Oh, What a Year!

Friends! I have truly missed writing to you all, or really writing mostly to myself, with each month’s newsletter to reflect on the happenings and learnings in my days. I’m grateful these are returning and hopefully better and with information more easily accessible to you for your middle of the night reading pleasure!

As we start to wrap up 2023, I look back and am grateful for the true gift it was. Full of ups and downs – absolutely. What good adventure story is not?! Yet, it was MOST full of the time between the ups and downs and it is for those times that I am grateful.

I read this morning,

“Life is amazing.

And then it’s awful.

And then it’s amazing again.

And in between the amazing and the awful

it’s ordinary and mundane and routine.

Breathe in the amazing,

hold on through the awful,

and relax and exhale during the ordinary.

That’s just living heartbreaking, soul-healing,

amazing, awful, ordinary life.

And it’s breathtakingly beautiful.”

-L.R. Knost

The high of my year? Asking my most favorite person on the planet to do the rest of our days together. I said, “Forever?” She said, “Are you asking?” And normally when I would say “no,” I got to say “yes!” She said, “Are you sure?” I was sure. It was perfect. It was amazing.

It was on a Tuesday because Tuesdays are our favorite day of the week. We even named one of our cats after it. You see, Tuesdays represent the ordinary, mundane, and routine. Who looks forward to Tuesdays? I can’t imagine many people besides us. There’s a song by Jake Scott where he sings about how love isn’t just about the best days, or the worst days, Love is the Tuesdays. It’s so true. Fitting even that I’m writing this on a Tuesday. A Tuesday filled with work, dermatologist appointments, and choir concerts. The mundane. The ordinary. The routine. Yet, remembering to exhale today and appreciate the candle burning next to me. The warm blanket. The dog on my lap. The roof over my head.

The same can be true in real estate. There can certainly be highs and lows. When you submit an offer (amazing). The day you find out you didn’t get the house (awful). The day you find out you’re under contract (amazing). Closing day (amazing). Inspection day (amazing OR awful), but MOSTLY the buying and selling process is made up of the 30-60 days between contract to closing and is filled with the mundane, the ordinary, the routine. The dreaded loan docs. The title work. The packing. The waiting. The packing some more. The waiting some more. Remembering to appreciate this middle time is equally crucial. There’s beauty in wrapping up one chapter and starting another and a lot of that beauty can be found in the middle. On the Tuesdays.

As we enter the holidays, it’s easy to get sidetracked and let the ups and downs define our days. However, I think it’s what we do and how we love on the Tuesdays that define us. If you’re not in the middle of an amazing (breath it in) or an awful (hold on tight), I hope you find rest in your routines today, tomorrow, and through this holiday season. May you come to cherish the Tuesdays of life.

Happy New Year, my friends! I cannot wait to connect with each of you in 2024.