Forgive the lag.  I do like the pressing of words, but I am oh-so-slow and my ‘just for pretend’ tax return assignments always seem to take precedence.

Rings: One wedding band acquired.  It was my great-grandmother’s, and I think it is lovely.  We must find another.  Also, we have the Mosaic Community Church sanctuary reserved for June 7^th for our wedding ceremony.

Families: Tim and I have them, and they are so good.  It has been fun to delve into them over the past year, feeling as if we are both treading into a foreign land.  Mine (extended family and all) is a large, lovable, sometimes hyper-anxious mix of good folk, with a curious bent for history, story-telling, and politically incorrect jokes.  Tim has lots of names to remember, and he is doing very well.

December: It has come.  Tim and I talked a while back, as we drove through the Fort Pitt Tunnel, about how much we’ve come to love the change of seasons.  I suppose everyone feels this way, at least a little bit.  That makes it even better.  But really, every year it’s the same thing, but newer…or maybe older, I can’t quite tell.  Isn’t that something!  It seems like this is a true, but subtle pattern on many fronts, this deeper-newer-older (I struggle with succinctness).  A year ago Tim and I were in the beginning stages of figuring each other out.  Today we still are, but on a different level.  The other night I stared at him as we walked through the parking lot next to the church where we met five years back.  It was interesting to compare his face to the one I first met.  I’m that much more comfortable looking at it, and I know it five years-worth better.

Really, though, I love thinking about this.   To me, it is the “Further Up and Further In” of any relationship.  With God, with friends…even with places, like my school or work.  The longer you stick with it, the deeper-newer-older it becomes.  I believe Reba touched on this once (from a place of more experience & study) a while ago, speaking about faithfulness and ‘pushing through’ when you don’t feel like it, and I’ve heard my mom resound with the same word.  The most boring, or most frustrating moments with any One inevitably give way to the richest ones.  How good is that?

Seeing the wonderful neighborhoods of Pittsburgh on my bicycle has been a really great experience…there is so much here to see. I have been to very little of it. So good to finally explore the City I grew up so near.

Here is one of the favorite things I have found on my journey’s, I full-heartedly agree:

Pittsburgh is beautiful, says Thor

I had one interview at the Pittsburgh Project for the assistant volunteer coordinator job…and I will be having yet another come next Wednesday. I guess I made it into the “final 3″ and they are doing a second round of interviews….it’s like American Idol. Who knew part-time, low-paying, assistant, non-profit jobs, were so popular.

So, next wednesday at 11:00… I really hope it goes well, yet again. To be able to work full-time at the Project would be really wonderful.

We’ll see what God has in mind…
Meanwhile…I am pondering graduate school, and GREs…I just re-learned how to divide fractions.

A few thoughts on
the current circumstances of our engagement:

I am at school. Essentially, I am here until Tim and I are married. School is 1 hour from Tim and 1.5 hours from family. This is not a very far distance, from what I’m told, but school is also full of another world. It is full of things left to learn and people left to know and love. Here is an inevitable balance of being in this place and preparing for the things to come. I believe this is a common plight of the senior college student, though I’m claiming mine to be more amplified.

I was reminded by an older, wiser person (our InterVarsity staff worker) of the inglorious-glorious things of life. While I may feel restless or disinterested, I must be present here, in this good season. When life with Tim is well underway, I’ll want to look back and know that I was faithful and that I finished well.

Take, for example, my new job in the bakery: It involves a funny chef hat – good for stripping you of self-conceit – and the restocking of dessert trays. It also involves me rescuing loaves of bread that I would otherwise have to throw away:

*

While the job is not so dazzling, the whole-grain is tasty, and it is refreshing to work with kindly, non-college-age people. This is goodness in the midst of the seemingly inglorious. And from what I can tell, this is a trend through much of life.

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Trends! Speaking of trends, Tim and I have been wedding planning, and we’re staying on top of the latest and the greatest. We found out that weddings today are decorating themselves with a “new” trend of kindness. Celebrities are doing it, so why shouldn’t we?

http://www.superweddings.com/article-kindness_wedding_trend.html

May kindness always be trendy?…perhaps for better reasons than celebrity affinity…

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* I also realize that school may be the only time in my life when I will have time to take pictures of loaves of bread

1. Our engagement tomato which Dani Roost gave us from the community garden as a gift (neither Rachel nor I especially like tomatoes).

2. My new laptop case which Rachel and I sewed together in an afternoon.

1.

2.

(pin compliments of Doug)

This was the question asked of me a few weeks ago:

“What are you and Tim going to do? Be poor and idealistic?”

I laughed and said yes. I’m sure we could excel at both of those things.
Perhaps, though, God willing, we might be able to accomplish a few other things in our married years.

Any ideas?

for those of you who do not know, and again to those who do…
most officially Timothy Cook and Rachel Hillbery are getting married!

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Yesterday evening Rachel and I sat back with some chilled ice water in fine glasses and recounted just how much life has altered since last year. And how we had these same thoughts the previous year, and the previous, and so forth.

Next year, we realized, the shift will be even more dramatic. Join us on our joint weblog as we are engaged to enter a new paradigm: sweet love and marriage.