Thankful

Where has the time gone? It's already February and it feels like I just left Savannah a few days ago. 

A new year has begun, and it is incredibly overwhelming to stop and think about all that has changed during the last few months. 

After living with my parents for a few weeks, and dealing with the paperwork and stress of buying a home, and Chris commuting an hour and half to and from work, we were able to move into our beautiful home! 

move in day :)

We moved in just in time to celebrate Christmas and New Years, which was so fun. Since we have been married, we've been moving every year at Christmas time, so we had our very first real Christmas tree, and we were able to enjoy our decorations! We had friends and family visiting and even had our dear friend, Amber who was visiting home from Australia come visit and stay with us fro New Years! I was also able to go to Lynchburg, VA (where I went to college) to visit with one of my favorite people who graduated as a nurse! Couldn't be more proud of this woman and the hard work she put in to make her dreams come true!

Congrats Sarah!!! (& so good to see Kelsie & Alli too, love my college roomies!)

Chris did an amazing job cutting down his first real Christmas tree!

enjoying our home and watching Christmas movies.

Baltimore Inner Harbor celebrating 2014 with Amber!

We church shopped for quite a while, and it was honestly pretty discouraging at first. We LOVE our church in Savannah, so we had to pray hard for open hearts and minds as we began our search for a church home here. Well... I think we found it. The Foundry is an amazing place where we have met amazing people. We feel so welcomed every week and fall a little more in love every time we go!

Moving to a new place... even if it is just an hour and a half from home... is really tough. Working from home has been amazing, but it gets lonely. I miss sharing an office with my best friend and having amazing people around me all day. Evenings are my favorite time when Chris comes home. It has been a challenge to not use my family as a crutch and just 'run home' every time I need to be around friends. Don't get me wrong, its amazing to have them so close, but I know that community needs to be built here, in our new home. 

This week has by far been the most overwhelming of the year so far... I thought this was going to be a very lonely, quiet week, with Chris traveling to Chicago for work, however, he has been by my side through a tough time. After driving him to the airport Monday and driving home, he called to say his flight was delayed until Tuesday morning. So I got to spend another night with my amazing hubby...great! Except that Tuesday morning was an icy one. As we drove in the dark to the airport, we were 2 miles out when we hit a patch of ice. This was the most terrifying moment of my life. I had no control of the car... we spun in circles across the highway... into the exit ramp... hit a highway light pole which threw the car into another circle and finally stopped when our car slid backwards up onto a huge highway sign that had been knocked down minutes before by another car. Within seconds after stopping, I looked up and saw another car sliding straight toward our car. Chris leaned across toward me while the other car slammed into the passenger side of the jeep. As we got out of the car and called 911, one after another, cars hit the same icy spot and spun out of control. We would watch one car spin and another car start spinning until they crashed and then moments later another car would start sliding and crash into the other two. It was like a horrible scene you would watch in a movie. There were 11 cars that had to be towed away, and many more that were able to drive away. 

All of this to say, Chris missed his flight... we sat at the scene for 2 hours in the freezing cold. It only looked worse once the sun came up and you could see all of the damage. What a crazy morning! 

*Thankful for our friend Jon who sacrificed being on time for work and came to picked us up and took us home.

 

Thankful... this is the only word that makes sense right now. I am so thankful that after spinning out of control on the highway, and smashing into a light pole, Chris and I walked away from the accident with nothing more than a scrape on the leg and a stiff neck. I cannot stop thanking God for keeping us safe! I miss my car, and I wish I could stop replaying what happened in my mind. But my car can be replaced and memories will remain... but sitting on the couch with my husband last night, with tears running down my face, I tried to put the words together to tell him how much he means to me and all I could say was 'I love you so much'.

It feels like this was just another reminder of how precious each day is and to never take for granted the opportunities we have to love on those closest to us! 

Sincerely, Loo