One Next Action

When you’re drinking great coffee AND Outlook gives you affirmations. 🎉 Yes, I have had a productive day and accomplished a lot, thank you very much.

Farewell 2022.

What a ride! My 2022 word of the year was “Settle.” There was some
significant uprooting before settling, but it was a perfect word to ground the year. A close second is “bittersweet.”

One year ago, we were on a holiday road trip and decided to play the “What if?” game: “What if we moved to Arizona? What would life look like?”

13 weeks later we moved. 🤯 It was simultaneously crazy sudden and 15+ years in the making.

Settling into a new life has had all the ups, downs, twists, and exhilaration of a roller coaster. Leaving old friends is beyond hard. Joining other friends and making new ones is wonderful. Starting a new school had some major bumps, but has opened the door to new interests and opportunities and both boys are thriving.

Moving has been a unique incentive to reassess if we’re living life according to our values or according to habit and external expectations. Do our careers line up with our personal and family values? Are we living our faith authentically in who Christ has called us to be, or what the American evangelical church expects us to be? Are we raising the boys to be their best versions of themselves?

Settling into an authentic life isn’t complete in a year, but it’s been a great stretch of the journey. Looking forward to the next steps in 2023!

I’m incredibly thankful to not have the ability to see the future. If I had, I likely would have done anything possible to skip August 2022.

Our family walked through some incredibly dark days. I could go on for hours about broken systems (schools, healthcare, etc) failing those that need help the most. It’s beyond overwhelming for us to navigate, and we’re about as privileged as they come.

I have no idea how people without our level of privilege do it. And the sad reality is many of them don’t. We’re called to do better, so much better, as Americans and as Christians.

Suffice it to say, we’re exhausted and hanging on by a thread and the grace of God.

When I found out yesterday that the fingers I thought were bruised were actually multiple breaks in fingers and hand, I had nothing left but to laugh in disbelief.

And yet…there are so many things I would have missed out on if I could have chosen to skip this month.

- A son turning 11 and having an EPIC birthday party to make up for pandemic-lost years.
- Quality family time and remembering that no matter what, we’re in it together.
- Friends, near and far, old and new - I couldn’t do life without you.
- Ugly crying, so many prayers, and pedicure friend dates to forget it all for a few hours.
- Celebrating all my August birthday friends. So.many.August.birthdays!
- The darkest days holding a glimmer of hope that this will (finally!) open the door to help that has seemed just out of reach for so long.
- Learning to ask for help, because sometimes life really is too much and that’s why we have community.