Hello everyone, Ann here.

Well, while Lynn has been busy releasing her spiritual warfare book, Bryce and I have had an adventure of a different kind: We've packed up our house, have left New Zealand and, as of yesterday, have started our six-month trip overseas.

As I write, I'm in sunny Brisbane, Australia, where we're staying with Bryce's sister.

One of the themes of this trip, for me, is a desire to nurture my marriage. We're going to spend an unusual amount of time together, and I'm looking forward to talking with him about what matters to us and what our life is going to look like moving forward now that our kids are grown. I want to develop new shared routines with him, and I want to love him well. 

May your fountain be blessed, and may you rejoice in the wife of your youth. A loving doe, a graceful deer - may her breasts satisfy you always, may you ever be intoxicated with her love (Proverbs 5:18-19, NIV)

This is a funny little passage: It's poetically archaic. Still, even though it's speaking of a man's feelings towards his wife, I often think of it in relation to my husband: Delight myself in the husband of my youth. And something along those lines is what I hope this trip is to look like.

While we are away, we will celebrate 25 years of marriage, and 30 years together.

I know many of you follow the lives of us writers, as we keep you company in your own struggles, so I might take the opportunity to share what the spiritual mismatch is looking like for Bryce and me at the moment:

I continue to go to church alone (Sigh -- hard. Always hard). But peace has settled between us, and the years of being spiritually stretched like an elastic band have given way to more of a non-chalance on my part. Is it ok to be non-chalant about my SUM? Well, the opposite is to be wound up like a top, and constantly stressed! So I guess God doesn't mind non-chalance.

I know God's got it all in hand.

However, even though I'm reasonably non-chalant these days, the outworkings of the SUM life are still mine to navigate: I do have hurts from being at church alone; I still gulp and experience stabs of fear or regret when I think about bringing faith to my children solo; I still wish I could give more to God, and so on.

What is perhaps a little easier is the loneliness: For some reason that has lessened. And there is less self-consciousness now when I talk about faith with Bryce. We can even speak freely about this blog: He is sitting opposite me right now, in fact, trying to be quiet so I can write.

While we are in Europe, I would love to ask him to go to church with me, so that we can meet local people. Will he?  I will keep you posted!

So yes, the whole thing has been a strangely evolving thing. How about you? Has the SUM situation evolved for you?

Well, next I'll be praying about our topics for the remainder of this week and will be back on Wednesday, still from here in Brisbane, and still in happy mode.

Much love to you all,

Ann