Holidays at Home

Leeann Mae
Feb 24, 2020
2 min read

Catching up on blogging about my time spent back at home for the holidays!

I was extremely lucky in that the new job I started in late September allowed me to work remotely for the month of December. I had planned a trip to go home already - mainly to celebrate my best friend's bachelorette weekend and wedding!

I flew home a few days before Thanksgiving. It was definitely bittersweet missing my first married Thanksgiving with Drew, but I was thrilled to be home for just a few weeks! Just a short 24 hours of flying later - I was HOME!

Being home actually ended up being a total whirlwind - I road tripped to Nashville for a bachelorette, my best friend got married, I finally got to meet a sweet friend's new baby, I hosted another wonderful friend's baby shower, photographed my brother proposing to the love of this life, and in between all of that - tried to split my time equally between both my family and friends! I also had the flu for four days - so that wasn't helpful.

In between the chaos of it all, I just caught myself thinking over and over - what a privilege all of this is. What a privilege it is to get to love so many people in different places - to get to celebrate so many life changing events: bachelorettes, weddings, baby showers, and proposals. These incredible, definint moments that typically only happen once in a lifetime. And don't get me wrong, there were a lot of days I was just exhausted and frazzled from trying to balance all the things I wanted to do, and people I wanted to see in just 4 weeks. It was simultaneously SO difficult, and SO rewarding. I feel like the weight of knowing my times at home was so fleeting, it made all the moments so much richer to me.

My trip home made me feel a lot of things: deep appreciation for my loved ones that carved out time for me, heightened awareness at how fleeting time truly is, and the strength that comes from grace-filled friendships. But mostly, it made overwhelmed me with how good God is. Celebrating things like marriages and baby showers and proposals - what a gift. Getting to step into other peoples' lives and encourage them + love on them in all the seasons of life. I'll never get over it.

A lot of days at home looked like parties & dinners,

but a lot of days were quiet + slow. And i'm just so thankful for all the days I had.

If you live close to your family + friends, I'd challenge you to do this: Call them. Text them. Actually do those plans you've been suggesting for months. Hug them a little tighter + a little longer. Do it for those of us who spend a lot of our time teary-eyed after another FaceTime call scheduled around timezones and overwhelming distance. Do it for those of us that ache for it. It's always, always worth it.