I Can't Seem To Resist

If this is your first year on this blog, you may not know that Valentine's Day is my thing. Truly, in a bit of a psycho-pathic way, I love the heck out of Valentine's Day. I explain how it is that I hate hearts and candy but love V-day, here.

Last year, I loved a lot of people who had loved us throughout the years, in a bread and butter kind of way. The year before, you can see a little bit more of my manic-ness, through all the preparation here and execution here.

I still have on this V-day sweater today, as I did three years ago. It's been part of my V-day uniform for the past five years.

And if you want me to go back farther--old school, we can sometime, over a cup of tea. I bet I could make you laugh pretty hard. Especially if I told stories with Jeremiah sitting beside me, reliving the embarrassment. It's not that I like to embarrass him (which is what it sort of looks like from the outside), it's an issue I have with big love statements...and wanting to make them. I have never had one of those scenes in the airport. You know the slow-motion-run into a kiss so big you don't care who's looking you just drop your bags and make out right there. But I feel like every Valentine's day, I let myself get wound up into wanting to create one of those type moments. I can't help myself. The first one, I attempted in an actual airport. It didn't go so well. I actually posted it-comment form-on someone else's blog recently. If you want to relive my embarrassment, you can, here (I'm the 9th comment down).

So this year, I determined to NOT cave to all the hype. We are flying out in the morning and I could use some Prozac to calm my frazzled nerves. The girls have never flown before, and I'm doing it by myself. Some of our flights have only two seats on each side of the plane...who would you leave by themselves? I'll let you know how THAT goes.

Even with the anxiety, I just could not let the day go without a little V-day ghost action. Especially after Pace said, "Mom, why am I going to school? Valentine's day is about doing things for people you love with your family." That's her Momma's girl. I couldn't disappoint that heritage I've been instilling all these years :) So, I made a simple chocolate brownie cake:

Picked up a CD I thought my Valentine would like and wrote a note (that I hoped would make him blush ;)) in a big red card. Then, we headed to his office--where he'd forbidden us to come. Pace got nervous once we got inside (and I did too). Have you walked through a busy trauma center carrying a heart-shaped cake, and dressed in various shades of pink and red lately? It can be a little unnerving. Pace asked if she could stand outside the office while I took it in. I knelt down to my ghost-in-training and said, "Baby, Valentine's Day is all about making a fool of yourself for the one you love. Be brave!" We did it, and he was sweet and thankful. You'll have to forgive me though...I couldn't add the whopping camera to the embarrassment. I did take a shot in the parking deck:

We got home to find that Daddy had sent us some surprises too:

That man knows me a little too well.

I may or may not be currently eating some of each type...How was I supposed to choose?! Evil gift!

Mrs. Konie and Papa had sent a whole big box of goodies that the girls tore into!!

Hopefully, tonight, I'll be dancing off at least one of the aforementioned cupcakes :) Jeremiah and I have a date, and it's of a very different type. I'd tell you more, but it's a surprise for somebody else who might check this. Hopefully, I'll get some pictures to share later.

Happy V-day!!!

A Book and a Song

My reading has fallen almost to non-existence since we've been in Seattle. My quiet moments (few as they always seem) have been devoted to writing away at my little book or embroidering. The past three days, however, I went on a thrilling reading adventure. It much revitalized a heart in need of being swirled in the delicious whirlwind which only a good book can bring. This is the book: When Knighthood Was in Flower by Edwin Caskoden (pseudonym for Charles Major)

My friend Lanier put me onto it here, and I've learned to trust whatever books she recommends. If you want to read more about it, you should follow Lanier's link. I call this type of writing high Victorian--full of (hard-to-believe but wonderfully refreshing) virtue and (over-the top but oh how it will make your heart swell) love. If you like Augusta Evans, I feel very safe recommending this one to you. If you tend towards the cynic...you might not like it so well.

This is my favorite quote from the book:

I do not mean that Mary was in love, but that she had met, and for the first time felt the touch, yes even the subtle, unconscious, dominating force so sweet to a woman, of the man she could love, and had known the rarest throb that pulses in that choicest of all God's perfect handiwork--a woman's heart--the throb that goes before--the John the Baptist, as it were, of coming love.

I love it partially because I know precisely what it means, having experienced it myself. When I first met Jeremiah I knew, I just knew, he was the one God had been protecting me for. I had never told a boy I loved him before Jeremiah, because I knew I was still waiting for something that had not been given to me yet. However, on a summer night in May, sitting on the tailgate of a white Dodge truck, with stars reflecting off the little pond we were pondering I heard the words, "I love you, and you don't have to say anything back, but I do." And finally, a heart who had been waiting for, what seemed like forever, could finally burst forth and answer back, "I love you, too."

He may have said the words first, but his heart was not the John the Baptist of the rest of our dating relationship. There was actually one point when I worked up the nerve to tell him, "I know you're the one, I've always known, and I'm just waiting for the time." I was answered by silence. "Do you not feel the same way?" And his answer, "I can't say that for sure." Oh there were some dark days on our road! But don't all good love stories suffer twists and turns and snags?

Before the days of iPods and iTunes--even before Napster!--Jeremiah used to call and leave songs on my voice mail. I would rush out to my car each day after school, to see what message he had left. The first song he left on my phone was John Denver's "I'd Rather be A Cowboy." When he started recording, the words were saying this:

We were just beginning it was such an easy way. Layin' back up in the mountains makin' songs for sunny days.

It was a perfect description of how this springtime beginning to our relationship felt, and if you could have seen me in my car as I listened to those words, you would have thought my face was going to break off if my smile grew any larger. However, if you know the song (you can listen here if you like) you know that it quickly makes a turn for the worse:

She got tired of pickin' daisies, and cookin' my meals for me. She can live the life she wants to, yeah, it's alright with me. I think I'd rather be a cowboy. I think I'd rather ride the reigns. I think I'd rather be cowboy, than to lay me down and love the lady's chains.

Now, as a man who loves music for music's sake, I now know he was just taken up by the song and wanted to share it with me. As a woman who listens to music for poetry's sake--searching for hidden meaning everywhere--I thought I was being broken up with over voicemail.

Anywho, we worked that one out, and that song has become one of our absolute favorites, partly because it expresses a deep desire that we've been fostering since those very first days together. The idea of wanting the freedom of fresh air and open spaces--

I'd rather live on the side of a mountain, than wander through canyons of concrete and steel. I'd rather laugh with the rain and sunshine, then lay down my sun down in some starry field...

And there have been moments, during all of this long medical training, when I've reminded him of those very words. When I've said, "I can't do this any more. I just want you. Can't we just go live in the woods somewhere. I'll learn how to garden, I swear!"

But now, we're almost through. Almost finished with the training, and we stand here still feeling a lot like those two kids who wanted nothing more than to disappear to a mountainside together,...but we also feel like two adults who have learned that we value and need community. We have signed a contract to move back to Dothan--I don't think I've told y'all that yet. We are so, so very excited to move back home, but are feeling really torn about where God wants us to put down our roots when we get there. I'm flying home with the girls next week to look at houses. Pray for me friends! It's such an exciting time in our lives, but pray for us if you will. That God will make it clear what His plan is because, ultimately--land or no land, community or countryside, we want desperately to be in His will.

Merry Christmas from Pace and Mary Aplin

I'm sorry to all you blog readers, who I know don't care about seeing picture after picture of our children opening presents :). These, however, are for our family. Thank you, thank you for the time and effort it took to send little pieces of you to us on Christmas morning. You seasoned Seattle with love, and we are so thankful.

Wow, this a lovely one of me! I did go to AUBURN and not Samford. This just happens to be the only sweatshirt in our house. Did I steal it from you Allie?

"Daddy, if you want me to tell the Christmas story I can. I did memorize it."

"Could we please stop telling the Christmas story over and over and just open a few presents?"

Aren't we sassy?

I love this lipgloss so much, I could eat it...oh wait, she is eating it.

"Oh the ballet costume I've been asking for for so very long! This is seriously graceful business."

Or...maybe not always so graceful :)

We were treated to dinner Christmas night in our dear friends' home.

And I haven't eaten at any restaurant in Seattle that had food this good.

Merry, Merry.

Some Things You Only Get to Do Once

This was the first Thanksgiving I've ever spent away from my family. I was apprehensive as we approached this holiday, especially since it coincided with my Mom's birthday. How would this be?

Dr. Chapman, one of the attendings that Jeremiah works with, invited us to join he and his wife's family for Thanksgiving dinner. I was thankful to have a plan--somewhere to be for the big day, but I was apprehensive about spending a holiday with people we had never met.

We found, as I am discovering over and over in our experience out here (and our road trip out), that when you allow life to just happen it can be surprisingly beautiful. We spent Thanksgiving here:

A farm in North Bend Washington, blanketed in snow. The Damazo/Chapman family welcomed us in a way that is still blowing my mind. They were fascinating--full of life experiences of which we were allowed glimpses--bronze sculpting, building a state-of-the-art free dental clinic in Kenya, fox hunting in England, mosaic art, running a horse farm, cooking gourmet meals,...my mind was in a blur the whole evening trying to take it all in. I imagined we would be dropping in as interlopers in another family's whirlwind, and instead, I found myself being served (by some very sweet children) a candle-lit meal with things like truffle-cream sauce over my turkey. Where were all the casseroles?! :) Were my children going to break the crystal? And how in the world did we get admitted to this grand evening? Dr. Chapman served us a variety of his favorite wines while his sweet daughters took my little chicken wings upstairs to play after the meal.

It was intimate and elegant and fascinating, and while I missed our family and my Mom like crazy, I felt blessed to be able to experience a new kind of Thanksgiving.

Ready for a gear switch? On Saturday after Thanksgiving we had another kind of all new experience--cutting down our own Christmas tree. Here in Washington, for a mere ten dollars, you can purchase a permit to troop out into the wilderness and chop down your very own tree. Is anybody else picturing Clark Griswold?

As we pulled off the exit ramp that Jeremiah had chosen for our tree extravaganza, I looked to the right and left and felt terror grip my heart. Sheer panic. I love my husband, and I trust him to take care of us, but when we are in a car and there is snow all over the roads, I do NOT trust him to keep us from getting stuck in it. I see this glint in his eye from all those Saturdays spent "mudding" in high school, and I know there is some part of him that just wants to slide all over the place. I began rationing out the picnic lunch I'd packed in my mind, wondering how long the four of us could survive on it after we were stuck in the wilderness in the snow.

Needless to say, we had a few scary moments (we had to help dig another family's car out the snow, and did a little spinning out), but we managed to make it out without having to ration our picnic--although we didn't enjoy it quite as I had anticipated...

Fifty degrees in Seattle, but thirty minutes outside the city was beyond my scope of planning.

We hiked a magnificent wooded trail, occasionally being sprinkled with snow, and in awe of the quiet peacefulness of a snow-covered wood. I know I will never forget that walk. Miraculously, I never felt cold but I saw streams tumbling over ice capped boulders

and a forest of evergreen trees with boughs drooping from the weight of their white mantles.

As we walked and waited for the glorious moment when Our tree would reveal its face, something changed in our spirits. We discovered we'd made a rookie mistake in buying the 12-foot and under permit. Who needs a tree taller than that, right? However, when you're talking about undergrowth in a forest, anything under 12 feet is, ummm, scanty at best. If we had paid $10 more, we could have felled a 20-foot tree and used the plump top half as our Christmas tree, but there were strict rules (and steep fines) for cutting outside the boundaries of your permit. We went from looking for the perfect tree...to looking for a tree that would support lights.

We sent Jeremiah down into a sun-filled gully, in hopes that some of that undergrowth might have grown some branches on more than one side.

I wish you could have heard how hard we've laughed over this dilemma. I am normally OCD crazy woman about the most perfect, most full Christmas tree on the lot...and here I was just praying for a tree with more than two branches.

I stayed back on the trail with the girls while he disappeared into waist-deep snow. And y'all, twenty minutes after his disappearance he emerged with this smile and this tree, saying he felt like he'd found the tree for Rockefeller Center when he saw this one shining in the distance....

I congratulated him on his magnanimous find and smiled to myself at what we now considered beautiful. By this time, Mary Aplin had managed to pack snow down INTO her boots and was crying in fear of why her Daddy had been gone so long in the woods. After unpacking the snow, I removed her wet, freezing socks and put my gloves on her feet instead. With empty fingers crammed into her boots and a chest cold that seemed to be developing before our eyes, there was no way little girl was going to make the half-mile trek back out of the woods. So, we went back to our old methods :)

I don't know how he did that the whole way out of the woods, but he only let me drag the tree for a very short reprieve before taking it back.

I think there was some kind of man-in-the-woods-need-to-bring-home-tree-for-my-women thing going on.

We didn't bring any of our Christmas decorations, so after a $30 trip to Fred Meyer (Seattle's version of Wal-Mart) we were drinking hot chocolate around our Christmas tree.

I feel staunchly protective of this tree's ugliness... Maybe because I feel like she's doing her best to shine for us, or maybe because she was born out of such a magical day. Either way, she may be ugly, but she's all ours.

Aware But Not Anxious

So very sorry! Jeremiah wrote this several days ago, and I've been procrastinating adding the pictures.


One of the seemingly harsh realities of growing up has hit me over the last few years. Nobody remembered to warn me about it, so I felt blindsided. I can remember being in school and having that really big test or project that you were dreading. Finally as the day approaches you tell yourself to just keep pushing because soon it will be over and you can relax and have nothing to worry about. I loved that feeling the afternoon after a test in college, when you knew there were days ahead without expectations or responsibility. How about the holidays where you had days and nights of whatever you wanted to do and nobody expecting you to perform or produce anything? I guess I subconsciously assumed this is the way it would always be, but I have since realized that life proves to be more of a continuous challenge, still marked by some big tasks that require endorphins to get you through. However, that post-test sense of ease doesn't come as easily once you are all grown up.




It is similar to the practice of medicine. As a kid you think a person gets hurt or sick and the doctor fixes them up and they get well and forget about it. So when a kid decides to become a surgeon, he thinks, "I can fix people up, patient after patient." At least I somehow thought that was how it works - you operate on someone and they get better and it's done. Then I started my training and began to observe what is meant by the term "practice of medicine". A patient comes in with a problem that needs surgery and they get it. Hopefully, they get well and move on but there are those cases of unfortunate complications - infections, persistent pain, surgical errors etc. This is hard to swallow - I thought you could do your best for a patient and then relax in a job well done, but sometimes the "test" doesn't end that day. You may follow that patient for years trying to help them but never have that nice "mission accomplished" feeling we grew up with.




Medicine is one place I see this but only a small part of it. I think raising kids may be the better example. I have seen that women don't usually get to get up in the morning, perform a task well, and then immediately see the results. They don't get to climb the mountain of tasks and then sit back and bask in the break from responsibility. Instead, they work daily, making investments of time and effort that will hopefully be successful in their children. The work doesn't really ever stop - always a kid who is sick, hungry, misbehaving, needing questions answered, and nightly baths and stories. So as parents, it seems impossible to get that reprieve we used to know. Maybe we could leave the kids with the grandparents a couple times a year but nobody wants to spend their lives desperately waiting to get away from that feeling of responsibility - we would be unhappy or bitter 90% of the time.




I think there is a way out of this. We can live a very safe life and keep our responsibility to a bare minimun. Keep ourself protected from expectations and relationships and keep that wonderful feeling void of responsibility we knew growing up. To me, this is not appealling but I have seen some people living that way. Since I don't want that kind of life, I have had to ask myself where to go from here. The problem is that the more responsibility you allow yourself, the more potential anxiety. You could handle it growing up because whatever task you had to complete was always followed with that period of reprieve. With every new responsibility comes a potential risk. For parents - will the kids turn out the way you hope, or for leadership - will you let people down that are counting on you, or for any challenge - how will this turn out? So what do you do with that potential anxiety because the challenges keep coming and the breaks don't?





Lately, we have been studying Luke with a group of friends here in Seattle. Much of Luke talks about anxiety. There are a few applications here. Jesus repeatedly emphasizes that he does not want us to be anxious. So what do we do with all this responsibility? If we know we are supposed to cast our cares on Him, how can we practice this? I think what we have to do is be Aware but not Anxious. No we shouldn't ignore the risks and responsibilities that we face by the lives we have chosen. However, I think the danger is on focusing on those things instead of what we are trying to do. So what if we could learn to be aware of those risks but not experience any anxiety because we don't focus on them? I think we have a choice to be Worriers or Warriors. May sound cliche, I know but I can't get this out of my mind and though Webster may not agree, I think they are perfect antonyms. In Luke, Jesus asks a question about which of us, before going to build a tower, doesn't first stop to consider the cost and if it can be completed. Obviously, there is a place for measuring the cost of each responsibility but that is where you become a worrier or a warrior. I think a warrior stops and kisses his family before going to battle. They cry together at the thought of possibly not seeing each other again and then he turns his horse and rides full speed and doesn't look back. The worrier considers the cost, rides a few feet and stops to reconsider and then rides a little further and then stops again to reconsider the costs and risks and eventually is anxious and paralyzed by anxiety and fear of the responsibility. It would be better to either ride back home and relax or to ride on into battle; but to stay in the middle world of the worrier would be miserable for anyone.




So the point is that we can't reasonably get away from responsibility and we really probably don't want to. The pertinent thing is how we deal with it. We have to learn how to enjoy life and enjoy our responsibilities, being aware of them but not anxious about their cost or outcome. Then I hope that we won't spend our lives living for that carefree post-test feeling. Instead, maybe we can learn to enjoy our responsibilities because of how we approach them as aware warriors instead of anxious worriers....