A Year in Review

I figured it was time for our year in review blog. It seems to be the right time, even though a year has passed a couple of weeks ago, as we listen to the pre-Guy Fawkes fireworks set off by the neighborly rabble down the way.

This year has been marked by many things. I can't help but be hit by the odd reality that we started and ended this year in the same way - packing up all our things and moving somewhere foreign to us. In many ways, this bracketing of our year is what also defines it. Life has been full of newness, chaos, travel, sadness, stress, excitement, and about every other emotion you could throw in. We have made a home in a new place, and will now miss people in several distinct places as we seem to find ourselves without real stability in these times. But through all of the randomness and unsettleness, we have been incredibly blessed and God continues to define himself by his faithfulness.

In an equally contrasting way, this year was marked by life and death, as well as enjoying new friends and missing the ones we left behind. We had three funerals this year, two of which we could make it to. When we moved we didn't think we would have any, so that has, in many ways, defined what this year has been. As our hearts have been in so many ways divided by geography, so they have also been divided to friends and family who have suffered much this year. But at the same time, there has been incredible newness of life. The birth of Emersyn, the joyful frolicking of little Abigail, seeing the twins Jenson and Owen, and getting to play with Luke, Ethan and Ainsley.

While this year has also been defined by leaving behind friends and family that we miss terribly, we have also been incredibly blessed with friends in Aberdeen who have been our family here. We have a surrogate niece in Hannah, the little girl of our close friends Kent and Tammy Eilers, who is always an incredible joy. God has blessed me with guys who think as I do about doing something like a Ph.D, and Kelli is surrounded by many women who bless her time here. As much as I want to talk about each of them, it would take way too long. In any case, they have marked our year as well, and have made this place a home we never thought it could be.

In many ways, Kelli and I both went through a desert when we got here. I had all of the anxiety of doing a Ph.D (in an area I had not studied much in), and Kelli had the problem of trying to find a job in a country without any! (for physical therapists). But now, Kelli is hard at work, and I am witnessing a new group of men and women coming over to do their Ph.D's all struggling through the same issues we had. Suddenly this life is normal, and, in many ways, a real joy, rather than a real stress. The research is now something I really enjoy, and I have found my way into a groove that fits me very well. Kelli has a mix of things she does, but it has clearly expanded both of our understandings of the broader world around us and the different ways to approach situations, problems, and trials in life.

All in all, this has been, while hard, a great year. There were times we weren't always sure that would be the case, but God has blessed this year with a great depth and joy.

We look forward to another year to see where this crazy adventure we call Aberdeen takes us!