Skip to main content

The Wonderful Unknown, pt. 2

Our possessions "BrExited" our flat on Thursday. This past month, I've been obsessed with getting everything packed away and organized, knowing that 23 June would arrive sooner than I wanted it. 

I thought when we moved over to Aberdeen, packing was difficult. We were faced with trying to pack our entire lives into two suitcases a piece (and those were mercifully larger suitcases because my father-in-law booked our tickets and we got baggage 'upgrades'). What were we going to need for two years? What could I take to make this strange country 'home'? But happily, everything else was going in a storage facility- so we weren't actively getting rid of those trinkets and baubles that make a house feel homey.

This time around we have the same two suitcases. Fortunately we also had the means to ship stuff back (read: we are mostly shipping my books home...), but what we leave behind here is being left behind. We aren't coming back to reclaim it at some point. It's just gone. The difficult part, though, is thinking that by leaving things, I won't remember this.

Moving to Aberdeen was a great unknown. We had no idea what to expect. How can you? Academia is stressful and isolating, moving to a different country is stressful and isolating. But this unknown was wonderful. Even in the great stress of living abroad, I would do it all over again (although for Jack's sake, we would probably do it someplace a bit warmer).

Now Houston is the great unknown. We're returning, but we're returning as different people than we were two years ago. And we're returning to a life that has continued moving on for the past two years. When are we returned that first Christmas, I was sad because so much had changed even in three months. It's naive to assume, especially in Houston and at our age, that life wouldn't change. It just makes it scary because I also don't know what we're getting ourselves back into  on 22 July.

It finally hit me today that we have less than a month left here. Our friends are throwing us a going-away Whiskey Friday (it's a post-graduate Divinity thing) on Friday. We'll celebrate my 31st birthday on Saturday. I'll leave on the 5th for Basel and the Bonhoeffer Olympics (International Bonhoeffer Congress). I return and my dad visits on the 15th- and a week later we'll be back in Texas. It's not enough time and it's infinitely too much time. 

So I'm happy and anxious, and ready for the next journey to start (and to have a dryer!! I'm so excited about having a dryer and a full-size refrigerator!!). We're also moving into our new house on July 23rd if anyone wants to pop by to say hello or help me unpack the kitchen--

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Syllabus for the Next 18 Months

I decided at some point in the last week that I wanted to make a checklist of 30 things to do before I turned 30. Creating a list of 30 things is harder than I imagined it would be. But, to quote Julie Andrews (which I suppose is actually quoting Rodgers & Hammerstein), "let's start at the very beginning, a very good place to start." There's nothing magical about turning thirty. I imagine that on July 2, 2015, when I wake up, my eyes will still be blue, my fingers will still number ten, my instant desire will be to go back to sleep. That said, it is one of those watershed points in life. The idea of approaching thirty is both reassuring and daunting. At least I'm theoretically past the point of having a quarter-life crisis. What I want to do is be able to look back at my 20s and tell my future kids about all the adventures their parents had before they were thirty. Creating this list isn't going to create those adventures. We've already had s...
7 comments
Read more

Claire tries cooking! Pineapple Chicken Quesadilla and Figgy Balsamic

We are the typical American family when it comes to food habits. In that, we eat a rotation of approximately the same 5 meals: - Chicken Tacos - BBQ Chicken - Sauteed Salmon - Spaghetti - "Meatloaf" Pies Every once in a blue moon, I'll add something "fun" to the mix: - Stir Fry - Pretzel Chicken - More different fish - Roast Chicken Fun meals ceased to exist once baby boy showed up, but now that he's able to sit in a high chair AND has a bit of a schedule during the day, cooking is incrementally becoming an easier task. Last night I found a slow cooker magazine (yay Better Homes and Gardens!) and realized that I'm bored with the same 5-6 meals. Trying to find new permutations of said meals is also a task I don't completely enjoy. Only Tuesdays should signal a specific food (e.g. Taco Tuesdays). So here goes a novel experiment - I'm going to try and cook something "new" once a week. Full disclosure - I'm a big fan of...
Post a Comment
Read more

Book Review: Inspired by Rachel Held Evans

I was anxiously awaiting the email that arrived. The day before, via facebook, a notification had been posted to fill out a form, hit submit, and cross your fingers to receive an advanced copy of Rachel Held Evans' new book,  Inspired: Slaying Giants, Walking on Water, and Loving the Bible Again, and being a part of the book launch team. The email arrived, as did the golden ticket (aka the PDF of the advanced copy). To put this in perspective, I have been an RHE fangirl since 2012 when I first read A Year of Biblical Womanhood.  I was just out of seminary, recently married, and trying to figure out life. The humor in her writing amidst her earnest questions about what the Bible calls women to be versus what a conservative, evangelical society told women. I loved it. On top of that, my church had RHE come in 2014 and I was able to meet her (and be her chauffeur) and she was just as gracious and funny as her voice in her writing posited her to be. I never had the same...
Post a Comment
Read more