a postcard from paris

Perhaps it's because we're almost two weeks away from passing our first milestone as a married couple {woohoo one year anniversary!}, but I couldn't help but think back to the way our little relationship started. 

See back in the day, husmate & I would hang out with a ginormous group of friends over at a lovely place called the Purple House on a regular basis. This group of friends was so large that it would take over the living room {sofa, loveseats, floor, stools, etc.} and it was pretty hard to actually know everyone really well {to the point that husmate & I pretty much knew each other's names}. In this group, husmate was sort of in the inner circle and I, being a semi-newbie, pretty much existed on the fringe {hello Peanut Gallery co-member, Kelsey!}. So yeah, basically he was the cool nice guy & I was the sassy & sarcastic know-it-all.

But as coincidence would have it, one day {about this time three years ago} the Peanut Gallery got to be too much to handle for everyone else {picture us as a funnier version of the old men commentators on the Muppets except that we laughed... A LOT}, and Kelsey & I were told we had to separate ourselves. Sad face emoticon. But that coincidence forced me to sit next to {you guessed it} the cool nice guy. 

So the cool nice guy, being nice {duh, it's in his personality}, leaned over & tried to start a conversation so that me & my blushing cheeks would stop being so ridiculously red {I get embarrassed easily folks- one of the things that husmate loves to this day}. He really was very sweet, and somehow it came up that he was traveling to Paris that summer. Well, lo and behold, that is a subject in which my nerd status comes out. Come to find out, this kid was going with no clue of ANYTHING about Paris: history, museums, churches, Versailles, anything. So I took it upon myself to help him out a little {because holy croissant he was going in blind!} & proposed that I would create him an itinerary of sorts to help him & his friend out on their journey. 

That little itinerary turned into eight pages single-spaced of nerd adoration of Paris & everything that this envious know-it-all had ever dreamed of seeing there. eight pages, you guys. You can bet that those cheeks were on Super Blush Mode when I sent it to him, too- SO EMBARRASSED. But because he was the cool nice guy, he didn't make fun of me in a mean way, but was instead appreciative & amused that I would take so much effort on something for a guy I barely knew. I, myself, was equally amused with this behavior & thought that was that.

Except it wasn't. And when he sent me a postcard from Paris that summer {in French, mind you}, I got a few butterflies. So I guess my nerd moment had its consequences {just like his did when he recited pi that day}. 

I did marry him after all. 

remember the time... {vol. I}

{lately}

+ Saturday midday rolls around, and it occurs to husmate & I that we don't know where his apartment keys are. We check his jeans, jacket, & and the bowl that sits on our dresser holding all his miscellaneous stuff... which turns up nothing. On a whim I tell him to check our door... wellwouldn'tyaknowit? FYI, we haven't used that door since 5 pm the previous day... Glad we have such trustworthy neighbors. Oh, and that we're brilliant and on top of things 24/7.

+ While mindlessly perusing IKEA and all its Swedish cleverness, I look over & catch husmate setting all the kitchen timers to go off in ten minutes time. We're talking at least 15-20 of those annoyingly high pitched things. I. am. mortified. I stomp off as fast as I can in any direction away from the ticking time bombs as to distance myself from any ensuing embarrassment. Meanwhile, husmate creates a stake-out one section over so as to witness the cacophony of sounds and the innocent victims who will undoubtably be confused by all the commotion. I married a forever 9 year old. I am convinced of it.

+ We went from having one Victorian chair & a coffee table in our den to adding a big ole comfy couch, a reading chair, & a side table in the course of a day. And we hung pictures?! It's as if we finally moved in two months later.

{auld lang syne}

+ So in order to move to Alexandria, husmate & I puffed out our chests & decided to move ourselves in a u-haul. We are adults, hear us roar. So everything's going great, and we're in the process of moving our old couch onto the truck. After walking backwards up the u-haul ramp, husmate is trying to be all Superman-like by opening the door while maintaining his hold on the couch. Andddddd he falls off the ramp. It is both slightly frightening & hilarious at the same time, but I am proud to say I was concerned for his safety wayyyy before I started laughing. The best part? The couch ripped his jeans from his belt loop all the way to his knee, and the rest of his pants had already been packed.

+ It was something of a joke back then, but I think husmate's friend, Dr. Nic, might have been right: Nic said that I would fall in love with husmate due to the fact that he could recite pi to the 50th decimal place. Said it had something to do with my nerdy behavior (Cue my inevitable blushing cheeks). But I did later that year. Hook, line, and sinker, and I suppose it might have stemmed from that little comment.

a lovely wooden bench

Some of you might have wondered why the header of this blog is an empty bench in a seemingly empty park... yes? Well, long story short that bench is where my sweet husband proposed to me two years ago today. But who ever likes a long story cut short? Not I said the fly. Of course, I hail from the days of Chi O's having candlelights every week, so perhaps I just enjoy a good proposal story... I can't help it. So if you don't care to hear about how we started this little journey of wedded bliss, you can skip this post. If you're a diehard romantic, you may want to stick around... ;)

Well, two years ago good ole husmate pulled the wool over my eyes and led me to believe that he needed help finding an apartment up in DC for when he started his job. Somehow it was simultaneously important enough that my advisor (sweet Dr. A) excused me from a mandatory Alumni Delegate function and common enough that my usually detail-oriented always-asking-questions mother simply said "be sure to take a camera!" Hmm... red flag, anyone? (Actually my mother being so keen on the idea from the start really did send up a red flag, but I just brushed it off and asked my dad if she was okay. Haha!). I then emailed all my professors that I would be absent on Friday (one of them told me it was my decision if I wanted my grade to suffer... I think I made the right decision in the end) and started to get excited to fly to my favorite city!

Since I now had a free weekend, I packed my bag and flew with then-boyfriend to DC eeearrrly Friday morning. He told me that the schedule consisted of job interviews on Friday morning and apartment hunting on Saturday, so when he left me at the hotel to go to his "interviews" I thought nothing of it. I climbed back in bed and took a nap, while the boyfriend was actually walking around the city memorizing his route for that night's plan & calling some friends to calm his nerves. He came back that afternoon saying his "interview" went well, and we got ready to go to dinner.

Boyfriend was super smooth in that he "let me" choose where to eat knowing that I would choose a restaurant we went to the previous summer while he interned up here and I was visiting friends. So still no red flag had been raised in my head. After dinner, I begged him to walk around the monuments at night because it's my favorite time of day to view them (again part of his evil plan). Still no red flag. 

As we're walking towards the monuments we pass the DAR Constitution Hall and see all these people milling about. By nature, I do not get curious about what others are doing but he does, so he asks if we could go see what was up and I agreed. As we're nearing the steps I see someone pull out tickets to be admitted, and I make a remark about how we don't have tickets and can't we please keep walking to the monuments? I got shot down pretty fast while also being pushed towards the door. Turns out he has tickets to some mysterious show that he won't tell me what it is until we're sitting down in our seats. Red Flag. 

Oh, it's just the Avett Brothers. My favorite band. Ever. No big deal. He tells me he discovered that they were playing here earlier this week and he bought the tickets on stub hub (can you tell how gullible I am with him?) and I totally believed him! Red flag is at half mast. Avett proceeds to play an incredible show, and naive little me- I comment during their song "Murder in the City" about a lyric saying "Always remember, there was nothing worth sharing/Like the love that let us share our name" that one day we'd share that bond. Ha! I crack myself up at how soon that was going to come true. 

So the concert ends and I beg again to walk to the monuments; obviously I am playing into his master plan... So we're walking and talking and heading towards a park that we both had mentioned we wanted to see. I start rambling on about how cute the ducks were in the pond being paired off, and he just lets me go on and on in my merry little nerdy ways. By this point we reach the Bench. We sit down and start chatting, and he tells me he has a small surprise for me. Now you would think that this would cue a red flag? Yeah, weirdly it didn't.

He pulls out a puzzle and tells me to put it together but not to flip it over. Hmm, what was that? Don't flip it over? So there's a part two to this? But that little train of thought exited stage right as I started to put the pieces together. Super sly one over there had collaged together all of the ticket stubs and receipts and trinkets from our relationship (even though he adamantly told me not to be sentimental about these things earlier in our dating relationship), and I was simply put quite mesmerized. He had to interrupt me from my trance to even remind me of part two of the puzzle. Ha, whoops... So I flip it over, and it was a picture of a little boy and a little girl kissing him on the cheek. And there was a speech bubble in the picture that said "Will you marry me?" WHOA. Hold up. Read that again... Yep, it definitely says that. I did not string this together out of my imagination... I look over and he's on one knee. He told me he loved me and asked him to marry him! 

The romantics of the story don't even stop there (I know, right? He's gooood). Inside the box was a gorgeous ring surrounded by yellow rose petals that he told me he picked the same night he told me he loved me for the first time. That night he had given me a red rose, and on our wedding night he gave me a dried white rose (also from the same night). Yeah, he thinks really far in advance...

After he put the ring on my finger, he told me there were a few more things. My mind is completely blank by this point. Can't even fathom what is going on. He hands me our journal and tells me that he wrote about his entire planning process, and in the binding was a scrap of paper I once gave him several months back of a quote by e.e. cummings: "Unless you love someone, nothing else makes any sense." 

After reading our journal, he said he also had a letter from someone that I might want to read... He hands me an orange letter in a wonderfully familiar handwriting that's addressed to Mr. Jordan Berry (and KB). My sweet big sis, Laney, had been tipped off and wrote a beautiful letter that brought on the first wave of tears. Her letter made our engagement real for me, and I couldn't have asked for a better way to come to the understanding that I was getting a new last name and wonderful husband to spend the rest of my days with. I was so numb from emotions by this point that all I could do was thank God over and over again for all of my many blessings, most of which were sitting on a park bench holding my hand. God is so good.

To end this scene on a note typical of us Berry's, my now-husmate looked at me before we left our little bench and pulled his hand into the shape of a gun and said "Boom!" as if to shoot the starter pistol my dad had always joked about (Boys only get to determine the start to the wedding, girls do alllllll the rest). 

Funny, funny boy whom I get to love for the rest our life. I am a lucky girl.

a valentine for my valentine

Happy Valentine's Day, everyone! I hope no one else procrastinated as much as I did to tell your special someone how much you love them (some things never change...). And I know we're all secretly excited to start seeing less pink and red everywhere and more Easter pastels in the grocery stores ;) Reese's eggs here I come! 

doomsday birthday

check out the evolution of his wardrobe {my ongoing project}

Happy birthday to this dashing man! 

Lucky you, you get to celebrate life and death (according to the Mayans, not me) all in one day! What a stud. 

Just in case my cynicism is proven to be ridiculously unfair and the world does indeed stop spinning, happy birthday Handsome! I have had an incredible past 8 months (to the day! yes it was planned for future memory issues of our anniversary) being married to you, living in our new apartment for 5 whole days, and owning a sweet pup 800+ miles away from us that we've never personally met. You've given me a wonderful life serving as your co-conspirator, and I am constantly blessed and encouraged to be your wife. Plus, you have a last name that everyone can spell and is shorter than the standard cut off on applications of 12 characters. You rock husmate. And I can't wait to always be by your side in this life and the next.

Love, Kat

it's a mad world

We live in a broken world. It's almost as if someone has taken a hammer and smashed it into tiny little fractures that would make even Humpty Dumpty's situation look favorable. While that overview is bleak, it's really quite simple: since the fall of man, our world has been riddled in sin. Anger. Hate. Greed. Lust. Envy. Doubt. Cleverness. Fear. And pain. Lots of pain. This is what the world is made of, and we humans (or rather our flesh) inhabit it. 

The challenge of the world is not to outsmart it, but rather overcome it. Patching up our hearts with love and filling them with Hope. And having unwavering faith in that Hope which allows our spirit to overcome our flesh. 

Tragedy strikes and the first thing we ask is "why?" Why would someone do something so horrific? So sinister? What could possibly be their motive?  To put it simply it's pain, and it was never our burden to share until it was too late. 

I've never felt so heartbroken in my life until today. The wonder and innocence of so many children were stolen this morning and that's something we can never get back. I know this story will turn into a platform on gun control, but how terrible is it that it took the loss of almost 2 dozen children with tremendous potential to get that one going? Not even the shooting of a congresswoman could do that. Are we that desensitized? But the real takeaway from this situation should be love, not politics.

I've seen a lot of coverage on the issue of getting stricter gun laws (and I'm not totally against it), but the counterargument of if you take away guns, tragedy will still happen is quite true (reference Matthew 2 if you need proof from a relevant story). We live in a broken world. Perhaps the issue that is not so easily recognizable is that our culture has slowly over time kicked out God. We can hardly do anything anymore without worrying about stepping on people's toes or offending others, and I'm right there in the middle of it. I have never wanted to push an agenda on anyone. I'm a firm believer in listening to others and I generally play the moderator between sides, but it has become increasingly clear to me that we can't keep doing this. We also cannot shove scripture (especially fearful excerpts) down people's throats as a way to evangelize.

It's an uphill battle for sure, but we're called to love on ourselves and others. Love as God has loved us. He recognizes the utter pain and horror of having a child be bullied, threatened, and killed. He did that to himself for our atonement (1 John 4:8-10), and he still shows us grace everyday for the stupid things we do whether intentionally or not, and actually forgives us so long as we seek it.

So despite the fact that it is Christmas and I cannot possibly fathom the pain of losing a child, especially one who still believed in the wonder of Santa, remember that it is Christmas and God sent us his son as a sign for us of the Hope to come.

This is a time to come together. To pray. To hug your loved ones and be thankful for your blessings. Nothing is certain in this world. Not the weather, the economy, or the politics. Our world and even our country is so incredibly divided, but this is a time to close that divide. Love on each other, I beseech you!

Called to Love

Presidential election years always present me with a strong case of emotions. A whole heaping basket of them, but one of the big ones that sits in my stomach is fear. And to be honest, it's not fear of who gets elected, but rather fear of what our country and our people are becoming. Election years tell you a lot about people. And I mean all sorts of people: family, friends, employers, colleagues, strangers in the grocery store, people on the news. 

Haven't you ever noticed that things get tense during an election year? It's like we, as Americans, get prepped and ready for a year of war. We all draw lines in the sand and point fingers and offer ultimatums of sorts. The cable news stations become a battleground of words. Words of hate and insults and half-told truths and slanderous lies. Some of those words have a basis of fact and have been twisted into incredible tales. Others have no truth to them at all. 

And the worst part is we all listen to these words. We take them and mold them into our own and then we become the ones saying hateful things about people we don't know. Terrible things that we don't bother to fact check or even doubt because surely everything that is said on the news is factual. 

Haven't you noticed the direction that pretty much all of the candidate ads are running? Lucky me, I now live in a swing state, so every other advertisement run on TV is talking about the election. All of them have some backing of a super PAC or special interest group, and none of them help me to know who to vote for. All they do is incite fear or anger and further divide this country into three sides: one to support each candidate and one for those in the middle. And the sad thing is, other than at the debates, pretty much all you'll hear out of our candidates is undermining words about each other.

We are becoming a people that think it's okay to be disrespectful towards others. We've gotten to the point now that if our candidate doesn't win, instead of standing behind the chosen leader, we lurk in the shadows and slander him for four years until we can elect someone to replace him. And guess what? It doesn't stop there. The boundary for disrespect is never black and white. We, as humans, live by example, so all the time we spend disrespecting a candidate teaches us and others that it's okay to disrespect other people, too. Generally the ones that aren't like us in any way.

We as Christians are called to love, not insult, not belittle, but love. And in this case, love is a synonym for being encouraging, just, and respectful. We are fortunate to have the privilege to live in a country that accepts people for who they are, what they believe, and what they look like. It's a country of freedom in almost every sense, and it truly is a beautiful and rare thing. And we as Christians are called to love on all those people (in that tricky "love your neighbor as yourself" bit (Mark 12:31)), even the ones that don't look or think or act the way we do. I know it can be easily forgotten, but Christ hung out with and loved on everyone, especially the ones whose voice was never heard (lepers, prostitutes, the blind, children, etc.), and He called us to do the same: to share his word and his love with all of the peoples (Matthew 28:19). 

We should also remember that Christ clarified one day that what one eats doesn't make him "unclean" but rather what he says (Matthew 15:11). So all I'm asking is to mentally wash our mouths out with soap and remember our character and respect for others in these last weeks leading up to the election. Our votes may be important, but our integrity and duty to love one another are infinitely more so.