The McDowell Way: Love lessons with a bit of travel.

Steven had some work that took him to Nashville, TN for the weekend. He left on Thursday and I drove up after work on Friday to tag along. We had a blast. Although it was definitely the kind of heat where it forces you to ask yourself, "Why do I live in the South?" We spent the whole weekend, site-seeing, honky tonkin and eating incredible food. Below are some pictures from our walk around town (I tried to at least condense some into a collage :)

We also had our first big fight as a married couple...

But the good kind. The kind that afterwards makes you fall in love even more :) I honestly have so much to learn about truly becoming one with another person. My husband is my first serious relationship, so before him the only person that was witness to all of my frustrations or disappointments or moments of wanting isolation, or my roller coaster emotions...was me. And now, I have this man who simply wants to be with me and love me and make me happy and take care of me and wants to be a part of me. And some thing that I admire so much about him and hope it will rub off on me, is his ability to separate situations from emotions. I never feel like he is angry at me, no matter what kind of day he's had or what he's had to deal with, it's clear to me that I am not what he's angry about. He deals with the actual situation.

Yet, I constantly struggle with being able to pinpoint what I'm actually frustrated about. And unfortunately Steven sometimes becomes a target for that frustration. Because he's this constant strength to my frazzled restlessness. I forget that things that I dealt with in the privacy of my own world, now effect and are in view of someone else. And it's not fair to him. Because he is never the cause of my anger, he just often gets tangled up in how I deal with it. I'm not proud of this, but it is something that I'm trying to be conscious of and work at every day. It's a habit I think a lot of people have, but one that can be changed. A Buddhist monk and author, Thich Nhat Hanh, says:

"In taking good care of yourself, you take good care of your beloved one. Self-love is the foundation for your capacity to love the other person. If you don't take good care of yourself, if you are not happy, if you are not peaceful, you cannot make the other person happy. You cannot help the other person; you cannot love. Your capacity for loving another person depends entirely on your capacity for loving yourself, for taking care of yourself."

Those words absolutely hit me to the core. Steven can not make me happy. And he knows that and has expressed that too me. He wants to see me happy and be a part of that. And that's what I owe him. If I'm not happy in my job, I need to change that. If I'm not feeding myself spiritually, I need to seek that out. Because it's not just how I treat him that defines our marriage, it's also how I treat myself. I want to replace self-doubt and insecurity with peace and joy, but I have to make that choice and that effort. For my sake and because that is what I want to give my husband. I am blessed beyond belief, and yet it is so easy for me to fall prey to my own mind of imagined thoughts of despair. And I hate that. I enjoy the company of my husband too much, and I enjoy my own company too much to not live every moment of my life full of love and excitement and aware of how wonderful my life truly is.

But like I said, amongst the life lessons, we also had an incredible time together :) So here are some of the pictures from our trip: