2022: Surrender
When 2022 started I knew I was going to be in for quite a unique year ahead, but I was unaware how much it would really push and stretch me. At the end of 2021, we had found out that our time in Fayetteville was not going to be as long as we had hoped and we would be making our way back to Montgomery in the summer.
In January, I learned from an acquaintance that she and her family were moving and their house was available to buy in Montgomery. It was in our desired neighborhood, about 12 houses away from our former rental house, and had an amazing sunroom (our greatest wish in a house). I couldn’t believe what big magic had fallen in our laps at that point and we were overjoyed to close on the house in March, leasing it back to the military family that sold it to us until they moved in the summer.
We started planning as a family how we would navigate the upcoming year. I pulled my planner out and we started mapping out months ahead. Our last North Carolina beach weekend got scheduled for a few weeks before our anniversary in April. The most daunting two items to schedule were a four-month long training for Ara in Oklahoma and our impending move back to Alabama.
Nora and I helped Ara load up his car, gave the biggest hugs we could and waved goodbye to him as he drove off for Oklahoma on our 11 year anniversary — April 17. At that point I had no idea how much I would have to and need to surrender for the rest of the year.
Late April and May brought a month of friends and family visits (including two trips that included Ara) which filled our hearts and overfilled our love cups. But also brought strange things like getting struck by lightning, and a missed flight to Kansas due to some Uber trouble. Wait a minute…getting struck by lightning?! Yes. I swear the weirdest things happen when your husband is away during military trainings or deployment. For me (and a friend I was with) it was a conduit strike of lightning as we were walking into our dear friend’s MBA graduation in Chapel Hill. Conduit strike meaning, the strike of lightning that was about 8-10 feet in front of us traveled through a large puddle of water, through us and through umbrellas we were holding and out a metal screw on the umbrella handle that we were holding. We thankfully walked away from that incident and rather scary situation fairly unscathed. We both experienced a bit of fogginess the rest of the day, stiff bodies from the electric shock and for me a feeling of my hair sticking up. A few chiropractor visits and a couple sessions of acupuncture made me feel like a new woman again and overall just thankful to have survived such a bizarre phenomenon. The missed flight to Kansas seems like a drop in the bucket compared to the lightning situation.
June brought the month of our move. The move that I was undertaking basically solo with a toddler. I’m a planner by nature so I worked my way through my mile long checklist as I have done with many military moves that have come before. This one was a bit different as I had to make sure everything was also in order for the family who would be renting out our beloved Pine Place when we moved out. The middle of the month brought some up-ending news that our moving company would be putting our household goods in storage and not taking them directly to our home that we’d purchased in Montgomery, Alabama. This news truly gutted me and I was devastated. This was supposed to be our “easiest” move YET! We had an empty house, just merely 9 hours down the road and I imagined the movers putting our household goods in a truck and only being without them for a couple days before the truck pulled up to our Montgomery house. Now I was faced with an unknown amount of time we would be without our belongings, with a toddler, living in an empty house once again. I was angry, felt so alone and defeated.
At the exact time that I needed someone, my sister friend text messaged me as I was spiraling in my moving woes. She gave me every validation to feel angry, alone and defeated but also gave me what would come as the best advice that I held close to for the rest of the year. “I think you need to surrender to this. Be angry and mad for a couple days and feel those things. But then surrender to this and move on.” It felt as if the Lord was using her specifically in the moment to be a beacon of light and strength to me. I almost immediately felt peace about the situation and decided it was time to be done being angry about the situation, pick up myself and move on.
Our move week came and so did Ara’s parents! They were the MVP of our move and held us all together for playtime with Nora, multiple Lowe’s trips, finishing final fix-it situations for the house, meal pickups and comfort as the days seemed to go faster and faster. When Nora woke up in the early morning of the first day of our movers coming to pack our household goods I said a prayer and surrendered as we tested her for COVID. Thankfully she was only down with a fever for 24 hours (COVID negative) and was cured with binge watching some Beauty & the Beast with MomMom.
We piled in two cars with Nora, Riley and Newman, approximately 36 houseplants, suitcases and our trusty air mattresses to get us through the unknown amount of “house glamping.” We arrived to our Montgomery house and I was eager to show Nora where I’d picked out for us to make our home for the next few years. We walk in, tour around and find the upstairs air conditioning broken. In the current state of late June heat in the Deep South, the outside temperature was about 87 and the temperature inside was almost matching that. I remember standing at the HVAC monitor and praying and saying “just surrender.” I sat on our empty kitchen floor making a claim as Nora showed her MomMom, PopPop and the kitties around the new house. It wasn’t my ideal way to start the first afternoon in our new home but I was thankful for the home warranty we had negotiated for in our house closing!
Next brought our wait for our household goods to arrive and making ourselves comfortable for the undetermined amount of time we’d have to camp. We made lemonade out of lemons and decided it was the best time to have our kitchen cabinets painted while there wasn’t anything in them. So while I was surrendering to not having anything to fill my cabinets—I hired a crew to do the first thing on our home improvement list. Meanwhile, we find out that we would be without our household goods for 34 days—insert huge deep breath and some cuss words. Once again, the Lord placed angels in my life through friends and Melissa texted me one night asking if Ara would still be away at military training when our household goods were set to arrive. He would still be gone and she said that she was ready to buy a plane ticket to come and help out with the transition. I was moved to tears immediately from her selfless actions and love for us as a family. She arrived a couple weeks later and put joy on our faces, pep in our step and helped us unpack our household goods in record time.
Nora and I waited patiently impatiently another month for Ara to complete his military training in Oklahoma to join us in August. We had created quite a special bond over the last few months—living, surviving, leaning on each other through the good and bad moments but we were ready to be the three musketeers again. We made signs, chalked up the driveway with colorful art and greeted our favorite guy with the biggest hugs when he walked through the door.
It seemed like the year of surrendering was going to be over—we had our family back together and all was going to be right. Despite our best efforts, sickness hit our house from September until December. It seemed like one week out of every month was our ratio for having one person not sick in the household. We battled stomach bugs, mystery rashes that resulted in a late night ER visit, allergies and countless colds.
I am ending the year of 2022 reflecting how much has changed over the past year. Reflecting on how much I surrendered my heart and endured to get where I find myself today. I typically chose a word at the end of the year to bring into the next year—to set as intention, but I realize that I didn’t do that for 2022. It’s interesting that the word found me throughout the year and how it continually showed up.
I’m being proactive this year for 2023 and choosing my word for the year. This next year will be a year that we aren’t moving (hooray) and I’ve found a job that I’m passionate about while working from home. We have a planner full of travel ideas and I can’t wait to THRIVE this year in 2023.
My hope and intention is to THRIVE — with relationships, in my job, in mothering Nora, with travel and with pursuit of my passions.
What word will you set your intention on for 2023?
(I can’t post about my year without including some of my favorite moments from 2022.
