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Brittany L. Bergman

Savoring motherhood, building marriage, and living simply

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Picture Perfect

May 23 26 Comments

When Dan and I were dating, I used to daydream about the moment when he would propose to me. I pictured him recounting all the reasons why he loved me, dropping to one knee, and asking the million-dollar (or, diamond-solitaire) question. I would be caught off guard, adorably throwing my hands over my mouth. Tears would spring to my eyes as I choked out a “Yes, of course!”

The tears, I knew, were a given: I well up at sappy commercials and photos of rescued dogs who need homes. I just hoped that my tears would be the pretty kind — the ones that stay put in my eyes, except for a single drop sliding down my cheek for dramatic effect — rather than the ugly ones that come out in sobs, staining my face.

The night Dan proposed, I was genuinely surprised. We were on day two of a mission trip to the Dominican Republic, and our group was staying at a small, locally owned hotel right on the beach. He suggested a moonlit stroll along the water before dinner started.

We walked down the wooden steps and let our feet sink into the sand, still warm from the sun that had just set. We stopped after a few minutes, and Dan read aloud a letter he’d written to me before we left home, about his vision for our future and his hopes for our life together. I’m sure it’s painfully obvious what was coming next, but I kid you not, I still had no idea what was happening. So when he got down on one knee, bravely opening the ring box over the sand, I’d had no time to mentally prepare. I put my hands up to my mouth like I knew I was supposed to, and I looked away from Dan’s eager face, willing the tears to come. They didn’t. I waited another second that felt like a minute; my eyes stayed dry.

I had concentrated so hard on what I thought my reaction should be that I had totally missed the moment. I shamelessly asked Dan to ask me again, committing myself to remember the way he said each word and the smile on his face as he obliged my crazy request. I took a mental snapshot of the moment and then said a resounding yes, letting him slip the ring on my finger (ever so gingerly — did I mention the sand?).

***

I did this same thing when Dan asked “Will you be my girlfriend?” and when he eventually said “I love you” for the first time. I tried to make my reaction look and sound and feel the way I thought it should rather than simply allowing myself be fully in the moment, reacting in a natural way.

Long before all these events, I had stopped believing the fantasy of romantic comedies: that each person has a soulmate, that everything is set right when we find that one person, that love is unstoppable once unleashed. Though I knew on a large scale that love takes work and no relationship is as simple as Hollywood would have us think, somewhere inside I still desired for even my small-scale moments to shine with cinematic perfection. I wanted to be the star of my story and hear the overture ushering in my happily-ever-after.

I do this in small ways too. I put pressure on myself to layer meaning onto every snuggle from my daughter, every date night with Dan, every conversation with a friend. I envision perfect Mother’s Days and birthdays and Christmases, complete with Instagrammable photos to prove that our perfect day actually happened. But I often find myself so wound up on these days that small frustrations — things that would hardly ping my radar most days — result in total derailment.

I don’t think my intentions are bad. My goal is that I want the important moments to last longer than the photo for social media. I want the mental snapshots to be just as happy as the real photos. I want these memories to be both precious and durable, the sorts of stories we’ll tell around the dinner table someday of that one Easter when . . .

But I know my puppet-master tendencies are more of a hindrance than a help toward this goal. I can’t generate a perfect moment any more than I can turn back time and edit all the blunders and missteps out my memories. And when I’m being honest with myself, I wouldn’t want to.

It’s tempting to tie this up with a trite little bow and say something about how the imperfections and unanticipated twists are what make the moments memorable. (For instance, my wedding was quite a memorable event: A flash summer storm rolled in unexpectedly, soaking me and the entire wedding party on our way over to the ceremony site. I’m still not over it.)

Sometimes imperfections do color memories in not-so-great ways. But often I’m the only one who notices these imperfections, simply because I’m so hyperaware of wanting everything to be rosy . . . and I’m definitely the only one who dwells on them after the fact.

Tsh Oxenreider, when describing how she travels with her kids, said that she wants them to remember how they felt during special moments rather than exactly what they did. This is what I’ve really been after the whole time — to create memories that have a warm incandescence. But in the process, I’ve tried to engineer the feeling by controlling the experience rather than letting it glow on its own.

You can't engineer picture-perfect moments by controlling the experience. Click To Tweet

***

When Dan and I were trying for a baby, I thought of a million possible cute ways to tell him when I finally got pregnant — wrapping up a pregnancy test, purchasing a sweet onsie, giving him a book about fatherhood. But the morning when I saw those two pink lines, the ones I thought wouldn’t be coming for me this month, I knew I couldn’t wait to create the perfect moment. I needed to tell him the news that was not just mine but ours; I needed him to share in the joy and fear with me; I needed him to know about this growing poppy seed, because the act of sharing it with another person would ground me in what was real.

So that morning, as I was turning over a piece of chicken sausage on the cast-iron skillet, I blurted out the words, “I’m pregnant.” I felt peace instead of pressure as we stood there in our pajamas in that tiny kitchen in our first apartment. The moment wasn’t fancy or romantic, planned or perfect; it was simply us.

For too long, I tried to engineer picture perfect moments: Christmases, birthdays, Mother's Days. I came to find that you can't create a happy memory by controlling the experience; you just have to learn to experience it naturally.
For too long, I tried to engineer picture perfect moments: Christmases, birthdays, Mother's Days. I came to find that you can't create a happy memory by controlling the experience; you just have to learn to experience it naturally.
The most memorable moments aren't fancy or romantic, planned or perfect. Click To Tweet

What helps you to experience and enjoy the present moment?

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Filed Under: Marriage Tagged With: joy, love, marriage, moments, perfection, perfectionism, pregnancy, relationships, romance

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brittanylbergman

Brittany L. Bergman
✔️ Kamala shirt ✔️ Kamala pearls ✔️ Ka ✔️ Kamala shirt
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✔️ Kamala curls

It’s a great day to witness the shattering of a glass ceiling, to embrace empathy and decency, and to breathe a collective sigh of relief.

The work is only just beginning, but today, we celebrate. Congratulations, President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris! 👏🏼🎉💙
What a beautiful, exhausting, festive, heartbreaki What a beautiful, exhausting, festive, heartbreaking, cozy, chaotic-but-strangely-quiet Christmas we had. ✨🎄✨

That’s a wrap for me on 2020—I’ll be off social media until sometime in January. May you be filled with peace and hope as we close this year but still wait for the close of this chapter in our history. 💜
I have faced Christmases full of grief and loss; d I have faced Christmases full of grief and loss; depression and rage; exhaustion and loneliness. But I can honestly say this is the weariest Christmas I can remember. I say that not to shine a spotlight on me, but to say that I have a feeling this might be your experience too. I’m with you.
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And so the words to my favorite Christmas hymn hit me different this year. They resonate in a place much deeper, more tender and true than ever before. I rejoice in the giggles of my meltdown-prone child. I rejoice in stolen moments alone in the dark, the room lit only by the glow of the Christmas tree. I rejoice in every video and every social media post I see of a frontline worker receiving the COVID vaccine, our ticket out of this nightmare. I rejoice in the vision that next Christmas might look more familiar than this one does. I rejoice in the hope of Christ, whose universal, creative, motherly love holds the whole universe together.
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On this Christmas Eve, I’ll leave you with this quote from Howard Thurman. I hope these words bring a slant of light to your day.
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“The symbol of Christmas—what is it? It is the rainbow arched over the roof of the sky when the clouds are heavy with foreboding. It is the cry of life in the newborn babe when, forced from its mother’s nest, it claims its right to live. It is the brooding Presence of the Eternal Spirit making crooked paths straight, rough places smooth, tired hearts refreshed, dead hopes stir with newness of life. It is the promise of tomorrow at the close of every day, the movement of life in defiance of death, and the assurance that love is sturdier than hate, that right is more confident than wrong, that good is more permanent than evil.”
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Whatever and however you celebrate at this time of year, I’m sending you all my love and peace. 💫
I found my Christmas spirit this weekend, just in I found my Christmas spirit this weekend, just in the nick of time.

I baked cookies with Selah without getting frustrated (first time ever?), took the kids on drive to see Christmas lights, and wrapped a bunch of gifts.

But here’s what I think did the trick, and please do steal this idea (because I stole it from someone else but have no idea who): Magical Movie Night™️.

On Saturday night, I stealthily placed a golden ticket under Selah’s pillow (which I printed from the internets and colored quickly with a yellow marker; good enough is good enough for Magical Movie Night!). We put Eamon to bed and got Selah ready for bed too, going through all the normal motions of brushing teeth, putting on pajamas, picking out a book. When we climbed into bed, I told her to look under her pillow.

She was confused when she found the ticket, and I told her it was for a Christmas movie night. “When?” she asked. “Right now!” I said. “What do you mean ‘right now’?” When it dawned on her that she was going to stay up past her bedtime to have a special movie night with Mommy and Daddy (sans Eamon), she lost her mind with excitement.

Bonus: Gramma was waiting downstairs with a bag of popcorn and Swedish Fish!

We snuggled under blankets, turned on Elf, and laughed our festive butts off. (This was her first time watching Elf, and it felt like the dawning of a new era. It’s such a big kid movie! And she loved it! Hold me. 😭)

Deck the halls, bring on Christmas, fill my mug with holly jolly goodness. 

I also acknowledge this has been a crappy year in so many ways, and I know many of you are not going to be able to access Christmas cheer this year. That’s okay. The real spirit of Christmas is light breaking through the dark, love making a way, and the beauty that can’t help seeping through the dirty, messy, horribly human moments of our lives. So you’re covered.

(And if you want to fake it ’til you make it, give Magical Movie Night a try. It’s the actual easiest.)
In which I couldn’t come up with a clever captio In which I couldn’t come up with a clever caption. There are signs of life but my brain is dead. 💀
“This is what I find most mystifying about Adven “This is what I find most mystifying about Advent: the period of waiting ultimately ends in great joy, but we can’t get to that great joy without intense, active, unbearable pain. In Advent we sense the mingling of anticipation and anxiety, excitement and disappointment, joy and pain, hope and fear.
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“On this side of history, we have the luxury of waiting with great hope, great joy, and great expectation. We know Jesus will be born, we know he will save us and redeem us, we know he will die and rise again, and we know he will set all things right one day.
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“But before Christ came, Advent was dark. It was lonely and unknown, as the Israelites waited in faith to hear from God, and all they got was… nothing. Silence.
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“Isn’t this more characteristic of the waiting we usually do? The waiting seasons of our lives are less often marked by joy and hope and more often marked by pain and fear. They are not often cozy or comforting but difficult and dark and even laborious.
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“We wait as a pregnant mother waits for her child to be born—there’s a vision of the joy to come, to be sure, but in the throes of gut-wrenching labor pains, we think we might actually die before we see that joy fulfilled. After a long season of pregnancy, when the fullness of time has arrived, the advent of labor ushers in the real period of waiting—and it is active and painful and raw.”
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// From “In the Fullness of Time,” a new blog post on @first15. There’s a link in my bio to the whole piece, with thoughts on pregnancy, Advent, and waiting well in an exceptionally hard year. 💜 Thank you so much to @first15 for publishing this post!
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Brittany L Bergman is a for-profit blog. Any company that I collaborate with is chosen by me and fits the theme and readership of my blog. At times, posts may contain affiliate links or sponsored content, which is never at any charge to you.

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