The Game-Designer's Wife

Thus far, I've been rather cryptic in my writings about my and my husband's current situation. This I have mostly been able to chalk up to a desire for anonymity, the Internet is a big place, no specifics, blah blah blah blahdy blah, but I am coming clean with the real reason tonight. I've been embarrassed. Of what? I guess it's one thing to say, "Our situation is strange and unique," and another to say, "God called my husband and I to live with his parents for two years so he can make board games." 

If you're like 90% of the people we know, you will look at us and our two little boys living in the spare rooms of my in-laws' place and think, "Are you sure about that? Because that seems a little...wrong." And you would be right, it does seem a little wrong. So much so, that I spent the first year of this process convinced it had to be wrong, that this couldn't be the real plan, that it must get normal at some point. Well, I'm tired of being ashamed of something I have no reason to hide. I'm tired of defending myself, my husband, and God. I am so freaking proud of my husband and, honestly, of myself, for getting where we are. So why the fear? Why the shame? Because of how it looks? That’s just plain stupid. And so, just to eliminate the temptation of waiting for clear unmistakable evidence that we were right all along, I'm going to tell our little tale before the story is over. Honestly, I don't know how this will end, but I know how far my family has come and the amazing things God has done with us and through us in the last two years and, no matter what the outcome, that’s something to be proud of and something to be shared.

Brian and I met in our final year of high school. He had it on his mind to be an engineer and, when we went to college that fall, he majored in physics while I signed up for English with an emphasis in writing. I found his chosen occupation to be a very attractive quality, having spent my life watching my own parents struggle through creating and maintaining their business endeavors and moving on when one thing didn’t work out. Brian would have a desk job and a briefcase while I sat at home clicking away on my typewriters and watching the children, an idyllic fairy tale ending to our high-school-sweethearthood.

It didn’t take long for Brian to realize that he hated physics and also was not doing so well. The things he enjoyed, story-telling, being creative, and hanging out at our school’s War-gaming club, didn't lend themselves to a "normal" career that would support a family, so he signed up for journalism. The problem was, he didn't like journalism any more than physics and he no longer had time to try another major. So, four and a half years later, we were married and he graduated with a degree in Visual Journalism. And, as was proper for any young married man, Brian was looking for a job. Any job. There was nothing. We thought when he had a degree things would change. They didn't. Our apartment had been paid for through the end of the school year by his parents, with the understanding that we would pay them back when he got a job. He didn't. When our lease was up that summer, we moved in with my in-laws. I was two months pregnant, and perfectly and sublimely miserable.

What was not on my mind was that I may need to be in that situation for a reason. I was convinced I was being punished for Brian not knowing what he was doing in college, for getting married too soon, for getting pregnant too quickly. Basically. I spent four months wading through severe cases of all-day-morning-sickness and self-pity.

Brian got a job that October as a photographer and social media manager for a vacation rental company up in the mountains. Secluded, cold, and far away. Just what I had always dreamed of! But not Brian. He didn't like his dull and frustrating job. He didn't like that our friends and family weren't around. He missed having things to do and places to go other than K Mart. He spent his free time working on developing characters for the games we played in college and even started making up some rules of his own. He had a few good ideas, but this hobby of his wasn’t real life. I tried to have enthusiasm enough for both of us. I tried to get him excited about the fact that we were finally doing what we were "supposed" to do, supporting ourselves, starting a family, being adults. I tried to tune out his discontentment because I was finally happy.

That changed, however, when our son was born.

It seemed to happen all at once that I didn't want to be trapped up on a freaking mountain all alone while Brian worked at a job at which he had no enjoyment at all. I wanted my son to grow up surrounded by all the people who loved him, not just hear about them and see them on holidays. I mentioned to Brian that I would like to move back home when we could. The next day, he was laid off. I took it as God leading us to the next location where we would do the same things we had been doing before, just in a better place.

The next time we moved in with the in-laws, I was excited. Brian had a little job experience so getting work again wouldn't be nearly as difficult and, in the meantime, I would have ample support with my amazingly adorable, though sleepless, baby boy.

One month turned into four. No job. My sister-in-law got married, and so moved out. I still lived there. Our little boy was still quite sleepless. Brian was spending his time going between looking for work and working on "projects", mostly games.

I began to hate games.

But why? Messing with “mechanics” and “balancing playstyle” made my weird husband so happy. He had some pretty good ideas, but then, no, people don’t design board games for a living. People, responsible normal people, work in offices and bring home money. The last thing that was going to happen would be creating a game company from my mother-in-law’s dining room table. Right? Well, while he worked on his games and even launched a Kickstarter campaign for an early version of “Winds of Fortune”, I spent my time spiraling into a chasm of doubts, depression, and contempt for myself, for our circumstances, and mostly, for God. I stopped praying. I stopped blogging. I lost the one thing on which I had based every aspect of my life, my faith. 

The first Kickstarter campaign for “Winds of Fortune” started in November. Probably because he knew I wanted it over as soon as possible. Was it finished? Not quite. Was it perfect? Certainly not. Half way through, we had only made a small dent in our $35,000 goal.

Brain took the website down and went back to filling out job applications. It looked like the phase was over and we were back to real life. That’s when I found out we were going to have another baby. Brian got another job. Things were looking up. Until three weeks later, when he got laid off yet again.

My pregnancy and that job loss were responsible for two things: helping me hit rock bottom when my all-day-morning-sickness had me completely physically debilitated and when all hope of moving out before baby #2 came along was gone, and they gave me the motivation I needed to revisit my dialogue with God.

I started asking the big questions and not accepting small answers. I started looking outside of what I wanted to find what God may have been wanting for me. I picked out certain bits of blog posts I had written while trying to cope with all of this, and, daily, I practiced believing them. It was a slow process that happened by increments that I still can’t trace or explain, but, somehow, I started appreciating my life. I started to trust God again.

I realized that I wouldn’t have gotten through two very difficult pregnancies had we not lived with my in-laws and if Brian had been working. I realized I had gained a crucial understanding of family and community that never would have made sense to me otherwise. I started to see that, while Brian had missed out on learning useful career skills at school, he had learned what his passion was, and that passion had become, or always had been, his calling.

I thought at one point, “Why does he want to be part of the gaming community?” I remembered some of the people from the gaming club in college, completely detached from reality, dabbling in very dark content. And then it made sense. I wanted Brian to care about something more important than gaming. It took me a little too long to understand that he already did; it was the gamers.

My husband wasn’t the top ad exec in the gray suit with the briefcase. He wasn’t the brilliant world-famous traveling photographer. He was a game designer, and a damn good one. His niche lay in understanding how people think and what they enjoy. His compassion is for the nerdy pale kids who get lost in dark fantasy worlds and need an alternative. His understanding is in what a proper family should be doing on a Thursday night together. He had spent the previous year and a half trying to fight what he felt God was calling him to do. He made his calling a hobby. And I had done all I could to keep it that way. Maybe the reason why nothing was working out for us was because we were trying so hard to be normal while we were never meant to be.

That’s why I was able to encourage him when he said he wanted to stop looking for work and focus on game design, to trust what he feels called to do and let go of appearances. That’s why I was able to get excited when things started to take off, rather than waiting for this phase to be over to get back to something more “reliable”.

But somehow, I’ve still been ashamed. I’ve still been loath to try to explain why we’re living with my in-laws and why Brian hasn’t filled out a single job application since April. I’ve still been afraid that things won’t work out and that I won’t be able to stick it to the nay-sayers and tell them, “Ha! See, we did it! God was guiding us. He was looking out for us. And we were following him!”

There is a lot of confirmation that we’re on the right track, but again, the story isn’t over. I don’t have a happy ending. I have a hope and a promise and a recently fulfilled Kickstarter campaign. But, I also have an amazing husband, two beautiful little boys (who sleep quite well), a wonderful and supportive family, and a God who makes all things work together for my good. I sometimes hate how it all looks, but this is what faith sometimes looks like. It looks uncertain and messy and strange. It looks crazy and illogical and foolish. It’s scary as all hell. But it’s also been the best two years of my life. Not always in feeling, but always in the reality of what God has been doing with me and in the metamorphosis I’ve endured, as a wife, as a mother, and as a disciple.

I don’t know what will come of all of this. I don’t know at what point, if ever, my husband’s calling will be traditionally profitable. I’m trying not to care that I don’t know and just appreciate the messy scary and chaotic beauty of trying something different out of what I really really hope is obedience. I know God will catch us no matter what. I just don’t know what that will look like. 

P.S. If you would like to secure a copy of Winds of Fortune from the first printing with exclusive cards, you still have three days to do so here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/64397847/winds-of-fortune-naval-strategy-board-card-game

P.P.S. If you want to know more about SafeHaven Games, go here: http://www.safehaven-games.com/

Bitter Pill

When I was a kid, I thought suffering was terribly romantic. One may be able to blame Mr. Disney considering that all of the characters that seemed worth looking up to were orphaned and abused and without a heap of misery from which to be rescued, you had no story. It was the damsel in distress that you rooted for so who wouldn't want distress?

As I got older, and experienced real problems, I didn't need to sit and hope my life would someday become interesting. I had problems which were evident and inescapable, and I can't say that part of me from my childhood wasn't somewhat satisfied. Being broken meant I mattered. Suffering gave me something interesting to talk about. Dealing with my problems seemed really hard and I figured that as soon as I wasn't the depressed messed up kid anymore, I wouldn't be me. Besides, who would want to save me if I wasn't distressed? Who would care? And so I stayed miserable. For a very very long time.

There is a phenomenon I have heard of occurring in people with entirely real illnesses or injuries who have a hard time getting better, primarily because they don't really want to for whatever reason. We look at these people as attention seekers or lazy or selfish. Don't they think about what they are doing to their families? Why are they wasting so much of their lives? There's a treatment. Take it. Get better.

Similarly, and I think much more commonly, our identities can become wrapped up in things like the pain we're in, the injustice we experience, the unpleasant possibilities we face, and the anger, bitterness, worry, and fear that accompany them. And at times, we just aren't sure who we would be without our afflictions. Or, sometimes it seems easier to just let a problem lie even if there is a solution. Even if that solution is found in the one we claim and declare to the world to be our savior, our hope, and our peace.

You may be thinking, not me! But have you ever chosen bitterness over forgiveness? Fear and worry over peace? Grief in place of healing? The murky and miserable present over the hope of the future? Have you ever let Satan trick you into digging a little hole of self pity anger or despair while ignoring the hand God is give you to pull yourself out? I have! I have frequently. I have only over the last several years come to recognize the ways I have been basking in infirmity and the time I wasted doing so.

Even culturally, I feel like there is almost some sort of cool unspoken status symbol in suffering. Even in our churches, people feel like if they don't have a good enough prayer request, nobody will care about them. Bleck!! All this kind of attitude is accomplishing is handing Satan the rope to lead us around with. And it sucks. It sucks for us, and it sucks for anyone who looks at the one who calls themselves "Christian" while walking day after day under a rain-cloud.

Now, I think as people we are entitled to having a reaction to our circumstances and, while my life has in no way been free of hardship, I certainly haven't had to go through the worst of possibilities and can only speak from my own perspective. I believe taking time to grieve is important to healing. Sometimes life does just suck. Jesus said there will be trouble, and there is no denying that. It's real and it's not fun. But he has also overcome the world. He has overcome the injustice. He makes love, joy, peace, patients, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self control possible in a very very broken world. I am not a fan of the belief that all Christians should be walking around perky all the time, that's just gross and unrealistic. But having peace is different than having a smile on your face. It's never moving beyond grief or fear, or always returning to suffering like a box of Oreos that you really just need to close and put away that robs us of the better things God intends for us. Sometimes this is a long process, I understand. But even in process, I think it's important to be aware of the bait Satan could inevitably dangle. I don't mean to add to anyone's burden, only to share what I wish I had known before.

Maybe you're not like me, maybe you never have chosen to let a wound fester. Maybe you haven't taken Satan's bait and you live free in the truth of God Almighty! But then, maybe you know somebody who is bound up in a lie of satisfying destruction. Maybe you have a close friend, a brother or sister in Christ, and you have watched them wear their misery and woes like a banner, and have been too afraid to let them know what it's doing to them.

I haven't personally confronted anyone in this situation, but I'll admit there have been times I probably should have. In fact, I can think of some people right now and I physically cringe at the idea of trying to tactfully bring up a topic like this. I have, however, personally experienced the discomfort of having to climb out of the aforementioned hole. It's not fun. It takes swallowing an uncomfortably large gulp of pride. It sometimes take a very painful process of dealing with the issue rather than basking in it. It's a large cost up front, but you save a lot more in the long run. You save relationships. You save time. You save a huge chunk of your life that God intended to be for something amazing. And that's what we should want for ourselves and for our loved ones.

A while ago, I wrote on pride, and how it can backfire on us. I think the same principal applies here. Whatever we may hope to gain by holding onto our dis-eases, can't compare to the rewards of giving them up.

There are people I'm hurt by. Things that make me angry. Concerning circumstances. Scars I'm tempted to re-open. But God is my Rock. He's my Strong Tower and my Fortress. He is strong when I am weak. He is the source of all wisdom and peace beyond understanding. And he's teaching me to turn to him and let him be my strength to forgive, to heal, to let go, and to take a step forward. My impatience and lack of grace for people who hurt me is just as damaging to me as the injustice done, and I need just as much grace and patients from God as they do.

My only desire here, I suppose, is to get anyone reading this to look at your own lives and your own situations and relationships and spend some time asking God where choosing the rain-cloud has robbed you of your joy and your ability to follow him. Ask for wisdom in dealing with your relationships, and really just strive to see clearly God's intention for your life. I wish you all many blessings and much healing.

Repunctuating

I like commas. I don't claim to always use them perfectly, and sometimes I get creative to a degree that would make Strunk and White cry, but generally, the comma is my favorite grammatical device.

I have begun to notice, however, that it is not God's. In fact, I'm starting to realize that he doesn't permit them. Even commas I never knew existed are slowly being erased from my spiritual philosophy.

I'm coming to realize that while some things God says may not be universal, they are black and white. Meaning, there may be some things that are right for some people and wrong for others, but the individual has a distinct right and wrong for themselves in their situation. When examining my own life, there are no gray areas, no middle grounds, and it's time to eliminate the commas I've put in place.

I believe this is true of all believers, but not for me.

I trust you in all things, just not in this.

I will follow you wherever you may lead me, except there.

Of course that's a sin, except in this situation.

I am to love everyone, just not them.

I'm being stripped of my commas and forced to face the black and white truths before me, and the process has not been pleasant, but the result has been good.

I've told God I want to understand him, no matter what it takes. So he has brought to light all of the fears, the doubts, and the commas.

I know I'm supposed to write what you show me, but I don't want to share it with that person.

I just want my daily bread and provisions for my family, as long as it looks like this.

I will forgive anything, just not that.

I have no secrets, except for those.

Guide every part of my life, Lord, just let me control this.

God hates the commas because they represent all the areas that we haven't surrendered, all of the wounds we choose to keep open rather than let him heal them. They keep us from being what he intended us to be. They hurt us.

I'm tired of being hurt. I'm tired of having wounds. I'm tired of trying to make a case for my qualifiers. I'm tired because it is exhausting trying to slough through all of the run-on sentences in my life.

Commas are pride. They are fear. They are self-righteous. They are empty. They make the rest of the sentence mean nothing.

It's time to simplify. And I think it's time for us, as a body of Christ, to ditch the commas and give Satan a good scare, to believe Jesus when he says we will lose our life when we seek to save it. How awful. How futile.

The worst lie we can believe is that holding on to anything when God has said let go will end well. That's where Satan wants us. That's not where I want to be anymore. I want to be the kind of person who says and means the words
Guide me.
Teach me.
Forgive me.
Help me.
Heal me.
Dig it up.
Get it out.
Show me truth.
Tell me what to do.
I will obey.
I trust you.
with nothing to add or take away. I don't know yet where that will take me. I don't know, but I suspect, that there will be times I will miss my commas. They make things comfortable, and sometimes easier.  However, they certainly don't make things better, period.

I'm back, sort of.

What a complicated couple of months it has been.

For those of you who may be wondering, I have indeed returned from my mid-faith-crisis no worse for wear and quite refreshed. I feel like I'm stepping out for the first time again, and while a little intimidated, I am refocused and much relived of many unnecessary burdens.

Again, for those interested, here is what I've been up to:

The meltdown:
When one is trying really hard not to drown, I imagine it's hard to remember how to swim. At least metaphorically, that's true for me. My current predicaments lead to such confusion and struggling that I ceased to see God through the storm. I began to doubt, and combined with having a thousand conflicting influences about who and what God is or should be, I started to just sink. There was something beautiful in sinking. I was allowed a moment of peace away from the fighting, and the air in my lungs was enough to sustain me until some things became clear.

Oh, the storm has not died down, it's as healthy as ever, thank you, but I know how to float which is so much better than treading water. And overall, God is still looking out for us and we carry on.

And here is what I learned/remembered/gained new perspective on.

God is not a genie.

When trending water, I found myself incredibly frustrated and started begging God to just make it stop. I knew he could. I knew he could stop the waves, the rain, the wind, the cold, and the exhaustion. But he didn't, and I was pissed off. When I stopped asking him to fix it, I began to see that I already knew a little bit about staying alive, and when I asked him for wisdom instead of a magic wand, I learned how to float. God decided not to fix my problems, but in many many ways, he's shown me how to work through them. For that, I am extremely grateful and far better off than before.

Having faith and joy doesn't mean you can't think bad things are happening.

Following God and trusting him doesn't have to look the same way as being pleased or satisfied with his choices. He made us with extensive emotional capacity for pain and empathy. We're supposed to use them. There were too many people telling me that faith meant walking around with a smile on my lips and a spring in my step, those people were wrong. Faith is trudging forward with trust in Gods ability to carry out his plan, tend his people, and overcome the world. It doesn't include liking his decisions or never saying "downright lousy" when someone asks how you're doing.

Lungs are not elbows.

God made people unique and particular to how he wants them to be. Thus, he communicates with different people differently. I forgot that for a while and it nearly broke me. I stopped hearing from God and had a hundred voices trying to tell me why. Say God is the brain of his body, giving out signals and directions. The lungs get their directions and do their function without really trying. They just do their thing and the body keeps going. If they tell the elbow to just lay back and let things happen, that poor confused elbow starts to think he's only functioning properly when moving involuntarily and he suddenly won't move unless it's reflexively. Likewise, if the elbow tells a lung it's not trying hard enough and needs to listen more closely to specific instructions, it then starts working out of sync with the other lung and won't move unless it is ABSOLUTELY POSITIVE that it was told to. Sadly, those who are equipped to keep us accountable to truth while also being encouraging in our unique relationship with God are few, and many push for something God never meant for us to have. The solution I have found is that we can't go wrong reading the Bible, praying for wisdom, and having just a little faith in ourselves too.

Optimism can be fun.

This is something I had never really tried before, mostly because of false expectations of what it looked like. Hope makes sense to me now. We have to cling to the possibility of better. No mater how small that possibility seems, things can always turn around. God is still with us and he's still in charge, which means things are okay, even if they aren't what we would call good. We can't let fear and misery and disappointment keep us from believing in better or we may as well just stop. I think I learned this when I tried to give up and realized I couldn't, because no matter how focused I was on the chances of worse, I couldn't ignore the tiny shred of a chance for better.

These days, I'm not trying so hard. I'm enjoying the good and being thankful for the blessing and spending time just being aware of the fact that God is here.

A Confession to Make

I'm writing this post entirely because I'm absolutely terrified to, and I don't think I should have to be. I know a lot of people who have reluctantly said the same things to me and my own response to them is part of the reason I'm not too excited about the responses I'll be receiving. So far, my wonderful husband is the only one who knows what is going on, and I think it's time I explain the recent dwindling blog posts and lack of social interactions.

In a nutshell, my faith is scant at best and completely lost at worst. I kind of go back and forth between, "I want to believe God still cares and is still in my life even if I can't see him right now and I don't feel that way," and "I'm not sure why I ever really believed this stuff in the first place, but it's not working out anymore."

I know the few people to care enough to read my blog are the few who also care enough to be completely freaked out right now. I appreciate that. I appreciate your love and concern. I appreciate how hard some of you desperately want to fight the doubts I'm having with me. I know there is a lot of love and passion being rounded up as you read these words and I thank you for that.

From experience, I know how hard it is to hear this, and I also know how hard it is to wait and mull over and choose the right response. To those of you who I failed to do that with, I'm deeply and truly sorry.

Love is strange because it is so closely related to anger, not towards a person, but towards their problem. To love someone well, you have to hate what you think is hurting them, and that often comes across badly. That's what I'm afraid of, the attack on me that will inevitably come when someone tries to attack my demons.

Now that I find myself on the very dark and lonely side of this subject, I at least know how I would best receive your loving intentions. If nothing else, I'm glad this is happening because it's good to learn and to share how to deal with it.

Here is how you can help me, or whoever else may be in the same kind of place if you don't actually know me.

Pray for me. I'm not sure if that works anymore, but if you are, and you're right, I can sure use it.

If you want to talk, please listen. What I could use is an open ear and some judgement-free support. Hear me out, try to understand my struggle, and give me some credit for having legitimate reasons for my doubts. The last thing I want to do is try to talk you out of your faith, so please extend respect to me as well where I am.

Be encouraging. I know this word has different definitions to different people so let me give you mine. Give courage to me. Build me up. Give me reason to have confidence in myself while I fight this. Positive encouragement: "I know things look bleak right now, but I know that you will figure this out because you are a strong person who won't give up. I believe God loves you, and so do I. Can I give you some advice?" Here you are giving me reason to feel validated and loved. Negative encouragement: "Of course God loves and cares for you, there is so much evidence you're ignoring that you should know is true. You're just dealing with a lot and when that's over this will be too. You need to read this and pray more." Here, you are making me feel pressured to be fixed and like you think I'm stupid.

I made the mistake of bombarding my friends with rhetoric and apologetics of every kind. I dismissed their struggles as weakness or failure. Now I know that faith is sometimes too personal for argument. I know I'm not weak. I know I'm not a failure. I know I didn't make a flighty and petty decision. I also know all the rhymes and reasons that you have for thinking I'm wrong. I have a 4 year degree from a Bible college where it got an A in apologetics and never less than a B in all my thirty-three units of Biblical studies. I didn't throw away my beliefs on a dramatic whim. I mourn the loss of the thing that once brought me so much joy and purpose. I fear for what my doubts mean for my family. If I could conjure it all back, I would. It's just not that easy right now. I can't ignore my reasons for doubt, I have to face them and, hopefully, conquer them.

Like I said, I'm afraid to post this, but I don't think I should have to be. But see, I've seen my sister expelled from school for having doubts and she was only a teenager. I've been to churches where the kids who could fake it the best were the ones who were made to feel special and the ones who struggled were left in the corner alone. And, I personally engaged with two other people in a rhetoric war to try to argue the struggles out of our forth friend's head.

Christians can be some of the best warriors, which is good when it's properly directed at Satan and the like, but that defensive stance and expert weapon handling are too often aimed at broken and hurting people who end up all the more bloody and bruised. I think of how Jesus approached people with gentleness and how open his arms were to them. It would be easier for me, and probably a lot of other people, to believe all of that is real if his followers responded the same way.

Again, your love and support and prayers are deeply appreciated. I'll update the blog as things progress.