Christmas Letter 2024
on marriage, career, and moving to Texas
Dear friends and family —
2024 has been a year of major risks and transitions!
After Ben and I married on October 21, 2023, the holidays passed in a blur. We entered the new year hopeful for what it would hold. Ben was coming up to a year of full-time work at Bartlett Tree Experts as an arborist climber. I was working part-time at Church of the Good Shepherd in Lynchburg, Virginia. We both had dreams beyond these day-time occupations. Ben started a podcast about outdoor guiding. I was ramping up my film & television newsletter, Leading Ladies, and I had other more personal writing ambitions in mind. Ben turned 30, and we threw a big party with our good friends at a brewery in downtown Lynchburg.
People often say the first year of marriage is so hard. But our relationship proved not to be the most difficult part: rather, our jobs and our finances were the consistent point of stress for the first half of the year. We had existential questions of career and vocation. And as we wrestled with our longings for what we felt created to do, we also faced the stark reality of a financial situation that simply wasn’t working.
Evening dinner conversations revolved around potential solutions. We had all kinds of wild ideas for reducing our bills. We followed through on one — we sold one of cars which still had a lien, and bought an e-bike from a friend. For those of you who know Lynchburg: many days Ben rode that electric bike from Cabell Street downtown out to Leesville Road by way of Timberlake. Yikes! Every day I anxiously checked his location to make sure he made it there alive.
Even as we sought to minimize our costs, we asked ourselves: what do we want to do for work? What will pay for more than just the bills? What makes sense with our skill sets and our passions? In the spring, I listened to So Good They Can’t Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Work You Love by Cal Newport. One day, as I walked along the Blackwater Creek Trail, listening and thinking, it hit me: I spent years developing teaching skills. I also developed writing skills. And I’m passionate about reading great books. My high school dream of teaching literature courses came back to me. I didn’t know where or when, but I knew I what I wanted to pursue. I began my job search.
On vacation, Ben read The One Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth About Extraordinary Results by Gary Keller. It’s a business advice book that my dad had read in the year or two before his death. The book poses a simple question over and over: what is the one thing you can do (today, this week, this year) that will make everything else easier or unnecessary? Ben raced through The One Thing during our week on the Delaware shore, and came to the conclusion: tree work is his “one thing” (see video below!).
So there we were in June: Ben was committed to being an arborist, and I was committed to finding a full-time job, preferably as a teacher. And even though we loved our life in Lynchburg, VA, our discussions on the future opened our hearts to the possibility of moving. We reminded ourselves that it’s quite normal to move for work. And if we do, but don’t like it, we can always move back to Lynchburg.
This openness to moving gave me the permission I need to apply to an organization I’d been aware of since my senior year of college: a network of classical charter schools in the Southwest called Great Hearts. I sent in my application in July, and began receiving calls and inquiries from headmasters at several different Great Heart locations.
A headmaster at a school in San Antonio called. He lead an upper school called Northern Oaks, and they were looking for a special education teaching assistant. It was hourly but full-time, with the possibility of moving into a full-time general ed position when one opened up. As I listened to this voicemail, it struck a chord: I texted a college friend and discovered that Northern Oaks was the school she helped found in its first few years. She had worked with the headmaster. Then I discovered that several other friends from college worked at that location too!
The school made me an official offer for the TA position, but Ben and I struggled to come to a decision: did it make sense to move to Texas for an hourly job, especially if Ben didn’t have a transfer in place? We prayed and prayed. The day that I owed the headmaster a decision, he called me again — a last minute position as a Humane Letters teacher had opened up. I would teach literature and history, the American Tradition, to ninth grade students plus one section of 8th grade US History…. FULL TIME! It was an offer too good to refuse. We decided to accept, even without confirmation of Ben’s transfer. But sure enough, the San Antonio branch of Bartlett accepted Ben as an arborist climber.
And so, with a three week turnaround, we made our relocation plans. In the first week of August, we moved to San Antonio, Texas. We drove for two days, — well, mostly Ben Drove— towing our little Hyundai Sonata behind our U-Haul. We arrived at 2:00am, crashed at a colleague’s apartment, and I went to my first day on the job six hours later while Ben went house-hunting. We signed on a new apartment that evening, and moved in the following day, on my 31st birthday. The school year commenced five days later.
Since then, we’ve experienced extreme highs: the new community of like-minded people at Great Hearts, the relief of financial stability, and the excitement doing something completely new together. We spent Sunday afternoons at the pool. We shopped for groceries at H-E-B, the grocery chain that every Texan raves about. We enjoyed the cuisine that a larger metropolitan city gives one access to. We saw my favorite band play their 10 year anniversary show at Stable Hall. We visited friends in Dallas-Fort Worth. In search of fall, we went on a hike in a state park called Lost Maples (we saw a couple of maples but they hadn’t turned yet). We found an Anglican parish that is much more high church than we’re used to — we sing and chant everything.
But we also experienced extreme lows: the theft of our property, long working hours, and the loss of of the physical closeness of our longtime communities back east. In September, our car was stolen from our complex and joy-ridden until it was totaled on the 1604 highway loop. In October, we experienced what Ben called “reverse seasonal depression.” The calendar said it was the tenth month, the days were getting shorter, but the temperature and the foliage stayed the same. We resented the sun and blue skies. We wanted rain, overcast skies, dead leaves, and cold! We wondered: had we made a mistake in moving to Texas?
In November, our emotions began to stabilize, but several events in the life of our friends and families made the reality of our distance sink in. We are so far away from the ones we love. And then, on the evening of December 2nd, Ben opened the door of our garage — the one we rented to keep our vehicles secure — to discover that someone had broken in, in broad daylight, through the locked walk-in door and stolen our electric-bike, his chainsaw, his mountain bike, and several other valuables. We were angry, confused, and sad. It truly felt like we had moved to the Wild West, where your property wasn’t respected. Would our personal and physical safety be respected in the future?
Yet here we are, physically safe and grateful for good insurance policies. And the community at Great Hearts has been so supportive — my colleagues give me rides to and from work. Someone anonymously gifted us a security camera, leaving it on my desk with a note that said “Christmas came early.” We are deepening new friendships and spending time with them at their homes, which are starting to feel like our homes away from home. Ben has been going to martial arts twice a week, right around the corner from our apartment. He’s learning to work with Live Oaks, which are incredible trees. And even though we miss the top-rope gym in Lynchburg, we have a local bouldering gym that ain’t so bad.
My job is demanding: I often say being a teacher is an impossible job. I work 7 to 4 every day, and usually have an hour or two of prep every night, at least, and several hours of grading and prep on the weekends. But I love what I’m teaching — great American literature and American history from the 1860’s to present day — and I’m learning so much.
On December 31, 2024, we feel confident that God brought us here to San Antonio for a reason. We have learned so much: how to more deeply trust God to uphold us, provide for us, and give us peace. We have learned so much about ourselves, our weaknesses and strengths. Our relationship has grown in depth and significance. We are daily grateful that God brought us together a little over two years ago. No matter what challenges and adventures come our way, we say to each other often, “There’s no one I’d rather do this with than you.”
We are uncertain what new challenges and adventures 2025 will bring. But we know that moving to Texas in our first year of marriage was the necessary step for the future God has for us. He’s telling our story, and it’s very good.
We covet your prayers and send you our love! Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
Love, the Wrights
P.S. Here are a few other photo highlights from a full and beautiful year! It was so hard to choose because there were so many good ones — 2024 in photos coming soon!
Winter
Spring
Summer
Fall
