Life as We Didn't Know It

My grand dad said that after working in the Danish underground through World War II, that he was "bored" with the lack of activity when the war was over.  He was a family physician in Denmark, and evidently, normal everyday life didn't feel right, thus prompting his decision to join a whaling expedition to Antarctica in search of whale blubber for the profit of Scandinavia.  Sounds exciting, right?  He was the only physician on board, responsible for the health and well being of all men on board for I think 3 months, as well as 12 passengers that stayed with them for a smaller part of the trip.  His stories from the expedition are impressive.  He put a man's leg back together with wood after it was almost amputated with a piece of whaling equipment, so well that the man was able to work again.  He performed an appendectomy with a fake anesthesiologist and no antibiotics and was told that his patient was the first of his kind to survive such a procedure on the open sea.  All of this danger in the name of regaining the kind of adrenaline and excitement that the war had provided.  At first, you have to think, what crazy person joins a 3 month whaling expedition to Antarctica because they're 'bored', but now I wonder if on a smaller scale, I sort of understand how weird a normal life could feel.

What sparks this thought, is that today marks one year since Sean graduated from college, beginning a year for us, of a LOT of change.  A lot of trials.  A lot of uncertainty.  A LOT of trusting God.  It's been an AMAZING year, don't get me wrong, but FAR from normal.  This time last year, I knew that in a year, my life would be right side up again, but a very different normal, and that May 9, 2011, was FAR far away.  This time last year, my name was Maria Seear.  I had lived my whole life in Greenville, South Carolina, and in Clemson, only 45 minutes away.  We went to church at Crosspoint, and had a lot of college friends.  I had dated Sean for 3 1/2 years and was in the middle of planning a wedding, which had already taken over a year.  I was coaching swim team for McCarter, and couldn't imagine doing anything else.  I was majoring in nursing, but had no real idea of what I would do when I finished.  I had never been in an ICU.  Sean and I, by this time, knew that we'd be in Charlotte, but had no idea where we'd live.  Sean had just gotten a job, but had never been.  Didn't know if he'd like it, didn't know who he'd be working with, and barely knew how to get there.  I'd had a ferret in college who had died in January, so I wanted us to get a cat eventually.

Since then, Sean graduated.  Sean started his first big kid job.  My mom was diagnosed with cancer.  I finished a 20 year association with SAIL swimming.  We became parents to a tabby cat.  We signed our first solo rent agreement and moved to an apartment in Charlotte.  We got married.  I changed my name.  I completed a semester of commuting back and forth to Clemson.  I graduated from Clemson.  I became an RN.  My mom finished her cancer treatment.  I was offered and started my first big kid job.  And most recently, we bought our first house.  We've had milestone, after milestone, after milestone.

People that last year, we saw almost every day

Sean's graduation

A swim team that I love :)

Our First Apartment

Our Wedding

Graduation from Nursing

So now, here we are on May 9th, 2011.  The anniversary of the beginning of a year of change. My name is Maria Crandall.  I am the wife of Sean Crandall, the proud mother of a tabby cat named Mogatu, and the daughter of a cancer survivor.  I am a graduate of Clemson University.  We call Charlotte, NC home and I work at Presbyterian Hospital in the NICU as a registered nurse.  Sean has been a civil engineer for one year, and feels like he has a handle on his job.  He likes the people he works with.  We have signed our first solo rent agreement, decorated our first apartment, and bought our first house.  We go to Elevation Church, serve on E-kidz on Sundays, and while we keep in touch with our college friends, have a whole new set of friends in Charlotte.  I know new roads and new grocery store cashiers at a new grocery store.  And I LOVE my new life.  But sometimes, I feel like I'm in the witness protection program, or in a dream, because there's almost nothing about life that's the same as it was last year, and more than that, hardly any major thing in my life is something that I even KNEW about a year ago.  So for the coming year, with no children on the docket for our near future, and no real uncertainty that we're currently feeling other than what color couch to get, the plan is to spend the year continuing the same life that we have right now.  That's what we had done until this past year, but now, that idea seems foreign, just like the calm after World War II in Scandinavia.  Unusually calm...and really nice.