I posted photos on Flickr from our trip and the wedding

Rachael and Jonathan’s beautiful wedding cake:

Celebrating my 24th birthday in rainy Duluth:

And now for the Stankey Road Trip Recap …

• I felt like my mom, in a good way, when we left. Packing a tasty lunch and bringing a roll of paper towels and extra water bottles. All of which were needed.
• We listened to half of John Hodgman’s The Areas of My Expertise. At one point, I was laughing so hard (while drinking water) and I ended up spitting it out…quite a wet pants situation. (This is where the paper towels came in handy.)
• We watched the gas prices increase from $3.80 to $4.05 as we drove north and spent $175 in gas over 900 miles.
• We were adopted into the Cushing family as Rachael’s long lost Cottey College sister and were invited to the yummy rehearsal dinner.
• We took advantage of our hotel (Polynesian Water Park theme) and acted like kids, sliding down the huge water slides and screaming during each turn.
• We took around 300 photographs during our trip, only the good ones made it onto Flickr.
• We, once again, were adopted into the Cushing family as they invited us over after the wedding for pizza and beer with the whole family.
• We helped set up and tear down for the wedding. We liked this much better than actually being in the wedding.
• We celebrated my 24th birthday in Duluth and then driving home to Madison.
• We bought some tasty dark roasted coffee beans from the Whole Foods Co-Op, as recommended by Jonathan and Rachael.
• Robb majorly stubbed his big toe when we were packing up the car to go home. Tore off about a million layers of skin. Emergency trip to the grocery store where I stocked up on Band-Aids, ibuprofen, and cookies.
• Enjoyed 9 hours of thunder and lightening and rain storms (apparently most of Wisconsin was on Tornado Watch when we were driving home).
• We found a quaint indoor mall near the water in Duluth and spent a while walking around, enjoying being warm and dry.
• Treated ourselves to some coffee after being severly under-caffeinated (Jessie, mainly).
• Robb provided breakfast in bed at the hotel (via the contential breakfast in the hotel) consisting of cereal, homemade waffles and hot chocolate. Yum! And we watched My Super Ex-Girlfriend and decided it was better than the reviews claimed.
• And we went to Robb’s favourite for lunch: Famous Daves. Not half bad. And my birthday cake was a big serving of Bread Pudding.

I hope you have enjoyed our little recap. Quite an eventful road trip, especially for our first one.

Dad helped me move to Wisconsin in August of last year, staying with me for about a week before flying home. From that point on, I was all alone.

It’s not like I wasn’t able to make friends here in Madison. My new church family and colleagues from work have been very welcoming. But my whole life, all my friends, my family, and all the familiar places up to that point had disappeared.

Anyone who once was such an important support in my life could only be reached through the tenuous and completely unsatisfying lines of communication of telephone and email. On a few nights I actually cried myself to sleep because of the loneliness.

In January, when Jessie and I got married and she moved out here with me, I completely forgot about how difficult those months of loneliness were for me, because I finally had Jessie to satisfy my need for social contact as an anchor to my past life. However, all at once she was in my shoes, having been ripped from friends, family, and everything familiar, and my attempts to comfort her insufficient.

At small group this week, Jessie opened up to the other girls and revealed how lonely she has been. Now, a funny thing about our church is that most of the congregation, much like Madison itself, are transplants, new in town and only here long enough to get that degree or finish that internship/fellowship.

Unbeknownst to her, all the other girls in small group, having moved here just recently, were extremely lonely too. All it took was for Jessie to break the ice, and now the church girls are planning a lot of future social events!

All this to say, we got together with a few other people from church to see a great concert last night. It’s really wonderful to see Jessie “back in her game”, enjoying being social with people again.

We have learned so much getting married, moving away from home, and starting grad school all at the same time. Learning how to deal with loneliness is yet another lesson we are learning together as we rely on one another, on our new community of friends here, and on Christ.

These letters were always the highlight of my days. (I think Robb would agree.)

Robb started a tradition of closing the note with these words “until face to face” or he would simply write 2 John 12. This became our signature.

Yesterday I was reminded of this verse at bible study. (We were actually studying 1 John, but I read ahead to see the verse.)

Though I have much to write to you, I would rather not use paper and ink. Instead I hope to come to you and talk face to face, so that our joy may be complete.

2 John 12 (ESV)

Reading this verse brought a huge grin to my face. After all our years of living apart from one another (hundreds upon hundreds of miles) we were finally blessed with being face to face. Everyday. My best friend. My partner.

How great is God!

Our joy is complete.