Starting Over
-by Alexander and Katie Pyles
If Starting Over Were a Sport, We Are at the Olympic Level.
On June 6th, at 11:57pm, our first child was born. 72 days later, we made the decision to start over. We were rubbed raw with the newness of our life: newlyweds, new parents, and new caretakers for an adult with special needs. One of us was newly unemployed. Grief for the loss of Alex’s mother, who had passed the year before, was renewed every morning.
This whole story begins with the loss of Anna, Alex’s mother. She was living with Alex’s brother (who has Autism Spectrum Disorder, along with mental health, learning and intellectual disabilities) in Florida, so we didn’t get to see them very often, since we were in Ohio. Anna had advanced MS, and she tended to hide her various medical ups and downs from us. We didn’t realize she was declining until she was already in Hospice. She died within the week... three months before our wedding. We let go of our plans for newlywed life and took in Alex’s brother, Nicholas. The boys rented a small little house so that Nicholas could bring his dog to Ohio with him. Katie moved after the wedding. We started our lives over without Anna on this side of Heaven. This was our first unmooring.
After much discernment, we realized that the Lord was calling us to start having children right away. Our daughter, Agatha was conceived on the first cycle—a gift from Anna. Two months after we announced our pregnancy, Alex was informed that he would be losing his job in in early spring—mere weeks before our little Agatha was due. We took a collective breath. Starting over in a new career was not in the plan. But even this early on, we knew that living within the plan was never going to be our reality. Alex was bringing in three-fourths of our income and had been fairly settled in his position. The anger we (okay, mostly Katie) felt at the Lord was immediate and intense—hadn’t He asked us to have a baby? Would He now take away our health insurance and most of our income? Hadn’t we suffered enough? The wilderness of this season opened before us like a vast, dark ocean. Neither of us knew for sure if we could swim.
For a while, we dug in our heels and tried to make it work, distant from any real job opportunities or support systems. But in August of 2017, we decided it was time to start over in a new city. The pros outweigh the cons by a mile. We were drowning; our savings, which we had been clutching tightly, was dwindling faster than we could have anticipated. Katie’s parents had been asking us to move in with them since Alex lost his job, and when we finally agreed. There was peace in that release. There was also an acute sense of failure, tinged with the bitterness of a complete loss of control: forced to leave the job Katie had loved and worked hard at since graduating with her masters, forced to leave the life of independence and the appearance of worldly success, forced to accept that we did not know how to swim after all.
We planned to leave roughly a week after our daughter was baptized. The love that our friends and family poured into us during these tender days is beyond words. We said goodbye to our house in a classic Catholic way: we had everyone over after Aggie’s baptism for a bonfire, drinks, and some good old-fashioned fellowship. We threw a bash to rival our (very awesome) wedding, all to honor our small community in Ohio, and our sweet baby girl, who was entering into something so much more. During those few days, we breathed in only gratitude. Family and friends flew into Cleveland to celebrate with us and stayed the weekend to help us pack 95% of our stuff into a trailer. As we watched Katie’s parents tow it back to Illinois, along with Nicholas in the back seat, we exhaled loss. We slept on the floor of the nursery—our favorite room in the house. One we couldn’t bear to say goodbye to, the one we packed up last. It is important, we learned, to properly say goodbye to a space when it has witnessed so much love.
Living with Katie’s parents was, in a word, an adventure. It was a fresh start, but the emotions surrounding this start were complex: gratitude, tinged with restlessness. Is there any other way to describe moving back into your childhood home in your hour of need? We struggled with many things during this time. We had to let go of a certain amount of control and freedom and fighting our own feelings of failure and displacement as we frantically job searched. We walked through those weeks with open hands, but there were few opportunities for two young millennials with too many degrees. However, we soon found our footing and were able to start over in new fields.
It was the first time both of us had worked full time at the same time, and we quickly discovered the painful logistics of this reality. Juggling how to get our daughter to childcare, dealing with being with her only three hours a day, and managing her sleep was grueling. We mourned Agatha not having one parent at home, especially when she got the flu. Spiritually, we continued to struggle. In hindsight, we can see where the Lord drew near, where He held us through our transitions and our disappointments, but at the time, it was difficult to believe in His Goodness. Despite all of this, we were starting to feel as though we were able to swim on our own.
Then we got pregnant. Again. We were drowning once more. Katie’s mental health at that time could be described as precarious at best. Living in crisis mode had become the norm, and anxiety grew in the empty space where peace should live. We had to move out and we had to do it soon. Katie’s parents, ever patient and supportive, were not excited about welcoming a newborn into an already packed house. We felt we couldn’t impose on their generosity any longer. Miraculously, we found a home for rent within our price range. After this, the Lord ushered in a season of consolation. We both found two new jobs that better fit this new phase of our lives, with two young children and a special needs adult. There was suddenly time and space for therapy, for spiritual growth, and for establishing a daily routine that didn’t leave us drained and empty at the end of it. We could start over, this time by choice.
By the time our son was born, we could call ourselves settled. We laughed when we celebrated our second wedding anniversary and looked at our stats: two kids, the lifespan of one dog, two homes, and four jobs. We have learned how to start over with joy. Passing through this crucible gave us intimate knowledge of chaos. When small things don’t go according to plan in our day-to-day lives, we both found that because we were so stretched by our past two years, we could adjust without too much stress. In August of 2018, we welcomed Augustine Matthias into our family with the same joy that we welcomed his sister the summer before; a glorious unfolding of love.
There are funny and difficult things that have cropped up from this season of our lives. For example, this past Christmas we realized that we don’t have any standardized family traditions. We tend to overreact to bigger problems and financial decisions because we are so used to reacting to crises. We are learning how to operate NOT in a crisis mode for the first time in our marriage. This has been our biggest hurdle—how to believe in the reality of our bank account, our lease, our stability and how to trust it won’t slip through our fingers.
Neither of us could really tell you how we felt the Lord was going to unveil what He had in store for us. And neither of us ever thought our family would find a normal gear to operate in. But the Lord gave us something so valuable: a roadmap for hope. We survived this big...thing. So, when we have blow-out arguments, when we run into difficulties within our marriage, especially as we juggle our children and Nicholas, we suddenly find forgiveness as something within reach. Starting over after disagreements, after hurt words or hurt feelings comes more naturally to us than we believe it would have otherwise. So many moments were truly “sink or swim” for our marriage during that season, but we carried each other through it. We know the depth of each other’s devotion. We find it easier to sacrifice for the other, to give gifts to each other, than we did at the beginning. It was so easy for both of us, prior to all this, to wallow in our present states of life, grasping for control and the image of success. However, the Lord has given us humility and clarity, and our long-term vision for our family has never been sharper.
We have learned, through this big Starting Over and the millions of times we had to start over within it, that fear and hope can sometimes feel like the same thing. We have learned that sometimes the Lord is quiet so that we can have the space to work ourselves out of bad situations, but only so we can know our own strength. The best thing He did for either of us (besides His Death and Resurrection, obviously) was to lead us to each other. Hope is an easier thing to carry in community—even if we have to take turns. We look forward to a lifetime of starting over, with each other. In our case, the words of our family patron, Mother Teresa, ring true: “I have found the paradox, that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love.”
Meet Alexander & Katie Pyles:
Alexander & Katie Pyles reside in IL with their two little monsters, Aggie & Gus and Alex's brother, Nicholas. Katie works as a youth minster and Alex for a Catholic NFP.
Alexander & Katie Pyles reside in IL with their two little monsters, Aggie & Gus and Alex's brother, Nicholas. Katie works as a youth minster and Alex for a Catholic NFP.
