catalysts (week four)

12/29/20

The joy of the Lord is my strength – this week I started repeating this to myself, in times of just idleness of mind. I really like this phrase.

12/30/20

two years ago today, R proposed to me.

Consider this: What will bring you comfort and strength in the next week? What could “taking exquisitely good care of myself” look like for you? What if caring for yourself actually came FIRST on your list of priorities? -Ivy Ingram

12/31/20

the other day on the couch I told R, “I’m glad we have a house. I don’t think I ever would have even thought about getting a house if it wasn’t for you.” and he said, “I think you’re the reason I got a house too. That we got married. Because if I was still single, I wouldn’t think about getting a house. I would just still be out partying or something.” Then I was thinking how…two people can be each other’s catalyst. They are the catalysts for each other.

Yesterday, it was cold and dark out and I was helping R take some material for the house off the top of his truck and into the house. I was really cold and PMSing too I think, so I started rushing him- I was shorter in my tone and words, like I hardly ever am towards him. I thought about it later after we’d worked on the house and gone home and I took a shower, and regetted it and apologized. I explained that when I have PMS and I’m by myself in the apt, I start doing things really fast and feeling like I don’t have enough time and banging the dishes when I wash them and stuff bc I’m trying to go as fast as possible. I concluded, “…but I don’t want to be like that to you.” And he replied, “You shouldn’t be like that to yourself either.” And I never thought about it like that. It kinda made a light bulb go on. I should actually try to not be like that even when alone, because… if I practice it when alone, it could more easily spill over in my actions toward him. Like better to not practice it at all, if possible. (But I know what he meant when he said that–he just meant he wanted me to be nice to both of us, not just to him. Like I am a person worth being nice to, just as much as he is.)

There’s something nice about working on a physical structure that no one else in the whole world really cares about but you two. Getting to know a place in such detail- texture, colors, layout, potential, areas for improvement, areas of beauty, which stair creaks, where there are holes that go straight through the floor, all these details- that no one else knows about but you both. It’s so much work, and I’m yearning for the day I finally feel that everything’s settled and in its place, but I also really like sharing this with him. He’s a little more excited than me I think, because he has plans and ideas and knows how to execute them with tools. But when I see him get excited, it melts my heart and I want to do everything to feed it and help.