Did you see our big announcements?  We are over the moon excited, but that feeling has been paired with a lot of disappointment and grief as well over the last two months. This time has been REALLY hard. 

Now, I’m not saying I am any worse off than anyone else. I know so many people are going through things that are so much harder, but I think all of us have experienced grief and disappointment on some level in all of this. It’s okay to acknowledge those feelings, even if they don’t feel as “big” as what other people are going through. 

One thing I am trying to get better at is being okay with opposing emotions. My default would be to not acknowledge the sadness this time has held because I should be HAPPY about these changes. Or alternatively, I would only feel the “woe is me” from the sadness and forget to celebrate the joy of this season. I have some great role models in my life teaching me that it’s okay to feel both. That Jesus can handle both. That both are valid, even at the same time.

The time we are living in is so unique. I want to remember both and document both sides of life in this time. Today, I want to document the harder parts.

Baby Announcement – but make it virtual

Our birth announcements didn’t get to be WITH our people. While we were never the type of couple that would have had a big, flashy announcement, it was still hard to not get to tell people in person (or at all for many people). I’d always imagined having time with my wonderful friends and coworkers soaking up the same joy that I’d seen showered on other people in my circle in the past.  No one gets excited about a baby like my coworkers. They are just the best. Instead, I had to tell them on Zoom from quarantine, and some I never got to tell. 

That alone wouldn’t have been too painful. After all – I’ll be pregnant for many more months.  However, we had the added news of moving to a new state!  This was the only true chance I would have to celebrate with my people.  

I will say, the bright side of pregnancy in this season has been not going to work. I’ve been SO nauseated 24/7, and being able to lay in bed more than I would have was a bonus!

Grief in the Goodbyes

Moving in a pandemic, during a time of staying-at-home, also meant we didn’t get to visit with our dearest friends and family before leaving.  We didn’t get to visit our favorite places one last time. There was no final weekend with our church family. One of the hardest parts is that I never got to say goodbye to my kiddos or the community that I’ve built at NLA over the last 6 years. 

It feels as though we have simply disappeared – that we’re ghosting everyone from our life in Minnesota. It’s hard. Thanks to the need for learning packets, I did get to say goodbye to a handful of coworkers. But without the hugs or the time to really get to say goodbye, it all felt so surreal.

On the other side

The grief didn’t stop when we crossed state lines.  Even though we live in the place we’ve wanted to for a long time and we are SO thrilled to be here, it’s hard. One of the things we promised each other long before we moved is that we would immediately join a church and meet the people in our community. Relationships take time, and we wanted to start working on that right away. Now, even though our new state is slowly starting to lift restrictions, we have to be extra cautious because of my pregnancy. Church isn’t open. Our neighborhood events have all been cancelled, and the common areas are closed. While on many days, it doesn’t feel any different than being safe-at-home in Minnesota, some days it feels lonelier.

I’m not writing any of this for pity, but simply because I want to remember what this season was like.  It’s such a strange thing to move, announce a pregnancy, and just live during a pandemic!

The last two months have been a whirlwind, and not just because of all the things going on in the world right now.  It’s an exciting time in the Osegard household. 

BIGGEST NEWS

First of all, Baby Osegard is coming this fall! We are so excited to meet this little one *hopefully* in October. More on that another time, because that is not the only big news from our family . . .

BIG NEWS PART TWO

We live in Franklin, TN now! 

I know, we didn’t get to tell everyone before we left.  It was the worst of goodbyes, but we’re living in a GLOBAL PANDEMIC and that really messed with our plan.

We’d known for a while that we would move, likely this summer, but we decided to wait to announce it until things were solidified in mid-March. 

Remember Mid-March 2020? That is about when things all started to go a little crazy in our part of the world.  Our governor announced that we would stay home for two weeks.  No big deal, right?  It wasn’t ideal timing, but we thought we would be in MN til the end of May, so we would wait til the start of April when we could see our people again to let them know. 

Our governor (wisely) kept extending our stay-at-home deadline. At the same time, we had some interesting scenarios with our landlord and buyer that meant we now had to be out of our house before the end of April.  It created a whirlwind of figuring out how we would move in under 30 days, say goodbye to our people, and how I would finish off the school year.  Not only that, but the time had come to start telling our people about Baby Osegard! It was a lot to process. 

As the pandemic situation kept changing world-wide, we found ourselves on an even tighter deadline to not only say our goodbyes, but to do all of the big things that are involved with a move to a new state, and start planning for the new addition to our family! 

AND AN APOLOGY

If we didn’t get to tell you in person, please know we are truly sorry.  We hadn’t been to work in person since the start of March. We also hadn’t gone to church since February! That made us miss out on seeing a lot of our people which made it hard to spread the news! We wish we could have told each and everyone of you in person and celebrate and said goodbye!

  ps. There are so many more updates to come with more details! 

“We’re going to spend less time on screens”, “No more wasting time on binge-watching”, “Let’s read more this year!” And so on and so forth. But then we come home from work tired or bored and ‘Voila’! The Good Place is magically on and we’ve already watched five episodes. Wouldn’t it be great if these priorities could actually impact how we organize our lives?

I’m sure we’ve all heard the saying “Show me your calendar and I’ll show you where your priorities are.” But Cody and I are totally good there, aren’t we? I mean, we make time for date night every week, volunteer at church, go to our small group, and so on. My guess is that whoever first said that quote meant more than the big events on our calendar, and more how we spend our time in general. I guess that’s pretty obvious, but as I let that sink in I realized that maybe I’m not living into the priorities I claim to have.

What ARE our priorities?

If you ask us our priorities, they are our faith, our marriage, and growth. But do our daily habits make these priorities obvious? I would say the “big events” on our calendar reflected those priorities. But the things we were doing on a daily basis showed our priorities to be work, television, and social media.

When we started our weekly sabbath – a time away from work – we started to take an honest look at how much time we were spending on things that we didn’t claim to be priorities. To start, we decided to realign our priorities by doing a complete tech detox on our sabbath each week. That means zero screen time. It wasn’t until we completely detoxed that we realized how much time we were spending on it ordinarily.

We made the same empty promises again, but kept slipping up almost immediately. Our house and life was set up to be conducive to our screen time, and was even preventing us from pursuing the priorities we wanted to have.

We truly loved how our home was setup and arranged. It was cozy and comfortable. All of our main living activities happened on the main level, which made things easy. However, having our television in our main living space meant that our TV was just always ON. While we cooked, while we ate, while we played games, any time we had a minute of downtime. It was right there, so it was easy.

We made the decision to rearrange our house. Not knowing where to start, we looked at the list of things we always said we “should” do more of.

Out with the old priorities. . .

The first step was to get rid of the things that we were turning to too often. Our basement had mostly become our gym and our dumping grounds for extra stuff. We de-cluttered (BIG TIME) and made the decision to move the television to the basement. It means giving up some fun traditions, like watching Christmas movies while baking cookies. But it also means we don’t just turn on the TV during dinner or anytime we walked into our main living area.

. . .and in with the new

The next step was to fill our newly empty living room with the things we wanted to do more often. We moved our piano down from our office. Our devotional items and many of our books moved out to a more accessible place too. It’s made it a lot easier to get into the habit of daily time in the Word and reading for fun!

The final move was to bring our games out of our office closet down to our living room. To be honest, I’m not a big game person. However, we’ve found a few that I don’t mind playing over and over. It has been great to build a new hobby and have time to talk instead of sitting side by side binge-watching shows.

What’s changed

Now, to be totally honest, it hasn’t solved our fixation with screens. We still are on our phones far too much. Neither of us practice piano as much as we envisioned. Cody and I first bonded over movies and tv shows, so we don’t want to cut them completely. So, we are working on finding a healthier balance for our relationship. The goal is that screen time can be intentional – only watching shows when it’s for a reason and on purpose. It’s all too easy to just turn on a show and veg out, and that isn’t helping us focus on our priorities.

Some things ARE getting better. We now eat together at the table more often than we eat in front of the television. Our open living room gives us easy access to our books, and a comfortable place to spend time with God. Before, we were so exhausted from the constant hustle of life. All we could do when we had free time was become zombies in front of the television! Plus, the fact that our basement gets REALLY cold in the winter means that we opt for card games upstairs. While there is still a LONG way to go, we’ve come a long way, too, and that’s something worth celebrating!

Alyssa and I love to travel to more remote locations, especially when we can combine traveling and wildlife. Our favorites are places where we can truly connect with the local culture and experience the nature and wildlife in an authentic way.

Our Favorite Vacation (so far)

We have had some great opportunities to travel throughout our college and married years so far. Some of our favorite (and not-so-favorite, but still memorable) wildlife encounters happened on our honeymoon trip to Costa Rica back in 2014.

At our first location, we stayed in a remote villa on a hillside near the ocean. Each morning, we would wake up, make coffee (of course) and sit outside on the patio to just watch and listen. The sounds of the ocean, birds and lizards all around, and even a family of monkeys swinging around in the trees right outside! Being surrounded by nature can be so restful and relaxing.

But, it can also be a bit more, how do I put this, unnerving?

At our second location, we stayed in a cabin in the rainforest, almost completely off the grid. At dusk each night, the staff would light candles and torches around the property and cabin, as there was limited electricity. They even had hot tubs that were drained and filled every day from the river, and heated by completely by wood fire. Our cabin was great, the food and service was phenomenal, and we were so relaxed. And then we went to bed.

That’s when traveling and wildlife collided.

Alyssa was concerned with the mosquito net that was covering our bed, because the opening hadn’t closed completely when I climbed in after her. I assured her nothing would get in, but hopped over and tucked the net under the mattress to ease her mind. And then, we heard a noise. “It’s just something out in the rainforest, nothing to be worried about!” I said, like I’m an expert on the noises in a tropical rainforest or something.

Then another noise. “Okay that was inside, but I’m sure it’s just one of the lizards we’ve been seeing all over the place, they’re harmless!”

And then it happened. Something jumped off the ground at the foot of the bed, climbed all the way up the net, and ran over our heads. It jumped off the net and into the rafters overhead.

I (Cody) knew that until we knew what it was, and that it was gone, Alyssa would NEVER sleep again. I climbed out of the bed, QUICKLY tucking the net in all the way around the bed behind me. Grabbing a flashlight, I starting looking and tracked the critter to the bathroom. Sitting overhead on the rafter beams, staring back with big bulging eyes was a mouse. Not like a common midwest mouse either, but a furry brown mouse that was more like a large hamster.

Needless to say, we slept the rest of our stay with the bug net tucked in all around the mattress. But even so, we plan to return to the exact same lodge and stay again. Why would we do that to ourselves?

Totally worth it.

First off, the food. I’m pretty sure we would fly back to Costa Rica JUST for a home-cooked meal at that lodge. All of the food is cooked over wood-fired stoves and ovens, using ingredients grown or raised right on the property

Secondly, the people. We met so many people from Costa Rica (and around the world) there. Every person we met was so kind to us. We felt so loved and cared for, even by complete strangers.

More impressive than the food (and at least as impressive as the people) was how connected to nature we felt. We hiked around the property and enjoyed the acres of farmland, natural rain forest, wildlife, and gardens. We took a guided rain forest hike on the side of the volcano, up the road in a national park. Everywhere we looked, there was more natural beauty to see an experience. It was really like a step back in time, into a partially untamed wilderness.

There is just something about being IN nature that feels so right. Something so truly restful about enjoying and appreciating all that God has created. All the way down to that darn mouse running around in your cabin like he owns the place. How can we not be in awe with the amazing wildlife and habitats that exist? We are just so grateful that we have the chance to experience it, even when things don’t go according to OUR plan.

In 2015, we went to a Hillsong concert. As with many Christian concerts, there was the plug for sponsoring a child through an organization called Compassion International. We’d heard the spiel a hundred times, and while it sounded great, we never felt like it was something we wanted or could afford to do.

This time was different. On one hand, we were probably more worried about finances then at any other point in our marriage. We had TONS of student debt we wanted to get rid of (and fast), so the idea of spending an extra $38 or $45 a month was pretty absurd.

Sponsor a child?

I (Alyssa) sat through the whole talk, mostly just waiting for intermission to be over. But as I sat, I felt my heart actually aching for these children. I started to feel a responsibility to take care of “the least of these”. My heart was racing and my palms were sweaty and I KNEW that I wanted to sponsor a child.

Some day.

I knew there was no way that I’d be able to talk Cody into it. It would feel irresponsible with our money. Sure, helping other people is great, but we can’t handle our money as is. I decided not to say anything.

Little did I know, Cody was feeling the same way. There was something at work inside both of us. God was clearly trying to tell us something this time.

We looked at each other and, without saying a word, knew it was something we both felt was important.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“Can we make it work?”

“For $45, it does so much. It’s a stretch, but . . . “

“It’s worth it.”

Why Compassion International?

We LOVE sponsoring Aklesso. We’ve seen him grow so much. One thing Compassion International does that is really neat is that they send reports to us that assess where our sponsored child is at physically, cognitively, spiritually, and socio-emotionally. Not only does it measure his progress so we can see that our gifts make a difference, but they offer practical ways for us to encourage growth in each of the areas.

We have not always been great about writing letters. However, now that we can write letters online (and attach pictures), it has become an easier thing to do. He is still young, and I’m sure doesn’t understand why he “has” to write letters back to us. We try to maintain a good relationship without overwhelming him. I hope that as he grows, we can develop a true relationship through these letters and that he would know how loved he is.

Is it really helping?

Absolutely. There are a lot of great, responsible non-profits out there, but we are so happy to support Compassion International and the work they do. More than 80% of all the donations received is spent directly in support of the children. By keeping their overhead low, we know that they are committed to truly making a difference. And, as of last count we’ve heard, there are more than 1.8 million children worldwide that are currently receiving support!

It’s $45 dollars a month to us, but it’s an entire life change for him. A change that (statistically) will help him change his family for generations to come!