You get what you give.

I love it here, even as we’re being broken and mended again.

There’s great opportunity for growth, and my marriage is being stretched and sewn back together in little ways everyday as we learn to work side by side and take on a house full of boys – an experience neither of us are experts at for sure. I have been struggling with my loss of control here. I didn’t realize how I had made my life before this, all about my control. Controlling my time and my social life, controlling my bills, controlling my stress and my diet, and here nothing is really in my control.

Here, I’m faced with reality everyday. The reality is that my husband is snowmobiling in the mountains alone right now and might not come home. I pray for his protection, but it’s out of my control. The reality is that my skills as a mother and a wife are subpar because I haven’t honed them over many many years, and now as they are tried and tested each day I find myself frustrated with my own imperfections- and these are my unworthy, humbling gift to the Lord.

I can’t control my diet the way I had been and I can’t control my stress, because everything here is moving all the time and everyday something new comes up that needs to be addressed. This backs me into a corner of fear of never conceiving a baby, because I’ve been under the illusion that if I could control everything and make it all perfect, my body would have no choice but to respond and do what I beg it to. It wasn’t true before, but I am forced to face that reality here, and it has been a daily battle to give myself to God.

I love the mountains, the sunrise and sunset, the warm breezes called “Chinooks” that come sweeping in from the canyon, the sound of cattle calling for their young and the hooves of playful horses right outside my door.
I love the community, the daily prayer, sitting down for dinner at a massive ping-pong table full of hungry boys who are constantly joking and shoving and growing.

I love the feeling of being utterly exhausted at the end of the day, retreating with my best friend to our little home, and swapping story after story from our different points of view as we become a part of this family.

I love being called “Miss Annamarie” and “The Lady of the House”, as I am the only woman here. I am treated with utmost respect, modeled for the young men by my husband and the other holy men we work with.
I love seeing my hard-won cooking skills pay off with smiles and compliments and gratitude.
I could go on and on, and I will as able, but know that here is a place where you get out of it what you put in.

I have experienced this as I put in compassion and receive it tenfold- like the day when I shared the story of our sweet baby Jackson and the night he was born, how Mary saved my life and brought our son to Jesus. They responded with tenderness hard to find in many teenage boys.

I offer discipline and receive respect.
I offer grace and receive gratitude.
I offer experience and receive learning hearts.
I offer modesty and receive purity.
I offer my love and receive theirs in return.
I offer my prayers and am met with God’s graces to live each day.

Not to say that each day is a dream- certainly I’m met with resistance to rules and boundaries pushed, grumbling and groaning and forgotten chores, dirty language and downright insults to each other- but these too shape us all as we learn who we want to become, and what is acceptable and pleasing to the Lord.

I’m slowly finding my footing, finding the confidence to lay down roots, finding the courage to step out with my faith- not just with my feet.

You get what you give.

JMJ

Anna 💖

Pictured above: a shot of the sunset peeking out of the clouds as we drove up into the mountains for some sightseeing this week.