It feels as though these last 3 years have been on fast forward... Just I think I am able to catch up, something comes up, a new big decision needs to be made. But we are hopefully in view of a more calm horizon in the very near future.We made it through the most difficult semester of them all, the last semester of a music composition major's life! His recital was a great success and despite handing in some papers late and thanks to the graciousness of many professor's hearts, Gordon graduated Cum Laude (Cummulative GPA of 3.5) :) I am beyond proud of my amazing husband, at how hard he pushed to finish while juggling a new marriage and all of the crazy 1-2 punches life has been handing us. He reached the finish line with his head held high and with many wonderful memories of his 5 years in college. What a cause to celebrate! :)
In March we were informed that we are needing to move. We live on the 3rd floor to a house and the landlords want to have our apartment for their 18 yr. old daughter. So we are hopefully moving out at the end of the month. At first I took the news really hard because we weren't planning on moving and this year has been tough and full of changes already, but as I was able to calm down, and talked it through with Gordon, I was able to realize that this in fact is a good thing. We've found a place that we like close to church which will allow us to become more involved with the church itself along with our young married's group.
The Lord has been so good to us especially during all of these changes. Gordon was able to secure a job the day before graduation and we are actually going tonight to put in our application on the apartment we are looking at. There is a possibilty of getting piano at a steal of a price (which would be a tremendous blessing for Gordon) and we are also getting a kitten! :) I've been wanting to get a cat for some time and we weren't able to have one in our current apartment. We were also asked to be part of a mission's trip to Ireland, which will help to encourage the missionaries that our church supports in the UK through worship and teaching. This is right up our alley and we are very excited about it. We will be gone from June 11-23rd and once we get back, we'll have landed for awhile. All of this happening one month short of our one year anniversary. Whew, what a first year of marriage!
People told us that our first year of marriage would be great, but also challenging, but we had no idea how challenging it would be. We certainly have had wonderful moments of reveling in the newness of our relationship, but there have been so many outside factors that have kept us busy and away from our hearts. We are hoping that once we return from Ireland and will have moved into our new apartment, life will settle down enough for us to catch our breath and survey all that has taken place this year. We're also hoping to be able to "re-discover" our relationship as we have been running like mad for the last couple of years even before getting married. It is hard to believe that next week we are coming up on 10 months of marriage. It seems like we've always been married, but also like we have just begun... It's a strange mixture of emotions. All of this being said, I am SO thankful that we have been married during all of these dramatic life changes, because I know it would have been extremely difficult having to handle this alone! What a blessing it has been to have been given the gift of marriage!
I think the thing that we have missed the most in these last couple of years is relationships. We formed several great friendships several years ago, and as life has happened, people have moved away or moved on with life. I am praying that as we stop in these next couple of weeks, that we are able to take advantage of the time that we have now that Gordon is done with school to cultivate these relationships and watch them flourish. Life in community can be such a blessing and in such an individualistic culture, it can be very hard to come by.
Well, enough rambling for me. We have a picture of our kitty, but it's blurry. So I'll wait to post it until I get a better picture. We'll be picking it up after our trip at the end of June! Horray! :) I will hopefully be updating more before we leave...:)
