Noticing & Naming: A Monthly Practice

Unpicky anxiety, letting each other change, and other ordinary glories

May held a handful of sweet celebrations and a fair amount of time spent lost inside of my head. Here are five things I noticed and five I named.

Five Things I Noticed

I’m trying to pay attention to the world around me and to the details of my days. Sometimes these observations may lead to bigger realizations, but other times, the act of noticing is enough. Here are five things I noticed last month:

1. The way Marty enjoys the morning air. He lifts his face to the sky, his wet nose twitching back and forth steadily, almost imperceptibly. Then closes his eyes. I imagine him taking it all in, savoring the scents the way we might a bite of a delicious meal. 

2. A persistent sense of feeling scattered, of trying to move quickly and check things off of lists but feeling minimal progress, like straining to lift heavy hiking boots on a muddy trail. 

3. An impromptu walk to a local ice cream shop felt like the initiation of summer. I think this needs to be a new tradition. 

4. The sky. I got to go back to the ocean this month (twice in two months is quite the novelty), and I was mesmerized by a dark, tumultuous sky that rolled in over the water one afternoon. I could have stared at it for hours as it morphed and shifted, unpredictable and moody.

5. Tom Hanks’s voice transports me. I just finished listening to The Dutch House, and it was an absolute delight. Ann Patchett’s masterful writing pulled me in, and Tom Hanks’s narration brought it to life. His character is so believable, his inflections so warm and familiar. When I’m listening to him, I could be a teenager watching You’ve Got Mail on a rainy day with my mom.

Five Things I Named

I have a loud internal life, and naming what’s going on the inside helps to quiet things down. When we can put thoughts and emotions into words, fear begins to lose its power, next steps come into focus, and we realize we’re not actually alone. Here are five things I named in May:

1. Presence matters. Getting to celebrate milestones with people you love is really meaningful. Sometimes it seems like the formless days of the pandemic were decades ago, but I don’t want to lose the wonder of how good and important it is to mark these moments together.  

2. My happiest moments were spent outside. Some good outdoor moments included eating lunch on a patio with Isaac and my parents, walking around my alma mater’s campus at golden hour, biking to meet friends, reading in a hammock, having good conversations with my feet in the Atlantic, and laughing hard with friends while sitting by the pool. On days I get too lost in my to-do list (or in my head), I need to remember how nourishing it is to get outside.

   

3. Anxiety isn’t picky. It’s just as happy to send me spiraling over small things as it is to make my heart race over the fear of deep pain. Anxiety can cause me to fixate on things that are relatively small—tasks that need to be done, wondering what someone thinks about me, questioning how to spend my time on a given day. But it’s just as content to plague me with bigger concerns too. I see a missed call and my mind whirs with worst-case scenarios until I have a chance to call back. I read another horrific headline and I want to both cry and shovel shame on top of myself because why am I worrying about small things when there is immense suffering in the world?  
   
   It doesn’t feel like it in the moment, but I know there may be some good in what anxiety is trying to tell me. Maybe it’s giving me the push I need to finish a project, or maybe it’s a clarifying force, helping me remember what is actually most important in my life. But letting the anxiety (or the shame) take over isn’t helping anyone. 
   
   So, when I realize I’ve been holding my breath, I try to breathe: In through my nose, out through my mouth. In for four counts, out for five. I sit on the floor. I pet Marty. I plead with God a little. I try to exercise or at least get outside. I do my best to refocus and try to do what this moment requires, just that, nothing else. For now, that’s all I can do. For now, that’s enough. 

   

4. Sometimes, things we once feared become unexpected gifts. I had a lot of anxiety before Isaac and I got engaged. That’s a story for another day, but during that season, one of the things I remember being afraid of was how Isaac might change in the future. How was I supposed to make a lifelong commitment when I didn’t know who he would become or, for that matter, who I would become? It seemed like an enormous leap of faith (and rightly so).
   
   We celebrated our seventh anniversary last week, and in some ways, I was right. I couldn’t have guessed how we’d grow and change, all the myriad of ways we’d be shaped by our choices and by circumstances outside of our control. One time years ago, I told Isaac I didn’t really care for fresh flowers, and he told me he didn’t really like hugs. In these and so many (more significant) ways, we’ve changed over the years. Author Esau McCaulley says this about his marriage: 
   
   “We had to give up enough of ourselves to make room for the other person, but we had to retain a sufficient amount of who we were to avoid bitterness. All marriages become a third thing, neither one partner’s dream nor the other’s, but a different glory, an ordinary one we made together.”¹
   
   I couldn’t have known how time would stretch and form us, but watching how Isaac changes as he becomes more himself and as we become more of a “third thing” isn’t scary anymore. It’s a gift to get to fumble our way through questions and shifts together in this ordinary, but glorious, work of building a marriage. 

5. I didn’t think I would ever finish this post. This one’s a bonus. After a week that derailed us, I’d about give up on finishing this, thinking maybe I’d just skip this month. The words weren’t coming. Or if they did, they felt dramatic or confusing or not quite true. I’m reminded that this is always how I feel about writing. It feels like this-will-never-ever-be-done and what-in-the-world-am-I-trying-to-say and maybe-I-should-just-quit-now. But then you keep coming back, keep your fingers moving across the keyboard, and somehow it eventually gets done. Or at least it’s good enough. So keep going, creative friends. Keep showing up. You’re doing great.

I loved soaking in Sarah Westfall’s new book this past month. Check out a couple quotes that stuck with me below.

I love fresh flowers. Hard to say what mid-twenties Missy was thinking when she said otherwise.

Questions for Your Practice

1. When was a time that someone showed up, in person, to mark a milestone with you? What did their presence mean to you? Who can you show up for this month?

2. What were some of your favorite moments last month? Think about times you felt the most like yourself or at least a little more at ease.

3. Try to pay attention the next time you feel anxious. Where do you feel anxiety physically? What does your body need (deep breaths, movement, stillness, etc.)? Look for one small step you can take to slow down the inner swirl.

Words That Resonated

In an effort to give us more language for our lives, here are a few quotes that stuck with me last month. 

“[Belonging] is not dependent on a particular person, place, or idea. It is not a status to possess or attain like a merit badge. Situations change. People change. And we can let them. Because despite the uncertainty that comes with being human together, belonging is a welcome we carry with us.”—Sarah E. Westfall, The Way of Belonging²

“Coming home to God allows you to erase the lines you so often draw around yourself and brings you ‘out to a spacious place’ where in the same sentence you can be too much and too little, enough and yet not enough (Psalm 18:19). When the Father whispers ‘everything is yours,’ you can let the breath of God fill your lungs because you do not have to perform your way into his presence but can come just as you are.” —Sarah E. Westfall, The Way of Belonging

“Trying to live someone else’s life, or to live by an abstract norm, will invariably fail—and may even do great damage. . . .I must listen to my life and try to understand what it is truly about—quite apart from what I would like it to be about—or my life will never represent anything real in the world, no matter how earnest my intentions.” —Parker Palmer, Let Your Life Speak

“‘Desire’ is a word many of us don’t know what to do with. It’s a hot-potato kind of word, one we don’t want to linger with too long lest we get into trouble. But desire is simply energy, a motivating force toward something we long for. Can we be misled by desire? Yes. But can we also be misled by avoiding, fearing, or bypassing desire? Also yes. Perhaps a helpful thing to remember about desire is this: knowing and naming what you want is not the same as forcing or demanding what you want. Demanding a desire be met is a form of aggression. Naming a desire you have is an honest confession.” —Emily P. Freeman, How to Walk into a Room

Thanks for being here. Walking with you as we continue to notice and name what’s happening in our inner lives and our right-now realities.

1. This quote is from Esau McCaulley’s book How Far to the Promised Land.

2. This beautiful book from

Sarah E. Westfall

releases on Tuesday, and you can preorder it now to get it as soon as it comes out. It’s a gentle but powerful companion for anyone who is longing to be known and wrestling with questions about what community even means anymore, which is to say all of us.