Beneath Your Beautiful

Ladies and gents, I want to apologize for my recent hiatus. I've been experiencing some big changes professionally and personally and I am just now getting back into a rhythm. Hopefully these insights can help you to forgive me :)

My brother has been a huge inspiration to my taste in music. He finds random songs I would like that seem to fit a variety of occasions, themes, moods, etc. He has a pretty good idea of my taste, and when he passes me a song I usually end up exploring similar songs and artists and give my music library a fresh feel. Recently he showed me this song, and in an effort to hear it again I just looked it up on Youtube. I found the video moving... and of course it got me thinking about my favorite theme throughout this blog: love and vulnerability.

The rest of this post will make a lot more sense if you listen to the chorus at the very least.

The song made me think of an article I read recently about marriage, found here (seriously, read it. I might repost it later for all of you lazy people who just don't want to click on another link or read a lot more words). The connection I saw was that love is about more than happily ever after. Love is real, love is honest, love is blunt, love is raw. At its deepest, it is two persons encountering each other in entirety, including scars & fresh wounds, emotions, fears, shortcomings, bad habits, and obstacles that seem like they'll never be overcome.

But what is love when it is not real? When it does not reach the core? It has no connection, no bond, it is not built on sacrifice for the sake of the other, it is driven by passion and emotion, it is photoshopped as it masks imperfections for the sake of pride, selfishness, and the fear of being alone.

NOTE: Yes, that does sound a little extreme, and yes, there are exceptions, as John Paul II, C.S. Lewis, Socrates, Kierkegaard, and many other philosophers and theologians have so beautifully articulated. The love that I am referring to in this post is most simply put as love in relationship. I am using the context of dating/marriage, but it also very much applies to deep friendships.

The point that I am trying to make here is not a new one:

"Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails." 1 Corinthians 13:7-8

Loving with this intensity does reap rewards. When people love selflessly, they "get back" love 10 fold... the satisfaction of giving. It's one of the wonderful things that help motivate us to service, both in our personal relationships and in our communities. And it has a contagious, pay-it-forward effect. As wonderfully put in the example from the blog I linked above (read it), when people feel genuinely appreciated, they are more apt to honestly appreciate and encourage you to be the best-version-of-yourself. It is beautiful, awe-inspiring, and almost majestically mysterious.

Don't get me wrong, I am not trying to sugarcoat anything. I want to challenge you, my dear friends, to love vulnerably, to let yourself get to a point where you can feel pain. In the above Scripture passage, St. Paul goes on to say:

"When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became a man, I gave up childish ways." 1 Corinthians 13:11

This love takes maturity. It means no games, no hanging up on someone just to draw out the drama, no gossip, no snapping back as a reaction, especially when you both know you're in the wrong. No beating around the bush, no pushing someone away for the sake of saving yourself the risk of heartache when they have every intention of showing you genuine appreciation. Give up childish ways. We can still dream of happily ever after, but iconic fairy tale stories end with a lavish wedding and riding off into the sunset.

Newsflash: your life together doesn't begin when you hit the horizon or come back home from the honeymoon. Your life with the ones you hold near and dear began the day you started being real with them, and them with you. Sure, there might be sunshine and lollipops and rainbows and gummy bears in your future, but don't miss one minute of loving someone wholly today because you don't know what tomorrow will be. Get dressed up for dates and don't be afraid of fake-it-til-you-make-it confidence if need me, but in order to live fully, we absolutely must let others see beneath the beautiful at least once in a while.


*This blog was intended for single women forging their way through their young adult years trying to figure out what the what is going on with their lives, and ladies, I am thinking of you as well as I write this, not just those in relationships. Walls keep us from love in all aspects of our lives, including loving God, our families, our friends, potential suitors, and ourselves. Don't hold back. You've got this. :)

Seek Holiness Before Seeking a Spouse

Single Life column by Catholic singer-songwriter 
Jackie Francois: From our July 29 issue
by JACKIE FRANCOIS 07/28/2012

– Jackie Francois Facebook

I really enjoy being single — until someone tells me they want me to date their kin in order for me to bring them back to the Church.

Sometimes I want to respond with, “Hey lady, I don’t flirt to convert!”

It seems, though, that God has granted me the gift of slow wit in the most inopportune times.

When people find out I’m single, they either 1) try to set me up (either with another supposedly pitiful single person or with a convent), 2) tell me how lucky I am to be avoiding marriage or 3) assume I have an incurable disease.

I don’t mind the setter-uppers; they mean well and often want me to enjoy the same bliss they have experienced in their vocation. The jaded marriage-avoiders are another bunch, though. Many times they pressure me to live the pleasures of intimacy without the levels of commitment. They especially flip out when I tell them that I’m a 28-year-old virgin striving to live a life of chastity, because, as they tell me, I “have missed out on life.” The “incurable diseasers” who condescendingly ask, “Why aren’t you married, yet?!” figure that if I’m still single in my late 20s, there must be something wrong with me.

Regardless of these assumptions and reactions, I have never felt more joy or peace in my life than I feel now in the midst of my young-adult single life.

Truthfully, it has taken me years of faith, humility and dating to get to a place where I know that God alone satisfies the yearnings of my heart to love and be loved. God alone is the one for whom my heart longs.

Even though I would like to get married someday, God is the one who I want more than anything. If God called me to give up a husband or family for the sake of the Kingdom, I would.

When there are days that I begin to idolize marriage as the ultimate fulfillment of this life, I remind myself of my God-directed priorities.

If I died tomorrow, would I be happy? Of course! I would be so excited to be with the One whom my heart loves (especially after an excruciatingly purifying time in purgatory, I’m sure).

Obviously, I am not perfect and am still learning how to navigate my way through single life, figuring out how to date properly, wanting the best for others (even if it means being rejected), and practicing what I preach — all the while trying to draw closer to the heart of God in the busyness of everyday life.

My hope for single people who are discerning is that they seek holiness before seeking a spouse, knowing that Jesus the Bridegroom gives a peace and joy that no person on this earth could ever give.

I hope that they practice enjoying the present, since every state of life brings with it trials and sacrifices that train us in virtue and prepare us for heaven.

Lastly, I hope they become witnesses to a twisted culture that scoffs at virtues like purity, chastity, modesty and self-control (see Philippians 2:13-14). Our world surely needs that bold witness.

Jackie Francois is a Catholic singer and songwriter.
Find her music online at
JackieFrancois.com.

Read more: http://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/seek-holiness-before-seeking-a-spouse/#ixzz227lYj6OO

Wedding Season Singleness

One woman's experience with the dreaded bouquet toss, the awkward comments and the empty chair next to you.

Usually when someone asks you about your most embarrassing moment, you conveniently cannot remember. But I remember quite clearly.

As most embarrassing moments happen, this one occurred in public, with some of my closest friends as witnesses. My college roommate Elizabeth, her husband Dave, and his college roommate who I call “Dr. Dave” to keep them apart and also because he really is a doctor.

Approaching Dr. Dave’s recent wedding, I had to tell the whole story all over again. Sitting with Elizabeth and Dave at the rehearsal dinner, someone asked if we thought the bride was going to have a bouquet toss. I said, “Well, I hope not.” Another woman inquired why that was—a 6-foot-tall, 9-months-pregnant woman who is married to a 5-foot-tall gymnast who competed in the 2008 Olympics, to be exact. Those details have nothing to do with the story, but it would make for an interesting family portrait.

I want to pause and clarify that I don’t hate bouquet tosses because I’m bitter about being single. I really love the life I’m living. It’s filled to the brim with amazing experiences and people. I can change a tire, jumpstart a car, take out my own trash, and I’ve got this grippy thing that helps me open jars ... so, I’m good. I’ve got covered all the main reasons people get married—at least for now. But as long as we’re on the topic, I do find it a bit odd that we pause wedding celebrations to throw things at single people. It feels a little mean.

No matter how healthy your self-esteem is, I think there are always about two minutes of Bridget Jones-style panic where you think, “Is this it? Does the entire single female population of this banquet hall really consist of me and three 4th graders?” That’s when you start searching the crowd for friends you can take down with you. The object is to pack the floor so that your odds of catching the bouquet are as slim as possible, because catching the bouquet means a night of, “So, when’s the big day?” “Are you seeing anyone?” “Got anyone in mind?” And, really, I don’t need those questions. I’ve got enough to worry about trying to keep up my strapless bridesmaid’s dress.

Not wanting to go into all of that, I simply told the Olympian’s wife that I didn’t have a good track record. Dave smiled and nodded his head while his wife, Elizabeth, covered her reddened face and said, “Oh, I’m still so sorry about that, Lainsie!”

At her wedding, Elizabeth didn’t want to be the bride whose bouquet went straight up and then fell straight down behind her. So she decided to forsake the gentle over-the-head lob most brides do and went for an approach I think is used by Scottish men in The Highland Games when throwing telephone poles. They use their entire body to heft these objects straight back with as much force and power as they can muster. This approach worked well for Elizabeth.

As everyone watched, it came at me straight as an arrow. Stems first. Cut at an angle. Roses. Thorns still attached. Wrapped in prickly evergreen branches. On the upside, at least the florist managed to talk her out of adding safety pins to the arrangement.

And then, in the moment everyone was waiting for, I caught the bouquet! With my eye.

Now, Elizabeth is half woman and half Care Bear, and I had no desire to make her feel bad on her wedding day. So, I took one for the team and instantly covered my eye to hide my injury and willed myself to laugh instead of cry as I felt my face beginning to swell and the abrasions begin to bleed. Laughing when you’re in severe pain makes you sound slightly sadistic, and, I probably over-compensated when I exclaimed to the silent and stunned room, while wiping blood from my face, “So much fun!! Let’s do it again!”

I spent the rest of the night following Dr. Dave’s advice to ice my bruised eye while dealing with people’s comments, the popular of which was, “Well, at least you’re getting married!” I never knew how to respond to this. Catching a bunch of flowers does not mean that I’m about to meet my future husband ... it is far more likely to mean I’ll meet my future optometrist.

Dr. Dave, having taken the Hippocratic Oath, opted to not put me through another bouquet toss at his own wedding, for which I’m very grateful. Instead, my college friends and I spent the entire reception dancing like complete fools. There was break dancing, and headstands and I got into a dance battle doing the twist with an elderly Polish woman (I let her win). The evening was a display of crazy, beautiful community in the truest sense of the word.

It reminded me of something I frequently say, which is that I am a pack dog. I love being near others and being on a team as we care and watch out for each other. I come from a big family and always want to have a big family around me wherever I go. As a teen, I remember being encouraged to pray for my future husband, but now there’s a different prayer that lives in my heart. Aside from praying for mercy from floral attacks, I pray for my pack. The people who have run with me, the people that are running with me right now and the people that God will bring alongside me in the future to run together. I may be the single one at the table, but I know that I will never dance alone.

Source: http://www.relevantmagazine.com/life/relationships/wedding-season-singleness

Boaz is Best

There is something special...

this is love.

Is it possible to marry the wrong person?

Did I make a big mistake and marry the wrong person?

"We've been married only a short time, but I'm already beginning to feel that I've made a mistake. As a matter of fact, I'm afraid I ended up with the wrong person. What do I do now?"

Our response is simple. Marriage is not primarily about "finding the right person." It's aboutbeing the right person.

The opposite view — what we might call the "needle in a haystack" philosophy of choosing a mate — can lead to all kinds of emotional pain and restless disillusion. According to this perspective, there's only one individual in the world with whom you can possibly achieve happiness. Your task is to find that Elusive Someone at all costs. If you end up with a partner who doesn't quite seem to fit the bill, there's just one thing to do: bail out and start searching again. This mindset has a lot to do with the epidemic of divorce we're seeing in modern society. One of its most notable adherents, Mr. Glynn DeMoss Wolfe, once said that "Marriage is like stamp collecting. You keep looking to find that rare one." It's no wonder that Wolfe was married twenty-six times.

What's the solution to this dilemma? How can you avoid the Glynn DeMoss Wolfe syndrome and stay off the hopeless merry-go-round of endless serial polygamy? How do you stop looking for the right person and start becoming the right person — the kind of person who can follow through on his or her promise to love "for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health?" We have a few suggestions.

You can begin by working on yourself. If you entered marriage with the expectation that you were going to find happiness in your mate, you were probably disappointed. There's a good reason for this. The broad range of emotions, from low to high, that we normally experience as unmarried individuals has the potential to become even wider in marriage. If you and your spouse were unhappy and unfulfilled as singles, it's likely that your feelings of discontentment sank even lower after you tied the knot. If, on the other hand, you each possessed a sense of deep individual meaning and purpose and a desire to share your goals in a lifetime of mutual commitment, your satisfaction level probably increased when you came together. The object lesson should be obvious: if you want to be content living with another person, you have to learn how to be content on your own.

Second, you can shake off the lingering influences of premarital romance and get down to the hard-scrabble business of appreciating your spouse for who he or she really is. During courtship, people often feel sure that they've found a "gold mine." Both spouses-to-be tend to get excited about this wonderful new relationship. As a result, they fill in any perceived gaps in their loved one's personality. The woman assumes that since her fiancé is willing to sit and listen to her feelings about life during courtship, he'll show the same concern after marriage. When he doesn't, she decides she's married the wrong person. In reality, he was probably never as wonderful as she thought he was. On the other hand, he's probably not a terrible as she may now be thinking. He's just a human being with the usual set of normal human flaws.

Third, you can remind yourself of the meaning of love. We're speaking here, of course, about theagape love that Jesus exemplified on the cross and that Paul describes in 1 Corinthians 13. In his classic work The Art of Loving, Erich Fromm declares, "To love somebody is not just a strong feeling — it is a decision, it is a judgment, it is a promise. If love were just a feeling, there would be no basis for the promise to love each other forever." That's what agape love is all about.    

If you're having trouble practicing this kind of love in your marriage, we'd like to invite you to call and discuss your situation with one of our staff counselors. They'll be happy to listen to your concerns and offer their perspective over the phone. They can also provide you with referrals to qualified counselors in your area who specialize in marriage and family therapy. You can contact our Counseling Department Monday through Friday between 6:00 a.m. and 8:00 p.m. Mountain time at 855-771-HELP (4357). We look forward to serving you in any way we can.

Excerpted from The Complete Guide to the First Five Years of Marriage, a Focus on the Family book published by Tyndale House Publishers.  Copyright © 2006, Focus on the Family.