A Year in Review

Hi friends! Happy official fall! When I think about the fact that an entire year has now passed since I signed out of my social media accounts I am slightly caught off guard. I thought a year was going to feel like an eternity. In reality it flew by and we are already back at the end of September again, many weeks into a new school year. For the past year, I have written here various posts with life updates, book recommendations, photos of our year, and thoughts about living life off of social media. A handful of folks had asked me to send those via email like a monthly newsletter, so some of you already know what this year held for us. But in case you missed any of those updates or haven’t been in touch with us lately, today I’m sharing the big pieces of news from our past 12 months, and later this week I’m going to share some thoughts on being off social media for a full year and what that experience was like, what I learned, and what role I might want those platforms to take in my life going forward. I’m not sure fully abstaining from them forever is where I’ve landed but I also don’t want to go back to a life where I’m constantly sucked into the echo chambers of the online space. I’ll reflect more about that later this week if that’s something you’re curious about!

Probably the biggest things that have happened in our lives in the past 12 months have been saying yes to getting a puppy, traveling to a couple of different locations, earning a black belt, giving the kids birthday experience gifts that have stretched out over the entire year, and finally getting to the point where we as a family knew it was time to find a new church home. All those things brought ups and downs, joy and grief, and I’ll share a little about each of them here for anyone who wants to know more.

The Best Yes I Didn’t Think I Wanted

Anyone who knows me well knows that I’m not really a pet person. I never have been. So of course God gave me a son who has done nothing but talk about wanting a dog and how much “every boy needs a dog” for years now. We had slowly started to entertain the idea. We’d talked about how if we did get a dog it had to be small, we don’t have a big yard or house. We knew we wanted something in the Pomeranian/shih tzu/fluffy little dog category. When we returned from Christmas travel Chuck saw a post on his Facebook page from the mom of a boy in his 8th grade boy life group at church. The mom had posted that her parents who live in the area had 16 week old Pomeranian-Shih Tzu puppies to give away to a good home. They owned mom and dad dog and had this litter. I of course called my sister who has loved, raised and studied dogs her whole life and she was like “do you know how expensive that dog would be if you paid for him? That’s a HIGHLY sought after mix!” After a flurry of texts and calls we arranged to go meet the puppy they had available and well, 12 hours and one frantic trip to the pet store later we brought him home. We named him Ollivander from Harry Potter and we call him Ollie, and Ollie is just the most perfect puppy we ever could have asked for. Even his trainer we met with this summer kept commenting on just how perfect of a fit he is for our family. He’s evened out at about 15 pounds, he turned one last week, and you have never seen a puppy more loved than Ollie is.

Yes, it’s changed some things about our family rhythms that have been difficult and have taken adjusting. We didn’t travel for weeks and weeks this summer like we often do, we left for one week instead. We are aware of how late we’re out at night or how long we’re away from home, and it is absolutely another creature for me to mentally think about. And at the same time, it is the best yes we’ve said. The unbelievable joy he’s brought to all of us can’t be explained. The responsibility Aidan has had to step up to has been so good for him. Asher is effusive in his love for Ollie but still not great at managing any of Ollie’s care by himself. Aidan on the other hand is doing an incredible job helping train him, walking him every morning before school, and managing him in the evening when I’m in with Asher getting him to bed. When one of the boys has had a bad day at school, coming home to a fur ball who is beyond excited to see them literally is the best medicine. He loves pup cups of whipped cream when we go to ice cream as a family, walks on the beach where he gets to run off leash (he does SO well staying near us), begging for any food that isn’t his own, snuggling with the boys in our big bed every morning, and he’s obsessed with ice cubes! Am I a dog person now? Nope. But I am absolutely an Ollie-person and man I am so glad we said yes.

Family Adventures

We didn’t travel as much as we often have thanks to the aforementioned furball, but we had a few adventures as a family this past year! Last fall we traveled to Tallahassee to see Clemson play at Florida State and that was a very fun little road trip where we got to see another school’s game day traditions and watch Clemson win big time.

We traveled to Minnesota for Christmas to spend a week with the cousins, and then this summer we headed to Door County, Wisconsin for a week in a lake house right on the shore of Lake Michigan. My parents and sister’s family joined us and the 10 of us had a great week of relaxing, some hiking, crafting, exploring, and watching the 4 kids compete in the Nutso Olympics that Megan and Nathan created for them. It was a lovely week in cooler weather spent with people we love!

Chuck earned his black belt in karate the first weekend in December, and we are so proud of how hard he worked and trained for 3 full years to reach this milestone! It was the coldest black belt test on record but we bundled up and cheered them on!

We saw plenty of live theater this past year. I took Asher with me to see three of my five Broadway shows downtown last winter—he saw Peter Pan, Michael Jackson the Musical, and Les Miserables. Our sweet friend Altom joined the boys and I for a performance of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory at the dinner theater, and Chuck and I saw Mamma Mia. I never get tired of introducing the kids to this thing I love so much!

The boy’s birthdays are in December and January, and this year we wanted to lean into the experience gifts. Chuck wanted to find something to do on a regular basis throughout the year with each of them, so for Asher we gave him the gift of an escape room with daddy once a month throughout the year. They have had the best time trying all kinds of different escape rooms around Jacksonville. Sometimes it’s just the two of them and sometimes they are paired with strangers, but they have had a blast and Asher’s mind lives for these kind of puzzles. It’s absolutely his love language!

For Aidan, Chuck signed them up for a year long father-son experience through our karate school where every month they do something together. They have done a ropes course, learned to use power tools, had an evening with a former NFL player, done water rescue training, and this fall they have a camping trip scheduled. Chuck has really enjoyed these gifts where they have something scheduled on the calendar every month that guarantees him time with each of them and the boys have loved the activities they’ve done together.

We’ve had other lovely adventures together—we made it our mission this summer to try a new to us ice cream shop every week and had a great time ranking them. Ollie got to join us for many of those outings and he very much appreciates a good pup cup! We read a lot of books this summer, served at Vacation Bible School together, and Aidan played a LOT of basketball. He played for his school last Dec-February, he played in spring, summer and now a fall league through Jacksonville Basketball Academy and will play for his school again later this fall/winter. These boys are just so much fun—I had absolutely no idea how much I would love parenting a teenage boy, but gosh I adore watching them grow and walking them through big and little happenings.

Naming Our Values

One of the biggest things we wrestled with this year was the idea of church, and how do you know when it’s time to move on from a place you love for many reasons but also doesn’t feel like the right fit anymore? If anyone else has walked this road, you know this is an excruciating decision. Church is so deeply important to us, we have such meaningful friendships there, yet for a long time now our church hasn’t felt like a place we have been comfortable for many reasons. Close friends know I have spent years tamping down frustrations and I have constantly felt like this square peg forcing myself to fit into this round hole that I am never going to fit into well. Chuck felt similarly but he has a much longer history with this congregation so I think it was harder for him. We struggled to articulate why we didn’t feel like we fit. We knew it wasn’t just one thing, like if this one thing changed we’d be good here, it was deeper than that. But we kept trying and kept getting frustrated, and kept being unable to figure out exactly why or what to do next, especially for our kids.

One day I was listening to John Delony, one of my favorite podcasts about mental and relational health, and he said something that was really really helpful for us. He was talking to a couple who were struggling to make a decision together and he spoke to them about naming their values. He said often we don’t take the time to concretely name what we value, either in life in general or related to a particular area of life, we just rush right to the decision making. But that can often lead us to a place where we make a decision that isn’t quite right for us. He used the example of choosing a school for a kid. Instead of just jumping into researching the local schools and making a quick decision, he urges couples to name together what they value in the education of their child. Is a technology heavy focus important to us? Do we value more outside time? Do we value lots of extracurricular options or somewhere with no homework? Once we name what we value most it often helps give us a clearer picture of whether or not the decision we’ve made is actually a good fit for us.

I shared this idea with Chuck one night and said I thought that was probably why we felt so stuck. We found ourselves frustrated with decisions being made or the way things were structured but we couldn’t articulate WHY those things bothered us. Until we sat down one night and together made a list of what we as a couple valued most in a church community. Some of the things on the list were more important to him and some were more important to me, but together we came up with 5-7 things that we feel are foundational to a congregation that is going to be a good fit for our family. And ya’ll, we finished putting those on paper and almost started laughing. We adore our church community of friends, but not one of the things we valued is a value of this particular congregation. It was so so clear to us that this is why we have felt like we just don’t fit for so long. We fit in relationship with the people, but when it comes to what we value in worship, in church government, in denominational relations, in who our kids are taught by and discipled by, man it was so clear that the structure of the church we’ve been in just isn’t right for us.

Let me be clear. This doesn’t mean it’s a “bad” church. Not at all. But just like we have all chosen different schools for our kids based on what’s important to us, at some point it became clear we had to make a different choice to be in a place that felt like a healthier fit for the things our family values. One of the things that can make church so difficult for both Chuck and I is that together we’ve invested over a decade of our lives and thousands of dollars studying this very thing. We’ve spent far more time than the average Sunday morning church attender reflecting on church government, decision making processes, denominational ties, discipleship of kids and students, and the importance of grounding all of these things in an understanding of church history to keep us from possibly tossing a baby out with the bathwater. And if we are honest, one of the biggest reasons it was clear it was time to leave is that neither of us have ever been asked to be a part of these conversations that are shaping the future of this church; instead we had to watch folks we know and love but who don’t share the same training and background we do make really important decisions about denominations, ordinations, church governance and bylaws without having any way to contribute to these conversations. We care a lot and wanted to be invited into these spaces and for years we weren’t. That has been something that’s been really hurtful to both of us in different ways but we finally got to a place where we said “maybe this is just God’s way of closing doors for us to show us this isn’t where he wants to use us.”

We knew we needed to go back to a Presbyterian church. It’s where I completed the ordination process and in a Presbyterian context if they hear that you have a Masters of Divinity and have completed the ordination process, well, in that context those things mean something significant. Not in a boastful way or in a way that makes you better than anyone else, but they know you’ve been trained and can be trusted to participate and serve in the life of a congregation in ways I have been hungry to serve in for a few years now. We settled late this spring into a smaller Presbyterian church and we weren’t there two months before the pastor asked if I wanted to preach on a Sunday. I’ve missed preaching more than anything this past decade, it’s not something I was ever asked to do at Beach, so I jumped at the chance. He put me on the schedule for October, said he trusted me completely and couldn’t wait to hear what God wanted to share with the church through me. I left his office that day in tears of gratitude, feeling like I have so much more to offer a community than I’ve ever been given the chance to for years now, feeling like here might be a place I can use the training and gifts I know God has given me to encourage a beautiful congregation. This past Sunday I was asked to be one of the pastors on hand for the blessings of the pets event we’re hosting for the community in two weeks, getting to meet new folks and their fur-babies and pray a blessing over them. I’m so honored to be asked to start stepping into these roles and it feels like confirmation the move was necessary.

We’ve been asked about our kids and how we’ve navigated this transition with them. With Aidan, we’ve required him to be in worship with us at Community Pres on Sunday mornings and then we’ve given him the choice of which youth group he’d like to attend. He has a wonderful small group at Beach and we don’t ever want to take him away from that group of boys, so he has continued to attend their Wednesday night mid-week program. Community Pres’ youth group meets on Sunday and he actually tried it for the first time this past week and also really enjoyed that, he liked the smaller group, the more low key program and the activities they do together as a group. We’ve explained that when you have a smaller sized youth group you can do things like do boating trips and water park days much easier than in a larger church setting. So we love that he’s getting a taste of both worlds and we trust the Holy Spirit to continue working in him through both places.

With Asher it’s been a bit trickier because Community Pres has a youth group that will be a really good fit for him. He needs a smaller, quieter space rather than a loud worship experience. Beach won’t be the right fit for him, we’ve seen that in some other ways with him already at various Beach events, and he’s even expressed concern about how loud and crowded the Beach youth program is. But this year, as a 5th grader it’s been a tough transition for him because he doesn’t know anyone and isn’t old enough to attend the fun youth activities. We’ve explained to him why we are making this transition and that it WILL be the right place for him a year from now. He does LOVE that the new church has a piano in their fellowship hall he’s allowed to play every week after the service and people are blown away when they realize it’s a kid playing some of these songs from memory each week! One thing that’s been super helpful is about a month after we made the move, Asher’s very best friend from Beach walked into Community Pres with her mom! We knew this family was also looking for a new church home and we were overjoyed when they said their daughter would be attending with Asher this year. That has helped immensely and we are grateful for what feels like God’s hand in all of this!

Leaving places is never easy. I met with our senior pastor this week and just had a conversation with him about why we’ve decided it’s time for us to move on, and he was so kind, gracious, and not a bit surprised (we joked that I hadn’t been at the church a year before I was in his office demanding to know where Holy Week services were at Beach!). He’s known I’ve struggled for years trying to fit and trying to be okay with decisions that deep down just don’t align with my values. So he was nothing but gracious and encouraging about what God has for us in this new season. I assured him we weren’t angry, we weren’t leaving upset at all, just realizing it’s time for something different and he so graciously expressed that all he cared about was that we found a place to plug in and didn’t just end up nowhere.

The relationships we have still mean the world to us, we just will be elsewhere on Sunday mornings, in a space that’s a little quieter and just a better fit overall.

Phew! If you’re still reading, I’m impressed! What a year huh? I honestly had the sense deep down that when I stepped away from social media a lot would happen. I knew a shift was coming in our church life, I knew we’d be entering our final year at the school we’ve been at for 9 years—Aidan will graduate from 8th grade there this year and when Asher finishes 5th we’re going to move both of them to a place that will be a better fit. But that’s kind of life isn’t it? All the ups and downs, doors opening and closing along the way. It’s been a beautiful year, one full of gratitude and grief. All the things. I’ve missed many of you online though! It will be fun to reconnect with those of you I haven’t interacted with in awhile! Have a beautiful day my friends, you are so loved!