Lessons learned after a year of marriage

One year of marriage! 

One year ago last week, I said "I do" to my husband before God, our families, and many friends. In one year of marriage, I have certainly not learned all there is to know. But perhaps sharing some reflections on this past year may be helpful to others who are just starting out on this journey. 

I have seen my own self-centeredness in new ways; learned the love of God in new ways; and learned how my heart does not default into being a loving, Christ-honoring wife. Even when I am ostensibly serving my husband and my home, how often I have realized that really I am serving a false image of being the perfect homemaker! Oh readers, the action may look the same but the heart is very different. And the fruit is different too: when I am cleaning my kitchen and baking bread in order to be the ideal housewife rather than out of love for God and for my husband and a desire to be the servant of all, I am more likely to grow frustrated with my husband for making messes or feel insecure if dinner isn't ready on time.

If you are about to become a wife, you'll have to learn for yourself where your vulnerabilities are and how to depend on the Lord in them. But from one beginner wife to another, here is some advice I would give after one year of marriage.

• Let go of your idealized version of marriage as soon as possible. This may not be possible before marriage, because most likely you feel that you have no idea what marriage will be like, and your expectations are unconscious rather than acknowledged. But once you are married, work to identify where frustrations may be arising due to the gap between the marriage you have really got and the one you imagined you would have. For me, I realized that I had thought marriage would look like sitting in bed at 9:00 peacefully reading our books side by side. When my husband preferred to stay up till 10:30 working on programming problems in the living room, I felt unreasonably frustrated. He wasn't doing something wrong, but this didn't fit my pre-marriage fantasy. Readers, swapping out fantasy for reality is always a change for the better, because it is real.

• Lose the idea that communication is "unromantic," that there are some things that your husband should just "know." He loves you, but he is not inside of your brain, and it's not fair to expect him to be a mind reader.

• Learn to not keep score. Even if you feel your accounting is quite fair and accurate and therefore you have good reason to feel like your marriage is "unequal" (you put in more hours at work, or make more of an effort to keep in touch with extended family, etc.), the scoring is flawed from the outset, because marriage is not about equality! We are called to outdo one another in showing honor, not to show up only as much as our spouse does. What if God was like this? What if he kept track of how much we were doing "our part" and whether it was truly 50-50 in our relationship with Him, and promptly stopped contributing if the scales tipped too far in His direction? Thank the Lord that He does not treat us as we deserve! 

• Let your husband be his own person, but don't give up entering into his world. What do I mean by this? Sometimes I want to connect with my husband only on my terms — I want to mold him to fit into my image and enjoy my preferred activities, on my timeline and in my way. When I recognize that I'm becoming controlling, the easiest solution is to disconnect entirely: you do you and I'll do me. We can peacefully live separate lives in the same house. But the goal of marriage is not to be good roommates who have no conflict. Instead, enter the tension of compromise and self-sacrifice. It is better for my marriage when I don't try to make my husband's decisions for him — choosing his hobbies, schedule, etc. — but rather seek ways to join in with what he has decided or to make choices together.

• Relatedly, don't forget that all relationships need intentionality, even when — perhaps especially when — you live in the same house and share life together on a daily basis. Again, it is much easier to be roommates than teammates. Keep seeking ways to connect and prioritize time just to be together, because it won't happen by accident. 

• Recognize the difference between sharing marital challenges with other people in order to confess your own sin, and sharing marital challenges in order to complain about your husband (whether in seriousness or in jest). This can be tough, because women slip very easily into the latter, both intentionally and unintentionally, and it is so easy to just chime in with your own frustrations. But it is never worthwhile to tear down your spouse to other people.

I am thankful for our first year of marriage, the many sweet moments and the hard ones. I am still in awe of the Lord's plan in bringing us together. The best is yet to come, my dearest.

Guide to yogurt making: all the tips and tricks

I have been making homemade yogurt for five or six years. What began as a quirky hobby and means to save money has become so natural to me that I don't even think about the process, the advantages, or the unusualness of this activity anymore. It's really quite a simple and forgiving process, but there are many ways in which to damage (or think you've damaged) the finished product.

You see, because yogurt-making is a somewhat long but mostly hands-off process, the easiest thing that can go "wrong" is forgetting that you're making yogurt at all during one or another of the steps. Then comes the frantic Google search as you try to find out if you've ruined it all (spoiler: you probably haven't). In some cases I found ready answers, and in others I had to experiment and learn from the results.

So, with half a decade of experience in over-culturing, over-cooling, boiling, and forgetting my yogurt, I have decided to create the guide that I needed when I began my yogurt adventure (you know, be the change you want to see in the world and all that).

Guide to Yogurt Making: All the Tips and Tricks

The Supplies

You do not need a yogurt maker to make yogurt! Most likely you already have everything you need in your own home.

• A yogurt starter (more on this below)
• Milk
• A stove and pot to heat the milk
• A kitchen thermometer
• Glass jars with lids to hold the yogurt
• Some means to keep the yogurt at a consistent temperature for culturing. You can use a yogurt maker if you have one, but I've heard of using the pilot light in your oven, hot towels, a cooler filled with just-boiled water... You can get creative. My personal method is a heating pad on medium heat, inside a small cooler with a towel draped over the top. This works quite well for me, but I've also tried the boiling water and pilot light methods and had moderate (though less consistent) success with those as well. You may have to play around with it to find what works for you; make sure to test the temperature of your yogurt the first few times to get a feel for how it's working.

On Yogurt Starters

There are websites that sell so-called "heritage" yogurt cultures. They claim that commercial yogurt starters (i.e. the starter used for any yogurt that you'd buy in your grocery store) are not as viable as heritage cultures. The idea is that once you start a batch of yogurt, you can use a spoonful from that batch as the "starter" for the next batch, and thus have a self-perpetuating system so that you never have to buy yogurt again. According to these companies, commercial starters are not capable of indefinitely self-perpetuation and "wear out" after 3–4 batches.

In my early days of anxious yogurt production, I bought these heritage cultures multiple times and tried to build a lasting yogurt starter from them. Some people may be able to perpetuate their yogurt indefinitely from these heritage starters, but my experience was that after some number of batches (5, 8, 12, whatever), my yogurt stopped reliably producing more yogurt, and I'd have to buy more cultures and restart.

After spending more money than I should have trying to make the heritage cultures work, I tried the not-recommended method of using a spoonful of yogurt from the store (my rationale was, a quart of store yogurt costs about the same as a single heritage starter, but you can eat the rest of the container of yogurt, so if it doesn't work, at least you get something out of it). The result? I have still had to restart my yogurt cultures from time to time, but less frequently than with the heritage cultures! (In fact, sometimes I restart on purpose — when going out of town, for instance, it's easier to let the cultures die and just spend the few extra dollars buying a quart of yogurt when I get back, than trying to time my yogurt production exactly around travel).

Note that brand does make a difference; I have had more success with "nicer" brands like Nancy's than the cheapest store brand.

Lastly, make sure to make new yogurt every 5–7 days; yogurt is perfectly safe to eat after seven days, but after that the cultures may not be sufficiently active to produce more yogurt (though I've had success up to Day 9 or so).

The Process

Making yogurt is really quite a simple, forgiving process, but there are some key steps:

1. Heat milk on the lowest heat till it reaches 180ºF. (Estimate several hours for the heating/cooling process!)
2. Remove milk from stove and cool to 105–110ºF. 
3. Put your yogurt starter in your glass jar (~1 Tbl yogurt per quart of milk), pour in a little of the cooled milk, and whisk. Once smooth, pour the yogurt-milk mixture back into the pot and whisk gently.
4. Pour milk mixture into jar (s) and culture at a steady temperature of ~105ºF for 3–24 hours.
5. Remove yogurt from culturing environment and chill.

That's the simple part — but what happens if something goes wrong at one of these steps? Is your yogurt a lost cause? That's what the section below is all about (organized in chronological order for steps 1–5).

What can go wrong

What if I forget my milk on the stove and the temperature goes above 180º?

Your milk is still usable! Just remove from heat and proceed to step 2. (I actually think yogurt sometimes turns out a bit thicker this way, though I still try to avoid heating beyond 180º, because higher temperatures destroy more of the milk proteins.)

What if the milk is taking forever to heat and it reaches 167º and doesn't want to go higher?

Be patient! You can turn the heat up a little, but not much. There is something special about 180º; if you stop before you reach that temperature, your yogurt will not be as successful.

What if I forget my milk while it's cooling and it drops below 105º?

Your milk is still useable! Return to stove and heat on the lowest heat until it reaches 105-110º and then proceed to step 3.

What if took too long to heat/cool the milk and now I have to leave my house while it's still cooling down?

If the temperature has made it to 180º but you don't have time to wait for it to cool to 105º, put a lid on the pot so it will cool more slowly. If you're not away too long, it might not have dropped below 105º when you return, and you can just proceed to step 3. If it drops below 105º, just return to stove and reheat to 105º. I've even had good results putting the heated milk in the refrigerator overnight and reheating to 105-110º the next day and making yogurt at that point.

What if I forget I had yogurt culturing and it stays in its culturing environment for hours longer than planned?

Note there is a wide range for culturing times (3–24 hours), so if it goes a little longer than planned, don't sweat it. The longer yogurt cultures, the more sour it will taste (because the yogurt cultures are eating the sugars in the milk), but it's still edible and viable. The sweet spot for me is 5 hours, but I have no problem pulling it out after 4 or leaving it for 8 if that's what works best for my schedule. Make it work for you and don't stress it.

What if I test the temperature during/after culturing and it's fallen below 105 or gone above 110?

Figuring out how to culture yogurt in your environment may require some experimentation, but you'll likely figure it out after a few batches (for example, I found that I could make significant changes to the temperature by adjusting my heating pad between the low, medium, or hot settings, or adjusting how many towels I put on top). See below for the various effects on yogurt texture from culturing too cool or too hot.

What if my yogurt looks kind of thin and wobbly when I pull it out of the culturing environment?

Put it in the fridge before you despair — the chilling time really does help firm up the texture.

What if my yogurt turns out thin and runny?

There are various reasons why yogurt can have a thinner texture than expected. This is more common with raw milk, for example (see below). The temperatures really do matter — stopping the milk before it reaches 180º will result in thinner yogurt, and a culturing environment that falls below 100º will also result in thin, runny yogurt.

If you've followed all the steps correctly and it's still thinner than you'd like, you can strain it: line a strainer with a clean tea towel and place over a bowl. Pour the yogurt into the strainer and place in the fridge for 1–5 hours, until the desired amount of whey has dripped out of the yogurt (leaving you with thicker, "Greek" yogurt in the strainer). You can then toss the whey or use it in a variety of ways (protein in smoothies, hair wash, add to dried beans when soaking, etc.).

What if my yogurt's texture is grainy, lumpy, or otherwise inconsistent?

Heating your milk too fast in step 1 or culturing your yogurt too hot in step 4 is the most likely culprit for grainy texture or separation. 

Of course, some inconsistency in texture is normal (especially if you use milk that's not homogenized — expect to have a "cream" layer of yogurt at the top). After the yogurt has chilled and before eating, you'll want to stir it.

What if my yogurt totally fails to culture and all I have is warm, weird-smelling milk?

Let it go and try again. You'll get this.

Miscellaneous Tips

How long does homemade yogurt last?

Quite a while for eating purposes (I've kept it for a month, though that's probably not recommended). After about a week, yogurt cultures are no longer sufficiently viable to make more yogurt, though.

What kind of cultures do you need to make Greek yogurt?

This is a trick question! There are no cultures specific to Greek yogurt — Greek style just means that the yogurt has bee strained. See the question above about fixing thin yogurt to learn how to go about this.

How do you make your yogurt more or less sour?

The sourness of your yogurt is mainly dependent on how long it's cultured. The longer you culture = the more sour the yogurt. Fiddle around with it to figure out how you like it.

Can you make yogurt from raw milk?

Yes, this is what I always do! However, heating it to 180º means that it's technically not raw anymore; you've essentially home-pasteurized the milk. Early on in my yogurt days I attempted recipes that only heat the milk to very low temperatures, thus keeping it raw. The issue is that the healthy bacteria present in raw milk are then competing with the yogurt bacteria. The result is that the yogurt never gets very thick (it's more like kefir at this point). Since I eat yogurt for the benefit of the fermented cultures anyway (not the raw milk bacteria), I've made peace with the slow, low pasteurization process that allows those bacteria to take over the milk and produce a thicker yogurt (though commercially-pasteurized milk probably still makes an even thicker yogurt). And, by heating the milk very slowly and capping it at 180º, you can still maintain the integrity of the milk proteins, which are destroyed by ultra-high temperature (UHT) pasteurization, the method used to treat most commercially-sold milks.

That's it for this guide to yogurt making! I hope my experiences are helpful to someone else trying to get started in this world. 

Happy spring,

On justice

How is it that "justice" is such a popular buzzword in our culture, and yet our concept of it is so meager? That there is much more truth than we'd like to admit in the phrase "justice for you and mercy for me"? And really, that phrase doesn't even fully capture our hackneyed, distorted idea of what is just and good. We have our consciences for a reason — God has put his law on our hearts — and yet we are in desperate need of having our minds and hearts renewed to truly distinguish between good and evil (there is a dividing line between the two, despite the recent trend towards portraying the world in gray instead of black and white).

What has prompted these thoughts? I just watched Where the Crawdad Sings. There are many reasons why I would not recommend this movie/book (I did not read the latter but have heard the movie was a very accurate rendition), but the most important and, to my mind, most neglected is the moral worldview it presents. I am deeply troubled by how many people love this story (it has a 4.4 star rating on Goodreads), including many Christians, because it testifies to the level of moral depravity of our society.

Spoilers ahead, FYI. 

In this story, a girl with an extremely traumatic past has two extramarital intimate relationships (sequentially, not at the same time), and experiences great heartache because of these. The second turns out to be particularly nasty, as the man is concurrently engaged/married to someone else and quite abusive as well. To solve this situation, she murders him. She then goes on trial for murder and her lawyer manages to convince everyone that not only is she innocent, that they should feel bad for even suspecting her because of their prejudice against her. And she goes along her merry way, reuniting with Boy #1 and living with him until her death.

Now, let's be clear: she did have extremely traumatic things happen to her. Her family gave her no solid foundation. Boy #2 was horrible. And the townspeople were prejudiced and mean to her. But while these make her choices understandable, it does not make them okay. A lot of the heartache she experiences in these two relationships could have been avoided if she had made different choices. 

Somehow it seems unpopular to acknowledge this — because of the things that happened to this girl, pointing out her own sin issues is considered insensitive or even completely false. I know lots of people would defend her actions by focusing on the hard things she experienced: she was just taking care of herself, she had to do it, she's been victimized her whole life and now at last she's standing up for herself... But as a perceptive online commenter said, "It's not girl power if it's premeditated murder." 

Still other people will try to take the tack that the girl herself does: nature doesn't have right/wrong, good/evil. It just does what it has to do in order to survive. Morals are just a societal convention. Marriage isn't necessary if you love each other. Killing another person is okay if you felt you needed to do it to take care of yourself. The mild version of this philosophy — where "good" people justify their not-so-good choices, because they are "good" people overall — is not unfamiliar in movies. What made this movie so shocking was that it actually took this belief system to the extreme of justifying and condoning cold-blooded, premeditated murder. And more disturbing still, the majority of people reviewing this story seem to have accepted that justification.

However, no one thinks the infidelity and assault of the two men in the book is "okay," even though these things happen in nature. How far are we really going to take this logical train? Living life by no other compass than following our own desires and urges is a destructive path. "They promise them freedom, while they themselves are slaves of depravity — for a man is a slave to whatever has mastered him." (2 Peter 2:19) I need to have my desires and urges restrained and redeemed — that is freedom.

If I got anything positive out of this movie, it was a reminder that God's path for our lives and his justice really are perfect. Submitting to his pattern for our lives bears good fruit, while rejecting his good plan will sooner or later lead to our own destruction. And that our sin has consequences is also good. The ending where the murderer gets off scot free is not a good ending. I didn't want the girl to get the death penalty, but neither could I rejoice that she was declared innocent. If we reap the fruit that we ourselves have sown, that is the just and right reward. If I I'm tempted to see God's justice as unjust, it's my vision that's the problem, not him.

In other words, I need Jesus's death for my guilt because I fully deserve my condemnation. It is just. But praise be to God! He does not treat us as our sins deserve (Psalm 103). He has paid the price in full. And as I trust in him more and more, he continues to redeem and renew my will and my conscience, so that I can see that his will is good, pleasing, and perfect (Romans 12:2), and life according to his plan is the life I want to live.

His commands are not burdensome, for everyone born of God overcomes the world. (I John 5:3–4).

...

I will run in the path of your commands, for you have set my heart free. (Psalm 119:32)

2023: Year In Review

 What-ho, readers!

It's been a while since I wrote a New Years post (or let's face it, any post), but 2023 was a year full of happenings and "firsts" for me, and I wish to preserve a record of it. There were highs and lows but mostly such a sense of awe at God's provision and his perfect plan, which is so much better than I can ask for or imagine.

So tally-ho and away we go!

January

My study buddy

The events of January were largely shaped by the previous December. On December 20, I got engaged! My sweetheart proposed on a very, very cold Tuesday by the small lake on our town's college campus. (It was a surprise but I knew it was coming—how many "complete surprise" engagements are there, really?) We celebrated our engagement and Christmas with family and friends, then jumped into wedding planning in January. As our engagement season coincided with the final semester of my master's degree (in history!), this month thus inaugurated a very busy but very exciting season. I'm honestly still not sure how it all got done, frankly!

Planning a wedding was bizarre. For so much of my life, I attended other people's weddings, and wondered, as girls do, what mine would be like and what the colors would be and what dress I would wear, etc. etc. And then even once it became clear that we would soon be getting engaged, getting married still seemed like a far off and even perhaps impossible event. Once we were engaged — and I was the person trying on dresses, and we were the people calling churches in search of availability for our chosen date, and every weekend seemed to hold some new wedding related activity — it was all rather surreal at times. (I mean, even now when I look back at wedding pictures and have visual proof that we were the bride and groom — not to mention the physical evidence in the form of my husband sitting next to me on the couch as I type this ;) — it feels not quite real.)

February

Wedding planning continued into February as schoolwork ramped up. I spent many hours in the library basement scanning through newspapers on microfilm as part of my research on the 1931 Citroën Trans-Asiatic Expedition. Though this topic kind of ended up in my lap (as in, I asked my advisor, "What should topic should I pick for my spring research paper?" and he told me), the deeper I went, the more interesting I found it. I certainly experienced "senioritus"; it was hard to feel that my university studies were all that consequential when graduation, marriage, and a break with academia were only a few months away. I particularly felt unmotivated to do my non-research classwork (i.e. to read two books per week and write miscellaneous papers). But for all that, I enjoyed my research.

Sometimes you find funny things in old newspapers.

March

March was a traveling month. It started off with a trip to my then–fiancé's hometown for an engagement party. That was a sweet trip — our first time getting to hang out with his immediate family since our engagement. They all joyfully put so much effort into making the party fun and special. It was a testament, if I needed it, to how amazing my in-laws are, and how blessed I am to officially be part of their family now. 

We rapidly returned home, and then I dashed off again to Detroit (pictured!) for my first serious academic conference. I say "serious" because I have attended a few other academic conferences, but they were more tailored to students rather than scholars, whereas this was most definitely aimed at specialists in French history. I had mixed feelings about this conference. I was glad to have the chance to go; I like French history and attending the conference gave me the confidence, for the first time in four years, to unapologetically identify myself as a French historian. I enjoyed presenting my work and getting to discuss it with others outside of my university circle. On the other hand, I also experienced a weariness with the topics that are "hot" in academia and with the carefully constructed language that humanists employ. That's a bit vague if you're not a scholar in the humanities; I guess I just felt that certain topics and even phrases are so in vogue in history that I could guess what people were going to say before they said it. The research angles that used to be clever and provocative are now rather canned. I felt that it is time to challenge postcolonial interpretations instead of claiming your research is new because you're copying and pasting the same old thing into a new place. And, eventually, that is what I realized my paper on Citroën's Trans-Asiatic Expedition was going to do (the former, not the latter).

April

An early spring morning (or maybe a twilight evening?) on campus

April was the month where everything was due. Presentations had to be given and final drafts had to be submitted. I was also spending hours making phone calls about silverware rental and messaging random people on Facebook Marketplace about tablecloths. Apparently I wrote a blog post, too.

I have only spotty memories of April. I know I sent those messages because we had tablecloths at our wedding and I know I wrote my paper because I graduated, but I do not remember doing so. I remember feeling surprised that there were already flowers on campus and then being surprised that the early spring flowers were already gone. I do remember many early mornings sitting in the sunny spot in the library before anyone else had gotten there, drinking coffee and reviewing my many wedding spreadsheets.

May

May inaugurated the season of parties, starting with... Graduation! What a strange feeling to be on campus the last day of finals, in a completely empty library.

Pictured: A spot you usually have to fight over

I did my master's immediately after my undergraduate, which meant that I spent six consecutive years at my university. It was exciting and also bizarre to realize I wouldn't be coming back the next semester — that I might never be in contact with some people in my department again, after years of running into them in hallways and seeing their names on emails. It was also amazingly freeing — six years is quite enough to spend at one institution, if you ask me. :P I was ready to move on.

Plus, I didn't have all that much time to indulge in graduation reflections, because the weekend after graduation, we traveled out of town to attend a wedding, and the following week 1) my mother-in-law to-be visited, 2) I turned 24, 3) my mom and sisters hosted a bridal shower for me, and 4) my fiancé traveled out of town (I made four trips to the airport within seven days).

The English tea theme gave me an excuse to wear my enormous garden party hat.

The shower was a beautiful, English-tea-themed celebration. As I once wanted to have a high tea as a wedding reception, it was kind of fulfilling in a way to have a tea-shower. And the care my mom and sisters lavished on the details (scones! fresh flowers! Jane Austen soundtracks in the background!) felt so special.

June

The last weeks before the wedding went rapidly. We traveled out of town again to attend another wedding, I packed up all my belongings to move from my childhood home, and the final preparations were made. The last week was rather emotional. I had spent six months longing for the wedding to arrive, counting down the days until I would be Mrs.— and at last start our days of marital bliss (:P). I had prayed, too, that God would help me to make the most of the engagement season — to recognize and appreciate the things that I had in that season that I wouldn't have once I was married. And yet, still, I had a feeling that I had failed to appreciate fully the time I had living at home, going downstairs to chat with my mother and have long dinners with my father. I had spent so much time with my fiancé, and yet had lamented more over not getting to see him more rather than lamenting the dwindling days left to live with my family. All of a sudden it seemed very short and my parents very precious and my marriage very exciting and yet unavoidably sad, too.

I guess this is how weddings are. And the day did arrive, ready or not. It is hard to express just how sweet that day was. How blessed we felt. How overwhelmed with the love of so many friends and family who shared our joy and traveled from afar and helped set up and ironed tablecloths and brought food and coffee and prayed and cried and were in our wedding party and shared their talents and reflected the love of God in their actions. So since it is hard to put this into words, I will share some pictures instead, and maybe you will get a glimpse of how lovely a day it was. :)

July

After a few days in the mountains, my now-husband and I returned to our [new to me] home. We spent about two weeks there before it was time to pack up again... for Europe! We spent two months on the Franco-Swiss border for my husband's work. It was terrible to have to leave so soon after our wedding and head to a foreign country.

C'est une blague! (That's "it's a joke" to the non-francophones). My husband and I have both spent time in France for work/school before we knew each other, and ever since we started dating we dreamed of going back together. Though it was quite a squeeze to leave so soon after our wedding (in those two weeks I also caught up with multiple friends, prepared our house for short-term renters, and unexpectedly applied for a job), it was such a very special and memorable way to start off our marriage.

Before settling into the small French town where my husband had work, we got to honeymoon for about ten days in Switzerland and Austria. It was my first time in the Alps! That has been on my "next trip" list since my last time in France. We had a blast visiting many places, trying to understand Swiss German, taking long hikes, drinking much espresso, and experiencing so many new things together.

August

August started out with more travel. After spending a few weeks at our temporary French apartment, I took a quick trip on my own to Vienna to visit a friend I hadn't seen in several years. It was a sweet time and really delightful to get to catch up.

Apart from going to Vienna and a few weekend trips, August was fairly quiet. It was quite a change of pace from the busyness of the spring. I had a little work (remote/freelance translation and editing), but also had time to read, try French recipes, make near-daily trips to the bakery, and pray. Our evenings were generally open, which left us to take walks, hang out, and go to occasional swing dances. It was extremely hot (Europe doesn't do AC — they like to suffer), but I made lots of iced lattés during my long afternoons in the apartment, and that helped.

A weekend trip to Annecy, where the lake offered relief from the extreme August heat.

We also were able to get to know a Russian couple at the church we attended, which was nice. All in all, it felt like a restorative, restful time, and I felt so fortunate to be back in a country that will always be near to my heart, and to get to start our marriage there.

At the end of August, I got word that I'd been offered the job to which I'd applied before leaving the States. To my great surprise, my university had an opening for a lecturer to teach European history (my specialization) and had encouraged me to apply. I got the job! It really felt like such a gift from the Lord — the opportunity had come to me without me doing anything. I couldn't have predicted it. I didn't deserve it. But all of the sudden I had the chance to teach my favorite subject at my alma mater. So all that stuff about leaving my department forever? Guess not!

September

In September, we packed up again to return home to the US. On our way back, we made a quick stop to visit Paris, my host family, and the city in Western France where I'd lived in 2021. I really enjoyed those couple of days — I got to meet coworkers in Paris whom I've only ever messaged online when we work together, got to show my husband places I'd spent so much time in, and got to remind myself that spring 2021 really did happen and I did live in France, even if it now feels like a dream. It was sweet to reconnect to my host family, too, and all in all was a reminder of how French and France will always be part of me, even if I never go back (though I think I will).

Bonjour, Paris!

Then we had reunions with friends and family back home, and what felt like the "real" start to our marriage: building a life together here in Kansas. 

October

October was the month of settling in to being a housewife. Truth be told, this was a harder transition than I expected. I wasn't unhappy; it's just that going from having a full and busy schedule to virtually no structure was quite the switch, plus I was still in the transition-from-single-to-married stage. My freelance work was also slower than I'd expected, and I discovered that interacting with clients is not my favorite part of my job.

Two more "firsts" at the end of the month: I had an academic article accepted for publication, and I made my first loaf of sourdough!

The article was a two-year+ process, and till the last I had no certainty it would be accepted. One more example of how I cannot predict how God will work in my life! Publishing the article — based on research I did in France — feels like a nice culmination of my academic endeavors.

I have wanted to try sourdough for many years, but it always felt like a project for the next Christmas/summer break (that would then be pushed to the next one). I was nervous. It sounded worthwhile, but hard. Then I learned that half the women at my church make sourdough. Okay, that's a big exaggeration, especially as 2/3 of the women are college students and probably not in the sourdough club, but suffice it to say, enough women do it that I felt the confidence to try. I got a starter from one of them, fed it a few times, and baked a loaf! It wasn't so hard after all!

I've now made many successful loaves of bread, plus cinnamon rolls (my favorite), crackers, bagels (a husband favorite), rolls, brioche (needs improvement), brownies, cookies, naan... basically, if it looks like it could be made of dough — or even if it doesn't — I've put sourdough in it. My husband got quite tired of the word "sourdough." (maybe you are too, by now). But he liked the bagels.

November

November brought a mind-numbing proofreading project (800+ pages!), lots of prep for my European history class (writing lectures!), and our first holiday as a married couple. My family ended up celebrating Thanksgiving on Sunday, which meant my husband and I had three days to be at home together: taking walks, drinking coffee (I'm suddenly realizing this is a theme of the post), enjoying time with our cat, and resting. I know if/when we have kids these days together won't be so peaceful... but can we celebrate on Sunday every year??

Mirab moved from my parents' house to our home in October.

I also reflected on the responsibility of homeownership in November. I realized that pre-marriage I didn't expect homeownership to feel like a responsibility. I already did much cooking and cleaning at home, and I just expected it would be doing the same things, but in a different house. However, owning a home does feel different. There are lots of things that can "go wrong" in a house — leaks and rot and termites and fire risks and electrical outages and mildew and who knows what else. There are the fun updates — like painting — and then there are the updates that sound fun but also like so much work and so many $$$ — like redoing a bathroom — and then there are the updates that no one hopes will come their way — like having to deal with insect removal or replacing a roof or repairing water damage. 

Fortunately, we have not had to deal with any of these things yet (except the painting, and I volunteered for that one). But we have various uncertain signs that could indicate some of these scenarios, and I didn't realize how the stress of that would weigh upon me.

But I also didn't realize how I would have a partner to share in the burdens of home-keeping and life decisions and cat-feeding and dish-washing and all of it. That is, I didn't realize how much of a blessing it would be to share these things with my husband and how he would support me through them and carry the burdens with me. I am so thankful for him. 

Lastly, I didn't realize that homeownership — more specifically, the fun part of homeownership, i.e. home design — could cause ugly reactions in my sin nature. I have really enjoyed hanging pictures, organizing the kitchen, unpacking our books, and generally making our house into our home. But I have realized that for me specifically, it is a slippery slope in my heart to go from home design — motivated by a desire to make our home a beautiful and comfortable place for ourself and guests — to covetousness, impatience, and discontent. The actions may look the same! (Scanning FB Marketplace, checking sales on picture frames, looking at Pinterest ideas, etc.) But in my heart I know the difference when I switch from one place to the other, and I have had to take time away from home design when I realize that my attitude is changing towards it.

December

December is the Christmas season... I guess? It didn't feel very "Christmasy" this year (whatever that means). I did an Advent reading plan, which I enjoyed but didn't start till the middle of the month and didn't end up finishing. I don't like the description of life as "busy" (especially when I know I am so much less scattered than the previous spring), but my life is/was FULL, between freelancing, bread baking, housecleaning, and etc.

I struggled to explain this to other people — struggled to answer the question of what I'm "doing" now that I've graduated college. The thing is, I love it. I love the rhythm of making my husband's lunch and baking bread and doing editing work with a cup of tea in the afternoon and then making dinner so it's ready when he comes home. I feel so amazed and in awe that this is my life. Why am I so blessed? I do not deserve it. I don't deserve my husband. I don't deserve my church. I don't deserve any of these unexpected, sweet blessings, but I have them.

Despite all that, I struggle to tell people I'm a housewife doing part time freelance work, because... I think they'll think I'm lazy? Or patriarchalist? (I do have unashamedly complimentarian beliefs, but that's different) Or something? I'm not sure why. I'm working on that, because I think I am failing to give the honest and simple answer and withholding myself from people by doing so.

Christmas brought my first ski trip (!) and first Christmas without my family. I love my in-laws, but I had some sadness, nonetheless, and not a little stress over trying to make it down the bunny hill. However, skiing did get better, and the trip was so restful and a really nice time with my husband's parents.

As mentioned at the beginning of the post, there was also some grief in 2023. I experienced an ongoing separation from a really dear friend, and witnessed from afar as she walked away from the Lord. More heartbreaking revelations about her life and choices came in December, and I spent so many hours in tears.  Again, I am so thankful for my husband, who was present with me as I processed these griefs. More, I felt the presence of God and of his heart. When love for people causes us great grief, we experience his grief, and his love for us and desire for our good is so much greater than we can understand. Though I long for redemption in this friend's life, and for our friendship to be restored, I am comforted knowing that the Lord loves them no less and grieves for them more. He is sovereign, good, and trustworthy.

I don't know yet what 2024 will hold. This week, I will start teaching European history to undergrads, continue baking bread, and watch a football game with my church family. Beyond that — it is the Lord's purpose that prevails. And if 2023 taught me anything, it's that his purposes are better than mine anyway.

Bonne année 2024, readers.