you have something to offer.

July 13, 2016 ~ mollyflinkman ~ 4 Comments

When I was in middle school, I had a bad run in with a water trampoline. I was at a church camp with my youth group an hour away from home, slipped on the wet surface, and ended up with two toes on either side of one of the trampoline springs. This landed me in a small-town emergency room with two of our group leaders: an adult and a high school student.

I couldn’t get ahold of my parents, you know, because they weren’t home to answer their landline telephone, so needless to say, I was fairly traumatized (if anyone knew me in the late 1900s, this shouldn’t surprise you. Going to a week long camp away from home was something in and of itself.).

I left the hospital with a few stitches and a love for emergency room doctors, but what I really remember from the whole experience was how touched I was that the high school girl had come with me. Her presence made me feel well loved and less anxious during what would have otherwise been a pretty terrible day for twelve-year-old me.

I was reminded of this whole experience a few weeks ago when I found a typed letter dated July 19, 1998. It was from that very high school girl, and she had written it to me in response to a letter I had written her thanking her for all she had done for me. It was kind and encouraging and meant enough for me to keep long past I received it.

Life is full of so many of these small moments, isn’t it? Moments when people, often unknowingly, impact us greatly or change our course significantly. I’m sure you could think of one¹.

Seriously. Stop reading and think of one.I think it’s easy to miss out on creating these opportunities for other people. I can’t tell you how many times I think, “I should give her a call” or “I should write her a note to let her know I’m thinking about her” but then leave the call unmade or the card unwritten.

And then it’s easy to convince myself that it wouldn’t have really mattered anyway. What do I really have to offer, after all?

But here’s what I know: I have never received a card in the mail or a random email or an anonymously packaged pound of coffee (you guys, this ACTUALLY happened to me last week and I really need you to know that it was real and amazing) and thought, “That was weird. I wish she hadn’t done that.”

Instead, I feel exactly the same as I did back in 1998: well loved and important.

As people, we inherently have something to offer. I know this because I have received such wonderful things from people all throughout my life who never knew how much they were really giving me.So here’s to all the unwritten mail. The text messages that get typed out, deleted, and then never sent. The lunch dates that we pretend we don’t have time to plan.

Let’s hit send and lick some stamps.

That one’s for you, 1998 Molly.

¹ I used to make my students watch this Ted Talk every year. It’s just over six minutes and a great story about how a particularly insignificant gesture has the power to change someone else’s trajectory significantly.

a few of my favorite things.

July 8, 2016July 8, 2016 ~ mollyflinkman ~ 1 Comment

I tend to love things emphatically. Harry Potter. McDonald’s soft serve ice cream. My kids’ bedtime (and when they actually stay in bed WHICH HAS BEEN HAPPENING). The way a fine-tip sharpie changes your handwriting from everyday average to fancy in just moments (this last one has helped increase my correspondence tremendously).

I’m finding that summer intensifies my love of things which I think is mostly thanks to Vitamin D and longer days to fill with wonderful things.Anyway, mostly for my own reflective purposes and because I love to tell other people about the various things I love, here are a few of my favorite things right now:

The library. More specifically, the fact that I can check eBooks out and have them delivered wirelessly to my Kindle from the comfort of my home. Attention, people who are buying books: libraries let you read these same books for free! Free!

I have, lately, been obsessively reading memoirs and autobiographies. I already referenced Kelle Hampton’s book, Bloom: Finding Beauty in the Unexpected, awhile ago, but recently I’ve been making my way through the minds of various actresses (you can click on the pictures to read more via Amazon although obviously I would suggest utilizing your local library).

I usually stick very closely to fiction, but I can’t stop swimming around in other people’s brains and looking at the world as they see it (which in turn causes me to think about my own lens and perspective).

Our minivan. I almost wrote an entire essay entitled “A Love Letter to My Minivan,” but given that a year ago I wrote an impassioned post about my dishwasher, it felt a little much. Attention, people who have made a solemn vow against minivans: DO YOU EVEN KNOW ABOUT ALL THE SPACE? You can’t because you have vowed to never step foot inside one!

In case the space alone doesn’t convince you, here are some additional perks: The doors open automatically as if by magic. You can fit more people than just your family which often eliminates the need for multiple vehicles. When you go through a drive thru, you are the same level as the cashier which I find to be especially pleasant.

The West Wing. I started watching this series when we moved to Cleveland a year ago and am only now nearing its end. This can be attributed to the fact that I don’t like the things I love to end and because I wanted Jake to watch with me (which slowed me down considerably).

Attention, people who think this is just a boring television show from the late 90s: I’m rolling my eyes at you. Everyone else: Bartlet for America!

Mexican Restaurants. Attention, people with small children: You CAN still go out to eat in your new life. The beauty of a good (“good” here meaning cheap, hole-in-the-wall) Mexican restaurant is that the chips will tide your kids over for exactly the amount of time it takes to cook your food. And then, if you’re real pros like Jake and me, you know how to feed a family of four with two lunch combos and will leave having spent no more than $12.

I could go on and on. The month of July. Splash Parks. Books written by Mo Willems. Rocking chairs on the front porch. Pictures lit by natural, summer sunlight. Oh, and coffee that is sent anonymously to me through the mail.

The other day I was feeling sorry for myself about something particularly insignificant when I stopped and thought about all the good things that had happened to me during that single day. It’s obviously not any sort of original practice (there are books written on the concept, for crying out loud), but it did recenter me. It reminded me that if I can make a list of even one good thing, that’s something to be thankful for. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll spend the rest of the evening watching The West Wing with Jake while I catch up on some correspondence with the Sharpie pen I just found. It’s almost election day and things are really heating up. Santos for a Brighter America!

when the hours get long.

July 1, 2016 ~ mollyflinkman ~ 5 Comments

Jake and I have now, officially, lived through the real life version of Grey’s Anatomy, Season 1 although it seems worth noting that our version of the intern year of residency was much less dramatic than what you might have watched take place at Seattle Grace Hospital (Apparently highly unusual medical scenarios don’t wheel themselves into the hospital every single day. Who knew?).

Today, the label “Intern” gets taken from Jake and given to the new class of first year residents who are are coming to a hospital near you (they say, “Don’t get sick in July” for a reason, you know). As I think about the transition so many spouses and significant others are about to embark on, I feel this incredible need to have them all to my house for coffee and scones, so I can tell them things like, “You’re not alone!” or “This year will, really, go so fast!” or “Sometimes it will be really terrible!”

But mostly, I want to tell them how we’ve made it work. I want to pass along the tips that were passed along to me so that people who live with people who work long hours can know that they can make it through. (This is, of course, not limited to those in the medical field. I see you, friends whose spouses work equally long hours in their own chosen professions.)

So, please grab a scone and a hot cup of coffee. I’d like to tell you five personal principles that have helped me through the longest days of the longest weeks of this past year as as I’ve navigated my way through this whole “Wife of a Resident Doctor” thing.Communicate. This could also be called “Name your feelings,” but that felt a little bit chintzy. It also applies, very obviously, to every single relationship, but I have found it to be an especially important principle to keep at the forefront of my mind during this season of our lives. You see, it’s easy for me to stop talking about my feelings when there’s really no way to change the thing that is bothering me. I mean, I could say to Jake, “It frustrates me that you work so many hours,” but, as it would be, he’s still going to keep working long hours. So, instead, I often choose to suck it up and deal until suddenly I hit my breaking point.

Bitterness and Resentment (who are never welcomed guests) set up camp when we stop talking about our feelings and assume the other person is keenly aware of our internal distress. Sometimes, just saying, “I’m sad. I miss my friends.” makes all the difference even if it doesn’t change the situation at hand.

Turn off social media sometimes (but mostly around holidays). Now, I cannot complain in this regard because I have been very fortunate to have Jake around for all major holidays thus far. He has, though, worked his fair share of American holidays in which I’ve found myself at home eating leftovers with the girls while my Instagram feed fills up with family feasts and gatherings and general merriment which I am not a part of. It’s hard to be alone especially when you know everyone else is together.

So, every now and then, I’ll delete all my social media apps completely from my phone and prove that I can go days and even weeks (okay, I only managed the latter twice) without Facebook or Instagram. You don’t own me, social media! As an added bonus, I find that I’m more present for the girls when I do this. Yeah, I know. Shocker.

Don’t wait up. The hours Jake works on paper are rarely the hours that he works in real time. I used to wait for him. We’d wait to eat dinner or wait to go to bed, and every time he was late, I would be so irritated. We don’t wait anymore. We eat when we’re hungry and go to bed at our regularly scheduled bedtimes and go to the park even if there’s a chance that he might get home while we’re gone. We are all (Jake included) happier because new, super-flexible Molly has implemented this principle.

Enjoy the time when you have it. I have this terribly obnoxious tendency to waste a perfectly free evening with Jake solely because I’m hung-up anticipating all the hours he’ll be gone the next day or week. Of all my flaws, this ranks up there toward the most-annoying for Jake (above Googling the ends to suspenseful movies while we’re watching them but below my inability to remember to turn off overhead lights when I leave a room).

Everything is always better when I take it one day at a time and choose to be thankful for the time I have.

Die to yourself. I obviously saved the easiest for last.

Typically, when someone is putting in long hours at the “office,” someone else isn’t. If you’re married to a doctor, or a coach, or someone serving in the military (etc., etc., etc.), when they are working extended hours in their field (maybe it’s a literal field!), you’re likely picking up the slack at home. You’re doing all the cleaning or cooking or [insert any other thing that society would tell you should be evenly split in a healthy relationship] and that’s just the way it has to be for that season. You can mutter under your breath about how he never cleans the bathroom (of course I’ve never done this) or you can die to yourself and choose to love better.It’s not easy (we were never promised that it would be), but it’s always worth it.

So, here we are ready to embark on year two of residency while many others step foot into year one and many others outside of this field entirely live through equally long and taxing hours.

May we live those long hours well and outside of our own strength.

Oh, and one more thing: Grey’s Anatomy Season 2 was more exciting than the first, right? Like, maybe Jake will have to cut open a chest while he’s stuck between floors on an elevator? I’ll report back this time next year.

finding value in the hard things.

June 15, 2016June 16, 2016 ~ mollyflinkman ~ 1 Comment

If you’re like me, you can pinpoint all the hardest moments of your life. These are the moments that strip us down and force the raw pieces of ourselves to rise to the surface. In my life, these times are marked by seasons of change. Seasons when the dependent variable vanishes, and I’m left with new, uncharted territory.

The beginning of college. My first years of teaching. The journey through medical school. The birth of babies. A move across the country. Residency. The unpredictability of toddlers. Mornings when you realize you’re out of coffee.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about my responses to these moments when life strips me down to the nitty-gritty. I’m certainly not trying to make a case that my life is harder than anyone else’s (We’ve got a lot of good things going for us here. My espresso machine, for instance, came through with the win on this coffee-less morning.). But, it seems an unavoidable fact that each season of life comes with its own various challenges. And, the more of them I come up against, the more resolved I am to face them well.A few months ago, I was dialoguing with a friend about prayer, and she sent me this clip of a Francis Chan sermon from like 8 years ago. It starts with a song, but Chan’s commentary at the end is what has been on repeat in my brain for the last month. Here’s what he had to say:

When we pray, we’re always praying, “God change things” rather than, “God change me.” We want God to change the circumstances and take away all this pain, all these trials, all these hardships rather than God’s plan which is, “No, I want to put some of these things in your life and you need to be praying for yourself that you would grow through these things.”

You see, whenever we have decisions to make, we want God to make it easy, [so we] say, “God why don’t you close all the doors and just leave one open?” [Instead we should say], “God, why don’t you make me incredibly wise, so I know how to make a good decision?”

When trials come, we say, “God, why don’t you change them? Why don’t you fix the situation and take away all the pain? [Instead we should say], “God why don’t you use this time to grow perseverance in me?” […]

Yes, there are times when God changes the situation, but so often, more than anything, God wants us to change and we should be praying for these circumstances that God allows in our lives as opportunities for us to grow in our character and our person.

I can’t get this tiny shift in perspective out of my head.

I know my tendency is to pray for the hard things to end. For ease and consistency and predictability. That bedtime battles will be replaced by compliance or that sibling fights will turn into happy conversations. But what if instead I prayed for patience? Or compassion? Or wisdom to parent my kids the best that I can?

I can’t always change my situation, but I can always change the way I respond to it. This, I am finding, is making all the difference. The realization that I was never promised ease or comfort and the reminder that, if I will let Him, God will use the hard things I face to sharpen me into a better version of myself. It’s not easy to shift perspective in the moment, but it is always worth it when I do.

Now, excuse me while I go attend to the screaming toddlers in the other room. Please send coffee.

perfect advice is a fairytale (but it’s still worth asking for).

June 6, 2016June 6, 2016 ~ mollyflinkman ~ Leave a comment

Once upon a time there was a maiden princess. She was spirited and animated and greatly full of life, but oh, did she also love to sleep.

Until one dark day when her parents, not knowing the magical powers it possessed, took away her pacifier.

As soon as the pacifier’s sleep spell was broken, the princess was turned into a tiny monster each naptime and bedtime. She would scream and cry and get out of bed until exhaustion finally got the best of her and sleep returned her to her normal state.

“Set a clear bedtime routine,” a kind villager said. “Try positive incentives,” suggested another. “Don’t engage with her,” added the town wiseman, Google.

Her parents did all these things, and then some more, yet still the tiny monster would return each day.

And they all lived happily ever after as long as there was coffee in the castle.

I’m thinking about a career in realistic children’s books.

But really, I’ve been thinking about our house’s sleep battles a lot over the past week. This was really the first “toddler-y” thing we had to deal with in our parenting, and in trying to figure out how to best deal with it, I reached out to my village (and Google, as any millennial mom would) for advice.

It’s frustrating when the things that work for other people don’t work for you. When you watch people skim across the tricky phases while you’re still wading through the muck of the deep end. And, I think this is true in a larger margin than just parenting even though I tend to have toddlers on the brain most frequently. In any walk of life, you get advice from those who have gone before you, and I guess I have realized recently (in a fairly non-cynical analysis), that you can’t fully trust anyone else’s advice.

Why? Sure, thanks for asking.

First, we are raising different human beings (see also: we are married to, roommates with, children of, etc. different people). Your kid is not the same as my kid. I will be in awe of your kid who sits quietly in your designated “time-out chair” just as you might be impressed when Lily responds to correction when her book time is threatened. Trying to perfectly replicate another mom’s solution to a problem hardly ever works because, news flash, her kid is different than mine.

We are also annoyed by different things. My kids are covered with food after every single meal. For whatever reason, keeping kids and/or clothes clean during meals is not a bridge I care about dying on. Just come and find me later in the evening though while I’m trying to coerce Lily to wear matching pajamas. I know it doesn’t matter. But still, here I am fighting the unwinnable battle for no other reason than because it annoys me when clothes don’t match. As people, we’re just agitated by different things, and I think, tend to offer solutions about things that might not necessarily be a problem to someone else.

Similarly, we have different breaking points. What sends me over the edge with my kids or my tipping point with Jake might be no big deal to any other person. Our thresholds vary. Some people can maneuver around a screaming toddler with ease and patience (see: Jake). You could suggest that I try reasoning with my kids because that is what works for you, but I know that is what will push me to my breaking point real fast. Instead? You’ll probably find me taking a timeout in the bathroom.

Finally, our life stages don’t line up perfectly. You welcomed your second child when your first was five; I had two kids under two. You got married in your thirties while Jake and I had just stepped into the twenties. The same phases hit us at different times and in different ways and will certainly affect us differently. Me telling you that the best thing Jake and I did for our marriage early on was to take a year off before we started our respective careers doesn’t make any sense if you already have careers.

But it certainly does take a village, doesn’t it?

I don’t know how how anyone could navigate through life without the advice of others. Parents and mentors and marriage counselors and pastors and teachers and friends–these are the people who go before us and make us feel like we can do whatever it is that comes next.

I need their advice and their wisdom even if it’s frustrating sometimes when their life circumstances or breaking points are different from my own. It’s when I understand who I am (another essay entirely) and who my tiny tribe is that I can begin to use my sieve to sift through their advice. Some of it will work for us, and some of it won’t, but it’s still worth seeking it out. Plus, you’re bound to find some hidden nuggets of gold because everyone’s got some tucked away in their pockets.

Two of my favorite never-failing pieces of advice? Love people well and always have coffee in the house.

(Of course, if you don’t like coffee, then you probably can’t trust anything I have to say.)

on moving on.

May 17, 2016 ~ mollyflinkman ~ Leave a comment

My parents moved from my childhood home this week and I can’t help but think about how it now sits empty of our physical belongings yet remains full of the memories we stored in all its various nooks and crannies. The bannister I slid down as a seven-year-old. The wall I knocked on in middle school to hear back from my sister on the other side. The tree in the backyard that I climbed as a kid, ate popsicles under during high school, and sat beneath during the rehearsal dinner for our wedding. I went home last week to celebrate my sister’s graduation from college and to say my goodbyes to the house that holds my childhood, adolescence, and early adulthood in its foundation.

A task which, if anyone knows me, could have paralyzed me with nostalgia and turned me into a sobbing mess.

I tried, though, to find the middle ground between sadness and reality. I know it’s necessary to feel the sadness of change, but I also recognize the importance of not getting hung up on the material. It’s just a house, after all. A temporary fixture in the eternal scheme.

I was reminded this week that I’m just a traveler through this life, and as I move heavenward, I know I can get distracted trying to hold on to the things as they exist around me. My childhood house. Norah’s wide cheesy smile. The way Lily physically narrates a story. I cling tightly to these moments and these things as I live them in hopes that they will last.And yet, my empty childhood house reminds me that I was meant for change. That as much as I want to hold on to the things I love, I must grasp them with loose fingertips. I must enjoy them while I have them, but also let them slip away eventually, so they can grow and bloom into something new and beautiful and more wonderful than I could imagine.

I can’t stay the same. And that’s a good thing.

I always seem to be drawn back to Ecclesiastes 3 during seasons of great change. In addition to reminding me that there is a time for everything, it re-centers me on the choice I have in those moments of change: wallow in the loss or embrace the chance to have joy and do good.

This time, I was drawn to verse 14: “I perceived that whatever God does endures forever.”

I certainly am a traveler through this life. My landscapes keep shifting. I keep having to let go of places and people and stages that I love, yet I am reminded that I don’t walk forward empty handed. As I let the physical things slip through, I’m filled with the lasting: family and friends and relationships and memories which will go with me wherever I am because whatever God does endures forever.And there is hope in that.

Of course I should also probably tell you that I made my mom save me a square of blue carpet from the living room and that I kept a sliver from the tree that used to stand in the front yard when they cut it down last summer. I know they won’t last, but they’re relics of the lasting memories I will take with me.

(They are also keeping my nostalgia at bay for the time being. Really, you should be proud of me for resisting the urge to frame all the glow-in-the-dark stars I plastered on my ceiling in high school. I certainly thought about it.)