Hello Again & Life Update

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It’s a beautiful, late summer Sunday afternoon. I’m sitting on my lovely back patio in a comfy chair with an iced maple latte. I just saw a brown squirrel scurry up a tree in the woods bordering our backyard. A hummingbird is feeding on my fuchsia petunias. We came home from a weekend camping trip earlier this afternoon. I am showered and refreshed; funny how you don’t realize how everything reeks of smoke until you get home. When it’s all around you, you don’t notice. I was feeling very tired and unmotivated. You know that restless, ick feeling after a fun weekend away? You come home out of routine, tired, dirty, and there’s loads of laundry and stuff to put away? That’s how I was feeling.

My very kind husband offered to take care of Raven while I have a couple hours to myself on the porch. I popped inside just a bit ago to grab a snack and my phone, and I heard the tub filling and Raven screaming. Precious thing! She is still learning to appreciate bath time.

Life has progressed by leaps and bounds since my last post about mailing wedding invitations. That was over two years ago. It seems unbelievable to me that I did not post anything since I have been married. I always meant to and never got around to it. Various times over the last months I have thought about writing. Sometimes I see all these very motivated, efficient, entrepreneurial woman online and feel like I should be doing something too. I miss going to work. I miss making money. Or I see my husband pour himself into his hobby (golf) and I wish I had something that brought me so much joy. So I’ve been thinking about what sorts of things (outside of Jesus and all the REALLy important things of course) bring me satisfaction, joy, and fulfillment–things I find personally invigorating. And I thought about writing and how I have always enjoyed expressing myself and my life in words. So I’m here to write about my life if nothing else, just for the sheer joy of it.

So much has changed about my life and who I am since two years ago. Most reading this know me well enough to know all this already. But join me, if you will, on a little trip down memory lane touching on highlights and (maybe some lowlights) of life since I’ve written. I’ll start with the present and work backwards. For starters, my alarm just went off reminding me to pump. What an appropriate place to start!

• June 2023: Our precious little princess–Raven Jo–was born on the 22nd. It has been truly life-changing. We fall in love with her more and more each day. It seems surreal to be able to call myself a mother. At 28, all my girlish dreams of motherhood have finally come true. And it is a whole lot less dreamy than I once imagined. But it is also deeply fulfilling and wonderful. I hope to write more in the coming months about motherhood and how it has been for me and us.
• May 2023: Micah finished teaching school at our local church school and started a new job working for a metal components company. He enjoys working with metal, doing office work and sales, and relating to his primarily Amish coworkers. He can’t get over the fact that when he started they bought him a new typewriter/word processor since they do not do computers, and he has to run out to the phone shack to answer phone calls. But overall, he loves it. It was quite a switch for me to have my husband leaving for work at 5:15 am instead of 7:15-7:30 am like he did while teaching school. But I’m a huge fan of having him home by early afternoon.
• February 2023: Micah and I bought a house here in Northern Indiana. We had been renting from my sister and her husband while they were gone at Faith Builders. It is a beautifully landscaped home in a little wooded neighborhood almost right in town. We are at the end of the road several houses down from my oldest sister. Living next door to one of my sisters has been especially delightful. I love the community feel and the ability to pop over for peach pie or baby snuggles at 8pm on a whim.
• October 2022: Prince Caspian (my faithful black Nissan Altima) died of a broken transmission. We laid him to rest in the arms of a Facebook Marketplace buyer from Fort Wayne, and bought Addie–our blue, MDX Acura. We like her a lot.
• October 7-9, 2022: Micah and I celebrated one year of marriage with a weekend trip to Indianapolis. We golfed (he did, I read a book on the cart), stayed at a beautiful old inn, visited the home of a famous Indiana poet, took a horse-drawn carriage ride through downtown, ate at a Brazilian steakhouse (as Micah had always wanted me to experience that), and were enchanted by the gorgeous voices of a show at the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra. Sunday evening we dressed up in our wedding clothes and showed up for evening vespers at a stately episcopal church. The day after we got home from this trip, we ate the last of our wedding cake that I had frozen, and discovered we were going to have a baby.
• Early October 2022: We got the devastating news that Micah’s mother was diagnosed with cancer. We made a spur of the moment trip to Missouri to be with her in the hospital. We are so grateful that God healed her through successful chemo and she was even able to travel to Indiana to meet Raven this summer.
• September 2022: We finally sold our beautiful home in Arkansas. It was the house Micah had built himself in 2019; his forever bachelor home ;). After being on the market for several months, we were glad to see it sell, but it was also bittersweet. That was our first house together, the place of our first 9 months of marriage. I cried the first time I saw it again when we visited Arkansas several months later at Christmas.
• August 2022: After packing up our earthly belongings and loading them into a big U-haul truck, we hooked my car behind it, and drove off early Monday morning, August 8. We were leaving Northwest Arkansas (Micah’s home for the past 13 years) and moving back to Indiana, to my home community. It was bittersweet.
• July 2022: Micah and I made a flying trip to Costa Rica for my cousin Dwight’s wedding. We even squeezed in a quick trip to the beach with our cousins and two of my brothers. We stayed a bit longer and were able to change our tickets for free due to a hurricane that was potentially disrupting flights. Worked nicely in our favor.
• February 2022: My sister Louisa and niece Audrey and my mom came to Arkansas to visit me. My mom, upon seeing my house for the first time said, “I would cry if I had to leave this place! I would!” 🙂 After dropping them off at the airport, I DoorDashed for the first time. That became Micah and I’s little side hustle that summer.
• January 2022: Micah sold his shed business and started working for his brother-in-law building post-frame buildings.
• December 2021: Micah and I flew to LA for a long weekend of street meetings. That was a stretching experience for me.
• First days of November 2021: We drove to Arkansas after our honeymoon, and my new husband carried me across threshold of his bachelor house. It was to be a man cave no more. We arrived to forks in the yard, chicken nuggets in the ice maker, solo cups of water all over the bathroom floor, and confetti EVERYWHERE. We knew we were loved and so began our life together
• October 2021: Micah and I were married on a dreamy October day. Need I say more? Covenant love is a marvelous thing.
• August 24, 2021: I worked my last shift as a nurse at the nursing home and haven’t worked as a nurse since. I’m a little sad about that sometimes. That life seems like a distant dream.

And that traces us back to my last post. Micah asked me just a bit ago if I wanted to go to Culver’s for ice cream. I think I’ll sign off and go take him up on that. Because who am I to turn down random ice cream runs with the two loves of my life?!

What have you been up to in the last two years? I would love to hear about your life in the comments.

Hope to chat again soon,

April