It seems to have flown by quicker than a baby bird leaves the nest. I knew it had been a while since I'd blogged, but didn't realise quite how long! These last months have been full. Full of love, learning, discovery, baking, creativity, growth, adventures, and laughter.
As I sat recently with Bella (our puppy) cuddled up on the couch beside me, I realised with acute clarity that my heart was full. Full and happy. This place has truly become a home, and I am so very content to be here in this moment of our lives.
I've been reflecting recently on what this year has brought into our lives. Reflecting on how it has been to settle into a small rural community. It's been an adjustment for sure, a learning curve, and a process to feel connected. But now, I feel like we are counted as locals. We have a community to call home.
I have a more multifaceted role out here this year. Not only am I a wife, mummy to a puppy, domestic adventurer in the kitchen, student of green fingered gardening skills, lover of the scenic beauty that surrounds; but I have added 20 hours working at our wee school into my week.
Working with kids again consistently encourages, challenges, stretches, and rewards me. My career path has taken a different turn that I once might have planned, but I wouldn't change it for the world. I am where I'm meant to be, with the person I'm meant to be with, living in an area and community that reminds you to slow down and remember what life is about.
It's funny where life takes us. Five years ago I had no idea that I was just about to meet my future husband. I had no idea of the rollercoaster ride that was just starting to take off. Incredible highs of falling in love and choosing to commit myself to Zac for life, deep lows of chronic pain and illness, and the highs of healing.
Four years ago Zac and I met and started a friendship that would grow and deepen and lead us into love. I had no idea then that thing would change for the better so rapidly, with engagement in under a year, and a wedding 5 months after that. So much could be said about the timings of all that, but let me just say that the timing of everything was perfect. Totally perfect.
Our vows included the lines "I choose you as my future. I promise to believe in you, to follow you, to encourage you, to both support and challenge you. To be a wind in your sail."
For me "following" is all wrapped up in choosing to love my husband. I would follow this man to the moon if he asked me to. So far he hasn't had the urge for space travel, but it has seen me follow him to this stunning, peaceful and isolated part of the country.
I pondered a lot last year on what it means for me to be a 'stay at home wife'. I'm not yet a mum (except to a puppy), and yet I'm in an enviable position of being able to stay at home and be a housewife. It's been an interesting transition for me, because if I'm honest this possibility had never entered my head. Starting out my career, I never really considered that I would stop working before having kids. I assumed life might pan out a certain way, and those assumptions have time and time again been shaken to the core, and I have been lead into a new way of thinking, a new joy and hope, a new season and a new opportunity to embrace life for all it is.
Life brings challenges and changes to our ideas of security and stability, and challenges us to widen our views and broaden our horizons. Each season is a blessing; though it might challenge us to examine preconceptions, and break us out of who we are, into more of who we were always meant to be.
I am still learning what the right balance looks like, and I am on a journey of defining what my 'role' in this season is. Perhaps that journey will never end because roles are flexible, fluid things that change and grow as we do, but I am learning about myself on the way.
There is freedom in realising that you are allowed to learn, you are allowed to make mistakes, you are allowed to grow, you are allowed to figure things out as you go. You are allowed to be happy in a place, a space, a season that other people might shake their heads at in wonder. I am allowed to answer the question of "Are you happy out there?", with a sound "Yes!". It is true, I am actually happy living in the middle of nowhere. It's a different pace, a different style of living, a different reality. It's not everyone's cup of tea (though they drink a lot of tea out here!), but it suits us, and in this season it is exactly where we are meant to be.
So here's to chilli jam, chutneys and home grown veges.
Here's to having a puppy to welcome us home.
Here's to space to breathe deep, and beauty to open up our hearts.
Here's to having a puppy to welcome us home.
Here's to space to breathe deep, and beauty to open up our hearts.
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