I am loving seeing photos from our wedding. It makes it seem more real but I don't feel like I am looking at myself. It is almost as if I am looking at an actor who played me on the day. Life is returning to a kind of normality. In my blog yesterday I mentioned that there doesn't seem to be any 'normality' anymore.

I am realising that normality is something you may experience in your childhood but once you leave home nothing is normal ever again. things are always changing and new. I feel like often I am thinking "What would an adult do in this situation?" and then I do that because I don't feel very adult at all. My Mum told me recently that she doesn't feel old at all and feels often that she is making it up as she goes along - doing what she thinks an adult or Mum should do rather than something from within herself. I guess that is what socialisiation is all about - copying and knowing the expectations of certain roles in society.

So this raises the question - what should I be like as a wife? Now I come from a rather feminist background but anyone who knows me well will tell you I love to nest and can be a bit of a Mother Hen. My nick name at Uni was Aunty Marion. So this creates a certain conflict between wanting to avoid traditional gender roles and knowing I actually like making house, cooking and being a maternal person. This is the dilemma of a post feminist (is it?) world. I don't want to deny my own personality but I don't want to unconciously follow a model which is outdated and oppressive. So I will let you know how I get on!

Wow, I'm back on line in nore than one sense. I got married two weeks ago and have been away on honeymoon since. It has been a strange but wonderfull time. The day before the wedding was awful and I didn't sleep at all but by the time I was getting ready the next day I was loving it. THe service was fantastic. I can't remember the vows at all but I remember the message. I really appreciated that it focussed on keeping your relationship real especially on such an 'unreal' kind of day.

The honeymoon was great. We went away to an island in the Hauraki Gulf and ate great food, went for walks and read books. It is probably the best holiday I have ever had where I trully relaxed to the point where I couldn't quite wake up at all each day.

Settling back into 'normality', whatever that is, has been quite scary for me. I am a very proficient worrier and I have been afraid that we wouldn't be able to get things together. But things are good. We are all settled into our place and went for our first real grocery shop yesterday. strange how mundane things like that are exciting to me at the moment.

I am back at work today which is strange. Not feeling that motivated and very detached but as my collegues predict, it will probably only last 1 hour and I will be back into it.

I am feeling exhausted today. The days seem to be going on forever at the moment. I am planning a blobbing day tommorrow. I will sleep in , stay in my p.js and read and maybe watch a video. I have some marking to do but I am trying not to let that turn into the focus of the weekend. I do think rest is a discipline I need to work on. I told my finace last night that my one wish was to sleep, for a long, long time. A bit sad really but also reflects that I am quite satisfied and contented with my life at the moment.

I haven't blogged for a while. I have had a shocker of a couple of weeks but it has definitely been a faith building experience and I actually feel quite positive and excited despite the distress. My fiance and I have had real dramas over where to live when we are married. We found a place and had an awful time moving in. There was the shocking driveway, the negative nosy neighbour and a generally yucky feeling about the place. I am not one to go in for hyper sensitive spiritual stuff but we definitely felt that it was a spiritually yucky place. So we made the scary decision to give notice after only one weekend. We immediately felt better.

So this last weekend we looked at new places. We found some great ones and I realised how I limit my expectations of what God can provide. so much of the reasoning about accepting the last place had been about thinking we couldn't get anything better. We loved one place more than the rest as it was newly redecorated, quiet and in a block of nice little units with professionals living in them. We also loved the fact that we both know the area really well and feel like it is already home. The landlord is lovely.

So God does provide what you need. I am so glad that we had the courage to leave the yucky place and that we really believed that there was somewhere for us. I kind of feel like we have been too blessed and that sceptical and pessimistic part of me thinks there are other people in need of much more than us. But I don't think God works on a continuum of need, making decisions based on who has greater need in comparision with someone else, only helping those who 'earn' it through their suffering. However there does seem to be injustice in the blessings some people receive while others struggle on.

One of the amazing things is that over this stressful time my fiance and I have grown closer together. There has been no blame laying and we feel even more sure that we want to spend the rest of our lives together. Throughout our relationship we have struggled to work out how to make God the centre and still be genuine and real. The pressure and stress we have both been under has meant we have prayed together and clung to God and therefore our faiths have been strengthened. It feels like when I was a teenager and went on Scripture Union camps. I would have these really intense weeks of being so aware of God but then return to the 'real world' and think it was impossible to live like that all the time. Now I have seen a glimpse of what it is like to have God behind me and before me in my daily life and I am thirsty for more. I feel invigorated and hopeful that as adulthood and all the responsibilities it entails stretches before me, that I can live a purposeful and radical life.