I want to tell you...

Where this becomes a real, Big News letter

There were two lines in the window that day, nine years ago this September. I was pregnant again. But for the first time in any of my pregnancies, I didn’t rush to the phone or shout for my husband to come to me and hold out the stick with my trembling hand.

I didn’t tell anyone.

It had been a long day already even though it was only afternoon. I got up early that morning and hiked the Aiea Ridge Trail with Matt, came home and made pancakes since it was a Saturday, and headed to our favorite beach on the windward side of O’ahu. As we drove the forty-five minutes across the island, my kids asked about the meaning of their names, and as I told them, something dawned on me. I thought back, checked my phone and confirmed it: my period was Officially Late, which only ever happened when I was pregnant. 

On the way home from the beach, I asked Matt to stop by CVS so I could pick up a few things, not mentioning that one of those “things” was a pregnancy test. When we got home, I told everyone I was taking a shower and locked myself in the bathroom. The second line appeared almost instantly. My eyes filled with happy tears, and I almost turned and raced out of the bathroom to tell everyone. But something stopped me. Instead, I ran water into our bathtub, climbed in and placed my hands on my belly, whispering prayers of gratitude for the tiny life inside. 

It’s not exactly that I meant to keep it a secret. I was over-the-moon happy. But by then I knew as soon as the news got out, there would be so many voices, loud and all around me.

“Five kids?! You know how that happens, right?” (For the record, I have always wanted to look at the people who asked this right in the eye and say as innocently as possible, “No, I don’t! Could you please, PLEASE tell me?!”) There would be sarcastic comments like, “Overpopulate much?” Everyone would have opinions about the baby’s gender and undoubtedly say things like, “Hope it’s another boy this time! You have enough girls!” or, “Wyatt needs a brother!” And since I had just turned thirty-six, this pregnancy would bear the humbling adjective “geriatric.” Of course, that also meant more risks too, which would present another whole set of opinions if the pregnancy was anything but typical or healthy. There would be heartache for certain loved ones who wanted one–just one!–baby, while here I was having my fifth. And what about names? There would be so. many. opinions. about this baby’s name¹. 

Right then, I just wanted quiet, to enjoy my unadulterated happiness and awe. 

I’ve been thinking about that day–I only managed to keep the secret for twenty-four hours–and about what we decide to share and when. I’m famously (or infamously?) a verbal processor. My mom often said about me, since early in my life, “You never have to wonder for long what Joy is thinking.” But the older I get, the more I value thinking about things before I say them, testing them to see if my thoughts true–sometimes for a very long time.

By a similar token, it’s gotten harder for me to tell people Big News, maybe because I’ve had, as I said here, so many things in recent years go an entirely different way than I expected. Sometimes the stories of people I love are wrapped tightly into my news, and I want to respect that too. Also, it’s hard to know what to say when I don’t have all the answers. Please don’t get me wrong: I’m not mad about anyone’s curiosity. I’m deeply grateful that anyone would care enough to want to know. But trying to give answers I don’t know requires a certain energy that I don’t always have.

All this to say, I have Big News. I’ve already announced it on my Instagram/ personal social media, but I know not everyone here knows me from those spaces. About a month ago, we left South Korea, where we had lived for six of the past seven years² and moved to Germany. I kept meaning to post on Substack before we left Korea, but this was a major move that took an enormous amount of time and logistics, and I just couldn’t manage to sit down and write this. So here are some things I want to tell you now–and I mean, I REALLY want to tell you this.

–We are very excited about this move. We lived in Spain early in Matt’s Navy career, when my two oldest daughters were tiny (my second daughter, Skyler, was born there). The other three kids have wanted to explore Europe like their sisters got to. We prayed so much for this opportunity and are incredibly grateful to be here. I’m trying to remember the last time I was so genuinely thrilled about a move, anticipating it to the point of being scared to tell anyone in case it didn’t happen. 

But even with this happiness, it was intimidating. There was still heartache in leaving Korea and uncertainty about what we were doing. I’ve thought a lot about how things can be so good and so daunting at the same time. We had truly wonderful friends, and we had been there so long, threads of Korea are inextricably woven into our lives. When we arrived there, Annalee had just turned one. A couple weeks after our arrival here in Germany, she turned eight. My first two daughters both graduated from high school there, and Lilly is already a sophomore.

When someone asks, “How did you like living in Korea?” or, “What did you think about Korea?” it is absolutely impossible to sum up such a significant portion of our lives in a one- or two-word answer.

The shortest, simplest reply I can give is, “It will forever be a part of us.”

–I’m so very grateful to have had some more essays published recently. Fathom Magazine shared this essay “I’ve glimpsed one of the monsters” about fear, anxiety, and what I hold to. I have another essay in the summer edition of Coffee+Crumbs called “Before You Go” about all we want to tell our kids before they are on their own. And Legacy Magazine shared this piece “Growth Charts” about the unconventional ways we measure growth as part of their Month of the Military Child.

–Now that all my kids are old enough to behave and entertain themselves on long-haul flights (even fourteen hour ones!), I really love to watch foreign movies that my family would likely object to watching with me. To be fair, it’s also really hard to find, rent, or buy many of them (trust me, I’ve looked). Anyway, this has become my personal treat, and on the flight here to Germany, I watched two French films. The first was Incredible But True (French title: Incroyable Mais Vrai if that helps you find it), about a couple that buys a house with a mysterious tunnel. It wasn’t my favorite, but I also can’t stop thinking about it, because it’s ultimately a commentary on aging–gracefully and… less so. I would love to know if anyone else has seen it and have a conversation about it. It definitely touched on things I shared in this post. The other movie was Rumba Therapy (Rumba La Vie), about a man whose heart attack makes him rethink his life, leading him to seek out his estranged daughter through the dance classes she teaches. I absolutely loved it. It’s funny and touching and so, so good.

–Remember last December when I wrote this post and talked about how I’ve been studying French for years, even though it didn’t make sense? I live forty miles from the French border now. I’ve gone on several day trips there already, and spent last weekend on the Normandy Coast. I think about this every day and honestly cry a silly number of happy, grateful tears. I also keep thinking about the manuscript I wrote last fall. It was so hard to tell anyone about it since I have no idea what will happen with it. But I’ve been plugging away at edits, and crazy as it may sound, I’m starting to really believe in what I wrote, to think it’s worthwhile, maybe even necessary? And here in my little spot here so close to the French border after all these years of dreaming and working on my “useless French” (not my words, but something someone once told me) gives me that much more hope that maybe, someday, the pieces will for that book will come together and make sense too.

I’ll be back with more soon, I hope, as the dust is finally sort of settling. But in the meantime, let’s talk! Is it hard for you to tell big news, and if so, why? What are things that seem crazy to you, but you keep plugging away at them anyway?

1. Okay, quick story. As soon as Lilly, my third daughter, found out about my pregnancy, she wrote a list of names, one column for girls and another for boys. Her handwriting wasn’t the best, since she was little, so “Emily” looked a little like “Emoy” and “ Freddy” like “Farby.” As we discussed name ideas later that week, Matt said, “Well, I’m partial to Emoy Farby.” And that was what we called Annalee up to the day she was born, and a few times since.

2. In case you’re new here, or just trying to keep up (because I know it’s a lot!), we lived in Korea for four years, then spent a year stateside after my husband retired from the Navy, and then moved back in 2021.