A Long Winter
A reflection on change, loss, and growth.
It’s been too long, friends. I apologize.
Many of you know this is a big year for my family. In January, we moved back to the Pacific Northwest, where my husband started a new job with a new fire department in a new city. The kids have new schools and are starting to build new relationships. We will hopefully soon have a new house. And in the summer, we will bring into the world a new life—a baby girl.
The past couple of months have been a blur. We arrived in Seattle in the dark after a six hour flight. My husband picked us up in a new (to us) truck and drove us out of the city into the foothills of the Cascades, where our friends from an old church community live. While we find our footing, they generously offered us a place to stay on their property, and here we remain.
Our first week was full of cold sunshine, and we spent the time hiking, showing the boys the city from the Space Needle, and visiting old friends. We are grateful for this time together as shortly after, my husband started recruit school, and he has been working long hours ever since. My oldest child started school around the same time, but the first week was shortened and softened by snow delays and snow closures. The next week brought many tears, as he grieved the loss of his old school and his old friends. His eyes continue to fill with tears each morning, nearly a month and a half after he first started, and my heart continues to break. We loved our old school. It was a long shot to even get accepted there, and it’s only in hindsight that we realize how amazing it truly was. For a little boy who struggles to make friends and struggles to separate from mom, starting over has been challenging and continues to ebb and flow. If you pray, I ask that you pray for a friend for him to make it all more manageable.
After that first week, school paused for mid-winter break, and all four of us had the flu followed by a sinus infection for the grownups. It’s really just in the last week that we’ve started to feel like ourselves again. It’s still the rainy season, but we’ve had pockets of sunshine most days and we are trying to press into the promise of the spring to come. All along we knew this would be a hard season, but that doesn’t make it easier to endure.
Most weekends, my husband gets one day off from work (Sunday is reserved for studying), so we’ve spent most Saturdays searching for a house. The market here is vastly different than the one in North Carolina. Where sellers are expected to cover repairs back home, here you will not get an offer accepted unless you waive every contingency, agree to an enormous sum of earnest money, and bid well over the asking price. So far we’ve made three offers, and we’ve been outbid every time. Generally, we’ve been competing against up to twenty other people. It’s been disheartening; despite our friends’ generosity, our quarters are tight, and as a pregnant mother with a strong urge to nest, I just want a house where we can return to our normal routines and rebuild our sense of home.
*
Before we left North Carolina, the boys and I spent New Year’s Day at the beach with my mom. We walked out onto the sand, where crowds of people were gathered for the annual Dolphin Dip. The boys ran in circles along the shore as we waited for a noontime countdown, and then we all watched as hundreds of people stripped down to their swimsuits and ran squealing into the waves. I held hands with my oldest son, and we ran into the edge, knee deep, since we didn’t have swimsuits with us. The water was ice-cold but the day was warm so we walked along the edge all the way to the pier, picking up shells and spinning in the water before we turned around to meet my mother and my youngest son.
In years past, I’ve made resolutions or chosen specific words for the new year. But this year, in the face of so much uncertainty, I decided to simply focus on a dream for the year instead of a resolution. Dreams feel more imaginative, more open. Dreams feel less like a thing you have to achieve and more like a goal to sail towards. And in the midst of all this newness, I need a dream to anchor me against this murky, swirling tide.
For the past year, we have dreamed as a family of exploring the rugged Pacific coast, of hiking under the evergreens with the boys, of more time as a family with an expanded schedule. We dream of building community, of opening our home and practicing hospitality, of finding friendship within the families at a new church and a new school.
Unfortunately, dreams aren’t always linear, and moving isn’t easy, even when you choose it. Maybe it’s even less so, since you have more room to doubt. Did we do the right thing? Have we made a mistake? We are trying our best to remain positive and be present with one another in this strange liminal season, but it is proving to be mentally and emotionally overwhelming, physically exhausting, spiritually draining. I hold onto the dream of the life we hope to build here, but right now it is hard to envision. I want to rush into June, like a child running into a field of wildflowers. School will be out, the baby will be born, summer will be here. Instead, we are one foot in and one foot out, balancing on a tightrope. It feels appropriate for Lent, I suppose.
*
Today, the words of jubilee below are my own: they are my attempt to say goodbye to our first house and our first home, where we made a life as a family of four, celebrating—the best we knew how—our boys’ early childhood. I wonder how much they will remember? It’s my attempt to honor our departure from a town we grew to love, from friends and a church we were grateful for. There is no tidy closure. Just a hope and a dream and a lot of grief over loss and change and the transition into a new season. But just as labor pains bring new life and the unfurling of seeds in the dark sprout new growth, we hope that God will see us through, making beautiful days bloom from the darkness.
Jenica
Ordinary Joy
I’ve seen so many folks sharing posts about their kid’s 100th day of school. For many, it was a joyful celebration of learning and growing and making new friends. For us, it marked nearly one hundred days of tearful goodbyes, friendships made and lost, sparks of curiosity and independence fanned into flame and then dampened, loneliness felt. I count it as joy that we’ve made it this far, and I pray that we finish on the upswing, that the years ahead hold less pain and more joy.
Words of Jubilee
What you don’t know until you move is how much you will miss your cheery kitchen with walls the color of a robin’s egg, how you’ll long to sit across the table from your husband and your kids eating dinner over candlelight because candles in winter feel special. You’ll miss the walls decorated with stickers and your kindergartener’s artwork, you’ll miss the side table covered with plants and art supplies, and you’ll wonder how a few weeks away can make the memory feel like years have passed.
You’ll cry into your pillow after the kids go to sleep, thinking about how the mountains painted on the bedroom wall have probably been painted over by now, and more tears will come when you think of the irises and daffodils that will bloom in spring without you. Surely the hallway misses the stampede of little feet running down its length, and the playroom, which was really a dining room, must feel empty without its usual scatter of blocks and magnet tiles, cars and superhero capes.
You would give anything for another night between the boys’ twin beds, for piles of stories to choose from, and a room big enough to hold space for cartwheels and front-rolls, Spider-Man training and ninja moves. You’ll miss the bathtub full of bubbles and colored water, and you’ll wonder if they’ll have outgrown baths by the time you find another place to call home.
You’ll wonder if the chipmunks and rabbits have crept back into the yard without a dog to chase them, and whether or not any lost hot wheels or broken pieces of sidewalk chalk remain in the tangle of juniper shrubs on the hill—if there is anything at all left to tell the story of a life once lived. Anything at all to say we were here.
A Few Good Things
Since we moved, the kids have gotten super interested in Transformers. Currently, we listen to this soundtrack every time we go look for houses. It’s from the 1986 Transformers movie, and it’s surprisingly catchy.
I’m currently reading The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden at the recommendation of the friend we are staying with. It’s a great fantasy, perfect for this season between winter and spring.
The first hike we did with the kids was a snowy trail to Franklin Falls. It was too slippery to make it to the end, but we had fun exploring under the giant evergreens.
Welcome to Joy & Jubilee! Thank you so much to the many people reading and sharing my work. If you would like to contribute to the continuation of this project, you can do so by becoming a paid subscriber, by clicking the “Buy Me a Coffee” button below, or simply by sharing this publication with others. A paid subscription is a few dollars a month, and each subscription makes an impact for our family.