I've been gone. Gone from my writing, gone from my routines, gone from any shred of schedule. It feels like I've been gone from my brain! I've missed it. The brain. And everything else. I thrive best on a regular plan of action; a flowing stream that keeps right on flowing. My goodness, we have been disrupted!
First of all, the summer happened. It does that every year, I'm told, and every year I'm less prepared for the change in routine than I would like to be. That disruption is just fine. It just means that I am spending more time with my kidlets and less time alone with my thoughts.
The next change was our missionaries. It's been a flurry of getting ready and shopping and preparing and gathering things and packing up a childhood's worth of memories. They will be men when those cardboard boxes are opened again.
The last change was the one that turned our worlds upside-down. In the space of two weeks, we went from happily living in our spacious home to paring out, packing up, and moving away. We moved in with my dad, to care for him and his Parkinson's disease. It was not completely unexpected, as I look back. I was feeling a bit of wanderlust, to the point of checking out houses for sale, and I specifically wanted to find a place to live on my dad's side of town. But the suddenness of the whole thing was dramatic enough to take my breath away. I dragged my exhausted body out of bed every morning, hollered, "This is crazy!" to no one in particular, cried, and then packed like a mad woman. I won't attempt write about the insanity of moving 10 people's things to a house half the size - I would not even be able to use complete sentences. (But I did write about it in my letters to my missionary boys, and that's where many of the summer posts come from.)
After all the hubbub of moving and the logistics of building walls to accommodate our family in what was then a two-bedroom house (besides my dad's room) died down, I expected to feel cramped and distraught. But I don't. I am at peace. Maybe moving back into my childhood home has something to do with it. Maybe having lived in this neighborhood only five years ago (although in a different house) has something to do with it. Maybe living in a quieter area, where my children play with new friends in the street in front of the house has something to do with it. Maybe it's all of those things, combined with the quiet assurance that I'm where I ought to be, doing what I ought to be doing. That Heaven-sent peace has been such a blessing in the middle of our chaos.
I'm back - back writing, back thinking again, trying to get back into a routine. And back home.
First of all, the summer happened. It does that every year, I'm told, and every year I'm less prepared for the change in routine than I would like to be. That disruption is just fine. It just means that I am spending more time with my kidlets and less time alone with my thoughts.
The next change was our missionaries. It's been a flurry of getting ready and shopping and preparing and gathering things and packing up a childhood's worth of memories. They will be men when those cardboard boxes are opened again.
The last change was the one that turned our worlds upside-down. In the space of two weeks, we went from happily living in our spacious home to paring out, packing up, and moving away. We moved in with my dad, to care for him and his Parkinson's disease. It was not completely unexpected, as I look back. I was feeling a bit of wanderlust, to the point of checking out houses for sale, and I specifically wanted to find a place to live on my dad's side of town. But the suddenness of the whole thing was dramatic enough to take my breath away. I dragged my exhausted body out of bed every morning, hollered, "This is crazy!" to no one in particular, cried, and then packed like a mad woman. I won't attempt write about the insanity of moving 10 people's things to a house half the size - I would not even be able to use complete sentences. (But I did write about it in my letters to my missionary boys, and that's where many of the summer posts come from.)
After all the hubbub of moving and the logistics of building walls to accommodate our family in what was then a two-bedroom house (besides my dad's room) died down, I expected to feel cramped and distraught. But I don't. I am at peace. Maybe moving back into my childhood home has something to do with it. Maybe having lived in this neighborhood only five years ago (although in a different house) has something to do with it. Maybe living in a quieter area, where my children play with new friends in the street in front of the house has something to do with it. Maybe it's all of those things, combined with the quiet assurance that I'm where I ought to be, doing what I ought to be doing. That Heaven-sent peace has been such a blessing in the middle of our chaos.
I'm back - back writing, back thinking again, trying to get back into a routine. And back home.
Spoons my Oma collected from her native Germany, and a few here in America
P.S. I actually have been writing over the summer - letters to my missionary boys. I think I'll post parts of them and back-date them over the last couple of months. Because I can.
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