Comfort and Joy

Merriest of Christmases to all my readers. Please know today that you are loved and cherished beyond your wildest imagination. Use today to remember that no matter where you are or what you have done, God chose to be born to a teenager amongst squalor in order to redeem and restore that which was lost.

No matter how lonely, downhearted, or guilty you may feel, you are adored.

He has come to His people and redeemed them.

Luke 1:68

Savoring this moment

Between moving, welcomed houseguests, bright and happy holidays, newborns, and plans for traveling back home, life has been spinning and we feel like we are running to stand still. It has been a happy busy, but exhausting all the same.

I think I am starting to learn the lesson of motherhood, though. I am beginning to see that life has no intention of slowing down anytime soon. 

Ben is 8 weeks today and I have no idea where the time went. I am already putting away his newborn clothes and I feel like he barely got to wear them.

Everyday since he was born, I have been striving to live in the present. I have been conscious to not wish for the future and to savor each day for all that it is worth. 

It has meant dropping less important items on my to-do list and learning to lean into the stress of life and not wish to escape it. It has meant being one of those parents that takes and unashamedly posts endless pictures of my baby doing the mundane everyday baby things. 

Because soon it will not happen everyday. And I want to make sure that I enjoyed it while it was happening. Then when it is gone I can look back and smile. I will be able to tell Ben what life was like when he was born and his parents set out a whole new adventure.

Flame.

I have always been a desert girl, and I dearly love the fall. Both of those statements have caused a great clash within my heart over the past month. I have never felt so far from home and completely at ease in a place. 

I am amazed at every corner in my neighborhood. It feels like the whole city is ablaze and every tree is on fire. I cannot help but feel the same flame in my own heart.

Sorry for the silence this past month. Between creating a new home and soaking up every moment with my new son, there is little time for writing and reflection. I'm hoping for more time very soon.

Welcome to the World, Benjamin Elias!

I do not think, as long as I live, I could ever forget the deepest exhaustion give away to the deepest joy the instant I laid my eyes on my son for the very first time. In that instant, my heart felt ready to burst and has stayed that way since.

It has been almost two weeks and Brandon and I still cannot keep our eyes off of him. The only thing to pull us away from him is packing up our lives. Brandon was offered a job in Sacramento, so we are both moving away from the place we were both born and raised to somewhere I have only been once before in my life. 

It has been a time for adventure. And we are ready.

Past the Glittering Screen

One of the things that really worried me in the beginning of my pregnancy was the gender of our baby. I made sure that we booked an appointment with an ultrasound technician (can you BELIEVE that hospitals won't waste precious dollars on finding out whether anxious parents are having a girl or a boy? It's like they only care about the health of the baby!) and found out just past 15 weeks that we were having a boy. Immediately, I had a huge sigh of relief and felt like a burden had been lifted.

I told everyone that I wanted a boy so badly because I wanted to make sure my daughters had an older brother like I have, that it is a family tradition on my husband's side, blah, blah, blah. In reality, what I was truly worried about was me. I worried that having a girl would make me take a closer look at myself as a woman and have to change (or at least disguise) the insecurities that I have so that it is not passed along to them. I would have to stop complaining about how ugly I feel, how fat I think I am or pick apart every flaw I have, whether genuine or completely in my head. 

I did not want my daughters to look at themselves and other women with a critical eye that never penetrated past the surface to see their true substance. I want them to have intellect, a sense of humor, and a kind heart that will last far longer than their beauty ever could. I want something more for them, but I knew that it would cost me my shallowness and tendency to ignore the heart for the face.

However, finding out I am having a boy has caused me to take a closer look at the world he would grow up in (like most parents do). I started to wonder about what kind of a man I want him to become and how my role as his mom will shape how he views women. I realized that it is my responsibility to shape his view of women and their image.

Via heatherhartstudio

The role of women in the media is extremely disheartening. We are put on display as sexual objects that are only as good as we look. Even looking at journalists, which are suppose to be in a place of professionalism and intelligence. On most news stations, the women look little better than strippers (with short skirts, plenty of cleavage and pounds of makeup), while the men look old enough to be their fathers (and sometimes grandfathers). What is this telling the world? That a man can be taken seriously based on the news he is presenting and women are expected to be their pretty props. This is just one example, but throughout media women are only prized for their looks and not for their fearlessness, love, intelligence or personality.

If I want my son to have a different view of women I need to make sure I play an active role in changing it. The more I critically saw and understood the environment I will be birthing my son into, the more I realized that my responsibilities as shaping my son's understanding of women are just as great as having a daughter. If I am shallow and critical of my body as well as others he will learn to have that same critical eye towards the girls he sees. If I put a woman's worth solely on her looks he will do the same shameful thing.

I want my son to have the same love, care and respect for women regardless of their looks. I want him to see them not as objects for his own gratification, but as partners in the race of life. I want him to appreciate a woman's wit and intelligence instead of her cup size. I want him to be free from the suffocating restraints of society and see life as so much more than skin deep. I want him to see past the glittering screen that the world will try to place in front of him to the true depth and beauty of reality.

So over the course of my pregnancy, I have been making slow and conscious changes in how I treat others: no more snap judgments and a deeper appreciation for the soul of a person instead of their body. I have also been concentrating more on my criticism towards myself. To say the least, pregnancy has not been extremely kind to me and I have struggled with the extra weight and haggard expression I have been carrying around. I have started to try to ignore that and cultivate my soul instead. For the first time in years, I have picked up writing poetry again. I have been reading more and trying to use my mind again.

Because at the end of the day, I cannot show my son more what it means to be a woman and how to encourage and appreciate her than to embody that for him.

The Starting Line.

Via laurenledbetter

During high school, I ran cross country and track. By far the worst part of the entire race was waiting at the starting line. I hated it. I would be dripping with anticipation and shaking as I waited for the gun to go off. It was not uncommon for my teammates to ask if I was OK, or if I needed to go throw up and I would have to assure them, with a face stark-white, that I was perfectly fine. It was a complete relief to be starting the race and getting down to the business of running.

It is the same stomach-churning, shakey-limb feeling Brandon and I have been experiencing for the past few weeks. Between coming to the end of my pregnancy and the prospect of a new job in a new city for Brandon, we have been sitting in anticipation for our new lives to start. 

There have been moments where neither of us need to say what we are thinking, when is the gun finally going to fire? There are no words, we just silently watch my belly, squirming with life beneath it, and the phone, occasionally ringing with concerned family members wondering if we have heard anything. And just when we think cannot take the uncertainty and unknown anymore, we are asked to wait a little while longer. 

Despite the anticipation, the fear, the unknown, I cannot help but think that maybe this waiting is for the best. The worst I felt at the starting line, the bigger the relief when I finally could stretch out my legs and run. When the time comes, the direction laid out and the race has started we will finally be able to stretch ourselves and feel the relief of running towards our life together. Soon, I will be able to run the race as a mother and together we can build our lives either in Riverside or Sacramento. 

It seems like an eternity before the gun is shot, but looking back it was only a precious few seconds. Right now this weekend may feel like an age-long minute, but I am trying to take this time to take a breath, get into position and get ready to run.

Slower

Via thewheatfield

The pressure to compete was taught to me (and, I suspect, most little girls) alongside potty training and Bible Stories. Every Disney princess and fairy tale reinforced the idea that being good was not good enough; I had to be the best. No little girl wants to hear a story about A pretty girl in the land: she needs to be THE prettiest girl in all the land. The message was unmistakeable: your gifts mean nothing unless it beats out everyone else.

As I got older, this lesson manifested itself in how I lived my life and spilled out into every area. Now, it was not enough to be the prettiest. I needed to be pretty AND smart AND funny AND social AND a hard worker AND successful AND busy. Not only did I need to be all these things, but I had to do them better than anyone else. Otherwise I did not have any worth, or at least not very much. 

When I became pregnant I was surprised how this sense of competition increased within me. Every woman came to me to tell me how they only gained 17 pounds, did not show until 6 months along; how their skin glowed, they had incredible energy, and cared for their 11 other children. Next to them, I felt like I had to compete and prove had I had every bit of grit and determination that they had. Each antidote placed yet another burden on my back. It didn't matter that I had morning sickness and could barely lift myself off the bathroom floor; I needed to go to work and prove I am strong. Then I needed to make dinner, work out, keep the place clean, entertain guests and participate in ministry.

At lunch one day, I was told how one worker at the University worked until she left to go to the hospital to give birth. Now I was competing against a woman I had never even met and felt like a failure that I was breaking down at a measly 7 months. This led to a month of no breaks, endless overtime and taking on the most difficult cases.

I became exhausted, overworked and on the edge of breaking down emotionally. All because I felt a need to compete with the ideal Pregnant Superwoman that not only survives, but thrives, all on her own while growing a person inside of her.

And I gave out. First it was emotionally, with endless tears in the shower and prayers that I could find magical strength on my own. Then my body followed when that did not work. It was finally when I landed in the hospital with preterm contractions that the reality dawned that maybe I am not suppose to handle this all alone.

As I sat quietly before the Lord the next morning, His word came unmistakeable from the book of Ruth:

Sit still, my daughter.

There are times to work and be in motion and there are times to be still. How much of life do we miss out on in our rush to catch it? In my striving to be perfect, how many perfect moments have I missed out on? Instead of slowing down and taking some time to be conscious and thankful for this change of season, have I just sighed, ate another piece of chocolate, and gotten back to work, praying all the while that it be over soon? 

Now, I am heeding the direction. As in other areas of life, there are some women that are brilliant in pregnancy. I do well, but not near as well as them. And now I am learning that is perfectly fine. I do not need to shine brighter than everyone else. I am enough as God created me to be. The same is true for you, dear reader.

Building New Wings

This has been a year of reinvention for me, of dreaming up a new dream. I feel like at sometime or another, each one of us is faced with the reality that what we imagined in our head to happen in our lives is not going to happen. It is then that we can either wade in the floods of our disappointment or take flight in the joy of our new dreams.

Unfortunately, a downside of my job is the tearing down of students' dreams. Time and again, I am forced to give someone the reality that what they had envisioned for their lives is simply not feasible. Either to lack of planning on their part or sheer ignorance, they were simply unaware and unprepared for the reality that they will not be spending their young and exciting years at the college of their choice. 

There, in that moment of devastation, is the chance to build anew. Can't afford school? Maybe take a year off and travel. Or start working at a non-profit. Get some perspective and try again next year. Or maybe find that this dream was not what you wanted at all and learn to enjoy a new one. This is what I want to tell people. Tell them that they may have just been released into the wild, but it might be the best adventure of their lives.

Via Pinterest

And that is what I have been doing. Growing up, I always wanted to be a mommy. Wanted to have little ones surrounding me and nurturing them like an earth-mama. Then, as I got older, I started to see what other things I wanted in life first. Like to travel the world. Enjoy a good couple years of marriage. Make enough money to buy my first new car and have a decent wardrobe. Go on a backpacking trip that I had been putting off all throughout college.

Via southerlywayfarer

Then came the shattering. It was just a faint plus sign on a stick, but it was enough to make my whole world come tumbling down. It was then that the Lord was whispering to me, "It's time to dream a new dream."

Our First Picture of Baby

And so I have. I have been holding on to the precious moments with my husband that will soon be few and far between. I am savoring the lingering baths and last minute trips, knowing that those will be a thing of the past in just a few short months. But I have also been saving up new little dreams in my heart. Like the thought of holding my son close for the first time. Or showing him the wonder of the outdoors. In the quietness at the dinner table, I imagine how joyous and loud it will soon be. I think of watching this little being grow into a man with thoughts and opinions of his own. 

Via woodennest

I look down at my belly and watch the kicking and squirming, watch as life is unfolding inside, and I know, HE is my new dream.

And maybe it was the better dream to have all along.

Restless Hearts

I have to admit, I have been putting off writing anything on here. Not just here, but anything in general. What can I possibly say that is worth telling everyone? 

Yet, insomnia is a powerful thing. As my legs restlessly remind me of the sleepless nights that will be lying ahead of me, my heart is restless as well. Restless to share and be creative again.

Via freepeople

When I was in college, a roommate and I were determined to use up the creative energy that we were not expending in our studies. She made beautiful works of art and I was incredibly jealous of how she could show her creativity with ease. I cannot create art to save my life. I once drew some impress kung-fo fighting stick figures, but that is where my talent ends. I had to find my own outlet for creativity.

I have found, though, deep down in my heart, that creativity is an incurable itch. I can ignore it for days, weeks, and even sometimes a month at a time. At the end of the day, though, it will come exploding out of me in poorly strung-together verses, and ridiculous DIY- projects that never turn out as great as the pictures promise. It comes out in overly-ambitious recipes that take me hours longer than I thought and leaves my poor husband starving for most of the night.

Via knuckleballerr

Most of all it invariably, and best, comes out in writing. I find peace in letting words flow off of a page and the itch is satisfied for a time. And I came to understand that creativity is not locked down to one art form and it is a necessity for every person in life. I have had people tell me that they are not creative, then go on to perfectly design and decorate a room where I could only see four walls and a floor, deliver a moving speech, or make the most amazing chocolate chip cookie.

Being creative is relieving that restlessness in your heart and making something come alive.

Via ohhellofriend

Where is your heart restless today? What is in need of your creative touch?

Introductions

Welcome to Fig Tree and Olive. This is me:

I am 25, an avid reader, sometimes writer, music enthusiast, daughter, sister, wife. This is my husband:

Pretty much the most wonderful husband known to man. We are newly weds and in a few months are expecting this bundle of joy:

A little guy named Benjamin. He already has a fire within him and I love it.

This space, though, is not specifically about being a wife and a soon-to-be mama-bear, although that will play a part in it. It's not a how-to, DIY, or place to put amazing tips because, honestly, I have none. Most days it's a victory to have 3 meals and an almost-organized home.

This is a place for growth. It's a space for digging deep and leaning in to life. 

I wanted to start a blog because I want to start writing about what is important to my life, and the only things important to me are that which will last long after I am gone. I want to get to the heart of what it means to be human, what it looks like to follow after Christ.

I am starting my journey to a deeper life. Care to join me?