A season of newness. 🌿

This past year has been one new thing after another. Wonderful things. Hard things. Scary and thrilling things. My twenties have been ever changing. Each year is a new home with new roommates and new challenges. Last year was adjusting to post-grad life, moving to a new city, starting a new job, and preparing to marry my now husband. It was dealing with silence and bouts of loneliness after moving out of a house full of loud and lovely women. It was leaving my college community and being placed into another god-loving beautiful college family. It was loving friends from afar and being intentional in my relationships. It was being bold enough to make new friends and be present where I was. Last year was so hard and so good. I was exactly in the place I needed to be, surrounded by the right people.

This summer I entered a new chapter of life: marriage. It has been all the wonderful things I thought it would be, and at the same time a thousand times harder than I expected. Making the commitment to love Jeffrey no matter what I feel in the moment has taught me more in the past few months than years of living with roommates and family. It is a safe place, but it's also a place where I've been wounded and wounded him. The first week after our honeymoon, reality sunk in. We got into arguments over little things,  I saw my pride flare up, and how impatient I really am. It's true, marriage is supposed to be a tool to make you more holy by seeing your sinfulness held up in a mirror which sometimes feels like a microscope. I thought I was a pretty decent person before marriage. Pretty thoughtful, fairly generous, about average on humility. I was wrong. I'm actually very selfish and extremely prideful up close.

This was the first few months of marriage. It was seeing these sides of myself I didn't even know existed. And also seeing my husband's up close. It was saying sorry, and really meaning it. It was forgiving quickly and often. It was realizing that I cannot control my husband, I can only control my own growth. It was realizing how much my spiritual life (or lack there of sometimes) affects my husband deeply. It seemed like every day was a new lesson the Lord wanted to teach me. One lesson is that Jeffrey and I have now found a way to defuse tense situations or arguments. We look at each other, so frustrated and holding onto our pride, and then all of sudden someone says "No one said marriage would be this hard!!" And we laugh-- because people did tell us marriage would be this hard. And like I said on our wedding day "life with each other is a beautiful messy journey."

So then November hit. Almost 6 months into our marriage, I started thinking "You know what, we can do this. We're getting the hang of it." And then I missed my period. To preface this, Jeffrey and I had been praying about starting a family of our own. We talked through our dreams in premarital counseling and how we wanted to raise our kids and what kind of parents we would be. While we weren't planning to have a baby in that moment, it had been on our hearts and in our prayers for months. Now we didn't know if this meant just a late period, or it meant "hey you're having a baby, get ready". So we waited. And we prayed, And we talked about how we felt about being pregnant, and how we felt if we found out we weren't pregnant. [& a side note, but this is just one of the things I love about Jeffrey. I want to process every little thing, and he goes along with me on that journey--though tiring at times I'm sure.We talk through things instead of around them or ignoring them and I love that.] At the end of the discussion we decided we'd buy a test that night, and I would take it in the morning, when the chances of it being accurate are most high. We went to sleep and it literally felt like it was Christmas. I woke up every few hours hoping it was morning. Finally at 3:30am I somehow convinced myself it was technically considered morning and I got out of bed. After taking the test, I waited three long minutes. In those minutes I prayed that God would prepare Jeffrey and I for however many lines showed up. I prayed that if it was positive He would guide us and show us how to be young parents. How to balance a new marriage and taking care of another human being...times up.

Two blue lines.

Pregnant.

I'm pregnant.

In that moment I wanted to run into our room and jump on Jeffrey to tell him. I thought that might be too much and a little overwhelming at 3:35am. So instead I waited, wide awake. Marveling at the fact that there was life inside me. That we created something together. This baby was a product of our love for one another.

Those next three hours ticked away, and in that time I googled some of the most ridiculous things.

"I'm pregnant, now what?"

"What can't I eat now that I'm pregnant?" and

"I don't really have to give up drinking coffee if I'm pregnant, right?"

Finally it was 6:30am. I made Jeffrey coffee, turned on our little Christmas tree and some music and he slowly woke up. We chatted for a little and then he remembered about the test. I confessed I had taken it already. And it was positive. In that moment I got to see such a vulnerable side of him. Doubt. Fear. Wonder. We just laid together for awhile in complete awe. We cried tears of joy because we are going to have a baby, and then we cried tears of fear because...we are going to have a baby. We have no idea what we're doing. We felt like kids in that moment. We're too young for this. How can we raise a baby when we feel like we were still growing up and trying to learn what it means to be adults? It was a range of emotions, but in that moment I was so so thankful neither of us were processing those feelings alone. Honestly one of my favorite things about marriage--you get to process life with a partner. The mundane things like your day at work and the huge things like "Oh hey you're pregnant. How do you feel now?"

So now we're in our second trimester already (week 13). These past two months have been full of doctor's appointments, telling our close community and celebrating with them, and working my way through the physical and emotional changes of having a baby. Every week seems to hold something new to figure out and tackle. There's been bouts of morning sickness, weird cravings (more pickles please?), and by far the weirdest symptom-- phantom odors. This past week I have been smelling salami wherever I go. It is so so strange. It also makes me nauseous. No one else can smell it though, so I feel like I'm going crazy. I keep blaming Jeffrey. Telling him to shower again, even though it's not him. Maybe I am just a crazy pregnant lady...

I was talking to one of my dearest friends on Friday about how we were planning to announce our pregnancy soon. It's strange because I've been waiting for this celebratory moment to announce this new life and addition to our family, but now that it's so near I feel so scared. Shayna asked me what I was really afraid of, and  I guess I've been scared of the pressure I would all of a sudden experience. To feel a certain way about this pregnancy when people ask. The pressure to give a certain answer. To say we feel elated, and I'm so excited to be mom. Which I am. But I also feel a lot of other things, that might not be so politically correct. There's always this huge temptation to say what's expected, and to be who people want me to be. Shayna really encouraged me that the most honoring thing, to my marriage and to God, is to be authentic about this process. That it's not all rainbows and butterflies. That there are a lot of moments of tears and thinking "what the heck are we doing." And when people ask, not to just say the expected answer, but to be honest with where we're at. And that's scary, but that is what I'm vowing to try to do, and what I need accountability for. From my husband but also the rest of our community.

So all of that to say, here's to a very new season. To feeling all of it. To processing it with those I love. To fighting for honesty. And to living this beautifully messy journey as authentically as I can.