Sobremesa Stories

Letting stories unfold around the table

Six Reasons I Struggled To Find Friends After College

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True confession: I have never been that good at girl friendships.  From my elementary days when I was painfully shy to my middle and high school days where girl friendships left me wounded and confused, I’ve always felt like girl friendships were more complicated and sometimes just not worth the pain.  When I went to college, I was wrestling with deep feelings of shame and fears that the girls I met would think I was too much or annoying in some way.

But oh my goodness was I blown away by the women I met!  The girls on my floor (and some of the surrounding floors) pursued me, loved me, and rallied around my broken, scared self in so many ways.  They taught me how to love and be loved, how to be silly and enjoy each other’s company while still sharing the deepest, hardest parts of our stories and our days.  I loved those girls so much, and cried with my head against the car window as I drove away from Davidson and into a new life with my soon-to-be fiancé/husband.

Find Friends After College Sobremesa Stories Blog

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Five On Friday: Back To School

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Welp, even though I haven’t met any of my new students, school is officially back in session for all of us teachers.  I started back to week on Tuesday and have had days full of meetings and planning since then.  Where the heck did the summer go?  Here’s what our week looked like…

1) Back To School Craziness

Y’all, I’m gonna be honest: it has been a ROUGH week of adjusting back to a school schedule for me.  By the end of summer, my structured, Type A self starts to come out and I am excited to jump back into life with more rhythm and routine.  But it has been rough to get out of bed this week and sit through lots of meetings (full of good stuff, of course, but still meetings).  I felt kind of overwhelmed as I thought about all the things I had to do this week to prepare my classroom for students and get myself ready to jump into another year.  I know I’ll be excited for the first day of school next Tuesday, but this week, I pretty much just wanted to stay in bed and do this all day (and yes, we do have a Duke pillow, because sometimes marriage involves compromise):

Olive Snuggles

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Womanly Wednesday: A Guest Post On Embracing And Processing Emotions

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Thanks for stopping by for this week’s Womanly Wednesday!  This is one of my favorite parts of the week where different women bravely and vulnerably share their stories.  If you would be interested in writing a Womanly Wednesday guest post of your own, please send me an email with your information and a summary of what you might like to share.  It would be an honor to have your voice and your story on the blog!
Anyway, I have known this week’s guest poster since waaaay back in our middle school years when we were just two (hopefully not too awkward) California blondies trying to figure out life, boys, friendship, and Jesus.  This girl has the most adventurous, loving spirit and as you’ll soon see, is really stinking wise.  Even though we live way too many miles apart, I’m grateful to know her and share her words today.  So without further ado…miss Molly Norton! 

Molly Womanly Wednesday

My friends and I are obsessed with personality tests, the psychological ones like Myers Briggs or Lion-Otter-Dog-Beaver. One out of five get-togethers has some discussion about psychoanalytic personality profiles. We love to analyze common traits and explore why we behave and react the way we do and how our personalities are programmed. The most common topics we find ourselves coming back to though, are those consisting of thinkers and feelers.

I am a thinker. I rarely, voice how I feel about something. What I think about something, sure. But how I feel? Ummm…I’m not sure….

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How We Make Money With Airbnb (Without Going Crazy!)

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Jordan and I LOVE to travel.  We spent five weeks last summer backpacking through Europe, and we loved all the fun people we got to meet, beautiful places we got to see, and amazing food and drinks we got to try.  During our trip, we stayed almost exclusively in Airbnb’s, doing everything from staying with people in their homes to renting out private apartments.  We had such a fun experience and loved how we experienced a more “local” feel of the cities that we stayed in.  It also saved us a ton of money (which we of course spent on more fun things like delicious food and German beer).

How to Plan Your Dream Europe Trip

Cliffs of Moher, Ireland

If you’ve never traveled with Airbnb, you should check out this post I wrote a few weeks back about how to use it! I go through all the details of creating your profile so future hosts will accept you and what to look for when booking spaces.  Okay, you’ve read that and are still interested in hosting? Let’s get going!

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How I Use A $20 Bill To Teach Students They Have Value

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Way back when I was just a wee college student trying to decide what I was going to do with my life (aka five whole years ago), I was in the heart of four years of intense Young Life ministry.  Seeing how much I loved working with high school students, I felt like being a teacher was the perfect way to combine my love of languages with my desire to impact high schoolers.  I knew I would walk into a high school and immediately have meaningful, deep relationships and conversations with every student I met each and every day (this is the part where all the veteran teachers laugh).

But as I started teaching, I started to realize that teaching is quite a bit different than leading student ministry.  For starters, I saw 160 students every day, with as many as 30 students in my room at one time.  I traveled between two schools every day, so I often wasn’t there for those before, after, and in between moments that help build relationships.  I had a handful of good conversations and got to see students’ hearts in tiny glimpses, but for the most part, my days were consumed with the daily realities of lesson planning, classroom management, and keeping rowdy 8th graders from driving me and each other crazy while still teaching them a thing or two about Spanish.

Teach Students They Have Value Converse Fields

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Five On Friday: Some Favorites!

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Happy Friday, friends! You’ve made it to another weekend! Woooo! Even though Jordan started work this week, I’ve still been off this week for one final week of summer adventures (or lack thereof).  This past week consisted of the following…

1) A SHOUTOUT TO MY AWESOME HUBBY

My husband started work at a new teaching job this week, and I am so, SO proud of him! These last two years have been a journey filled with lots of prayer as we dreamed about what kind of teaching job he would get. He was offered his dream job teaching high school in the same district as I teach last year, but due to some frustrating HR interactions at his old district, wasn’t allowed to accept it and had to teach elementary one more year.  I’m so proud of how he still loved kids and taught well in that hard scenario.  But now? He finally is starting up at that high school where he originally got offered the job.  He’s coaching cross country, co-teaching biology, and teaching a few sections of Essential Skills, or more basic, functional Special Ed classes.  He is an amazing, compassionate coach and teacher and I love seeing him finally getting to do a job he loves! The 2015-2016 school year is going to be a good one!

Why Your Marriage Is More Than Your Sex Life 2

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Womanly Wednesday: A Guest Post On Eating Disorders And Second Chances

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Thanks for stopping by for this week’s Womanly Wednesday!  This is one of my favorite parts of the week where different women bravely and vulnerably share their stories. This week, we have the honor of hearing from a lovely new blogging friend named Liz.  Liz writes about marriage, motherhood, and life over at Sundays With Sophie, and her blog is definitely one you need to add to your must-read list!   I love how bravely and honestly she is sharing about her journey of wrestling with an eating disorder, and I have a feeling you will too.  

Hi, I’m Liz!  This is what you know about me, mama to Sophie, and wife to Kyle.  I’m the sole writer of Sundays with Sophie.  Mama by day, blogger by night and wife on the weekend.  But, here’s something you don’t know about me.  Something that I haven’t talked about before, something I’m bravely telling the world.  I’ve suffered from both Anorexia Nervosa.  It happened quickly and quietly.  This is my story.

Womanly Wednesday Sundays With Sophie

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Why Your Marriage Is More Than Your Sex Life

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All right, guys, we’re getting kinda real today. Posts like this are hard because they require a lot of vulnerability, but reading honest posts by brave bloggers helped me get through a season of our marriage where I felt deeply ashamed and alone.  I hope you’ll read it with respect, compassion, and kindness (as you always do).  Thanks for sharing the real and the hard with me, my friends.  

In a lot of ways, I think Jordan and I were well-prepared for marriage (or at least as well-prepared as you can be).  We’d talked through a ton of topics ranging from finances and hobbies to relationships, community, and general expectations.  We were on the same page about so many things, and we’d had many wonderful couples remind us that getting married would not fill some void in our heart, that we would still wrestle with questions of identity and worth that we’d wrestled with for most of our lives.

But the one thing we quickly found out we weren’t so prepared for? Intimacy.

Intimacy in marriage can be confusing and hard and this post gives encouragement for anyone struggling in this area.

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Five On Friday: Last Full Week Of Summer!

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Hey hey, friends! If your hometown has been near as hot as ours was this week, I have a feeling you also stayed inside watching way too much Netflix and hiding in the AC.  Or maybe that was just us?

Jordan starts “new teacher” training next week since he is starting in a new district, so this was our last full week of summer together.  I’ve been feeling a bit under the weather, so we once again spent lots of fun time watching Jimmy Fallon, doing house projects, and hanging out with friends.  I also decided to rewatch Parenthood from the very beginning, which has led to lots of happy tears.  It’s just as good (if not better) the second time around!

Here are some pictures and updates from our last full week of summer!

1) Baking Time With My Niece

My sweet niece Elsie is in town for the summer, and it has been so fun to get to spend some time with her.  Jordan and I took her out for Funny Face Pancakes at Ihop and then back to our house for some puppy play time and baking, and it was so fun! I let her decide on our “recipe” (aka what extras we added) and we made chocolate-chip, peanut butter chip, M&M cookies. Olive is pretty happy any time a small child more likely to drop food comes into our house.  She scored two scoops of cookie dough that day! Totally unhealthy but she survived, so I suppose it’s okay, right?

Friday Baking With Elsie

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