2011: a pile of rocks

i wish i could take all the happy memories of my life and carry them around, untouched, in a safe, little bubble. i could remove them from time to time to re-experience them, and i would feel again just how much i knew at those moments that God was really, really good, that life was precious, that there was hope. i find myself furiously snapping photos and trying to create experiences because i'm terrified of forgetting. i try to hang on for dear life to moments as they slip through my fingers. i'm sentimental to a fault, desperately wanting circumstances and people to stay the same, and grieving even minute changes to degrees i'm not proud of.

last night, at 1am, after we waved goodbye to friends from the pale light of our front door and snuggled in underneath our down comforter, i found myself reminiscing and trying to catch my breath. is 2011 really over? did all of it really happen?

first, a day back in the spring, when i was very pregnant and road-weary. Kyle and i got a call with an invitation to return to our alma mater to lead the campus ministry there--the very ministry God had used as one of the most enormous catalysts of our growing up, the one we had met one another in, whose people had surrounded us on our wedding day. an answer to a secret prayer i had begun to pray only in January, now handed to us on a sparkling, silver platter. march, 2011.

then, our first night here, in our very own home. we had de-glossed and primed the baseboards, and the heavy scent of chemicals lingered in the air. we had plans to stay the night at an old friend's house, but we found ourselves unable to tear ourselves away from...home. so impulsively, with eight-week-old Emaline in her tiny bassinet next to our bed, we snuggled in for the night in a house that was all our own. Kyle had chosen it quickly without me ever seeing it, it was a work in progress, and it had its share of imperfections, but it was beautiful, and it was ours! an answer to about fifty prayers that had seemed beyond our greatest hopes. june, 2011.

and the way it felt when we held our tiny, eight-pound Emaline, our very own baby, in our arms for the very first time, all wet and slimy and alive and very, very real, while tears ran down my face and i told her over and over again, "i love you, Emaline! i will always love you!" and he was suddenly a daddy. and i was a mommy. us! and we were never supposed to be. april, 2011.

i could go on. that day in Publix when i tickled Emaline's feet and she laughed for the very first time. the first staff meetings with our very own staff team, where i watched Kyle lead and my heart swelled with joy and delight at his skill and life and gifting. that night when after a series of arguments about how and where shelves and picture frames should go, and i shed not just a few tears, we stood back, breathless, and admired the work of our hands--Emaline's nursery, pale grey, sugar and spice, in all its glory.

2011 did not come without its share of pain. i spent 2011 watching my Mimi who i dearly love really get old. it seemed to happen suddenly all in one year. and it hit me for the first time that my own mother is getting older, too. we waved goodbye to a church in Gainesville full of friends who had rapidly become family in just two, short years. i never imagined that we would be severed so soon from people who had become so dear so fast. we returned to a town full of the greatest memories of our lives, with efforts to lower our expectations that all would be "the same" as it was in our college days. and nothing was the same. my heart has broken again and again. i am still fighting to release the days of everyday, neighborhood, heart friendships and a group of friends who are all best friends. i walked through valleys of long weeks of learning entirely new eating habits that drove me to my knees, sacrifices of sleepless nights that motherhood brought, the indescribable pain of labor that kept me reeling, gripping Kyle white-knuckled, crying out with abandon, hopeless apart from His help.

2011 ended in a slump of depression. but loving intervention swept in, ripping idols from my clenched hands, resulting in tears, tantrums, and finally, exhausted and desperate worship...of Him. He who is enough.

in Joshua 4, God told His people to erect a pile of rocks as a landmark to help them not to forget all He had done. may the year 2011 be as such to me! in years to come, i will remember 2011, and i will think of all God did, and how faithful He was. how faithful He is to us. i know i am forgetful. already, this morning upon waking, the first of 2012, i began to worry. "what if we don't have enough money?" "what if we never have another baby?" "what if i don't have what it takes to be a Nav wife?" "what if i burn the pot roast?" all those lingering questions. but look at 2011. He was good then, amidst the deepest pains and greatest joys i've felt so far. and the joy we felt when we held our girl for the first time on that warm, April day was nothing but a shadow of the Hope we are really waiting for. the best is yet to come!

happy 2012.