PDX

"If one advances confidently in the direction of one's dreams, and endeavors to live the life which one has imagined, one will meet wiht a success unexpected in common hours." -Thoreau

We have been allowing ourselves to dream about what we want to do next, since things just haven't quite been working out for us. February Mark and I both started exploring other options that were beginning to interest us, and let ourselves dream about what that might look like for us. Finally a couple weeks ago, we received good news! We are headed to Portland on Saturday for a couple interviews! We'll be there Saturday through Tuesday. We'd feel a bit better if we each had at least one more interview, but if not that's okay too. We are just grateful that someone is actually interested in meeting with us!

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover." -Mark Twain

After the suggestion of a friend, Mark began exploring the possibility of working in residential treatment centers for youth. We’re excited because these type of positions seem to fit Mark a lot better than any youth ministry position we have looked at. He has not been able to find any openings here in Denver, so we decided to check out Portland. Mark emailed a connection we have there, and it turns out he had some pretty good leads for him. Mark was able to line up an interview almost immediately with Northwest Behavioral Healthcare Services, a residential treatment center for youth.

I've been exploring getting into Montessori Education, and I really think it will be a great fit for me. I have been considering going to one of the Montessori Institutes to become a teacher, but decided to look into job opportunities first. I found a posting for a position as a classroom assistant in a small Montessori school run out of a mother's home in SE Portland. It seems this would be a great opportunity to gain a significant amount of experience before seriously considering becoming a teacher. It also just so happens that she is into local/organic foods, gardening, community, yoga, etc. That made me even more excited! I emailed her and she said she’d be very interested in meeting me, so we went ahead and set up an interview when we found out about Mark’s interview.

We feel like we finally have hope that something will finally work out for us. We are trying to stay calm though, we're so afraid of setting ourselves up for disappointment. So please keep us in your thoughts and prayers!

"Do not lose hold of your dreams or aspirations.

For if you do, you may still exist but you have ceased to live."

-Thoreau

I often hesitate to update this, thinking that unless I have some update on our lives that it really isn't worth writing anything. I have to remember that this blog isn't strictly informational in the "I just did this, we just did that" sorta way. I guess there are plenty of things that I wish you knew about the two of us. Chances are, when you learn these things, we will have found another thing in common. We like that common word. Community.

I have been reading a lot of David James Duncan as of late. More specifically My Story As Told By Water. I guess you can call it a memoir. If you call it that, then I guess you could read it and hear our story too. I (Mark) feel like it is as much of My Story As Told by Water as Duncan's. His descriptions of the Pacific Northwest feel hauntingly like the very words I use to describe it, the images created by his words are the very photos and mini-movies I have preserved in my memory.

So I have been flipping through all of those as of late. Remembering and reliving those sacred moments in Lincoln, OR. Beth and I both go through these times often. Beth calls them the "Oregon Homesick Blues."

Take for example the photo below. A picture of our honeymoon road trip starting in San Francisco and traveling north through the redwood forest.

Thinking about that first full day of our marriage...man. We arrived in San Francisco, rented a Jeep Patriot from a shady rental place, and turned that thing north. We traveled for nearly seven hours, passing through the rolling, grass covered hills just north of San Francisco, then dodging in and out of dense redwood forest and the subsequent fog. We stopped in tiny towns for burritos and gas. We drove by roadside attractions like "The Legend of Bigfoot," and laughed.

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We met Paul Bunyan, who amongst the giant redwoods, seemed at home, but thankfully retired many years ago.

We were headed to a campground on the coast in Brookings, OR. Our second night as a married couple was to be spent in a tent, and we preferred to set up that tent with plenty of daylight. But as we entered into the ancient forests the headlights started to beat out the sun as far as illumination. After hours in the forest we rounded a corner and beheld the mighty Pacific and the setting sun. Still hours from our campground we decided to stop and embrace the disappearance of our easily set up tent. We took this photo:

Man, how I wish we could repeat this again soon.

Thanks to Beth, the blog has a pulse. I figured I should follow up, show some signs of life myself. The days of winter here in Colorado have a nice cyclical feel to them. A week of absurdly warm weather (I'm talking 50 plus degrees here folks) teases us with the thoughts of sprouting vegetables, and hours more of sunlight. These pleasant and Vitamin D filled thoughts are squashed by the blast of arctic air seemingly pouring off them mountains just west of us. And when I say squashing I mean it in the most unprepared, rude, and destructive way, because before you know it your looking at -15 degree nights. yea. This is usually followed by a dump of snow. 10-15 inches usually. The snow hangs around forever, even as the temperatures start to climb back to a more understandable level. The snow melts and turns to ice and you have daily mini-heart-attacks when your treadless shoes decide to move just slightly faster then the remaining 96% of your body. Thankfully no bones have broken, nor heads cracked. Just lotsa' "take deep breaths honey" types of sentences after recovering from so many near death experiences.

I wish I could be more specific, but that's a little tough now. I think a lot of things are going to change for us. We're realizing that the $50,000 education that was supposed to be "an investment into your future" has actually just taken a huge dump on us. sorry to be crude, but man I can hardly think of a better way to express that. I'm thankful for my education in many ways, just not in that "your gonna work at Starbucks and be poor/slightly miserable, for much longer then you EVVVVER expected" sorta way. Did you start reading to hear me whining?

So yea, things are probably going to be changing. There. Stay tuned. K?

Oliver (yes we are those type of dog owners) is forever growing in size and sass. He is even talking back to us now when we "correct" him. He gives us this throaty and disgruntled growl after you tell him to "shoosh!" And will continue to do it until you grow tired of his teenager ways. Kids.

Other then that I would strongly encourage you all to take care of your appendix's. If that tiny little pouch of flesh decides to get all infected and angry you WILL land yourself in the hospital. Also, that little stay in the five star hospital will cost you a pretty gosh darn fortune. Yep $16,000 for that little dangly flesh hanging off your small intensities. (Prepare yourself for sarcasm) Thanks to our unsurpassed and completely functional health insurance industry I paid next to nothing for this procedure. (Prepare yourself for absolutely no sarcasm whatsover, seriously) Except for a year later (which was about a couple days ago) when you receive a bill for $4,000 benjawashinglincolns. psssssst we have no such money!

Yep. SO the crapping on continues. Take care of your appendix's folks.

New Year, New Post

We're not very consistent bloggers to say the least, but in our defense, we honestly haven't had the time nor the motivation. So here's what we've been up to...

Mark's parents and Beth's family came out for a visit in October a few days apart.

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Beth sold her knits at a couple craft shows.

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Oliver experienced his first snow, and it turns out he LOVES snow!

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We celebrated Christmas together at home, and then again with the Preston family, and then the Beach family. It was wonderful to be welcomed into their family celebrations, as we were definitely missing our families back in PA.

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After coming home crying one too many nights, Beth decided to quit her job at AE. We both decided money wasn't worth being treated less than human. So since then she's been cleaning and doing all the laundry that we've put off for over a month, spending time with Oliver (who has spent way to much time pent up in his crate), knitting, and spending time with Mark. That's been the best part of course, since we were both working 40 hours per week, we rarely saw each other. We've also gotten to spend a lot more time with our friends out here, which we have both missed as well. We also got to see a couple of our dear friends from out east when they were in town visiting family.

SO that's just a tiny bit of what our lives have been like lately.

This morning we gathered for morning prayer... I decided to read two Mary Oliver poems as prayers. I'd like to share one with you all.

Morning Prayer
by Mary Oliver

Every morning
the world
is created.
Under the orange

sticks of the sun
the heaped
ashes of the night
turn into leaves again

and fasten themselves to the high branches--
and the ponds appear
like black cloth
on which are painted islands

of summer lilies.
If it is your nature
to be happy
you will swim away along the soft trails

for hours, your imagination
alighting everywhere.
And if your spirit
carries with it

the thorn
that is heavier than lead--
if it's all you can do
to keep on trudging--

there is still
somewhere deep within you
a beast shouting that the earth
is exactly what it wanted--

each pond with its blazing lilies
is a prayer heard and answered
lavishly,
every morning,

whether or not
you have ever dared to be happy,
whether or not
you have ever dared to pray.

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Part of the complicated thing about having grown up in a specific denomination all my life is that I have been taught what is, and what is not. Prayer is this, prayer is not this. This, as you can imagine, has left we quite confused, especially when God the "great genie in the sky" never did give me everything I asked for.

So for a while I had no idea how to approach a conversation with God.

It was during my time at the Oregon Extension that I found that my encounters with God, those times of communication, almost always were happening while admiring the soaring cedars of the pacific northwest, or when I was transfixed by the intricacies of a bird.

I never thought of those moments as prayer. But now I do. Thankfully so does Mary Oliver, and thankfully she can write beautifully about those moments.