I Can Do Hard Things

I recently read the book Untamed by Glennon Doyle. I shared some of my thoughts on Untamed on my social media accounts but I didn’t talk about the part of the book that impacted me the most. The part that made me stop. The part that made me inhale and exhale. The part that made me shed a tear because it put words to what I now know, after the last 12 months, to be true of myself.

I can do hard things.

Last year when Patrick and I moved out East, I did not anticipate the journey ahead of us. I thought that our biggest challenges would be the overall transition and trying to figure out what our lives would look like. I thought that we knew exactly what we wanted. I thought that we would find jobs that we loved and an apartment that we loved and that everything would generally just be rainbows and sunshine.

I think that the beauty and tragedy of being an optimist, is that you’re always thinking about how great something will be and often not considering how difficult or challenging things may be.

I can do hard things.

There were times where I felt so blindsided by the realities of this human existence. Blindsided by the pain that comes from walking through this beautifully imperfect life with beautifully imperfect people. Trying to hold myself together while also trying to keep their pieces in place.

I can do hard things.

I felt like I could take care of everyone well, while also taking care of myself well. I thought that I could fight racism without growing weary and survive a pandemic without being exhausted and depressed. I thought that my smile wouldn’t fade. I thought that a year into marriage, at the time, that my husband and I had already experienced all of our growing pains. I thought that saying no to one thing, in order to say yes to something else, would be easy. It wasn’t.

I can do hard things.

I thought that I would be buried but I grew. I thought that I would sink but I swam. I thought that I would die but instead I started to become fully alive. We are forged in the fire. We learn what we can withstand by walking through trials. We grow from fighting not from resting.

I feel bigger now. Like my heart has expanded. Like it has tripled in size. I now understand that my hands can’t hold it all but my heart can hold more than I’ve allowed it to in the past.

I can do hard things.

I trust God on a deeper level now. I trust that He is for me and that He loves me and that He is always near. I trust that I can feel His presence. I trust that he wants nothing but good for me. I trust that, like pastor Chelsea Smith said “I can be in His perfect will and still be in pain.” I trust that He hasn’t forsaken me even when it feels like he has.

I can do hard things.

I walk with more confidence than before. Not confidence in my abilities but rather a confidence in the truth that life does not stop in the hard moments. Life does not swallow you whole, without spitting you out. That even in death, there is life to come. And that in the struggle I’ll find a glimpse of the beauty of humanity and a reminder that… I can do hard things.

One day, when the scabs turn into scars, I’ll go into detail. I’ll tell you about every high and every low. I’ll write them out on paper and on blogs. I’ll show you the wounds that took forever to heal because life constantly reopened them. I’ll whisper parts of therapy sessions and late-night desperate prayers. I’ll talk to you about fear and pain and heartbreak. I’ll cry while I’m speaking as I’m reminded of all that we’ve been through and I’ll look at you at the end and say.

I can do hard things.

The One About the Shotgun Wedding.

Patrick and I eloped on July 20th. It wasn’t our intention when we got engaged to go down to the courthouse on a random Friday afternoon and just get married but life and our circumstances at the time made a run to the courthouse the best option. No I’m not pregnant and definitely wasn’t at the time, so why the rush? Well…

When we got engaged on April 29th it was hands down one of the best days of my life. It happened pretty much exactly how I always imagined it would (you can read all about the proposal here ) but once the engagement high wore off life started to happen real fast. We started wedding planning and as much as we both loved the idea of short engagements we realized that weddings are expensive and short notice weddings are even more expensive.

So my mom and my sister-in-laws went on a crazy wide search trying to find a place in PA to have the wedding and found the perfect place and my dear friend Shallyn agreed to do our pictures. All seemed like it was going to work out. Except the venue and Shallyn were only available, at the same time at least, on September 8th. So September wedding it is we thought and began the planning process.

Then came the question of our living situation and we realized that both of our leases were up in July. Sure, we easily could have just moved in together and lived together for a few months before our wedding but there was one piece to the puzzle which made that an idea we didn’t want to entertain.

Before Patrick and I ever met we both made a decision about our lives and specifically about our sex lives that would go on to impact every single one of our dating relationships. We decided that we wanted to wait until we were married to have sex. It’s a decision that I made when I was a teenager. I didn’t get a purity ring or do some strange ceremony with my dad with him vowing to protect my honor. It was a conversation that happened in a room, between me and God, where I decided that sex before marriage was just not something that I was interested in. I was going to wait.

When I decided that I wanted to be in a serious relationship meeting someone that was also a virgin wasn’t a requirement of mine. Rather, I just wanted to meet someone who could respect that decision and who could honor that while we were dating. To find out that Patrick was also waiting and that this decision was something that meant a lot to both of us, was a real blessing. God is faithful.

So our leases were almost up, we found a place that was available in July but the wedding wasn’t until September, so what do we do? I’m not sure who came up with the idea but one night over dinner we decided that the best idea would be to go to the courthouse and make it official. So on July 20th that’s exactly what we did and it was awesome.

I was lucky that it worked out that my best friend Veronika was in town from Sweden and she, along with Patrick’s family and our friend Chad were able to come to the courthouse with us. We decided that we wanted to be in the actual room with the judge by ourselves in order to have one piece of the whole wedding ordeal just the two of us and everyone was fine with that and waited patiently outside.

Before this whole thing went down if someone would have asked me how does one go about getting married at the courthouse I probably would have said that it’s really simple. Now that I’ve gone through the process I know that it’s quite complex. You can’t just show up to the courthouse and meet with a random judge. You have to go online and find the judges in your district that perform weddings and then you have to reach out to them and ask them if they can marry you. If they say yes then you have to make sure that you get your marriage license before the ceremony and ask them what their fee is because they don’t do it for free.

The judge that we picked was so sweet and kind. I was nervous that it would all feel superficial and not special at all but I was so wrong. She was so intentional about every word that she used and made sure that we understood how big of a deal marriage is. She had us repeat the most beautiful vows and I’m so grateful that out of all of the judges we picked the BEST one. It was so special.

Something else that made the day feel really special and not just like something that we just threw together was the fact that we had a photographer there. Our friend Liz offered to come and take pictures for us and I’m so glad we said yes because it was so fun to have her there. Now that I’m looking through the pictures again and adding them to this post I feel so blessed to have such high quality memories from the day when the Magloire Casey family began. Liz if you’re reading this you’re awesome and we appreciate you!

So that’s pretty much how the shotgun wedding came about. Our leases were up, our wedding was planned for September and we didn’t want to live together until we were married. Looking back on it I’m so glad that we did everything the way and in the order that we did it. I can’t imagine having a huge wedding, moving in to a new place, going on a honeymoon and starting married life together all in the span of two weeks. For us, spacing it out and having time to process each step made us so present for every part of the journey.

From the ceremony on July 20th to the big wedding on September 8th, the Denver reception on September 22nd and the honeymoon coming up March 2019, they all feel like isolated incidents if you will. Experiences that we could soak up and enjoy individually without trying to do it all at the same time.

Yesterday was our two year anniversary and as I look back not only at our ceremony but at our relationship as a whole I’m amazed by how perfect God’s timing is. If I had met Patrick at a different time in my life I’m confident that we would not have worked out and probably wouldn’t have even gone on a single date. Yet here we are, two years and one day in to our lives together and it’s just so wonderful, far from perfect but yet perfect for us.

“You are the finest, loveliest, tenderest and most beautiful person I have ever known…and even that Is an understatement.”

The One About Marriage Counseling.

Patrick and I have been married for almost 4 months now. It’s crazy to think that two years ago today we hadn’t even met yet but here we are married.

Marriage is quite the beast. It’s this beautiful, scary, powerful force that is so glamorized in the media but so often the truth of how intense it is isn’t shown. I feel like the shows I watch either portray flourishing and thriving marriages or it shows couples signing divorce papers. There’s not a lot about the in between. Today I want to open the door for a conversation about the everyday, the simple, the moments that aren’t necessarily Insta and FB worthy but are the foundation of the moments that are.

When Patrick proposed to me in April we immediately started talking about marriage counseling. We’re both from two parent homes and grew up seeing the fruits of a healthy and thriving marriage but we didn’t exactly know all the steps that got our parents there. I have a strong relationship with my parents now but when I was younger I didn’t ask a lot of questions. I wasn’t the type of kid that asked my parents how they met, or what their first date was like, I was mostly focused on myself and navigating what felt like the hell of adolescence.

So when we got engaged, we knew that counseling was a non-negotiable. We talked to our Pastors and they agreed to do our counseling and to connect us to the resources we needed. Before we started, both Patrick and I had to take an assessment. We were told not to discuss our answers with each other and it essentially evaluated our personalities as well as our love languages and argument styles. The assessment also looked at the ways that we’re different from each other and how those differences worked in our favor or could be areas of contention in our relationship.

After we got our results we went through the book, that matched the assessment, with our Pastors. The whole process was simple, at times predictable but undoubtedly helpful. To be completely forthright with you the first few weeks of our marriage were kind of miserable. We argued a lot and the meshing of lives was not as smooth as we both would have hoped but I KNOW that it would have been a lot worse if we wouldn’t have gone to counseling. Counseling helped us to understand that the differences that we see in each other are not things that we need to aim to change but rather things that we need to celebrate.

One of the focuses of our counseling that really impacted me and the way that I continue to navigate in our relationship was the piece on love languages. Patrick and I talked about our love languages for the first time on our second date and it feels like we’ve talked about them a bunch since. I thought that I knew what Patrick needed to feel loved but I hadn’t fully grasped how important it was for Patrick to receive verbal affirmation. I think that one of my greatest flaws is that I’m not always verbal with the people closest to me about how much I love them. I try to show it in the way that I treat them and the thoughtful things that I do for them but it can be difficult for me to verbalize it. I learned in counseling that it’s important to Patrick that love is not only shown but verbalized.

So now I have a reminder on my phone to tell Patrick that I love and appreciate him every single day. Not just when I’m saying goodnight or when we’re heading out the door for work but in the moments where he’s not expecting it. I don’t always get it right, sometimes I don’t have my phone and at times I’m being a brat and I don’t say anything but when I see it and I follow the prompt I can tell that it means the world to him. Counseling put us in a space where we had encouraged vulnerability which made it easier for Patrick to open up and express how much he values and needs that affirmation.

I also learned a lot about myself in counseling. I realized how stubborn I can be and how much I enjoy being in control. We talked about my need to feel safe and how detailed talks about money and creating a plan for the future helps to create that sense of security for me. When we were deciding on where we wanted to live after we got married, I just wanted to pick the first place that we found that was nice and within our budget. At the time I couldn’t verbalize why but post counseling I can identify the reason and it was because the unknown in regards to where we would live made me feel unsafe. Now Patrick knows that and in times where the unknown is unpreventable he does whatever he can to make me feel safe and secure in our situation.

Marriage counseling, paired with a relationship with Christ, gave us legs to stand on in our marriage. Marriage is a ton of fun and it’s also very hard and I’ve found that my life experiences didn’t give me the tools and resources I needed to be able to handle everything. Marriage counseling isn’t perfect but it definitely gave us some of the tools that we need and will continue to need to be able to navigate this journey.

When I think about my marriage I know that the goal is not for us to have a life free of arguments or disagreements. Rather the goal is to make sure we always come out of every trial and tribulation together and stronger than we were before. That’s why Patrick and I are committed to having at least one session with a counselor every year. So that we can continue to invest in our marriage and each other, not just when things are bad or on the rocks but rather all the time.

Until next time friends!

Xoxo,

Nicole

An Ode to Short Engagements.

So short and sweet

these months will be

leading up to the day of our union.

So short and sweet 

so wish me luck

to keep it short

wedding planning sucks. 

Okay planning doesn't completely suck, it's actually a lot of fun but it's definitely not always fun. Patrick and I are getting married in 108 days. 108 DAYS! It's very exciting because I seriously can't wait to start a life with Patrick. Patrick will be my forever Partner in Adventure and what an adventure life with him is but again, planning is fun but not every aspect of this new stage of life is fun. 

I've heard people say that marriage doesn't solve the problems that you have in your relationship but rather it puts a magnifying glass to them. I think it's safe to say that short engagements, or maybe engagements in general, do the same thing. In the last three weeks Patrick and I have bickered about the silliest things. Things that we'd normally let slide or give each other grace for, in the last few weeks, have caused some friction and tension in our relationship. 

When I imagined what it would be like getting engaged and planning a wedding I imagined that it would be months and months of happiness and just a hint of stress. What was I thinking? Where did I get that notion from? I'm not sure but the truth is that there's a lot to think about and if you go in to it unprepared (like I did) you will definitely find yourself getting stressed and arguing with Bae. 

So if I may, I'd like to pass on some of the many wonderful tips that I've gotten from friends and blogs and that I've learned along the way. Tips that I think are really helpful. Hopefully these leave you feeling motivated, inspired and encouraged in your planning process.

Tip number 1. - Don't plan right away. My dear friend Dannah texted me when Patrick and I first got engaged and suggested that we take some time to just enjoy being engaged and I'm so glad we took her advice. The first week we didn't plan anything. Instead we spent all of our time enjoying each others company. The day after we got engaged I got so many text messages from family and friends all wanting to start planning and it was really nice to just pause it all and ask them to get back to me in a week.

Out of our almost month of being engaged the first week was one of my favorite parts so far. We told our engagement story over and over and we got to relish in the moment and we didn't spend any time thinking about all the things that needed to get done. I'm so grateful to Dannah for dropping that seed in my ear. Taking the first week off helped me to catch my breath before diving in to the crazy whirlwind that is planning a wedding in less than four months. 

Tip number - 2. Decide what IS and what is NOT worth fretting over. Before Patrick and I even got engaged we talked about the top three to four things, in regards to our wedding day, that we were going to be particular about and the things that we were just going to let go. Out of all of the aspects of our wedding as long as these three to four things went really well and were planned out, we could essentially live with anything else. Our list included making sure that I had the perfect dress, that our pictures were amazing and that all of our closest family and friends could be there. 

Now that we're deep in to this planning thing, I refer back to our list almost daily. When I find myself stressing over our menu or whether or not we're going to have an open bar, I think about our list. When I'm stressing about what the groomsmen are going to wear, if the greenery we like is in season and if we'll be able to have long (compared to round) tables at our reception, I check the list. If it's not on the list, it's not worth the stress. So I strongly encourage you to make a list, stick to the list and take a chill pill about the rest. 

Tip number -3. Don't forget that it's YOUR wedding! Okay, so this one is a bit tricky, especially if you're like me and you're kind of a people person and you want all participating parties to be happy. Everyone has a picture and an idea in their head of what they think a wedding should look like.  They picture the dresses and the suits and the decor and that's their idea of the perfect wedding day and anything outside of that scope seems out of place to them. 

The vision that you have for your wedding, your special day, may be something that people have a hard time grasping. They might say that it's not traditional enough and that it needs more of this and less of that. If you find yourself in a space like that, know that your vision and your desires are okay. Actually they're more than okay, they're perfect. It is YOUR wedding day. I have to give myself this advice all the time. There are so many amazing people helping me to plan and I often find myself hearing their suggestions and feeling bad if I don't like them.  But as my bridesmaid Veronika says "This is maybe the only time in your life that the two of you can be 100% selfish and it's considered okay. So be selfish." 

So whatever your perfect is, stick to it, regardless of what people say because at the end of the day it's your wedding, so be selfish girlfriend! 

And lastly, I don't know if I can call this a tip but rather advice. It's very easy to feel like you've 'arrived' if you will, once you get engaged. Seemingly out of nowhere you're getting a ton of attention from so many people and it can feel like you're all of a sudden important. At least that's how I've felt at times in these last few weeks. I've been overwhelmed, in a good way, by all of the attention that we've been showered with. It's enough to make one think that they've never been more relevant than they are at this very moment. 

Engagements are beautiful and I believe they can be very Godly but they are NOT an indication of value or worth. God does not love me any more now than he did before. He doesn't notice me more, or think about me more. God's love for me has never and will never change. That's a truth that I was reminded of this morning during my devotional time. The attention is great, being engaged to Patrick is amazing but if it all went away tomorrow, God's unchanging love for me would remain and that's what is most important. 

Until next time friends! 

Xoxo - Nico

"My hope is built on nothing less, than Jesus' blood and righteousness; I dare not trust the sweetest frame but wholly trust in Jesus' name." 

"

My burning ring finger.

First comes love, then comes marriage....right? 

Or at least that's what I've been told. You meet someone that you like, then eventually they become someone you love, then it evolves into someone you can't live without and BOOM you get married. 

That's how the story has been told and retold to me. Patrick and I have been together for just shy of ten months and I've lost track of how many times I've been asked "Soooo, when are you two getting engaged?"

That sentence and others like it, after awhile, have become a fire that burned its way into my heart and set up a shop of resentment and jealousy inside of me. 

Patience, lately, has not been my strongest virtue. I took hold of the lie that the only next step for us was for us to get engaged and anything that didn't quench that desire wasn't good enough. Irritable is a word that could have floated over my head non-stop. I was irritated, irritated by any conversation and any date that didn't end with me getting one step closer to having a husband. 

The truth though, is that marriage is not the next step for Patrick and me. 

The next step is for us to grow deeper in our trust and our communication. The next step is for us to celebrate our birthday's and enjoy our first Fall season together. The next step is for us to spend the Holiday's with each other's family and learn more about family dynamic and how to exist as a unit bound to so many other units. 

The next step is for me to not be so connected to the way that I think a relationship is supposed to play out and open my eyes to the beauty of how my relationship is evolving.

So yes, we are going to get married. Yes, we are going to have a beautiful wedding and start a life together and have a ton of kids. Yes, it's something that we talk about but no, it's definitely not happening today and it won't happen tomorrow. 

Marriage is in our future and is one of the goals of our relationship but it's not our only goal.

Let patience be the virtue that we all cling to in this season. Today, the burning in my ring finger has begun to cease as I realize that the title of 'Girlfriend' is not a scarlet letter and after only ten months, in my first ever relationship, is exactly where I want to be. So please let me enjoy time with my boyfriend in this beautiful season that we're in and when we get engaged, believe me, you'll be the first to know. 

"When we are so eager for the next season, we believe the lie that the next season will bring some added level of completeness or perfection. But with God, we're never incomplete and never lacking in His holy perfection. We are only stretched to grow. And we can flourish in the waiting." - Jordan Dooley. 

Xoxo.