Sobremesa Stories

Letting stories unfold around the table

Testimony Tuesday: Fighting For Healing

By

When I graduated college a few years back, it seemed like I had everything lined up for me.  I was headed to Kansas City to finally be in the same city as my long-distance boyfriend of two years, I had a teaching job lined up, and would start classes for my Master’s degree in education soon after I arrived.  That boyfriend soon became my fiancé,  and after a whirlwind seven months of teaching, wedding planning, and night classes, we got married.

From the outside, everything was perfect.  But from the inside? My heart was aching.

Sobremesa Stories Testimony Tuesday

[Read more…]

Six Ways To Stop Arguments From Escalating

By

I’m gonna go ahead and say it: Parenthood is probably my favorite show of all time. I love the depth of the characters, the combination of sweetness and silliness, and the complex ways they show so many different parts of marriage and family life.  But in the words of a friend’s husband: “Is Parenthood the show where they’re always yelling at each other?”

While I won’t say that’s true ALL the time…they definitely do yell a bit.  Sometimes when I’m watching the couples in the show argue, I’m amazed by how quickly arguments turn into loud yelling matches where each person shouts their own perspective without actually listening at all to what the other one is saying (especially Crosby and Jasmine.  I love them but their marriage is a hot mess sometimes).
Marriage Conflict Cycle Black and White

[Read more…]

Why Your Marriage Is More Than Your Sex Life

By

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.

[Read more…]

How To Break Your Marriage Conflict Cycle

By

If you are dating someone, married, or have been either of those things at some point, you know that arguments with your significant other happen.  Any time we share our hearts, bodies, and souls with another person, it’s inevitable that some sort of friction will rise up.  Even the best happily ever after’s have a solid argument every once in a while, and anyone who tells you differently is either lying or hasn’t been married long enough to get down to the nitty-gritty (it only took us maybe…hmm….3 days into marriage to get to this point.  We’re over-achievers, you know?)

[Read more…]

Learning To Love My Husband’s Hobbies

By

If you know my husband at all, you know Jordan is a man who loves to be outside.

Jordan has always been athletic, and in the last three years he started cycling and running pretty consistently.  He loves being outside and loves how races are an outlet for his competitive spirit.  He did his first marathon on two days notice when a friend dropped out, and even with the disgusting blisters and super-sore muscles, he was hooked.  Since then, he’s competed in a variety of half-marathons, marathons, and now is starting to do triathlons as well.  He did his first Half Ironman last September and is training for another one in Boulder in a few weeks.  And if you follow him or me on Instagram at all….you’ve probably seen that our weekends have been pretty full of races these last few months.

Great tips about how to embrace and love your husband's hobbies instead of just tolerating them!

[Read more…]

Five Tips to Help Your Wedding Tell Your Love Story

By

Wedding Planning Tips Sobremesa Stories

Two years ago this week, Jordan and I were soaking in the final crazy days before our wedding.  As friends and family started to arrive in town, the whirlwind of a wedding weekend began.   We set up the barn, had our picnic rehearsal dinner at a local park, and then finally jumped into our wedding day.   There were so many things I loved about how our wedding turned out. It was exactly  like I had dreamed, and I still love flipping through our wedding pictures and video to remember all the little moments and details of the day.

When we look back on our wedding, our favorite part is all the ways that day told our story.  Our wedding was uniquely us – a mixture of all the things, people, places, and ideas that defined our story and the story we were about to begin.  While we had pulled in elements from weddings and styles we liked, we felt that our wedding represented who we are in so many ways .  

There were a lot of things that went into planning our wedding day and making it ours. These five wedding planning tips below are the things I learned from planning our Memorial Day weekend, barn wedding two whole years ago, and I would do all of these things again in a heartbeat!

[Read more…]

How I’m Finding Freedom From Shame (A Three-Step Process)

By

“Owning our story can be hard but not nearly as difficult as spending our lives running from it. Embracing our vulnerabilities is risky but not nearly as dangerous as giving up on love and belonging and joy—the experiences that make us the most vulnerable. Only when we are brave enough to explore the darkness will we discover the infinite power of our light.”  

Brené Brown –The Gifts of Imperfection

Finding Freedom From Shame - Sobremesa Stories

The first time I remember feeling shame, that gnawing feeling in the pit of my stomach that something’s wrong with me, was in middle school.   I struggled in my relationships with girl friends, and remember one particular conversation with a girl friend who told me she didn’t want me around when the boy she liked was there because I was “too much,” and when I was my full self I was “obnoxious.”  I know that those words came out of a place of her own insecurity and fears, but they impacted me deeply.

I started to believe that who I am is obnoxious, that I needed to tone down my personality, my happiness, my intelligence, and myself in general to be liked and even loved by others.  I desperately sought attention from boys, believing that giving them my body and my heart was the only way to overcome my “obnoxious” personality and be “loved” the way I was longing for.  When I compromised my boundaries and values to make them happy, I felt an even deeper sense of disappointment and shame.

[Read more…]

Creating Our Marriage Mission Statement

By

“Marriage has the power to set the course of your life as a whole. If your marriage is strong, even if all the circumstances in your life around you are filled with trouble and weakness, it won’t matter. You will be able to move out into the world in strength.”

Tim Keller – Meaning of Marriage

How to Create your Marriage Mission Statement - Sobremesa Stories

When Jordan and I got married, we knew we weren’t signing up for a lifetime of romance and forever happiness.  We were lucky to have couples of all ages loving us, asking us hard questions, and speaking truth to us..  As we spent time with these people, one thing consistently stood out: these couples whose love had stood the test of time, tragedy, and trials of all sorts firmly believed that their marriages had a much bigger purpose than their “happiness.”  These people trusted that their marriage was something God would use to shape them, to draw them to Him, and to paint a picture to the world of His love, joy, and commitment.

After the chaos of the wedding faded and the daily realities of marriage began to sink in, we wanted to revisit the things we had admired in those married couples who had counseled and inspired us.  We decided to spend some time processing our dreams, values, and goals for our marriage, hoping that through writing out these thoughts, we could come up with a mission statement that summarized a bigger picture and purpose for our marriage.

We sat down together and started to brainstorm, focusing mainly on these questions:

  • Ideally, how do we want to relate to each other? What action words, ideas, and concepts repeat as we describe what we want our marriage to look like?
  • Who are some couple whose marriages we admire? What do we admire about them? How do we feel when we walk into their home or spend time with them and why do they make us feel that way?
  • What things or ideals do we value in life in general? How do we want our marriage to express these values to each other and to other people?
  • When other people walk into our home and sit around our table, how do we want them to feel? When they get into their car to drive away, what do we want them to say or think as they leave?

[Read more…]

Sobremesa Stories

By

La Sobremesa: The time spent at the table after a meal; laughing, talking, and sharing stories with the people around the table.

Sharing Stories around the table, Outdoor Dinner Party, Sparkling Lights, Lanterns, Globe Lights

Ever since I was a little girl watching the grownups sip their wine and share old stories around the dinner table, I have felt a certain magic in the moments after a meal:  crumbs of dessert scattered across plates, candles burning low, and conversation turning to laughter and memories.  I loved hearing my dad reminisce about his travels through Europe (complete with many spot-on accents), my mom’s loud and contagious laugh, and the back and forth of neighbors and friends discussing everything from the latest Angels baseball season to the brokenness and hurt in their homes.

Sharing stories at a Wedding Table, Rustic pink and white flower in jars, burlap runners, candles , globe lights in barn.

In Spain, there is a specific word to describe this time around the table after a meal: la sobremesa.  Spaniards are accustomed to spending a long period of time in the middle of the day sharing lunch with friends, family, and colleagues, taking time to savor a meal and conversation before the work day continues. There is no direct English translation for this Spanish word that so beautifully encompasses a culture of lingering, a culture of spending time around the table with the ones who remind us we are known and loved and worth listening to.

Any time I have traveled, this cultural tradition has challenged my on-time, driven nature.  It reminds me to choose people and stories over to-do lists, even when my introverted self wants nothing more than to cozy up on the couch with some Moose Tracks ice cream and an old episode of Gilmore Girls.  When I moved to Kansas City, Missouri to get married and “settle down,” I knew I wanted to carry the tradition of sobremesa with me.

[Read more…]