The "Best Friend" Label

This may sound weird to some, but I have been hurt by girls more than guys. Sure guys have broken my heart, or have mistreated me, but I can get over that. Girls, on the other hand, fight dirty. They stab you when you're least expecting it, they gossip and talk behind your back, they do sneaky and sly things to undercut you and then act all innocent and nice to your face.  I have been "dumped" numerous times by girls that have called me their "best friend" sometimes for no particular reason. Girls are plain old mean. They don't need a reason to not like you, or act cold towards you - they just do, because they're girls.

Because of this reason, I have been tremendously careful not to throw around the "best friend" label. For some girls, they worry about saying the "L" word too quickly with their boyfriend - for me, it's the "BF" word that I worry about.

Best friends, to me, are not a dime a dozen. And they shouldn't be. If you have 10 so-called "best friends" then you have a problem. A best friend, to me, is someone to has proven themselves worthy of your trust, your time, your secrets, your laughter and have stood the test of time. Sure, maybe you click with your roommate or some girl you met in class, but just because someone is fun to hang out with does not make them your best friend.

This is my theory: Girls are so quick to call just about every friend they have, their best friend. Soon you see pictures with multiple girls with the hashtag as #bestie or #bestfriendforever and it hurts to see the person who called you their best friend labeling about 15 other girls their best friend too. And my message to you is: Be careful, you have no idea who you may be affecting.

Since we girls were little, we have had the "BFF" label shoved down our throats. There are friendship bracelets, necklaces with a heart broken in half, one for each best friend, friendship rings, BFF tattoos, BFF stickers, even friendship rocks for crying out loud. As a little girl, if you didn't get one of these things from your so-called "Best Friend" and the other girl did, your heart was shattered. I remember countless times coming across a letter or having that girl say straight to my face, "You are not my best friend anymore, so-and-so is." It's so elementary school, but that hurt is real, and believe or not - it still happens into our adulthood, just in different ways.

Be careful who you call your best friend. And if you tell them they are, make sure that feeling is mutual, and mean what you say. If you have a best friend then stick by them through thick and thin. Stop calling every other girl your best friend too or it undermines the meaning of "best friend". And for the love of God ladies, can we please stop gossiping behind our friends' backs?! Can we just get over ourselves and treat our own kind with respect and dignity and kindness?? Guys do enough to break our hearts or shoot us down, girls shouldn't have to do that to other girls too.

Thank you for reading my rant. Have a nice day everyone.

Dancing to a different beat

My 6-year-old niece loves to dance. She dances ballet, she dances jigs that look like a variation of Scottish clogging, she dances slow, she dances fast, and she dances to any type of music possible, even her own humming. For several minutes at a time, she gets lost in her own world as she hums her own tune and twirls, bends, and moves to her body's music. She creates a stage in her mind and she dances as if she were in the spotlight, blocking everyone and everything out.

One day I asked her, "Do you love to dance?"
She continued to dance and smiled, "Oh yes, I love to dance!"
"You should take dance lessons and perform, I think you would love it."
Then she thought about it a while, never stopping for a moment, always moving, tapping, twirling with the music in the background. She looked up at me, quite seriously, and said, "No, I don't think so. Then they would tell me what to dance and how to dance. I like to let my body move how it feels - I like to dance to my own beat."

Her comment stuck with me throughout the entire day. I began to think about my own childhood, in a general sense. Like most kids, I was taught to color inside the lines, to take piano lessons and only practice what the teacher assigned, to be good, behave, and be quiet if adults told you to. Children are so often told what to do and how to do it. While authority and guidance to a degree is obviously very important for a child's upbringing, we must also remember to never squash the creativeness out of them.

Why are we so set on telling children they can't sing loud in church, or they can't color the sky pink when the sky is supposed to be blue, or they can't understand something so we refuse to explain anything to them? Why are we so afraid children might get dirty digging in the dirt or sand, when it can easily be washed away, or they can't even run around in the back yard without shoes on because God forbid they might stub their toe? We all know that children aren't perfect and they all don't fit one mold. We also know, exploring and feeling things for themselves helps them learn and express themselves. So why are we as adults so set on taking that away from them?

In a way, my niece's comment was also helpful for my own life as an adult. I heard once that a writer can go to as many writing conferences and read as many books on writing as they want - but like my niece said, they are only telling you what to write and how to write it. It isn't until you let your heart and mind move and think for itself when you truly become a writer. I think I am so afraid to color outside the lines, or explore a little bit, or dance to my own beat that it is hindering me from finding out more about my own self. In a way, I am acting like my own parent or adult, constantly telling myself I can't, when I know I can.

If this seemed like a rant, I apologize. But if you take anything away from this post, at least remember this: We must all learn to dance to our own beat; not to the world's beat, not to another person's beat, but to our own intrinsic orchestra, beckoning us to move and bend with our heart's rhythm.

If my niece, Lily, were to plan my wedding...

Recently, I had a conversation with my four-year-old niece, Lily, about my wedding. Having small nieces proves to be a challenge when explaining to them the rules of engagements, weddings, marriage etc. Lily has asked me several times, "Did you already have the wedding?" or "But I thought you got married already!" She doesn't understand proposals or engagements. On Mother's Day, my dad was toasting to my mom and my older sisters who are also mothers, and Ella chimes in and says, "And Abby too! She's going to be a mother!" I quickly said I most certainly will NOT be a mother anytime soon. Through her explanation she thought that because I was getting married, I will also be a mother very soon as well.

So I had a bit of fun this weekend and asked Lily to "plan" my wedding. Here is what it would be like if she were to plan everything:

Colors: Pink - and lots of pink flowers too.
Food: Pizza
Hair: Up in a bun with a pink flower in it and a reaaalllly long veil.
Dress: Big and poofy like Cinderella's or Belle.
Ceremony: She specifically said "Lots of flowers and plants" and it would be in my hometown church.
Makeup: The more the merrier. Especially lots of eye makeup and bright red or pink lipstick.
Cake: Chocolate cake with lots of frosting. With more flowers on it, preferably pink.
Reception: Lots of dancing, pizza, and flowers. No kissing allowed.

Other details: There should be a "kids place" at the reception just for the kids to have fun, play games and hang out so the adults can have their own fun at the wedding. I should also make sure to have a good photographer that takes lots of pictures. The flower girls should wear tutus and flower headbands in their hair. Michael has to have a good haircut. And very specifically she said, "You and Michael have to sit across the table from each other so you can look into each other's eyes like you love each other very much."

Diamond in the Rough

             This past weekend was an eventful one. After two and a half years of dating a wonderful man, he proposed to me and we are now engaged! In the world of small towns and Facebook, this is probably not much of a secret to anyone who knows either of us. I have had to literally disable Facebook notifications from my iPhone because it has been a constant stream of comments, likes, posts, and tags. In today’s information world, not much is kept secret. I’m guessing you’d like to know how he proposed to me. And if you know me personally, you’d know anything that happens to me is an interesting and partially comical story.

                We began the day with a picnic at the interstate park in Taylor’s Falls. After our little picnic, he went to the car to grab something. He began with a clue and a letter that explained he wanted to do something nice for me every week leading up to our actual engagement to throw me off. Of course I bought the story without any hesitation. Since we began dating, he wrote me a letter every single month for two and a half years, and in each clue he had snippets of those letters guiding me through different stops along the hiking trail. Each stop meant a new clue and letter.

                Well by the time we started hiking, the sun came out and it was beginning to grow fairly warm. Luckily I had worn plenty of layers and I was stripping them off gradually, but Michael was still wearing his fleece zip-up. “Why don’t you take that off, it’s getting so hot out!” I said, since I could see beads of sweat forming on his forehead. “No, I’m fine. I’ll just leave it on.” Because little did I know, in the pocket of that jacket was the ring. I kept persisting that he should take it off, but he refused every time.

                As the walk progressed, he kept getting more and more sweaty. Finally, the last stop on the map was upon us. A year ago, we had carved our names in a tree at this park, but it wasn’t in a very obvious spot. In fact, it was in the middle of the woods and the last time we were there we didn’t bother to mark where it was. After not finding it for quite some time, I noticed Michael’s forehead was now dripping. I suggested we split up to find our tree.

                Later Michael told me he was praying like crazy that we would find it; otherwise he didn’t know what he was going to do. After searching alone, I found it, “Michael! Over here!” I yelled. He quickly ran over to me. We were standing there admiring our handiwork from a year ago when he said, “Look a deer!” I turned around. “Where?” I didn’t see a deer, and was disappointed, but when I turned around Michael was down on one knee with a ring box in his hand.

                You would think my first reaction was to cry or clasp my hand over my mouth. Instead, it was, “What are you doing!?” I was in so much shock I actually thought it was a joke. “Is this a joke!? What’s happening? What are you doing? Oh my Gosh! Are you joking?” Poor Michael was trying to say his planned speech, but I kept stammering like an idiot. “I’m trying to propose to you Abby! This is not a joke.” Then the tears came, but I still kept stammering. In between sobbing I said, “You – you grabbed the wrong hand! It’s this one!” I honestly can’t remember what he said. All I heard was that I was beautiful and amazing and “Abigail Luray Ingalls, will you marry me?”

                If anyone were to see this event take place, they would think I was a hysterical, crazy woman. Shortly after, I was sobbing and laughing at the same time. Also immediately after the crying and the kissing and the hugging waned, he quickly ripped off his fleece jacket, relieved to finally have some fresh air.

                As we walked hand in hand back to our original picnic spot, I admired the way the ring sparkled in the sun, still stunned and shocked that I am now an engaged woman with a fiancé instead of a boyfriend. 

But as I looked up at him, I knew in my heart he was the one I had been waiting for, and the only one I want to spend the rest of my days with. I can't wait to marry the love of my life and my best friend and I am so thankful and blessed that God brought him into my life. I love you Michael Roeller. 

The Pursuit

After traveling to several countries and having the honor to live in New Zealand for a year, I feel that I have been presented a gift; a relic along the seashore. This gift is the gift of perspective. To see and experience how other cultures live, how they live along side each other as citizens, humans, neighbors. My Americanized version of life has been taken a part and then reassembled with new eyes because of these different perspectives. 

You do realize there is an entire world out there right? Besides the one where you, reader, now comfortably sit in your easy chair with a pantry stocked full of food. The more you experience more of life, the world and other cultures - the more you realize you know nothing at all. The more you realize there's more to life than a comfortable house, job, chair etc. Life wasn't meant to be comfortable. 

However, being an American entails some sense of responsibility; to your country, to yourself as an individual, and to other Americans. Whether you know it or not, compared to many parts of the world, you are privileged to be an American. In the Declaration of Independence, there is a phrase that strikes me; "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness."

As an American, as a human being, you have the right to pursue Happiness. 

Pursue. Do you know what that word means? It means to follow, to strive, to gain, to chase, seek to attain or accomplish. But, many Americans chase or pursue that happiness in areas that always fail. Money, sex, power, success (by American standards), clothes, drugs, body image.... 

Let me tell you, I have looked into the eyes of beggars in Italy, poverty-stricken children in Mexico, the simplistic lives of school children in Thailand, laid back New Zealanders with small lives and little drive in life - and I have seen happiness. 

Some of the happiest people I have met do not have much. 

I met a Canadian in Thailand. He was on the back of an Elephant and so was I, and my family and I talked to him as the magnificent beast slowly walked around the most beautiful garden I had ever seen. He quit his comfortable job and was traveling the world.

I met a middle-aged woman who was kicked out of her home in her early teens, just because her parents didn't like her. She had the reading level of a first grader, couldn't drive, never had a career - but she worked with so much zeal, had an extremely compassionate heart and read the Bible every morning; slowly, articulately, word by word. Her face perpetually glowed with joy. 

I met a three-year-old girl on a busy Minneapolis street. With dirt smeared on her face and a messy hairdo she seemed like any other toddler; but her and her family were homeless. She lived and slept in a stroller in her little pink T-shirt. But when my sister and I brought her food in a couple of grocery bags, she ran to us screaming, laughing and smiling - overflowing with happiness and joy. 

I also met a CEO who gave up his dreams to become an artist and focused on business and marketing instead. He lived in an office, interacted little with his employees, and scolded his interns twice for not having the overhead light on over our desks. He had it all, in the worldly sense.

Our pursuit of happiness should never be to get to the highest level of success or to obtain materialistic things. In the end, those things matter little. Find what makes you happy, not content or comfortable, but rather fulfilled and joyful - and do it. Live always in the pursuit of something greater than yourself. 

Through the Silence

Spring is so dynamically sensory. After months of dead silence, bland white snow, dead trees, dark and dreary clouds - Spring creeps up on us and suddenly everything is alive. Green grass, budding trees, a palette of colorful flowers replaces the never ending piles of sludge and snow. Spring peepers, frogs, birds, crickets, cars splashing through puddles, rain and thunder replace the eerie stillness of winter. The sun pokes out, white puffy clouds that look like cars, dragons, and other miscellaneous things left to the imagination take the place of a monotonous gray sky.

Spring makes you smell, touch, feel, see, create - it refreshes you, rejuvenates you. Spring makes things anew. 

For me, Nature has always been a way for me to connect and reconnect with God. Growing up in a small town, with not much to do for entertainment, the outdoors became my movie theater, my classroom, my playground. I explored the woods, I climbed trees, I hunted and dug for frogs, tadpoles, worms, and turtles. I biked through wildflower lined back roads. I walked through cornfields and sunflower fields. I swam in rivers and lakes until sundown. 

G.K. Chesterton equated Nature and the world as the stage, life as the play, and humans as the actors. The stage is beautiful and perfect, but the actors move things, wreck things, say things out of line, or create props that shouldn't be there - we ruin this perfect thing that was created for us. 

However, I believe that as "actors" it is perfectly acceptable for us to explore this great big stage. Comedian and actor Louis C.K. once said, "'I'm bored' is a useless thing to say. I mean you live in a great, big, vast world that you've seen none percent of. Even the inside of your own mind is endless, it goes on forever inwardly. Do you understand? The fact that you're alive is amazing, so you don't get to say 'I'm bored.'"

As spring has sprung here finally, this quote was a sobering thought for me. "I'm bored" is something that slips out of my mouth so frequently. But if we just take a moment to get out there and do something, even if we're alone in doing it, it's amazing what we can discover. 

With the birds chirping and the grass greening, and nobody to play with on a beautiful Saturday, I just couldn't let myself waste the warm, sunny day away even if I was alone in doing it. So I did something that I've never done in my life: I took a long walk... all by myself. For some reason, I hate taking walks by myself because I feel like people look at me and think I'm either A. a loner B. a loser or C. somebody who has no friends. 

But I pushed those thoughts aside and went anyway. I was becoming the exploring "actor" in the newly propped Spring stage. I explored a quiet little neighborhood where no cars passed me. A large black dog lied lazily on a front lawn; he peeked up at me as I passed by, too lazy to say hi or get up and bark. I looked at beautiful homes, secretly wishing I could own such a home someday. I walked to a park, sat on a bench and looked at the lake still covered in ice, like God's giant cup full of ice cubes and water. I walked by swamps, trees, a lazy brook, a pond. I whistled back to the Chickadees when no one was around me. The sun beat down and warmed my skin to the touch. 

I was utterly alone. But not once was I bored. Stuck going to school in a "city" for four years (anything over 10,000 is a city to me) I sometimes felt that that part of me who had such a relationship with the land and nature has slowly stripped away. I was becoming desensitized to the beauty of nature. In the city, the sound of waves or birds are muted by the never ending stream of cars. Stars are dim, hardly seen at all, or obstructed by buildings. "Lakes" in the city are barely clean enough to swim in and are surrounded by more cars, more buildings, and plenty of public beaches. You are never alone. You are constantly surrounded by the buzz of busy people and sound. sound. sound. 

Spring, a bit of silence, and my ability to push through being alone on a walk helped recreate and rebuild that relationship I once had with nature. I urge you, reader, to step out and explore what God has created - not man - even for a little while. See what you can hear, even through the silence. 

Flirting with God

The Midwest, particularly Minnesota and Wisconsin, has recently received a large dumping of snow. A blizzard. A whopping foot of damp, depressing, dismal snow.... and May is only a short 11 days away. 

Needless to say, like all the thousands of other Minnesotans and Wisconsinites, I am shaking my fists of rage at the blankets of white and the snow-laden trees screaming, "Where is spring!!?!?" 

Also needless to say, I have a poor, pessimistic attitude about all of this. I'm the type of person that is utterly romantic for white Christmases and snowy New Year's Eves, but then loathes and wishes the snow away as soon as January 2nd comes around. 

I hate snow. I hate how cold it is. I hate how I have to spend an extra 10 minutes scraping and wiping and sweeping the snow off my car. I hate that it takes me an hour to drive somewhere that should have taken me 20 minutes. I hate that I can't take a walk outside without loading on the boots, snow pants, coat, scarf, etc. etc. until you look like you are about to embark on an Antarctic expedition. 

So, 8 a.m. comes, my alarm wakes me up on a Friday morning, I take one look outside and I instantly want to go back to bed. I quick check my email in case my professor decided to have a heart and cancel class. He didn't. I begrudgingly brush my teeth, wash my face, put my clothes on and go about my usual morning routine. 

Let me interrupt my own story right here. I promise, it has something to do with the whole theme of this post, just keep reading. 

We hear so often, especially from the mouths of Christians, that "God loves you!" And they say it with a fake smile on their face and an annoyingly cheery attitude. When I'm in a bad mood or having a crappy time in my life, honestly that's the last thing I want to hear. I know God loves me, but what good does that do me for my bad mood right now? Go shine your sunshine attitude to someone who has rainbows coming out of their butt right now, and they'll gladly agree. 

Don't get me wrong, I wholeheartedly agree that God loves me and everyone very, very much. So much, in fact, that the human mind literally cannot comprehend it. But, c'mon! Give me some advice I can actually apply and use overly cheery Christian person! 

When a person loves another person, whether it's puppy love or the real thing, they flirt with them in different ways. I believe that God flirts with us. Not in a romantic, sexual way of course (who do you think I am!?), but more like a friendly smile, or a wink, or a nudge, or a joke to make you laugh. You can laugh, but I'm dead serious. God flirts with us! It might be to make us smile, or to make us laugh, or to just show us how much he loves us, or to soften that icy heart or attitude with a little harmless lovin'. 

So, God flirted with me today. I must say, I wasn't particularly flattered at first. It was like the type of flirting you receive from an unwanted specimen, so you roll your eyes and pretend like they didn't say or do those flirty gestures. I had such a sour attitude that I didn't want to receive it, therefore I denied the subtle "kiss" or "wink" from God. I put God in the friend zone today. 

As I am trudging through the Alaskan-like snow with my boots that I never want to see again for the next 6 months, I was just ticked. And I mean, ticked. I wanted spring, and I wanted it now! 

For some reason, right then, God decided to flirt with me. It started to snow... again. But this time, it was this fluffy, dreamy-like, soft snow. It fell on my cheeks like soft, little kisses. I literally said out loud (don't worry, nobody was around me) "Stop flirting with me God, I'm not in the mood." Then the clouds parted and the sun shone like a spotlight right on me. The sun made the snowflakes sparkle like a dazzling sunlit ocean, like dancing diamonds in the sky. It was like the parting of the clouds and the beam of sunlight, which lasted a whole 10 minutes this morning, was a giant radiant smile from God. 

Despite the unwanted snow and my horrible attitude, God's pestering flirting made me smile. It made me see the beauty in the snow instead of what should be in its place right now (green grass, budding trees, flowers). I cracked a smile right then and there, on my way to class, and I even looked up and gave God a subtle wink. Who says we can't flirt back?