52 minutes.

February 14, 2019February 14, 2019 ~ mollyflinkman ~ 3 Comments

I stare at the cell phone on my desk and will it to ring. It’s silent in my dorm room save for the quiet ticking of my roommate’s alarm clock and the occasional passersby on the sidewalk outside. I notice a couple walk by hand in hand while frustration prickles the back of my neck.

I snatch my phone and call Jake. I think better of this decision about two rings in, but the prickly anger wins as soon as I hear him answer.

“Hey,” he says. I hear confusion in his voice. I had seen him less than an hour ago, after all. He dropped by my dorm room on his way home from the cafeteria to say goodbye before I went home for fall break. He stood on my porch for about five minutes before he walked back across campus to his room. I wanted him to stay longer. Only, I didn’t actually tell him I wanted him to stay longer.

“Hey,” I say, icily.

Pause. “What’s up?”

I sit up straighter in my chair and load my words carefully. “You could have stayed longer than five minutes tonight, you know. I’m not going to see you for four days and, really, I have only seen you for like 52 minutes all week.”

As the last four words leave my mouth, I realize how ridiculous they sound, but it’s too late to swallow them back up. Instead, I’m left with silence and the mortifying fact that I had taken the walks between class, the quick drive to Taco Bell and the run-in at the student center and turned them into an exact amount of time. I mean, I hadn’t even bothered rounding up.

The silence on the other end shrinks me in my chair.

“Well,” he finally says, “I’m not sure what difference that makes. I guess I’ll see you in a few days.”

Click.

///

I am terrible at math—a fact that may surprise you given my keen attention to minute details.

I’m pretty sure I felt my first heart palpitation in third grade when my teacher placed a minute math worksheet in front of me. Mental math? Multiplication of fractions? Size estimations? Forget it. I’m still over here using my fingers to execute basic addition.

It’s funny then that I’m so prone to counting up minutes and storing them in labeled jars on the shelves of my brain, ready to unseal and wield at a moment’s notice.

When Jake and I were first dating, I saw a direct correlation between the health of our relationship and how much time we were able to spend together. In those early years, I was fixated on quantity over quality. It didn’t matter so much to me what we did when we were together as long as we spent enough time with each other.

A few years after that college night of specific numbers, my boyfriend became my husband, and time was ours. The years of demanding careers and 3 a.m. wake up calls were ahead of us, so we went on spontaneous road trips and played cards at Starbucks whenever we wanted. It was early marriage bliss.

The babies came soon thereafter though—four in just over five years—and, coupled with a job which required so many of Jake’s hours, time felt stacked against us. I could never seem to get as much time with him as I wanted.

Still today I often wish we just had more time.

///

My cell phone alarm nudges me out of a deep sleep. I roll onto Jake’s side of the bed and try to remember when we last slept here together. As I warm up his side of the bed, that mortifying memory from college comes to mind, and suddenly 52 minutes a week sounds pretty nice.

My thoughts are interrupted by the girls downstairs. I throw on a sweatshirt and meet them in the kitchen. Lily flips on the light. Norah follows and takes her seat.

“I want cereal,” they each say, nearly in unison.

Just as the milk hits their bowls, I hear Sawyer calling from the other room. I open his door and make my way toward his crib. He takes one look at me and asks, “Where’s dad?”

“He’s at work,” I say as I pick him up, “but I think he’ll be home soon.”

I take him into the kitchen where his own cereal bowl awaits him. With the kids quietly eating, I wonder if I have enough time to drink a cup of coffee before Jude awakes, but with that thought, I hear the front door open. Sawyer does too, and his eyes brighten.

“Dad!” he exclaims. “Dad’s home!”

Jake rounds the corner, fresh from another night at the hospital. As I watch him connect with each kid, I try to remember when I last spent time with him alone. My mind stretches back five days before he started this string of overnight shifts.

I wish I could tie a nice ribbon around it and say that I have learned to stop counting minutes and to be content with whatever time I have to spend with Jake, but the truth is, there are still some weeks where we don’t feel like we have enough time together because some weeks we don’t have enough time together.

So, I still do the math sometimes (usually on my fingers). During the weeks where our schedules line up just wrong, I look ahead to when we will next have measurable alone time to spend with each other. The difference now is that I no longer measure the strength of our relationship by these minutes.

Instead, I’ve learned to be grateful for the quality of the time we share. The 19 minutes drinking coffee together on the couch while our kids crawl around like cats at our feet. The 23 minute conversation at the kitchen table while the Paw Patrol theme song carries up the basement steps. The silence we enjoy together on the 10 minute drive to church. These moments can make all the difference as long as I make a choice not to squander them.

Jake meets me by the refrigerator and wraps me into his arms just as I’m shutting off my internal calculator.

“Hey,” he says.

“Hey,” I reply with a smile.

I want to make this moment count.

p.s. If you want to read some different perspectives about what love looks like after babies, let me introduce you to my friends Cara and Stacy:

Butterflies by Cara Stolen

Still Looking for Love by Stacy Bronec

One more thing! Each month, I send out a newsletter in which I regale my email friends with various thoughts about all the things I read, write, and love. If you want to get in on the fun, you can sign up HERE!

firecrackers and a decade of marriage.

July 26, 2018March 12, 2019 ~ mollyflinkman ~ 3 Comments

Ten years ago today, Jake and I got married.

I put on a white dress and wore a veil with a huge hole in it while, down the hall, Jake put on a tan suit and probably complained that I didn’t let him wear linen pants. I walked down the aisle to the wrong song, almost messed up a line of our vows, and taught Jake how to light the unity candle as we were lighting it.

It’s funny which details you remember most vividly isn’t it?

And then suddenly I blinked, and we were pronounced husband and wife. And as we made our way off the stage, our groomsmen marked the occasion by lighting firecrackers and throwing them in our direction.

You read that right. We literally walked into our marriage with the sound of firecrackers popping behind us.

It’s hard to forget a moment like that.

I’ve been thinking about those firecrackers a lot this week because my tendency, in writing especially, is to try to wring deep thoughts from seemingly insignificant things. I mean, after all, last year’s anniversary reflection was inspired by a lighter and a broomstick while the year before that, all my marriage thoughts stemmed from the fact that I had just read the word “teleological” in a book.

So, as I’ve been thinking and reflecting on the past 10 years of marriage, I’ve been wanting those firecrackers to transform into something. I’ve been wanting a beautiful metaphor about love and marriage to emerge because an entire decade feels like it deserves something deep and profound.

But then a thought occurred to me: What if I just let them be firecrackers?

What if this year, I don’t over analyze how hard we’ve worked at this marriage thing? What if I don’t try to oversimplify ten years of marriage? What if *gasp!* I just let the firecrackers be firecrackers?

And so, this year I don’t have any deep thoughts to share. Instead, all I really want to say is this: I felt those firecrackers a decade ago, and I still feel them today.

a lighter, a broomstick, and an anniversary.

July 25, 2017July 26, 2017 ~ mollyflinkman ~ 5 Comments

A few nights ago, Jake and I climbed into bed only to realize the monitor in Sawyer’s room had gotten flipped off earlier in the day.

Now, this is pretty boring backstory, but it’s worth noting that said monitor is mounted in the back corner of the crib. And, it would be super easy to reach over the top of the crib to push the power button if Sawyer didn’t insist on sleeping, instead, in the pack n’ play which is set up right next to the crib. Really, the only way to get a hand on the monitor (while the baby sleeps) is to climb stealthily into the crib.

Jake: “How am I supposed to turn it back on without waking him up?”
Me: “I don’t know.”

*Three minutes pass*

Jake: I used a lighter and a broomstick.

///

It’s a little known fact that the summer before Jake and I started dating, we wrote letters to each other while he was in Kansas and I was in Iowa. We exchanged about a letter a week as, really, our only means of communication because Jake didn’t have a cell phone at the time and I wasn’t too keen on calling his home phone where the majority of his brothers (who sound just like him) also lived.

Anyway, as I’ve been thinking about our ninth wedding anniversary, one paragraph from the last letter Jake wrote me that summer (dated 7/29/06) keeps coming to mind:

As the summer draws near its end, I couldn’t help but think of my summer as a whole. I find it interesting that a girl like you and a guy like me have been so faithfully writing each other, and furthermore, enjoying each other’s letters when in reality we don’t seem to have that much in common. I am a guy from the boonies who loves excitement, thrill, and pushing the limit, while (although you may object) I understand you to be a safe, down-to-earth, thrill avoider (note: he underlined “avoider” three times) who would just as soon stay in Des Moines, Iowa for the rest of your life. Is it possible that a mutual faith and similar Biblical values are enough to allow such a relationship between two seemingly opposite people to progress?

///

So, did anyone want to guess which one of us is the lighter and which one of us is the broomstick in this particular metaphor?

Jake and I are the unlikeliest of pairs.

Yet, together, I’ve seen us accomplish a lot of good and important things (you know, like turning monitors back on and stuff) in the nine years we have been married.

Furthermore, I can’t help but notice that so many of the things we have done together are things that a broomstick would never have accomplished without the initial spark of a lighter.

We’ve still got (and always will have) a lot of growing to do. We don’t have a perfect marriage by any means.

But we do have a mutual faith and similar Biblical values, and, while that’s certainly not all it takes to make a marriage work, I really believe those lenses have tethered us to the things that are lasting and have given us common goals with each passing year of our marriage.

The metaphor, after all, isn’t really about the lighter and the broomstick as individual units. It’s about how, united, they worked together for the good of someone else.

It’s about purpose.

And, in year nine, more than anything, I’m thankful to be married to a man who shares a similar vision as to what exactly our purpose is.

A man who lights a fire under my feet and continually pushes me toward our common goals. Toward the good of other people.

And, on the cusp of a decade, that feels pretty good.

You know what else feels good? I didn’t live in Des Moines, Iowa my entire life, so take that 2006 Jake.

finding perspective: there’s always someone else.

July 1, 2017 ~ mollyflinkman ~ 1 Comment

The long awaited First of July is finally upon us!

Maybe you didn’t know that today is an important holiday. That today new doctors all around the country, fresh from medical school graduation and their Hippocratic Oaths, are coming to a hospital near you.

But everything’s coming up roses over here because we’re walking our way out of Jake’s second year of his medical residency and into year three.

(You know, pushing play on season three of Grey’s Anatomy.)

WE’RE HALFWAY DONE, and this is something that cannot be said in lowercase letters.

Last year I processed this important holiday by writing about how I’ve learned to deal when the hours are long. I think I thought I might have a lot more to add to the list this year, but, as it turns out, things like “Communicate” and “Die to yourself” still prove to be incredibly effective relationship tools.

There is this one thing though. This one phrase that has been on repeat in my brain all year and never fails to jolt me back to perspective just when I’m about to staple the “Feel Sorry for Me” banner across my entryway at the end of an 80 hour week.

There’s someone else.

My life always feels less hard when I think about my friends or acquaintances whose lives are, indeed, much harder than mine.

Yes, Jake works long hours, but then he comes home.

That sentence alone gives me reason to never complain.

Lately, though, I’ve been thinking about the “someone elses” in a different way.

It all started when I read 2 Corinthians 1:3-4:

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.

Two years ago we were uprooted and transplanted to Cleveland and God met us here. He has provided comfort in the affliction and constant reminders that this is where He wants us right now.

That doesn’t change the residency requirements though. And, when the long weeks start to feel agonizing and like I might indeed sink through the hatch and into the sea, I think about someone else.

It’s like five years from now and I meet her in line at the grocery store. She has more kids than arms, and I only have one (kid, both arms still) because the rest are in school. She tells me that her husband is about to start his first year of residency, so I invite her over for coffee. We talk about all the things and become fast friends and then scour places like the library and preschool parking lots for other new friends because when things get hard, we both know the importance of rallying the troops (a perfectly normal and realistic hypothetical scenario).

There’s someone else.

So that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.

I’m learning that, with an eternal perspective, nothing is without purpose. That God promises to comfort me during the challenges of my life and then, in turn, comfort others through me.

That doesn’t make the hard things any less difficult to paddle through, but it does fill me with a lot of hope and the good kind of anticipation about what the future holds (and this applies to a lot of things in my life outside of medicine).

So, here’s to year three.

To the new lessons, new challenges, and new relationships born from hypothetical dreams.

And, in case, you’re out there celebrating this holiday too, make sure you don’t wind up in the hospital. I mean, give them until at least September to get the hang of things.

marriage: something better and something new.

July 27, 2016July 28, 2016 ~ mollyflinkman ~ 1 Comment

Jake and I love when the girls go to bed.

We also love when they’re awake (you know, most days), but there’s a certain relief in knowing that you’re not imminently needed for a few hours (until, of course, a kid wakes up screaming because her fan isn’t close enough to make her blanket “really, really cold”). There’s a satisfaction in telling a story with fewer than twelve interruptions and a sense of accomplishment that you made it through the chaos and demands of another day.

Jake and I used to leave our house a lot. We loved to go out for dinner or take long walks after dark. We’d see movies in theaters, play cards at Starbucks, and take drives with no particular end destination in mind.

Now, 7:00 rolls around, and we’re knee deep in toothpaste, bedtime stories, and toddler negotiations. And, then, once both girls are asleep, we’re usually homebound. The late night spontaneity we used to enjoy together is long gone and has been replaced by the surprise of what the other person will choose on Netflix.

Let me tell you something, though: This is the most fun I’ve had being married to Jake.I used to get pretty anxious thinking about moving to Ohio and away from the family and community we had filled our life with. And in those moments when it felt like it was going to be too much and too lonely, I would remember that I wasn’t going alone. I was going with Jake.

Before we had any friends here, we had each other, and as I think about how hard our eighth year of marriage was in terms of transitions and change, I’m equally reminded of how easy it has become being married to Jake.

Of course it’s still work. Of course we still come up short at times. And of course we still drive each other crazy at least once every day (Jake: “Why would I unpack and move my suitcase from the middle of the room when I’m just going to need it again in three weeks?”).

But here we are, 8 years in, and still happy we’re doing this thing together.

I read in this really great book by Donald Miller¹ recently that relationships are teleological–that they’re going somewhere. Miller went on to say that “If you’re coasting, you’re going down hill. Unless [you’re] practicing, [you’re] getting worse. We can fall into reactionary patterns in relationships rather than understanding they’re things we build and nurture and grow.”

Eight years ago, I made a choice to enter into this marriage relationship with Jake, but I never got a choice as to whether or not it will move forward–it’s going somewhere regardless of the effort I put forth. The ongoing choice, then, is whether or not I want to continue to build and nurture and grow what we have together into something beautiful.I think it would be easy to stop working at it now that kids are in the mix. To take that time when the girls are sleeping only for myself because “I deserve it.” To stop talking to Jake about real and important things because I’m too tired. To stay married but not really be friends.

And that’s what I’m really thankful for after these eight years: That we’re better friends now than we were when we started off on this life together. Sure, it looks more like rocking chairs on the front porch and late night, take-out dinner dates at our kitchen table after the girls are in bed, but that’s time I wouldn’t have any other way.

Time that, I think, is turning our marriage into something better and something new each day.

¹ Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Finding True Intimacy (2015)

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.)

the thing my husband never says.

May 14, 2016May 21, 2016 ~ mollyflinkman ~ Leave a comment

When my husband, Jake, gets home from work every day, he is usually met by two toddlers flailing their bodies about with wild excitement. Once the hugs and kisses are distributed, he is almost always asked the same question by our three-year-old, Lily: “Dad, will you throw me up in the air?”

“Yes,” he always says, “I would really like to do that.”

Jake works long hours. By the time he gets home most nights, he’s drained. His brain has worked long and hard, and I know that everything in him wants to collapse on the couch and not move.

In these moments, sometimes I ask him to carry a load of laundry down the stairs for me. Or start the dishwasher. Or change a diaper.

And in each of these moments, he always agrees willingly.

And in thinking about it recently, I realized I’ve never heard him use the phrase that so often goes through my own mind at the end of a long day: “It’s your turn.”

It’s easy to keep score in both marriage and parenting especially if you stay at home like me. Tallies of clothes washed, bathrooms cleaned, and floors mopped can add up in my head pretty quickly, and I’ve found that in these moments when I start to keep score, I’m tempted to relinquish all responsibilities to Jake as soon as he gets home by saying, “It’s your turn.”

But then I remember that he never says it. That even in his most exhausted moments, he swoops in and de-escalates a screaming toddler with his magical powers of reasoning and calm.

He’s always one step ahead of me really. Always reminding me what really matters in this life.

Time and time again, he wordlessly reminds me that the best thing I can give to my family is all that I have. My best.

Sometimes that means changing every single diaper in the span of a day or cleaning the bathroom without complaint even though I can’t remember the last time he did. Sometimes it means waking up early with the girls again so he can sleep in or taking the trash out during a busy week even though, technically, it’s “his job.”

And here’s what I’ve learned: When I stop keeping scores and mental tallies in my head, it’s not so hard to do all the things I have to do. It’s what I have to give, and it’s always worth it.

And so, here’s to the endless numbers of meals to be cooked, floors to be vacuumed, and children to be bathed. To the easy days, the bang-your-head-against-a-wall days, and to the nights of celebrating that you made it through another day together.

Which reminds me: Jake, it’s your turn to pick out the Redbox.

molly flinkman

Marriage