In the summer of 2022, we left Arkansas for New Jersey, thinking we were moving to our new forever home.

We left behind a lot of things, including all the summer traditions – the sounds of the frogs and cicadas that filled our farm at night, trips to New Orleans in the hottest part of the summer, Fourth of July celebrations with friends and family, naps on my grandmother’s porch, days spent in the “blue jean room” at my parents’ house. Afternoons working from my home office or stock-tank pool, and that moment when the daytime switched to evening, and it was time to drink cosmos in the same pool. Our gardens and the most perfect tomato sandwiches as early as June. Thrifting outings with best friends. Grilling out on the regular with our small-group family and watching old movies like Summer Stock and The Music Man with all the curtains closed and the air conditioning running full blast.

When we moved to New Jersey, we *knew* we were leaving all of that behind, but we also knew it would still be there to visit, to touch and smell when needed.

The first summer in New Jersey was filled with all of the awkwardness and excitement of making a new home, learning a new place. We looked forward to creating new traditions with new framily in a new land. I still had my job with The Episcopal Church, and now I worked from a larger pool and took calls from a second-floor home office instead of a first-floor one. But really, everything had changed.

2023: The second summer in New Jersey. We acquired Connor. Eli moved to NJ to be with Wylie. Miles went to Arkansas to work at Camp Mitchell.

That summer, I worked with my amazing team at TEC to pull off a large churchwide festival/conference. It was all-consuming. It was the largest project of my career. A week before we launched, Nathan and I received an eviction notice from our “partners” in New Jersey, who owned the farm where we lived and worked. For the entirety of the festival, where we would live come fall was a great unknown. We had spent all our savings to relocate and send Miles to school. There was no plan B.

Eight weeks later, all of our belongings packed, we left New Jersey. Wylie and Eli went to Pennsylvania. Miles went to Arkansas. Connor went to New York. Nathan and I went to Arkansas. I still had my job at TEC. Nathan, no longer the Farm Steward in NJ, was out of work.

And everything changed.

Six weeks later, Nathan and I moved to Ohio to camp. The plan was I would be the consulting interim director of the camp for 6 months, and still work for TEC.

Within a month, I was offered a full-time interim instead. It was best, and it was abrupt. And it meant ending a job I loved to take a job I loved. Instead of consulting for camp and working full-time for TEC, it flipped. My big job became my side-gig, and my side gig my new career.

And everything changed.

2024: 9 months later, during our first summer at Procter, in the middle of Counselor Training, my grandmother, my first soulmate, died at age 99 in her sleep. Her funeral was the same day as our staff commissioning. I was at camp.

We started our first Summer Camp season at Procter. Everything was new. Every success a miracle. Every end of camp Eucharist, an exhale.

Miles came home for the summer and began applying to schools. Connor came home and worked at camp. Wylie and Eli stayed in PA.

Two weeks later, I went to General Convention – the big conference of TEC. There I walked in two worlds. Spending half my time at the booth filled with resources I had helped create, and half my time at the Episcopal Camp and Conference Booth with my new colleagues. Straddling who I was and who I was becoming. My heart was in my throat the entire week.

We went home to Arkansas for the 4th of July. To celebrate the holiday with my mom and siblings at the place we loved best – Maw & Paw’s house. To take our last naps on her porch, to eat fried chicken and watermelon around the tiny kitchen table, to take the kids fishing in the lake. To watch State Fair one more time on the old tube TV. On that trip, we also stayed in the blue-jean room at my parents’ house one more time. The house was for sale, and I didn’t know if we would make it back to say goodbye.

The house sold within weeks of that trip. My siblings moved my mother out one weekend in August during our End of Camp celebration. I kept in contact via text messages between songs and activities regarding the movers I had hired to help, since we couldn’t be there in person.

And everything changed.

2024: Last summer, our second summer at Procter, we stayed at camp. The summer flowed. Our kids came to us for the 4th of July. I began to understand the light here, that tomatoes aren’t ready until August. That June feels like April, and August feels like August. Miles came home again and this time brought Charlotte. Connor came home and worked at camp. Wylie and Eli were still in PA.

2025: We are on our 3rd summer of camp, and it is the same and completely different. There is never an end to what we can learn about leading and serving. I am no longer surprised by the lack of tomatoes in June – it’s worth the trade to be able to wear hoodies with shorts around the campfire. Every closing Eucharist is still an exhale. Every campfire an alleluia.

This summer, Miles and Charlotte are in Louisville. Connor is working at camp. Wylie and Eli have moved back into NJ.

My mother, who has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, has moved in with us, and this has meant a lot of shifting.

It means everything has changed.

Closets and rooms are being flipped. Boxes are being packed and unpacked. Artifacts from all those other summers are being discovered. Like my old laptop, which I found at the bottom of a drawer. A relic from another era. An era of big Forma conferences, and Rooted in Jesus, of revivals in Paris and Appleton. Trips across New England, COVIDtide webinars, retreats with the nuns at Sewanee, that last night in the blue-jean room, vacations in Louisiana, and a seminary in Iowa. Grief still not fully processed rises up. Again.

I can’t help but wonder how long the past 4 summers will be part of every summer. How long it will be before summer doesn’t carry a tinge of heartbreak for all that was- my parents’ house, my grandmother & her house, my mother’s wholeness and with them the comfort of knowing you can always go home; the job and team that I loved so much but that no longer exists except in my memory and in the bits and piecese I have saved – laptops, scraps of papers, buttons and namebadges among them; for the life we thought we would make in NJ?

How long will the low-grade buzz of vigilant and nervous energy that came from trying to navigate all of these changes, while keeping our family intact, keeping a festival running, getting my mother moved, grieving my grandmother, and keeping a camp full of kids and staff safe, color each summer?

How long will the joy of what is, and the grief of what is no longer, co-exist in such stark relief?

I have no idea. I suppose it’s how it will be, until it’s not.

Until it changes.