The Big Surprise

My ongoing struggle is, in a way, with priorities. I'm pretty sure I have the right ones in the right order on paper. The hard part is making consistent decisions, even small ones, in a way that correctly reflects the priorities. I suppose I could call that realized priorities.

My realized priorities definitely tend to center around myself, and sometimes my family. Big surprise.

Marriage and fatherhood have turned an embarrassingly bright spotlight on my selfishness. They've also been two incredible relationships that God has used to change me. I'm learning that neither relationship works unless my relationship with God comes first. It takes a lot of faith to make God my realized first priority. It's a lot easier to get wrapped up in the here and now and effectively worship the lovely and talented Mrs. Cooper or the chubby cheeked little cherub, or even myself. God's got a lot of work to do, and even though I hate it sometimes I'm glad he's on the job.

The Deal

Michigan, Michigan. Good old Grand Rapids. I never expected to be back again in this capacity. A job. A car. Almost a house. A church. Family. Friends. So many feelings, so much history. It's good to be back, very good. But it's hard too. Our life is not as much ours as it used to be, but that's because our relationships here are with family, and with friends that go back to childhood. I'm ready to settle down for a while, but it's scary. We're putting down so many roots I'm afraid we won't be able to make a change even if we want to. I'm enjoying work and looking forward to becoming competent and productive in a new field, but it's scary to leave what I'm good at behind. It's tough to come back as adults to a church we left as children. What is our place?

I know we made a good decision, and I'm not complaining. I expected it to be hard. It's good to know that God is with us. Being with family again is amazing. Seeing our long lost friends is incredible. Getting to know them all again has been a beautiful thing. The chance to own a house is one I thought we wouldn't have for years, if ever. The first week of work has been good, and I think the job will be a great challenge. Fitting back into church will be a stretching and growing experience, I'm sure. So all in all, hard but good. Painful but joyful. Challenging and growing. Forcing us to our knees in prayer and into faith for a life we know we can't live on our own.

I don't know how to say it!

I miss Adelaide and all you wonderful people!! I was thinking, once again, about you all this morning and just wishing I could give you all a big hug. I think about each and every one of you but I won't mention names for fear of leaving someone out. But you know who you are :) Alex misses you too - in fact he was just talking about his rellies (spelling any Aussies?) this morning. He was telling me the whole story about how he loved it when you all would hold him and make him laugh. And then he made me cry cause I was remembering it too. We miss you!

He's on the Move!

So my friend's website inspired me (Sarah) to finally put a post up!

Alex is crawling yo! He has been doing some mad army crawls for the last 3 weeks but this last week he started officially crawling :) The doctor said he's gonna be trouble (uh huh) and wouldn't be surprised if he was walking by 9 months. He's also begun the stage of stranger anxiety! So sad since, as most of you know, he was such a smiley & friendly baby. He still is but a lot of times just stares at people instead of constant smiles :(

What Alex has not been doing is sleeping on his own...but we're changing that. A little history. Alex always demanded to be wrapped to go sleep - even after he started rolling. Like an idiot I continued to wrap him instead of trying to teach him to sleep on his own. When we decided to visit friends in DC, which was when he turned 6 months, he became too mobile to be wrapped. Thus came the end of naps and sleep as we knew it. So here we are in a hotel, with a very rude lady next door, trying everything we can to get Alex to sleep. We struggled until last Thursday when we had enough of him waking up 5 times a night and not napping and decided we would sleep train him. Thanks to Brian's strength we conquered the night time pretty well. The task now falls on me for naps which I had geared myself up for today. I put Alex down, expecting a long fight, but after 5 minutes of silence I peeked my head in to see him sleeping like a what? A baby! No way! I know I know it's just one nap but it does start my day out brilliantly.
So...enough about Cutes. I can't wait to move into our house. I can't believe we are going to have one but I am so excited to have a backyard and not have to balance Alex & groceries up stairs! I'm excited to see how horrible I am at decorating. But I am up for the challenge now that I have a sewing machine and a few relatives that are pros at this sort of thing.

We miss all of our friends in Adelaide and DC. Our visit to DC made me want to move back there 'cause all our friends are having fun & having babies :) Everyone asks us about Australia and I would like all you Aussie's to know that we give high praise and can't stop raving about Holy Trinity. I well up with tears every time I think about you all!