Falling

I wore a cozy, rose-colored sweater with an exaggerated turtleneck and wooden earrings shaped like teardrops. I remember because I spent an entire day stress-shopping for that sweater, for the impeccable “first date look.” You wore a white jacket with a slanted zipper and your own skates. After lacing up, I stepped cautiously onto the ice and felt every muscle in my body tense. But then you stretched out your hand for mine. My rigid body relaxed into your steadying strength. Under the bright white tent and quiet night sky, we danced.

Several dates later (though not many days), we exchanged Christmas gifts in the kitchen of my apartment. I unwrapped two tickets to the upcoming Trans-Siberian Orchestra concert. You unwrapped the movie Notting Hill, a thoughtful nod to our first inside joke. “It’s perfect,” I think you said and then, “just like you.” And before I could process what was happening, our lips brushed to the tune of every happy alarm in my head.

Priorities and preferences shifted rather quickly after that night.

I swung by your house after twelve hour work days because sleep could wait. You sacrificed grad school because it was interfering too much. I spent Thursday nights on bleachers cheering for your old-man softball team. You spent one entire evening listening to live country music and several more wandering First Friday art strolls. I became a soccer fan and you became a sushi fan.

One weekend you were away and I sat on a park bench for two whole days writing you a love letter because, it seemed right.

Nestled on the couch in the shadow of a movie ended long before, you whispered, “I wish I could hold you forever.” This also seemed right.

This was love. We were sure of it.

You dropped to your knee and asked me to be your wife in the parking garage on 47th and Pennsylvania. A few months later, dressed in white, I twirled slowly before you and brushed a single tear from your cheek.

As newlyweds we explored Costa Rica and Italy and the coast of Maine because I love to travel. We also spent quiet evenings at home because you love popcorn and board games most people have never heard of.

On my birthday, you took me skydiving yet waited on the ground because open doors and airplanes are foolishness in your mind. On our anniversary, I inscribed 365 hearts and hung them from the ceiling in our living room because I wanted you to know why I loved you.

Oh how we loved!

Do we still?

Those gestures of love, once romantic and easy, now feel decidedly not.

Because when we eat sushi, we also attempt to pick food up off the floor faster than the toddler can throw it down. When we play a board game, we cautiously toe the line between competing and preserving our preschooler’s confidence. And when we travel, well, we wake earlier than we’d like, we cut adventures short to find the nearest bathroom and we avoid the production of patronizing a restaurant three times a day at all costs.

Our two little alarm clocks, they changed everything.

It feels like a loss some days.

But what I think might be true, Darling, about all those years before, the easy, exhilarating ones… I think they were only our falling.

It’s as if we leapt that first day, from the highest of cliffs into euphoric bliss. With nothing to push back against us, nothing to calm the butterflies wild within, we just kept falling, weightless, free.

It was a rush, falling in love.

Until we crashed into the water below. Our graceful fall, swallowed up into the sea. Some days we struggle in this dizzying new world. Love moves more slowly than we’d like and requires more effort than we can muster. Some days we long for the ease of the air that resisted us not.

Oh but those days, they were only our falling.

And this sea?

It is growing in us the real thing.

This love rises early with the kids while you rest a few minutes more and whisks them away to the park while I shower in silence, undisturbed. On your night to do dishes, it washes them before you get home. On my night to do bedtime, it nudges me out of the house toward chai and an empty notebook.

This love listens because you process verbally.

This love waits patiently to discuss because I don’t.

When struggle finds our home, this love sits in silence, together. Prays, together. Grieves, together. Most often though, this love creates, together. Laughs, together. Dreams, together. It encourages the other to pursue opportunity and challenge. It finds overwhelming delight in those two little alarm clocks.

It is not glamorous.

Not effortless.

Not perfect.

But it is rich with intention and sacrifice. It is generous and refreshing and life-giving (quite literally... he's two, she's four). It is a love that is lived, though not always felt.

Darling, these waters may have swallowed our fall, but they have awakened us to a dimension previously unknown and profoundly beautiful. And I think maybe, this love is the love. The goal. The love we were falling toward all along.

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Images by Solar Photographers

2018 Christmas Letter

Two thousand eighteen.

It was a year of settling for this family of ours, in the very best of ways. Settling into the beauty of Brazil. Settling into the challenges it has laid before us. Settling into our version of the expat life. We are still so grateful for the opportunity to call this country home for a little while. Grateful too for the ways we have been stretched (many times uncomfortably so) and the growth we’ve experienced because of it.

Speaking of growing, London is somehow closing in on two years of age! How can that be?! He serves as the resident dish rinser and brings us so much joy. He loves playing Pat-a-Cake, splashing in water, and jumping on the closest trampoline, couch, bean bag or bed. He slurps milk out of his cereal bowl (along with 3-4 refills) while mostly neglecting the actual cereal. And when I ask him to hold my hand, he wraps his whole hand around one of my fingers. Our favorites of his growing vocabulary include his breathy “wow,” “ap-ple,” “pease!” and “pee-yo” (play-doh)... along with his never-ending requests for “more?!” of any game, book, or bite he enjoys. His bright blue eyes and blonde hair draw plenty of adoring attention around here, appropriately so in our opinion.

Cora bravely entered her first year of preschool back in February, tackling the Portuguese language immersion style, and wrapped up the year with new friends and a comprehension that exceeds our own. What a trailblazer! She loves a good dance party, especially if Let It Go is involved, and has fully embraced her dad’s love of board games. Go Nuts for Doughnuts is the obvious favorite. She spends hours tending sick “friends” in her doctor’s office (our closet) and has announced she will be a doctor when she grows up so she can “take care of her friends when they’re not sick.” Preventative medicine is where it’s at folks. She weaves together a beautiful blend of colors in her many art projects and finds delight in train rides and chocolate. We kind of love what four years has fostered.

Greg continued the learning process in his role at Compass Minerals (aka Produquímica) this year. When he’s not working / commuting, he can be found making pancakes, reading literary classics (Dickens as of late), or throwing kids up in the air in the general direction of the bean bag. Monthly daddy / daughter dates revolve around a shared love of doughnuts and a growing collection of Pokemon cards (in Portuguese!).

As for me, I am enjoying the rhythms of home life with two littles. We spend our days rotating between books and balloons, colors and cars inside and between BSF, the park and the pool outside. Writing through our transition to Brazil rekindled my love for creating through words. I even took part in a writing workshop for the first time! It was a little scary / overwhelming but I loved it. Documenting this life of ours - and God’s abundant, generous presence in it - is a discipline I am grateful to grow into.

And now we look forward to a new year of new adventures. We’re a little (okay a lot) unsure of what 2019 will hold. But as we settle more deeply into the God who both goes before us and journeys with us, we cannot help but trust His lead and His timing. Because while His ways are often surprising, they are always, always good.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year friends!

Greg, Emily, Cora & London

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Images by the lovely Jenny Rawson, taken on our whirlwind trip back to the US in June.

The Time

Day One:

“I’m late.”

I slip this casually into our post-bedtime conversation. His eyebrows rise and his mouth forms a silent yet emphatic “Whoa.”

No one knows what to say next. Left to itself, the moment swells into an uncomfortably pregnant pause. Appropriate.

Now is not supposed to be the time. We weren’t even sure there would be another time. But if there was, now is not it. My husband is working way too many hours. We are 5,500 miles away from family. And I just accepted the reality of my post baby number two bod and bought clothes that actually fit.

I begged God this afternoon, over a sink full of dirty dishes, to not let this be the time.

Day Two:

Every time I look at my baby boy, my thoughts jump to the one who might be coming next. A brother? Sister? Our family is currently an equal blend, “Two boys, two girls” as my oldest so often says. This one would tip the scale.

As I envision our family of five, an internal tug of war begins. Logic and Emotion jockey back and forth relentlessly. The reality of how hard it would be to have a baby here pulls against the warm fuzzies of a newborn, someone new to discover and love. By dinner time, I realize this war cannot be won. Both sides are true, and strong.

Our post-bedtime conversation avoids the topic for all of five minutes.

“Still nothing?” he bravely asks.

“Nothing.”

“I won’t mention the name I came up with.” He drops this comment so casually it makes me smile. Apparently, our potential surprise monopolized his thoughts today too.

“For a boy or girl?” I ask.

“Boy” he says.

I urge him on, “Do tell.”

He spends the next few minutes explaining and defending his name selection. I find his thoughtfulness incredibly charming. As I listen, I feel the whole of his weight settle firmly on the side of Emotion in my tug of war. It’s almost unfair. Logic, unprepared, loses its grip. I sense my resolve against this possibility beginning to fade.

“So this timing wouldn’t be completely awful?” I interject.

“No, not awful,” he responds slowly. “Hard, but not awful.”

We talk through the scenario as if this conversation could somehow sway what already is. Our car cannot physically hold another child; neither can our home. And having a baby here? Who would take our kids while we rush to the hospital? More importantly, his work leaves me alone for over twelve hours a day. How would I handle single parenting a preschooler, toddler, and newborn for days on end? Would we eat actual meals?

But then, there is the silver lining: a baby! A snuggly, squishy baby. Sibling love that nearly smothers. One giant step closer to complete. And really, between grocery delivery and the park downstairs, we’d be fine. My daughter even has a ride to school. I could do drop-off (an elevator ride down to Level 0) without interrupting the sleeping babe upstairs.

Due to the lingering effects of our conversation or the Holy Spirit himself, I’m not sure, but I feel a calm settle within me. I can tell, by the softness in his eyes, he feels the same. If now is the time, then the questions we’ve long been avoiding (Should we have another baby? If yes, when?) suddenly have answers. No further debate, hesitation, procrastination. I welcome this finality with open arms. If a baby now is His plan, then a baby now is our plan.

The night draws to a close in a prayer flavored by openness, acceptance, and (dare I say?) hope.

Day Three:

The planner in me awakens this morning. I check the online due date calculator: early April. We would celebrate four out of five birthdays and our anniversary within six weeks. My stomach twists into knots at the thought. I love hosting a good party, but just one is exhausting. Back to back to back birthdays might just become one triple birthday party, rotating the date of course, so each child would have a turn celebrating on their actual day.

One issue resolved, I move on to the next: where would this baby sleep? In the pack-n-play, in the laundry room. It’s the only room available with a door. Bonus: I can turn on the dryer during nap time to drown out the sound of siblings.

Finally, the car. Upgrading to a larger vehicle is not a realistic option. Besides, we only use it as a family on the weekends. During the week, he takes the car to work and I take Uber, everywhere. I guess more Uber is our answer.

With these superficial concerns resolved, my mind wanders back to last night’s concluding thought: If a baby now is His plan, then a baby now is our plan.

Is it really that simple?

If there is a baby, God has intervened in dramatic fashion. Surprisingly, I still feel mostly relieved. To have His plan so obviously trump our own is liberating. Because I know His plan is better. I do. It’s just that sometimes, His plan is hard to figure out. Nothing like a surprise pregnancy to bust through and thunder through the megaphone “Now is the time! This is what I want for you.”

There is peace in knowing, without question, His plan. Knowing doesn’t remove the inherent challenges, but it does give me courage to face them; to lay down our plan and take up His. I may not understand how, but it seems now is His best for us. This is the knowing I will cling to when I’m nursing the newborn, warming up chicken nuggets for dinner, and skyping family far away.

This evening, I pour forth the day’s revelations over steaming mugs of hot tea. My husband recognizes a shift in my tone and calls me out.

“Are we going to start trying if we aren’t actually pregnant?” he asks.

“No, no, I don’t think so.”

My voice attempts to sound firm, as though I haven’t been thinking this very thought all day.

My voice fails me.

Day Four:

Shuffling in from work, my husband crouches low to catch the littles launching themselves in his direction. An audible inquiry is no longer needed. He sneaks a side glance in my direction. A slight head shake communicates all that needs to be said.

I am no longer looking for the signs of my cycle. When my stomach turns, I anticipate the inner pokes and prods to come. I am drenched in happy daydreams. Emotion, it seems, has won the war.

“Should we buy the test then?” he asks, emerging from a well-executed bedtime routine.

I feel my breath catch. This (very reasonable) question rouses Logic from the depths of defeat. The peace of the last few days doesn’t vanish, but I once again feel the weight of the challenges pull against the rope. The test could make this daydream, well, real.

We might actually be pregnant.

I repeat this daunting phrase several times over the course of the night, each time with a slightly different nuance. Does this phrase warrant a tone of gratitude, because it might really be true?

“We might actually be pregnant!”

Or is apprehension a better fit?

“We might actually be pregnant.”

I take a deep breath and digest fully, for the first time, this might be the time.

Day Five:

I have two things on my must-buy list today: tortilla chips for three perfectly ripe avocados begging to become guacamole and the test. But the weather today is cold and rainy. I live in a large city without a car, which means I run errands on foot, pushing the stroller, herding the preschooler. A quick trip to the store, in the rain, is not enjoyable for anyone. It’s not happening.

Eventually my husband arrives home, and with him, the weekend. We charge onward into jammies and bedtime. Finally, it is Friday night. We hail this eve as date night and begin the impossible task of selecting a movie that fits our mood (a sloshy mix of excitement and apprehension). After scrolling through unappealing options for far too long, we acknowledge the root of our indecision: We must know. I continue the movie search. He runs to the store for chips and the test, because both are now date night essentials.

He returns, approves my pick of a documentary, sets about making the guac. And I... I finally take the test. It makes my stomach turn, anticipating what we will know for certain in three minutes time. I replace the cap, lay flat and upside-down, to avoid accidental glances before I’m ready for the reveal.

The chips and guac are served. The documentary is queued. To whatever lies on the other side of that test, these will serve as a welcome diversion. A place to process silently under the cover of entertainment. No need to form words, to feign excitement… or relief. Just watch the show. Eat the chips.

We stand close, wrapped in each other’s arms, whisper a prayer, then flip.

“Not pregnant.”

“So that’s that,” he says. We hug again, though this time is decidedly more mechanical than the last.

I can’t tell if I feel relieved or disappointed or simply numb. Whatever it is, I avoid it, for now, and lose myself in the noise of someone else’s story.

I watch the show. Eat the chips.

Now is not the time.