Elizabeth Lyvers's Blog, page 2

When Monday Morning Appears Again

In our house we call them “the Sunday night downs,” those gloomy feelings that occur in the space of time between the weekend and Monday morning. No one knows exactly where they come from or where they return to, but they’re as reliable and inexplicable as the wind. As a Christian commanded to make the most of each day, I know not to live for the weekend, but it feels nearly impossible not to. I excitedly sign our Friday emails with TGIF and shout “Have a great weekend!” to anyone in sight, like I’m bestowing birthday blessings. But on Sunday, when that long hoped for event is winding to a close and the credits about to roll, the emotion descends like rain on an outdoor wedding. Monday again. Starting over. No sleeping in. No languid afternoon spent puttering around the yard. No evening pizza and movie. The discouragement can be as keen as locking up the beach rental and starting the twelve-hour drive back home.  Some of us are better at stuffing down emotions than others. We feel them, ignore them, but still allow them to subliminally rule our behavior. We can be quick-temperated or impatient without trying to understand […]

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I Used to Dream of You

Dear Husband, I used to dream of you. In the center of the mall, surrounded by Christmas shoppers. In between the rows of novels at the bookstore. At the edge of the seashore while couples strolled past hand-in-hand. I used to sit in the corner of a restaurant and imagine looking over and finding your eyes. I figured I would know you instantly. I would see our future before I learned your name. But life almost never falls for these romantic tropes. That’s what I’ll tell our son one day. Don’t look for a cinematic moment signaled by dramatic soundtrack music. Real life is often unromantic, but it has something that no book or movie can replicate. It’s real. The first memory I have of you is captured in the amber glow of an autumn afternoon in West Virginia. You were walking across the New River Gorge Bridge with your family. I nudged my mother and said, “That boy goes to my school.” See, I already knew your name, but I didn’t see the future. I didn’t know you yet. It’s strange to me now because it feels as if I should have known, even at fifteen. After all these […]

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The Ties That Bind

If I look back in my journal and search for the word “grandma,” there’s only one person who appears. She’s neither of my biological grandmothers, who had both passed on by the time I was ten, but my husband’s grandmother—Janice. She first showed up in my life when I was seventeen. I was stricken with fear to meet Tommy’s “Houston grandparents,” this rags-to-riches, powerhouse couple who’d traveled the world, mastered the stock market, and given my then-boyfriend some of his best childhood memories. Before that first dinner at Texas Roadhouse, I’m pretty sure I googled, What’s a Dow Jones? in hopes of having something intelligent to say. But I shouldn’t have worried. Before I could butter my second roll, Grandma and I were chatting away about our favorite authors and books (Karen Kingsbury for her; Francine Rivers for me). Pretty quickly I learned that there was nothing pretentious about her. She was the ninth of ten kids, lost her dad at age two, and grew up dirt poor and happy in Nebraska. Her childhood, marriage, and family were inextricable from her identity, sturdy roots she returned to with esteem and affection again and again. She was grateful for all of […]

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Freedom From Regret

Although the decision to push pause on my career took place in the past, every day feels like a crossroads. A choice I must make anew every morning as little hands reach for me and I yawn against too little sleep. A choice I encounter as I go through the rhythms of stirring oatmeal and slicing strawberries. A choice I face when I chafe under loneliness and miss the challenges of my job. Contentment, meaning, identity wrapped up in a question without answer. Is this where I’m supposed to be?   I remember being a high school student when my future was a list of occupations on a whiteboard—French teacher, journalist, history professor, pharmacist. And now, at nearly thirty, my pharmacy doctorate is a piece of paper in a drawer. I plan meals, order groceries, vacuum, wash clothes, write, and play in an unchanging cycle of necessity. I finish one week to start another that looks just like it. And I wonder, was this the right choice?  But truthfully, the pursuit of personal happiness and self-fulfillment as supreme ends is a modern, first world luxury. Tomorrow in Kenya, thousands of women will awake while it is still night and trek miles […]

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How Parenthood Upends Perspective

“It’s hard to live at the pace of time,” Tommy likes to say. He usually reminds me of this when I’m restless for the future or when I’m bemoaning a change that forces something I love into the past tense. Jack is an entire year old today. Twelve months—gone, vanished, like dandelion seeds in the wind. No longer an infant. Past tense. It’s hard to live at the pace of time.  When he was a couple weeks old, squawking at me through the night, I longed for him to be a few months older so I could get some sleep. Now I ache for the tiny baby that would fall asleep on my chest every morning around 4 o’clock. It’s hard to live at the pace of time. Hard to be content where we are. Oh, but I’m trying. There are few guarantees in life, the surest one being that it’ll someday end. In my youth, I blithely assumed I would eventually become a mother. It seemed so obvious. I can still picture the look on Tommy’s face when I told him I wanted eight kids. We were seventeen, sitting on the bleachers at our high school, rattling off plans […]

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The Name of Hope

Grief becomes more real at Christmastime. As the years roll by, sometimes we tuck away thoughts of those we’ve loved and lost like photographs in an album, but during the holidays it becomes nearly impossible to keep the cover closed. The minutia of life takes on a heightened glow, each piece a vestige of what life used to be. December brings the first fall of snow, silver-wrapped presents, hot cocoa, and ornaments. There are festive songs in the stores, lights on the bushes, evergreen branches in the windows.  Every wish of good cheer is inexplicably bound up in the “better days.” All it might take are the opening notes of Silent Night, and the photo album bursts opens and memories change from monochrome to color.  At Christmastime, it feels nearly impossible to pretend that we haven’t lost.  A couple years ago, I wrote a blog post called Loving and Losing about a little house on a bending road in West Virginia. My Uncle Gary and Aunt Dolly lived there. They weren’t really my uncle and aunt, not really anything by blood to me, but they loved me and my sisters like we belonged to them.  I have vivid memories of […]

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Sorry about all the emails…

Hi reader! Sorry about the wealth of spam email this morning… While I am somewhat competent with words, I am NOT competent with website design. A plugin became overexcited and sent out 28 gibberish posts, none of which were written by me. They should have disappeared by now. The Dear Life Blog has been undergoing several changes over the last few months. After countless hours spent clicking in circles, downloading faulty plugins, crying over broken links, and sending weird emails, it’s finally fixed! (I say while crossing my fingers and squeezing my eyes shut in nervous dread). Thanks for your patience. More words coming soon. Love, Elizabeth 

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Like a Child

“Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it.”  – Mark 10:15 “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” – John 20:29 Your heart beat 100,000 times today. Your lungs, thanks to 300 million alveoli, breathed in 11,000 liters of air. This year, your mouth will produce enough saliva to fill two bathtubs, and as you read these words, your feet are actually hurtling through space at 67,000 miles per hour.  Such are a few of the marvels that occur under our literal noses. Before I could spell the word thermodynamics, I remember my dad introducing the relationship between science and my faith. From the rocks beneath my feet to the starts above my head, the earth told a mesmerizing tale of creation. There I was, caught in between, wrapped up in a cosmic story massively bigger than my own existence.  Science was never something to be afraid of, but to face, to scrutinize, to ask questions of. This passion for data and logic put an interesting edge to the nostalgic, pensive streak I’ve had since childhood. When I consider the marriage of science and […]

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Empty: An Essay on Listening & Being

I’m currently in the middle of an ugly case of writer’s block. It’s like one of those bad dreams where you’re at the start of an Olympic race and the gun cracks but your legs don’t move. Or you’re on the foul line at the end of a tied basketball game and suddenly realize you …

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A Dog’s Eulogy

I was a senior in high school, dutifully scribbling notes in chemistry class, when a teacher appeared in the doorway and asked if he could speak to me in the hallway.  “Your dog was hit by a car this morning. Someone saw her on the side of the interstate. I’m so sorry.” Numb to my …

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