Iowa…you make me smile.

We spent a considerable amount of time in Iowa this Summer. I’m quite certain that it is the most consecutive days I have spent in Iowa since my time living there…which I have affectionately termed

The Cold War.

A. It was cold.

B. I was at war. Internally. During that short phase of life…I had one too many major, life transitions happening to remain sane.

Examples: Getting married. Moving across the country. Meeting my new family. Graduating from Graduate school. Getting pregnant. Planting a church. Making all new friends. Having a baby who became very ill during the first week of life.

Not any one of these things…maybe even two or three of these things is too much to handle.

But you put them all together…

WHAMO.

Instant crazy person.

The cold war was not my finest year and a half.

And I’d like to take this time to make a public apology to my mother and father in law…who probably took the brunt of my coo-coo for cocoa puffs attitude during this time.

I didn’t like Iowa. I wanted to go home…(wherever home was now that I was married.) The only real home I had known was with my family in Texas. Clemson was a fun filled couple of years in Grad school…but it wasn’t home.

And that’s the kind of thing that TV shows and movies and Nicolas Sparks books don’t talk about when they romanticize falling in love and getting married. They don’t tell you that all of a sudden…you’re home isn’t your home anymore. And that was super hard for me.

BUT!!!! The good news is…I really like Iowa now! And it turns out…I probably didn’t like it then…not because of it…but because of me. I was mad at it for being my home when it didn’t feel like my home. I resented the ridiculously cold weather…the gray skies…the icy roads…the shoveling of the driveway…the having to get dressed in my ski clothes to go to Target. I resented the fact that we were a mile from Chad’s entire family and I couldn’t see mine without traveling across the country. I resented that my parents had to travel 1000 miles to see their first grandson. The list of my resentments goes on and on. But the truth is…it wasn’t Iowa’s fault. And that Iowa ain’t so bad.

Iowa provided a safe haven for my family this Summer. It provided love. It provided healing from loss. It provided sweet time with old friends…and game nights with family…and music and dancing and laughing. I went to Iowa so sad from a year of loss…broken and faltering. And I came home whole. Iowa was my respite. And for that…I will forever be grateful.

Iowa: at a glance…

cousins…