"I've been one poor correspondent, and I've been too, too hard to find, but it doesn't mean you ain't been on my mind." -- America, Sister Goldenhair
The last eight weeks have been a strange mix: of waiting and wondering, of contentment and restlessness, of making it work and impatience, of beauty and messes, of loneliness and family and soaking up the fading daylight. I don’t know what they would have looked like if we were still in Tennessee, or if we were in a more stable situation here in Virginia. Depending on the day—or really, the moment—when you catch me, I might be overwhelmed with joy and gratitude or I might just be overwhelmed.
New in the area and new to homeschooling, we have found ways to fill many of our days. And yet I’ve found myself with time, as I don’t yet have many external obligations. The first time we did this, in Tennessee, those expanses made me feel anxious. I felt they had to be filled. This time I’ve tried hard to acknowledge that this is not yet real life, since when we settle here, it will actually be all the way across town. Our every day won’t look much like it does at the moment. This is a bit of a holding pattern. But then there’s a balance. I think going too far in that direction, waiting around for life to begin, can be dangerous. I can make all kinds of excuses: We can’t find a church yet because we don’t know where we’re going to live. We can’t join this club or that group because we’re not sure when we’re going to move. I can’t sign the kids up for that field trip, because we might be moving that day.
It’s hard to embrace the everyday when living in between; it’s hard to stay motivated to be fully present when you’re moving through a tunnel to an unknown destination at a pace you can’t control. These times always remind me that I’m never actually in control of it anyway. All I can really ever do is trust and pray, focus on the problem in front of me, and take care of the people around me.
And if I really believe that, then I’ve mostly been doing awesome, though I haven’t had much to say about it, nothing to write about it, and if you call me at a weak moment, you might think otherwise.
Pending a successful inspection tomorrow, we are set to settle on a home in mid-November. It’s not our dream home. But something about living the way we have been, in a ramshackle rental house with most of our life in boxes, makes a late 70’s ranch with roomfuls of eventual upgrades strangely appealing. Because it will be our 70’s ranch, the upgrades ours to dream and do. It will be the first place our family will call home that we intend to stay and grow in. So I guess that makes it kind of a dream after all.
This season has been so weird, so full of faith and doubt, blessing and uncertainty, hard lessons and lovely moments and seeming contradictions. But when I look at the photos, all I see is the beauty.
New in the area and new to homeschooling, we have found ways to fill many of our days. And yet I’ve found myself with time, as I don’t yet have many external obligations. The first time we did this, in Tennessee, those expanses made me feel anxious. I felt they had to be filled. This time I’ve tried hard to acknowledge that this is not yet real life, since when we settle here, it will actually be all the way across town. Our every day won’t look much like it does at the moment. This is a bit of a holding pattern. But then there’s a balance. I think going too far in that direction, waiting around for life to begin, can be dangerous. I can make all kinds of excuses: We can’t find a church yet because we don’t know where we’re going to live. We can’t join this club or that group because we’re not sure when we’re going to move. I can’t sign the kids up for that field trip, because we might be moving that day.
It’s hard to embrace the everyday when living in between; it’s hard to stay motivated to be fully present when you’re moving through a tunnel to an unknown destination at a pace you can’t control. These times always remind me that I’m never actually in control of it anyway. All I can really ever do is trust and pray, focus on the problem in front of me, and take care of the people around me.
And if I really believe that, then I’ve mostly been doing awesome, though I haven’t had much to say about it, nothing to write about it, and if you call me at a weak moment, you might think otherwise.
Pending a successful inspection tomorrow, we are set to settle on a home in mid-November. It’s not our dream home. But something about living the way we have been, in a ramshackle rental house with most of our life in boxes, makes a late 70’s ranch with roomfuls of eventual upgrades strangely appealing. Because it will be our 70’s ranch, the upgrades ours to dream and do. It will be the first place our family will call home that we intend to stay and grow in. So I guess that makes it kind of a dream after all.
This season has been so weird, so full of faith and doubt, blessing and uncertainty, hard lessons and lovely moments and seeming contradictions. But when I look at the photos, all I see is the beauty.
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