Spring 2017
It’s been almost two years since I last wrote a “life” post. After last year’s March furnace fires, things quieted down… briefly. After the fire Mari and I moved into the on-campus missionary housing at SBTS and finished up our semester there. At the end of that my parents came up to help us move everything into a friend’s garage. We surprised my parents with the good news they’d been waiting for: Mari was pregnant.
They were, of course, ecstatic, and there was, of course, a catch: after we heading back to Norway for the summer, I would return alone to Louisville in the fall while Mari would work in Norway to get maternity leave. Because I need a Master’s degree in theology to get a visa to do any theological work in Norway, I couldn’t even intern at our church in Norway. Getting a master’s degree, then, was top priority for me, and I would have until the end of 2019 (when Mari will finish).
Summer 2017
Mari and I had a good summer in between. We drove around Jotunheimen National Park where Norway’s tallest mountain stands.
Fall and Winter 2017-18
In the fall, my parents helped me move into my new efficiency apartment, just big enough for one person, and I smashed five classes together. I came back to Norway for the winter break to my wonderful, very pregnant wife. Now, our son was “supposed” to be born on January 3rd. That being so, our plan was that I would head back to KY on the 19th, and Mari and Micah would visit sometime later that semester. But then Micah didn’t come on the 3rd, but on Sunday the 14th. My plan changed the instant he was born. How could I leave on Friday?
After emailing Southern and making numerous class changes, I was able to stay in Norway for another month and help Mari take care of our newborn baby boy, Micah Jonathan Robinson. It was the best sleep deprivation I’ve ever had trying to figure out our little boy. When I had to head back to KY, I was then leaving two loves. Thankfully, I only needed to wait five weeks to see them again.
Spring and Summer 2018
I crammed all of my Systematic II and III work into those five weeks and then relished the six weeks I spent with Mari and Micah when they visited. We drove all over to see friends and family, but unfortunately we could not fit everyone in (always the problem).
M&M flew back to Norway. I packed up our apartment, and two weeks later I followed. Mari had had two online classes with Southern this past summer while I spent time looking after Micah and tried to let Mari do her schoolwork. We went through Philippians with our church’s youth group on Wednesday evenings, and I was able to teach a Bible study through the book of Colossians for three weeks at our church in July, which was good fun. This semester I am taking three classes (a light, easy load), and Mari had an online class. Micah sleeps well and is a now-crawling, cute, happy, patient ten-month-old who likes to laugh.
Winter 2018
Visa issues still abound (for now). Mari is not yet an on-campus student, so she is only “visiting” (and is thus on a visitor’s visa). Thus she can only be here for 90 days. 90 days in-90 days out, that’s how those visas work. I was in Norway for 90 days in the summer. All that to say, Mari has to leave the country by Nov. 11, and I can’t enter Norway until Nov. 21. What will we do in the meantime? Go to one of our dearest, favorite places on earth: York, England.
We’ll spend the winter in Norway, and when we return to KY Mari will be a student again and I will be working at home and watching a one-year-old trying to figure out our future. We’ll see how that goes.
spoiledmilks 