More than lost signals.

Someone stole our GPS from our car last week.  They also stole a few CDs and a car charger, too.  It didn't look like anyone broke into the car, so I suspect that Nathan and I somehow forgot to lock the car when we unloaded it the day before, carrying way too many conference supplies and snacks after running some errands.

There were many different frustrations to reckon with - frustration that Nathan and I (though I think it was probably really me) forgot to lock the door in the first place; frustration that I didn't want to feel dependent on the stupid GPS but was feeling the tensions of not having it because everywhere we've needed to travel to so far didn't seem to have proper signage.  Cue the extra u-turns, missed exits, and roundabout routes to destinations.  Then cue the rain, the unnecessary tears, and confused husband who doesn't know what to do with his mess of a wife.

But the stolen GPS also came in the midst of this major season of frustration in my life, which can be boiled down into two categories:  frustrations with ministry, and frustrations with myself.

I know this may sound super cheesy, but I can't help but compare how I feel about our missing GPS with how I feel about my life.  I feel like a terrible wife, a terrible daughter, a terrible staff worker, and a terrible follower of Jesus.  I don't know where I'm going, I don't know what God's saying, or how to lead others who don't think like me or communicate like me very well.  I don't know how to trust God but also avoid sitting around waiting for God to wave a magic wand and do something.  I know He doesn't work that way.

It's frustrating because I'm trying to make decisions about where to go or what to try instead of just standing around, but I don't have any signs telling me if I'm going the right way or need to turn around.  Everything I try seems to hit dead ends.

Today I realize I'm starting to feel a numbness creep in.  There's a temptation for me to start shutting down because I've tried caring and it's not getting me anywhere.  It only seems to deepen the sense that I'm lost.  Nothing seems to work.

But my fear of becoming depressed seems to be outweighing everything else to give me enough strength to fight the numbness for now, so I'm trying to dig into God's Word again.  I may not recognize where God's working or what God's doing in my life.  I may not understand what He's trying to tell me.  And I may be terrible at almost everything.  But I'll use what little gas I have left in the tank to try and show up. 

A weekend to quench my thirst.

I had an absolutely refreshing weekend.  It was so nice to get away from campus, not have to worry about work, and not think about my oh so thinly developed Rochester community.  There were so many factors that made this long weekend great:

Meeting with my supervisor.  I love my supervisor.  She's a great listener, has excellent intuition, knows how to challenge me without pushing me over the top, and gives such genuine encouragement.  It was so good to see her and meet with her and just share about what work has been like lately and to ask for help where I needed it.

Spending time with good friends who were willing to listen to me talk about how I was feeling about things going on in my life.  I knew I needed to take a sabbath since I'd be at a wedding all day Saturday, and as you well know by now, socializing is not my go-to life-giving activity.  Well, spending the afternoon with girlfriends who know me and understand what I do and were willing to listen just hit the spot.  I felt bad for rambling and talking so much, but I knew it was something I've really needed for a while now.  They were so great and it was so much fun to visit and be with them.

Fall is here and the weather has been gorgeous.  It seemed like the trees along the road in the Poconos/The Crossings area were at their peak.  There were so many red, orange, yellow, and green colors with speckles of purple flowers everywhere.  It was so beautiful to look at as we drove along.

Singing in a friend's wedding.  I can finally cross that off my bucket list, though I wouldn't mind doing it again.  I've always wanted to sing at a friend's wedding, and what better way to do that than with some of your old college praise team members!  I was so honored to be asked to be a part of it, and am so happy for the newlyweds.  The ceremony was great and the wedding overall was fun and so well done.  

There's so much I left out, but I figured I'd spare you the details (ooh, except for the fact that I got to see Pam, if even for a split few minutes - it was too short, but it was better than nothing!).  The weekend was packed with good company, good conversations, good weather, good travels, good food, and good fun.  Now if only I can get my hands on some butter and bake some pumpkin scones or something, that would be awesome.

Moderate homebody of sorts.

I'm a bit of a homebody.  Not to the truest sense of the word, though.  Maybe 'moderate homebody' is a more accurate description.  I don't prefer to be home at all hours on end.  When a great opportunity arises to travel to a different state or a different country, I'm usually down (if it's feasible).  I enjoy long car rides most of the time, especially if they're to new places I've never been.  I don't really enjoy flying as much anymore, but that's mostly because of the liquid limitations (as stupid as it sounds, I unashamedly love and need my lotion...and lots of it) and "new" costs to check baggage, which I find extremely annoying.

I guess I call myself a 'moderate homebody' because I enjoy going out and traveling on the minimum end of my time.  A special occasion.  Something to look forward to.  A temporary, clearly limited time living out of a suitcase until I can exhale a sigh of relief to be home.  It becomes not so great when I'm traveling back to back to back to back.

But being home can be so boring, some of you may say.  Not so for this moderate homebody.  Home has endless possibilities for me.  It can mean reading for hours on end, or trying a new dinner recipe I've always wanted the time to make.  It can mean crafting some birthday cards or dreaming up some creative ways to send my congratulations on the new baby.  It can mean baking something delicious from scratch, or watching some fun movies from Netflix, the library, or Redbox.  It can mean having the personal time and space to host my students in town for the summer, acquaintances I hope will become friends, or out-of-town friends who would grace us with their presence to visit for a few days.  It can mean cleaning and organizing what I had hoped would magically clean and organize itself.  It can mean quality time with my husband, talking or playing or eating.  It can mean a quiet place to think, reflect, or meditate.  I love it.  I bring the adventures home without having to go very far.

And now that my home is in Rochester, it can mean a lot of other things - exploring a local cafe or shop, attending a town festival, or learning something new.  It could mean visiting museums, the zoo, or art galleries.  It could mean volunteering somewhere to serve my community.  I could take a day trip to Buffalo, the Finger Lakes, or picnic on the "beach" at Lake Ontario.  Day trips to be back home without having to pack a suitcase.

But it seems as though when this moderate homebody agreed to marry a man who grew up and thrives in chaotic travel plans, she signed her summers of moderate homebody-ing fun away.  Well, maybe not away completely.  More like to a limit of one or two weeks?  As this is our first summer together as a married couple, it will be a test of sorts.  Last year we also had crazy travel plans, and since we were engaged it was particularly difficult for me.  It should be easier this time, but we'll have to see.

Now, since you're probably a faithful reader (or stalker, whichever floats your boat) of this blog so far (or you were referred to this by someone else who follows), keeping up with the sparse updates of what's going on in my mind, I'll let you in on a little secret (for those of you who don't already know):  if you'd like to follow my more superficial, day-to-day life adventures with Nathan, you can check out my other blog.  You'll probably find updates of where our crazy summer plans will lead us.  Happy stalking!

Christmas cheer.

There were a few years when I was little, when my dad would use these pre-made paper links to celebrate Advent with me and my family.  Each night in December after dinner, we'd read the little blurb about an aspect of the Christmas story on one side of the paper strip and then would do the word puzzle together on the back side before my dad would lick the adhesive end to add to our paper chain that we hung on our real Christmas tree.  I absolutely loved that tradition of Advent celebration, but we only did it for a few years (I think the company where my dad ordered the paper strips from stopped making them) and Christmas just hasn't been the same for me since then.  We'd still light our Advent candles each day, adding a new one for each week, and my dad would go through some Advent booklet, but I longed for something more creative and exciting and fun.

Even though I do think the materialistic hubbub, shopping dash and overly-done crazy Christmas stuff can be a bit over-the-top and isn't the real meaning of Christmas, I still love the Christmas season and the things that come with it.  I love the decorating process, real Christmas trees, 24-7 Christmas music radio stations, and learning about people's quirky family traditions while enjoying my own.

This is the first year I won't be spending Christmas with my family.  This is also the first year where I felt like I had a chance to really be free in getting my creative juices flowing to start my own quirky family traditions, go all out with Christmas decorations, and celebrate the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ in creative ways.  But November was quite a crazy month of emotional roller coasters, which made focusing on preparing for Christmas season the last thing on my mind.  And with so much traveling and planning for work these past few weeks, the most I've done this season is put up a Christmas wreath on our apartment door, set up a nice nativity scene on our windowsill, and sometimes listen to Christmas music on Pandora all day.  Nathan and I thought it would be silly to get a real Christmas tree since we wouldn't be home for most of the month.  Things went by too fast for me to think about sending any Christmas cards or gifts for friends, family and co-workers, and I haven't even baked anything.

Thinking and lamenting over how I haven't done anything for Christmas has got me thinking of some ideas for next year.  For example, we don't have many Christmas decorations (though we did get some as wedding gifts from some pretty brilliant friends!), but I was thinking maybe there would be some after-Christmas sales that Nathan and I could catch (hopefully there will still be sales after Urbana!).  Also, I got this other idea (initially as a joke) for if I know Nathan and I will be traveling a lot during December for work and visiting  family next year, maybe we can get one of those little Charlie-Brown-Christmas type Christmas trees to keep when we're home and to bring with us when we're traveling.  Portable Christmas tree?  That'd be a quirky tradition :)

Anyway, sorry about the lack of spreading Christmas cheer from the Bixlers.  Hopefully we'll be in a better place to do so next year!

Sweet, sweet sabbaths.

I am so grateful to God for the gift of sabbath.  Especially in the midst of having this rain cloud hang over my head, taking sabbath is like running into a shelter for a moment of protection from the downpour.  It is by God's grace and mercy that I can rest despite the unrest I've often felt recently in my vocational world, my familial world, and my future.

It's also twice as wonderful to take sabbath with my new husband - three times as wonderful when you find a   beautiful way of taking sabbath together for two very different people.  Nathan came up with the brilliant idea of making a list of all the local coffee places and deciding to visit a different one during each sabbath.  It works really well for us.  Nathan gets to go explore a new area of town and gain a mini sense of adventure; I get the stability and consistency of visiting a coffee place (there's coffee and there's food).  Since Nathan is a high extrovert, he gets to be around the hustle and bustle of people coming in and out, having intriguing conversations or just being there; since I'm a pretty high introvert, although there are people everywhere, I thankfully don't have to talk or interact with them - I can just be in my own world of reading or writing or talking (when I feel like it) with my husband.  There's no rush to go somewhere or meet anyone, and we have the freedom to change plans on the spot.  And on top of it all, we get to learn a little bit more about our new neighborhood, enjoy some delightful treats, and spend quality time in each other's presence.  Even more so, since we tend to travel a lot, we can take our sabbath practices with us on the road...there's usually a coffee place of some kind in every town!

Have I mentioned how much I enjoy taking sabbath with my husband yet?

I've forgotten how to make friends.

There are not many things I expected or clearly wanted in a "potential husband."  I didn't create this customized soul mate for myself in my head because I knew "the one" didn't exist.  However, one of the few things I whole-heartedly (and still do) believed was that it was possible and it was okay to want my husband to be my best friend.  And friendships don't just pop out of nowhere - they need to grow and mature if you nourish them and let them go through trials.  That's how I concluded that if I were to enter a dating relationship (which, from my perspective, is for the purpose of working towards marriage), it would stem out of a solid and somewhat deep friendship I had with a brother in Christ.

And that's exactly what happened.  But I think Nathan and I did a pretty good job making it clear while we were dating that we weren't going to be each other's entire world.  We knew our significant other wasn't going to fill our emptiness, meet our every need, or make us never feel lonely again.  Other people are very important to me.  Friends and those in need were my top priority for most of my life, and a boy wasn't going to come in and mess that up. I've always needed and wanted different circles of friends, and because of this, I knew that that aspect of moving to Rochester was going to be difficult and that being married wouldn't be enough.

I don't have any friends here.  I'd like to make some.  The only problem is, I've practically forgotten how to make friends.  During my college years I was more often than not surrounded by people I knew, and even if there were new friends to be made, I made them together with my home base of friends there with me.  Nowadays I get shy or just don't open up as easily or quickly because it feels so new.  And I don't have a solid base of friends to retreat to when new relationships don't quite hit it off the way I'd hoped.

This old feeling has returned where I feel like I'm barely hanging on to my relationships from back home.  Ever since my college years I've always found it very difficult for me to develop my relationships with those who weren't within my immediately community.  It becomes a nasty tug-of-war within myself because it takes a lot of work to develop my immediate community around me, and it takes a lot of work to develop the community I grew up with, and finding a balance is like walking through some thick, pitch-dark woods without a flashlight or anything else to survive the night with.

I want my friends and family back home to know how important they are to me and how much I want to be there for them, but I know that I can't be there for them the same way I could if I was living near them.  Maybe it's been like this for a while or it's a long time coming, but the reality that I'm not going to be the first person anyone would call for help or advice has been sinking in.  No one's going to expect me to comfort them through this difficult time they're going through and ask me to pray for them right now.  I'm not going to be asked for my opinion about which color to paint their room or if they could borrow one of my dresses.  No one's going to say, "I'm so glad you picked up your phone because I really needed to talk to you."  I'm not going to be at the forefront of people's minds because the reality is that people are busy, I'm not in a dire situation (like a soldier or missionary serving overseas), and I'm not by myself.  I'm married now.

Well, I got what I asked for: my husband is my best friend.  It just never sunk in as to how, after gaining this best friend of a husband, moving to Rochester would be at the cost of so many other relationships.  The rubber has begun to meet the road where I'm working through the losses of stepping out of a community that has loved me, encouraged me, and supported me for many, many years. 

I've been thinking and blogging a lot lately about the concept of living a good story.  And as I wrestle within the tensions of moving to the fringe of one community and what it means to move deeper into another, it forces me to think about the God I serve - the God who calls us to develop and steward community as we go to the places God leads us.  The move to Rochester is a threshold I'm forced to make a decision about:  I can either constantly look back over my shoulder at what could've or should've been, or I can look forward to the opportunities I have before me to live a better story.  So I'm choosing to embrace the new stories and relationships God invites me to participate in and I'm looking forward to sharing these stories with those in both the community of my past and the community of my future.

Living a good story.

After months of traveling and craziness, Nathan and I are finally here in Rochester to stay.  I of course miss my NYC family and friends and I appreciate those who continue to send me off with joy and encouragement even though they miss me and know I'm far away.  Thanks for not forgetting me, friends.  But it's time to commit and be in one place for a while.

I've been noticing that one of the symptoms of my life changes/transitions is how I often suffer a bad case of FOMO (fear of missing out) when I think of my friends and family in NYC and what they're up to.  And the fact that I know practically no one - or at least, don't know people very well - in Rochester makes it tempting to doubt why I came here in the first place.

It also feels like I've been living in a lull.  Now, I hesitate to say that because it has such negative connotations and makes it seem like my life is boring or nonproductive.  So maybe “lull” is the wrong word.  Maybe it’s more like a pause button.  Kind of like the pause a comma is supposed to make when you read.  Except this pause feels like it has overstayed its welcome.  

Even though I've accumulated a mountain of new books over the past few months during my travels and actually haven't increased my reading pace at all because I haven't been reading all that much, I've recently decided to re-read Donald Miller's A Million Miles and a Thousand Years.  I wanted to read it for a bit of inspiration and to go back to the root of the theme of my wedding:  the desire to live out a good story.

As I was reading this past week, Miller said this:

“I’ve wondered, though, if one of the reasons we fail to acknowledge the brilliance of life is because we don’t want the responsibility inherent in the acknowledgement.  We don’t want to be characters because characters have to move and breathe and face conflict with courage.  And if life isn’t remarkable, then we don’t have to do any of that; we can be unwilling victims rather than grateful participants.”

It seemed to resonate with this feeling I've been having these past few weeks.  Maybe it's more like that feeling where you've been running or moving at full speed ahead with such power, force, and momentum that if you suddenly come to a complete halt, you get this really strange feeling that you should keep moving.  That's part of what it is.  But at the same time, I think it's more than that.  I think Miller's quote resonated with me because this pause has fed into my nervousness about this new chapter of life.  I don't have wedding plans or crazy travel schedules in the immediate future to hide behind as excuses for stress.  Now I just have to face the unknown head on, and there's this glitch of hesitancy.  I've already overcome conflict after conflict, and I've moved and moved and moved over this past year.  It's tempting and easy to sit back and become an unwilling victim.      

But Miller goes on to say that the essence of a good story is "a character who wants something and overcomes conflict to get it.”  And so, if I want to live out a good story with my life, I need to move and breathe and face conflict with courage.  I need to be a grateful participant who figures out what I want (in light of what God wants) and would be willing to overcome conflict to get it.  I can't just sit back, get through the day, and bide my time.  Life is precious and as Craig Groeschel said during the Willow Creek Global Leadership Summit, "If you're not dead, you're not done."

I have been saying "yes" to Jesus.  I am married and I am here because this is where He led me.  The windows and doors are open before me and my directions are already pretty clear.  The obstacles and conflicts are inevitable, but with the authority of Christ I can surely overcome them.

Let's do this.  Let's live a good story.