning involves not only planning (which is bad enough) but also cooking(!) from scratch(!!). They bookmark food blogs, research chef knives, and collect healthy recipes on Pintrest. They make brownies with hidden spinach. They buy Brussels sprouts at the Farmer’s Market and prepare them in a way that their kids will eat.

Imagine.

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And they don’t do all of this as superwomen, or because they are trying to squeeze themselves into some predetermined role. They care about nutrition, and they care about their families. And so they are working on new habits, in fits and starts, according to their schedules and situations.

And because I know my friends, I can’t dismiss them as I would a caricature of a “fifties housewife,” just as I can’t hide behind my caricature of a “liberated woman” or even “hopeless cook.” My husband is our family’s 9-5 worker in this season of our lives, and we need to eat, and eat well.

Maybe there is a part I can play.

I’m not saying anything revolutionary here, just that I’d like to take meal preparation a bit more seriously. I’d like to explore a role that I have largely rejected-not because I have to, but because it would be beneficial for the people I love. I won’t do all the cooking (oh perish the thought), but I could do more, and I’m sure that it won’t be a complete disaster.

Maybe I’ll begin with a big pot of homemade beans and rice. I don’t want my daughters to think that only men can cook.

 

Photo by Peter Grevstad