Earlier, today, I read that Huffington Post article that’s making it’s way around. It’s called “I Didn’t Love My Wife When We Got Married” and it details the way that the author has noticed the love in his marriage has changed. All in all it’s a pretty typical “love is a verb” type of article. I don’t disagree with anything in the article. I highly suggest you read it! There are just a few things that I want to add. Not that I’m an expert or anything.

At least in the Evangelical communities in which I grew up, this is not a foreign concept. We hear all of the time “love is not a feeling it is an action”. And that can be true but that also led a lot of us girls to grow up with a misguided notion that led many friends and dorm-mates to rush into very young marriages believing that it’s okay that maybe things didn’t feel exactly right–love is a verb. It’s not a feeling. This was dealt with in various ways. Some young couples that I know have grown into happy, loving marriages. Some divorced just as young as they married. I don’t think either way was the right way. Everyone is different and everyone’s relationship is different. I don’t dispute that love is a verb but I think that “this is right” feeling is pivotal, too. It just needs to be used correctly. More like a compass rather than something used to gauge whether or not things are alive or dead.

Elad Nehorai talks about when he would go out of his way to be extra romantic or lovey-dovey, trying to rekindle that initial fire that he felt, it would not be reciprocated. Probably because it felt very fake, put-on, or like he was trying too hard (enormous turn-off). But then once he started doing things, say, around the house for his wife or just taking some of the burden off of her (to use another form of Christianeese, “he was speaking her love language”), he noticed that she would look at him as a woman who loves her husband. And that would fuel his fire to keep doing these loving things. To quote my dear friend Angela, “love begets love.” And this is an excellent point. Love is what produces more love. You can’t create it out of thin air.

But I think there’s another way to love, too. And that’s by living loved. I mean by living as one who is loved. I mean by accepting that this person across the table loves you and then actively accepting that love from them. I speak from a woman’s perspective, of course, though I’m sure this speaks to men as well. When someone compliments us, we’re expected to deflect it. When someone says, “I love this recipe!” We say, “Oh, it wasn’t that difficult.” When someone says, “You look great today!” We’re supposed to say, “No, I look awful.” When someone offers to help, we’re supposed to say “Oh, no, I can do it on my own.” Regardless of what we really feel, we’re supposed to downplay ourselves and our wants and our needs and that, I think, is really detrimental to our relationships with other people.

I’ve been with my boyfriend for over two years now. That’s not long, I understand that and so I’m not trying to speak as an expert on the subject. But I have lived a little. I’ve tried to make a man love me who was completely incapable of giving me what I needed and after years of trying to get water from a stone, it made an imprint on me as a person. I thought that I was doing it right, though. Because everyone says that love takes really hard work and that love isn’t a feeling, it’s a verb. So I trained myself to love by giving and giving and giving without reciprocation.

Well now, here I am two years in with a man who loves the hell out of me. And I catch myself, still, going back to those old habits and trying and trying and trying. And when I’m met with, “I love you” sometimes I don’t know what to do. And I deflect, like we’re supposed to. But for me, one of the most loving things that I can do for my boyfriend is to let him love me. To let him compliment me. To let him buy me dinner. To let him clean out the cat box because he knows I hate to do it. And it doesn’t come easily. Not at all. It can be scary and vulnerable to just sit there and accept kindness and compliments and kisses. Sometimes it takes everything in me to fight that impulse to push it away because graciously accepting something that I want and enjoy isn’t something that I’ve been trained to do. I’m the one who’s supposed to be working for it, not you! But real love is reciprocal. And love begets love begets love. And so I keep trying.

And I just wanted to tell you about that.

XOXO
-Lib

For starters, I don’t want this blog to become all about eating sugar-free at all whatsoever. I just want to get that out of the way. So if this doesn’t interest you in the least, feel free to skip on by and come back some other day when I have a bunch of feels to share.  But I have had a few people ask me to write about it and so here we are.

What? I want to train myself not to crave sugar anymore. Some friends (my boyfriend and then three other friends who are all smattered across the country) and I are all going to (do our damndest to) spend September avoiding sugar entirely. I think that each of us kind of have our own different set of standards for what that means individually but the blanket truth being that we’re weaning ourselves off of refined and fake sugars. And we’re excited about it. Ryan has committed to taking this challenge with me and it makes me feel excited that we’re embarking on a challenge together. I’m not here to put his business on the street, but I just have to say God bless his heart and his soul as his sacrifice is great indeed.

Why? If we’re being really, really honest my main motivator isn’t necessarily that I want to lose weight or that I want to detox my body or anything like that (I mean, yes. Those things are great and those things will very likely happen but they aren’t the main drive). Frankly, I just kind of like a challenge. When I was reading Mindy Kaling’s book, there is a section about food and how she’s tried every fad diet known to man just because she likes trying them out. I relate to that. I understand completely if no one else does (but if you do, please tell me). Lately I’ve felt a little out of self-control and this is a way for me to reign it in, center it and prove to myself that I really am in charge of myself.

I have been reading a lot about a whole foods diet–which is something that I really, really want to embrace for myself. I feel like going sugarless is step one to get going in that direction. It’s hard to avoid sugar (both real and fake) and still consume a lot of refined foods. Sugar is in everything and a lot of people have a lot of opinions about it. I’ve watched the documentaries and I’ve read the articles and books but I don’t feel like an expert enough to have a solid opinion one way or another regarding the whole of humanity and the right way to do food. I know that for me, this is what I want to do. So that’s why I’m doing it. It’s really that simple, I want to. 

How? Well, for starters, I’d been researching going sugarless for weeks before my friend Jessica even approached me about it in the first place. And, allow me to get very real with you about my feelings really quick: initially I didn’t want to do it at all. I’d been researching and talking a good game about my thoughts on healthy eating but I was not excited about having things actually expected of me. But I thought to myself (and, let it be known, I can be pretty self-righteous), “Well, this is really important to Jessica and if it was me, I would do better if I had the support of someone else so I guess I’ll do it with her.” Ugh. How condescending. I mean, I didn’t say it like that outloud. I’m sure I feigned some excitement about health but in my mind, I wasn’t doing it for me. I was doing it out of sympathy for my friend. And I had that attitude for about twelve, maybe thirteen minutes before I went back through all the research that I’d been doing and decided, no I’m going to do this and I’m going to do this for me and I’m going to be damn proud of myself.

So as much as I prepared myself mentally (learning about where hidden sugars are in food, developing less of a need for sweet  in regards to my coffee consumption, learning about the glycemic index), I did not prepare myself physically at all. September 1st came around and I was seriously lacking in the food department in the house! So Ryan and I drank Gatorade for breakfast (for the record, not even remotely sugar free) and then I went to the grocery stores. That first trip took about two hours because I wanted to read the ingredients of everything that I put in the cart. It’s easier if you stick to the outer edges of the grocery but even there you have to be careful. For example, I know that low-fat or non-fat dairy sounds like a better idea but there’s a lot more sugar in that than there is in the full fat version. And there’s fewer ingredients in the full fat version so that’s just what I go for, now. Full fat yogurt will keep you fuller anyway and you end up eating less.

Like I said, we all probably have different standards. We all are more lenient in certain ways and less than others. I think all across the board, donuts and gummy bears are frowned upon. But then there are other things, like bread? I like bread a lot. There’s sugar in it, of course, because that’s a main component in the chemistry of bread. But for me, personally, I choose the bread with whole grains so that if I have to have this small amount of sugar, I might as well balance it out with whole grains and fiber and protein also.

Fun facts: did you know that tonic water has nearly as much sugar as a Coke?! It’s disgusting! How could it be, like, 50% HFCS?? Anyway, maybe you did know that but I didn’t and I was downright shocked.  No more G&T’s for the Monaghan-Parker Household this month.
Also, on the side of good news, red wine is basically sugar free. So, that’s awesome. I mean, alcohol is never ever going to be considered a health food but a girl can only sacrifice so much all at once.

When it’s hard and I want to eat all of the cookies, or when I am wondering whether or not I want to eat something, I try to go back to the purpose for this experiment. I want to train myself not to crave sugar anymore. Studies show that the human body is in no way benefited by sugar. Sugar does, however, feed and nourish sickness. That’s all that it does in our bodies, it just makes disease more diseased. And the fact that my body craves that is pretty disturbing to me. Sugar hasn’t done anything to earn my affections and it doesn’t deserve my attention. I’m worth more than that. My body is worth more than that. My friends and my family are worth more than that to me. And anytime I wonder, “can I eat this…” I say, sometimes out loud, “I want to train myself not to crave sugar anymore.”  For September, I’m going no sweets at all (I am pro-fruit, however). But once Sept is over, I’m going to work on finding better-sugar alternatives to certain foods. After all, I have a monumental birthday coming up next month!!

So in the mean time, I’m going to keep reading and learning about my body and the food that I put into it. I might tell you about it if you want to know.

If you have any questions or suggestions please, I’d love to hear them. Encouragements, too. Because despite the fact that this post might sound really upbeat and positive and certain, at about 3:00 pm all I want in the world is gooey, rich, thick, melty chocolate chip cookies.

XOXO,
Lib

Can it be that summer is nearly over already? It’s been raining in Kansas for the past three weeks with no signs of stopping.

“Spring passes and one remembers one’s innocence.
Summer passes and one remembers one’s exuberance.
Autumn passes and one remembers one’s reverence.
Winter passes and one remembers one’s perseverance.” 
–Yoko Ono

On one hand we are grateful because we’ve been in a drought for three years.
On the other hand, we are drowning.

Summer used to be magical! This summer, nothing seemed to work the way that it was supposed to. Summer used to be so crazy delightful but this summer just seems like what it is. I am an adult with a job that I go to every day and there is no summer break. Every day is every other day, only occasionally with a higher heat and humidity.

It’s supposed to be 111 degrees at Pond Party but this year it was rainy with a high of 75.

We’re supposed to have Ryan and Josh’s birthday pool party at Grandma’s house in the sweltering heat. But this year, it has to be moved to an indoor location due to the unswimmable weather. We’re all pretty excited to go bowling together this weekend, though.

I have not put my body into a pool or a bathing suit even one time. Though I did get drunk and dance in a back yard. At least there was that.

I have eaten watermelon once. That was in May. A few days ago, a coworker brought tomatoes from her garden. So at least I didn’t go an entire year without tasting a real, real tomato.

Despite all of the reality, this summer has been lovely.