Thankful & Blessed.

As November suddenly draws to a close, 

I cannot help but to think of how many ways I am thankful and blessed.

I am blessed that six months from today I will be marrying my love, 

my friend, and my biggest encourager. 

Credit to Nick Benson Photography

There is no denying that these past near four years have been incredibly difficult. Just thinking through all the distance, all the goodbyes, all the rough patches, misunderstandings, terribly lonely days and nights makes my heart hurt. Date nights will ceaselessly be my favorite. I cannot wait for a time when they are not through a computer screen or phone. His voice for two hours and ten minutes is better than nearly anything. Seeing his nose crinkle is my favorite picture, even if it is on a screen. 

I cannot believe how quickly these near four years have been and how slow they’ve dragged on at the same time. I am amazed at the memory of opening a large cardboard box on my eighteenth birthday with a dozen ring pops inside. Not even six months in and we knew. We knew our countdown had started. We knew to just wait three years. And so we counted down. Our months together and apart have been filled with countdowns and airports. Exactly six months from now, this chapter will close and we will be on to the next as husband and wife. I will live with him and wake up the very first permanent morning and know that we did it. We won. That this time it's for real. For more than a couple of weeks. For more than a few days or a long weekend. 

I cannot even begin to imagine what that will look like, what our life will change and spin into. But my goodness, I can sure daydream. I cannot believe that our life together, our next chapter, is only a blink away.

I am thankful for experiencing daily life with twenty-four little stories. 

I am so sad realizing that I will have to say goodbye to my students soon. I am fearful. What did they learn from me? What did I teach them? I mean really teach them. Not just content, but did I impact their lives? Will they remember me? It is so bittersweet to be leaving a piece of my heart in room 214. It is so exciting to know how much they taught me, to know how everything I learned and experienced in that room has shaped me into the teacher that I am now. The thought of them and their little hearts and brains excites me for my someday-classroom. Where, yes, I will still have to leave them. But it will be different. It's so painful and joyful to know that you've invested so much temporary raw emotion and energy and experience into a room full of exhausting, loving, amazing kiddos. 

And in the end, I'm sure grateful that they have taught me more than I ever expected. 

They taught me patience and cautiousness, security and boldness, timidity when necessary and how to be a friend. They taught me that not every student that comes into my classroom will be blessed the same way I have been growing up and that with each step into my classroom, their little faces will carry countless stories, backgrounds, memories, emotions and lives. 

And that it is my job, to take everything they bring to me, everything they come to be knowing and being and to teach them. However that looks for each of their little unique faces and hearts and minds. 

I am thankful for home. 

Every time I think I have this concept, this idea of home figured out I'm thrown for a loop. I wish I could explain everything going on in my heart and in my head over this. Regardless of the confusion, I am thankful for family, for chasing little feet around the house. For the way that dog radiates heat under the covers in the morning or knowing which boards creak outside my bedroom door. I am thankful for the physical roof over my head and all the lessons learnt inside of it with the family of people stampeding in and out of it; biological or otherwise. 

“You get a strange feeling when you’re about to leave a place. Like you’ll not only miss the people you love but you’ll miss the person you are now at this time and this place, because you’ll never be this way ever again.”— Azar Nafisi

Despite how I'm feeling, despite reminiscing in the past or wanting to hurry towards the future, I am truly and deeply thankful and blessed this holiday season and on.