Rooted

Hello Dear Ones,

Cursor blinking - words desired, yet words escape. Today felt like a beautiful day to write and share an update with you all, but the second I sat down to type, I couldn’t quite find a great transition from the last post I shared well over a year ago. I’d like to say “I can’t believe” it’s been a full year since our last update; however, the truth is that I’m very well aware. This year has been the hardest and most painful year of my life. I’ve felt every single day to the core of my being, some days longer and more painful than I’d prefer, and others filled with surprises, excitement, & deep peace. Yet, I didn’t have it in me to share what we were going through as I could barely keep up myself. Before I give the wrong impression - we are all good and well and healthy. We are all filled with so much gratitude for where we are, what we get to do, & the people who love and support us. And really, our year of low is but a fraction of what others experience in pain, grief, & sadness. Thanks in advance for your grace and for continuing to follow our journey this past year as the Lassiter 5.

Early January 2024, I was prayerfully considering the year ahead - “Lord, what would you like me to know about this year? Is there a word, phrase, or picture that you’d like to share with me - to hold for this year ahead? As if audible, I heard “joy” - but really “JOY” as in all-caps, all-in, full-on, deep-rooted JOY. Great - that’s easy! JOY. I can do this! It’s a fruit of the Spirit & I know I have joy - but I want to exude JOY. I want to better externalize JOY. read: what I interpreted as joy. You know, the radiant beams that shoot off one’s body, blessing every encountered being and spinning every experience with joy-colored lenses. Impenetrable by life’s curveballs, hardships, struggles, and grief. Overwhelming joy. <ties bow>

Right after my rabbit hole interpretation of “joy”, I was led to Psalm 126. Verses 5&6: “Those who sow with tears will reap with songs of joy. Those who go out weeping, carrying seed to sow, will return with songs of joy, carrying sheaves with them.” Record scratch. Wait, tears? Lord, I’m not sure I’ve sown much tears. Do you mean that I’ll have a fast-track to joy this year bypassing all the sowing? I mean, how can joy be what you have for me this year, if you first want me to sow in tears? So, possibly somewhere in the years prior, those tears were already sown. Surely. Right? Because this year, we’re heading for JOY!

Let’s pause for a bit of framework for you. In November 2023, our family moved <again…as in move # 3 in almost a year and a half> Moved again, as it literally pains me to have to tell you how many times we’ve moved in less than 2 years. But you’ll have to keep reading if you want that answer. Because 3 isn’t it. Anywho, in November we moved into another rental - a single family home this time (bless) with space abundant, a yard to boast, & anticipation of plans and people in our home in a way that we hadn’t been able to host since our downsized move here. And for an entire 6 weeks, that’s exactly what we got to do! Then. Things changed quickly. The second week in January kicked off a week-long, multi-wave, snow, ice, & wind event that crippled the Portland area and caused major, extended power outages. This snowballed, quite literally, into a Landlord tailspin <that we had unfortunately been warned about> that resulted in us receiving a formal notice to move out. We’ve never had so little control over our family’s circumstances and felt so violated in our life. For my sanity <and your time>, I will spare you significant amounts of details, but I need you to know that we were devastated, tormented, & sickened at the way our family was attacked. We had previously verbalized to our Landlord our intent, desire, and need to be in this home for a bit to ensure our girls felt rooted and safe after the implications of so much change. The girls had just started a new school and the absolute last thing we could do was move again in a way to impact their sense of stability, forming friendships and school consistency. Utter devastation.

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again - logistics are my jam. Logistics are also the way in which I disassociate from my emotions and feelings - putting them off until the ‘appropriate’ time and space so as to not be too overwhelmed all at once. Except, this time, I couldn’t do that. I felt paralyzed. I felt out of control. I felt anger. I felt righteous indignation. I felt trapped. Trapped in a cycle of change, this time unwanted, and on a trajectory of outnumbering my childhood moves in a way I swore I would never do. This made no sense, we had so much peace in making the November move, even at the cost of changing schools mid-year. It allowed us to move closer to the city (albeit still deep in the ‘burbs), closer to our community group, closer to work, & into what felt like our “spacious place”. I couldn’t handle the mental overload. I felt like my feet had been wiped out from under me. Sure, Bryan & I could easily have handled this. But we are responsible for three little lives and the thought of navigating this, wielding an outcome we could live with, yet again without the nearby support of family and friends helping to hold us all together felt impossible. Utter devastation. Tears. So many tears.

Oh. Tears. As in, those who sow with tears. So THESE are the tears I am to sow? Which means, tears haven’t already been sown and we’re doing this now. Tears. We’re going to sow with tears. We’re going to weep.

And that’s just what we did. Standing in the kitchen, speaking not with words, but with tears streaming down our faces. Many tears. Tears carried me into the day & into the night. For days. And weeks. The best place they carried me to was at the feet of Jesus. In prayer. In surrender. In trust. In hope. That my God is for me. In this world, I will have trouble. But I have a friend who walks beside me. Who holds me up. Who guides me. Who provides for me. Who delights in me. And who will meet every single one of my needs. Who will meet every single one of our needs. Not always in the order, time, or fashion that I so desire, but in His. By His good, pleasing and perfect will. So instead of caving. Instead of becoming immoble. Instead of letting the grief wreck me completely. I chose to trust. I chose to pray. I chose to ask. God have mercy. Lord, help me & Bryan know what to do & how to do it. Would you make a way where there feels like there is no way?

Owning a home in Portland has always been the plan…the hope, but let’s just say Oklahoma real estate doesn’t convert equally to Portland. Honestly, quite laughable. In spite of how laughable that was, we genuinely felt led to pursue purchasing our home. Again, laughable. But hey - we’re feeling rather desperate and we’ve also been asking the Lord to give us wisdom & discernment to navigate this, so…if we feel led to explore it, let’s go look at houses <shoulders shrugged>. 

We couldn’t navigate the logistics of re-situating ourselves in a long-term rental <there’s a joke there> or purchasing a home in our landlord-provided deadline to vacate. So, queue…move # 4. By this time, I’m over it. Goal: keep the girls in their school & find a place to toss some mattresses on the floor. Easter weekend, we did just that. God, bless our friends who have helped us move. We were embarrassed to call in the ask again, and not in a position to squander our precious dollars to hire movers, so we moved as much as possible ourselves over a long weekend. (Not recommended at our peak-age. Bad for the back, and every other part of the body!) A few storage units later and feeling like quite the moving ninjas <tetris was always my fave>, we were settled in our 1100 SF apartment just up the street.

The market was weird, both rentals and sales were hard to come by. Also, we have a preference. One might think that now isn’t the time to give in to preferences, but if we’re doing this thing. If we’re drawing a line in the rental sand & fast-tracking this home purchase process, it’s got to make sense. We do need to like it <read love it>. Because what the last few years and 4 moves have taught us: we’re desperate to be rooted. Settled. Nestled in a community where we can know our neighbors, faces, and names within our community. Settled. Rooted. Not moving anytime soon. 

May 8, 2024, we closed on & moved into our home. Move # 5, clocking in under 2 years <did you guess it?> Our Portland Home. Not just any home. The home that we asked for. That we longed to have. The home that made no sense. The home that had ample space for family & friends to come & go as they please - to hold an open invitation to those we love both near & far. A garden for me to tend. The same schools <close to> for the girls. 3 minutes from where our community group meets. And perfectly situated between church and Bryan’s work. Rooted. This was never a reality on our timeline - for sure it’d be at least another 5 years. But it was the Lord’s. By His favor, provision, & delight. Good gifts He’s given to us. Our family - thousands of miles away - prayed for and provided for us in ways that we’ll never be able to fully grasp and one day we hope to repay. We are home. Just in time for summer. But I’ll have to share about that another time, because surely you’ve read plenty already. 

So, what about that JOY? My sowing, my weeping, my tears have been laborious. Just as I imagine the Psalmist intended. And today, in this season, I am reaping songs of joy. Not in the way I imagined. I’ve exchanged my self-imagined joy for that which the Father intended: Joy that is rooted in faith and hope in the person that is Jesus. Because that joy is everlasting. That joy is worth singing about and precisely the kind of JOY that one carries in sheaves. Sheaves I imagine that are truly shared with everyone around them. JOY. The fruit of the Spirit. I know this season will come again - sowing in tears. May I be reminded that as I carry the seed to sow, I know I can hold both joy and grief at the same time. And that sowing will return songs of joy. As Eugene Peterson says, “Prayer is strengthened immeasurably when it acquires a memory.”

So much love and encouragement to you friends, in whatever season you are in, whether sowing in tears or reaping songs of joy. As always, if you find yourself adventuring to the endless delight of the Pacific Northwest, please call us! We’ve love to see you & we’d love to lend our space to you. 

Until next time, 

xoxo