For Halloween 2018, Gabe and I dressed up as Anthony and Cleopatra. For Halloween 2017, we had gone as Ron Stoppable and Kim Possible, and Gabe had actually bleached his hair to look the part. Last year I decided it was my turn to show that kind of commitment, so I chopped my hair off to go with the Cleopatra look.
It was a pretty big adjustment. I'd been getting into the high ponytail thing, and that was no longer an option. I had mixed feelings for a while, but then I started to like it. I've kept it at a touching-my-shoulders length ever since.
But no one else mentioned the haircut.
Then, around Christmas, I got a sudden wave of compliments. And that has continued through my writing this, on September 10, almost a year after the haircut.
People I see relatively regularly (or at least have seen in the last twelve months) will say, "Oh wow, did you get a haircut? I love it!" and I don't know what to say! XD It doesn't bother me in the slightest (who wouldn't want to spread out the kind compliments?!), but I wonder how/why it's happening?
I got a similar haircut—just touching the shoulders, slight layers—the day before my sixteenth birthday and I HATED it. It made me look like I was ten years old. It threatened to ruin my sweet sixteen (but then an ice storm knocked out the power for four days [as if I needed more reasons to switch my birthday] and my haircut suddenly seemed less devastating).
I had anticipated the same sinking regret in October of last year, but it just never came. I don't know if I should be happy or concerned that I now look old enough to have this haircut. Ha!
Anyway, while the haircut started as part of a costume, it has become part of the Me I am now. I know it's silly, but it feels right that a "big" style/look change sort of coincided with a wave of other lifestyle changes. I didn't do it on purpose, but I'm keeping it on purpose.
Or MAYBE the haircut triggered all other changes, the way Abigail's visit flipped the Tidy Switch? ;)
~Stephanie
When I started my fitness journey in August of 2017 I had two goals: 1) to lose weight, and 2) to grow my glutes. Today, I continue my fitness journey for one reason: I love it.
While I've never been overweight (I think I was slightly in college, but more in a "skinny-fat" way), my fitness goals until recently have been completely aesthetically motivated.
In August of 2017, I finally got an Instagram and began following fitness influencers like Emily Skye, Anna Victoria, Meggan Grubb, and Whitney Simmons. Obviously you have to be careful of who you follow, but Instagram has actually served as a surprisingly healthy source of inspiration and motivation for me.
I began doing workouts that influencers posted, gradually learning more about physical health, from BCAAs to progressive overload to macro counting.
For almost two years, this is the zone I lived in, very happily. My body made awesome changes that still make me happy when I see them. I'll never forget the look of shock on Gabe's face when I flexed a bicep one day and said, "Hey, look at this!" I'll never forget how shocked I was when I moved an amount of weight I thought would be utterly immovable for me. I eat 500–700 more calories a day now than I did a few years ago, and I'm not looking any heavier. Weight lifting is AWESOME on every level.
But eventually, I noticed that while my body had definitely changed, it hadn't changed enough to sustain my motivation/dedication. I worked really hard to be fit. I worked out, I ate intentionally. With the amount of effort I put in, shouldn't I look...better?
But then, both gradually and all of a sudden, I didn't care anymore. I think it was a slow-sudden culmination of growing in Christ, and—I'm serious—paying more attention to mentally/spiritually/physically healthy Instagram influencers.
I began to rest in the fact that my body is strong and healthy, and I actually really like working out. My motivation can simply be that I enjoy it.
I also started thinking about what Mik Zazon says: "What is the kindest thing I can do for my body right now?"
Sometimes, the honest answer is to eat some spinach and do a HIIT workout.
But sometimes, the honest answer is to watch Netflix and eat a candy bar.
Thinking about how to be kind to myself has radically changed the way I make choices about my body. I never realized it before, but sometimes I had sort of a creepy mindset where I would think things like, "You're disgusting. That's right, eat ten cookies, because you're already gross."
Whereas if I think about being kind to myself, I think things like, "You have a great body. Let's be respectful and not feed it trash."
Being kind to your body means you don't do things to it out of spite, whether that's eat spinach or cookies.
Letting go of my aesthetic goals has meant incorporating different kinds of exercise to see what I enjoy and what makes me feel good. I don't have to resign myself to heavy hip thrusts because they're the best booty-builders; I can do a HIIT session instead because the endorphins are insane. I can go for a walk.
Will I ever stop weight lifting? I don't think so, but not because I'm afraid of getting fat. Because I want to be kind to myself.
~Stephanie
It baffled me.
Parents didn't take off their clothes at the end of the day and throw them on the floor. Grandparents didn't leave dirty dishes on the coffee table and just go about their days.
But we did.
On any given day, the living room had piles of discarded clothing lying around, dishes from several lunches sitting out, and activities like books and notebooks and video game controllers strewn about. It would get worse and worse until there were just a few areas of clear floor and Gabe and I would, in unison, realize that it had gotten too far and we'd clean up together.
How did real adults do it? And why weren't we there? We'd been raised to put things away and clean up after ourselves, but now that we lived on our own, we just didn't. We both agreed that we preferred a clean, tidy space. It compounded our stress levels when the house was messy. But somehow...we just didn't change.
This went on for the first two and a half years of marriage, not causing a lot of arguments or problems (we teamed up well and cleaned for company), but hovering over me and in the back of my mind as something I didn't like about ourselves and didn't know how to fix.
Unfortunately, I still don't know how to fix it. But somehow, it's been fixed.
Unlike my general realization that "I'm changing," I do know exactly when the Tidy Switch was flipped. It was March 13, 2019. My sister-in-law Abigail was coming to visit, and we did our customary cleaning for company: straighten up everywhere, clean the kitchen and bathroom, dust, vacuum, etc. Abigail visited for three or four days, and we kept the apartment pretty tidy, as we always would when we had people over. She eventually left.
But I kept things tidy.
Just as an experiment, I decided to see how long I could keep things nice. I stopped throwing my clothes on the floor when I changed into pajamas. If things were dirty, I put them in the hamper; things I'd barely worn I would fold and put away or hang up. After every meal, the first thing I did after standing up from the table was put the dishes in the dishwasher, food back where it belonged. When I was done reading or writing, I put my book or journal in a designated spot. When I came inside, I took my shoes off and lined them up in their place rather than kick them in the right general direction.
I'm a biiiiiiiiig fan of "streaks" (currently have a MyFitnessPal streak of 447 days), so when I realized that I'd been staying tidy for a few days, I kept it up. I didn't want to break that streak.
(Let me also say that in the midst of all this, the old adage "If you do a little every day, it doesn't take so long!" still felt like a BOLD-FACED LIE. Y'all it takes WAY more time to fold and put away clothes than it does to drop them on the floor. Don't believe those lies. It IS gonna take more time, and it's gonna feel like a LOT more time at first. Going from .5 seconds to three minutes is like, what, a 500% increase? Yeah. And it feels like it.)
At that point in the tidiness journey I began to feel fairly frustrated with Gabe because the Switch had not flipped in his mind when it did in mine. If I wanted the apartment to stay neat, I had to address 100% of my personal mess and about 85% of Gabe's as well. It was wearing real thin.
But a few verses in Proverbs 31 (I did a post on that experience) compounded with a bunch of other sources about respecting your husband, leading by example etc., and I ended up deciding that I needed to make one of two changes for my own happiness and holiness:
1) I could stop picking up after Gabe and accept that the apartment was just going to be messier than it "should" be.
2) I could let go of my bitterness and expectations and do it all because it's important to me and I love Gabe.
Well, the first one wasn't an option because 1) streak, and 2) I had decided I really liked a clean space. So Change #2 it was.
I have to imagine that this was what God wanted me to do all along, because I'm not kidding: within a couple of weeks (if not DAYS), the Switch magically (supernaturally?) flipped in Gabe's head too. He started putting his dishes away, and now if he doesn't, I don't mind doing it because it's the exception (and, ya know, letting go of bitterness and expectations). He stopped leaving clothes in the living room, and now I can handle the occasional bedside laundry pile because #Progress.
The apartment still gets messy, but for like a few hours at a time. Before I go to bed, I tidy up. When I go to bed, I put all my clothes away. When I wake up, I'll straighten up anything I've missed. We can always see all of the floor now. We barely have anything to do, clutter-wise, when people come over.
Doing this still takes a lot more time than not doing it. It takes just as much time as did in the beginning, but now I'm used to the amount of time it takes, and I've decided that it's worth it to me. It's all (FINALLY) become a habit to the point where even when I'm exhausted, I'll find myself putting my clothes away before I go to bed, without thinking about it.
I don't know how exactly the Tidy Switch got flipped for me. I guess my best advice is either to be patient and hope that one day it'll flip for you, or to get started and then cling to that "streak" mentality.
Or maybe have Abigail over. Maybe the secret was her all along XD
~Stephanie
Switching it up today with just a recipe :)
One of my New Year's Resolutions was to "eat more veggies." I've tapered off some since January, but I absolutely eat more veggies than I did this time last year. Mainly I make sure to incorporate a couple of servings into breakfast, either by making an omelette, or the following.
I'm not really sure why I'm posting this or calling it a "recipe," because 1) it's ridiculously simple, and 2) most people probably won't even like it XD But here goes.
Hardish Boiled Eggs on Toast and Zucchini and Spinach Stir-Fry
- 2 eggs
- 2 slices of toast (I use Nature's Own Sugar Free Whole Grain)
- 1 cup sliced zucchini
- handful of spinach
- butter to grease a pan
- salt, pepper, garlic, red pepper flakes
Macros: 295 calories, 24C, 15F, 23P
For those of you just wanting the recipe, you really don't need it. You assemble this exactly the way you'd expect. Now, if you want to keep reading, brace yourself for the anecdotal story of how I make it. *evil laughter*
(Fun fact: This year, I discovered that I like hardboiled eggs not boiled for approximately half a century.)
The magic choreography of this breakfast goes as follows.
Return from the gym. Hang up keys, put away shoes, plug in bluetooth earbuds to charge because God forbid they not be fully charged when I need them.
Put two eggs in a pot of water on the stove and turn the burner on.
Put two slices of bread in the toaster oven, but don't turn it on.
Unload the dishwasher, leaving out a plate, a fork, a sharp knife, and the cutting board.
Get out the tiny frying pan and put it on a burner.
Using the left out fork like a barbarian, slice off some butter and put it in the pan.
Slice zucchini. Put it in the pan. Season with salt, pepper, garlic, and red pepper flakes. Top with a handful of spinach.
When the egg water is juuuuust about to boil, say "Hey Siri. Set a timer for four minutes."
Thank her when she gets it going.
Turn the zucchini-and-spinach burner on. Nudge the stir-fry around and watch in fascination as the spinach shrivels before your eyes.
Turn the toaster oven on.
When the egg timer goes off, the stir-fry is probably done. Take it off the burner if it is. Leave it and continue to poke if it isn't. But definitely...
Move the egg pot to the sink and run cold water over the eggs for a minute or so.
Peel the eggs. Pray you get ones with the shells that slide right off rather than the ones that cling to the whites and leave you with a mutilated 2/3 of egg left.
Toast is done.
Plate toast.
Plate stir fry.
Place one egg on each toast and chop with a fork.
Season egg toast with salt and pepper.
Eat while doing a Wife of God devotional ;)
~Stephanie
"Everyone suspects himself of at least one of the cardinal virtues, and this is mine: I am one of the few honest people that I have ever known."
~ F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
I don't know if "self-awareness" is a cardinal virtue, but it is a quality of which I like to suspect myself.
Before anything more, I would like to point out that I realize how awkward and ironic this will be if it turns out that I'm fooling myself into thinking I'm self-aware. But I do genuinely want to be self-aware, so if you think I'm not, do tell me.
Actually, now that I dig deeper into my thoughts, I think that's more what I'm trying to say: my "cardinal virtue" isn't that I am self-aware, but that I genuinely want to be. If you think I'm arrogant, please tell me. If you think I'm shallow, please tell me. If you think my tone is too sharp, please tell me.
This is something Gabe and I have been working on since we got married. His default is to let things go, which is a GIANT GIFT FROM GOD because my default is to grab onto everything. If we were both as nit-picky as I am, we'd...well, we'd never have gotten married, that's for sure. If we had anyway someone would definitely be dead by now.
But that quality of his also bothers me, because I feel like I thrive on people calling me out on my crap.
On my very first blog, I would sometimes post excerpts from stories I was writing. People would comment kind, encouraging things. And I hated that. Here is a moment of sheer self-awareness that I often shy away from because #Arrogance:
I know I'm a good writer.
There. I said it.
Now, admittedly, that's right now. Tomorrow I may recant this and insist that I'm average at best, or I peaked when I was a teenager, or a bunch of other different statements that I will believe just as much at that time as the one above. But, on the whole, I know I'm a good writer.
What I want to be is a better writer. And those kind, encouraging comments to my middle-school self were not making me that. I did want to hear what people liked about my stories or style, but where did they see weakness? What didn't they like?
This intense desire to expose flaws and fix them is one of my core qualities. Gabe is getting more and more comfortable with stopping me in a moment and saying, "You're being mean to me," or "You're not listening," or "I think you don't have a good reason for that." And my suspected cardinal virtue kicks in, because I think—and Gabe, please correct me if I'm wrong—that I do a good job of pausing and taking that criticism.
Now, I'm not saying that my other core qualities of Logic and Arguing For The Purpose Of Understanding don't make an appearance too. I will sometimes push back against the accusation of "meanness" if I honestly don't believe it, but Gabe knows that it's because I need to understand and be understood. I go into "cross examination mode," which is definitely not warm and fuzzy, but it is devoid of whatever emotion was overwhelming me a few moments before.
If I was being mean, I explain where I think it was coming from and apologize. If I wasn't listening, I start. If I didn't have a good reason, we discover that and I admit that I need to let go (sometimes, in the moment, I can't yet, but I will at least stop forcing it on the world at large XD).
I have some good qualities, but I'm more interested in the bad ones. What can I fix? What can I understand better? What can I change?
I know I'm intense and self-assured and argumentative, but don't ever be afraid to stop me if you have something to say out of love.
I really do want to know.
~Stephanie
