Gindi Vincent

The Dish on Career, Fashion, Faith, and Family

Family

2023 New Year Resolutions/Word: LESS

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I haven’t done a New Year’s Resolution or New Year’s “word” in a while. I’ve done them on and off again. But this year’s smacked me upside the head.

It started a few weeks ago.

I turn 50 in September. And I’m super heavy. Overweight heavy. The heaviest I’ve ever been except for pregnancy. You know, with triplets.

So I’d already planned to do weight loss as a New Year ‘resolution.’ No extreme diet or plan. I have to lose 32 pounds in 8 months. That feels reasonable. Four pounds a month, or one a week. Cleaner eating. Walking every morning. And then whatever else I can work up to. Modest goal.

At the same time, I’m watching the kids spend more time on their phones. They have now had them for a year. We have plenty of controls. No app downloads without permission. Screen limits. Downtime. We check their texts every other day or so. They know these are our phones and breaking phone rules means they lose them. But I’ve seen the addiction creeping it and it concerns me.

This week at dinner, I said we’d try a family resolution. No use of the phones Monday – Wednesday except for calling/texting or if a work/school email had to be returned. No social media (for mom). No games or You Tube (for anyone). No use of the phone except for how you’d use an old school Blackberry.

As these resolutions started bubbling up, a word bubbled up too.

LESS.

It was more than just too much food. Or wine. Or cell phone. It was too much of everything.

Bray went up in our attic to put away our boxes of Christmas décor this week and was apoplectic. “WHAT IS ALL THIS STUFF? This is insane!” He said that we’re decluttering and we’d start with his office, but we would hit every space in our house.

LESS.

I’ve started spending without discipline again. Periodically I go on a spending diet. I notice with three kids in middle school, the spending sneaks up on you. Athletic gear and new clothes and presents and parties to attend and school activities and donations. Nothing bad. But the amount of money I’ve spent in 2022 has passed previous records.

LESS.

Then, as I’m crafting this blog post, I heard THREE (that’s right, not one, not two but THREE) reinforcements of the power of less. God calling me, and our family, to less. So I wouldn’t miss it.

First, I’m listening to a book called Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer which a friend recommended. Dr. Kimmerer is a Native American and shares wisdom about the importance of the care and reciprocity of our land which came from her Native American heritage. In a chapter called Windigo Footprints, she talks about the Windigo monster in traditional tales that was designed to strengthen self-discipline and to build resistance against the insidious germ of taking too much. “The Windigo nature is in each of us. So the monster was created in stories that we might learn why we should recoil from that greedy part of ourselves. This is why elders remind us to always acknowledge the two faces – the light and the dark side of life. In order to understand ourselves, see the dark, recognize it’s power, but do not feed it.” The insidious germ of taking too much – boy if that doesn’t characterize me and everything around us in our country.

Next, I’m listening to a podcast by Annie F. Downs called Let’s Read the Gospels. Every day for a month, she reads three chapters from Matthew, Mark, Luke or John and at the end of the month you’ve listened to the entire gospels. Each month she’ll read them in a different translation. She is starting in John. In John 3:30, John the Baptist says “He must become greater; I must become LESS!!!” (Exclamation points added. Like the Bible just went and SAID THE WORD right when I was supposed to be learning it.)  Then, right after that, in John 6, Jesus shows the power of “less” when he feeds thousands with five small loaves and two small fish.

Less isn’t for us. Less doesn’t diminish what can be done. Less is so God can show up and be God.

Finally, I’m listening to Present over Perfect by Shauna Niequist (having already read it a couple of years back), and she’s sharing how she moved to a simpler life. She said, just tonight!, “Pride, for years, has told me I’m strong enough to drink from a fire hose and gluttony tells me it will be so delicious. But those voices are liars.”

Ouch.

Pride. Gluttony.

I feel those words like arrows to the deepest part of me.

Because of having a childhood of less because of necessity and lack, I’m ever prone as an adult to “more” in the worst sense. I overdo it all. For parties, I’ll prepare like there’s 40 even if there’s only 10. I want “nicer” things. Remodel parts of the house. Remodel parts of me.

Those deep needs for more are from the unhealthier parts of me.

So my resolution, to the extent there is one, and my word, to the extent I have one, is LESS.

Less food.

Less activity.

Less spending.

Less time on the phone.

Less clutter.

Because.

Less opens the door to more.

More peace.

More clarity.

More health.

More rest.

More time with those I love most.

More.

The only way to get to the healthy more is with a concentrated effort on less.

That’s what I pray 2023 will hold for me. Less.

What will it hold for you?   

Christmas 2022

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The last time I wrote was on my 16th wedding anniversary. Six and a half months ago. That has never happened. I’m going to go back and retroactively date a 13th birthday letter to my kids, since I’ve never missed that. And recap my Mommy & Me trip to Vail this month. But this, well this is the annual Christmas letter.

Christmas 2022.

I mailed my cards almost a month ago, over half of them anyways. And I kept thinking, hey I put a link to a letter, I better write one. But then life.

Life is good, by the way.

This time two years ago we were sitting with a freshly minted cancer diagnosis. In the first COVID Christmas where there was no church to go to or family with whom to gather. Two hurricanes had slammed into the family farm in Louisiana and ripped it to shreds.

2020 was a hard year.

2021 was a year to climb back. A mix. Ups and downs.

Then 2022. One of my favorite scriptures is Psalm 18. It’s in 1 Samuel too but this is the one I go to. The whole chapter is deeply comforting. But then you get to the middle, verses 16 – 19:

He reached down from on high and took hold of me; he drew me out of deep waters.
He rescued me from my powerful enemy, from my foes, who were too strong for me.
They confronted me in the day of my disaster, but the Lord was my support.
He brought me out into a spacious place; he rescued me because he delighted in me.

That’s been 2022.

A spacious place.

Not that there hasn’t been hard mixed in, but there’s been an incredibly phenomenally extraordinary amount of goodness. The best friends. The best experiences. Wonderful travel. Amazing food. Adventure and respite. (And I just had my second clean bill of health from MD Anderson.)

Bray is still making Houston look better and received manager of the year at his company, again. I completed my first year as Assistant General Counsel for a Honeywell company last week. It’s incredibly busy but the office is across the STREET from my house and the kids school. It has been a game changer as far as letting me be involved in ALL they are involved in. Which I love and they tolerate (we only have 5 1/2 more years, sniff sniff).

Which logically brings me to ALL they are doing. Sam and Will played JV and varsity football for their middle school this fall and Lillie cheered! What fun to have them all three on the same field for the first time in our triplet history! Now they are all three playing basketball which is less fun because when the boys have a home game, Lillie is away, and vice versa. Ahhh, triplet juggling. Simultaneously, the boys have joined a non-school baseball team and Lillie is doing some outside cheer work. The spring will bring the boys on two baseball teams and Lillie cheering and running track, both of which she loves.

This summer, we did something EVERY SINGLE weekend. We adventured all over the place.

Our summer vacation started out without Lillie because she had cheer camp, which I had no clue about when we booked the trip last August. But she was able to join us for our last day in Yellowstone, riding horses and fly fishing in the northern portion, and then she traveled with us down to the Grand Tetons where we hiked and white water rafted. Before she joined, the four of us experienced the rodeo at Cheyenne, the wonders of Cody, and then all of the gorgeous geysers of southern Yellowstone.

But in addition to the big family vacation over the summer, we had Refugio, Lake Conroe, Minnesota, Louisiana, Fredericksburg, Canyon Lake, and Toledo Bend – fishing and boating and working cows and visiting museums and playing games and staying up late. What an incredible summer.

In addition to sports, the kids are now half way through 7th grade and have one more full year at the school we’ve been at since 1st grade. It seems unreal. This time next year, we’ll be talking about where they go to high school. Everyone says it, but it’s true: the days are long, the years are short.

Bray and I are closer to 17 years of marriage than 16 as I write this and this month we realized we’d been together for 19 years. Next year I’ll turn 50 and our relationship will turn 20 – where does time go!?!

As Christmas twinkles mere hours away, we all feel extraordinarily blessed. We have our family, extended family, a fantastic community, and a faith that sustains us when the circumstances around us darken. We celebrate the miracle of Christmas and also the miracles, big and small, in our daily lives.

I mentioned on the socials that I’ve missed this community, and so want to return to writing, but life is ever busier and since finishing the cancer treatments, I want to live in the present and do it all. It’s meant very little time for writing.

Our crew is so thankful for the blessing of your love and friendship and wish you a very Merry Christmas and a New Year filled with adventure and bravery.

The Thirteenth Year Love Letter

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YOU ARE THIRTEEN!!! So here comes a belated thirteenth letter. I started writing you a birthday letter when you were two, so I went back and read that love letter.

I loved picking out the characteristics that still so define each of you. For S, I wrote, “You are persistent and stick with things until you understand them.” If I could select any trait for you, persistence is it. Others remark on your ability to work through the hardest challenges and not give up. This will serve you well your whole life.

For L, in addition to your zest of life, I wrote, “You are also very independent.” Ha! It’s still utterly true and will carry you to great success because of your focus and ability to strike out on your own away from the crowd. No matter the pressures you face, please hold on to your ability to find and know your own way.

And W, I wrote about your sensitive soul, but also remarked, “We will always be seekers in our home, on a journey to learn and understand more, because of you.” You are curious. It’s a trait that can’t be taught and one that will take you to new adventure because of your love of learning. Please don’t lose this when you have a tough school year.

I’ll warn you, I’ve back dated this letter. I’m writing it in December instead of on October 2nd like usual. Turns out, it’s much harder to write with wisdom and advice for 13 year olds than it was for toddlers.

This led me to look back on the more recent letters. For your tenth it was more a recap of all we’ve been through for 10 years and less insightful advice. Your 11th year love letter is my favorite because it recaps all of the highlights of the prior years. I wrote:

For S: I’ll close with my five year old love letter words, “I love how you march to the beat of your own drummer.”  May it always be so. But know that wherever you march, daddy and I will always be there to cheer you on. 

For L: I’ll close with a note from your three year old letter: You are fierce.  So independent.  Strong willed.  So focused…You will face battles and challenges in your life my beloved, but you will stare them down and they will shake as you approach.  You are so brave and fearless.  I love that.  The most remarkable thing about your strength is that it carries as its companion empathy and nurturing. 

For W: I penned this at three years old, and I close with it now, “Your absolute delight in living fills up any space you invade.  And there’s never any doubt about your love for everything you encounter because you tell us in no uncertain terms what you …  It is a revelation to watch the world through your eyes.  You are already becoming a man of honor…” 

Why am I relying on words from years past?

Because the older you get, the more I realize I don’t know. And the more I realize the window is closing with time I have you here. There’s so much I want to tell you. So much I want you to know when you leave our home.

I know you’ll have to learn it for yourself. But the mom in me, well I can’t help but want to help. I’m also learning that I’ll be able to do less and less of that. Don’t get me wrong – dad and I are ALWAYS here and ready to support and encourage and pick you up. But we actually help you through the things you face less now than when you were younger.

You’re a teenager! I can’t even believe it. Don’t believe all that buzz about how teenagers are hard and have to fight with their parents and rebel. You are awesome! Yes, we have our conflicts, and we have and will continue to have them. We also have a fantastic relationship. Your dad and I love hanging out with you guys. Traveling with you and experiencing new foods and cultures and sights. I hope we will be able to experience new things together our whole lives.

I also know that these teen years are ones where you’ll need to pull away and set boundaries that make you your own person with your own beliefs and plans.

During these times, when you’re deciding what it means to be you, I’d ask you to think about these three things:

1. Treasure your faith. When you were young, you made a personal decision to follow Jesus. This was a precious step of faith. Increasingly, being a person of the Christian faith isn’t a popular decision. And you’ve been in a bubble of a school where your faith is not questioned. As you move to high school, your faith will face storms. Heck, it already has. Your relationship with Jesus is between you and him. Don’t let it be governed by politics or media or tv preachers. Grow it personally. Question it, struggle with it, push and pull through the issues you face (the Bible tells us to work out our faith with fear and trembling – God gets that faith is hard and it’s a journey). But don’t lose it. After all I’ve been through now for nearly 5 decades, I can tell you I wouldn’t have made it without the centering love, power, and grace of God. Hold on to this.
2. Choose your friends wisely. We have been gifted with an incredible community. You have adults and peers who you’ve grown up with, who you deeply know and who deeply know you. It is a rare gift. Friendships in your teen years change. That’s okay. As they change, be discerning. Choose people who are kind and honest and make, more often than not, good decisions. These next five years, friendships will be absolutely critical in the places you go and decisions you make.
3. Make your own decisions. This is a natural counterpart to #2. Each of you often are your own person, marching to the beat of your own drummer, and setting out on your own path. However, that gets harder. Over the years to come, people will make decisions that look fun but are wrong, or are wrong for you. People will pressure you to make choices to be part of the crowd. I know this advice sounds like an old person who doesn’t “get it,” but I do. These pressures still occur as an adult. I believe the most intense of this pressure occurs over the coming years for you though. Remember who you are. What you believe in. What your priorities are. Make decisions that are best for you not the ones to be a part of the crowd. You’ll always have support from your faith and your family.

I closed out your 12th birthday letter with a thanks. A thanks for being you. That still holds true today. But I guess I’d also close out with this: forge your own path. Be brave. Hold onto your faith. Love boldly. Speak truth. Show respect. Add to the good in the world. You already have.

All my love (and sorry this year’s letter was SO long), always, Mom.

Christmas 2021

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What. A. Year!

Seriously. I don’t even know where to start.

I started by reading last year’s letter. You know, I’ve been writing Christmas letters since my senior year of college. There are still some of you who get our Christmas cards that remember those old letters that would come on Christmas-y paper tucked into an old fashioned card (before photo cards).

That first letter went out in 1990. So here we are, a full three decades into this tradition. I’ve missed a couple because of kid chaos, but overall I’ve been pretty good.

I’m sure I have them all somewhere. I’d love to see if ever there has been a year as wild as this one.

You all know well this year started off with two big Cs. I had just received the cancer diagnosis when a week into the New Year every single member of our family was diagnosed with COVID. Except me. Which was an absolute miracle because it meant my lumpectomy did not have to be delayed! Bray got really sick, and still doesn’t have his sense of smell back. The kids were fine but it meant homeschooling for several weeks right before surgery.

The surgery and month’s long radiation were successful and I rang the bell right before Easter weekend! Thank you all for your prayers and support during this time.

All the while the kids played spring sports (the boys playing on a wonderfully fun team, the Astros, for spring baseball and little bit playing Grace softball) and Bray and I juggled really busy jobs.

No sooner did sports end than we had a fifth grade GRADUATION on our hands and I could hardly believe we were going to have middle schoolers this year! I basically stopped writing for months after cancer so I don’t really have a record of all these precious moments at the end of elementary school. I think I’d burned up all my words.

A gorgeous family vacation to Bar Harbor, and a little reminiscing of where we spent our honeymoon, brought me back to life and gave me words again. We had an amazing trip, full of lobster, boating, Acadia National Park, and downtime together.

Beyond that, I don’t remember much over the summer. We did get to celebrate Bray turning the big 5-0 with at a party at our house. And we finally got to see my dad and stepmom, twice!, after two years apart because of the pandemic. The kids were obsessed with the farm and the horses and the baby may become an outdoor survivalist.

The summer flew. So fast that suddenly we had 6th graders. Middle school. Sheesh. The boys played on the school football team and little bit ran cross country. Just over a month later, we were celebrating the trio’s 12th birthday. I also got a clean bill of health from MD Anderson (no check ups for a year!).

Now we’re nearing the end of the first semester and two of the three are playing basketball, while the baby decided to sit this sport out. The eldest is playing the trumpet in band and little bit is also training for cheer team tryouts.

And since it wouldn’t be a Vincent Christmas letter without a bombshell at the end, there is more big news this year. After a wonderful nine years at ExxonMobil, I’ve accepted a position as Assistant General Counsel for a business division of Honeywell. I learned so much and grew as a lawyer tremendously while at EM, and now I’m excited about this new opportunity in my career. As the icing on top, I will go from a 33 mile one way to commute to work to a ONE mile commute. God is good.

While this year held much good for us, we know so many are still suffering because of the pandemic and other losses. I pray we can encourage one another and hold each other up during these really challenging times. I don’t know what we would do without the support and encouragement of our community.

From the Vincents to you, we wish you a very Merry Christmas and a 2022 filled with great joy.

Four Weekends: No. 4

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You made it! I feel like Grover in the Monster at the End of the Book! You made it all the way to the last of the four weekends away!

Weekend one – celebrating the kids.

Weekend two – family time.

Weekend three – girls trip.

Weekend four – family friends.

That’s right, today we’re talking about the gift of family friends.

You may have gathered if you’ve read me over the years that Bray and I are VERY different. Country/city. Politics. Free time. Hobbies.

All different.

What weaves us together other than love and attraction which we still thankfully have 16 years in is common values. Faith. Family. Morals.

But because we are so different and because we have kids of both genders, it was really hard to find family friends. People where Bray connected with the husband, I connected with the wife, and the kids connected with each other.

When we came to our current school, the kids were in first grade, and we found family friends for the first time. Really dear and meaningful friendships which continue to this day. Some families have left and some have joined but I feel tremendously grateful for some core families with whom we adore spending time.

One of those precious families invited us out to their lake house on Canyon Lake. It’s a gorgeous lake in the Hill Country we hadn’t ever visited before. With all the activity of October, we weren’t sure we were going to make it, but luckily we did.

All we had to do was pack a bag and drive up. We threw some wine and appetizers in the car but the wife had meals all planned out. Casual and easy but delicious. The husband drove a super fun boat and the kids swam and tubed and surfed off the boat waves.

While the kids explored the area, the grown ups sat on the wrap around porch and drank coffee and visited in that decadent unhurried way. We laughed and unwound. We watched sports and played pickleball (I love it and am supremely awful) and had loud competitions on the vintage foosball table.

Even my husband, who would almost always prefer to be at the ranch or the farm, remarked on our way home what a fabulous time it was.

Adults don’t get to have long swaths of time to laugh and goof off and hear each other’s stories. We squeeze it in here or there over a drink or in between cheering for our kids team.

You know me. I don’t want to mess around with the small talk. I want to get into your STORY. Deep. All the gory details. This weekend was a gift of stories and history and joy.

We all felt lighter afterwards. And more connected. And most of all, grateful. Grateful for the families God has placed into our lives to enrich it and make it more colorful.

Each of these four weekends gave us something back. I’m so thankful we had each of them.