It passed in a blur. Waking up in a room with the majority of our children perhaps wasn’t the most romantic way to mark our fourteenth wedding anniversary, but we murmured a hazy congratulations to each other and hauled ourselves into the day. With a (kid-free) work trip to Nhulunbuy looming on the horizon, we promised to celebrate properly when we were up north.

Fourteen years is a strange number. Smack bang in the middle of child-raising years, with our days filled to the brim, we hardly know how to process the reality that we are hurtling through our thirties together. Memories of life before children seem more of a dream than a history, a perplexing phase that we moved through without ever fully taking advantage of the freedom we never realised we had.

Six years we spent together – travelling, dabbling in part-time jobs and starting careers, starting a church for the irreligious, throwing lavish dinner parties and being the masters of our own hours. When Eli came onto the scene we hoped we were ready for a meaningful shift, and he sure delivered.

Our lives became tethered to a new reality. With this new life we were responsible for – loved with every fibre of our beings – we suddenly found ourselves on a plane we hadn’t realised existed. It was wonderful and exhausting, unpredictable and boring. Somehow we managed to create three more humans and their utterly unique personalities have us marvelling (and fretting) at the brilliance (and complexity) of life.

Marriage can be tested by parenting. Time is no longer an abstract concept, able to be spent without consequence. Activities and passions become transactional, taken or granted depending on the disposition and energy levels of the other. We push and pull, support and launch each other – a complicated dance of respect and balance. Explosions occur occasionally, and we are forced to regroup, realign values and responsibilities to sustain everyone.

For the past three nights we have been relishing time away in Nhulunbuy, an utterly unique town situated at the northernmost tip of Australia. With Dave’s expertise in professional development and my writing capabilities, we were destined for Nhulunbuy Christian College, a vibrant school offering passionate and wholehearted education to the close-knit community there. Our parents bravely agreed to take care of the children while we ventured into the unknown. Our goal: to relish the moments alone together, while being as helpful to the school as possible.

In the past, being away from the children has been conflicted for me. The feat of being able to be completely immersed in the moment and enjoy our time away proving more bittersweet than freeing. Thoughts of the children tethered me to somewhere else, a piece of my heart stuck behind wherever they are. One bonus of being 12,000 kilometres away, however, was the reality that one cannot simply pop back, so one must resolve to seize the day.

We absolutely did. Perhaps it was the legitimacy that the element of work gave the trip. We spent many of the hours engaged in life-giving, meaningful work; having deep conversations and dreaming of what the school could become.

Or perhaps it was the incredible experiences we were lucky enough to enjoy. In our down time, we were whisked away to tour the incredible surrounds – with a boat ride on the sapphire blue of the bay, a rumbling ride down the red dirt road that provides the only land-based entry to Nhulunbuy, to delicious dinners and a view of the indigenous communities around the area. Principal, Tanya, and her husband, Tim, proved wonderful companions and we thoroughly enjoyed every part of the whirlwind trip.

Dave and I marvelled at the ease of travelling with no kids in tow, the silent space for our thoughts to unfold, and the uninterrupted conversations about what our lives could look like if we leaned into the possibilities before us.

We met humble and unassuming heroes, people who give of themselves daily – whether spending holidays lovingly setting up classrooms, gracefully surviving significant tragedies, accepting positions of leadership because of a deep passion for the staff and students, travelling into remote Homelands to provide much needed dental treatment, flying the injured to Darwin to receive proper care. Every single person we met was utterly inspiring…and so down to earth. We were challenged and moved by each encounter.

At times, the pressure of normal life gets the better of us. Of me, particularly, as I reach the edge of my patience, bubble over in anger and have my perspective reduced to a pin-prick of despair at the chaos of life with four kids. We react rather than design, recover rather than thrive, and view the walls of our existence as fixed.

In Nhulunbuy we walked more slowly. Breathed in the humid, pressing air. We stared across the blue expanse and wondered out loud. We said ‘yes’ more often, lingered over meals, felt our spirituality enliven as we embraced anew the reality of our flawed humanity and constant need for a greater Source.

We cannot see, in this moment, what our next fourteen years hold. No doubt there will be brilliant beauty and fragments of pain. But as we stand in this thin place, this liminal space, we have unbounded hope – for our family, for our marriage and for our future. The adventure awaits and we breathe, waiting to step forward into the unknown.