The Unexpected Blessing of Plan B

Can you guess which one is my strength? (from adsoftheworld.com via Pinterest)

I have some exciting news to share! (No, we’re not pregnant. Really people? C’mon.) As of this morning I am moving from part-time Office Manager at Elmwood Design to full-time – salaried with full benefits and extremely generous paid vacation! If you’ve been keeping track, you will remember that I have only been in my new job less than two months, so I was pretty surprised at how quickly things moved forward! We had talked about reviewing and maybe moving to full-time at my 90 day review.

After looking for full-time employment in NYC since spring 2010, this is such a blessing and relief. No, it’s still not my “dream” job in editorial. But through the many conversations I have had with God over the past two years, I prayed that if he didn’t open a door in the editorial world, that he would allow me to at least do an administrative job in a creative environment with like-minded people. While plan A didn’t work out, I feel like this is the best possible plan B. I have to allow my brain to be challenged creatively, or I feel like I’m drowning in monotony. So even though my current role is not creative, the culture is all about it. There may even be copy writing opportunities in the future!

Last night at dinner group, our leader asked us if we ever feel or know without a doubt that God is loving us. After such a long period of uncertainty and struggle, this feels like an outpouring of his love – a reminder that He is my provider and the one who sustains me. He opened up this opportunity unexpectedly through a friend from dinner group. I realize my success in this position is dependent on the use of the skills He has given me, but I can’t help but think that this feels like a gift.

I know that taking the time out from a now even busier schedule to write will be a challenge, but I realize for the sake of my creative drive, I still absolutely have to do it. I made many excuses and prioritized so many other things over writing when I was working in full-time positions before, and I refuse to let the comfort of a salary deter me from writing. So keep asking me how its going and what’s next. I’ve been so encouraged by the fact that you have been reading and especially grateful for those of you providing feedback and engaging in dialog.

A few weeks ago Nick said to me, “Babe! I think this might be our year!” It is looking like he might be right. I can’t wait to see what the rest of 2012 has in store.

The Truth About Newlywed Life (Part 1)

After dinner out in the city to celebrate our first anniversary

The first year of marriage was easier than I expected. During our engagement, some people told us that the first year of marriage is the hardest. Thankfully we also heard from other couples that it was a great year. I am so glad to be able to say that while our first year obviously had its challenges, overall it was really good for us as a couple. We didn’t live together until after the wedding, so becoming man and wife and roommates all at once was (is) an adjustment that we are still figuring out. We have your typical roommate/best friend/family disagreements, but have yet to have a major fight. I think being such good friends before we became a couple really helped. We just love “doing life together.” I recognize that as we grow and change, our greatest challenges as a couple probably lie ahead. There’s always the possibility that I could be wrong, and that would be kind of awesome, but usually during the span of a lifetime commitment to each other, you can expect some bumps along the journey.

The “Newlywed Bubble” is necessary. When I first started witnessing people marry themselves off, I when I was about nineteen years old about in Bible college, I couldn’t understand why it seemed that these people had dropped off the face of the earth. I get it now. I swore I would not be that girl who all of a sudden becomes a social snooze once they become a Mrs. But I have to admit, it wasn’t until about six months into marriage that I really started to crave the normalcy of going out on dates with my girl friends and going our separate ways every once in a while. When we do go out with our friends without each other, I miss him and look forward to seeing him when I get home. Those of you who know me well know I am the very definition of a social butterfly. I doubt I will ever become a total homebody, but in this season of my life, I really love spending as much of my weeknight downtime just relaxing at home with my husband.

Marriage isn’t a non-stop sex fest. …much to my dismay I spent my teen years and first half of my twenties looking forward to finally being able to let loose and finally act on all those years of built-up sexual tension in a socially and religiously approved way. Maybe it is like that for you. If it is, more power to you. I’ve found that sex is just a part of the bigger picture. It is a wonderful thing, but it is part of the rhythm of life and marriage. It is not the be-all and end-all of my marriage. And I think that’s healthy. A well-rounded relationship should include enjoying a multitude of activities together – not just getting naked.

Two becoming one is expensive. Yes, the wedding festivities were pricey, but I don’t think Nick and I were prepared for the financial struggle of our first married year. We both honestly thought I would land a full-time job during my first few months of resuming the job hunt. I had leads and interviews, but the elusive full-time job never showed up. Living in the NYC area on just one salary is hard. Halfway through the year, we had to leave the apartment in Hoboken Nick had lived in for the past three years because we couldn’t afford to stay there on just his salary and still pay down our debt. It was heartbreaking. We created so many memories from when we were dating in that apartment, and Nick had hosted countless parties. People have encouraged me by saying, “Isn’t that what the first year of marriage is supposed to be like? Living in tight quarters in a crappy apartment, learning to love each other?” So maybe years from now, we’ll look back and smile on our time spent in the Heights.

Marriage isn’t magical. Parts of the wedding day felt somewhat like that (as I hoped they would), but while I have no doubt that marriage has changed me, I am still the same person. Does that make sense? I hope I am a slightly better version of myself because of the way Nick challenges me on a daily basis, but I still have the same hopes and fears and joys and dreams that I did before. I am still Erika, even though I’m also Mrs. Lenzi. There is certainly a social shift that occurs – I became aware of it the first time we saw our Hoboken friends after the wedding. We walked into a bar a few days after we had returned from the honeymoon, and a host of our friends greeted us with excited shouts and hugs. “You’re married!” they said, wide-eyed. “You’re a WIFE. How does it feel?” While the label felt strange, like a pair of shoes that still needed to be broken in, I still felt like we were Nick and Erika. We had just committed to being ourselves together for the rest of our lives.

What cliches or myths have you heard about the first year of marriage? If you’re married, what was the easiest or hardest thing about making that transition? What surprised you?

Life Post-Wedding

Me and Clara at the APW book tour after-party (from the APW flickr photostream)

A couple Saturdays ago, I had the pleasure of attending the “A Practical Wedding” book tour event in Brooklyn because of the invitation of my friend and fellow newlywed Clara (whose lovely wedding you can see here). If you aren’t aware of the awesomeness that is the APW blog, do yourself a favor and check it out, whether you are planning a wedding or already married or if you’re thinking about doing those things one day. I have yet to read the book, but I did buy a copy and plan to get to it in the next few months because I have no doubt it will be at the top of my list of resource recommendations for newly engaged friends. You can find information about where to buy the book here.

It was so refreshing to be in a group of (mostly) women asking bold questions about the blog, the book, and the writing process among other things. I have been so encouraged lately by smart, funny women like APW’s Meg Keene fighting fiercely to share their voices and what they deeply believe. Meg didn’t start out as a writer. In fact, she is dyslexic. But Meg felt the need to start a blog for “normal people” to maintain her own sanity while wedding planning, and she ended up striking a chord in the hearts of other brides. Events like these and stories like Meg’s encourage me that the act of writing and sharing your truth may start off as a small act, but has the potential to create a community. It makes a difference!

During the after party, Clara asked me what wisdom I could share from the past year of marriage. That is a challenging question, because while I know marriage is this definitive, grown-up life event, I still feel much like the same person. Since that conversation, I have made a conscious effort to think back over the past twelve months and pinpoint what I have learned and how I have changed as half of a married couple. I was surprised to find that I actually came up with a fairly extensive list of realizations, and I plan to unpack those over the remainder of this week.

It was important to me before marriage to not be one of those intensely private couples, living in our own little world. I am so thankful for married couples who have invested in and shared their stories with Nick and me. It may be even more important to me now having become a married couple to share what I am learning with others. Thank God for people who continue to share about life after the wedding. The wedding day did not signal “happily ever after,” but the start of a new chapter. By no means do I think I have all the answers after just one year of marriage, but I need to write these things down, both for the sake of my own memory and in hopes that what I share will encourage you. Stay tuned!

5 Lessons I Learned While Wedding Planning

photo by Joey Bastelli, minutes after our engagement.

Congratulations! You’re engaged! Now welcome to Purgatory.

Ok, engagement isn’t that bad… for some people. Honestly, I was one of those brides who was generally a stressed out hot mess while planning. I don’t understand the (very few) women who are completely calm about the whole process and knock out the entire wedding plan to the last detail in just a few months. I love to throw a great party, but I’m also a complete perfectionist. I warn you now – this is a recipe for insanity. I found the planning process fun at first, but I was over it within a few months. So please, take my advice looking back on engagement from a year later, and hopefully you will be more successful than I was!

Avoid long-distance engagement at all costs. I realize that this is not the norm, but we were engaged long-distance for the first three months of our nine month engagement. I understand sometimes this is unavoidable, but it is definitely not preferable. Being away from Nick during what was supposed to be one of the most joyous times of our lives turned it into one of the most trying. We fought more in those three months just trying to nail down a date and a venue when I was 600 miles away than we ever had before or since. We got engaged in April of 2010, but I didn’t quit my job and move until the very end of June. I wanted to give myself closure at my job and say adequate goodbyes to my friends in Tennessee, but looking back, I wish I had done that in May rather than waiting an extra month.

Decide your priorities early. Pick a few aspects to focus on, and realize that the rest will get taken care of. It becomes overwhelming if you try to pick the perfect everything. We focused on three. 1) We wanted the entire day to be a celebration (dance party included)! 2) We knew we wanted to focus the theme of the wedding around story – the amazing one God had written through us, reflecting His bigger story of restoration and redemption for us all. This ended up deciding the direction of our ceremony, including a worship set, and even stretched as far as our table centerpieces. 3) We wanted to make sure that all of the above was captured timelessly. Photography became our biggest priority budget-wise, so we did something kind of crazy and decided to wait until January to be able to have the photographer whose work I had been following for three years shoot our wedding.

Don’t be engaged longer than necessary. We got engaged in April of 2010 and married in January of 2011 – that time span was a little too long. One of the loudest pieces of advice we were given from multiple older and wiser couples was that the ideal amount of time for engagement is six to eight months. I knew before I got engaged that a six month engagement would be ideal for me. I understand this rule may not apply to everyone, but we were trying to maintain a pure sexual relationship before marriage, and let me tell you, those were a trying 9 months! What I found was that I was ready emotionally at six months to be married, but I was stuck with an extra three months of planning and stressing over details just waiting for the day to arrive.

Embrace compromise. This is the essence of marriage, after all. If you can’t embrace compromise while you are engaged, how will you ever make in marriage? Decide what is most important to you and what is most important to your fiance and when you differ, try to meet in the middle. Your wedding should reflect both of you, not just the bride. You also may need to compromise your vision of your “perfect” wedding. When we first got engaged, I said I really wanted an October wedding, but my “dream” photographer wasn’t available until January. So I could either have my perfect time of year, or perfectly captured memories. Obviously, the latter won, even though I hate winter. While I absolutely love my pictures, I also realized that had I decided to get married in the fall, my alternative choice of photographers still would have done a great job.

You can’t have your cake and eat it too. Your wedding budget will be your best friend and your worst enemy. I was convinced I didn’t want to come anywhere close to spending what the average American wedding costs (somewhere around $26,500 in 2011) but once I started looking at the numbers and the kind of wedding I wanted to have (largely impacted by the sizable guest list because of our big families), I realized my desire for a wedding on the cheap probably wasn’t going to be realistic. However, we cut costs where we could. We had on off-season wedding. Photography and guest list were at the top of our priorities, so we ended up sacrificing in other areas. We didn’t do save the dates, I bought a sample dress, salads were axed from the menu, and I decided on handmade instead of fresh flowers. Don’t get me wrong, I would have loved to go crazy creative and fancy with all of those, but it just wasn’t worth it to completely break the bank.

What is the best advice you gathered during engagement or the engagements of friends? What was the worst? What do you wish had been done differently?

Is there a Wrong Way to Pray?

Last summer, a friend from Hoboken Grace sent me a copy of With Christ in the School of Prayer by Andrew Murray. I started it a while ago, but it’s the kind of book where each chapter is so rich, your mind feels overloaded by just one chapter. Since starting my new job, I’ve taken to reading about two chapters a day on my commute back and forth into the city.

Chapter 5, “The Certain Answer to Prayer” (based off Matthew 7:7-8 and James 4:3) completely bowled me over this week, and I have been mulling it over ever since. Here are the main passages that stuck out to me:

Prayer accomplishes a great deal. Ask and you shall receive; everyone who asks receives. This is the eternal law of the Kingdom. If you ask and receive not, it must be because there is something wrong or missing in the prayer. But do not lose the confidence He wants to give you, that everyone who asks, receives. (p.40)

By His Word and Spirit, God will teach those who are teachable and who give Him time, whether their request be according to His will or not. Withdraw the request if it is not according to God’s will or persevere until the answer comes. Prayer is supposed to have an answer. It is in prayer and its answer that the interchange of love between the Father and His child takes place. (p.42)

Your words are faithful and true. It must be because I am not praying correctly that my experience of answered prayer is small. It must be because I live too little in the Spirit that my prayer is too little in the Spirit, and my power for the prayer of faith is lacking. (p.44)

I was struck by the idea that maybe over the past year, my prayers were misdirected. While Christianese tends to include cliches like, “there’s no wrong way to pray,” James 4:3 reminds me that somebody probably made that up because it sounds good. That’s not biblical truth – and as far as my recent prayer life goes, I have been doing it wrong.

It’s not that God will not listen to me when I am praying somewhat haphazardly, listing off the things I want Him to do, the people I want him to take care of, and to grant me that elusive perfect job. God delights in giving his children good gifts, but His greatest desire is that that I would live my live by the Spirit, completely trusting in and depending on him.

While I made progress in this by leaps and bounds from 2008 – 2010, I felt like I majorly backpedaled when I moved here. I don’t know why it became harder to trust God. I had experienced his love and grace and blessing in such richness, but somehow my heart seized up, unable to believe that He would truly meet me here.

I will venture to say my experience of God last year was most likely limited by my unwillingness to communicate with him after my prayers were not answered. I think I can point out a handful of occasions where I know He directly answered a prayer, whereas during my time in Tennessee, answered prayer was my weekly reality – not only in my life, but in so many of the lives around me. That had become the norm, so I was hoping that somehow, that would continue. But I found that it didn’t. So I largely ignored him. I barely opened my bible last year. I became a former version of myself that I hated – the one that would run to him only in my desperate need. I have not been living the majority of my life “in the Spirit,” and instead have allowed myself to be ruled by anxiety.

At Hoboken Grace, we’re two weeks in to a conversation about being “Fearless.” This past Sunday we talked about what it looks like to fear God, and I think it ties in well with what I am wrestling through this week. We were given 1 John 4:18 as a memory verse: “There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.”

My view of God as of late has been too small. I know in my mind that He is all powerful, but I want to experience that again. I want to regain my trust in Him. I do not want to live my life by making the “safest” or most practical decisions. Running from him is an act of fear. He is my Father and has only His best in mind for me. I want my faith to grow to the point where I am living out of that reality every day. Spewing my anxieties heavenward isn’t going to make that much of a difference in my life. It is more important for me to be in synch with God in prayer and asking him to teach me how to pray, and what is on His heart, than it is for me to just unload what is on mine.

What do you think about the concept that there is a right and wrong way to pray? How did you come to that conclusion? When have you seen your prayers answered most blatantly? What do you do when it seems like your prayers are not being answered?

Resolution: Embrace Failure

In case you haven’t heard me say it before, I’m an ENFP. I love new beginnings and projects, and will take any opportunity to embrace them: A new year? A new age? A new city? A new apartment? A new stage in life? A new job? WOO HOO! The problem is that I’m terrible at practicing discipline and following these things through to completion. After the initial excitement has worn off, I am easily pulled down by the every day demands and stresses of life. I choose to give up rather than follow through. Once I start failing at a goal, I usually lack the courage to pick myself up and try again. I am too easily discouraged.

I both love and hate making resolutions. Every year I know I will love making them and hate myself when I break them. The reality is, I need to practice more discipline this year. This is where I thank God again for my plans and systems oriented ESTJ husband. One of the things that has really started to sink in is that in 2012, I am turning 27, and I don’t want to look back at the end of this year and see that I’ve only made inches of progress. For one thing, my obnoxious biological clock is in fact ticking. There are a lot of things I want to do before I enter that next huge stage of my life. And if I can’t live the life I want to live now, how am I ever going to be disciplined enough to do those things when I have kids to take care of? I don’t want to be that kind of example for my future kids either – that mom who is so busy just trying to get through each day that she ends up slowly losing herself along the way.

So this year’s resolutions will be a little more practical and detailed. They are baby steps (NO puns intended). So here we go…

1. Write more. While I would love to say I am going to write every day, I know that probably isn’t realistic given my blogging track record shows a whopping twelve posts in 2011. So I’m starting out with the simple goal to write four times a week, and blog two times a week. If what I write isn’t “blog-worthy,” every time, that’s ok, because practicing and the act of creating itself is important in getting where I want to be. I am a perfectionist by nature, and perfectionism is a vicious enemy of success. I was encouraged by other creatives, through a variety of mediums, to let myself fail this year. If you struggle with this too, I highly recommend Jon Acuff’s book Quitter and Ira Glass’s thoughts on the creative process. As corny as it sounds, keeping a collection of motivational typographic posters has been also been fantastic reminder for me to press on. I have bigger goals too, of pitching to magazines and getting published this year, but I know I need to start small first. Even if I can manage 2 posts a week, that will be 104 for the year, and 92 more than last year!

2. Become more active. This currently translates into: start working out again at least 2 times per week. I don’t know if it was the cupcakes, BC hormones, or marriage or a combination of all three, but somehow I managed to pack on about 15 lbs. since I first moved to NJ in July of 2010! I’m back up to my “freshman 15″ weight and not fitting into my skinny jeans is annoying. While buying a new wardrobe sounds fantastic, it’s not as much fun two sizes too big, and would also have an adverse affect on my financial goals… which leads me to goal number three.

3. Reach our next financial goals. Specifically, save 3-6 months of expenses to start our emergency fund, and then put dedicated effort towards eliminating college debt. Nick and I spent all of 2011 choosing to be “broke” (aka sacrificing a lot of our former single life indulgences) and attacking the credit card debt we incurred during our wedding planning and unexpected significant expenses the first four months after marriage. It looks like by the end of this month we will have finally knocked it out.

4. See new cities. Nick and I spend many of our date nights talking about where we want to visit next. Charleston, SC keeps coming to the top of that list, so we hope to check that city off in 2012. If we rent a car, we can spend some quality time with my Daddy Will’s side of the family in Greenville and kill two birds with one stone! Nick also has a cousin getting married in the California wine country next summer, so we’re hoping to be able to extend that trip and turn it into a full-blown adventure.

5. Remain baby-free. We’ve almost gotten through a year of marriage, so I might finally be less anxious about this one, but it would still be preferable. This would also aid in achieving our financial goals much faster! I’m still a little worried that whatever they put in the Hoboken water might be contagious

There are plenty more goals floating around in my head for 2012, but this is where I’m starting. Now this is where you, dear reader, come in. Especially when it comes to goal #1. I want you all to keep me accountable to these things I’ve mentioned. If I haven’t blogged in a while, call me on it. Let me know which posts inspired you and your honest feedback. What topic could you see becoming a magazine article? What was our last conversation topic that should be delved into deeper? I know this year will include failure – probably a lot of it. But that’s ok, the point is not to reach 2013 having done these things perfectly. I want to be stretched this year – better and stronger than when I began – and I’m grateful you’re coming along on with me on the journey.

2011: On Purpose, In Waiting

image by sarah jane studios

Now that I’ve shared with you the highlights of my year, I want to get real with you: this year was hard. Let’s be honest, every year seems to have its significant struggles now that we’re getting older.  Relationship dynamics become more complicated. People we love break our hearts or move away and sometimes they die. Hard things are always bound to happen… I just didn’t expect my first year of marriage to coincide with an extremely frustrating year of coming to a standstill in my career. I was so happy in one aspect of life, while deeply broken in another. For most of the year, I wasn’t able to move much past the place where I found myself stuck in April.

The biggest reminder I think I walked away with in 2011 is that I am made for more than my job. Even though our society’s values tell me otherwise, my job does not actually define my worth. We walked through a series on Purpose at Hoboken Grace this fall, and yes, you guessed it, we read through Purpose Driven Life together as a church. When I first heard that we were doing this series, I thought: Meh, whatever. I did this book in 2004, but maybe it will be a good refresher course. As I began reading and having this discussion about purpose in my dinner group, it struck me that while I may have already known the content, it was still completely relevant to my life in 2011. My struggles are different, but still very much the same.

The first time I read the book as a freshman in college, I saw endless possibilities lying just ahead. I had the world at my feet. I was figuring out what I wanted to pursue as a career, and hopeful about finding someone who might be worth spending my future with.  These two things – my future profession (but even more so) the thought of my future husband – claimed almost all my waking energy. I would spend hours daydreaming and journaling and praying about my future. I wanted to know so badly how my story turned out.

As I read PDL this fall, the reality of how much energy I had poured into dating and trying to decipher who was “the one” for at least 10 years dawned on me.  I got engaged right before I turned 24, and married this past year. Now that God, in his infinite mercy and love allowed the question of who my spouse is to be answered, I realize what I have been struggling with since the end of all things wedding has been this deep nagging question: what now?

Where do I pour my thoughts and hopes and dreams? The natural progression was to pour myself wholeheartedly into my goal of landing an editorial job. After all, that is what I moved to the NYC area to do. I got the love story and amazing guy I had been waiting for, and it seemed high time I got the job. But life doesn’t always work that way. God doesn’t often lay our next great life milestones out on a silver platter. And with each passing month working a retail job and spending less and less time pursuing my passions, I became more and more bitter. I can’t tell you how many times I broke down in tears, wondering if God was ignoring me or just being spiteful. I wondered why he brought me to NYC just to leave me hanging. I do not truly believe that is his character, but that is often how I felt.

One of the simplest but most profound discussions I had this year was with a dear friend and mentor from my home church in PA over Thanksgiving. She asked me if I was still working at the cupcake shop, and answered, shamefully, that yes, I was. Her response was, “That’s ok! You’ve been building a marriage!” It was so freeing to hear her speak those words. I knew she was right. Maybe God’s priority for me this year was to focus on learning to love Nick and build a home. I still don’t know yet why God had me spend 14 months serving cupcakes, but maybe I don’t have to know. Maybe it doesn’t matter.

In a somewhat crazy turn of events and connection through a friend, I interviewed for a part time office management job in December, was offered the job soon after, and I started this week! It is only part time, so I won’t be making all that much more than I was  at the bake shop, and it still is not editorial, but the fantastic blessing out of this is that it provides me with the time to do what I love. I write because it is what I am compelled to do, and as I write, the truth of what I’m sharing sinks deeper in to my own soul. The work of writing might be unpaid right now, but it is still important.

As I consider God’s purposes for me and what role I will play in telling a broken world about the one who binds up my wounds, I know He has got much bigger things in store. I have a growing desire to make a tangible difference in the world, to become less self-absorbed in my own pain and unfilled dreams and help others begin to heal reach for their own goals. I don’t know how that is going to play out, but He knows what He is doing, even when I don’t. This is an exercise in faith. This year I am going to cling so tightly to this truth David shared in Psalm 138:8, “The Lord will fulfill his purpose for me; your steadfast love, O Lord, endures forever. Do not forsake the work of your hands.” I am only 26. There are still many stories to tell and chapters left to be written. He is not finished and I know He will be faithful to complete the good work He started in me (Phil 3:6).