Musings – Page 2 – Thoughts from Blue Eyes

marriage is cleaning the stove

Corbin semi-coerced me into watching Twilight with him today to poke fun at it together. It was so cringy, the CGI was so bad, I had to walk out of the room. Apart from the bad acting and unbelievability of it all, I was also annoyed with how sappy and, well, perfect, the romance is portrayed between Edward and Bella. Like, have the directors ever seen a real dating relationship before? (“No one even talks like that,” Corbin pointed out laughing.)

Because that’s not what true love is or looks like. Marriage, especially. Marriage is a commitment, a decision to sacrifice and love even when you don’t feel like it, or when the other person isn’t beautiful or always there or perfect. Marriage is

cleaning the stove on a Wednesday night; doing laundry for the 9000th time; sharing toothpaste; sitting in silence on the couch doing two separate things; having a domestic about

marriage is cleaning the stoveKaitlyn2021-09-02T01:41:15+00:00

Ground Control to Major Tom

My living room is filled with piles of neatly stacked and folded laundry. A sign of a diligent and thoughtful husband, who is now asleep because of an early morning stocking the grocery store tomorrow.

I ran into a couple at the store this evening while I was picking up ingredients to make fish tacos. They just got married three weeks ago – such joy! I remember what it felt like because I still mostly feel that way too. It is still so sweet to just do basic life things with Corbin like getting groceries or cleaning the kitchen (which may or may not now include scraping suicidal pepperonis off the bottom of the oven).

However, after walking down to the soup aisle, I realized, in a panicky sort of way, that I couldn’t quite remember what exactly I felt like or what exactly we did during those first few precious weeks and

Ground Control to Major TomKaitlyn2021-08-03T03:38:24+00:00

To all the boys who haven’t yet loved

Like many who love a good relationship drama, I adored watching Netflix’s To All The Boys I Loved Before. Armed with snacks and my best friend, I indulged in the sweet and quirky tale of high school romance between Lara Jean and Peter complete with a bubblegum color palette, fun music, and loveable supporting characters. I couldn’t wait for the sequel, and then, finally, the final chapter in this story which came out a few months ago right around Valentine’s Day.

It’s senior year, and Lara Jean is in a tough position. She didn’t get accepted into Stanford, her dream school that she and Peter had planned on both attending together, and now she has to figure out what to do. Attend college across the country at NYU, or choose a “safe” option and a college closer to home (and Stanford, and Peter). The ending of the movie was slightly predictable, but

To all the boys who haven’t yet lovedKaitlyn2021-05-23T00:03:19+00:00

Six months of marriage: reflections

The next thing I knew, I had been married for SIX MONTHS WHAT and winter was beginning to melt into Spring slush. Rumor has it that it may hit 65 degrees this Wednesday, I missed picking up my hold from the library, and I’ve cleaned the kitchen four times in the past 24 hours. I’m reading through the Gospels in 30 days (ok more like 75 days at this point RIP), thought I had COVID but ended up sorely disappointed, and have discovered a latent obsession for extreme sour patch kids. I think I’m done with our taxes, hosted brunch this morning, and am savoring sunshine. My Spotify playlist is still a weird mix of stuff that’s mostly circa 2013. I have ups and downs emotionally about the world, my health, and if I’m doing enough for the Lord (spoiler, that’s a bad trap to get into and is a

Six months of marriage: reflectionsKaitlyn2021-03-07T03:11:07+00:00

ode to my husband

Today my sweet husband went to work and I was puttering around the apartment tidying when I found a treasure. I was cleaning up the kitchen table and putting away his old laptop into its case when I found a giant cache of every love letter I ever wrote to him over the four+ years of our relationship. I knew he had saved them, but to find them all at once in one pile was overwhelmingly dear. I read through a few of them and smiled at the sheer amount of affection within them.

What a joy that our hope was fulfilled and here we are today, three months married, and the Lord helps me grow in love for him in deeper ways than I previously believed to exist. I did not know that I could have such deep attachment to another person who is so other from me. And it

ode to my husbandKaitlyn2020-12-13T20:09:25+00:00

joy

I have never felt such joy as I do now being married these two months. Committing to life with my best friends has opened a special gate of happiness into my life that truly proves marriage as a gift. The sweetness of waking up together each day, living and loving and serving together, sharing a life, is a divine blessing. I am happy in a new, deeper way. They were right, more than they knew.

Dying to self and serving someone else with your whole being brings, strangely, a new type of life injected into my heart. Being able to wholeheartedly belong, love, submit to another in such an intimate way of day in and day out – marriage is a joy.

Too many people say that marriage is hard. Yes, in the sense that denying yourself and choosing to love out of a decision when you don’t feel like it and

joyKaitlyn2020-11-08T23:29:17+00:00

it smelled like the august of 2013

I stepped outside and the scent of sunshine, of warm wind, of a very specific olfactory sensation hit me. It made me think of hope and memories yet to be made from late-night dorm talks, the smell of change and excitement and bewilderment, of discovering twenty one pilots and having eyes wide open to every experience happening to me.

I felt 18 again for a moment.

I’ve always been the type of person to take in everything and savor it, remember it, feeling the weight of the small hours and seconds that make up our lives. Sometimes a small voice shouts in my head, Remember, remember this! when a this tangibility happens, a snapshot that I ought to grab and file away and hold.

2020 has been one large roller coaster of weirdness, fear, hope, and curiosity. No one could have predicted what has happened in our world. I’ll never forget trying to plan

it smelled like the august of 2013Kaitlyn2020-08-17T15:33:54+00:00

valleys of shadow

It’s a quiet day at the desk here. I’m minding the phones but my mind is in a faraway place, pondering great human suffering and the broken, dismal bleakness of our world. I made the mistake this morning of reading a book I found in a pile our receptionist left behind. It is a fiction-ish narrative about a Holocaust survivor and I knew that it would be dangerous, one of those can’t-put-it-down novels that will leave me thinking down a hole and feeling heavy sadness for a while.

My heart shuts down at the brutality of human beings and the atrocious horrors experienced by real people in real time, fellow image-bearers who all had names and faces and favorite colors and loves and special talents and unique laughter. All I can say is, “Lord…?” There really aren’t words for such things.

In the darkest events of human history, it’s easy to shove

valleys of shadowKaitlyn2020-08-17T15:20:44+00:00

0.6 miles of holiness

Every evening around 10:30pm, if you’re hanging around a certain Chicago street corner, you’ll see a couple emerge from a yellowed apartment building, usually holding hands. They begin a 0.6 -mile walk in the twilight, cutting through some neighborhoods and past the parks, to a squat, brick two-flat on a one way street. She unlocks the door, he kisses her goodnight and assures she is safely inside, then he turns around and re-walks the 0.6-mile path in the dark.

It’s an inconvenient dance where I’m living out of a suitcase and sleeping on an air mattress in a near-empty apartment while my fiance lives a 15 minute walk away in a fully-furnished one. We aren’t getting married for another five weeks, and the back and forth is annoying and tiring.

Why make the harder choice? Why deal with the inconvenience of going home each night? This is stupid, many would say.

Nobody ever

0.6 miles of holinessKaitlyn2020-08-01T17:24:28+00:00

100 Days

In 100 days, I’m getting married.

What will the world look like in 100 days? It’s not something I’ve ever thought about before. Time usually just rolls on like normal. We don’t expect major bumps and blizzards and bizarre changes that completely curtail our expectation of the next several months. No one really wonders if restaurants will still be open in 100 days or if we will be allowed to leave our houses.

And yet, for the first time in my life, I and the rest of my friends, family, and community, are forced to take everything one day at a time. The coronavirus has crumpled our little wall calendars into magnified accordions where we can really only see today, honestly not knowing what will happen tomorrow. What kind of world will I wake up to in the morning? Will I be quarantined, will the grocery store close, will my roommate wake

100 DaysKaitlyn2020-03-19T18:42:00+00:00