Reflecting Back

This blog started seven years ago (what?!) when I was heading down to Mexico to live and serve for 6 months. I wanted a way to stay in touch with family, share my stories and pictures and verbally process with people far away.

I named it Jubilant Adventures because when I worked at camp my camp name was Jubilee and somehow it all seemed to fit.

That was pre-hubby, pre-baby. In fact, my move to Mexico was partly in response to not having those things. I had wanted to get married and have a family for so long, and after I was done with college there wasn’t any of that. There wasn’t even a boyfriend. Or even a slight hope for a boyfriend waiting off in the wings.

All of a sudden I realized that I needed to figure out what my life might look like if I was on my own. So I moved to another country. Isn’t that what you are supposed to do when you are trying to discover yourself and what God’s call on your life might be?

Anyway, it was a wonderful experience. I learned a lot, grew up a little, contemplated what I wanted my life to be like and even became an international criminal (you can read that story here).

And then this blog became a place where I could explore life and grow up a little bit more by trying new things; pushing myself to be brave and again find what life had to offer outside the traditional marriage and family (you can read the beginning of that journey here, although there are many posts). Ironically, in the midst of pushing myself to try new things, I met my hubby and we dated and we got married.

And now this blog has turned into a place to reflect on life in general through different seasons (my unfinished Lenten journey blogs start here), motherhood and home-ownership. 

What I love about all of this is that these jubilant adventures of my life have all been different, but they have all been adventures. At times the joy has not been evident at the beginning, but it is there nonetheless. They are different seasons. Often I wrote on here as I was traveling to different countries through tourism, study abroad or volunteering.  For now I most likely won’t get to travel like that, which is often what we think about with adventures. However, I am already convinced (after owning a house for a two weeks) that home-ownership has many adventures in store for us, and I am excited to see how these adventures play out as I take a year off to be a stay-at-home mom, gardener, organizer, maid, creative spirit, etc.

Let the fun (and blogging) begin!