calm in the chaos 🌊

happy Thursday, friends! I started writing this post on Memorial Day and then got completely side-tracked with planning our Europe trip for this summer and forgot to finish it 😂 so picking it back up now and sharing a revelation I had last week -- I feel like my blog posts this month have been more of processing life lessons I'm learning week to week, and honestly, it's been really therapeutic! I hope you enjoy today's :)

if you've been reading my past few posts you may know that Justen (husband) and I are in a weird limbo season of life right now... we're waiting on my job offer to be legally official, we're waiting to plan a cross-country move, and we're waiting to figure out all the next steps that come with that – travel, packing, his job, and all the adult to-dos. I'm also a few weeks out from taking my certification exam – I finally have a date for the exam thankfully!! so a whole lot of life feels ~on hold~ right now.

and ya girl does not do well with that 😂

if we had to rank them, I feel like patience is not my top fruit of the Spirit. throw in some natural anxiety and my flesh's selfishness and you get a girl who wants this all resolved NOW.

and that's the posture / mindset I've been operating from for the past month or so. I kind of feel like I've wasted the past 6-ish weeks since I finished my semester in a weird mental state of anxiety and confusion and trying to figure out how to live my everyday life while so much of the near future is a complete question mark.

if you can't tell already, I tend towards black-and-white thinking – I've struggled with this for as long as I can remember and have to continually self-reflect and have others call me out in order to see that I'm slipping into extreme views. I logically know that I haven't completely wasted the past 6 weeks. we've traveled so much and spent quality time with friends and family across the country; we've celebrated big milestones in our lives and in the lives of others; and we've rested and hopefully grown character-wise as well.

the last bit is what I want to focus on today – growing in character. the stuff you usually don't see until later on after a hard season.

I was talking to Justen at the end of last week about my lack of patience and desire to have our move solidified so I could finally tell everyone where we're going and share about the job. I said that once we I signed my contract, I would feel so much better and more at peace.

and then it hit me.

the chaos CONTINUES.

not exactly the most peaceful revelation to have, right? nope 😂

but it's so true! once the job is legally official, yes, we can start planning our move and our North Carolina friend good-byes, but more chaos will come. there will be scheduling movers and packing and applying for apartments and buying and selling cars and traveling and onboarding for new jobs and moving into a new apartment and making new friends, and the list goes on and on.

the next year of life will probably be chaos. they say it takes at least a year to feel settled in a new place, and we aren't even there yet, lol.

I don't say all of this to be a downer but to shed light on the reality that life is crazy, and while some seasons are markedly crazier than others, life maintains a somewhat constant level of "crazy" on this side of heaven.

there are absolutely ways we can prepare for these upcoming transitions to promote spiritual, mental, and emotional wellbeing, but at some level we just have to accept that this next season of life is going to be a little wild and stressful at times.

I was on a walk processing all of this when I felt like I heard God tell me "be with me in the chaos" or "if the chaos continues, will you lean on me?"

I'm pretty sure I physically stopped in my tracks because it was such a woah moment. up until this point, I hadn't been leaning on God in the chaos at all. I had kept telling myself that once this or that got resolved, then I would get back to consistency with God because I truly believed that once X problem in my mind got resolved, then I would have peace.

and guess what? I got my contract today and the chaos does in fact continue!! I'm so glad that we're moving forward job-wise, but so many new anxieties have popped up.

and I don't want to wait around for fleeting peace when I have access to the literal Prince of Peace. do you?

I hope you know that in whatever you're going through, you are NOT alone!! life is messy and can feel chaotic more often than we would like to admit. I don't know about you, but I don't want to fight the current so much anymore – I'd rather hang onto the life raft of Jesus and ride the waves 🤍. even when it feels like I want to fight out one more tide on my own strength, I know better than that; another tide will come, and I need the life raft.

have you been in a similar season of life? what helped you keep calm in the chaos?

{photos in this post are from this past weekend at a friend's wedding! such a pretty sunset :) }

see you in next week's post!

much love,

emily