Scattered Thoughts

Less frazzled than the last post. Fo sho. Another completely beautiful week with family helped. A vacation rental at a fraction of the normal cost is also a blessing while we anxiously await the closing on a new house. I'm really, really excited about the new house, but here is a beautiful place for now.

For those who wish to know, Una is adjusting beautifully. She gets a long run on one of the many bike trails followed by breakfast and time with the girls. Her favorite, however, seems to be sitting on the deck watching the squirrels run through the park across the street. Yesterday she bolted into Lake Michigan chasing seagulls. We're not sure if she underestimated the distance or if she meant to do that. According to husband, she looked very surprised, somewhat sheepish, but was very proud to discover she could swim.

The days are already cool and brisk, but warm in the sun.

Heidi seems to be homesick. She wants to send letters to people. She wants to know what I miss about New Mexico. She remembers everything: the birthday cake she painted with Miss Margaret, the doll from Mrs. Linno, and the night we watched fireworks in the park with Abigail, Cayley, and Aubrey. It is amazing to me to hear her asking about these things.

Moving always makes me think harder about home. Like, where it really is. It has been the great question of my life, a life of many moves. We watched "date night" earlier this summer--kind of funny--but there was this bizarre scene with a low-life couple, sparing the details....anyway, they have to run away and the girl says "but this is our home," and the boy pounds his heart and says over and over "this is your home. This is your home." There is something true there. I can't quite place it. Something in between the cliches of saying our home is in heaven, which is completely TRUE but hard to feel. Until you are without a current home. But also something in how we are supposed to represent heaven, as churches, as families, as the body of Christ. How, in family and fellowship, we are to be Home to each other and to the homeless. The longing I feel for my own bed (do you miss your bed?, Heidi asks) is not always the same as the longing I feel for heaven. But when I'm standing over the grave of a loved one, it all becomes the same.

Well, that was fast.

My last post was written from our kitchen in New Mexico. The rest of that week was spent packing up, cleaning late into the night, moving out, enjoying our last few hours with great, great friends and church family, and speeding off to Montana in the earliest dawn.

In high school my goal was to live in Montana. I know now that it was a brilliant goal. The week there was precious and gorgeous, made more so by the exhaustion and shock of the two weeks prior.

We knew we were going to be moving this year, but were not expecting it to happen until mid-september. But when God gave us some renters for our house, we had to say yes...so within a week we were on a plane out of the desert, never to return.

When husband introduced us at a wedding as "people who have no place to live," I knew we were definitely in the middle of something. Now, living at my parents' and having strange high school flashbacks interrupted by the very current, very real demands of my children, I feel even more in the middle, already, and not yet. We received a hodge-podge of signatures via email that seem to indicate a deal is pending on a house for us in Holland, some fifteen days after acceptance. Acceptance of what, you ask? I do not know either.

Yesterday at Elsa's Dr. appointment, the nurse followed me out to the waiting room. "I know how hard this must be for you," she said. "If you need anything, anything at all, just call us." The Dr. had already given me a website for his church and told me all about how hard moving had been for him and his wife, and how I should go and find her at the moms-n-tots group, perhaps immediately. I think he was trying to witness to me. I guess in the land of churches, I need to up my game, testimonially speaking.

"Do I seem really frazzled?" I asked the nurse.
"Yes, actually, you do," she answered. I guess my sweeping entrance with Elsa merely wearing a pamper, complete with tales of carsickness (her cute brand-new outfit was covered in puke), in addition to being ten minutes late minus an insurance card really made a good first impression. And to top it off, we sat in the "sick" waiting room. I didn't notice the sign until after my girls had touched everything within the entire premises. I was deeply touched by the staff's compassion and love, and it dawned on me that yes, I am pretty frazzled right now.

All that to say, I have no reason to be frazzled. We had two beautiful, perfect weeks of vacation with each side of our family, I have full-time childcare and my mom irons our clothes faster than I can notice what needs to be ironed--I hesitate to even write this because I know how many of you reading are deep in the trenches of normal motherhood. Husband made it safe across the land of the free with Una and the rest of our stuff. I need to come up with a new name for my blog since I am definitely back in the land of many waters. The radio is still constantly playing the Edmund Fitzgerald. I'm feeling a desire to get some blond highlights for myself and my children, you know, just to fit in more in Holland, you know, maybe add a Van to our last name somewhere...

All that to say, God is good, faithful, and even though He plucked us out of the desert pretty fast, He provided for our every need along the way and continues to remind us of His nearness and goodness.