No Judgements

No judgements, Genevieve, I tell myself now.

No judgements about the women who choose to bleach their hair blonde and ruin it in the process. I do remember walking into a conference room one time and strongly disliking the woman sitting there based on this and like only two other facts I knew about her.

I never really understood that. Isn’t your hair perfectly suited to your own skin the way God made it? Why waste $50 every six weeks?

I also remember wearing a T-shirt when I was growing up that said: Life is better blonde.

Haha!

I remember discussing a mutual friend’s marriage one time and the woman opposite me pursed her lips and said, Well she’s just so shy, it’s her problem. Why doesn’t she do more for her husband?

Or maybe she just likes to withdraw into quiet and work on her art and pray, I think.

Like I often do these days.

How hard I worked to overcome the label of “shy” in my youth!

Also: “tradCath.”

Which is funny, because I remember a certain CEO telling me about a certain client: You know, he really likes you, Genevieve, and I just couldn’t figure out what he meant.

What did he mean?

I think he said it multiple times.

No, really, what did he mean?

Like, what had I ever done to earn that client’s approval?

It comes from a certain ingrained inability to take a compliment.

And now, in retrospect, I’m like…

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOH LOL.

It’s because I have tradCath vibes deep down in my soul.

It’s all that ingrained Latin.

I suspect that client has it too.

It’s important to be wise like Socrates and know when you know nothing, when you do not understand what all is going on in someone’s relationship…

I pray for many friends and leave them in the past.

There was the smarmy blonde coworker who made me feel bad about my body, about having lots of siblings, and about my personal life. Uuuuuh that’s kinda like an insult to my very existence. You think big families are bad? What if I had never been born…

They did not like me when I was shy.

They did not like me when I learned to be bubbly.

I was either too tradCath or too Protestant for them…

There was the day I woke up and stopped using words like “depressed,” “anxious,” and “shy” in regards to myself.

There was the day an older relative approached me and said: You need this diagnosis, the same one I got and my response was basically F YOU I’M VERY SOCIAL YOU DO NOT KNOW WHAT IT IS LIKE TO LIVE LIFE THROUGH MY EYES STOP DIAGNOSING ME YOU DON’T HAVE A DOCTORATE YOU DO NOT UNDERSTAND THE PAIN OF MY SO MANY YEARS OF…

Because when I look back at my different diagnoses over the years, I realized: Oh, those were just different spiritual periods of my life…

I was given two different diagnoses over the course of four years.

But then I woke up and was like, oh hell no.

I choose gratitude every day.

I choose joy.

I choose forgiveness.

I pray for many people and I leave them behind intentionally.

It is important to know, when you are going through a difficult spiritual period, that many, many people are praying for you.

I like to surround people in happy bubbles of prayer.

I defy their labels.

I choose Jesus.

This is why I give people books about God everywhere I go now.

I do not know where they are on their walk with Him.

Valentine’s Day was wonderful — the first time my mom forgot to get me a gift, and my man sent me one.

And my best friend keeps me sane, of course.

My family was like Why the hell would he want to move here for you and I was like, Uuuuuuuuuuhhhh maybe because I said things like: No divorce, we’re not living on separate continents, I only need one ring without a huge chunky diamond, we can go camping on our honeymoon, I don’t ever want to take on debt again, I am not afraid of poverty…

One does tend to learn from one’s parents.

Ok, so there was a slight hiccup. I had this great tattoo planned all about Jesus and the mercy of God and with my personal motto: Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam, Do everything for the greater glory of God and I had FINALLY found like the only tattoo artist in the Portland area who doesn’t inscribe demons on people’s skin and…

I had told God at the beginning of the year: Ok, only You. I’m done with the restless self-seeking and the piercings and the blue hair… I’m going to do everything for YOU this year, like get the tattoo of my dreams, become a blogger, get radically poor and radically generous, travel blog and take pictures and write poetry about how amazing You are…

But then he was like aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah…

And then I thought about my German American tradCath mom, and his Sri Lankan tradCath mom, and the importance of keeping the in-laws happy (who are definitely the future babysitters), and the logistics of a long-sleeved wedding dress…

And I said, So about your alcohol intake…

So we compromised, and found joy.

We grow toward heaven together. I will make a better man of him yet.