Two years ago I wrote a few posts about how I felt in this whole graduate school season of life. I had graduated from my own program and was able to move to Thibodaux where Jeremy was attending Nicholls.
You can read about that here:
Part 1,
Part 2,
Part 3,
Part 4, &
Part 5.
When I left off we didn't know where Jeremy's internship would be. My hope was to take the position in Alaska and eventually move to Europe, that obviously didn't happen. It was probably for the better too, we had agreed that if he applied there we would not come home for the entire year.
I would have missed a year of birthdays, holidays, and just the in person conversations I so love to have with my family. Even more than that, God knew it would be very hard to me to handle the idea of my father having cancer and not seeing him once.
So something worked out there, what I wanted would not have ended with the same joy I wanted to go there with.
We still moved though, and it wasn't exactly because we wanted to. The parish I was working in had the new tax proposal shot down last May, which only caused more cuts and even a few school closures. There was absolutely no possible way for Jeremy to work there unless he accepted an unpaid internship.
Where we were financially at the end of last summer did not allow for such a thing.
Sadly we have to leave a church we loved serving in, and several very close friends we spent all of our time with. God had us more plugged in at FBC Thib than I could have ever imagined. Seriously, not once in my life did I ever see myself as the wife of a youth minister.
Trust me, having not envisioned that led to a lot of heartache and a big learning curve.
That was still a year ago.
Here we are now, three weeks from Jeremy's graduation. A day that I honestly thought would feel more like 20 years away as we opened the letter from NSU three years ago and Jeremy told me it was my decision if we would take the plunge.
It hasn't made marriage, life, family, or friends easy this three year stint; but I'm insanely proud that my husband who statically shouldn't have ever made it to this point in life is going to have a Specialist degree.
Heck, my pride would nearly force the man to get a doctorate if I weren't ready to go back to school myself.
As we close this chapter of our lives, I in a sense feel like I did when we started it.
We're in a new place, far from our old friends and in the process of making new friends. It's a new church, and I'm trying to find my footing as to how and to what capacity I will serve in. Jobs are new, the home is new, and like our move to Thibodaux... it began with the need for a new car.
Finally though, and I mean the all caps version of finally, we are at the point in our marriage where things are beginning to settle. It's funny we set a 5 year deal on talking about kids while we were engaged, because it has literally taken 5 years to get to a point where there is obvious room for them.
I know I've said a few of these things in other posts, but I like to keep my stories together... and I left this story without an ending two years ago.
It was mostly a story of lamenting and change.
Now it's ending with change and joy.
Jeremy is finally done with his long and arduous program.
Dad has cancer, but we were finally given a primary site and chemo started yesterday. We will find out towards the end of the week how he is reacting to the treatment, but it's finally treatment for a treatable cancer. I've even convinced the old man to go zip-lining with us in Puerto Rico, probably mostly just to please me... but I'll take it none the less.
We are planning to finally buy a house, and speak of babies.
Plus I'm going back to take classes to add on a Special Education certification.
I know God doesn't plan for us to feel settled, but this is the little bit of settled I need to continue to trudge though life. There has to be just enough positive to help ease the negative in life. There also needs to be, within us, just enough optimist to overcome the pessimist.
So what has this whole Graduate Wife Journey taught me that I never saw coming?
It's made me overcome my pessimistic self just enough to see the positive in things.
I know I've had a grumpy school year, but it gave reason for me to be much more grumpy than I ever let out in public. It also gave me reason to be grumpy that I won't ever speak of entirely here.
I may not see the world through rose colored glasses, but I left a huge chunk of my cynical self behind. I've learned to cope being far from family, and have seemingly come to love friends a lot more than I ever did before, because when you're far from family you need friends.
Leaving Monroe was hard, but leaving Thibodaux was a lot harder.
I'm hoping we plant such deep roots here that leaving this place would trump the latter.
So yay for graduation, and whoo hoo for the end of a season I never thought would come to this end!
