Lately it seems like conversations compulsively drift back to the subject of our economy or politics. Maybe that's because people are watching the news more. Maybe it's because they, too, are worried about their family's future.
I'm determined to be fixated on my family's now.
Before Vance and I got married, we drove to West Palm Beach once a month for nearly a year to meet with the pastor I grew up with, the pastor who would marry us. He asked us to name the traditions we'd maintained with our respective families and the ones we hoped to start as we became family to one another. Now that a year has passed since we exchanged the promise to have and to hold, I'm thinking back on how we've done.
One of the simplest traditions we probably assumed we'd never keep is a monthly meal where we prepare three or four courses of gourmet fare for one another and sit down over a tablecloth and some candlelight to enjoy it together.
We haven't missed a month of these meals yet, and because of that we have had an opportunity every 30 days to talk about our hopes, our goals, our hurts, and our passions in an intentional way unlike what we share at our daily meals. It also gives us an opportunity to constantly serve one another and be creative.
Another tradition has been an annual Thanksgiving celebration where we open our home up to share with friends and friends of friends who want to come together in community around that time regardless of whether family is close by enough to serve up the turkey and mashed potatoes. We managed to get through our third year of this tradition together -- our first as a married couple!
Our commitment to cooking and consuming slow food has grown and matured over the year as well; we're learning to garden organically, learning to incorporate local and seasonal foods into our regular meals, learning to skip the fast or cheap option to go with something a little closer to home and a little closer to the farmer's heart.
And finally, we committed a year ago to spend time reading together each week. This has probably been the biggest struggle for us, although we've managed to make it more of a priority in the recent months. We read in the library Vance helped design and create soon after he moved in, and at Palmanos during our trip to the Winter Park Farmer's Market each Saturday.
It's staggering to think of how quickly this year has gone by and how much we've grown together in that time. It's also exciting to think that we can plan and dream and hope together and come out a year later knowing that together we made it happen!