Lauren and I have been back in Canada for just over five weeks now. The first bit of time at home was quite busy for us. To rewind it a bit further, we are about 95% sure that during our four days in London, we fell prey to the H1N1 virus. Not only did this suck the fun right out of the end of our trip, but it also placed us in recovery mode for our first week home. My parents came up for a few days upon our arrival, and we would go on to attend a wedding in PA and get together with Lauren’s family for Thanksgiving, take a road trip to Ottawa the next weekend, and head to St. Catharine’s / celebrate Opa’s 80th / attend the Donald Miller ‘Million Miles’ tour stop in Waterloo the weekend after that. Throw in the gradual process of re-acclimating ourselves to Eastern Standard Time, and needless to say it was quite a welcome home.
Since then, things have started to calm down a bit, and we are deep into the process of figuring out what’s next. In terms of employment, we are both actively pursuing work in our respective fields, believing that we were both meant to study over the past few years and that we are now called to devote our lives to that which we are passionate about. That is sometimes easier said than done, and we are extremely thankful that we have the support and encouragement of family. We have a roof over our head and food in our tummies, and that certainly helps maintain a level of patience in this process. I am looking into further educational opportunities, so perhaps it’s not as urgent or even possible to jump right into what I want to do long term right away. But, to borrow the main idea from Donald Miller’s latest book, we want to live a story worthy of what we believe to be the call that God has placed on us as individuals and as a married couple, and do not want to settle for anything less than that.
So, in the midst of some ongoing uncertainty of the when’s and where’s of it all, we still feel as though we are in the midst of a drawn out transition period. This is compounded by the fact that we are still waiting on two boxes to arrive from Scotland. It almost seems as though bits of us are still not completely home, a reality that in some ways hinders the ability to move forward, mentally anyways.
Throughout all of this, we have been enjoying the recently awesome fall weather, going on a fair number of walks and even many a morning run. Lauren’s parents also have a great sun room at the back of their house that I enjoy reading in, even if it is a bit chillier. It reminds me of reading in our flat in Aberdeen. Throw in a few side projects and we have actually kept ourselves quite busy.
While there are some things I definitely miss about Scotland, it is nice to be back in Canada and we continue to trust that everything will work out in due time, as it always seems to do.
Filed under: life
