Like many a Northern Virginia native, I used to say I would never return after college. God proved me wrong, as he so often likes to do. After graduating from Wheaton College my brand-new husband and I moved to Falls Church and, on our very first Sunday of church hunting, we found Restoration. It was there that I fell in love with the Anglican tradition, and with NoVa. I swore I wouldn’t leave – until God called us away to Honolulu, of all places.

Our years in Hawaii brought many sweet surprises: church planting, collegiate ministry, a (for me) unexpected fondness for the beach! But the biggest surprise of all was the way in which God used the people we met there to call me into ministry. At the height of the pandemic, after much discernment and with the encouragement of our tiny church plant, I found myself enrolling in a Master of Divinity program at Northern Theological Seminary. CS Lewis once said that he was the most reluctant convert in all England; I may have been the most reluctant seminary student. God’s calling was both the biggest and sweetest surprise I have ever known.

With the benefit of hindsight, I can see the seeds that Lord had planted in me since high school to call me into ordained ministry. But at the time, I was bewildered by the path my life had taken. I suddenly found myself helping to baptize college students in the ocean, sharing the gospel while hiking through rainforests, and waking up at 5am to attend classes in a different time zone. My ministry in Hawaii was an exercise in submitting my will to the Lord’s, watching the fruit he brought about through my obedience. So, when he prompted us to come back home to Virginia, we never questioned that he could bear good fruit here, too. I am thrilled to be back at Restoration, this time as a curate! I can’t wait to see how the Lord is going to teach and use us here.

My husband Dakota and I have made our home once again in Falls Church, where we live with our two little boys, heaps of books, and more yarn than I could knit in a lifetime, though I do plan to try (ask me to teach you!). You can find us playing board games, wandering nature trails, or watching old musicals.