We were lucky to catch up with Marian Frizzell recently and have shared our conversation below.

Marian, appreciate you joining us today. Let’s kick things off with your mission – what is it and what’s the story behind why it’s your mission?

I admit that I still love getting to tell people that our family lived in an RV for a year and a half. I love seeing their faces. “But this was before you had five kids, right?” Nope. All seven of us crammed in there. “But what about the pets?” We took them too. Both cats and the dog. “But where did you put the litter box?” You really don’t want the answer to that one.

But before we get too deep into the story, you should know that we weren’t one of those Youtube adventure families, eschewing suburbia to show our kids the Great World Adventure. No, we were a post-Cat 5 hurricane family who couldn’t stomach the idea of more time away from my military husband. We decided that we’d take a lack of personal space coupled with an uninterrupted view of hurricane destruction if it meant that we could be back together again.

Those seventeen months were hard but also incredibly good, and I look back on them and see how they were shaped by the words we used to tell our story. When we talk about our time there, we talk about purpose. We knew the reason behind the choices we had made, and it helped us to stand by them. But even more than the purpose, we were purposeful in how we shaped our perspective.

For me, it began in small ways. I started my time there by reading a series of novels that were set during the Holocaust. I didn’t do this to shame myself–“Look how bad they had it! AND YOU FEEL SORRY FOR YOURSELF!”–but rather to remind myself that suffering is universal, and there is still goodness and beauty to be found.

Then, I got myself and the kids to the beach as often as I could. All around us was utter devastation, trees literally snapped like matchsticks, houses that looked as if some cosmic toddler had kicked their windows in. But at the beach, we could look away from the hurricane ravaged land and let our eyes bring a measure of peace back to our souls.

Finally, I learned the power of making memories. Did we talk about the hurricane? Sure. But we also talked about planting a tiny pallet garden with our RV neighbors, going kayaking, making bee hotels, watching the sunset from my husband’s truck bed. These words had power. We were not victims. We were survivors. And even more so: we had a life that wasn’t on pause but was worth celebrating.

The lessons I learned from that time in the RV carried over in so many ways. I learned that we see what we’re looking for. If I focused on all the ways that RV life was miserable, that’s all I would be able to see. If I focused on how difficult life was, I’d miss out on the many ways it was also wonderful. If I focused on all the losses, I’d be blinded to the growth our family had through that time, to the irreplaceable joys of friendship, to the satisfaction of the simple. Through that experience, and so many other similar ones, I learned the power of perspective, and I learned that I wanted to share it with others.

There are so many of us out there who look at our lives and just feel defeated, exhausted, and broken. I’ll be the first to tell you that I’ve been in that season of life again this year (six years post hurricane/RV life). Learning to shift perspective isn’t a one and done. Neither does it mean ignoring the difficult things or trying to paint them with some kind of happy-go-lucky veneer. But, for me at least, it involves opening the door to the possibility that the Hand of God is at work in really interesting and unexplainable ways–if I’m willing to look for it. And as a writer, I like to invite others along on that journey with me in the hope that my pursuit of perspective might widen theirs a little bit too.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I’m a writer. I’ve been (extremely) small scale blogging for many years now. In addition to that, I’m a military wife, a mom of five (they’re cute and mostly funny, so I’m not planning to give them back yet), a runner, a homeschooler (because moving every two years makes school choices fun), a Third Culture Kid who grew up in Indonesia and now lives in the US, a teacher, a flutist, and a reader. I have a Creative Writing degree, and when I have time (which has not been this year), I like to dabble in writing novels that have yet to see the light of day. Mostly, I use my very limited platform (blog, Instagram, Facebook) to share words that might be beautiful or thought provoking or funny. My hope is that as I share my story of seeking perspective in my own life, others would be encouraged in theirs.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

One of the biggest lessons that I’m still having to unlearn is that if I do all the right things, I’ll get the result that I want. Honestly, this one still feels like a punch in the gut sometimes. I’m not sure how much of it is being super type A and how much of it is being a rule follower and how much of it is that we live in a total hustle culture, but I still think that if I put in the effort and I follow all the rules then I should get what I want in the end. But experience (or is it the School of Hard Knocks?) keeps telling me that this is just not true.

There’s a story I want to share with you about this, but I’ll just be upfront and tell you that you’re not going to get it. It’s entirely too vulnerable and I still think back to it and cringe at my own judgmentalism and selfishness. The short version of the story (and the one completely stripped of too personal details) is that I followed all the rules and got a result that no one would’ve asked for and then saw a friend of mine, who had broken all the rules, get the exact thing I’d hoped for and was smacked in the face by how much it gutted me. I struggled to be happy for her. I was disgusted with my own selfishness. But I still truly mourned my own loss and didn’t know how to reconcile the reality of what I’d gotten with what I thought I deserved.

This specific instance happened fifteen years ago, but I still struggle in this area. So much of our culture really leans into this idea that A + B = C. There’s a reason the internet is agog with “Ten Easy Steps” articles. You know the ones I’m talking about. The ones that promise a result if you just do it exactly the way the author tells you. Well, I’m calling bull. I’m not saying that it’s a waste of time trying the ten easy steps or five simple rules or three key whatevers, but I am saying that success is never guaranteed.

And that that is okay.

One of the things I’m trying to learn this year is to get more comfortable with the things I deem to be failures. For one, success is incredibly subjective, but for two, what I think is a failure now may be the very thing that shapes a later success.

I wish we could have a little more grace for ourselves. I wish we could stop shaming ourselves when things don’t turn out the way we anticipated. I wish we could stop bullying ourselves into thinking that if we just tried harder, maybe we could have it all.

Right now, I’d like to look with clearer eyes at what I already have…and hold those rigid rules to seeming success with looser hands.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

I get to see the world in different ways. For me, it’s that simple. It’s looking at a world that is full of pain and division and brokenness and still having the ability to see something more.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.marianfrizzell.com/blog
• Instagram: @marianfrizzell
• Facebook: marianfrizzellwriter

Image Credits

Kat Hetland for the runner photo
Marie Heiderscheit for the head shot