Why we should give

Last night, Tucker and I went to a nice dinner at 5 and 10 Athens to celebrate my graduation and our time in this city. Honestly, it was way overrated. And then I felt guilty for spending that much money on a meal, that wasn't even that good, when the money could have gone to really help someone in need. Stories about children suffering around the world shouldn't make me feel guilty though. It should make me realize my blessings and my ability to HELP alleviate the suffering. So why should we give? Because we can, even when we feel like we are poor. For $30/month, what it cost me to eat last night, I can provide schooling, healthcare, and food for a child in Africa, Haiti, Bangladesh, Ukraine, India, or a host of other places. How exciting is that?! For that small amount of money, I can change someone's life. Can we help every suffering child? No, not by ourselves. But, like the old starfish proverb, we can make a difference to that one who we take from suffocating after being stranded on the beach to rejuvenation after being thrown back in the sea. 


Read on for a story of how child sponsorship can save a life. 

Kanini, 13, herds cattle in exchange for food. Every couple of days, he receives a small amount of porridge — barely enough for one person, yet he always carries some home to share with his ailing grandmother. "[She] cannot do anything to fend for herself," he explains.    Struggling to survive in southern Zambia, Kanini and his grandmother have few options. Both of Kanini’s parents are dead. His grandmother is well into her eighties and is too weak to work. Each worries about the well-being of the other. "Even if I go for many days without food," says Kanini's grandmother, "it is all right, as long as my grandchild tells me that he ate something." Their neighbor, Rose, offers to share her food, but there's little to go around. Rose is a widow caring for 10 children of her own. As rising food prices push basic commodities like rice and cooking oil beyond reach, the community is fracturing. People used to share their food freely — especially with the elderly. Now it's more difficult to do so. "The hunger situation here is dividing us," says Rose. "Very few people will harvest enough this year." Still, Kanini dreams about the future. He desperately wants to attend school and take care of his grandmother. But he won't be able to do it alone. "I don’t go to school," he says, "because there is no one to sponsor me." For about $1 a day, you can help provide a child like Kanini with access to life’s most basic necessities — things like nutritious food, education, clean water, health care, and economic opportunities for their caregivers. Change a life. Sponsor a child today. Visit www.worldvision.org/helpachild.

Click to give hope

Ever feel like the problems and pain of the world are just too much to bear, so you just rest in ignorance in an "out of sight out of mind" sort of way? Well, I have a way that you can be proactive without even having to leave your laptop. Woohoo! To help Heartline Ministries in Haiti win $40,000, $20,000, or $10,000 in grant money, click here to vote for them in the Giving of Life grant contest. To read more about the contest and Heartline's hopes for winning, and to in general go ahead and follow their blog to keep updated on their encouraging work in Haiti, click here. If you're still not quite convinced that Heartline's ministry is worth that one click (or several clicks, since you can vote once daily), read the below information about their important work with pregnant mothers in Haiti. This ministry is attempting to stop the perpetuation of the orphan crisis in Haiti by offering birth mother's prenatal care, a respectable place to give birth, nutritional training on how to raise babies, and a network of support and hope in a place that seems to have neither. Read on for more info on the Maternity Center Heartline plans to build with the grant money they would receive with this contest. Then go vote, by clicking here!!! 

"Through the Maternity Center, it is our desire to impact orphan rates in Haiti by empowering women and giving them the tools to parent to the best of their ability. We are seeing plump, healthy babies born on a regular basis! We are seeing attentive mothers bonding with their newborns immediately after birth. We are seeing the women of our program passing along the tools taught by our midwives to their family members and friends who are outside of our program. We are seeing the birthing process being honored and women being spiritually and physically supported during their labor experience. We are seeing their lives being transformed from birth. 

Below is an excerpt from a Heartline volunteer who was taken to a public maternity hospital not far from Heartline in Port-au-Prince.

“‘No…’ I thought to myself. ‘That can’t be the hospital.’ I was staring over a crumbling wall at the dingy building scrawled with the words Lospital Maternite-maternity hospital. Though I was sitting in the back of a pickup in 100+ degree heat, I suddenly felt cold. Looking at the faces of the others in the pickup bed, I knew they felt the same. Beth McHoul wanted to show us the public hospital, the place expectant mothers were taken when complications arose that the midwives at Heartline’s birthing center could not handle. Beth wanted to convince us that Heartline needed its own clinic. We went through a set of guarded gates and my eyes saw something which my brain failed to register for several seconds. The people I saw before me-lying in the dust, on concrete rubble, walking back and forth in the dark alley-they were pregnant women. On the verge of giving birth, these women were doing whatever they could to achieve some measure of comfort or distraction from the pain. Such horrific conditions…and we weren’t even inside yet. Inside the barred doors, my nose was assaulted by the scents of sweat, blood, urine, and bleach. Yellow lights cast an eerie glow on more women walking the halls or poised on benches. They clutched their backs, their bellies, their heads while screams echoed from beyond. Yet these weren’t the screams of healthy babies filling their lungs for the first time but the screams of anguished women with no comfort in reach. Beth led us slowly into the interior, looking for one of only two doctors in charge of the entire place. As she opened a glass door around the corner, I simultaneously noticed the man closest behind her blanch just as my shoulder was grabbed by the Haitian who had accompanied us. He shook his head and said, “No men.” In a dim reflection of the glass door I could tell that it was a hallway lined with beds. I saw pairs of black legs pulled up in the delivery position with what I later learned were 5-gallon buckets hanging beneath them to catch the babies. After a few moments the doctor appeared, beads of sweat covering his face. Beth presented him with a gift-a new blood pressure cuff-that caused a smile on his lips and tears in his eyes. I was later told he’d needed that for almost a year. The rest of the tour (pre- and post-natal, pediatrics, and urgent care) was just as nightmarish: squalid conditions, lethargic newborns, exhausted mothers, overworked caregivers, glazed eyes everywhere. Where was the privacy? The joy of new life? How many mothers would give birth on the floor tonight or in the alley outside?”

The Heartline Maternity Center is keeping babies out of 5-gallon buckets and giving mothers the chance to cherish their birthing experience.

Click here to vote for this ministry to receive the grant money necessary to build their maternity center! 

Why history matters

Americans don't know their history. Now, I'm not really one to talk because American history is not my favorite subject. I'm sure that will change this year as I submerse myself in it to teach my 12th graders. But history is more than just "learning a timeline" or "memorizing facts." History is a discipline that not only helps you appreciate the struggle of peoples past, but also the impact of people's actions on the present. And in history, you learn valuable skills, like reading comprehension, research, writing, creativity, analysis, and an appreciation for cultures and people different from yourself and your community. 

Now, I love America. I'm glad to live here, and I think we do a lot of things well. But, we also do a lot of things poorly, and we need to step out of our ignorance. If, for instance, Americans knew more about the history of slavery and race in our country, I think we would be much less likely to point fingers at the African American community for the struggles they face today (see former post I've written on racism here.) If people knew history, they wouldn't boast about how America has tried to save the world through democracy, when many times our history of war and invasion is nastily imperialist and heartless. We wouldn't poke fun at the French, who actually saved our revolution and ultimately contributed to their own revolution in doing so. We wouldn't have political parties who hijack Christianity and claim that our country was founded on it, when in actuality it was Deist. We wouldn't wonder why inner city schools are so terrible, given that they weren't given adequate resources or funding until the 1950s and 60s. We wouldn't hate and attack our immigrant population, when every single one of us came from an immigrant family seeking change. We wouldn't wonder at our current economic crisis, given the number of wars fought and the development of our military-industrial complex in the 20th century. We wouldn't pretend that we're not racist, bigoted, or hateful, given our history of slavery, civil rights, women's rights, and immigrants' rights. We wouldn't have made enemies throughout the world by resting comfortably in our ignorance of world affairs and our reliance on the prevalence of English. We wouldn't hate the poor if we understood more about the development of social classes in America. We would think twice before purchasing that chocolate bar full of cocoa harvested by child slaves in Africa, or that $7 skirt at Target sewn by slaves' hands in India. We wouldn't try to fix things by throwing money at them, but would instead try to find the root of problems in our society and the flaws in how we treat one another.  

Now, this probably all sounds like impractical utopian mumbo-jumbo, but I know that my study of the intellectual history of racism in France and the Americas has helped uncover my own racism, ideas lurking in the corners of my mind that I didn't even consciously realize were there. History is powerful. It's necessary. And it unquestionably should be taken seriously in schools. Will most students continue on to study history? No. But will most students need analysis skills, research skills, the ability to take various pieces of information and form a cohesive, well-founded argument? Yes. When students witness the conflicts in society today and shrug it off as commonplace and unimportant, studying history can help them grasp the tangible, living, breathing consequences of past conflicts, many of which remain unresolved. As a British historian has claimed, "People make history but not in circumstances of their own making." We respond to our circumstances, but our circumstances are a product of their context. How, then, can we adequately respond to the present, without even attempting to understand the past?

Does history matter? Emphatically, I say YES. 

Running off course

"Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us." Hebrews 12:1

I received an email Monday night with an offer from the Fulbright Commission to come and teach English in Poland. If any of you have read my past posts about Fulbright and the emotional roller coaster of the experience, you're probably not sure whether to curse or embrace  this development. That's pretty much how Tucker and I felt. Like this...

I mean, what should we do? We had prayed for clear direction from God about either staying stateside and finding jobs or moving to Europe for the adventure of our lives (can you tell which way I was leaning...heavily?). Then, I got a job offer in May from a wonderful private school in Atlanta to teach European and US history in their upper school. Problem solved, we thought. It was fairly terrible and heart-wrenching to release my dream of living in Poland, but I had pretty much moved on, what with working right now, finishing a thesis, graduating in two Saturdays, moving that same day, then starting my great new job the following Monday. I have a lot on my plate. And then I got that bloody email. 

Would it be running off course for Tucker and me to consider Poland? Would we be lacking faith if we left my job opportunity here for a unique, once in a lifetime chance there? Or would it be unfaithful to leave here when God worked out my job already? Why in the heck did God present us with this chance? If he wants us to stay here and start careers and a family, why even let the Fulbright people send me that stupid email? My brain was exhausted, my emotions spent, my convictions completely muddled, and my heart broken all over again. The dream I had literally wailed over losing was now reappearing, like magic, and I was powerless to grab it. It's like those dreams where you're being chased but you can't scream, except in reverse, where I was chasing Poland and wanting to badly to accept but all the sudden my vocal cords froze up. I was (still am?) angry, depressed, and deeply sad. 

It turns out that we must stay. We have obligations, contracts to uphold. Everyone keeps telling me that it's OK to decline because it's still such an honor to have been awarded Fulbright status. I can even put it on my resume, they gush. Well, I could care less. What's the point if I don't get to actually experience it, live it out for nine months, see how God stretches and grows me and Tucker, how I could become a better teacher and a wiser person? 

I guess this is the true, final goodbye to Poland. It will be so terribly difficult to run the race before me with perseverance and not look back over my shoulder at Poland, not wonder if that choice would really have been off track, not mourn for what could have been. Right now, I feel like I'm stumbling and crawling in the direction I think is right, but hopefully I'll hit my stride soon. Luckily I'm not alone in this endeavor, because surely my own strength will fail me in this, the path determined for me. 

So complicated

This is how my life feels right now. 

And this is how my brain feels right now. 

Know what I mean?!

on that thing about women

I was reading another blog I love, Rachel Held Evans' Blog, and she, of course, summarized so much more eloquently what I was fumbling and bumbling around in my post "Word to Your Mother". Evans basically repeated how Christian women shouldn't feel guilty about having a career OR staying at home with your children. God leads us in different paths because, well, He's sovereign God, and well, we're not. In Evans' words, "As a defense mechanism, we tend to elevate our own lifestyles as God’s will for all women everywhere.  If God’s presence is here, we reason, it must not be there." And she had what might just be one of my favorite new photos at the top of her blog. I stole it and put it at the bottom of this post, so please, friends, scroll on. You won't be sorry. 


The highlight of Evans' post, for me:

"Seeking God’s presence means recognizing that while God might inhabit a certain sphere, He is not contained to it. Though he may be found in pots and pans and communion wafers and poetry, He also transcends them. What works for a housewife in North Georgia might not work for a widow in Sub-Saharan Africa. How God is glorified in a single Lutheran girl from New York City might look a little different than how God is glorified in sprawling Catholic family in Mexico. 

When I categorically dismiss another woman’s lifestyle as irrelevant or unworthy in order to elevate my own, I am, in effect, placing limits on God. I am imitating Martha, who was so scandalized by Mary’s absence from the kitchen that she failed to see that her sister was reveling in the presence of a Savior. 

Some of my favorite lines of poetry come from Elizabeth Barrett Browning and go like this: 

Earth’s crammed with heaven,

And every common bush afire with God;

But only he who sees takes off his shoes

The rest sit round and pluck blackberries.

God’s presence is everywhere. 

Faith isn’t about finding the right bush; it’s about taking off your shoes."

And now for the awesome picture.  Please don't think I'm judging anyone with this one, I just found it pretty much HILARIOUS. I think I might start telling Tucker that I just can't make dinner tonight since my dreams and goals are distracting me :) 

New shoes on tonight

I wish I had these new shoes on tonight! I stumbled across them on a fellow blogger's site, and I'm now slightly obsessed with them. Before you judge me for falling into the fiery pit of mass consumerism, read on. (After you enjoy the cute pictures, of course.)

These shoes are crafted by a company called Sseko designs. Based in Uganda, Sseko provides fair labor for women in the customary Ugandan transitional period between secondary and college education where people earn money to cover their college tuition. Unfortunately for women, there are already few jobs in Uganda, and women are at the bottom of the hiring stack. Sseko hires these young women and allows them to earn their tuition money with a fair wage, in a safe environment, and with a community of support. From the Sseko website:

"Sseko Designs is a not-just-for-profit enterprise that recognizes the power of business and responsible consumerism to support sustainable economic development, which in turn affects a country's educational, justice, and health care systems. The goal of Sseko Designs is two-fold: provide university tuition for these promising young women through a sustainable monthly income, while also contributing to the overall economic development of Uganda."

Now that's what I call responsible consumerism. The soles of these awesome shoes are made from genuine leather and look pretty cushy, and the straps change into a bunch of different styles. The colored straps are also interchangeable. SO CUTE. I've asked for them for graduation. Fingers crossed that I can sport them come August and tell everyone to buy them and be smart consumers :)

These are my favorite styles. Now I'll just have to watch the user-friendly tutorial videos on youtube and figure out how to tie them!

To buy your sandals, click here. They do specials for wedding parties too. If only I had known this four years ago...

Word to your mother

Recently, an article has been floating around peoples' Facebook statuses that discusses a Christian woman's cultural encounters as a mother of 5. She voiced a lot of things that I've been sorting through myself, so I decided to mention them here in case some other 20-somethings women are doing the same. To read the above mentioned article, click here

Ever since Tucker and I married in 2007, I've felt the weight of conflicting social normatives regarding motherhood and family planning. On one end of the spectrum, you should start a family in your mid-to-late 20s, or else you're being selfish. On the other end, you're losing your independence and forfeiting your goals if you start a family before the age of 35. So, during the last four years, I've seen both sides of the "motherhood" debate, and honestly, I've felt judgement from both sides over either delaying motherhood in favor of schooling, or ending schooling with just a masters degree in favor of acting on what's best for our (future) family. It turns out, each side of the spectrum judges the other, maybe out of fear, or self-righteousness, or just ignorance.

I'm not a mother, so all of these observations are just that, observations. I don't pretend to have any practical knowledge about being a mother or the challenges involved in motherhood. But I do know that my fellow 20-something female friends and I feel similar pressures, creating a sort of "pressure cooker" of family planning. Caveat: my summary below of positions on motherhood are the extreme ends of the spectrum.

My academic friends will readily stand and defend a woman's right to her reproductive rights, namely in reference to abortion. But, ironically, when I tell these same friends that Tucker and I are looking to start a family in the next several years, I'm met with incredulous disbelief. Worse than that, I feel judged that, in their eyes, I'm forfeiting my academic career to have kids? What in the world? My decision to terminate my studies with a masters is far more complicated that merely "having children" or "not having children," but I don't understand how some of these women judge me for something that doesn't even impact them.

But in some ways, maybe their response is merely defense against the other side of the spectrum that tells women they must forego higher education or pursuing a career because you can't be a good mother and work outside of the home. In some instances, yes, often children fall to the bottom of a woman's priority list, trailing behind career, love, exercise, travel, or social life. The motherhood article above covers this topic well. But in many cases, I know women who are excellent mothers and fantastic professionals. I also know mothers who stay-at-home with their children, and they are smart women, with higher education, strong convictions, and impressive talents. They are not wasting these attributes and accomplishments by staying home with their children, either.

So, why is it that in our society, we automatically judge those who make different decisions than we do? And why is it that we feel somehow vindicated in sharing our judgements regarding something as personal and complicated as family planning and career? But I totally find myself doing it too. When someone announces they are pregnant with a third or fourth child, I always say "WOW," which probably makes them feel that I'm thinking "do you know what birth control is?" What I'm really thinking is, "Wow, 4 kids. Do I want 4 kids? That sounds like a huge responsibility." Oftentimes my response to someone else's family decision is really a product of my own insecurity, fear, or anxiety over the fact that Tucker and I will have to make those decisions at some point too.

So the point is, right now, at this point in my life, I will face judgement when (and if) I announce that I'm pregnant. It's that simple. Some people will judge me for starting a family too early, without enough financial stability, without having done enough "fun" things before being tied down  to children. Others will judge me for not having kids sooner, or for (maybe) continuing to work after starting a family. Don't get me wrong, I'll get plenty of excitement too. Too bad it can't be excitement all around, though.

It seems, from my humble observations, that regardless of if you're a stay-at-home mom or a work-outside-the-home mom, our society launches ridiculous expectations at you from all fronts. Maybe we should stop judging so much and instead grant the priority and respect motherhood should earn, whether you have a child at 22 or 42.

I heart Harry Potter

Seriously. I love this epic story. I used to be  a hater, and I resisted the mania for years. Literally. But then I actually watched all the movies in a row (thanks to a fellow grad student's HP collection!), and then I read the first 6 books. Over Christmas break. When I finally got my hands on Book 7, I read it in like a day. Who needs sleep when you have to find out what happens to Harry?! IT'S SO GOOD. My advisor in grad school, a quite serious scholar and mother, told me that she skipped going to the archives one day just to finish reading book 7. That's a serious concession from an historian. But trust me. The books are just that good. 

Moral of this posting? Read the Harry Potter books. Here's why I love them:

1. I am boring and uninspired, but JK Rowling is magically and brilliantly creative in weaving the story of Harry Potter. 
2. Family and friendship are really important to Harry. 
3. JK Rowling makes up words. But the words are so perfect, you wonder why they were never in the English language before now. Like muggle. 
4. The whole plot about "cleaning the bloodlines" reminds me of the Nazi party and their "Final Solution," which I think is sort of a cool way for kids (and adults) to attempt to grasp the Holocaust. 
5. In the books, there's a whole side story about Hermione trying to abolish elf slavery, since the elves are similar to a hybrid of serf and slave. Her comments and her friends' responses are similar to what actually went down regarding abolition. Hermione wants to free the elves, and others say "but they wouldn't know what to do with freedom. They like having masters." I love that JK Rowling looked to human events to craft her story. 
6. I love their accents. 
7. I wish I was friends with Harry, Hermione, and Ron. And that I went to Hogwarts (aside from the giant spiders lurking in the forest). That's how good Rowling is. 
8. Voldemort means "flight of death" in French. So clever. 

So, I, a 26 (almost 27!!) year-old woman love Harry Potter. I openly admit it. AND THE MOVIE COMES OUT tonight. I've already taken my nap so that I can give Harry my undivided attention and focus. I might just even dress up...

I Love Blogging

I do. Mock me if you want. I love feeling in community with people around the world who share similar questions and struggles with me and who ruminate on them with much more wisdom and eloquence than me! So, here are 2 things I found in the bloggie-world this week.

1. I found this beautiful analogy on Relevant Magazine's blog, and I thought it was so clearly and truthfully described. And, if you know me, I'm slightly obsessed with dancing... so, TADA. My favorite bloggie-world read of the week. 

"I finished reading Through Painted Deserts on our honeymoon and I quickly remembered why I love Donald Miller’s writing so much. His style is the perfect blend of adventure and spiritual musings, written in such a down-to-earth, authentic voice. One quote in particular stood out to me as I read on the beach in Cancun: "Life is a dance toward God, I begin to think. And the dance is not so graceful as we might want. While we glide and swing our practiced sway, God crowds our feet, bumps our toes, and scuffs our shoes. So we learn to dance with the One who made us. And it is a difficult dance to learn, because its steps are foreign." Poetic and eloquently put, such a beautiful, accurate depiction of what happens when God interacts with us. It reminds me of another quote that relates our walk with God to dancing, from a book I read last summer, Son of Hamas by Mosab Hassan Yousef: “Pray for me, that I will grow in my faith and that I won’t step on too many toes as I learn to dance with the Bridegroom.” Earlier this year, my wife (fiance at the time) Ellie and I took a few dance lessons and I learned first hand that dancing is no easy task, especially when you do not know the steps. The dancing we do with God is the most difficult of all, because it is His dance and the steps are advanced and unfamiliar to us. We must not be discouraged by this fact however. Proverbs 20:24 says: “A man’s steps are directed by the Lord. How then can anyone understand his own way?” So then, life is a dance toward God, with the Bridegroom (Jesus) and we don’t even know the steps. Sounds hopeless, doesn’t it? Professional dancers will tell you, however, that as long as the man knows the steps and has a solid figure, the woman will be able to follow with ease. So what does that mean for our dance with God? It means that we no longer need to be discouraged and confused when life throws us a curve ball, nor do we need to fall prey to the worldly pressures that tell us we need to have everything figured out, because we have a perfect and loving God who knows every step of the dance and has a figure more solid than any substance we know."

2. I found this awesome video on another blog, but it's also on youtube. Some highschool kid wrote and filmed this. So clever. I especially love the part about "my fridge is too full" and how we get annoyed when we run out of fridge space. Seriously? I just realized how ridiculous that is that I grow frustrated from having TOO MUCH FOOD. Thanks random high school kid for showing me the light. (PS I'm so proud of myself for remembering how to embed a video. Seriously, I don't think you get the depths of my technology-challenged nature.)

The story of us

The first time he saw me, it was my second day on Furman's campus, and I had lugged my giant, heavy desktop computer across campus to IT. I was sweaty and flustered, but he remembers me as cute and with painted toenails.

The first time I met him, I thought he was aloof and disinterested :). Only later did I find the spontaneous, fun, hilarious, thoughtful, and spiritual dimensions of this intriguing boy.

We became fast friends while preparing for a Winter Term foreign study, and by the time January rolled around for our departure date, my best friend Ashley called it. She told me, "I think Tucker likes you." "No way, " I said.

On foreign study, we both experienced Europe for the first time, the romantic cobbled streets, the street musicians cranking up "Amore" or "La Vie en Rose" when you walk by, the beautiful, intoxicating culture of places and people with such long, storied histories. By the time we reached Riga, Latvia, I realized I was falling for this boy. I always secretly hoped he would sit by me on our long bus trips throughout Eastern Europe, because our conversations inevitably led to discussions of God, theology, family, and the anticipated challenges of life after college. I had never met anyone like him.

In Bolshevik Square, St Petersburg, Russia

In Sweden one morning, I was eating my cereal when he plopped down across from me, asking "Can I join you?" "Sure, " I said, and then nearly choked when I looked up. I suddenly envisioned sharing all my breakfasts with this boy, and it was a novel revelation for me. I had never before met anyone who I could see myself marrying.

He was simple, to the point, and needed no nonsense, but I was anxious, invested, and fearful of how hard I was falling. So we talked. A LOT. And we finally had our first date in Florence, Italy. Later, in Paris, he slipped me a note at dinner that said "Will you have dinner with me in London: Check Yes or No." Cheesy? Yes. Effective? Oh yes. I still have the note.

In the Roman Coliseum 

After foreign study, everyone said we were doomed since we had started our relationship in the most unrealistic, surreally romantic setting ever. And despite me trying to break up with him 3 times over the course of that year, he fought for me. He was patient with me. He prayed with me and for me. The February of 2006, before I left for foreign study in France, I wrote this in my journal, "Dear Lord, I know that I love Tucker. I want to spend the rest of my life with him." I even found some doodles from my class notes while in France where I had scribbled "Erika Mosteller" and then furtively scratched it out so no one saw.

We were engaged November 5, 2006, and we married July 7, 2007. I can honestly and legitimately say that there has never been a day of regret in my life. Hard days? Yes. Days with lots of prayers for patience and the ability to hold my sharp tongue? Yes. But mostly, the days are full of gracious thanks that the Lord sent me a husband beyond my wildest dreams.

Our engagement at Chimney Rock, November 5 2006

Our wedding day, July 7, 2007. We look so young!

Here's to four years of being married to my best friend, the man who makes me laugh harder than anyone else, who holds me when I cry, who encourages me in my faith, who is my helper in all things, and who clearly loves me so deeply. When we married, I thought there was no possible way I could love him anymore. My heart was so full. I was wrong. (Cue cheesy Brad Paisley song "I thought I loved her then.") Just when I think I can't love him more, my love deepens even further.

I hope we have at least 50 more years of remembering our story and celebrating God's gift of marriage. What a blessing and incredible journey it's been so far. I can't wait to see what happens next.

Back in the US of A

I was singing this title to the tune of "I'm back in the USSR" in my head. It's good to be home. Tucker was so happy to be home yesterday evening, I really thought he was going to do a little "home sweet home" dance. I have done 5 loads of laundry and now have to pack up our house, find a place to live in Atlanta, start planning my new courses for the school year, and start my teaching assistant job Friday! My timeline for all of this is about three weeks. Yikes. I have my freak-out moments, but while in Europe, I was totally on vacay.

Here are some highlights of what we saw.

• Vernazza, Italy - Hiking Cinque Terre was one of the coolest things I've ever done, even if there were tons of tourists. 

• Several days in Provence, where our favorite village was Lourmourin. The lavender fields were INCREDIBLE. Especially when they were lined up directly beside sunflower fields!!!

Lourmourin, France

Outside of Roussillon, France

Dordogne, France

• THE FOOD. We had the best pesto ever in Vernazza, the best chevre chaud salad (hot goat's cheese) in Lourmourin, and pastries EVERYDAY. Can we say chubby cheeks? 

Chevre Chaud Salad

• We had a wine tour from a specialist while in Cotes du Rhone, and it was so fun and informative! We learned that we like reds from St Emilion, Bordeaux, and Minervois, but NOT from Cotes du Rhone or the Loire Valley. It was interesting to hear about the age-old tradition of wine making and the culture surrounding it. Vineyards covered EVERY square inch of the South of France all the way to the Loire Valley. Beautiful. 

• Seeing the Medieval and Roman ruins throughout the South of France, especially the medieval fortified city of Carcassonne and the old Cathar fortified castle of Peyrepertuse. 

Carcassone, France

Chateau de Peyrepertuse

• Chilling on the beach in Collioure, right on the border of Spain. We swam in the Mediterranean Sea and it was really salty and COLD. We got fried (of course) but it was so relaxing and beautiful. The sparkling sea was on one side, and the medieval fortified city on the other! I was in heaven, even if we did have to look at an old French man in a Speedo THONG and old, topless French women sunbathing. Hilarious and awkward at the same time. 

• The Cribs in the Loire Valley. The castles were amazing, and the countryside was just stunning. The best part was watching the feeding of over 100 French hounds at Chiverny, a chateau where the family still lives on the third floor and leaves the bottom floors and grounds open to the public. After watching the feeding of the hounds, I now understand the expression "chomping at the bit." Also, the gardens at the Chateau of Villandry were phenomenal. I can't get the video upload of the hound feeding to work, but I'll keep working because it's hilarious. 

Chambord Chateau

Villandry gardens

• Hanging out in PARIS for 4 days, my favorite place in the world. AND we got to see friends we haven't seen in 2 years, Anne-Laure and Renaud. Anne-Laure was the tour guide during one of the trips I organized to Europe, and we have been friends ever since. They were wonderful hosts, and we could see the Eiffel Tower from out bedroom window in their apartment. Sweet. 

It was a FABULOUS trip!!! We were tired at times, and some lost luggage made it stressful (as did having to drive in Paris! crazy!). Having an open-ended itinerary made the trip nice in some ways since we could decide to stay longer in some cities (like Collioure) but it made finding hotels stressful. We stayed in a place one night that I'm pretty sure hadn't been cleaned all year, let alone the linens washed. I cried. Total girl moment. BUT overall it was amazing and we had a blast. 

Hope you all are having great summer vacations too!