We are on the countdown to finishing this year. I used to think of New Years as the starting point for a new season, but July 1 now feels even more significant. It feels as if we are leaning into the final turn. Next week will hopefully be the curve that finally lets us see the home stretch. Part of me wants to hold my breath but there’s too much life to be lived in between. That being said, I am coping with some of the stress by sufficiently hiding in books. As in, one day last week I read a 500 page book and still managed to cook dinner. One foot in fiction, one foot in reality. Hey, you gotta do what you gotta do to keep your eye from twitching. This morning I told Garrett, “You’ve almost made it babe.” He was taking the last drink of his coffee before walking out the door. He gave me a look followed by the sweetest words. “We’ve almost made it.”
And we have. We have done it together and it’s been the most beautiful thing once you take a step back and look at it closely. I’m so thankful for this season. It hasn’t been easy, but then neither has very much of anything since we started this story together. We often remark that God was all in the timing of us meeting. It’s been confirmed a hundred different ways and to be honest it’s a comforting reminder on the long days. It’s also encouraging to see the peace that has followed after setting in place our priorities and boundaries. I feel like these are living breathing things that I now consider friends and we will keep learning to adapt with them as our seasons change.
This year of being settled in our own place has been the most wonderful thing. I doubt if I would have appreciated it as much if we hadn’t first lived like gypsies. Seven moves in nineteen months is a lot for this girl. Five of these were mini moves consisting of 4-6 week periods but they still felt major because when you are packing to live and cook and clean the list goes long. It was a fun challenge to figure out what we actually needed. We didn’t have room to pack anything that we wouldn’t get significant use out of. You realize rather quickly what is excess and what is not. For example, we really only needed two coffee mugs, but I found it helpful to pack a couple of extra towels in order to make fewer Laundromat runs. I don’t know if I fully realized it at the time, but that season was chalked full of so many life lessons and while things weren’t always pretty it did quickly build muscle that still benefits us.
There’s been plenty of challenges but there’s also been a lot of well lived moments. It has been loads of fun to go on little adventures and return to our nest to cook or binge on Netflix. Time spent on our little patio drinking coffee and dreaming. We have really enjoyed living in our busy neighborhood. The fun surprise has been our obsession with Chipotle. I didn’t see that one coming but it’s been the perfect little oasis to walk to for chips and guacamole or to hit for dinner when a grocery run hasn’t happened. All of our evening walks, plus CVS runs for ice cream or Redbox has been really fun. Due to a plethora of events, mostly long distance, we didn’t have a lot of time to date before we got married. And we certainly had very little uninterrupted time together with the exception of late night phone calls. This season has righted a lot of things and finding this balance of being us has been invaluable.
