It’s been so long since I’ve written a blog post that it almost feels silly to start up again. What could I possibly have to say now, after two years of nearly radio silence? My last post ended by saying, “I hope my next post doesn’t take me a year and a half!” So naturally, it is almost exactly a year and a half later that I’m finally taking time to start writing again.

I have a hard time slowing down. Even when I intend to slow down, I have a way of blazing a trail through life anyway. In 2019, I graduated from seminary, moved to a new region of the country, started my first call, bought a house, and got engaged. In 2020, I got married at the height of the pandemic and my brand-new husband moved away from all his friends and family to be with me. Our life in Ohio was hard- harder than we knew how to publicly talk about. Getting married during a pandemic and living in a town with hardly any community was lonely and tiring. Our first year of marriage was so much harder than we were prepared for and it forced us to make big, hard choices about the life we want to live together.

I am often aware of how lucky I am to have David as my life partner, but I think think the moment that most clearly made me realize what a gift he is to me was when I first began to dream about moving. We were sitting in the barn apartment on the Nile fam, a place I love more than any other in the world, and I was feeling wistful and sad. I said, “I wish I was retired so that I could just take a year off and fix this place up.” Without missing a beat, he said, “Why don’t we?” I remember laughing in response. “Oh sure,” I thought, “just pack up and leave my job and move here?” But the more we talked about it, the more real it became.

And so we did the impossibly hard and wonderful thing- we left everything and moved to California. We left our first house together, our new group of friends, our pottery studio, and jobs and pension plans and started our second year of marriage, living in the basement apartment on the Nile farm.

I cannot say it has all been easy. I worry more about money than I used to. It’s hard to make friends in an area that doesn’t take COVID precautions seriously when you’re living with an elderly, immunocompromised family member. My MBA program is hard work and I have less mental energy than I’d like after a long day of finance homework.

But all that doesn’t hold a candle to the joy that this season of life has brought us. We love living in the mountains. We love getting to take care of my grandma and the sweet moments that only come with lots of time spent together. We love watching Penny roam the fields, chasing geese or searching for mice. David loves coaching volleyball and the ski team and I love learning new hobbies like woodworking and stained glass. We love living with family and being back on the West Coast where we belong.

This season of life feels special and sweet, in part because we do not know how long it will last. We know the next year will involve more changes to our lives, but we’re not quite sure what those changes will be. I used to have wonderful, multi-year plans for my life but those days feel long gone. Learning to live with ambiguity has been the essential task of my twenties. I entered this decade in the midst of unpacking the black and white world I thought I had been raised in. It took me years to learn to become comfortable with not having answers or with having answers that will never quite feel sufficient.

As I look ahead to my thirties, I know that the work of my twenties has prepared me well for what is next. The work is never quite done, just as the work of keeping one’s house clean is never finished. But the work that I’ve done, the spring cleaning of my mind and soul, has set me on a good path. I know how to live with ambiguity and to walk with others as they navigate unsure waters.

I titled this post, “Slowing Down Time” because I’ve been feeling the effects of time quite profoundly lately. There are days that stretch on so long that I feel like time itself has slowed down. Particularly on my hardest, loneliest days, it feels like this transition season will never end. But then, I look at the calendar and I realize that it’s already been six months since we started living here. Time is flying by and before we know it, a whole year will have flown by. In those moments, I long for time to slow down so that I don’t miss anything. But, of course, time waits for no woman and so I must make the most of the days, hours, and moments that are given to me. Perhaps the best way I can slow down time is to write, for it is the process of putting pen to paper (or keystrokes on the screen) that allows my brain to stretch around time and my mind to settle. Thank you for accompanying me on the journey.