A Summer of Grit and Grace

The days are growing shorter. The temperature outside is cooling. The leaves are hinting that they are ready to trade out for a more colorful wardrobe. Summer, it seems, is coming to an end. I normally welcome the descent of winter. Snow is one of my favorite things in the world and I love playing in it. I love the world being blanketed in white and giving everything a clean slate. But this year feels different.

A few nights ago I watched the movie “Miracle” about the miraculous triumph of the United States hockey team over the Soviets in the 1980 winter Olympic games held in Lake Placid. I love that movie, and not just because it’s about hockey, but because it truly inspires me each time I watch it. I’m sure the film doesn’t even begin to convey how hard the team had to work in order to overtake what was at the time considered the greatest hockey team on earth. Herb Brooks, the renowned coach for the U.S., pushed the players harder and further than anyone thought was humane. He even went so far as to tell his team that they didn’t have the talent necessary to win on talent alone. They had to train harder and simply want the win more than the soviets in order to conquer them. And that’s exactly what they did. They believed in a dream everyone told them was impossible....and in the end, their dream became a reality. 

By the time I reach the end of the movie each time I watch it, I too feel like I’m on top of the world and am capable of achieving all of my dreams. I guess that’s the beauty of sports films based on true stories like that and why I’ve always been drawn to them. 

Four summer ago, I had the privilege of experiencing a similar moment of achievement when I rode my bicycle 65 miles to Lincoln, MT. It was a feat I never would’ve dreamt possible, especially when a few years before that I couldn’t even jog one block down my street. The next summer I did the ride again via a slightly different route. The third summer I rode to Lincoln and spent the night and then rode home the next day for a total of 137 miles. Last summer I rode 70 miles in one day to Butte and two months after that I rode 101 miles in a single day to Great Falls. I pushed my body to its limit. And by the end of each ride, I could feel that something inside me had shifted and left me a better and stronger person. 

After each ride I always had people ask me why I wanted to do it, or more specifically, what had possessed me. I always tried to explain, but there came a point where I realized that if they had to ask, they would never understand. I did my rides for a lot of reasons, and after each one I had a bunch more reasons to continue with them the next summer. The best way I can explain is to say that they were a spiritual retreat. They were 6, 7, or 10 consecutive hours with just my thoughts, my heart, and God at my back. Somewhere along all those treacherous miles, I made peace……with life, with myself, and with God.

I fully intended on doing another long ride this summer. I was welcoming that high I felt each year after my ride. It was a feeling I not only love but physically and emotionally need. But God had different plans for me. I had one gloriously happy day in May when my boyfriend, Andy, of 8 years proposed to me. Then 8 days later, he was diagnosed with MS. My world got shattered for a bit…..and even 3 months later I find that I am still incredibly bitter about things and the way they always seem to play out in my life. Even when the pieces of my life seem to fall into place, they are handed to me with fractures already in them. Dealing with his diagnosis and all that came with it forced me to become a wife before I was even a bride. And in the weeks that followed, two of my cousins also became engaged and I witnessed the joyous pictures and words pop up on Facebook. I wanted to be happy for them. But all I found inside was anger and bitterness. For that, I am truly ashamed. 

I am a firm believer that God delivers the hardest battles to his toughest soldiers, but sometimes I wish He’d made me weaker and would give me one easy win. This summer has drained me of what some days feels like all my time, strength, love, and energy. I’ve given everything I have to Andy and to making sure he is taken care of. And I wouldn’t have had it any other way.  But I feel exhausted and angry about it all. The worst part for me though is that it caused me to give up my annual bike ride. I just didn’t have the time to put in the training necessary and I lost my drive to do it. Now I feel hints of fall in the air and it makes me sad because I didn’t get that spiritual boost from a ride that I’ve grown accustomed to carrying me through the winter. I so needed it.

One of my cousins and her boyfriend embarked on a 3 month bicycle trip along the Continental Divide from Canada all the way to Mexico earlier this summer. There isn’t a day that’s passed this summer where I haven’t thought about them and wished I was turning pedal strokes all day long right beside them. I can’t even imagine how they will feel at the end of that journey, but whatever feeling it is, I know it will only surpass the feeling I’ve experienced. It’s the kind of feeling, like I said, that you can’t really explain but it’s the kind of thing that carries you through the next year and all that life throws at you along the way.

This year I didn’t get to ride. I didn’t get that feeling. But I like to believe that when summer rolls in next year that I will be renewed for a bunch of new reasons. Not long after Andy’s diagnosis, I met with my past dance instructor of 13 years because her husband has lived with MS for many years. I don’t remember a lot about that meeting because most of what she told me frightened me. The one thing she said though that has never left my mind pertained to her, not her husband. She laughed saying she has spent most of her life saying that she can handle whatever God throws at her, and sometimes she realizes that He is clearly seeking to challenge that belief. When she told me that, I remember thinking that I do the same thing. 

I don’t run from challenges---I face them head on. When people tell me I can’t do something, I go right out and do it just to prove them wrong. My bike rides were a way of challenging myself, physically and mentally. But I never doubted that I would succeed. I don’t think God doubted me either. And I do believe that’s why He decided to put a greater challenge before me this summer. He wanted to give me something I wasn’t sure I could handle. He knew all along I could handle it, but He needed me to realize that too. And He prepared me well by helping me come to the decision to be baptized into the Catholic Church earlier this spring. Without His spirit within me in a new and profound way, this challenge would have been much harder. 

I still feel angry about things and I won’t ever try to hide that fact. But I know now that at the very least I am at peace with God about things. And in the final analysis, I believe that peace is the only one that really matters. 

Playing Dress Up!

When it comes to playing dress up, let’s just say I’m an expert.

Most kids go through some phase of fantasy play growing up, but for me, it was daily life. My parents probably felt blessed beyond words at bringing a little blond hair blue eyed daughter into the world. What they didn’t realize until later, however, was that I would transform into so much more than that. 

For my mom, who stayed home with me most of my childhood, everyday must have been an adventure to see which costume I would come barreling out of my room dressed in. Unlike most little girls, I was never content being just a pretty princess in a billowing gown with tulle and rhinestones everywhere…..although there was still plenty of that. I was simply never content playing any one character. My imagination was ever expanding and I never stopped dreaming about who I wanted to be next. 

Some days I was a pioneer traveling across the prairie in a covered wagon. Other days I was a dancing doll in the Nutcracker Suite. There were days I’d dawn a straw cowboy hat and boots and play a tough cowgirl and then others when I was dressed head to toe in bright green in my Ninja Turtle costume. 

And of course, the crème da la crème of my get ups was the custom made Little Mermaid costume my mom had made just for me. Growing up, The Little Mermaid was my absolute favorite Disney movie….well, still is actually. According to my mom, I wore that Ariel costume everywhere---even the grocery store. I’m smiling right now thinking about what an amazing mother it took to take her daughter shopping for milk and eggs dressed as a mermaid, especially when Halloween was months away. Thinking back on it, Ariel was the perfect character for me to assume. Ariel was a mermaid stuck in one world and identity but she was always dreaming, and reaching, for more.

As I got a little older and started taking ballet lessons, my favorite month of the year was May when our spring performance was held. I’d sit on the floor in my frilly tutus and leotards looking longingly through the blue velvet curtains at the older dancers pirouetting across the stage. They were such lovely creatures and I wanted to look just like them when I was older.

This past weekend, I finally became one of those beautiful creatures that little girls look up at and oooh and aaaah over. I went bridal dress shopping for the first time in Bozeman. It probably came as no surprise to my mom and grandma, who accompanied me, that all I wanted to try on were the big poofy dresses. I’d been trying on dresses in the shop for a while when another group of ladies walked in. Accompanying them was a little girl about 3 or 4 years of age. I slipped in the dressing room to put on another gown while they continued browsing. When I came out, the women were right outside the dressing room admiring a dress one of them had tried on. But when the little girl turned her head and saw me floating by in my yards of tulle to step up onto the pedestal, her reaction was priceless. She had the biggest smile on her face and kept saying “Look at her! Look at her!” 

I didn’t find the dress of my dreams that day, but I do recall smiling from ear to ear when I saw that little girl’s face. To her, I probably was a real princess…..the real life version of everything she imagined herself being when she played dress up at home. Her reaction was the only one that mattered to me that day. And if I’d hung around her a little longer, I probably would’ve been convinced into buying that first dress she saw me in. 

Despite the fact that I’m all grown up now, I still love playing dress up and taking pictures of myself. Even if just to spawn laughter from my best friend, and fellow dress up pal for life, Jamie. But on that day in the bridal shop, I played dress up for the first time when it wasn’t make believe. I finally realized that I was looking for the perfect costume for the one day I get to be a fairytale princess in real life. And that’s why finding the right dress….”the one”…..is so very important to me.

Here’s to the continued search for the ultimate dress up gown!