committed....settled....?

greetings from... mrs. marsh. yep, that's right, i am now a mrs. a mrs. with the last name marsh. i love it.

and it's strange. and frightening sometimes.
good frightening, don't let me scare you now.
love is frightening. commitment is frightening.
settling is a new part of my vocabulary. its ink is not yet worn and faded on

the pages of my dictionary.

i married my best friend, Evan, on june 4. we've been "newlyweds" for almost 2 months now. we personally wrote our promises to one another, promising to listen, support, uphold, and love. most days i think we do a pretty good job. some days i yell at Evan for leaving all of the cupboards open. other days he gets annoyed with my "c'mon! we need to go to church... now!" reminders.

so, i am slowly learning how to honor my commitment to supporting and upholding my best friend.

i have to listen a lot more than i talk.

i have to bite my tongue when i want to make a comment about his driving.

i try to remember that it's ok to take a break from studying just to make him banana bread.

oh, how i need grace to remember all of these things... every day.

i think i am learning each day how deeply satisfying it can be to feel "settled". and i vehemently oppose the "settledness" of middle-class America...complete with the suburban, gym membership, sprinkler system, and "i only have 5 more years until retirement when i can finally enjoy my life" mentality. this settledness has hit my heart too close to home too many times. no thank you, Uncle Sam.

settledness for me is a cup of tea in my husband and my small apartment while we watch little kids run by chasing their little chihuahua down the street for hours. i feel a deep sense of "this is a good place, this here and now" in those moments.

it's choosing a career that, for the time being, i feel very passionately about continuing in for as long as the opportunities present themselves. it's being committed even in the shittiest of times to the classes and professors which seem like a darn good waste of my hard-earned $1,249 dollars. every little penny, every little quiz is opening another pathway towards wanting to live out a vocation-centered life of meeting others' needs and helping them acheive goals through music therapy.

and oh boy, if this isn't settled, i don't know what it is...
saturday mornings waking up bursting with excitement to go serve coffee and "cottage cheese please!"
to four, soon to be five, wonderfully vulnerable people.
it is hard to believe that i will have been working at this group home for almost a year
after having searched and failing miserably to find a job all last summer

to support myself through graduate school.

my husband, my rock-climbing/dumpster diving/fudge-making/young at heart husband, and i pay bills. i think that has propelled us into adulthood quite nicely and realistically. you know, it's really not as hard as our parents try to scare us into believing. you get a job, you write down your monthly bills, and then you pay them. and you don't buy too many frappucinos or skinny jeans or cheap plastic stuff, 'cause if you do, well, shoot, there goes the electricity for the month. and then you learn that it can be fun for a few nights to eat by candlelight and eat raw veggies for a week, and that next month you will work your ass off to have that stove-oven combo just so you can remember the taste of chocolate chip cookies.

ok, so i don't really know what that last part is like, thankfully,

but i think we've learned to give up and we need to keep learning.

but i've grown up a lot. and i've learned to love commitment. and "settledness".

thank goodness God blessed me with someone so wonderful

to help me learn how to do all this "pay the bills" stuff,

because they say you learn best if you practice over again,

so i'd say we get twice the practice, right?

because of My Creator, i have someone who teaches me

how to forgive. how to love. how to heal.

someone who will practice those ideas over and again

in the kitchen

in the car

when i'm far away from him writing in a coffee shop, realizing all he's taught me.