Lazarus

The sermon at church the other week was about Lazarus. Then I read a story online about a dog that was named Lazarus because he refused to die (twice!) when the vet tried to euthanize him. It made me think about a lecture in college, with Jerry Sittser I think. We were talking about the difference between resurrection and resuscitation. Of course, Jesus is the only one who has ever been resurrected, but people are resuscitated all the time (that makes it sound quite casual, but of course it's a very big deal to be brought back from dying!). Jesus was resurrected, brought back to life forever. The difference is that resuscitated people go on to die again sometime later. Lazarus (the man) and Lazarus (the dog) did not escape death permanently.

This got me thinking that my blog is a bit like Lazarus. I think at some point I referred to the fact that I was starting to blog again as a resurrection, but that was grossly inaccurate, as evidenced by the fact that it has been MONTHS since I last wrote. 

And yet, like Lazarus (the dog) I will fight for life, again! I've been putting it off because there is SO much I could write about and it's simply overwhelming. Should I trying to catch up, chronologically? Or would it be better to just write about what I'm thinking about right now? 

While moving our laundry to the dryer, I decided to rebel against the part of me that wants things to be linearly organized, and start with where we are right now. The catching up can come later.

In August, Daniel and I moved to Olofsfors, near Umeå in northern Sweden. It feels really far north compared to where we were living before, but there's still a lot of Sweden to the north of us. Daniel started his Masters program in September, so we'll be here for the next 2 years. After nearly 2 months, we're feeling pretty settled and pretty content. 

I intended to put in some pictures, but for some reason it won't let me. Those will also have to come later. 

We have worked hard to get some adventures in before winter, so our weekends have been fairly busy. The area we're living in is great - near the Baltic Sea, and surprisingly mountainous. Ok, "mountainous" is perhaps a bit too generous, but at least it's not flat. And there is forest everywhere! We have hiked on the coast, a bit farther inland, at another place on the coast, and to some nearby caves, and it's been beautiful. We picked blueberries in the forest behind our house and I made jam with the help of Daniel's mom. I refinished a set of drawers and a big desk that we'd got second-hand. And I passed the tests to get my Swedish driver's license! Daniel has been studying hard and is nearly finished with his first course of the program. He's feeling good about it so far, and we're both feeling good about having some idea of what these next 2 years of our lives are going to look like. It's been a while since either of us was able to say that!

It's still not letting me add any pictures, so I'm just going to post this and give the pictures another try later.