whitney dziurawiec

I write this post from a new town, a new home. And all our furniture is taking its first breaths of air since March, I have Febreezed everything and washed all the dust off the Tupperware and glasses. And yesterday was the first time I'd felt it. The rain fell enchantingly from the sky and soup simmered on the stove and piles grew in the sink and it hit me for the first time since we'd been here, the first time since we'd been homeless, since we've gotten married, really: Welcome, long-awaited normalcy . Intangible, inexpressible, and yes, fleeting. I knew normalcy was never the goal; I knew stability could always be (and was, often) ripped out from under us. I knew travel, moving, and packing were part of the job we have. I'd prayed for many things to occur after we'd moved here but this feeling was not on that list. Yet it flooded my heart warmly as I listened to the rain and emptied the dishwasher. I had planned to write about my hatred for this time o...

A week from tomorrow we will have a real home. A return address, a place for our pots and pans, where our shoes will be inevitably strewn haphazardly around despite our various attempts at keeping them neat. My husband's green thumb will ensure we have plants and lots of them, and I will put a candle in every room. Perhaps we will finally print our wedding pictures. We will rebuild a home, and walk with as much faith we can muster into the next stage of our lives. The summer is almost over, and the heat is welling up inside with anticipation. It is quiet now, as we play house in my parents' home while they are away; finally cooking what we want, not being cooped up in a room when we need alone time. There is space to breathe in every room, and goodness is this how it is for everyone else? Next Saturday has always felt forever away, but now it is next Saturday and we aren't sure what to do with all of this. This summer has drug us to the outskirts of our trust, forced ...

Yesterday was Jon's birthday and I find myself most speechless on the days where I'm supposed to be the most full of praises and affirmations. And we spent the morning driving around the city to different churches with the air conditioning sputtering on and off, and the evening driving to Omaha and back, and we never acknowledged the sober reality that we'd spent most of his first day of 27 in the car. The heat is fading in slowly, in suffocating silence. Some days this farmland glows with glory. Others, it grows stagnate and stale. And we wait on the Lord out in this farmland. We wait on Him in relief that His faithfulness is not correlated with our trust, but with His own character. We cling to blurry hope on the stale days; we relish in the abundant glory on victorious days. We ask Him. He answers. "No's" sting our cheeks in shame and "yeses" feel foreign, abbreviated, delayed. But we have no other choice but to sit at His feet ...

This Starbucks is murmuring, my iced coffee is dripping, Norah Jones is crooning, and the world outside is swelling in anticipation for a storm they say will pass through. Jon took a day trip today so I've had a much-needed introvert day, complete with hiding from the septic pump people in desperate attempts to avoid all human interaction for the entire day. So the world is swelling and my soul is groaning because this world is so wearing, I'm seeing, for all of us. And often my personal pain hinders from me from seeing this, but we are all groaning, waiting, limping down our respective roads that are often riddled with pain and unmet desires. We all whisper those silent questions when night falls and we are forced to face our swollen hearts pregnant with longing, the when? the why? the how? I feel it too, friends. And I know you're here. I know your pain, though different than mine, is just as valid. It is deep. It is too complex for trite encouragement, too deep to de...

Oh, friends, it has been one of those days (weeks?). The sky and I have had a lot in common the past few days as we've both decided (simultaneously but separately) to start giving exactly zero craps, wailing and thundering at random times of the day, whenever we feel like it. Being 92% funded is both wildly exciting and wholly depressing. We have nothing to do. We have a few contacts left and if they miraculously get back to me, then we will have maybe a few hours of work to do and then we will find ourselves again with nothing to do, staring into oblivion and probably deciding upon another episode of Seinfeld, which has been our only anchor to the sea of sanity the past few months. We work from home, and so work at this point includes staring at my computer screen in my pajamas praying for God to give me an idea of something productive to do. Many times He's come through, but this week, ya'll, I have been scraping at the bottom of the barrel and I'm probably wron...

I'm caught between art nowadays, between listening to some good new (to me) tunes by my current faves James Taylor & Stevie Wonder, by this depressingly beautiful novel I'm working through, and a short story/memoir I'm writing that's too special to me to just slap together without much thought. Amidst all those things, though, I find myself here, where the words I spew are read by a handful of friends and strangers. Something about the inconsequentiality of writing these words keeps me coming back. I could be delving into timeless pieces of art, but I turn to this trivial space where my words will be soon forgotten. We are working hard, on this trek toward a percentage, a number, a dollar amount, a whatever. All we know is we aren't done yet, that we're homeless, that the days stretch long, and we feel guilty about not knowing what to do with ourselves sometimes. We pray more than we ever have, because we our motto now is, "If the Lord doesn't do ...

If you guys have never been to Sioux City, it is probably time for you to offer a sacrifice of thanksgiving to our good Lord. Jon and I are stuck here for a few days while we wait out a few appointments later on in the week, and find ourselves recklessly slandering this place without pause. Spring makes me too optimistic, I've decided, and all I brought to wear is shorts, tshirts, and a maxi skirt (not ideal for rainy, muddy farmland). So my outfit (one long-sleeved shirt and yoga pants) has remained the same (both daytime and nighttime) since Monday, which is surely a major turn-on for my husband. My conclusion from this week: I do better as a pessimist, in the winter. Speaking of winter, Jon and I have some news: we are moving to Minnesota! This exclamation point has meant many things in the past few weeks since finding out, but currently (I promise) it does mean excitement. We spent the last year preparing, support raising, and paying rent for our future home in Ames. I be...