Unending Change

January comes with snowy mornings and pale sunshine. Its gray skies and ice cold days leaving the fireflies and grass-y smell of summer a memory. The new year has been laced with memories of, “Remember a year ago…” 

C.S. Lewis once wrote, “Isn’t it funny how day by day nothing changes, but when you look back, everything is different?” 

Amidst the wedding planning and the nannying days, the way those words resound in my heart is taken to whole new meaning. So much has changed in such short time. Hard maybe, but never bad. Exciting, yes, alongside challenging and stretching. I don't know that one can transition from one season to the next without using the word, “Bittersweet.” 

New cannot come without the old dying. Anticipation of tomorrow does not stand without some sort of goodbye to today. Every possible dream for the future is weaved with excitement, but threaded through the past is a sadness of sorts for something that is ending. 

Change is good. But change is hard. 

I have these conflicting desires. On one hand rests a desire for everything to always be new and different and exciting, for things to constantly be changing. On the other hand, I find myself with a want for the comfort of stability, the constant that comes with routine, the certainty that one can have when things stay the same. 

January turned the corner and I suddenly saw 2016 as the year of changes. Finishing my nannying job, a day-to-day living of life with a family which feels too intimate to be called a job. Marrying the man whose name makes me smile, whose gentle kindness melts me, and who gives the best hugs. Moving across states from the city to a small town, taking his last name and being known as his wife. Leaving the only home he’s known, boxing our few belongings, and leaving the States behind to fly to Haiti.

Every time the leaves change on the treetops, so will our lives. The thought is a bit daunting.

I think the fear is normal, maybe even necessary. Change and fear have this beautiful way of reminding me where I should put my hope. The seasons always change. Our lives cannot remain exactly as they are today. There is a time for everything under the sun, as the author of Ecclesiastes wrote. 

In the year of change and inconsistency and newness comes this whispering, “Embrace..” 

Embrace this, child. Embrace every single change through every single season. Because you know the One who does not change.

beautiful forget-me-nots

The words don’t come easy. Not the way they used to anyway. They’re scribbled in notebooks, these thoughts half finished-- fragments and snippets of the last 5 months scattered on index cards and moleskin journals and iphone note apps too numerous to count. They hold everything from the craze of nanny days to a new-found relationship to the achings and longings for Haiti. 

Like the winter we’ve watched become summer, the seasons come and go. One moment they seem to stretch into eternity, and the next you’ve blinked and wondered how it all passed so quickly. We swear we’ll never forget, but it’s been not even 4 months and I can’t recall the sound of the snow crunching beneath my feet or the sound of the birds on the first day of spring.

So we write, in attempt to always remember. We string together letters and words with the hope that sentences will bring back all the memories and feelings like how it was in the very beginning. 

This is my effort to never forget.

I fell in love with him—this man who sings hymns on 7-hour road trips and stops mid-sentence for the airplane flying overhead (even via FaceTime), this man who prays over our meals and our lives with a fervent passion and continues to teach me more and more about the God I serve, who cooks eggs every morning for his breakfast, and his mischevious eyebrow arch can be traced all the way back to the baby pictures. 

He took me on a roadtrip to see his 3 week old niece and nephew, and we cradled the scent of newborn in our arms. He tracked my plane and held me tight when it landed. We grocery shopped and cooked the macaroni and melted the cheese and had dinner together. That weekend he took me out at 10 o'clock to stargaze and watch the moon dance shadows on the Nebraskan fields below. We picnic lunched at a rest stop in the middle of the nowhere and it was there that he knelt on one knee and asked me to be his wife and share life with him for as many days as we have left. 

Sweet sunshine filtered through the tree tops above us, spilling patterns on the picnic blanket. The sky was this brilliant blue, with puffy white clouds all around. It was there that his question hung in the breeze. And it was there, looking into his eyes that I could see it all: the stargazing that first night in Haiti, the heart-wrenched sobs of a girl who was leaving a life behind and the way he just sat beside her, the night she killed the spider for him; the hopes for the future and the taste of adventure in his words; the late night FaceTime calls, the very hard and very long talks, the packages mailed and plane tickets bought. 

And it was there that I said yes. And it was there that we began the most terrifying and most beautiful adventure. 

The coffee mug is half empty sitting on the table beside me. I’m watching out the window for the bus to bring Fin home. My ring keeps catching on my coffee cup, clinking at every touch. I’ve whispered the words under my breath a hundred times… Spirit lead me where my trust is without borders, let me walk upon the waters wherever You would call me. Those words took a frightened 18-year-old to Uganda, to the world of special needs, and to a country where evil runs rampant. But I never anticipated it leading me to a nanny job in the suburbs, or a relatioship-turned-engagement. 

The past 5 months have been a whirlwind I’m still trying to keep up with. They’ve been hard, and beautiful, and unforgettable; thought-provoking and spiritually stretching and filled with such bliss. Some days I rest in the peace of knowing He has held and ordained every moment. At other times, I’m the one whispering late into the night, struggling to believe her God is good and gives only good gifts. 

Summer has only begun, but I can feel how fall is just around the corner. And it’s human nature to forget. So this, right here, is my effort, to always remember and choose to believe: 

there are things too beautiful to forget.