Yes, I did it. I pushed the couch and coffee table aside, perked up my laptop on some pillows and pressed play. Before I knew it, I was doing all crazy kinds of commands from Cindy like leg kicks and arm punches, something called the spider man, and of course…the plank (You know that thing where you fold your hands together on the ground and make your back really straight and your toes touch the ground)… major oucher. Sweat was dripping off me as though I were emerged in the Mississippi River. Cindy told me to work at 100%, so that’s what I did. She also challenged me to do this 30 minutes a day. I just might until these negative temps cease!

I really hope I didn’t freak out the neighbors below us with all of my wild stampeding up here on the third floor of #B8. Whoops. Forgot about those lovely peeps below us.

Exercise TV is the perfect solution to my winter exercise dilemma! I do get myself to the Rec with Nick a few times a week, but I gotta say, we are just WAY more active in the spring and summer. And I seriously dislike having to put on ridiculous amounts of layers just to avoid getting frost-bite on my to-and-fro walks to the Rec and home… the benefits are off the charts!

See, this winter I have gotten trudgy. And maybe a little pudgy? I eat really healthy, but I have had so much trouble getting my behind out the door to walk to the rec. I use to go almost every day, but these negative temps have trapped me inside for too long! I thought I was doomed today… the coldest day EVER… I had a committment to exercise and I was dreading the loooonnnngggg, ccccooooolllllddddd walk- But Then- I heard about exercise TV! Let me tell why its so colossal.

I don’t have to bundle up at all or do the whole take-my-slushy-boots-off-and-put-on-my-tennies routine or fight like a mad woman to get a machine at the overinflated hour of 5pm at the ol’ Rec. I don’t run the risk of being awkwardly stared at or haunted by mirrors reflecting every angle of my body to a room full of people. I just have to move some stuff around, and SHIZAM! I am gettin’ buff in my own apartment!

Everyone- YOU MUST TRY EXERCISE TV! If you are crunched for time or have the winter blues like me- its amazing! I don’t recommend this be the only form of exercise because I do think its a ton more fun to run or workout with other people, but for the days where you just need to squeeze something in or don’t want to go out in the winter frozen land, I’d give it two thumbs up!

And Cindy Whitmarsh rocks. After certain body movements that are really hard, she likes to say, “Oh, I love that one!” which in turn makes me feel like I love it too. K. Now get off your bum and try this! I recommend the “Less is More” workout. Its only 30 minutes. You can do it. Just click http://www.exercisetv.tv/ and you wont regret it.

Get ready to jump, flail, kick and sweat!

Cheers to your FREE workout!

Perhaps you weren’t led astray by the ferry-tales of Disney, but I was. Do you know what I heard on Minnesota Public Radio the other day? That Disney makes more sales selling princess and bridal accessories to five-year-olds than any other Disney Disney apparel… SAD! Five-year-olds are suppose to be skipping around in fields, playing and eating peanut-butter and jelly, not idolizing these female non-real characters as they prance around in bikinis while searching for their life-long lovers! Ok. I’ll stop my Disney rant. I really do like Cinderella.

Anyway. Marriage HELPS with SOME problems and is most definitely the sweetest gift apart from Christ I’ll ever be given in this life, but Hollywood did not prepare me for what is actually true about marriage. This is why I am so utterly thankful to have parents who are still happily married and to have been discipled/mentored by older Christian single and married women throughout college who gave me a REAL picture of singleness and marriage, the joys and struggles that befall, and how to be content either way. While its true that marriage does equate entering into a new and exciting chapter FILLED with amazing blessings, it helps to be sobered and trained for how to walk through what often becomes a battlefield.

I seem to be eagerly alert for the day that my marriage could at some point become my life’s biggest battle (and at times, feels like it!) … because in our culture it just seems that we’re doomed to expect it at some point, and in no form or fashion am I above the rest. But I do want to get to the root of why these battles begin, or I fear I’ll never change my ways during conflict with Nick. And I don’t want to be on the pathway of doom. Divorce will never be an option, till death do us part! I said it, and I meant it- forever and ever am I delighted and committed to work through conflict with Nick. I’ll admit I’m still very much a starry-eyed newly wed. Most days I think I could just stare at Nick and do nothing else… but we do have our fights. So, I’ll need help.

Instead of looking to Hollywood for the definition of love and romance, I am going to look to the bible and older, more mature married people than myself. God is the creator of marriage, so you’d think he has a lot more wisdom to offer us than Hollywood’s misrespresentation of the beauty and ideas of what being a woman is, what marriage is, and what husbands are suppose to be. I have yet to be proven wrong that the bible is more helpful than the media around me, but let me let you into a scene from my freshmen year of college…

I was so unsatisfied, but on the outside I had it all: a serious boyfriend, three jobs, perfect grades, a regular exercise routine, and awesome friends. Yet, I wasn’t happy. When circumstances didn’t go my way, do you know who I invited to my pity parties? Kate Hudson and Matthew McConaughay. I would watch “How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days” over and over again or some other chick flick. Seriously, I would pop one into the tiny TV in my dorm room and watch it while planning “cookies and milk” night for our dorm hall. Ridiculous! I think to myself in hindsight. I watched these chick flicks because they displayed what seemed like true love. I would watch them and feel crappy cause I didn’t have it, yet hopeful because these movies seemed to portray that it CAN exist! Oh, if only I knew where to look to find it…

Hollywood combined with my sinful desires destroyed me… before I knew that I could be more loved and accepted by God than I could ever be from people. I assure you that I still watch movies regularly. Its just that I no longer bow down to what they tell me about who I am and what will make me happy in life. After living twenty-one years completely defining myself by the standards of our culture and the media, I have had a rude-awakening, after beginning to trust in Christ, to who I REALLY am and what is REALLY true about my self-worth in the eyes of God.

I’ll never forget the first day of kindergarten. I held a boy named Johnny’s hand, and I believe my teacher had to refrain many testosterone-filled five-year-olds from kissing me. I must have been hard to resist while proclaiming that Santa Clause was real and learning to sound out the alphabet! However, I remember feeling devastated when one boy decided he wanted to kiss Shelly instead of me because Shelly had her ears pierced! The chances of me being loved drastically sunk to somewhere below zero in my mind as a five-year-old. I couldn’t be loved for who I was… I had to have something more to get attention. It didn’t matter how much my parents loved and cherished me (which they did A TON!)… I was born with a natural tendency to sin and to want to be worshipped myself, rather than worship God. I was born with an innate desire to hear what God says, but to totally NOT believe any of it and look everywhere else- ANYWHERE else- but God for love and approval. Age 5-21 were the hardest most unsatisfying years of my life as I chased a false identity for one reason: to be needed and wanted by men.

I wanted to be the object of affection from the opposite sex from a young age. I wanted to be needed. I would do anything to get these things. Nowhere does our culture tell us that being a single woman is a joyful and wonderful experience. If anything, it tells us that the reasons for being a single woman are to show men that you don’t NEED them and you can make it for yourself without them. You can have your “Miss Independent” streak and shun away all attention from men all together. You can prove yourself. Well, I’m sorry. But, honestly, does this angry attempt at “Lone Success” truly make us happy women? What if we could be joyfully single? Patiently single? Single and still desiring the love and affection of an amazing man? I was anything but patient or happy.

I think deep down, we “independence seekers” are still unsatisfied because we were created with an intelligent design- with a radical opportunity to love and enjoy womanhood the way God has created it to be. Does this mean we should all be at home ironing and cooking with pink polka-dotted aprons until hubby and kiddies get home at the end of each day?! NO! Not at all! Perhaps for some, and that is perfectly ok if a woman feels called by God to serve her family and husband in this way. But this isn’t the only way, and its not mandatory for all Christian women. There is a biblical womanhood to be discovered, and it can be lived out in the working world, in politics, in schools, in hospitals, in the music business, in sales, the marketing world, in the home, and in so many other careers.

The sky is the limit with our God-given abilities as women, but it’s the motives and the heart behind why we’re living like we are- that determine if we’ll really be happy and satisfied or not. I think if we’re honest, at the end of the day, we’re all dying to be rescued and swept off our feet by the man of our dreams. Isn’t there a hidden desire in all of us women that wants to be rescued into the arms of a strong and trustworthy leader? I would find it hard to believe if women, at their true core, actually feel satisfied when they are doing the rescuing, date-asking and phone number grabbing.

Little did I know, I was this woman. But I grabbed guys’ attention in different ways than verbal requests for their presence across the table with me on a so-called date. I played the innocent “girl-next-door.” You know, the wholesome girl that people “desire for marriage.” The girl who you could just sit with and pour your heart out to, and she would comfort and listen. She would secretly gain more self-esteem from feeling needed by these relationships in her life. I liked being this girl. This girl that was hard to get, yet so soon would give anything to be in a serious relationship. If a guy EVER pursued me, I thought for about a millisecond before I nearly interrupted the invitation with a hearty and school-girlish: “Yes!” Almost as though I were being proposed to. I said yes as if my life depended on it- depended on assuring myself that I could get attention from men.

I have previously blogged about my struggle with irrational anger. I have no doubt that I will struggle with this again, but I am just now beginning to get to some deeper roots of where this anger is coming from. For most of my life, I have been defined by the amount of attention I could get from guys. As I begin to believe in different standards for who I am and how I am loved by God, I struggle to leave my old ways of thinking and believing. I struggle to believe that I am still worth something, I am still beautiful, and I am still wanted- even if Nick has to finish a work task, or even he would like to spend an hour reading his Popular Mechanics Magazine or spend a few hours playing racquetball at the U of M Rec Center with students. He does these things because he enjoys them, not because he desires them more than me. He would gladly cancel any of these things (and has!) to come running to my side to comfort me and be with me if I’m having a bad day. He will even come home from work for me!

He’s shown me over and over again that he truly cares and loves me more than anything in the world (besides God)… yet I still run to the lie that I’m not worthy of love unless I can remain the most attractive and desirable woman around. I place a lot of anxiety in maintaining this status- this status that says: Katie+ something = lovable. When God is saying to me in every moment: Katie + nothing = always lovable, now that I am saturated with the righteousness of Christ. This makes me worthy of love.

My dream is to be so changed by God’s love for me- His love that doesn’t ask or require me to add anything to who I already am- to believe so much in his grace covering all my shame and sin, that I am unaffected and unshaken if I am not wanted or “needed” by another person or my husband. I am the object of God’s affection all the time! Sadly, I am still living a lot of the time to be the object of someone else’s affection. Namely, my husband. I will love Nick better and be so much more gracious when I become a woman who finds her worth and identity in Christ before I look for my identity in my husband. I am confident that I am becoming this woman ONLY because God is faithful to me, though I go through trials and set-backs. The apostle Paul promises me that God is going to continue to work in me in Philippians Chapter 1.

Phil. 1:6 And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.

Thanks for reading as I peel off the layers of myself and expose to you a rather broken and insecure girl, made confident and perfect through Jesus Christ… being made MORE like Him through my husband, Nick Stromwall. He is cuter, sweeter, more gracious, more helpful, more EVERYTHING than I ever dreamed in a the man I would marry. I don’t blame the media for my anger. I will take ownership for my sinful desires involved- my need to get approval, my desire to be perfectly physically attractive, my desire to be worshipped… its not getting these things that make me angry. When I get angry, I’m finding out, its because I am holding myself to a standard I cannot meet, or holding Nick to a standard that he cannot meet. Jesus Christ is the perfect resolution to our conflict. Jesus can meet all of our standards and provide for us a perfect relationship with Him alone, and we don’t have to meet any standards to get his love. We only have to believe that He is real and trustworthy to enter into a life-changing relationship with him.

We will still struggle, but we no longer have to give in to the dominion of sin and lies. Because of Christ, my idea of being a woman has been radically redefined. I can break free from the cultural lies I use to believe in and these recent patterns of anger. I hope that as I learn to believe that I am adored and desired by a perfect God that I will feel less angry and MUCH MORE GRACIOUS towards my husband when conflict arises. The more satisfied I am in God, the more I will give grace. Giving grace shows God’s mercy and kindness. Isn’t this what I want to show others?

I’m beginning to think so.

Bamb! Like the strike of mid-night in Disney’s Cinderella, my dream, most likely conducted by an unending collection of bridal magazines ,is awakened by the notorious interruption of my cell phone. Ok. Let me float down in my parachute for a second while you look for my glass slipper.

Perhaps I will really have a cheesy wedding smile and Nick will really be googley-eyed at me, and I just might get a freckle removed soon… but what if I fall as I walk and accidentally moon my loving friends and family? What if it rains? What if I sneeze? What if I get all emotional and just enter into hyperventilation mode? What if a bodily function interrupts this perfectly dreamy day of mine? What if I can’t control how perfect this should be? The anxiety could rise to a boiling point if someone didn’t bring me back down to earth during this dreamy season of being engaged. For real. That is what I am so often forgetting- what is real.

Don’t get me wrong. Dreamland is a great place. I think we are meant to go there sometimes. The problem is that I could spend every waking moment there and swim in a pool of dissatisfaction at my dreams-not-come-true and risk missing out on real life.

When I find myself swimming in this pool, I’ve observed that there are often two things going on: 1) I’m dreaming of being something I’m not. 2) I’m dreaming of a world that isn’t. My hopes are that over time, these will be replaced with a love for who I really am and a confident embrace of this world that really is, with room enough to dream of the home in which I am truly created for.

Something I’m not. Let me dig my spoon into the cereal of what I’m not. Let me assure you the reason to momentarily consider this is not to derail my sense of being, for I am “fearfully and wonderfully made,” the Psalms tell me. However, let me acknowledge with loving confidence who I am simply and honestly not, while simultaneously considering who God is and all of the things he has made me to be.

Believing that Jesus Christ was perfect in my place, I have nothing more to prove because he has forgiven and loved me completely, even if there are still a zillion things I’m not. I can find my worth in his perfect love for me, rather than my mediocrity. So I am free to be honest.

I’m not Super Katie. I’m not perfect. I do not enjoy multi-tasking. I do not adjust quickly to change. I’m not easily emotionally composed. I don’t regularly check to see when I need another oil change. I don’t always do what I say I’m going to do. I’m not as thin as the American cultural ideal of thinness. I’m not in control of the weather. I didn’t splash myself with freckles upon my day of birth. I’m not a perfect friend to people at all times. I’m not great at deciding what to order at coffee shops. I’m not consistently organized. I’m not a perfect financial planner. I’m not the fountain of all wisdom and knowledge. I’m not always thinking of flowers and ding-dong ditching people with May Day baskets, although the whole “kindergarten teacher” persona may have you fooled.

My dreamland is often a result of trying to be someone I’m not and being unsatisfied with who I am and with what is. I have realized that I have begun to define myself completely by cultural standards and people’s expectations, rather than taking a look at who my creator is and what he says about this mysterious creation called “me.”

I’m going to run to Psalm 139 in the midst of my insecurities of wanting to be thinner and wishing I could create the perfect wedding day. Consider me so desperate for life, a sense of self worth, and a promise that there is a reason for who I am that I have to get as dusty as the bible for answers.

The old me would have mocked this form of “self help.” The new me can’t believe I lived 21 years not believing it would really help me. Yes, I’m talking about the bible. I use to think authors of cultural self- help books ( that often start with titles like…”The Seven Steps of a Highly Effective __(fill in the blank)___”) could be more authorized to help me than the author of life altogether – God himself- the divine writer of the bible. I still like those books like “How to Win Friends and Influence People,” and I don’t doubt that they could help me. In fact, they are wonderfully written and full of great life tools we could all use. But they can’t explain to me who God is and who the heck I am.

Its like hearing the most beautiful orchestra when I read these words in Psalm 139:14-15 “For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. “

I draw from these verses that there is no accident going on with that freckle I don’t like, or that curve that sticks out when I wear a shirt that mistakenly hopped in the dryer. There is something beautiful going on, a purpose to my being. My frame was not hidden from the Lord. In fact, I was intricately woven together- knitted, in fact! Think about knitting. Knitting shops actually stress me out. Which color? Which texture? Which pattern? Hmpph. Yarn overload. It seems a tedious and
time-consuming procedure. Yet God patiently has knitted all of us into being.

Fearfully and Wonderfully made. I have just been told that the way I am made is wonderful. It doesn’t define wonderful with: has a great job, has a great hair color, weighs X amount of pounds, is a great friend, does wonderful acts of service for the poor, goes to church every Sunday, is socially pleasant at all times, is great at relationships, and on goes the list. Our culture, or for Christians, the “Christian Culture” could scheme us unto putting false definitions into the word wonderful.

If we break apart the word wonderful- we find a simpler word: wonder. Is it not true that the beauty of the ocean and the way that a rainbow broadcasts the sky after a rainstorm produce a sense of wonder and awe in all of us? And yet, we have been created to have dominion over all of these things Moses tells us in Genesis. Rather, God has created us to be the highest reflection of himself- the truest form of beauty. We were made different from inanimate objects, and from the brute creation; we were “so” made, in the entire structure of our frame, so as to fill the mind with wonder.

Wonder fits along the lines of dreaming, but instead of dreaming of people and things and places that aren’t real, I want to start dreaming of loving and standing in awe of who I have been created to be, the good and the flaws. I want to start loving that God is in control of my wedding day and of every single day of my life, both the glories and imperfections that may befall.

Just the other day, Nick and I were discussing the ways we could “buff up” over the next three months before our wedding. We could form rules, like no dessert unless we workout, only one can of soda per week, workout every single day until the wedding… oh and we could get our teeth whitened. Well, I am quite confident that we’ll have a flawless marriage if we can attain these goals.

Bamb! Again, the truth hits like a hurricane. Wait! I cry. You mean marriage has nothing to do with the color of my teeth and the way i fit into a wedding dress? But…those magazines…I thought… my honeymoon…what about that bakini I’ve been dreaming slipping into?

Taking steps to be healthy and look good are great goals. But I want to focus on a greater reality- that marriage is not about any of these things. A sense of relief is running down my spine. Whew! Praise God for pre-marriage classes and the blessing of older, married friends. Marriage is not about a dreamland of looking and feeling a certain way. Its about reflecting the covenant God has made to his people. Marriage is designed to help us see Christ’s undying love. How he sacrificially served us by loving us in our sin and taking the punishment we deserve. He came first to serve. When we see that his ultimate purpose is to serve us and give us all good things, it drastically changes the way that we serve and love others, whether we are married or not. I am still in beginning stages of learning to love people this way.

So it seems that I really do spend a lot of time in dreamland. Perhaps, over time, I will learn to get in touch with reality. Perhaps the bible truly is the ultimate self-help book. If it isn’t, I have yet to read a book that could help me find a better, more solid sense of worth and love.

Psalm 139: 1-5 says “O LORD, you have searched me and known me! You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from afar. You search out my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways. Even before a word is on my tongue, behold, O LORD, you know it altogether. You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me.”

I can believe that God is a purposeful creator of everything, sovereign over areas I excel in and areas I flounder in. I can stand in awe of this reality. Perhaps areas I flounder in reflect the beauty of dreaming, that I am not yet who I am becoming each day. Immaturity and areas of weakness are a creator’s dreamland- he cannot perfect something that’s already perfect. But he can conform, day by day, an imperfect person to the image of himself.