About

b’ahava (with love): באהבה

Hi! I’m so glad that you happened to find this little space of mine.  I’m Katy.  No, it’s not short for anything and yes it’s with a y!  Typically, I use this spot to share about my life’s journey.  Everything from what I’m learning, interesting quotes, delicious recipes, my crazy Vizsla Boaz, God-thoughts, and really just my messy, beautiful every day life.

I began this blogging journey at the prompting of a dear friend back in December of 2007 right after finishing college.  Since then, we’ve had quite a wild ride.  (read on if you want the shortened version of life since then…).

I spent 2008 getting my feet wet in church planting, my first “real” job, and starting seminary only to feel a stirring to gain some experience first.   So, I did the “logical” thing and applied to move to Africa for a year long internship.  In a whirlwind of about two or three months, I quit my job, packed my things, fundraised, and boarded a plane.

2009 became my year of falling in love with Africa and finding home.  You’ll find tons of posts about all things missionary life, learning to love, being broken, and lots of messy parts of life.  Let’s just say…my heart is longing to go back and you’ll still hear me talk about Africa often.

In 2010, I landed uneasily back in the States and jumped into a church family.  I experienced all things related to culture shock and not wanting to be “home.”  I made mistakes and stumbled along my way.  I took a risk and applied to go back on staff in Africa and was accepted…only to find myself heart broken a few months later when the ministry announced they were closing their doors.  But God….decided He wanted to plant me right in my church family.  I accepted a job to become the Children’s Director and boy have I learned a ton about ministry and life since then! Plus, I have gotten to do it with the best staff ever.

In 2011, I started working at church and trained for my first marathon!  This was a year of tons of growth and digging deep…plus, I decided to get Boaz at the end of the year!

2012 was my year to celebrate and it sure was one to remember!  Boaz came home in January.  Then, I traveled to Sri Lanka, London, Rome, Greece, Rwanda, and Mexico.  Not to mention that on December 12th, I married my husband.  He’s my favorite.  We got married in the mountains and headed to the beach for our honeymoon.

By 2013, we were headlong into all the fun things of our first year of marriage including training for a marathon that wasn’t (a blizzard prevented us from running the actual race), road tripping to Virginia, D.C., and Michigan, and finding out we were pregnant!  I finished my Master’s degree in December (December’s are always good months especially with my birthday!) and we got to share our news with family at Christmas.

2014…Asher Ryan jumped onto the scene right on his due date (July 4th) and we’ve been on quite an adventure! He’s absolutely lived up to the meaning of his name and is a happy kid.  We’re still (surprisingly) living here and still loving our church family.  Asher’s vying for the drums and tagging along to a few staff meetings.  We got to spend time in Nisswa for our anniversary and all sorts of people came to meet our little man.

2015 was a year where we loved watching Asher grow and growing ourselves. We said hello to our sweet second baby, Enoch, and also said goodbye. In December, we boarded a plane to South Africa. Asher was an awesome traveler considering his age! We hit up Cape Town and drove up the coast before heading to see June.

2016 started out with waiting to get pregnant again and thankfully we did! Then it became a thank you God for each day with our sweet baby. Melea Rose arrived in perfect timing on December 1st. I couldn’t have asked for a sweeter gift of a girl to share my birthday month. Asher is rocking the big brother role and is active as ever. We also road tripped on one of the best vacations ever to Glacier and Banff in June with our good friends. Hiking and mountains and lakes and time together. A trip to DC for a wedding rounded out the fall to celebrate my brother getting married.

2017 began quite rockily. Adjusting to two at home and my dad being in and out of the hospital with cancer plus finding out we needed to move. We made the best of it by buying a house with intents to fix it up and eventually hopefully make money on it when we sell. We did get to sneak in a half marathon in Grand Forks with friends and the kids loved the beach in Florida where we celebrated my brother getting married. We also jumped in and started planning to take a team to South Africa. Clearly, buying a house didn’t take away any desire to jet out of here..maybe intensified it ha!

2018 we found out we were pregnant shortly into the new year! We brought our next little baby with us and a team of 8 total on a trip to Ignite a South Africa. This was such a sweet time being back “home” and made it hard to leave. Though, getting home to Asher and Melea helped. They were more than ready to see us! Canon Clay surprised us all by coming close to two weeks early on September 14th and has been such a rock. He came right after we snuck a last trip to Stillwater together and even hiked Fairy Falls. He’s been steady and sweet and full of fun moments. Though, with three at home, Boaz was sadly not getting nearly enough attention so we rehomed him to this dear couple with lots and lots of land and another Vizsla named Lexi for him to play and hang out with all day. He got the good end of the deal–we still miss him a lot.