One of the many things I love about being alive on this crazy planet is the ability I have to float in bodies of water. I have inherited generous hips from my mom’s side of the family. For many years I was sad that I had to have those child bearing hips with no children to show for them. I all but put an ad in the paper saying “Wanted: Man to Give a Purpose to my Child Bearing Hips!”
What were these hips for if not for child bearing? I have been pretty self conscious of them my entire life because I had a parental figure often comment that they were too big. But I have found that they have one very redeemable quality: when I go into a swimming pool or hot tub they transform into buoys for the rest of my body, and I can float for as long as I want to.
I sometimes fantasize that I am on a year long sail boat adventure around the world when I am suddenly cast to sea. No one thinks I survived, but then they find me. No life boat, no life jacket. Just me and my amazing thighs keeping me afloat for 22 days.
I used to go swimming often in my local YMCA, and I would do about four laps of swimming and one lap of floating. Okay, I admit. Two laps of swimming and one lap of floating. For the first ten minutes. Then, mostly lots more floating. And when I gathered up more energy for more laps….I would go float in the hot tub instead.
One day, a life guard was in the hot tub with me and I mentioned that I really like swimming. “Oh but you just don’t like swimming,” he said. “You like floating.” “What?” I said? “How do you know I like to float?”
“Oh, all of the lifeguards know you around here. We talk about you often.” He retorted.
“You’re the floater.”
I might not ever become a famous writer, but it seems as though I am already famous for my wonder thighs.
All thigh jokes aside, floating is not just fun for me. It is a spiritual experience. I love feeling the water surround me. I often say to God “you always surround me like this water. Help me be aware of it.”
I was once asked to write a mantra that would give support to one of the weakest parts of me (my tendency to be anxious). I wrote “Jehovah Shalom, prince of peace, I live in you, you live in me.” I often repeat that over and over as I am floating.
I love how when I am surrounded by water, all the sounds around me get muffled, transporting me to a quieter, more contemplative world for a while. And especially when I am in a hot tub, I feel like I am in the womb of God.
I am not often a peaceful person, but there in that warm water, just for a little while, I am able to let go of all of that aching and fall into all of that love.
So when my husband and I were about to celebrate an anniversary, he remembered my love for all things hot tubby and recommended we go to our favorite hot springs. Not just for a few hours like we normally do, but for the whole weekend.
I looked on the website at the rooms. “Oh my gosh, Love!” I exclaimed! “We can have our very own hot tub in our room that the hot springs water can flow in! This is my dream come true!”
Let me add here that I got married for the first time at almost 46. In all my adult years, I was in a serious relationship for about four of them. So I had about twenty adult years with zero touch. The only time I would get touched is if someone hugged me, and that lasted about one second. It was freaking hard for me.
After a while, I gave myself a budget for flowers and massages. Flowers because no one else was going to give me flowers if I didn’t give them to myself, and massages because it seemed the only way I could get touch that lasted more than a moment was by buying a Groupon.
I felt a lot like Tom Hanks in the movie Castaway when he was on an island alone for so long that he became best friends with a volley ball.
Then I met my husband and his kids. One of the things I love about them is that they say “I love you” like thirty times a day (something the kids got from their dad) and they are super affectionate with each other and with me (something they also got from their dad.)
Every day, I try to remember how much I longed for touch for all of those years and not take for granted Justin’s hand in mine or my Avie or Aurora with their head in my lap as I scratch their head.
After all that starvation for touch and the answer to twenty years of prayer in a loving and wonderful and devastatingly handsome husband who doesn’t even resemble a volley ball in the slightest, I was really excited to go on this weekend away and get lots of affection.
We got to our anticipated hotel and, much to my delight, the hot tub in our room was the shape of a heart.
How wonderfully romantic. In a seventies love lounge kind of way.
But, as we got into that anticipated hot tub, we found this out:
A hot tub heart is not a good place for intimacy. We were stuck in each of our own ventricles and could barely touch each other. We reached across the aorta to hold hands, and even that was difficult.
My husband also hates to be in hot water the moment his hands get wrinkly, so I ended up spending a lot of the weekend in that heart hot tub all by my lonesome.
How ironic.
We laughed about this at the time (and almost wrote a review begging them to change it to a round hot tub). I even looked up the history of heart hot tubs and found out that the creator of it erected a seven foot tall champagne glass hot tub at his hotel when the popularity of the heart hot tub died down. Perhaps the champagne glass of the 90’s was just as awkward as the heart hot tub of the 70’s?
Despite the seeming silliness of this experience, I have thought about this picture a lot when I think about my new life in a blended family. That heart hot tub is a good representation of my romantic expectations of being married.
I think for many of the years I was single, I pictured what my life with a family would look like. I assumed that I would live in a nicer house if we had two incomes, that I would decorate the home I longed for beautifully, that I would finally feel at home. I think I also pictured notes from my husband, flowers, candle lit dinners. These were my heart shaped hot tub expectations.
But now, reality has hit.
Candle lit dinners? We have never had one of those.
A big house with my rich husband? Nope. We spend our days in a tiny house and our nights on a school bus. My husband has always chosen time with his family over lofty career goals and although he makes a decent living, we are far from rich.
A home that I have decorated beautifully? Turns out that our family dog is a comfort seeking missile and finds the most comfortable spot in the room, which is usually the fancy couch that I bought that fills up almost our entire tiny house. Shedding and slobber don’t exactly add value to that couch, or to my decorating aspirations.
If I am not careful, those expectations will steal away my gratefulness and make me become bitter towards my new life.
Romantic expectations keeping me from being intimate with my new family is about as ironic as our heart shaped hot tub.
What is the secret to overcoming these heart shaped hot tub expectations? The answer is the same answer to so many of life’s questions:
Finding gratefulness.
Noticing and cherishing.
My husband doesn’t often write me romantic love letters. But he does ask me how my day was every night and sincerely listens to my answer.
I will notice that. And then I will cherish it.
Our house is tiny. But I love the people that fill that house so much that it outweighs that it is so small.
I will notice that. And then I will cherish it.
I don’t have a rich husband. But I do have a husband that seeks out time with his family more than he seeks out dollars in his wallet. I have found out this is actually one of the wisest and most beautiful qualities about him.
I will notice that. And then I will cherish it.
Dirty dishes mean that we had food to eat. Clothes on the floor means that we were provided for and are warm. A mess in the living room means that we were all there together laughing and enjoying each other. And even a disagreement with my husband means digging deeper, not being surfacey, and choosing to know each other more, even when it hurts.
I will notice those things. And then I will cherish them.
A Jewish midrash (biblical interpretation) says of the story of the Israelites walking through the Red Sea “You can walk along the sea floor with your head down complaining about the mud in your sandals, or you can lift up your head to see the walls of water that have been held back for your liberation.” I want to stop focusing on the mud in my sandals and start focusing on the liberation that I often overlook.
Being in my heart shaped hot tub is nice for a time. But at some point, I need to get out of that place and go to my messy house with the people I love.
I don’t want to hate my story because it’s not what I expected. I want to accept my story. More than that, I want to swallow it whole. I want it to nourish me. I want the joy of acceptance to shoot light out of my fingertips and eyeballs like a superhero. (Okay wow, too far.)
What about you? What are some simple things in your own life that you want to notice and cherish?
How can you move from a life that you expected to a life that you accepted?
Do you have some stories of how your life changed when you lived into the story you’ve been given rather than the story you wish you had?