Why La La Land would've wrecked me if I were still 22

There is a gaggle of girls in this coffee bar spoiling the ending of "La La Land" and I take umbrage. They are loud and sighing and I'm annoyed. But I should warn you that this post probably contains a spoiler or four, as well.

Like the rest of earth that needed to see what would happen if Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling put on tap shoes and started singing, my beloved and I went to Los Angeles last night for a couple of hours. We also went back to our twenties when we were full of friend-roomies and durrnnk parties and all the ideals our 22 year-old hearts could contain. I would not go back to that time on a permanent basis, though. I needed Jesus and a budget more than I can articulate.

We loved "La La Land" like the rest of the universe. We were wrecked by it, too. From this vantage, though, Loverpants and I can safely wonder and wander through all the What Ifs and not be completely devastated. We are committed to the happiness and holiness of each other and our children and right now that looks like trading off time to write blog posts and play frisbee in equal measures.

However, if I had seen this film when I was 22 and was fully convinced I needed to move to NYC and get an MFA and find my voice in the basement of moody unnamed coffee bars, I probably would have tore a page out of main characters Mia and Seb's playbook. They decided they needed the space to pursue their own dreams. Their creative endeavors could not come to fruition if they stayed together in the same geography, looking up at the same stars from the same latitudes and longitudes.

And that's a lie I so wanted to buy when I was in my early 20s. The lie that one can *only* pursue creative dreams when given the maximum space and resources one can afford. It all seemed easier to clean house to make space for more short story drafts than to have to compromise with another whose time and talents pulled equal rank.

I tried to break up with Loverpants and he with several times. I felt ashamed that I was doing the un-feminist thing by moving to be closer to him after college. Even a month before our wedding, I was still fighting to get into law school until I realized that law school wasn't what I wanted. I just wanted stable professional footing. Even more than than that I wanted a happy, stable marriage. I deferred law school and ultimately never went and have exactly zero regrets.

Throughout our relationship and marriage, we have pursued various degrees, moved to support one another's professional dreams. I was pregnant and adjusting to life with a baby for much of grad school. Some would say these were not ideal circumstances, but I wouldn't trade them for anything. They added a richness and a texture to every pursuit. I worked harder and more efficiently because I had a baby who napped for two hour windows. My degree mattered to me because I wanted to make my daughter proud. Loverpants built a private practice from our kitchen table. I wrote a book while rocking our son to sleep. Time and Fit are the non-negotiable factors in a relationship's survival, whether starry-eyed millennials or obedient Dave Ramsey-like Baby Boomers.

Mia and Seb's relationship is familiar, I'm sure, to many creative dreamers who don't want to trump one another's artistic aims. It's familiar to me but allow me this microphone: It's not the only narrative that will net a Mostly Happily Ever After. Partnership adds something wonderful to the creative life, whether one's role is co-author or sideline cheerleader. I'm glad to have been able to play both roles and look forward to wearing a many more hats before the curtain falls.

Here's to the ones who dream. Foolish as they may seem. Here's to the hearts that ache. Here's to the mess we make.

Imagine. Getting married. Without a hashtag. #thehorror

I don't even remember the exact date other than that it was the beginning of the Red Sox clinching the division in 2004, coming back heroically from many a loss. This was probably why my dad had spilled the beans--that man is just manic about baseball. My old man spilled the beans so I knew it was coming, and that bummed me right out.

I was bummed for my love who had moved heaven and earth to make it back from San Francisco to Boston to arrange for The Shaky Clinking Drink Talk with the old man. And the phonecall to the mom. And he'd done it all being so coy, but loose lips sank the surprise ship.

So there we were, probably talking about the Red Sox or about to watch "Pimp My Ride" in real time as one does on a Satuday night in 2004. He in pajama pants, cooking pierogies in his kitchen, which smelled always of onions and laundry.

He didn't even ask me. He just told me that he wanted to marry me. A declarative statement. Much like "I do." He didn't have a ring so he pulled some string from his pocket and tied it around my ring finger.

We were engaged. Engaged in a relationship that we were committing to for all the evers and evers. There were outward symbols of this inner commitment. But we had no rings (yet), no engagement photos in a landscape that evoked pastoral romance at the golden hour. There would be no bachelorette/bachelor parties with limos and a Snapchat reel. No Pinterest-inspired wish lists or official hashtags copyrighted for the occasion.

There was just a monthly plane ticket to visit our pastor and do the hard work of premarital counseling. Me with my paragraph answers because I was evidently trying to get an A in premarital counseling and Loverpants with his one word answers because he's just more evolved, I suppose.

Had Pinterest and hashtags been a thing some twelve years ago, I promise you I would have been all over it. Puns and planning tools, oh my. I'm just glad for my sake they weren't on the radar.

The trappings of wedding planning have long been about excess and show and tell in the First World. They masquerade as expressions of etiquette but the reality of having the resources for chair bows and gold-foiled favors smacks of elitism.

And none will guarantee a happy, healthy marriage.

I rejoice with the many couples who are getting married in the next many seasons. I hyperventilate at the gorgeous photos and I fully participate in the hashtag propagation. But the careful curation of images and scripts are almost an ironic prelude to the mess that is uniting one's life with another's for all times. I can only speak to my own marriage, obviously, but my seflishness has a way of betraying the consuming gazing at my groom that you'll see in my wedding album.

Marriage is a surrender, marriage is leaning in to the disagreements rather than pretending everything is phenomenally breathtaking beset with an Instagram filter. The day to day of marriage is not bathroom baskets; it is searching for the errant cap on the toothpaste your partner does not hold as a priority. Hashtag cliche.

To the newly engaged and soon-to-be weddeds, I simply offer this: let the time you spend coining a clever hashtag for your big day be a lovely exercise in creativity and compromise. Because, whoodoggies. You're gonna need a lot of it for the long haul.

Hashtag Honeymoon won't last forever. Hashtag And that's a good thing. Hashtag So grateful. Hashtag I'd marry this guy all over again. Hashtag seriously seriously seriously blessed.

Sorry Not Sorry: On apologies and boundaries

I've seen my students punctuate tweets and statuses with a phrase, often in hashtag form, over and over: "Sorry not sorry." It's an anthem of their generation. The unrepentant declaration always bristled me. I'm not sorry. Ergo, I'm not apologizing. But I also get it--they're staking their claim for feeling the way they feel, even in the face of elders who've raised them to be more mannerly, puppeteering their sorries when they really were not very sorry at all.

What about when we really are sorry? What is required of us when we truly are sorry?

As a teacher, apologies are one of the currencies I am supposed to accept in the barter system of assignments and grades. "I'm sorry I couldn't complete this assignment in time. Technology conspired against me." "I'm sorry for being late for class today. My roommate turned off my alarm by accident." "I'm sorry I was not able to come to class today--I was feeling under the weather."

I know there is a sincere sorrow in {some of} the sorries I receive. I know it does not benefit me to judge the sincerity of {any of} them. What is sorrow for something done in error if there is no repentance, though? What worth does an apology have that simply observes a custom of niceties?

Our tenant gives us a Christmas card. He apologizes that there's no envelope. He apologizes in the card for all the noise. But he's a musician. How can he not generate noise and how can he truly be sorry for the noise? He does not want to repent of noise--it's his job, his identity. He still feels sorrow for the ways in which the noise affects us and the hours, decibals that it reaches us.

In this instance, I realize it is possible to hold two truths, one in each hand, and for neither to eclipse the other.

In one hand, he holds sorrow for causing us irritation. In the other hand, he holds an unrepentant love of making his music.

***

This last school year, the personal theme that has emerged for me is BOUNDARIES. How I don't have them, how I need them, how I'm afraid of instituting them, how ultimately I'm so mad at everyone because of my failure to embrace them. How I'm going to die if I don't learn how to nail them.

Ahem. So yeah. That's been my area of interest.

Like most hard-wired people pleasers, I have been learning to let the smallest biggest word to emerge from my mouth (it's spelled N-O) while my neck cranks back and forth in synchronicity. I've got a long history of saying YES while on the inside the feelings were rioting and the heart was launching an OCCUPY NO movement and my hands got clammy and my sleep vanished as I lived in dread of the things to which I said yes, sure thing, you got it, you bet, you can count on me, YES - party of one.

I just felt so much guilt in the saying no, initially. So I said, Sure, Friend, you can sift through my closet. Then I got mad when she took all my clothes. I said, Okay, Teens from the youth group--y'all can sleep over in my dorm room. Then I got mad because I was sick for the rest of the weekend and got nothing done. I said, Hey, why don't you come over to my house and cry at my kitchen table when you're sad. Then I got mad when she wanted me to be her therapist.

It was all so virtuous, the reasons I said yes, initially. Jesus shouldered the weight of the world, surely I could sign up for one meal train. Even though my kids never see me cooking during the school year. Even though I sit down to a bowl of cereal most nights. I can ferry over a casserole to the church member who just had a new baby.

If you really examine Christ's behavior in the height of His ministry, though, the Savior of the world had boundaries. He retreated. He made specific requests of other people. He delegated jobs to a bunch of knuckleheads even though He knew they lacked faith to even see them through to completion. He didn't get mad that He said Yes to living in a broken world, even though He knew how it would all end.

I started to awaken to this once I saw that Brene Brown video that should be required for all people-pleasers and those in recovery from people-pleasing. She says she learned about boundaries only after she turned 35. Oh look. I'm 35. Maybe that's why they don't let you run for President until now in the hopes that you've learned about boundaries. Dr. Brown says that once she learned about setting boundaries, she became less nice and more loving. I absolutely want that to be my legacy. Not to be remembered for being nice. Niceness is the sugar in lemonade that hides the sour, niceness is a smile that fades. Love is enduring and infinite and we have more of it to pour out into the people who need it and who matter when we identify and stand firm on the boundaries in the rest of our life where we can only offer cups of sugar for their sour pitchers of lemonade.

I am learning ever so clumsily to hold the two truths at once, out in front to a world that wants me to choose only one. I'm learning the art of being sorry I can't say yes, but also not sorry that I'm saying no. I've learned to say, "I'm sorry--I wish I could." I've learned to say, "But I can't."

You can hashtag that "Sorry now, not sorry later."