JulieLeung.com: a life told in tidepools

(Stachys byzantina)

Amanda Witt shared how her husband loved and accepted her as she was despite her difficulties with driving.

I don’t mean that I miss an exit now and then. I mean that I have zero sense of direction and worse than zero–I’m somehow fundamentally miswired. When I had lived in Lubbock for almost ten years, I still sometimes got lost going to my sister’s house. Once, driving alone in Oklahoma City (with a frantic cat on the passenger seat, gnawing his way out of his cardboard carrier) I found where the highway ends. It has a road block and, beyond, a big field.

Hey Amanda, if you ever come to our house (she lives in the same county), I’ll be sure to give you good directions because the highway here ends on the ferry boat to Seattle. 🙂

Last night Ted and I happened to discuss how we love each other despite our flaws. We had read an article in which another couple described how they learned to assume the best of each other in situations even when frustrated. While their examples of sloppy, soggy towels and over-peppered eggs seemed trite to me, the principle of loving and persevering through bad habits and annoying character traits was significant.

When we first married, I tried to make Ted happy. Not that I don’t try now. But little things in our home became big deals to me, the miniscule magnified by my insecurities, from the taste of the meals to the appearance of the apartment. I noted how Ted liked eggs cooked and the bed made. I thought if I did everything right, if I could keep him happy, I would be loved. The truth was that I was afraid of being someone who wasn’t loved.

Soon Ted and I went through a time where we were able to glimpse each other’s ugliness. I think mine was pretty glaring and not pretty at all. It was an intense experience of seeing into my soul and realizing that I had rottenness within me. Despite my attempts, I was a mess.

After seeing how little I deserve love, I am grateful for Ted and less concerned with his habits that might annoy me. How can I pick on him when I know that I have many flaws inside me? Mercy means I can learn to love beyond limits and judgments. Grace keeps us dancing despite the stumbling.

The past few years, while calmer for our marriage itself, have taken us through some stormy situations. I’ve learned to hold many aspects of our life with an open hand, seeing how easily they could come or go. Compared to the crises we’ve weathered, little things in our relationship seem miniscule, not worth mentioning.

We’ve come to accept each other as we are. This happens in a physical dimension first in romance. After all, neither one of us married a movie star. Physically, through time, I feel I’ve grown farther from the cultural standard of beauty, yet my husband loves me. Maybe, dare I say, he loves me more than he did years ago. Other aspects of ourselves have been revealed through the years as well. I like to think that parts of me that weren’t so pretty when I was younger, are now emerging in maturity, like stones smoothed by the ocean waves. Yet Ted’s seen other sides of me, raw and rocky. And he’s still here loving me. I’m amazed and grateful.

Love is a gift. It’s a gift given by one flawed soul to another. It’s like gold, valuable and beautiful, adorning the beloved. It’s like a treasured Christmas present made precious because you know it is better than what you deserve. I should have found a lump in my stocking and instead I found love.

Being beloved means every morning becomes Christmas morning.

I thought of Jeffy and snapped this pic as we walked past…

My college magazine intrigued me with an article by David L. Marcus titled Close to Home in which he details his experience writing a book about therapeutic schools—last-chance places for teenagers struggling with alcohol, drugs, and impulsiveness.

I couldn’t help think about my own community as I read these paragraphs containing what the kids at a therapeutic school in Massachusetts had in common.

Several factors keep surfacing, though. First, the kids felt lonely, like pariahs in their families. Most, but not all, had parents who were busy working, traveling, or dealing with their own emotional problems. Second, the kids lost their passion in middle school. They quit the swim team in a huff, or dropped piano lessons, or abandoned hobbies like photography. They spurned old friends.

A third characteristic stands out: nearly every kid in my group grew up in the suburbs or the outer ring of exurbs. Places that were farms and fields just a few years earlier. Places where parents relocate to be near good schools and far from problems. Places that force parents to commute long distances. Places where there’s no there there, like the developments that spread beyond the Washington, D.C., Beltway—the area where my wife and I settled for the sake of our son and daughter.

Also the same magazine led me to Pete Gilligan’s blog where he chronicled his college admission process and was chronicled himself in the college paper even before arrival on campus: ’09er blogged his way into Brown

From Jerry Large’s March 31 column in the Seattle Times.

The Mavin Foundation in Seattle has picked five 20-somethings to travel around the country stirring up conversations about mixed-race people, raising awareness of a mixed-race baby boom and connecting people with resources relevant to mixed-race people and anyone who has contact with them.

Of course, it isn’t as if there were no mixed-race people in America before these young people were born, but there is more freedom now to make that mean something positive.

According to the 2000 Census, which was the first to count multiracial persons, 7 million people, 2.4 percent of the population, said they were of two or more races. For comparison, there were 5.2 million Jewish Americans in a 2000-01 survey of that community. So 7 million is a noticeable chunk of people. In Seattle, 5 percent of the population claims two or more races.

Mavin picked the crew for what it’s calling the Generation MIX tour to reflect this new generation, people who’ve grown up since the civil-rights era, who have been told they can be whoever they want to be.

I particularly liked this quote from Mavin founder and president Matt Kelley:

He thinks they’ll be able to play a role in tearing down walls. The way we talk about identity in this country is far too polarized, he said — gay/straight, Democrat/Republican, black/white and so on.

“We have the exciting potential to move away from conflict-based dichotomies,” he said.

Multiracial people defy the limiting black-and-white lines of the world. They are and not either/or. They belong to both sides of the story. I join Matt Kelley in hoping that conversations and connections can help break the pattern of polarization prevalent in our culture today. I’m also grateful my children live in a time of freedom and choice. I hope they never have to deny half of their heritage, feel they have to fit into a box or live within a label. They are who they are. I hope they celebrate the beauty of being biracial and the gifts it gives them.

I appreciated what Ponzi shared in a post describing her hair color:

One of the great things about being of interacial heritage is the chameleon like qualities one acquires from such a loving union.