Tonight I am home alone in my tornado of a house with something akin to free time. So I pulled out a basin, filled it with soap and warm water, and moved everything out of my kitchen so I could get a good honest look at the floor. It is a little odd, I know, to enjoy washing the floor as much as I do. However, there are few household tasks that I enjoy more than mopping the kitchen floor with a rag on my hands and knees. A lady I nannied for gave me her electric mop…it just was not the same.

The kitchen is servant and slave to the rest of the house. The floor bears the bulk of this inglorious business while the household takes and takes from it. My floor in particular is speckled with tea and wine, the occasional run away pea, and grains of rice that managed to escape. I find smatterings of frosting and batter flecked from the mixer that got away from me. There are foot prints from every shoe I wore these past few weeks (more honestly, months) as I dashed in and out for this or that; they are outlined in cranberry sauce and cumin, pie crust and cilantro leaves.

I forget that I like this. I forget that I benefit from this ritual, this washing of my kitchen’s feet. It is silly that I forget because I so often tell people that a person can tell how I feel by the state of my kitchen. If it looks unused, I am not taking care of myself. If there are stacks of unwashed dishes, I am trying desperately to keep up and remember all of the pieces of my health. If you cannot see the counters and the sink, well…pray for me because there is likely little else that you can do to calm my brain and heart once such a tumult has taken center stage (unless you are one of the few who can roll up your sleeves and help take care of the mess without stepping on my toes or putting dishes away in the wrong cupboard).

Anyway, this is my way of managing to do more than live on the surface of my environment. Somehow that is really important to me. To live deeply rooted in a place without destroying it. I do not know if that makes sense.  Let us just say for now that I have taken care of my house and it has taken care of me in return.

These last few weeks have blown me in every direction. Tyler proposed and I accepted. I feel like that shouldn’t have changed anything all that much. After three years of dating, we knew we wanted to get married and we were working through all of the many things I was afraid of or unsure about, rational and irrational. Still, I was surprised and it seemed that my brain had fallen out the back of my head. Any ability to analyze, sort, or prioritize information was crippled and metaphorically bedridden for a little over a week. I am indeed delighted but, if I am honest, that was not the singular emotion riding my synapses that first week or so. Some days, it was not even the dominant emotion. I am such a timid creature until I am certain of something. I struggle against an inner compulsion to meet every expectation put in front of me and I shrink back the second I realize I was not made that way or do not wish to meet that standard or might not be totally capable. Marriage terrifies me in a deep and unsettling way.

Tyler and I have been examining this fear for awhile now. Basically, it is the same pet fear I keep around all the time but amped up with a new mask and a thousand extra expectations that I have no intention of meeting. I know I as a woman am supposed to want to be beautiful, but I do not. I mean, sure, being beautiful sure beats being ugly. But I have always felt beautiful excepting the intermittent trespasses of the unhelpful man or ignorant woman. I do not want to be more beautiful enough to fear failing. What do I want? To be capable.

Can I tell you something? 2014 hit me hard where it counted. Evicted. Fired. Four months of unemployment. Folding t-shirts. Largely unable to communicate to my coworkers because I couldn’t remember all of the Spanish I had learned, couldn’t relearn fast enough. I was in and out of depression. I couldn’t explain to friends what was wrong or why I needed them. When I went home to Montana, I spent so much of the time explaining myself and defending my beliefs it was exhausting. I was just following God around a desert that I often felt like was made out of my own ineptitude. And the gut punch? I have no idea how far away or how close flight school is. But I took most of that in stride…kind of a drunken stagger really. But, I was upright and still trying. Marriage is extra terrifying because of my fear of not being capable. A fear that, after 2014, seems a lot less irrational than it did previously.

I have heard all of the quaint things that people can say about how no one is good at marriage and so on. Odd as it may seem, those statements *are not helpful*. I am more likely to panic than to be comforted. In that panic, I have found just a few friends who are truly helpful and a partnership with Tyler that continues to encourage me that marriage does not have to end in disaster.

Tonight, as I clear the clutter from my kitchen, I feel like I am coming home to myself. I have no idea what the next few days or weeks or months have in store. Quite certainly, the Panic will find me again. But it will also leave again. Each time, it stays a little less long and I am glad for that. I know myself to be mostly capable. If I can add humility and grace to whatever skills I have, I think marriage will be good.