2010: A Summary

What a year... Whew... I'm happily exhausted just thinking about it. Let's review, shall we?

January 
Daryl flies back to Nashville to resume coursework. This marks our 5th month of living apart since September.  Boo.

I fly back to New Jersey to start my final semester of classes at Princeton Seminary.

I start rehearsals for "A Caucasian Chalk Circle," the spring seminary play where I am cast as (yay!) Grusha, the resourceful peasant mother. One of my best friends is cast as Natella, the evil villainess, and we enjoy verbal sparring on our rides to and from practice.

February
I watch my friend Jinelle skate to Olympic silver with the U.S. Women's Hockey Team. Since the seminary doesn't get the channel, we watch from a nearby Mexican restaurant...

Daryl and I celebrate Valentine's Day apart by cooking the same meal and having a Skype dinner date. Not the real in-person thing, but still pretty good.

After noticing that there are few church jobs in the Nashville area, I apply to the Nashville CPE (Clinical Pastoral Education) partnership as a chaplain. I anxiously await word back.

March
We welcomed our new niece, Sophia Joy, into the family! She was, and still remains, the cutest baby EVER. (Besides our other niece, Aleah, of course!)

I have my final review at the Presbytery of Chicago where they officially certify me as ready for ordination in the PC(USA)!

Daryl and I travel (together!) to California for spring break where we visit his family and lots of friends. We also eat at In n' Out Burger about nine times. In one week. Yum.

I hear back that the Nashville CPE partnership would like to interview me. I interview, and a couple of weeks later in...

April
...I hear back that I've been accepted as a chaplain resident at Alive Hospice in Nashville. Daryl and I both breathe a sigh of vocational and financial relief.

I performed in "A Caucasian Chalk Circle" at the seminary. After performance #1 I lost my voice for several anxious hours. Lots of tea with lemon (prescribed by the director), lots of prayer (my addition), and it came back by showtime the following night. Phew.

May
Daryl and I slogged through finals and were rewarded at the end... with one another. The long-distance marriage was over! Hooray!

My parents treated us to a cruise to Mexico. All the gluten free food I could eat, delicious sun, and lots of napping. It was A-MAZ-ING.

We returned to Princeton for my graduation! All done, seminary!

We packed up all of our belongings, and with the help of my parents, loaded them into a storage POD that was sent to await our arrival in Nashville.

June
We headed north to Wisconsin to spend much of the summer with my family resting, reading, and relaxing. A wonderful  reward after nine months living apart from one another, three years of seminary, three part-time jobs, and a whole lot else...

July
We trekked to Nashville to pick out a new home and found the townhouse of our dreams. Less than two miles from Vanderbilt for Daryl, less than two miles from the hospital where I'd be working, and within our price range. We signed the lease the very next day.

August
We travel to Michigan for a week-long family reunion with my dad's side of the family. There are games. There is food. It is awesome.

We move in  to our new home in Nashville, after waving goodbye to our wonderful family in Wisconsin. After hauling in box after box in 105 degree heat, we both agree: this is the LAST move we are ever doing ourselves. Next time (which we think will be years and years down the road), we're hiring movers.

I begin work at Alive Hospice on my birthday, August 30th. Lots of orientation, lots of preparation, lots of great people.

September
Daryl begins his second and final year of coursework at Vanderbilt.

We travel to Asheville, NC with some dear friends to visit Posana's Cafe, an all-gluten free restaurant. It is worth every mile.

We head back to Wisconsin to watch two other dear friends tie the knot in an outdoor ceremony on a beautiful lake. Then we dance all night.

Daryl travels to Oxford to deliver a paper at a conference. He visits all of our old haunts, even eating one of "Ben's Cookies" for me at the covered market.

I receive a semi-cryptic email from a church in Wisconsin asking me if I'd be willing to move to Wisconsin... I respond in the affirmative... They interview me over Skype and we immediately hit it off.

October
The church flies me up for a weekend interview. It goes wonderfully, and at the end of the weekend they extend the call to me! Daryl and I take a week to pray about it and feel nothing but confirmation. I call them back with the news - it's official (though not yet Facebook-public, as I still need to be examined by the Presbytery)!

Daryl's dad and step-mom visit, and we hit up the Frist Museum and the best Predator's game of the year.

My mom and dad visit and we visit an outdoor Chihuly exhibit and explore Nashville and Dad teaches me to make the best gluten free cookies ever.

November
I meet with the PC(USA)'s Company of New Pastors at their conference in Nashville. We spend hours talking and learning about prayer and how to incorporate Scripture into worship in different ways.

We eat the world's best Thanksgiving dinner with some dear (and gluten free!) friends in Nashville. I can still taste that cornbread stuffing.

Friends from Michigan come to visit us and we play board games for hours and hours.

I finish my final day of CPE and say goodbye to some wonderful patients, staff, and fellow chaplains.

Daryl surprises me with tickets to a Ben Folds concert after my last day of work. I sit, enraptured, listening to one of my favorites perform.

I fly up to the Wisconsin for the congregational vote and Presbytery examination. Both go well and now it is officially official - in January I will start my tenure as pastor of 1st Presbyterian!

December
Daryl finishes his coursework after a grueling two weeks of final exams. Cough drops, coffee, and meals I cook and set in front of him get him through.

Back to Eagle River, Wisconsin for a white Christmas at home with my family. Restful, fun, and full of delicious food.

Down to Nashville to pack up a few suitcases and await the arrival of movers who will take all of our worldly goods north to Wisconsin where we will move into the church's historic and very beautiful manse (parsonage).

Which brings us to New Year's Eve, where we'll say goodbye to Nashville and ring in the new year with some dear friends and a pile of gluten free goodies.

Whew... What a 2010! What will 2011 bring? I can hardly wait to find out... New Year's plans coming soon!

Update

It has been too long.

I'm sorry, friends. This past month has been an absolute whirlwind, and there were things I couldn't post about on here until they were sure things, which now they are.

I'll write more in depth later, and post some great photos, but for now, the summary is this:

I've accepted a call as a Presbyterian minister at a church in southern Wisconsin! I start January 9th, and my ordination service will be January 30th.

Daryl and I will be moving our belongings from Nashville next week, and he will return here to finish his coursework for the final semester of his PhD. He'll join me up north in May.

Wonderful blessings. I'm moving back to Wisconsin, my home state, to a beautiful, vibrant church. I'll be close to family once again. I'll live in a landscape that feeds my soul, full of trees and prairies and snow and summer grasses. I'll have the chance to pursue the vocation I've been training for over the past several years, and the one I've felt called to since college. I'll be close to dozens of friends and family in Illinois, Minnesota, Michigan, Iowa, and Wisconsin.

All changes come with a tinge of sadness too, of course. This means more time away from Daryl. It meant I had to end my CPE program early. It means leaving Nashville--a city I love--and my Nashville friends who have become like family.

More to come about the job, Christmas, the death-flu that my whole family came down with over the holidays (eeesh...), our favorite new holiday board game, the best book I've read in quite awhile, and just general Christmas joy.

I'm back. Updates to come.

Surprises

I love surprises.

No, that's not right.

I love, love, love, love, LOVE surprises. Yup. That about covers it.

I had a hard day at hospice last week. I came home exhausted and discouraged. Then I checked the mailbox. Not one, but TWO unexpected surprises!

A note from my dear, dear, dear friend Inga, along with a CD. On that CD were three songs from one of my favorite artists--Jake Armerding--who has a new album out that I hadn't even heard about. It was like musical manna from heaven.

A small package from my grandmother who lives in Michigan, containing two really good make-up brushes! The kind I would never, ever splurge on for myself! She had read my previous blog post and put them in the mail as a gesture of love.

After such a crummy, difficult day, I found myself sitting at the dining room table with these two beautiful gifts from two people I love so much, tearing up a little. "You knew I needed this today, didn't you, God?" I asked.

While I love surprises, I hate them, too. I love gifts, letters, concert tickets (thank you, Daryl!!!), unexpected trips. But I hate the unexpected turns life sometimes takes. As a child I once threw a screaming fit outside my preschool when Miss Cindy, my teacher, was absent. There was a substitute teacher in there and I was bound and determined not to have any part of that. Dad used to say that I'm not "good at hitting the curve ball." He's a sports metaphor kind of guy.

My life has been full of surprises lately, both the kind I love and the kind I hate.

I am leaving Nashville. I have moved nine times in ten years, and this will be my tenth move.

I am moving somewhere closer to home, and to do something new and exciting and joyful and challenging.

That's all I can say for now, but more news will be forthcoming.

I love the new possibilities of what is to come, but I hate that I'm leaving Nashville. I hate that this new turn of events means I'll be living apart from Daryl for a few months (again... I know...). I hate that I have to move again.

But I love the excitement of a life spent following Jesus. I love that I'll soon be doing what I feel called and gifted to do. I love that my life will soon be marked by some real stability and that Daryl and I will have the chance to put down some roots.

I'm headed north.

More soon...

I Guess I'm Cool Now

I live in Nashville now.

Me.

I live in Nashville.

So does Taylor Swift, Tim McGraw, Amy Grant, and the Kings of Leon.

The Avett Brothers concert here sold out in about nine minutes.

People run into Carrie Underwood and the guys from Switchfoot at the dry cleaners.

It's pretty neat.

Apartment Hunting: Round 3

I suppose it is misleading to label this series "Apartment Hunting" because, as we soon discovered, we do not want to live in an apartment. After visiting only one we became immediately irritated with the whole mass-marketed apartment world.

"Come! Rent our place!" they scream. "We have amenities like pool parties that you will never go to and free popcorn from six days ago!" And then, when you need something fixed, they hassle you. Also, they keep the garbage dumpster far, far away from where you live so that you get to take your trash for a car ride. Fun.

So after our very first apartment glance, we changed course. We wanted a house. A home. A place that felt like maybe we were grown-ups and not just displaced college students.

The problem there was that homes are pricey. Way over our budget, for the most part. Enter townhouse/condo/duplex. Ah, this was good. The personable nature of a house with a smaller price tag because of one shared wall. Perfect.

So we looked some more today.

First we saw a run down duplex that had five of these living next door:

But it's cool, right? Because the yard was separated from the duplex's yard by a shoddy fence. And pit bulls are friendly, right? I mean, they love people so much that sometimes they eat them.

Next we saw a cute-and-affordable-but-kind-of-far-away-and-in-a-sketch-neighborhood place. We fell in love with the landlord here (around our age, a former Christian college student, offered to put in lots of sweet amenities for not much money), but the distance and neighborhood were too much for us. Also, it was right across the road from a BP refinery. Lots of issues with that one. Like, I like to breathe air. And not have cancer.

Throughout the day we were waiting for K, our potential landlady, to call us. She was offering our dream townhouse to the first folks who viewed it. If they didn't want it, it as ours. So we waited, nervously, while looking at other potential options. I had a hard time sleeping last night because I was so anxious. What if someone else took it first? What if it fell through? What if she decided that she didn't want to rent to us for some bizarre reason? What if she suddenly changed her mind about allowing cats?

So we continued our just-in-case tour. We saw a cute house and called to see how much it was renting for. The number was over twice our budget. Eep. You could buy a house for that much in some places in Wisconsin.

We waited. We were nervous. We waited.

Then, she called.

"I haven't heard from the first folks," she said. "If you want it, it's yours."

We told her we were getting in the car with our checkbook.

And we signed a lease.

I was a silly disorganized person and forgot the camera when we toured it, so there are no photos (yet). Tomorrow we head back to Wisconsin.

So, beginning in August we are now living 1.5 miles from Vanderbilt, a couple of miles from the hospital where I'll be twice a week, and only 20 minutes from my place of work the rest of the week. We are one mile from Daryl's favorite coffee shop and my favorite resale shop. We are less than a mile from my two favorite gluten-free restaurants. We are just over a mile away from some friends (hi, M and P!) who moved downtown last week. We are in a safe neighborhood that's still close to the city. We have a yard. We are a hundred million times excited.

We have a fireplace. We have a washer and dryer. We have a garage. We have two stories. 

Also, we have a guest room. So come visit.

And we are very, very happy.

Working Out

I have not exercised regularly in three years. Count 'em. Sad, I know.

But now that we're up in Wisconsin for the next couple of months, it has become a million times easier to work out. And I am. Regularly. And I am achy and sore and more relaxed than I've been in years.

Why the change? For one, I have time (time! glorious time!). For another, my workouts now look like this:

I am so happy.

*Photo courtesy of: http://www.3eagletrail.com/trailpics.html

New GF Blog

Hello y'all.

I'm starting a new blog in order to keep the personal more personal (hello vacation photos!) and to separate all of my gf-related posts into their own blog. Autumn All Year will continue on as my personal blog. Gluten Free Jesus Freak is my new gf-and-Christian-related-stuff blog. Feel free to pass on the link to those you know who are living gf, especially those who are interested in how following Jesus and living gf can go together (yes, there are some solutions to the communion bread dilemma!).

The new blog: Gluten Free Jesus Freak.

(There's also a link on the right side of this blog under "Friends and Blogs I Like.")

For those of you who are not gf, now you won't have to wade through recipes and gf rants on a regular basis to get to the rest of the blogging. (I'm sure you've heard more than enough about my interactions with cranky waiters... No more for you! Hip hip hooray!)

Have no fear, Autumn All Year shall continue as usual. I'm having an extended summer break, so expect lots of updates on both!

Cheerio, friends!

The Finish Line

On May 3, I gave my final exams at Rider. On May 4, I graded them. On May 5, I flew to Nashville from Princeton for the final time. It was the final plane ride back to my husband after being away from him for the past nine months. It didn't come a moment too soon. I felt like I was limping in, like Dr. House after a long night on the hospital floor. Something like that.

Daryl met me at the airport with a huge hug. The last week of our long-distance marriage hadn't been too kind to him, either--in the middle of his final exams his computer crashed and he, the king of backing up files, had neglected to  back up one particular paper that he then had to rewrite from scratch. Have you heard utter despair over the phone before? I sure did, the morning that paper got eaten... Poor boy. We practically collapsed into each other's arms in the terminal.

"This has been the hardest year of my life," I said. I'm prone to large amounts of exaggeration and apocryphal storytelling, but this was the utter truth. "This has been the hardest month of that year. And this has been the hardest week of that month."

He held me for a moment, rubbed my back in that wonderful lower-back region that makes me curl up like a happy cat, then said, "Let's go get breakfast." (Yet another thing I love about him: he understands that, while food doesn't solve problems, it does help take the edge off of them...)

So we did. There was no grand celebration yet. No fireworks or large, extravagant gifts given to one another in honor of the occasion (hey, we're grad students...). There was no award from the Mayor of Marriages in honor of our survival. There was just him and me and the knowledge that we never, EVER had to do this again. We ate a leisurely breakfast of fruit and juice and then got down to the next business: packing.

We had a deadline in SoCal. My parents (thank you, thank you, thank you!), knowing how tired we would be at the end of this season, booked a cruise vacation for the four of us leaving from Los Angeles on May 9. We needed to return my friend's car to her in Monterey, CA. So after breakfast we hurriedly packed up Daryl's life from the last year in order to began the 42-hour drive from Nashville to Los Angeles via Monterey.

Daryl is, shall we say, a contemplative packer. He muses about where each item should go, thinks about each book or piece of clothing, and generally drives me (and eventually himself) crazy. So he ran the errands and I did the packing. I am speedy-packer-girl. I also have no problem throwing things - this pair of tennis shoes from high school, a shirt with holes in it, a book with serious water damage - away. That helps. So I packed. And packed. And packed and packed and packed. And we headed off for our first night's hotel (St. Louis, about 6 hours away) around 6:30pm. Ah well, it was a start.

It seemed fitting somehow to end this marathon of a season with a long drive across the country. We've done more of these than most people in the past five years of dating and marriage. Daryl dropped me off at my magazine internship in Colorado right after our undergraduate graduation. We drove to Princeton to move in. We drove to Los Angeles and back for a summer internship. And this season we ended our long separation by driving to California to see a dear friend and then get on a cruise boat. It's pretty easy to do that much driving if you know food, sun, and a pool lounge chair await you. And if you're just so overjoyed at the presence of the man you love that you'd happily drive forever if it meant it was just you and him and nothing more.

Speaking of road trips: I never know what to post on Facebook or not. I like to share what I'm up to, but sometimes it gets me in trouble. People find out I've been in town and feel hurt I didn't call or visit, even though I was only there for a day (or a few hours!). I thank people in a status only to forget one or two important ones (hurt feelings! so bad!). I overshare without meaning to, or update when I'm in a grumpy mood and sound too harsh and unpastoral. They're' tricky nowadays, these Internets.

Anyway, on our drive across the country I updated where we were every night, to keep people (including my parents) posted on our driving progress and because it's fun to update Facebook from cities across the country. Also, hooray! I wasn't in New Jersey anymore!

Because my family of friends (my fremly, as my sister Caroline calls her own) is so dear, thoughtful, and wonderful, almost everywhere I stopped I had people commenting and asking why we didn't stay with them/their family. For free! They'd feed us! Why not?

Kind gestures, to be sure, but hey: I had just lived apart from my husband for nine months. We were getting a hotel room, gosh darn it. 'Nuff said.

And so we drove. And drove and drove.

We saw this (yes, at night - no, not with the cool moon shining through it):

And lots and lots (too much!) of this:

And this strange addition to the Utah salt flats:

Daryl and his friends Chris and Steven have a special name for this piece of art, but it isn't particularly blog-appropriate. You can ask any of them yourself, if you want.

But mostly, I saw this:

Boy, was it a sight for sore eyes...

Gratitude

I'm back! As promised! Welcome to June, friends.

I have lots of updates to... update. Taking finals, vacation, moving, driving across the country, graduation, saying goodbye, starting a new chapter of life, leaving NJ (!), moving back in with my husband permanently, heading to Wisconsin for the summer. Before I get into all that (which I will, soon!), I wanted to begin with what has been at the forefront of my mind for the past month: gratitude.

This has been a crazy-difficult season of life. From being apart from Daryl to finishing my degree in Princeton to working to moving, Daryl and I have both been quite exhausted. During our most recent long drive (24 hours from Princeton to Eagle River, WI), we talked about what has gotten us through this season. People. Our dear, dear family and friends who have sacrificed, loved on us, cared for us, and blessed us. Without them, we would have probably fallen to pieces at some juncture along this long, long road. What am I grateful for at the end of this month of May?

1. A family who loves me and often knows what Daryl and I need before we ask. My parents took us on the most restful vacation of my life (a cruise! to Mexico! with special gf food!), and then came back to Princeton where my Dad and Daryl proceeded to carry every heavy thing from our apartment into the moving POD. And then they filled up our fridge. And then they let us come to WI for a couple of months to have a real summer of lake-swimming, grilling out, and craft projects. Does life get better? I submit that it does not!

2. Friends who sheltered Daryl for the past nine months. How do you thank people who you'd never even met before this August who invite your husband into their home for the year? And cook him dinner when he's losing his mind during final exams? And become dear friends? You can't... There's no language of thanks big enough for that.

3. A friend who loaned us her car for the year. Her fun, practical, cool, sunroof-equipped car. We didn't have to buy or rent a second car (read: crazy expensive for cash-strapped graduate students!). Again, how do you begin to thank someone for this?

4. Friends from Princeton. Saying goodbye was hard. These friends have brought us food and smoothies, provided incredible and insightful conversation partners, challenged us to live out our faith, and helped us with the little finishing touches of moving (Daryl carried out our last three heavy pieces of furniture assisted by three different friends, all of whom dropped everything the moment they heard we needed a bit of heavy lifting help).

5. Friends from home. It feels so good to be headed toward a summer surrounded by friends (and family!) from home. We never have enough time to visit, catch up, celebrate, and hang out. And perhaps this summer we will. Or at least, we'll have a little bit more.

6. Friends and family from CA. When we were in town we stayed with some dear, dear friends and their cute little chinchilla, Rudy. We made it to the Mother's Day celebration brunch for Daryl's dear grandma and saw almost all of the rest of his family. We had a great dinner with his mom. We visited some other dear friends, even though we were only in town for a short while. We went to Disneyland for free. You really can't beat that.

6. The little things. My final trip to the dentist in NY yielded no cavities. (If you know me well you know that's actually more of a BIG thing than a little thing). Disneyland makes gluten-free EVERYTHING for the same price as the normal stuff. I won an unexpected award at Princeton that led to a surprising check from the seminary that helped us a great deal with our move. I finally got around to getting a Princeton Public Library card and loaded up with books on tape for our long drive. Iron Man 2 was better than expected. The cats stayed healthy. There happened to be a yard sale the same day I realized we had left my old bike out of our POD (and the POD was picked up!), so I sold it for $30 in less than an hour. The little things have been so wonderful.

7. Our great God. I've said this before, but in one of her books Anne Lamott comments that her two most often-used prayers are "Help me, help me, help me" and "Thank you, thank you, thank you." I have said both of these many, many, MANY times in the past month. And Jesus is always there. And when I don't have an ounce left of strength, he provides. And when I'm at the end of my rope, he helps me hang on. And when finals threaten to make me go crazy or the distance from Daryl threatened to make me fall apart, he cared for me. The toughest seasons are often the ones of closest fellowship with the Father, and I've felt that this season. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

More to come (including LOTS of photos)! Thanks for your patience with me this May. There is lots of blogging to come this summer.

Happy June 1. Happy summer. Happy end to a season of running, running, running. As I write this the breeze off of Yellow Birch Lake is coming in my window, ruffling my hair. The cats are sitting on the window ledge watching the trees. Daryl is upstairs eating cereal and I am just about to head to breakfast. It's 10am.

Summer rocks.

The Play's the Thing

The show opens tonight!

The seminary's performance of Brecht's "The Caucasian Chalk Circle" begins this evening, and I am super excited. I'll post pictures of the cast from the dress rehearsal after Sunday's show, but for those who are coming to the performances, I don't want to spoil the surprise of the costumes!

It's a great story. If you can't see it because you aren't in the area, it's a great read. Brecht was a complicated man, but he had some great insights into power, sacrifice, and the "terrible temptation to do good."

I'll be away from blogging until Tuesday or Wednesday. With the show, my parents in town, and Daryl visiting, I'm going to be one busy (and happy) girl.

Blessings to all! If anyone needs ticket information, drop me a line and I'll hook you up.

New Baby Pics

Welcome to Sophia Joy!

Here is my mom (aka, Grandma!) with Aleah and her new little sister.

 

New Niece

I have a new niece!

My sister Caitlyn and brother-in-law Jared welcomed their second little girl, Sophia Joy, at 4:45 this morning in Minneapolis.

Their first (Aleah) has bright, bright red hair. Sophia is a dark brunette.

Pictures to follow!