welcome to the team

In 2008 I went to a concert with my new friends, the Wardles. Someone else tagged along for that trip - a rather funny girl named Mallory Eggebrecht.

There she is on the left. (Sorry Mal - not our most glamorous shot)

That night was memorable in more ways that one, and at the time we seemed like a pretty random group of people to attend a concert together. Eventually though, some of them became members of the team, one of them being my sweet friend Mallory. 

Mallory and I have been part of a group of friends that developed over my last three years at Ashland. Many of them are now here in Redding, but some are also still in Ohio. Mallory has been such a significant part of my journey and my journey with Jimmy. She was part of a group of people that became family, the group that walked with us through dating and engagement. She actually helped coordinate most of the happenings of the night we got engaged. She was there when wedding planning was difficult. She has been a rock and such a covenant friend.

Last January Mallory and I went to get dinner at Lyn-Way in Ashland, our favorite little comfort-food diner spot. She told me that the Lord was moving her to open her heart to being vulnerable in an unexpected way. She signed up for EHarmony. She was brave and courageous and although it was sometimes difficult she stuck with it. We admired her ability to risk for love and to trust the Lord.

Shortly after the most amazing, hilarious man came into the picture. Matthew Beres. We met Matt at Panera after having dinner for my birthday in Wooster. We laughed the entire time. We knew this guy was different. Mallory lit up around him. He challenged her. He treated her with amazing respect and honor and love. We felt like he was part of the team.

It didn't take long to know where they were headed. We shared some of the sweetest moments from our spring in Ashland with them. They brought us to Amish country. Matt introduced us to some of his amazing team there. Matt and Jimmy drank horse minerals together (don't ask). We laughed. A lot.

Today Mallory & Matt are getting married. It will be beautiful. It is so hard for us to not be able to be there. 

The hard part about moving across the country is the things that you can't be a part of. Grandpa's 70th birthday, my brothers on homecoming court, friends' weddings. Team is important to us. We hate missing out on team events. 

But we love the Beres'. From across the country we bless them with all the joy and adventure and deepening friendship that these next months, years and their lifetime will hold. Today we celebrate you in our hearts (and I try to hold back my tears). We celebrate your obedience and faithfulness to what God called you to. We celebrate your willingness to risk on each other, on new adventures, on moves and decisions to follow your hearts. 

We love you both.

Welcome to the team (officially), Matt. 

(This probably seems so overly sappy. It's mostly therapeutic. We mostly love to celebrate the team, even if it's through a sappy blog post.)

the time we went to pick up a uhaul

Last Thursday we & our housemates moved across town to a new home and decided to rent a Uhaul to transport our large furniture. I have not done this before. We moved to California with only the belongings that could fit in the Civic, although we packed a ridiculous amount of stuff into that tiny little gas-saving vehicle.

Anyways, Jimmy rented the Uhaul online and we went to pick it up before the move. I anticipated a massive fleet of white, boxy trucks lined up in a specific order in a well-maintained parking lot of a Uhaul-only renting facility. The Uhaul mecca of Redding. 

No, no. We carefully followed our trusty iPhone directions to a back-ish road toward this little building that looked like it used to be an automotive repair shop. There was the not-so-massive fleet, matched by the not-so-massive office of this little rental shack. 

What was massive was the dog lying on the floor of this tiny office:

Have you ever seen Balto? I think we met him that day. I think Disney came to Redding and based that movie off this dog. 

He was beautiful. And huge. I sheepishly went to pet Balto and pretty quickly he decided to stretch out. I sat on a chair. One of two in this tiny office. 

Then Balto got bold. He put his front paws up on the other chair right beside me, which I swear made him about a foot higher than me, put his nose in the air and then lowered it and stared at me directly in the face. 

That's when I got up the courage to ask what kind of dogs they were. 

"Wolf hybrids!"

Let me tell you, there's something really interesting about the sudden realization that there's a WOLF staring at you in the face. A REAL LIVE WOLF. And I love dogs. Dogs have never scared me. But this wolf was definitely establishing dominance, or so it felt. 

Eventually he got back down, laid down on the floor and the owner went on to explain how loving and caring and incredible these Malamute/Wolf hybrids are. 

Then two more crawled out of back corners. One was too shy to come near us. The other one (which was, I swear, the size of a small bear) mad ea brief appearance:

Apparently the owner used to breed them and all three were related. 

And did I mention huge? And really quite beautiful. I was almost convinced that one day we should have one. Then everyone that visited our future home could be able to walk away with the statement I was left with:

Today I stared down a wolf.

Not what I expected on a trip to pick up a Uhaul.

please excuse us

We've been busy moving across town, being part of an amazing concert, meeting wolves (no joke), taking day trips to decompress, and are now working at unpacking our lives. 

Sorry to those that haven't received responses to texts, emails, etc. We're working on it. And we'll tell you about meeting the wolves soon. 

peace is hard

"Peace is hard. You can do hard things."

I read this today on a blog that I just recently started reading. Her ability to write with such honesty about her faith, her emotions, her suffering and her healing is astonishing to me. 
The peace she mentioned isn't the world-peace-no-guns type of peace - it's inner peace. The past few weeks we have worked hard to fight for peace, which seems to be paradoxical but I can promise you that it is not. 

The funny thing is that we didn't know that at first. When life throws 5,000 lemons at you all at once, let me tell you that my first thought was not, "Well, time to fight for peace!" No, no. Your first thought is more like, "Are you kidding me?" perhaps with some stronger language. And we search for answers and clues as to how it all happened and try to answer why it happened and even spend time being offended and angry. We were fighting for peace without knowing it. 

I used the word fight because I've never been able to move from anger and offense to peace by sitting still and waiting for it. That usually just gives me room to stew over my anger with more intensity. I have to fight for peace - I have to take some intentional steps forward to carry on, warrior and fight through the web of disappointment and despair and chaos. I have to face my own emotions, and most of the time I feel like I have to battle to really encounter those. Some people are feelers by nature, but I'm staunchly rooted in the thinker field. It takes a lot of energy for me to encounter and face and put words to my emotions.

So we were intentional at working to not stifle the other one when they had their moments. We warred for honesty and vulnerability with ourselves and each other. That gave us room to get centered, to talk about what we do  know about this season, what we're sensing in our spirit about what we're supposed to do. And it gave us room to laugh a little.

And then peace entered. It was a messy fight. It made me so thankful to be married to a courageous and honest man. One who's not afraid to disappoint me momentarily if he trusts and believes that he's making the right decision. 

And every day I have to remind myself of the battle and walk through it again (only much quicker this time because now there's what I imagine to be a trail). It's easier to walk each day.

Peace is hard. It's intentional. & we've been fighting for it. 

glimpses

posts have been infrequent because truthfully, we've had a crazy last two weeks that involved no internet for a week, figuring out that we're moving and we're moving our friends, and i was sick for a decent amount of that first week.

not quite sure if it's due to the smoke in the air, the anti-flame retardant chemicals, stress or a mix of the three but i've either had or been fighting off migraines nearly every day for the last week. it started with a sleepless night (for both of us, which was strange). 

jimmy's such a trooper. such a great man. he's brought me toast. laid in the bed with me and talked to me while i piled pillows over my eyes to block the light. handled my not so sweet demeanor. left events early because i felt sick. one night he shoved clothes at the bottom of our door because i saw the world's largest bug in the hall and we couldn't find it to get rid of it. & we are currently on a mattress on the floor. really, he's amazing. 

we've really been learning about being flexible and surrendering our plans. i really thought i had mastered that lesson after the last year and a half, but apparently i still had some growing to do. the job i thought was very secure for me here in redding fell through last week. we also have known for a few weeks that we need to move out of the house we're staying in (with other roommates) and thought we had landed a great one, only to discover on thursday that after a series of unfortunately timed events we lost that house.

jimmy & i entertained a few different options of ministry programs for him to do but decided that the timing didn't feel quite right. so we're on the house hunt and the job hunt. and in some ways back to square one.

we're praying for & thankfully have some flexibility to wait to land jobs that we really enjoy and/or can grow in and/or teach us new skill sets.

right now, we're occupying square one with peace. we had some major emotions to deal with after everything seemed to fall through last week, but after we worked through that we both decided to keep each other from subscribing to anxiety and fear.

some of the more light-hearted things of the last few weeks: 

i developed a great future parenting plan.

i'll raise the boys, jimmy will raise the girls. he's so much better with them. example number one:

everywhere jimmy went on labor day, all the little girls (our friends' kids) went too. they love him. he is great at entertaining their stories. they follow him wherever he went all afternoon. & i'm so much more used to little boys.

here are some shots from labor day, which we spent around the pool with friends.

i've been really privileged to help promote aaron's new album, which releases on september 14th. (for those that don't know, aaron is a close friend, our pastor & the one who married us in june). he's so talented, the project is so amazing, and rooster party/records is an amazing non-profit. you can check them out here: theroosterparty.org   (and you should search for aaron's new EP on friday!)

getting really classy with our wedding gifts these days.

a really sweet surprise i came home to this weekend.

a long day of packing and boxed turned aaron into a princess.

jimmy tried on aaron's grandpa's army jacket and played the part.

and today i felt like a really great wife, if i do say so myself. after a frustrating time at the DMV i needed some therapy which often manifests as thrifting. wandering through a new goodwill, i found a great gap checkered/gingham shirt for jimmy - the kind he's wanted for a while - for $5 AND THEN i came home and conquered spaghetti squash!

it may not seem significant but for me it was quite the milestone. see my first attempt here.

so life is good, even if life is crazy.