Moving Sale…It’s Getting Real, Y’all

Charles and I just put together and shared with our local Taichung community a pretty comprehensive list of all the furniture and big items we are selling since we’re leaving Taiwan. Because it’s an overseas move, it’s cost-prohibitive to take most of our household items with us. That means selling couches and beds, bookshelves, dishes, the dining room table, and just about everything but the … Continue reading Moving Sale…It’s Getting Real, Y’all

Goodbyes and Hellos

“Do you keep a blog anymore?” my youngest sister asked me yesterday. Yikes. Has it been that long since I’ve written?

Yes, I still keep a blog, but in the midst of a very busy and somewhat tumultuous season of life, the blog has gotten a little dusty. So now it’s time to blow off the dust {woooosh} and get back to writing, even though I don’t know exactly what to say. Continue reading “Goodbyes and Hellos”

Restless Dreams

Recently, I’ve been having a recurring dream that I am going back to Asbury University as a graduate student. In the dreams, I am always rooming with one of two friends from my real Asbury days–incidentally both are named Sarah–in the regular undergrad dorms even though we are working on our master’s degrees. The weirdest aspect of the dreams is that though I am still married to Charles, for some reason (job-related, I think), Charles cannot move to Wilmore to be near me, and I spend the dream trying to reconcile deeply missing him with my desire to pursue further education. Another consistent and unnerving aspect is that a considerable amount of each dream entails unpacking, setting up the room, trying to fit everything into tiny closets, adjusting to college life, realizing I don’t have enough supplies, worrying about finances (those courses are expensive!) and feeling generally unsettled. After the most recent iteration of the dream, I woke up feeling confused about my whereabouts and about reality. Continue reading “Restless Dreams”

{Segue} My Mess

I’ve read a lot of commentary online about how we manufacture perfection in our Instagram photos and portray only the best in our status updates on Facebook. There’s a lot of talk about how it’s easy to be fake online, how it’s natural to be unnatural when there’s a computer staring you in the face instead of another human being. And, of course, I agree with these sentiments because I know it’s all too easy to be Online Me instead of the real Christel.

But sometimes I wonder just how much of the mess I should expose. Continue reading “{Segue} My Mess”