our journey thus far
david and i got married in may of 2008. since then, we've been on quite the journey that has taken us across the country twice pursuing higher education degrees for david, and one for me along the way. we've learned so much. we've grown up together and become "real adults." it's been a rocky road, but we've stuck it out together one day at a time.
our first year living in austin, tx was the hardest of our marriage (entering year five). we felt isolated and desired permanency after feeling transient for so long living in campus housing. we felt like we were going in opposite directions with david and his schooling and me and my work. i was working two jobs, a full time and part time one. it was too much and the work was wearing on me. my part time job was in the field of my master's degree and i felt i couldn't give it up. but my full time job paid our bills, so i really couldn't give that up. i felt god gave me a choice. brittain, your career or your marriage. well. when you put it that way... i gave up my part time job.
god honored my sacrifice and me giving my marriage priority. he opened up doors for advancement in my full time job and brought me to where i am today: working a job i love with co-workers i love. doesn't get much better than that, right? well then we decided to have a baby.
god totally took the timing of my pregnancy into his hands. it took us four months to get pregnant and had it happened any sooner, it would have been disastrous for my husband david and his degree. because of god's perfect timing, david could be home with me during the hardest months of my life facing life with a newborn and crippling post partum anxiety, not to mention c-section recovery.
i anticpated that my return to work after 12 weeks at home would be challenging. and it was, but it went a lot better than i anticpated. we had planned to put our daughter in full time daycare when i returned to work, but we just couldn't do it when the time came. god provided a part time in-home care arrangement for us through a friend, and david was able to provide care for the other days. recently when we planned to enter her in full time daycare for the spring semester, we came to the same crisis of conscience and god graciously opened a door for another friend to provide full time care.
our struggle with putting our daughter in a daycare center led us to re-examine our priorities and decide that we both wanted me to be able to be home with our daughter and, god willing, any future children. but this wasn't possible in our current financial situation. so god opened another door, one that comes with yet another cross-country move. but this one back to my home state of michigan.
and this is why i wanted to start this blog. to share my transition from working woman, to working mama, to stay at home mama. to share the struggles of making a new home for ourselves again and learning a new place. though i grew up in michigan, i left to go out of state for college at the age of 18 and haven't lived there since. david and i are both excited about the future. but we will miss the life we made for ourselves in austin. this is where we feel like we really became adults. where we got our first dog, our first home, and had our first baby. we love our home, our family, our church, our friends, our jobs. but we have new priorities now and we're making decisions to reflect that shift. after four years in the great nation of texas, we are moving north to the mitten. six months and counting.
so join me on this journey. there will be joy and laughter. there will be tears and frustration. it's real. it's raw. it's life. it is our journey, our story, and it is beautiful.
