Speeding Up

Life is speeding up again. 

The two-week honeymoon in Estonia was very nice and much needed as a vacation. It was wonderful to unplug, let the days run their own course, sleep and swim and visit cafes. But unfortunately we live in a world where after a couple of holiday weeks one has to become a responsible adult again, earning money and studying and doing laundry and what not. Over the past two weeks when S. has been back to work, I have been slaving away at my computer, writing my dissertation. I have just - five minutes ago - sent the first draft of the last chapter to my supervisor. I have come to the expected and even inevitable phase where opening my dissertation folder on my computer makes me want to vomit. The throwing up phase. I am so sick and tired of it, gaaaah. 

And last week I also started the language course in Stockholm. Why waste time, we thought, and applied for the SFI (Swedish for Immigrants) course right away as we got back from the honeymoon. Now I'm beginning to think it might have been smarter to concentrate on my DMin studies first and let the Swedish wait a little but here we are. So my days look like this - a waaaay too early a start, bus and metro to Stockholm, 3,5 hours of someone speaking at me in pure Swedish, metro and bus back home, a long nap, and dissertation writing marathon. It's a little bit funny and skisophrenic because I go from sentences like "I live in Täby. Today is Monday" to sentences like "The Postmodern rejection of authority bears grave consequences for any preacher who commits herself/himself to the faithful proclamation of the Gospel." It's like there are two people living inside me - one that can't even hold the simplest conversation in a grocery store, and the other one that is pushing to get the terminal degree. Every day I go from one end of the scale to the other. I hope my sanity will not suffer too much from it haha.  

And my work in the church starts on Thursday. It is only 50% but I am already totally worried about where I will find the time and energy to get everything done that needs to get done. I will be preaching my first sermon in Ekebyholm church this coming Sabbath... I think I will need a LOT of power naps in the coming year to make all of this work out.   

But on the lighter and brighter side, marriage is wonderful and we have already reached the impressive anniversary of 5 weeks! It's so much fun to have your favourite person right next to you every day. I know it's early days but I really enjoy riding on this wave of energy and excitement - we do something fun almost every evening. We go walking and jogging, we often go swimming, we have been kayaking and cycling, we have been to the National Museum in Stockholm and sometimes we just eat junk food and watch tv. All of these things can be done and have been done alone but it's a whole different experience when you can do these things together with someone. It is simply wonderful.

Our first shopping trip as a married couple was a couple of days after returning from Estonia and we both got a brand new pair of running shoes and a pair of hiking boots. This is a promising start, I'd say. :)

A boat trip to Sandhamn island in Stockholm archipelago

Testing our new running shoes

Out and about

In the National Museum

The People

Our evening

Everyone who has organised (their own) wedding, knows that the sheer amount of little decisions that need to be made during the last week is so overwhelmingly big that it becomes a bit too much at some point. Even with all the help we got and with all the baffling amount of work S's parents put into the wedding prep, my mind still cracked. The reason - the most common of all reasons - the weather! The time - three days before the wedding. When your mind picks up speed and you get into this almost manic state of mind, and when you happen to get some 5 hours of sleep during the last weeks, then it's just too much to handle. So my anxiety got channeled into the weather canal which in the end meant that I was obsessively checking the weather forecast. Rain. Rain. And the evening three day before the wedding saw some crocodile tears and S had to calm me down because I was convinced that the weather would ruin everything.

Then the first guests started to arrive. (And as a side note - I will be forever grateful for the fact that we didn't just have a wedding day but more like a wedding week because the first guests arrived on Tuesday and the last ones left next Monday - the wedding itself taking place on Friday in between - and we got to spend so many wonderful hours with everyone.) NJ and M were the first ones to arrive from Scotland and as soon as I saw them in between my apointments and phone calls, I knew we were to have some mighty good time together. I hadn't seen NJ for some three years and it meant so much to me to see them there. But the worry and anxiety still remained. 

And then Wednesday evening came. I could see NJ and M spending some quality time on the deck at the lake and I didn't want to disturb them but I had a little request concerning the wedding day and I knew if I didn't ask it there and then, I'd forget again. So I went down to the lake and I asked what I needed to ask but then we got into a longer conversation. And then S came looking for me after a while and stayed there as well and after some time S. K. arrived at Ekebyholm and also joined us. And what had started as "it won't take more than a minute" turned into a couple of hours of the best conversation and fellowship imaginable, and me and S ended up telling the story of how we found each other last summer and there was so much laughter and so much love and so much joy in our being together there. And we ended the evening with a spontaneous prayer meeting and we praised God for His amazing goodness and grace in our lives. And I could almost physically feel the tension and anxiety leave my mind because I remembered again, there and then, what the whole thing was about - it was about spending good time with the nearest and dearest, it was about celebrating life and love and friendships, and no amount of rain or hail or thunder could ruin or take that joy away from us. So I stopped checking the weather forecast, stopped caring about it.

And this is what I remember the most from the wedding weekend - the people. The pure joy of seeing old friends and relatives and family members (and also local church members), from Estonia and Sweden and Finland and Norway and England and Scotland. It meant a whole world for me that they would be there, that they would see our tears of joy and hear our vows of commitment, that they would be a part of the wonderful dinner party (12 speeches in total!) and would celebrate way into the night until we could not celebrate any more and had to get some sleep. And guests showing up to church the next morning, NJ preaching and everyone almost singing the roof off the church building, and then another wonderful meal in the castle and long evening hours with conversations and walks and dad doing his jazz thing on the big piano in the castle... It was wonderful. Much more than I could have ever asked for.  

Oh, and by the way. The weather happened to be perfect on the wedding day, +22'C and cloudy. No-one was hot, no-one was cold, and our photographer had a big smile on her face.