GREATful

Well, it's 12:05 a.m., so it's officially Thanksgiving. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! I have to admit it feels weird to not be home. In fact, this may be my first Thanksgiving ever when I am not with family. When I let myself think about it too long, I get sad, but it's just not possible for us this year. Clay had grad school today, he's feeling sick, and flights home for both holidays this year weren't in our budget. So we're here. As perhaps has become our mantra, "this is where we are right now." And instead of thinking about what we're missing back home, we're focusing on the immense gifts in our lives, the joy of having uninterrupted time together (no classes! no tutoring!), and the beauty of the season all around us in The Big Apple.

No better way to usher in the season than to head to Central Park and see the Macy's Thanksgiving Day balloons inflate before our very eyes! Tomorrow morning, we're each going to go for a long run and then enjoy these yummy biscuits together while we watch the parade from the comfort of our sweet home. Then, we head down to our new friends' home for a potluck Thanksgiving Day feast. We're bringing the cornbread dressing (thank you Gahan family!) and the green bean casserole (thank you, Hume family!) and are going to remain thankful thankful thankful for the full lives we have been blessed with.

So...without further ado, here's a sneak preview of what you might see on the parade route in the morning narrated by some of the many things we are thankful for this year:

A beautiful, healthy, vibrant, joyful, active son.

The support and love of our families,

who never cease to overwhelm us with their thoughtfulness and generosity.

We love you.

For the many experiences and adventures we have had this year,

all of which have reminded us that pursuing dreams, believing in yourself,

and taking risks lead to abundant happiness.

For Camden, our loyal beagle, who has remained by our sides throughout it all--and who has demonstrated impressive patience when Will pulls at his ears and tail multiple times a day.

For old friends, yes you, who haven't forgotten about us and instead have sent us cards, called us, texted us, and prayed for us despite us being miles away from where you are.

For new friends, who welcome us into their homes after meeting us only once, who track down our email addresses in order to invite us to cookie exchanges and tree lighting parties, who remind us that good people are all around us, no matter where we go.

For the ability to check out books and DVDs for free at the local library, for Trader's Joe's Tomato Basil hummus (insane, people), for $2.99 wine at Whole Foods, for $1 bagels that are better than any bagel I have ever eaten in my life, for an abundance of playgrounds and ramps and stairs and escalators for Will to play on, for the playroom in the basement of our building, and for Beth Williamson's chocolate chip cookie recipe, which we have basically framed and used weekly since we moved in. Man, her cookies are good.

For Christmas being right around the corner.

For new jobs that we didn't expect but are so grateful to have, and for the job openings this year that will hopefully lead to more growth and excitement in the future.

For a warm fall. We are crossing our fingers it isn't a brutal winter up here.

For life-giving runs throughout Central Park and Riverside Park--and for the Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me podcast that literally had me laughing out loud during my run today.

For faith in a God that is good.

For waking up every day next to my best friend, rolling out of bed, heading into the next room to hug my smiling baby boy, and not having to say goodbye to him for most of the day. Man, I am so so thankful for TIME with the people I love.

Last but not least, for a husband who loves me actively, richly, constantly, and kindly.

It is because of his love and our committed best friendship that my life is so, so GREATful.

Happy Thanksgiving!!

FALLin' in love

Thursday morning, November 17 at Riverside Park

And then a little wine to warm us back up afterwards :-)

Settling In

I like to stay busy. Busy means excitement, friendship, and growth. This week has been gloriously busy. Somehow, without me even really realizing it, my life is once again full of things and people that inspire me. In this month of thanksgiving, I am feeling pretty darn grateful.

Don't you just love this sign?

I kind of feel like this has been my life lately: whichever way we go, there are possibilities.

Here's a top ten list of what we've been up to lately:

10. Attended 2nd week of Mom's Group/Bible Study and continue to be grateful for the warm welcome I have received. Redeemer's pastor, Tim Keller, preached today on the necessity of community in our lives. In order to be a part of a community, you have to be open and personal. The women in this group demonstrate this openness beautifully to me and inspire me to be real with others. The message today also hit home for me and Clay as we continue to be honest with each other about the joys and stresses of this latest chapter in our lives. We realize that this constant conversation and opening of our own hearts to each other is our way into an even closer marriage. Community, on a small and large scale, is crucial to happiness and service.

9. We cheered on the 60,000+ runners at the AMAZING NYC Marathon. We cheered on a constant stream of runners for an hour while we constantly tracked our dear friend, Mary, as she dominated the course in just over 4 hours. There's something about running through all five boroughs with crowds cheering you on the entire way that got Clay and me thinking about how many more marathons we have left in us :-). Dude, if we end up in NYC, I am definitely doing this race. It's a model marathon.

8. Which leads me to the next thing keeping us busy: the job search.

Yup, it's already begun.

Clay has already applied to a number of schools and signed up with the three big educational search agencies, all of which visit TC this month.

Sara has yet to sign up.

She knows she needs to, but her heart and mind aren't in it quite yet.

Please pray that this involved search will result in a position that stimulates and excites Clay, offers me some new opportunities for growth and leadership, and provides a healthy lifestyle for Will and our entire family. At this point, we literally have no idea where we are going to end up.

7. The weather here has been FABULOUS. Mild, mild, mild. The trees are finally changing colors and the holiday decorations are starting to be displayed--and yet today I went the entire day without wearing a coat. Lovin' it.

6. Our weekly date nights continue to be a huge highlight for us. We are much busier during the week than we anticipated, so we look forward to our weekend evening together all week long. This weekend we headed all the way out to Brooklyn for our friend Ali's house warming party. It might have taken us more time to get there and back than the time we were actually there, but we were so glad we went and loved seeing another part of the city together.

5. My 3-4 x week tutoring job continues to go swimmingly, I think I am going to pick up a second Johns Hopkins writing course, my work on my friend's environmental building materials website is constant right now, I am reviewing writing for this online magazine as often as I can, and I have found two friends to help me assemble a published volume of poetry and prayers written by a GPS legend. I wasn't overwhelmed until I realized I needed to also start this job search process and then I may have had a little temper tantrum before resuming my identity as a semi-responsible adult.

4. I have also been determined to read through my awesome list, though, and in the past two weeks, I finished two enthralling ones:

I LOVED Rebecca. My grandmother told me the story of Rebecca when I was a little girl, and while I (conveniently) didn't remember the exact plot that she recounted at the time, I remember how enthusiastically she told the story. My grandmother is a gifted storyteller, for sure, but this story is also one worth telling--and reading.

Thanks, Beth, for the awesome recommendation!

3. Got together with one of my best friends and college roomies, Blaire, yesterday. I cherished every second of my three hours of girl time in the West Village.

2. Went for a beautiful run in Central Park last Saturday only to return home to find a hole in my jacket pocket--and a missing key. 2 hours of family time retracing my steps, a couple visits to the housing office, and many "I am SO sorry's" later, we have yet to hear from the TC authorities about how to fix this problem. Their solution most likely will be to rekey the lock, and thus charge us an arm and a leg, but I am (probably naively) hopeful they will have mercy on us and perhaps just duplicate the key. I mean, my old key is somewhere beneath the dirt and leaves in Central Park. It doesn't even say Columbia University on it. No one's going to use it. But its still a tiny trinket that is probably going to cost us the same amount as two weeks worth of groceries. Dang.

AND #1 (and this is super dated, but who cares): Brittany and Phil came to town!!

They're so fun.

We love Aunt B!

Checking out the sights in the Museum of Natural History.

Love family!!

Good Grief.

Not to get super serious here, but this post is going to be less about Will and more about me today. I have been blessed by a series of events in the past few days that have fully enabled me to understand and then process a bit of what has been on my heart since February, and seeing that Will is napping and I often think through my thoughts best in writing, I am going to open up here.

First event: an email to my Praying Life group at my former school.

Why it is significant: I Skyped with them a few weeks ago because I miss them so much, and after I got off the computer with them, I thought to myself, "Wow, I sounded pretty darn bitter today." I also have to admit that since we decided to move to NYC last February, my wonderful husband has more than once told me that "you haven't been your normal self lately." And it's true. But I kept struggling to talk about it because I didn't know what exactly I was feeling (resentment? fear? insecurity? anxiety?) and every time we talked, nothing I said sounded just right.

I got an email from a friend in that praying group last night that was honestly a gift from God for me. In it, she talks about how she too struggled with change and a geographical move and the shift of her focus on career to her kids, and towards the end of the email, she said something like, "It's almost like I was grieving my old self."

And it hit me. I have been grieving all this time.

I know it may sound melodramatic, but I am writing about this because I think this is a very real phenomenon, especially for women at this stage of their lives. Giving up careers to focus on family is NOT an easy decision, and for some reason it is often dismissed or looked down upon in our society. For me, I have been grieving the woman I used to be before I got married (Sara Hume) and the woman I used to be before I had Will (a wife and a teacher) and now the woman I used to be before I moved to NYC and knew absolutely no one and was suddenly a stay-at-home mom in a huge city with a husband who was very, very busy. My life looks very different from my life 10, 6, even 2 years ago. And while I love this evolution and every gift that has come into my life since that time, there is also a very real sense of loss for the woman I was before I got married and had kids and stopped working.

Phew. Wow. That sounds risky to say, but it shouldn't. I really do think women everywhere are struggling with this and not talking about it.

So I wrote my Praying Life group last night and told them that I felt like I was experiencing this weird form of grief and that I was definitely coming through it having learned a lot about myself and what I love and what I am willing to negotiate (where I live, how I spend my time) and what I'm not (protecting and nurturing my family, worshipping God, teaching in some capacity).

And I went to bed feeling like I finally had some clarity to all this crap I have been dealing with inside...and then I went to Event #2.

Second Event: A Mom's group bible study.

Why it is significant: BECAUSE THE TOPIC WAS GRIEF.

Clay and I have started attending a huge, famous church up here that we really like (thank you, Aunt Sally, for the recommendation!), and literally the first person I saw when we first went was a former UVA classmate of mine. In NYC, this is a pretty big deal--I don't often (aka never) "run into" people I actually know. But Christian (his name) and I immediately recognized each other and then I met his wife, also a classmate from college, and they both welcomed us to the church and got our contact info. Well, Jennifer thoughtfully emailed me on Monday to invite me to the UWS Mom's bible study she attends, so off Will and I went this morning to try it out. A chance for Will to play with other kiddos and for me to meet other moms and talk about significant topics? Uhh, I'm there. Well, Will amazingly fell right into step with the other kids in the childcare room when I dropped him off (THANK YOU for letting me go to this, buddy!), and I went upstairs to meet the other moms. And I quickly felt right at home, for the first time feeling like I might actually make a friend in this city. They were all smart, capable, thoughtful, friendly, go-get-em moms who for one reason or another are staying "at home" (which in NYC means bundle-up-kids-cause-we're-going-places). And as I looked around the room before we officially began, I felt this swell of pride in moms all over the world. Moms might be my ultimate heroes. I mean it. Moms everywhere are dynamic, educated, creative, capable women who usually put others' needs before their own and work so super hard to take care of their families. Dads do too, don't get me wrong, but this room was a group of such impressive women that I could have easily been sitting in a boardroom somewhere getting sh*t done. I tell you what, for the rest of my life I will have the utmost respect for stay-at-home parents, not just because their days are often long and thankless, but because they were all individuals with well-developed identities before they had kids and then somewhere along the way they assumed the new role of parents and primary caretaker and their former primary roles had to take a bit of a backseat. Now when I am walking down the street, I look at a mom pushing a stroller and I think to myself, "she might have gone to law school" or "she is published author" or "she's a pediatrician who negotiated part-time work so she could push her kid down the street this Wednesday morning and take him to storytime" and I smile at her (they almost always smile back--it's like this secret stroller club we're members of) and I want to fist-bump her and say "way to go, friend!" because I am starting to fully realize how deep and layered everyone's life is...

Anyways, we have a speaker at bible study today, and she is this amazingly put-together, stylish 40-year-old counselor who no longer practices professionally because she is at home with 3 young girls. And she starts with the following statement:

"So, I have been asked to talk about grief today, a topic which is so huge but that I think we can all relate to on multiple levels. Whether you have lost a loved one or at times grieve the woman you were and the life you lived before you had kids, we all know how muddling and yet all-encompassing grief can be. Let's talk about it today."

WHAT? I grabbed a pen and a piece of paper and took notes for the next 90 minutes. And then I picked up Will (who had the best time, by the way) and hugged and kissed him like crazy (how can I miss him this much after just 1.5 hours?) emerged back out into the streets of NYC feeling more understood and comfortable in my emotions than I have in a long time.

I know that I am exactly where I should be. I am blessed beyond words to have a husband who is also my best friend and partner in everything, and we are blessed beyond belief to love a son who constantly redefines what love means for us. I am so lucky and happy to be at home with Will every day, and I find myself wanting nothing else but to be with him and explore our world together. And I love living in NYC. My life is SO, so full and rich and good and happy.

But saying goodbye to one role only to assume another is a difficult thing. The grief is real. And I wish women would talk about it more, because I think we could really help support each other through these times of beautiful transition. And in the midst of celebrating the new and the beginnings, we can also honor the old and the traditions, the lessons learned and relationships cherished that got us to today.