Happy 2024, everyone! We are so honored that you’re a part of our lives, and would love to do some catch-up on the Eccles crew.
It’s a joy to enter the year with the desire to have more of the same kind of living. As an Enneagram 7 I thrive on change, variety, and action. It’s weird, but true. The past few years have been consistent in one way: change. The 2023 goal Kevin and I had was to end the year with the same jobs as we started the year. And we did it!
We spent this past year falling in love with the place God has planted us. In our 15 years of marriage, this is the most content we have ever been with our lives. We love our small, simple home with it’s huge, heated garage which we fill regularly with brunch friends, birthday parties, house church, and football gatherings. We may have 1 bathroom and no dishwasher, but that can’t stop hospitality. Hospitality is more of an attitude than a place, a willingness to share what you have and a sincere love for the people in front of you.
We love our neighborhood and the five blocks we circulate multiple times each day to walk to and from school, to wind down in the evenings on our family walks. This pedestrian living is on purpose, keeping us connected with the land and the lives around us. Walking slows our pace so we can pay attention to our bodies, appreciate nature, and form relationships.
We coined the phrase hyper-local this year, living, shopping, walking, working, and playing within a two-mile radius. We venture outside of this radius on occasion, but naming this value has helped us make decisions. It helps us spend our time with meaning and margin. It keeps our money local –at Hyperion Coffee, Cafe Liv, and Cross Street Coffee, at the Thrift Depot and the Food Co-op, at Aubree’s and Maiz. And living hyper-locally fosters neighboring relationships; like today when we went to the Thrift Depot and saw Ms. Maggie, Ms. Jennifer, and parents of my former students/girls’ friends. We got to see Ms. Freda, the owner, who always makes us feel like valued and important, and we got to stop and give pets to our neighbor’s new dog. Plus, exercise. And being outdoors. Two daily musts for me.
Psalm 37:3 lodged itself into my spirit last year, and I believe it’s going to continue to serve as an anchor for me in 2024.
Trust the Lord and do good; live in the land, and farm faithfulness.
Psalm 37:3, CEB
We’re going to keep doing more of the same this year.
Junia continues to be a source of joy for all of us. She is rocking her second year in full-time school, now a Kindergartener at YIES. She adores her teacher, and is well on her way to reading, sounding out difficult words to add them to her wish list. She plays happily by herself, always making up songs to fill our home with music. She loves playing with friends, and especially with her big sister, and WOW this sweet girl also has a strength of personality that will serve her well. Junia unabashedly exerts her independence when a boundary has been crossed. We’re proud of her for that (even as we work on the explosive reactions.) Junia has made wonderful friends with many different schoolmates, and she loves giving mommy hugs while her friends stretch out their arms to hug “Mrs. Eccles.” Junia has an instinctive connection with spiritual things and will randomly say things like, “I love Jesus,” while watching a show or snuggling. Her soul is as beautiful as she is.
Kirsten is a small and mighty 2nd grader. This girl has an endless energy and enthusiasm that the world needs. She is fierce defender of her friends, and a tender-heart. Kirsten has taught herself how to do a great cartwheel and will drop and do a headstand anywhere, anytime. She is the best little chicken farmer, snuggling our Black Australorp hens most every day before collecting their eggs. She smiles with her whole self, and loves laughing and getting people to giggle almost as much as she likes staying up too late reading. Kirsten has overtaken Mom’s MarioKart abilities and is hot on Daddy’s tail. She can put together 1500 piece Lego sets with no assistance, and is reading voraciously. Her imagination has really taken flight this year, and it’s so fun to hear her playing make-believe with her sister and friends. Kirsten has a spiritual gift of hospitality and would have people over every day of the week if she could. If she and I decide to throw a party, there’s going to be 50 people there with 1 day lead time. To end the year, she turned 8 and is stoked that her front tooth is finally coming through after 1-1/2 years.
Kevin is in his second year working as a Database Administrator for the WMC of the FMC (the World Ministries Center of the Free Methodist Church of North America). It’s so cool to see him shine at this Venn-Diagram overlap of pastoral ministry and administration. He works remotely and adores having a quiet house during the day to work on his spreadsheets. When the girls get home from school he’s starting dinner and blasting their favorite Spotify songs (including Sweet Child of Mine -Guns n’ Roses, King of New York from the Newsies, and Good to Be Alive from a 1994 Geoff Moore & the Distance). Kevin has perfected cast-iron cooking and plays short-order cook on his Blackstone grill at least a few times a month for our brunch gatherings. He loves sitting and watching the chickens, reading and snuggling with the girls, and working on his chess strategy. This year I finally bought him a his sought-after wooden chess set which he uses regularly. (Kirsten has already surpassed me as a chess player as well, and Kevin comes into my 5th grade classroom weekly to play against my students.)
As for me, I absolutely love my life. Being a 5th grade teacher, at an IB school, five blocks from our house, is the best thing ever. I don’t think I ever realized how extraverted I was until I was surrounded by people every day. But it’s not just random strangers sharing space with me, it’s 16 students who I love like they’re my own kids. (I talk about “my kids” all the time and have to specify if I’m talking about my actual children or my students.) How cool is it to spend 7 hours a day with these 10 and 11 year olds who are in a beautifully-formative stage of life? We get to have deep conversations, ask higher-level questions, enjoy humor and sarcasm, all while learning math, reading, and social studies skills that will serve them throughout life.
As if that weren’t awesome enough, I get to work with two incredible teammates–Vanessa and Tabia. We jive so well. I adore these two. We support each other, have each other’s backs, collaborate on ideas and plans, and genuinely value each other. My mentor and instructional coach, Sarah, is one of my favorite people to talk to; she makes me feel empowered and want to grow at the same time. And then there’s an ever-growing list of my colleagues who’ve become true friends. I adore talking with them about real life, laughing and crying on the good days and the bad. This community will drop everything to support each other. It’s the most incredible thing. (It’s the way community is meant to be done.) Plus, they make my job so much fun.
And call me crazy, but I even love the lesson planning, the 700+ slides I make each week, the newsletter writing to my families, the leading of student council and recycling, and building Roadmaps (by U-M) for digital curriculum. (I was super proud to have been named the first ever Roadmap Educator of the Week in November and featured in two MLive articles 1 and 2). Teaching is totally my jam, and talking about it gets me giddy every time. It’s bonkers to feel this way after doing so many other cool things in my life, but I love it.
And now, just as Kirsten prays many nights at dinner, we pray our world will be a better place where wars end and all people be safe and loved. And may your daily lives, both momentous and mundane, be lived in love and grounded by peace.
Melanie, Kevin, Kirsten & Junia
