Memorial Day

So we moved! No more sacrificing our marriage for our daughter's sake. No more sacrificing our family for a career in theatre arts. I don't think our goals have changed at all... merely the scenery along the way. What matters more: the journey or the destination? Trick question. Both are of great value. I still hope Brett will be a Technical Director one day, even just at a high school with next-to-nothing pay, or maybe he will have a career in carpentry and do theatre on the side. We just won't sacrifice time with each other to achieve it.

Living in Maryland taught us much. Both of us working full time just to pay the rent taught us to appreciate every moment of time together. Living in the city confirmed our hearts' desires to dwell away from both urban and suburban communities. Being half a continent away from our folks (opposite coasts from mine) truly forced us to leave and cleave, and to find encouragement and support in the body of Christ and necessarily depend on God alone as our Anchor.

For us, being in the midwest feels right. I will always appreciate what living in the DC-Baltimore area taught us, but I will never regret leaving it. Places have always had an affect on me. The desert - Bakersfield - represented dry land, brown sky, constant summer. I also wanted to escape the brokenness of relationship - when my parents were seperated for five years. But God was drawing me to my calling (Genesis 50:20). England represented history and fantasy, a place very green and very rainy, almost too good to consider home. Iowa was where I was happiest, always. It was there I met Brett, who would become my best friend, and there our daughter was born by God's decree, and I would have it no other way!

And what is my calling? Something I am ever discovering. (Stay tuned!)

I relate well to Almanzo and Laura Wilder, whose first four years of marriage were full of hardship and sorrow, and whose daughter was also named after a flower. Let me state for the record that I wish to always be poor but always make ends meet. I am happiest working at home. I hope to have a leaky, ramshackle, Boxcar-Children-meets-It's-A-Wonderful-Life house someday, but the Lord is my Shepherd and as long as I am with Brett my cup overfloweth.

At the end of two years I was just beginning to uncover two of my greatest vices: impatience and discontent. Only from a place of honesty and humility can I learn to walk according to my calling - helpmate, steward, disciple. I want to keep this blog to challenge myself in discipline, and to write more than a facebook status to my community and kin.

Let me share Memorial Day with you: The first part was spent in Owatonna Minnesota, my husband's hometown, where our Norah watched her first parade and the marching band and horses held her attention fast, and our morning concluded with a potluck with Nana and Tatanka. Then Norah and I drove down to Rolfe Iowa, my father's hometown, to see Grandma Ives, aunts, uncle, cousins, and second cousins. Swimming, a movie, and singing around a bonfire. A brilliant sunset on the plains and night sky brimming with stars.

Reading Till We Have Faces for what must be the third or fourth time: "Who can feel ugly when the heart meets delight?" My heart has met delight. Here. Now.