Then Aaron took off by himself for a spiritual retreat at a monastery about an hour away. This was to make up for the class retreat he missed in January. He was a little nervous he might offend some uptight monks somehow, but he really enjoyed it.

He got back just in time for the seminary picnic to welcome all the new and returning students. My friend E. also kicked off a group for the spouses of seminary students, which I think was much needed and will be much appreciated by those who take part. Friday was the all-seminary (and families) retreat day at a nearby camp with a sweet pool open in the afternoon (AJ can tell you what happens if you get cocky and step from the wading pool into the big pool without swimmies–lesson learned, I hope!). I really enjoyed the retreat this year and feel like I know a lot more seminary people now, although the new incoming class is huge so there are many I haven’t met.

It feels much different being on the “experienced” side of a seminary year. It’s fun getting to know new neighbors and their kids who play with ours on the big playground behind our houses. It’s nice knowing better what to expect from the year: I wrote on the calendar for August 30 “Classes start/Aaron freak out.” I sometimes have the urge to gather some of these innocent, fresh-from-college newlyweds and shelter their tender hearts from the onslaught that’s about to hit them! Of course each will have to find their own way, but I hope  I can offer someone the encouragement they need on the day they’re bursting into tears, like further-along friends did for me last year. I know we’re going to need that encouragement and support ourselves too, but it feels like a different role in the community somehow.

This semester’s workload for Aaron is looking like no less of a doozy than last year’s, though. He is trying to keep his freak-outs under control, but they’re in there jabbering at his brain This is impossible. This is impossible. This is impossible. Still, it seems possible he’ll really like some of his classes. And in 15 weeks, he’ll be halfway done with seminary!

As you’re praying (please) for his studies, please also continue to pray for his eye. His actual doctor (the kind, calm one, not Dr. FreakYouOut) is willing to do the surgery if he finds the partially dislocated eye too difficult to live with, but there is risk. We could decide at his October appointment whether to schedule the surgery for Christmas break or not.

This weekend, because we hadn’t had enough time away lately(?!), we are going camping with our church at a summer camp. This is an annual tradition but our first time. It should be good hang-out time (when Aaron’s not studying) and AJ loved camping earlier this summer.

After that we will be really READY FOR SOME FOOTBALL!!! Go Lions! And go Suh-Nami Zone, our first ever fantasy football team! We had our draft party last weekend and it was a blast even though we only kind of knew what we were doing. Chatterbox came all the way from Oregon just to babysit for the day! Okay, no, she came to go back to college, but we put her to good use while we had her for a few days between her arrival and her dorm opening tonight. We are so happy to see her loving school and so proud of her. And so glad she does dishes.

Wow, that was a long blog. Behold the power of the early bedtime! I mean for AJ, now that the school routine has started, although honestly I feel ready to follow suit. Goodnight, my friends.

AJ was a travel rock star. On the way out she started getting grouchy on the second flight, then promptly feel asleep. On the way home we took the red-eye, which means changing planes at some pre-dawn hour you can’t even identify because you don’t know what time zone you’re in, and it wasn’t until the very end that she was ready to fall apart and melt down. But weren’t we all?

Our friends A&L arranged for us to rent the house right next door to them, which was awesome because we had plenty of space to spread our junk around and hang out in. Plus we could walk over there when we couldn’t find a bottle opener. Our rental car was a sweet Subaru sedan which was practically brand new before my parking skills got ahold of it (uh, oops). AJ called these things “our new house” and “our new car.”

Aaron got to see some of the high schoolers and recent grads he was close to when he youth pastored there. We also happened to be there for graduation, aka the whole small town’s family reunion. And I am a sucker for a small town graduation.

We were able to be at our old church two Sundays–once like weepy returning champions, once like a normal part of the family again. A hint of heaven. (Possibly more on this another time, if anyone is still up for a LOST analogy…)

When the weather was good (it was kind of 50-50), we went to the beach and let AJ see if she dared touch a wave and throw rocks into a creek until she practically built a dam. She would have happily done this all day.

We also went to the aquarium to see and touch fishy things and tidepooling to see and touch more.

We drove along the rocky cliffs and hiked to my favorite lighthouse. We took in the view that never, ever gets old.

I drove until she slept, and then I stopped for photos.

We hugged trees.

We rocked.

We rode a sweet tractor.

We ate a lot. Duh.

We acted natural.

We impersonated Lewis & Clark.

We hunted wild game.

And we took the BEST FAMILY PHOTO EVER.

No, not that one.

No, not that one either.

THIS ONE!

Vacation is ending? Aaaaaaaaagh!

• Exams happened. Post-exam bonfires happened. Graduation happened. We are trying not to think about the friends we’ve made who are seniors moving away…
• Aaron has completed one year of seminary. One third done already. That had to be one of the fastest 9-month periods of our lives, especially the blur that was April. Did we even have an April? (Hard to be sure–the weather was playing February far too long.)
• We got to have Chatterbox with us through exam week because her college got out earlier and she didn’t leave for Oregon until this past week. It was actually great timing because we could make her do dishes and watch Anna and generally be our indentured paid-in-cell-service nanny enough to keep the house functioning through the busy exam week.
• We enjoyed some of the Tulip Time festivities, such as eating elephant ears, shivering through a parade, watching the Dutch Klompen Dancers klomp, and pitying that poor basset hound wearing Dutch garb.
• My cousin Laura came through town in time for the parade, and the next day for Mother’s Day we gathered at my parents’ with my Grandma and Papa B., Grandma H., and Aunt Barb as well. I got zero rest that day but did score the iTouch I’d been coveting! The commuter’s sanity saver.
• I was then brutally attacked by allergies and spent last week in a snot and Sudafed based fog. I also generally felt like my house and life were an out of control mess, which is not unusual but can get me feeling out of sorts when combined with not feeling great and not getting a chance to catch up, let alone look ahead. Even this weekend, although we had no big plans (except Aaron had a Classis retreat Saturday–part of the denominational ordination process is that and an exam he has Tuesday), I felt like I never unwound yet also never got anything caught up. Today I never really stopped either, but at least we have groceries and the dishes got done.
• Last week, his first Monday of summer vacation, Aaron went to the hand doctor to score some more Vicodin see how his thumb is healing. The bone, okay. The ligaments, etc.,…not so good. So he had a CT scan Tuesday, another consult Wednesday, a visit to his regular doctor Friday. I should have gone so I could understand this better, but the ligaments are messed up and pulling his finger wrong and bottom line, there will be surgery involving pins and I presume some kind of Ligament Gorilla Glue. The surgery is Thursday morning.
• Almost worse than the surgery is that for a week before and after, he has to be on even more hard core blood thinners than he’s usually on, so he has to give himself shots twice a day. What a cruel thing to tell a person to do. I feel bad that I can’t help, but it’s common knowledge that I faint at the sight, nay, even the thought of . . . hey, I just had the weirdest dream . . . Oh, right, as I was saying: at the thought of shots. So I’m useless as he’s being tortured.
• But hey, at least we have group insurance now! (Seriously, I would be SO freaked out by now if we didn’t. And so bankrupt and living off the dole. On the dole? Is it on the wagon or off the wagon?)

That’s that. Please pray for Aaron with the shots and for the surgery to be even more successful than anticipated–it is the kind of thing where the doctor says it’ll probably need to repaired again someday (because of Marfan? I’m not positive).

Note for our Smallport friends: We are trying to get our Oregon visit nailed down but this kind of stuff keeps making it hard to get it done. We are thinking around June 3 or 4 to 14-ish.

With tons of schoolwork looming, Aaron was in the library just about every night last week, and then he had a church men’s retreat scheduled for overnight Friday. Seriously impeding our progress catching up on LOST (we’re early in season 6–don’t say a word!). We were hoping to get some in on Thursday night after he got home from church, but he got home really late. And the first words out of his mouth?

“Don’t freak out.”

That is never good.

He’d fallen playing basketball with kids at church. Scraped up his knee as well as his hands but didn’t think it was anything more than that. But he was up all night with pain getting worse despite ice until finally at 4:00 a.m. I told him to go to the ER since he clearly needed an x-ray and wasn’t sleeping anyway. They put a splint on it but said it was not broken. He went to sleep at 6:30 and I went to work. Then around noon they called him and said, “Hey, remember how we said your hand wasn’t broken? It’s kind of the opposite of that, so please come back to the ER for a better cast.” He has a hairline fracture near the bottom of his thumb, apparently a bone which is important for circulation.

Tomorrow he goes to a specialist for a more permanent cast. Meanwhile he is still in pain and either unable to concentrate because he’s doped up on Vicodin or unable to think because he’s let it wear off (so he can think) and his hand hurts even more. And he’s frustrated because he has so many papers and tests due and it’s so hard to think and type.

So many fluke medical things this year–so frustrating we don’t know whether to laugh or cry or take turns. The end result is that (1) I am probably on some kind of “possible Vicodin dealer” watch list at the pharmacy and (2) next year he will not be allowed to leave the house without full helmet and pads for the last four weeks of any semester.

I actually then went to a nearby coffeeshop/restaurant to work and began to notice a curious thing: half the people around me seemed to be talking or reading about Jesus. An older lady near me seemed to be studying about prayer. A young lady with a diamond ring the size of Delaware was telling an older lady about working at a food pantry ministry. I thought one old guy was converting another but then I determined they were both Jesus-y already. And when a coworker later joined me, we were discussing Bible passages for our project energetically enough that the prayer-study lady asked us if we knew where a certain passage was and a businessman waiting for someone felt compelled to comment on what we were discussing. (He first asked us if we went to the local college, so he was all right by us–the phlebotomist had asked me too, so double score! for inheriting my mom’s mistaken-for-younger-ness).

Obviously I don’t have anything against people talking about Jesus. So I suppose I should I should have felt glad–or “blessed”–to have so many people talking about Jesus all around me. But I have to say, I mostly found it odd. It’s not bad, it’s just so very West Michigan. People in Oregon do not talk about Jesus in restaurants all that often, in my experience (with the clear exception of my pizza-joint-inhabiting youth pastor husband). Typical eavesdropping in an Oregon coffeeshop might be how the softball tournament went or how the fishing has been or if the spaghetti dinner raised enough for Herman’s cancer treatment. Rarely did I hear people speaking of their personal faith, let alone getting down to naming names like Jesus.

Does that make Oregon a less “blessed” place? I remember a conversation with someone at our old church the first time we visited after moving to Oregon. We tried to describe how it’s a different culture and he went on about how when he visited he could “feel the darkness.” I was borderline offended and I hadn’t even fallen in love with our town yet. I just wouldn’t put it that way. Yes, we encountered a lot of sad, difficult, and even dark things, and I believe Jesus can shine a light of hope and truth into those things. In terms of history and churchgoing, and maybe coffeeshop conversations, Oregon has “less Jesus” and West Michigan has “more Jesus.”

But is the whole earth filled with his glory or isn’t it?

There’s not more Jesus here than in Oregon. There’s just not. Because he’s everywhere, even if his people aren’t, or haven’t recognized him there yet.

So while there are a lot of good things about West Michigan, I wouldn’t say it is more blessed. It’s not some kind of Promised Land. It’s not free of deep, painful brokenness (believe me, life has not let us forget that this week). I don’t see this as necessarily a better place to live or raise a family just because if you talk about the Bible in a coffeeshop people around you will already know what you’re talking about. I think I’d rather have that conversation where it’s one small act of bright, rebellious light-shedding.

I’d rather hold one bright candle in a dark room than fall asleep under dull florescents.

Sometimes I miss the pagans.

• Work is good but busy.
• Commuting is much better when it’s not snowing and now that it’s getting light out earlier. That said, we’re getting a snowstorm tonight. Again.
• Our weekends tend to be lazy yet fly by. They often sneak up on us before we can make any plans, but it is so, so nice to not have to work (I have worked a little a few weekends but swore it off completely for Lent). Two weeks ago we went out and brunched hard, just the three of us, just because we could.
• We have started watching Lost. We cannot stop watching Lost. We are addicted to watching Lost. We are just about to start season 2, so we have only 50 or 60 hours of television to catch up on before the series finale. We are confident in our ability to be this lazy (see above re: weekends) so NO SPOILERS, people.
• I have started getting together with the other wives of Aaron’s “Jedi Council” seminary posse. We are the Sacred Sisters…of the Traveling…Husbands…or something. We just hang out one night a week with no agenda other than to find out what’s going on with each other, pray, and breathe in the sweet sweet air of a quiet, comfy home that’s not littered with plastic kid junk, sippy cups, and wet mittens. I think it has been just what we all needed. Why should our husbands have all the fun–and all the support? I am getting to know people at work at church, but it’s hard to get involved in anything with them or coordinate much to see old friends, even though in theory we are not that far from GR. So it’s good to have these friends who are going through a lot of the same things and who live right here by us.
• Aaron preached at our church for the first time today and he did great! He didn’t even seem nervous (you’ll have to ask him if he secretly was). He preached a number of times at our church in Oregon and has given countless Young Life and youth group talks, but it’s always more pressure the first time in a new place, I think, and our church here is bigger. He didn’t shy from the challenge, though, but took on a crazy hard passage and brought it home strong. Even if he did skip an entire page of his notes! Must be the power of the fauxhawk.

Kidding aside, I really figured I’d be happy with basic survival skills this month–if I got to work every day and everybody in the house found something to eat three times at least once a day, we’d be doing pretty good. I guess I’m exceeding my low expectations since I’ve yet to oversleep or resort to takeout for dinner and I did get the Christmas decorations down today before the clock ran out on January.

This complete change in routine has forced me to be more organized as far as meals and to go back to getting shopping, laundry, hair braiding, and the like done on weekends instead of whenever I felt like it. I’m actually pretty proud of myself for doing as well as I have so far. And now that I’ve said this, I’m set me up for a major domestic fail of some sort, I’m sure.

And now that I’ve been satisfied by discovering Bon Jovi gracing my TV to make up for the Pro Bowl (football nerd alert!) being mysteriously absent, I need to get my getting-up-early booty to bed. Livin’ on a prayer . . . and coffee.

Go figure, I think I like it too. Yes, the days start early and the drive is long, and sometimes I sit at my desk in my cold office for so long that my pulse slows to roughly 40 bpm and I have to take coffee via IV to get going again. But on the other hand, I don’t have to repeat simple requests seventeen times in a row seven thousand times a day or help wipe any part of any other person’s body.

At work my office has a door and a huge stash of snacks and no Mr. Potato Head parts on the floor. Sometimes there are coffee runs or people stopping to say hi. And I get to have LIVE, INTELLIGENT CONVERSATIONS with actual, mature, ADULT HUMAN BEINGS.

For example, last week I got to spend an hour with two others comparing ideas and opinions on designs for a major project. I love that kind of thing. People think that editors must be quiet, shy introverts, but I am a collaborative person and I think actually an extrovert. Those conversations and connections to the bigger picture give me the energy to go back and do the focused solo work. I did miss that sometimes as a freelancer. (Of course, there is also the imposing wall of deadlines looming over me to keep me focused. Yikes!)

I have my morning routine down pretty well and was just able to simplify our daycare/grandmacare schedule. AJ is doing great with the new routine, although she was happy to spend Saturday at home just lazing around in her pajamas and then ballerina outfit. Me too. (Well, minus the tutu.) I did feel like I should have been working on the weekend, since that was when I got a lot of my freelance work done, but it is nice that now when I’m off, I’m really off–no choice, no guilt.

Today was the first day of Aaron’s new semester, so we’ll soon see how his weeks flow and how all this goes with him juggling a ton as well.

Time to go juggle some chili into my crock pot.

Aaron ended up not going on his retreat because of some doctor’s appointments and things he needed to deal with. So he could stay with AJ some of the days I worked and get dinner going before I finally got home. Thank goodness! AJ did great with letting me drag her out of bed, bundle her up, and drag her out in the dark (baffling to her) to head to Miss J’s day care or to meet my mom. I don’t think she gets yet that we’ll be doing this all the time.

Going back to work at the same place I worked six years ago is strange in the way our whole life has been since moving back to Michigan from Oregon: The same, only different. Familiar, but it’s changed. Old friends nearby but lots of new people too. Really it was like being in one of my crazy dreams: I dreamed I went back to work, and you, and you, and you were there . . . and they gave me your old office but stole all the furniture except one of the crappy brown chairs and a pile of screws.

The first day was a lot of meeting new people and chatting with those I’d worked with before, getting set up on the computer, and regretting those shoes as I toured the building which is now much bigger than it was. I’ve also been gradually recalling the terminology and processes I didn’t use as a freelancer–how to set project schedules, how to do pre-production tasks, technical terms like cast-off and loose lines and Green Envelope. It’s like dusting off all that German I learned back in school (Kennst du Ingo? Ingo ist mein Freund.). But I was pretty much able to get right to work.

If it wasn’t clear enough that this is a good place to be, Wednesday we all got a reminder: someone from editorial was in a severe car accident on the way to work. We waited to hear anything at all, then heard he was in surgery and did one of the remarkable things about working at a Christian company: those who wanted to gathered in a conference room to pray for Jeff, his family, the doctors, the other person in the accident.

Like they prayed for me eight years ago when Aaron’s brother died.

Like they have prayed for so many.

I stepped in the room as they were already praying, and this struck me so hard I was immediately in tears. But many eyes glistened as we agreed For Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory and the company president reminded us, “This is why we’re here. This is so much more important than what’s on your desk any given day.”

Please join the many praying for Jeff. They did surgery on his heart that day and are now most concerned about pressure in his head. Family has come from out of state to be with his wife and young daughters. Miracles have happened but he needs more.

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More blogging soon–after I go catch up on my sleep. Ah, Saturday sweet Saturday . . . suddenly I love you so much more.